So I must confess last week’s news about the release of a new “AI assistant” coding helper called GitHub Copilot gave me complicated feelings. Copilot, which spits out code to order based on “plain English” descriptions, is a remarkable tool. But is it about to put coders like me out of a job? Trained on billions of lines of human code GitHub (now owned by Microsoft) is a collaboration platform and social network for developers....
But most of us also know what it’s like to be at the receiving end of people’s lack of creativity. That’s why the Infinite Conference — a Twitter created by Aaron Z. Best that generates fake sessions for a never ending tech conference — hits so close to home. The session titles generated by the bot are both mind-numbingly boring and nauseatingly jargony, while still sounding real. Basically, it’s funny because it’s true....
There are 5 billion mobile users around the world —and they have access to nearly 5 million different iOS and Android apps to download and sample. And all those apps are expected to generate nearly $190 billion in revenue this year. Considering those kinds of numbers, it’s no mystery why your friend, your friend’s kid, your Uber driver, your grandma and probably you are all working on the next great app idea that’s going to break the internet in half....
You can barely move for dark mode news stories these days. Gmail? Dark mode. Instagram? Testing dark mode. iPhones? Dripping in dark mode. It’s disgusting. And you, readers, should know better. “Oh,” you say, shuffling from foot to foot. “Disgusting? Hardly. I actually really like dark mode. It looks great.” Oh you poor, sweet, beautiful fool. Are you the sort of person that still has a Matrix-style screensaver on your Linux desktop computer?...
If you’ve got to bet on anything, it’s always best to bet on yourself — and investing in improving your skills and knowledge is how you make sure that bet always pays off. For the past 30 years, the pieces of the Adobe Creative Cloud, anchored by heritage apps Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign, have been the gold standard of digital creation. Since that dominance shows no sign of ending soon, you can learn to use these powerful and popular tools to their limits with the training in The 2020 Adobe Graphic Design Certification School....
The Newspaper Navigator shows how seminal events and characters, such as wars and presidents, have been depicted in the press. Jim Casey, an assistant professor of African American Studies at Penn State University who’s tested the tool, said it would add a visual component to his historical research: [Read: Are EVs too expensive? Here are 5 common myths, debunked] The tool is the brainchild of Ben Lee, a Washington University researcher and the Library of Congress’ Innovator in Residence....
Lucid, a new EV company that’s now led by a former Tesla engineer who spearheaded the Model S, is saying that its upcoming Air EV will be capable of driving more than 500 miles (around 800 km) on a single charge — 517 miles (832 km) to be exact. [Read: Judge finally rules that Uber and Lyft drivers are employees — but this is just the beginning] In a press release published earlier today, Lucid says that it’s managed to achieve the range using “proprietary technology, along with careful engineering of every aspect of the Air’s performance and efficiency....
As Ananya Bhattacharya noted in her story for Quartz, a lot of global companies such as General Electric, Citibank, Airbus, and Morgan Stanley, have their back-office operations situated in India, and they can’t afford to put work on hold. [Read: Video games can help kids tackle loneliness during lockdown] One of the primary reasons is that while signing a project deal, clients often ask these firms to set up a highly secure Offshore Development Centre (ODC) — a separate section, such as a floor or a closed area, in an office with tight security measures....
According to Russian business daily Vedomosti, a new facial recognition system coming to every school in the country has been ominously named “Orwell.” The system will keep the lucky kids safe by following their movements and spotting outsiders lurking on school premises, the newspaper reports. The platform identifies targets from video and thermal imaging streams using algorithms developed by tech firm Elvees Neotech. A spokesperson for the company said that parents and children wouldn’t be added to the system without their consent....
The company this week offered the entire research community access to a fully-trained large language model (LLM). Named the Open Pretrained Transformer (OPT), the system mirrors the performance and size of OpenAI’s vaunted GPT-3 model. This mimicry is deliberate. While GPT-3 has a stunning ability to produce human-like text, it also has a powerful capacity for biases, bigotry, and disinformation. OPT’s creators said their system can reduce these risks: In addition to sharing OPT for non-commercial use, Meta has released its pre-trained models, their underlying code, and a logbook of their development....
The pathogens that the halicin antibiotic has targetted include Acinetobacter baumannii, which was nicknamed “Iraqibacter” after it infected thousands of US service personnel returning from the war in Iraq. In 2017, the World Health Organization (WHO) named it the bacteria that poses the greatest threat to human health — because of its resistance to antibiotics. The discovery of halicin may be able to change that. The Financial Times reports that it can also target tuberculosis (pictured above_ and clostridium difficile, a bacteria that can infect the bowel and cause diarrhea....
As is the case with previous Moto 360 smartwatches, this version is targeted at people who need a general-purpose device. Something that looks good, runs apps, and can play media. This is a welcome change, given the propensity for smartwatch manufacturers to aggressively target their products at a small niche of fitness-focused consumers. At the heart of the device is last-year’s Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear 3100. Although slightly long in the tooth, this remains the chipmaker’s most current wearable-focused silicon, largely due to the unhurried nature of the smartwatch market....
The news comes just days after activists stripped naked outside Facebook’s and Instagram’s New York headquarters to protest the platforms’ censorship regulations around artistic nudity. NCAC confirmed the social media giant had agreed to a meeting with a “group of stakeholders including artists, art educators, museum curators, activists, as well as Facebook employees.” During the meeting, which has no set date but is believed to happen some time this summer, they “will discuss the issue of nude photographic art and the harm done to artists, provide insights into the challenges Facebook has faced in developing its nudity policies, and explore ideas for a path forward....
But the Mountain View giant is not alone; the rest of US tech is hoarding too. In 2012, the companies currently featured in the tech-heavy NASDAQ 100 (NDX) stock index collectively held $405 billion in cash and other small investments. Now, they’ve amassed more than $927 billion — more than half a trillion dollars saved in eight years. Microsoft and Alphabet are NASDAQ’s kings of cash Together, they’ve added $323 billion since 2012....
Up front: We can’t confirm its existence, but the Anti-Cheat Police Department Twitter account posted footage of what it says is a legitimate AI-powered cheating software. — Anti-Cheat Police Department ?️ (@AntiCheatPD) July 5, 2021 What makes this interesting is that it’s alleged to work on consoles. While consoles are typically more difficult to cheat on than PCs, due to the nature of their respective operating systems, it’s certainly not rare to come across people using aim assistance software (aim bots) or modified controllers....
Ella is a life-like virtual assistant that uses real-time animation to emulate face-to-face interaction in an empathetic way. Its first day of work will be next Monday, when Ella will be stationed in the lobby of the force’s national headquarters in Wellington. Its chief duties there will be welcoming visitors to the building, telling staff that they’ve arrived, and directing them to collect their passes. It can also talk to visitors about certain issues, such as the force’s non-emergency number and police vetting procedures....
Nintendo says on its Japanese support page that login information was “obtained illegally by some means other than our service.” The company believe the hackers were able to do this by impersonating Nintendo Network IDs, the old login information used on the Wii U and 3DS. The hackers were then able to access users’ Nintendo accounts — used on the Switch and Nintendo’s mobile games — via their associated NNIDs....
They don’t discriminate either: it doesn’t matter if you’re the best performing team member, an award-winning CEO, or the new kid on the block. The truth is that there will be times when you have to rectify mistakes and solve problems on the fly. Some setbacks will be small — the kind that entail you working late one evening — and others will have a profound impact on your professional and personal life....
As we reported earlier today, MoviePass is shutting down. It leaves behind a few now-useless cards, and several major VC funds out of pocket to the tune of $68.7M. Make no mistake, this was a completely predictable turn of events. For over a year, MoviePass has struggled with cash-flow struggles, primarily because it had an utterly doomed business model. In short, it sold a product (movie tickets) for far less than it cost to acquire, with no concrete plans to reach profitability, save for vague postulations about “analytics” and “partnerships....
Studies have predicted that by 2040, there will be more than 7 million tonnes of EV batteries that need recycling. As more of us make the switch to electric power, the need for recycling facilities grows — and Nissan has come up with a wonderfully circular way of reusing batteries from its Leaf EV. The reason why we’re racing to find alternative uses for EV batteries is that their entire life-cycle can go far beyond the vehicle....
