Your Cash Is No Good Here. Literally. – So how to pay if you don’t like plastic: which helps the banks but not your spending patterns

As more retailers—including Drybar and Sweetgreen—ban paper money, it’s making things awkward for customers without plastic. [paywalled] Source: Your Cash Is No Good Here. Literally. – WSJ   Oh dear, not accepting money – when the pain signals in your brain are not set off by clicking a bank pass, but are when you have Read more about Your Cash Is No Good Here. Literally. – So how to pay if you don’t like plastic: which helps the banks but not your spending patterns[…]

AI learns to Navigate the Web, fill in forms – without a human built training set

Learning in environments with large state and action spaces, and sparse rewards, can hinder a Reinforcement Learning (RL) agent’s learning through trial-and-error. For instance, following natural language instructions on the Web (such as booking a flight ticket) leads to RL settings where input vocabulary and number of actionable elements on a page can grow very Read more about AI learns to Navigate the Web, fill in forms – without a human built training set[…]

AI Automatically Sorts Cancer Cells to determine most effective treatment

A team of researchers in Japan have devised an artificial intelligence (AI) system that can identify different types of cancer cells using microscopy images. Their method can also be used to determine whether the cancer cells are sensitive to radiotherapy. The researchers reported their findings in the journal Cancer Research. In cancer patients, there can Read more about AI Automatically Sorts Cancer Cells to determine most effective treatment[…]

This Roomba can create its own Doom levels

Game developer and designer Rich Whitehouse gave the world an unusual present this Christmas Eve. It’s called Doomba, and it uses the popular Roomba vacuuming robots to create levels for Doom, the classic first-person shooter. Whitehouse is a 20-year veteran of the game industry, with credits on titles such as the original Prey and Star Read more about This Roomba can create its own Doom levels[…]

In Blow to Amazon and Walmart, India Bans a Key Part of Their Business Strategy

The Indian government sent a strong screw you to Amazon and the Walmart-owned Flipkart on Wednesday, banning e-commerce companies from selling products from companies that they have an equity interest in or “entering into exclusive agreements with sellers,” CNBC reported. India already bans e-commerce sites from selling products directly, per the New York Times, which Read more about In Blow to Amazon and Walmart, India Bans a Key Part of Their Business Strategy[…]

Mapping All of the Trees with Machine Learning

Much fuss has been made over city trees in recent years. Urban trees reduce crime and help stormwater management (yay!). Cities and towns across the U.S. are losing 36 million trees a year (boo!). But, hold up—climate change is accelerating the growth of urban trees in metropolises worldwide (boo/yay?). Urban trees are under such scrutiny Read more about Mapping All of the Trees with Machine Learning[…]

The Amazon Alexa Eavesdropping Nightmare Came True: Creepy Recordings sent to random stranger

An Amazon user in Germany recently requested data about his personal activities and inadvertently gained access to 1,700 audio recordings of someone he didn’t know. Germany’s c’t magazine reports that in August the Amazon user—exercising his rights under the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation—requested his own data that Amazon has stored. Two months later, Amazon Read more about The Amazon Alexa Eavesdropping Nightmare Came True: Creepy Recordings sent to random stranger[…]

Breakthrough ultrasound treatment to reverse dementia moves to human trials

An extraordinarily promising new technique using ultrasound to clear the toxic protein clumps thought to cause dementia and Alzheimer’s disease is moving to the first phase of human trials next year. The innovative treatment has proven successful across several animal tests and presents an exciting, drug-free way to potentially battle dementia. The ultrasound treatment was Read more about Breakthrough ultrasound treatment to reverse dementia moves to human trials[…]

At Blind – a whistleblower site -, a security lapse revealed private complaints from Silicon Valley employees. Turns out it’s not very safe to blow your whistle there after all.

Thousands of people trusted Blind, an app-based “anonymous social network,” as a safe way to reveal malfeasance, wrongdoing and improper conduct at their companies.But Blind left one of its database servers exposed without a password, making it possible (for anyone who knew where to look) to access each user’s account information and identify would-be whistleblowers. Read more about At Blind – a whistleblower site -, a security lapse revealed private complaints from Silicon Valley employees. Turns out it’s not very safe to blow your whistle there after all.[…]

New Photo Wake-Up System Turns Still Images Into 3D animations

The system, called Photo Wake-Up, creates a 3D animation from a single photo. In the paper, the researchers compare it to the moving portraits at Hogwarts, a fictitious part of the Harry Potter world that a number of tech companies have tried to recreate. Previous attempts have been mildly successful, but this system is impressive Read more about New Photo Wake-Up System Turns Still Images Into 3D animations[…]

An Amoeba-Based Computer Calculated Approximate Solutions to an 8 city Travelling Salesman Problem

A team of Japanese researchers from Keio University in Tokyo have demonstrated that an amoeba is capable of generating approximate solutions to a remarkably difficult math problem known as the “traveling salesman problem.” The traveling salesman problem goes like this: Given an arbitrary number of cities and the distances between them, what is the shortest Read more about An Amoeba-Based Computer Calculated Approximate Solutions to an 8 city Travelling Salesman Problem[…]

FCC fines Swarm $900,000 for unauthorized satellite launch

Swarm Technologies Inc will pay a $900,000 fine for launching and operating four small experimental communications satellites that risked “satellite collisions” and threatened “critical commercial and government satellite operations,” the Federal Communications Commission said on Thursday. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) logo is seen before the FCC Net Neutrality hearing in Washington February 26, 2015. Read more about FCC fines Swarm $900,000 for unauthorized satellite launch[…]

EU Diplomatic Comms Network, Which the NSA Reportedly Warned Could Be Easily Hacked, Was Hacked. But contents were boring.

The European Union’s network used for diplomatic communications, COREU, was infiltrated “for years” by hackers, the New York Times reported on Tuesday, with the unknown rogues behind the attack reportedly reposting the stolen communiqués to an “open internet site.” The network in question connects EU leadership with other EU organizations, as well as the foreign Read more about EU Diplomatic Comms Network, Which the NSA Reportedly Warned Could Be Easily Hacked, Was Hacked. But contents were boring.[…]

This AI Just Mapped Every Solar Panel in the United States

n some states, solar energy accounts for upwards of 10 percent of total electricity generation. It’s definitely a source of power that’s on the rise, whether it be to lessen our dependence on fossil fuels, nuclear power, or the energy grid, or simply to take advantage of the low costs. This form of energy, however, Read more about This AI Just Mapped Every Solar Panel in the United States[…]

Turning Off Facebook Location Services Doesn’t Stop Tracking – you have to hide your IP address

Aleksandra Korolova has turned off Facebook’s access to her location in every way that she can. She has turned off location history in the Facebook app and told her iPhone that she “Never” wants the app to get her location. She doesn’t “check-in” to places and doesn’t list her current city on her profile. Despite Read more about Turning Off Facebook Location Services Doesn’t Stop Tracking – you have to hide your IP address[…]

NASA fears internal server hacked, staff personal info swiped by miscreants

A server containing personal information, including social security numbers, of current and former NASA workers may have been hacked, and its data stolen, it emerged today. According to an internal memo circulated among staff on Tuesday, in mid-October the US space agency investigated whether or not two of its machines holding employee records had been Read more about NASA fears internal server hacked, staff personal info swiped by miscreants[…]

Facebook Allowed Netflix, Spotify and A Bank To Read And Delete Users’ Private Messages. And around 150 other companies got to see other private information without user consent.

Facebook gave more than 150 companies, including Microsoft, Netflix, Spotify, Amazon, and Yahoo, unprecedented access to users’ personal data, according to a New York Times report published Tuesday. The Times obtained hundreds of pages of Facebook documents, generated in 2017, that show that the social network considered these companies business partners and effectively exempted them Read more about Facebook Allowed Netflix, Spotify and A Bank To Read And Delete Users’ Private Messages. And around 150 other companies got to see other private information without user consent.[…]

Amazon and Facebook Reportedly Had a Secret Data-Sharing Agreement, and It Explains So Much

Back in 2015, a woman named Imy Santiago wrote an Amazon review of a novel that she had read and liked. Amazon immediately took the review down and told Santiago she had “violated its policies.” Santiago re-read her review, didn’t see anything objectionable about it, so she tried to post it again. “You’re not eligible Read more about Amazon and Facebook Reportedly Had a Secret Data-Sharing Agreement, and It Explains So Much[…]

Ancient Hidden City Discovered Under Lake Titicaca

Five minutes away from the town of Tiquina, on the shores of Lake Titicaca, archaeologists found the remains of an ancient civilization under the waters of the lake. The find was made 10 years ago, by Christophe Delaere, an archaeologist from the Free University of Belgium, by following information provided by the locals. 24 submerged Read more about Ancient Hidden City Discovered Under Lake Titicaca[…]

Machine learning-detected signal predicts time to earthquake

Machine-learning research published in two related papers today in Nature Geoscience reports the detection of seismic signals accurately predicting the Cascadia fault’s slow slippage, a type of failure observed to precede large earthquakes in other subduction zones. Los Alamos National Laboratory researchers applied machine learning to analyze Cascadia data and discovered the megathrust broadcasts a Read more about Machine learning-detected signal predicts time to earthquake[…]

Google isn’t the company that we should have handed the Web over to: why MS switching to Chromium is a bad idea

With Microsoft’s decision to end development of its own Web rendering engine and switch to Chromium, control over the Web has functionally been ceded to Google. That’s a worrying turn of events, given the company’s past behavior. […] Google is already a company that exercises considerable influence over the direction of the Web’s development. By Read more about Google isn’t the company that we should have handed the Web over to: why MS switching to Chromium is a bad idea[…]

‘Farout,’ the most-distant solar system object discovered yet

For the first time, an object in our solar system has been found more than 100 times farther than Earth is from the sun. The International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center announced the discovery Monday, calling the object 2018 VG18. But the researchers who found it are calling it “Farout.” They believe the spherical object Read more about ‘Farout,’ the most-distant solar system object discovered yet[…]

Researchers demonstrate teleportation using on-demand photons from quantum dots

A team of researchers from Austria, Italy and Sweden has successfully demonstrated teleportation using on-demand photons from quantum dots. In their paper published in the journal Science Advances, the group explains how they accomplished this feat and how it applies to future quantum communications networks. Scientists and many others are very interested in developing truly Read more about Researchers demonstrate teleportation using on-demand photons from quantum dots[…]