25 years after Linus Torvalds unveiled Linux, the free operating system is still finding new uses. The post Linux Took Over the Web. Now, It’s Taking Over the World appeared first on WIRED.
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Go Set Up Two-Step Verification On Your PlayStation Right Now
This morning, Sony quietly added two-step verification to the PlayStation Network, allowing users to add an extra layer of security to their PS4, PS3, and Vita accounts. Finally.
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Voice Recognition Software Finally Beats Humans At Typing, Study Finds
A customer tries the Siri voice recognition function on an Apple iPhone 6 Plus in Hong Kong.
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A customer tries the Siri voice recognition function on an Apple iPhone 6 Plus in Hong Kong.
Bloomberg/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Computers have already beaten us at chess, Jeopardy and go, the ancient board game from Asia. And now, in the raging war with machines, human beings have lost yet another battle – over typing.
Turns out voice recognition software has improved to the point where it is significantly faster and more accurate at producing text on a mobile device than we are at typing on its keyboard. That’s according to a new study by Stanford University, University of Washington and Baidu, the Chinese Internet giant. The study ran tests in English and Mandarin Chinese.
Baidu chief scientist Andrew Ng says this should not feel like defeat. “Humanity was never designed to communicate by using our fingers to poke at a tiny little keyboard on a mobile phone. Speech has always been a much more natural way for humans to communicate with each other.”
Researchers set up a competition, pitting a Baidu program called Deep Speech 2 against 32 humans, ages 19 to 32. The humans took turns saying and then typing short phrases into an iPhone – like “buckle up for safety” and “wear a crown with many jewels” and “this person is a disaster.” They found the voice recognition software was three times faster.
Stanford computer scientist James Landay did not expect that. “The surprise for me was that it was that much better: three times faster! You would think everyone would be flocking to use it if they knew how much better it actually was.”
Voice recognition still gets a bad rap. That could be because of how people use it. Apple’s Siri, the beloved and befuddled personal assistant, has a hard time answering basic questions.
The Stanford University-University of Washington-Baidu team didn’t test query skills. They zoomed in on voice recognition software’s ability to type the spoken words. In English, they found the software’s error rate was 20.4 percent lower than humans typing on a keyboard; and in Mandarin Chinese, it was 63.4 percent lower.
Landay hopes these findings encourage people to revisit the idea of talking to their phone.
“People probably play with Siri and find oh, it didn’t give them the right answer. So they don’t think to use speech as a way to do their text messaging or their email or what not,” he says. “Using speech for those things is now working really well.”
Back in the 1990s, researchers found voice recognition tools were far less accurate than keyboard typing. Slang and ambient noise in a room tripped up the software.
In the last few years, that’s changed for a few reasons: just like smartphone cameras with more megapixels can see us better, the built-in microphones can hear us better. Supercomputers are churning through data more effectively in a process called “deep learning.” And there’s more training data to vacuum in and learn from. For example, Ng says, Baidu has five years worth of audio – unique recordings of people speaking that can play nonstop from now until 2021.
In 2015, only 65 percent of smartphone owners in the U.S. used voice assistants, according to the 2016 Internet Trends Report, a popular annual overview by tech investor Mary Meeker.
That said, many tech companies are betting that now is the inflection point and are hiring experts in the field of “natural language processing.” Google and Amazon are inviting developers to work on voice-driven products.
It’s easy to see how talking at your device would be far better than typing, say when you’re driving.
Baidu’s Ng imagines another scenario. He does not have children yet. But, he says, he looks forward to the day when his future grandchild comes home and asks, “Is it really true that when you were young, if you came home and you said something to your microwave oven – did it really just sit there and ignore you? That’s just so rude of the microwave.”
His co-author Landay reins him back and notes there are many moments – in a meeting, in bed with your partner sleeping – when typing still makes more sense than talking to one’s devices.
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Crash landing for world’s largest aircraft
The world’s largest aircraft crash landed at the end of its second test flight on Wednesday.
The 300-feet long Airlander 10 nosedived on its return to an airfield north of London after spending more than an hour and half in the air.
“The Airlander experienced a heavy landing and the front of the flight deck has sustained some damage which is currently being assessed,” Hybrid Air Vehicles, the British company behind the aircraft, said in a statement.
The company did not explain what caused the crash but said all planned tasks were completed during the flight. The pilots were unhurt, it added.
The U.K. government’s Air Accident Investigation Branch has begun an investigation, a spokesperson said.
Part airship, part helicopter, part plane, the aircraft is about 50 feet longer than the biggest passenger plane.
Airlander completed its maiden test flight just last week. But that was not without incident either.
The flight was postponed for three days due to a technical problem, and then when Airlander took off — after hours of delay — it only stayed in the air for 20 minutes instead of the 90 minutes originally planned.
Related: World’s largest aircraft completes its first flight
Airlander has four engines and no internal structure. It maintains its shape thanks to the pressure of the 38,000 cubic meters of helium inside its hull, which is made from ultralight carbon fiber.
Together with the aerodynamic shape of its hull, the lighter-than-air helium gas provides most of the lift. The aircraft’s odd shape has led some observers to describe it as a “flying bum.”
The aircraft was originally designed for U.S. military surveillance. But the project was grounded in 2013 because of defense spending cuts.
Hybrid Air Vehicles then managed to raise over 3.4 million pounds ($4.4 million) through two crowd funding campaigns. It also received a grant from the European Union and funding from the U.K. government.
Airlander is designed to stay airborne for up to five days at a time if manned, and for more than two weeks if unmanned. It should be able to carry up to 10 tons of cargo at a maximum speed of 91 miles per hour.
— Laura Perez Maestro contributed reporting.
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Mylan pledges to make EpiPen more affordable
Mylan announced a series of steps Thursday it says will make its EpiPen more affordable for some patients.
The drugmaker is caught at the center of a firestorm over the rising price of prescription drugs. Mylan had raised a standard two-pack of EpiPens to about $600 over the past several years. It had cost $100 in 2009.
Following a recent uproar, including a public tongue-lashing from Hillary Clinton and a senator whose daughter uses the product, Mylan (MYL) said Wednesday it would help reduce the cost of the emergency allergy drug for people who are struggling to afford it.
In a press release, Mylan said it would provide instant saving cards worth $300 to patients who have to pay full price for the drug out of pocket. That amounts to about a 50% price cut for those people without insurance or for patients with high deductible plans.
The drugmaker also said that it would expand the group of patients eligible for financial assistance. Families of four with a household income of $97,200 or less can apply to receive the EpiPen two-pack for free.
Mylan will also “open a pathway” to sell its EpiPens directly to consumers, which could help reduce the cost of the drug for patients. And it will continue to give away free EpiPens to select school systems.
The company did not mention the public criticism from politicians and did not immediately respond to CNNMoney. But Clinton and also Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat from Minnesota whose daughter carries the emergency treatment as a precaution against potentially life-threatening allergic reactions, have demanded that the company reduce the price.
“What this company’s done is taken a product that in 2009 was about $100 and moved it up to this year between $500 and $600,” she Klobuchar, in a recent interview with CNN.
She said in Canada they’re hundreds of dollars cheaper and that the company increased the price without making any significant changes to the product.
“They reach their expiration date in one year so then you have to buy more,” she said, adding that some people carry expired EpiPens, hoping they will work when needed.
The pen provides epinephrine, a hormone also known as adrenaline, which can help relax muscles in the airwaves in the midst of a severe allergic reaction.
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Whatsapp will share your phone number with Facebook
If you use WhatsApp for messaging friends and family, get ready for Facebook to learn even more about you.
WhatsApp announced in a blog post Thursday that it will begin to share phone numbers and other data the activity of its one billion users with its parent company Facebook (FB, Tech30), more than two years after getting acquired.
WhatsApp framed the move as a way to crack down on spam and help Facebook improve its friend suggestions and the ads it shows users with the additional data.
“Facebook and the other companies in the Facebook family also may use information from us to improve your experiences within their services such as making product suggestions (for example, of friends or connections, or of interesting content) and showing relevant offers and ads,” WhatsApp explained in its updated terms and privacy policy.
The service will give users a chance to opt out of the sharing arrangement before agreeing to the news terms and privacy policy, and another 30 days to opt out after agreeing to it.
The policy change is likely to upset some users who trusted WhatsApp to keep their data as private as possible — a principle that WhatsApp founder and CEO Jan Koum promised to abide by shortly after getting acquired by Facebook.
Related: WhatsApp adds end-to-end encryption for all communications
“Respect for your privacy is coded into our DNA, and we built WhatsApp around the goal of knowing as little about you as possible,” Koum wrote in a blog post a month after the acquisition. “If partnering with Facebook meant that we had to change our values, we wouldn’t have done it.”
WhatsApp, he explained, does not have data on its users birthdays, home addresses or places of work. But it does have access to phone numbers — and now Facebook does too.
Some users aired their outrage on Twitter over WhatsApp handing over their phone numbers to Facebook.
“Phone numbers?!? No! That’s absolutely NOT OKAY. I might need to delete Facebook, people. NOT kidding,” one WhatsApp user tweeted.
While the arrangement may frustrate users, it was only a matter of time. Facebook bought WhatsApp for $19 billion, by far its largest acquisition ever, and had to start making use of its data sooner or later to make that money back.
In addition to tapping into WhatsApp data for better ad targeting, WhatsApp also updated its policy to pave the way for users to communicate with businesses.
That follows Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s typical playbook for making money from social platforms: give businesses an opportunity to engage with customers on the platform, then start charging them to be seen more prominently.
It’s a long game — and one that Zuckerberg put off for WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger for years, despite interest from investors.
“This may sound a little ridiculous to say, but for us, products don’t really get that interesting to turn into businesses until they have about a one billion people using them,” Zuckerberg said on an earnings call in October, 2014.
WhatsApp hit the one billion user mark at the beginning of this year. Now it’s time to make some money.
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Guy’s Mom Tries To Describe Overwatch Characters Without Knowing Overwatch
The “parents don’t know but they’ll talk about it anyway†gag is not a new one, but it remains a sweet one when the parents do a good job (and aren’t treated like idiots by exploitative kids). Like Karhall’s mom here, who was asked to talk about Overwatch characters without knowing who the hell they were.
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