Government
Star Trek Fans Will Love Amazon's Newest Echo Feature
President Trump Again Said Millions Voted Illegally. What to Know About the U.K. Supreme Court's Brexit Ruling Donald Trump Just Pulled Out of a Trade Pact Meant to Help the U.S. Compete With China He Just Won't Say How. Lin-Manuel Miranda's Oscar Nomination Puts Him One Step Closer to EGOT Jimmy Kimmel Has Some'Alternative Facts' for President Trump
Why Resident Evil 7 is the perfect horror game for 2017
Horror movies have always reflected and explored the political climate of the eras that produced them. In the 1950s, Cold War paranoia led to a spate of films such as Invasion of the Body Snatchers about aliens hiding among us, looking to destroy humanity from within. Later the chaos and bloodshed of the Vietnam war inspired a cycle of cynical, anarchic and bloody movies such as Tobe Hooper's Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Wes Craven's Last House On the Left, in which the rules of civilised society collapse amid senseless, numbing violence. Horror cinema, with its in-built tropes of shock and tension, has always provided a convenient way for culture to process real-life fears. This is why Resident Evil 7, released this week to much critical acclaim, is an interesting benchmark for where horror video games are right now, and what they say about the world around us.
D-Wave's $15 million quantum computer runs a staggering 2,000 qubits
For D-Wave, the path to quantum computers being widely accepted is similar to the history of today's computers. The first chips came more than 30 years ago, and Microsoft's Basic expanded the software infrastructure around PCs. Quantum computers are a new type of computer that can be significantly faster than today's PCs. They are still decades away from replacing PCs and going mainstream, but more advanced hardware and use models are still emerging. "A lot of that is unfolding and will have a similar dramatic change in the computing landscape," Vern Brownell, D-Wave's CEO, said in an interview.
Artificial intelligence positioned to be a game-changer
The following script is from "Artificial Intelligence," which aired on Oct. 9, 2016. Charlie Rose is the correspondent. The search to improve and eventually perfect artificial intelligence is driving the research labs of some of the most advanced and best-known American corporations. They are investing billions of dollars and many of their best scientific minds in pursuit of that goal. All that money and manpower has begun to pay off. In the past few years, artificial intelligence -- or A.I. -- has taken a big leap -- making important strides in areas like medicine and military technology. What was once in the realm of science fiction has become day-to-day reality. You'll find A.I. routinely in your smart phone, in your car, in your household appliances and it is on the verge of changing everything. On 60 Minutes Overtime, Charlie Rose explores the labs at Carnegie Mellon on the cutting edge of A.I. See robots learning to go where humans can'... It was, for decades, primitive technology.
Fake Think Tanks Fuel Fake News--And the President's Tweets
A longstanding network of bogus "think tanks" raise disinformation to a pseudoscience, and their studies' pull quotes and flashy stats become the "evidence" driving viral, fact-free stories. Not to mention President Trump's tweets. These organizations have always existed: they're old-school propagandists with new-school, tech-savvy reach. They've been ginning up so-called research for everyone from shady corporations to anti-LGBTQ groups to white supremacists for decades--they're practiced, and their faux-academic veneer is thick and glossy. Which makes them harder to brush off than your garden-variety liar.
Passports replaced with WHAT?
If you're the type of traveler that can never remember which pocket you put your passport in when asked to produce it by airport officials, then Australia's plan for a major overhaul of its checking systems is likely to appeal. The nation's Department of Immigration and Border Protection is aiming to do away with the need for passports at its international airports by introducing systems for biometric recognition of the face, iris and/or fingerprints, the Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) reported. International arrivals could speed through airside without ever interacting with a human official as the new technology -- part of the government's high-tech Seamless Traveler initiative aimed at transforming the border experience -- will eradicate the need for passport checks and passenger cards. Besides making the arrival experience more efficient, officials also believe the system will be better at identifying passengers on watch lists. While a number of airports have for several years been using so-called smart gates that prompt travelers to scan their passports upon arrival, the new system, which the government wants in place within the next three years, goes much further.
Robots fighting wars could be blamed for mistakes on the battlefield
Some argue that robots do not have free will and therefore cannot be held morally accountable for their actions. But UW psychologists are finding that people don't have such a clear-cut view of humanoid robots. The researchers' latest results show that humans apply a moderate amount of morality and other human characteristics to robots that are equipped with social capabilities and are capable of harming humans. In this case, the harm was financial, not life-threatening. But it still demonstrated how humans react to robot errors.
Cognitive Computing: Building A Machine That Can Learn From Experience
But University of Wisconsin-Madison research psychiatrist Giulio Tononi, who was recently selected to take part in the creation of a "cognitive computer," says the goal of building a computer as quick and flexible as a small mammalian brain is more daunting than it sounds. Tononi, professor of psychiatry at the UW-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health and an internationally known expert on consciousness, is part of a team of collaborators from top institutions who have been awarded a $4.9 million grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for the first phase of DARPA's Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics (SyNAPSE) project. Tononi and scientists from Columbia University and IBM will work on the "software" for the thinking computer, while nanotechnology and supercomputing experts from Cornell, Stanford and the University of California-Merced will create the "hardware." Dharmendra Modha of IBM is the principal investigator. "Every neuron in the brain knows that something has changed," Tononi explains. "It tells the brain, 'I got burned, and if you want to change, this is the time to do it.''
Machine Learning in Radiology - Vendors Must Prove The ROI - Signify Research
Machine learning was undoubtedly one of the hottest topics in radiology last year, with a steady stream of academic research papers highlighting how machine learning, particularly deep learning, can outperform traditional algorithms or manual processes in certain use-cases. Investment in machine learning start-ups also continued, with several companies attracting early stage funding. To date, more than $100m has been invested in start-ups that are developing AI solutions for radiology. Furthermore, commercial activity gained pace, with at least 20 companies exhibiting AI-based products at the RSNA conference towards the end of the year, although most were prototypes and only a handful had regulatory clearance. Whilst the enthusiasm for machine learning is certainly justified, it inevitably raises expectations, potentially to unrealistic levels.
How AI will transform your Wi-Fi
I've always had a lot of respect for veterinarians, because they are masters at solving problems based purely on fuzzy symptoms that their patients cannot explain: where it hurts, how long it's been hurting, and what events led up to the problem. Many times the patients don't even know they are sick. Yet a vet is able to make educated guesses with the data they do have, which often results in successful diagnoses and treatments. Wireless local area networks (WLANs) cannot talk, either, which often forces IT administrators to operate like doctors, listening to wireless users describe symptoms in vague terms: "I can't connect." "Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't."