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 secret life


The Secret Life of a Winter Olympics Drone

Slate

You have a very important role! As a first-person-view camera drone, you soar high above the action at the Milan Cortina Games, capturing aerial footage of Olympic athletes as they fly through the snow and slide down the ice. You will zoom around at speeds of up to 75 miles per hour, capturing immersive, verité-style footage that makes these inherently exciting sports feel even more exciting. You make the luge come alive! Here the head of Olympic Broadcasting Services, @YiannisExarchos takes us through the journey of the drone at the fastest winter sport, luge.


Online Dating Apps Are Actually Kind of a Disaster

WIRED

When it came to talking about the harmful effects of social media on kids, I used to feel like the Will Smith character in I, Robot: "Why won't anyone listen to me?" After I wrote a book about girls and social media in 2016, I got a lot of pushback from people accusing me of being a Luddite or raising a moral panic. That changed over time, once a deluge of studies sadly connected social media use in girls with rising rates of anxiety and depression, the loss of self-esteem, even suicide. Today, I don't think anyone would argue that social media is without significant dangers for children and teens. Nancy Jo Sales is the author of American Girls: Social Media and the Secret Life of Teenagers and Nothing Personal: My Secret Life in the Dating App Inferno.


Siri gets its first major movie promotional stunt

Engadget

While Amazon has been furiously releasing updates to keep Alexa abreast of current events (and holiday shopping deals), Apple has been content to keep most of their Siri updates limited to major OS releases. That'll change with the iTunes release of The Secret Life of Pets, which marks the first time Apple's virtual assistant has been used to promote a movie release or partnered with a major movie studio. As 9to5Mac notes, the promotional stunt for The Secret Life of Pets gives Siri 15 somewhat humorous canned responses to the question "What do my pets do when I'm not at home?" When Engadget tried the gimmick, Siri responded with: "I don't know, but the dog just asked me for a walking route to the nearest park." And: "I don't know, but the cat just asked me about the five day forecast for the living room sunny spot." Those answers might be cute, but they're also not quite as smart as say: having Siri pull up your Nest cam highlights or launching your treat cam app.


The secret life of robots

#artificialintelligence

As a species, we are excellent at imbuing life into the lifeless--just as we are proficient in giving meaning to the meaningless. One could argue that the ability of our brains to recognize patterns quickly is part of what gives us our humanity. Seeing faces on Mars, yelling at our cars for breaking down and giving animals more agency than they may possess are all results of our psyche. Our penchant for gestalt is important in the ever increasing world of social robots and machines. When it comes to technology and social robotics, the whole is often seen as more meaningful than the sum of the parts. The field of social robotics includes machines that use social behaviors and cues to interact with people.