For everything from family to computers…
#DeleteUber is trending on Twitter after the notoriously scummy ride-hailing app broke a strike and undercut taxi drivers’ protest of President Trump’s refugee-detaining executive order. Once more, Uber reminded the country that it’s a scum company.
from Gizmodo http://ift.tt/2kHgeB5
via IFTTT
To paraphrase Men In Black’s Agent K, a person is smart, but people are dumb, panicky and dangerous animals. Researchers at MIT and Princeton wanted to see if, despite this, they were able to extract better information from crowds. They appear to have succeeded after developing an algorithm that looks at what people answer, but also what they believe other people will answer too.
As the paper’s authors explain, the democratic method of asking people to choose between two (or more) options isn’t perfect. The system often skews heavily in favor of "shallow, lowest common denominator information at the expense of novel or specialized knowledge." Hence the idea, so espoused in the UK’s recent referendum to leave the European Union, that the people had grown tired of experts.
In order to combat this, the pair developed a system that essentially gives extra weight to the answers of better-informed people. In the example, a group was given two questions: "Is Philadelphia the capital of Pennsylvania?" and "Will other people think that Philadelphia is the capital of Pennsylvania?"
Now, Philadelphia isn’t the capital city of Pennsylvania, that honor goes to Harrisburg, but Philadelphia is bigger, more populous and better known. But those people who answered no to the first question said yes to the second, showing that they anticipated being in the minority.
The researchers’ solution to polling data is to only select the answer that is more popular than people predict it to be. As MIT News explains, it’s this smaller group that helps give you the proper weight of the overall answers. Put simply, it’s worth looking at those folks who answer against what they believe everyone else will say, since they may be smarter than everyone else.
There’s a sting in this tale, however, because this newfangled algorithm may not be enough to overcome human biases in some fields. At the same time that news of the research was published, the Washington Post carried out a similar experiment with unfortunate results.
The paper asked people to compare images of the National Mall on Jan 20th, 2009 and Jan 20th, 2017 — inauguration day. They were asked, simply, to choose which image displayed more people, and those with a political slant toward the current administration chose the clearly less populous picture. So, while scientists are still trying to make surveys and voting patterns better, they’re still going to have to contend with people being people.
from Engadget http://ift.tt/2jVozxx
via IFTTT
The last time we reported on Canadian quantum computing company D-Wave, it’d extended a contract for its 500-qubit D-Wave Two machine. Now, the firm has announced a major step forward: commercial availability of the D-Wave 2000Q, which it says has 2,000 qubits and costs a whopping $15 million. More than that, D-Wave has its first customer lined up for the pricey machine. "Cutting-edge cyber security firm" Temporal Defense Systems. There, the computer will be used for chipping away at problems that are for more complex than previously thought solvable.
"Using benchmark problems that are both challenging and relevant to real-world applications, the D-Wave 2000Q system outperformed highly specialized algorithms run on state-of-the-art classical servers by factors of 1,000 to 10,000 times," the press release says. Said benchmarks even included machine learning applications — which could prove to be the most consumer-facing application for the machines. A group of scientists is also looking at the machine for solving how planetary rovers can manage time and schedules autonomously.
As Nature notes, however, these systems work great with problems designed to run on them. Anything not tailored to the systems’ strengths can be another matter entirely. "So although scientists now agree that D-Wave devices do use quantum phenomena in their calculations," the journal writes, "some doubt that they can ever be used to solve real-world problems exponentially faster than classical computers — however many qubits are clubbed together, and whatever their configuration."
D-Wave isn’t stopping with the D-2000Q, of course, with SVP of Systems Jeremy Hilton saying that the next machine would once again follow the path of doubling performance and making easier-to-use and more efficient software.
Via: ExtremeTech
Source: D-Wave
from Engadget http://ift.tt/2jU9kF8
via IFTTT
Amazon has been working for a while now to build out its shipping and distribution network. Now the online retailer has started coordinating its own shipments from Chinese merchants to its warehouses in the US via ocean freighters. The Wall Street Journal reports that the company doesn’t own any ships, but it’s working as a freight forwarder and logistics provider. These are the companies that reserve space on freighters and handle trucking shipments from port to a warehouse. WSJ says that Amazon has coordinated shipment of 150 containers from China since October.
News of Amazon’s intent to get into shipping freight across the ocean first broke last year when the company gained approval from the Federal Maritime Commission to act as a Ocean Transportation Intermediary. During the 2015 holiday season, the retailer bought extra trailers to beef up its shipping capacity at the busiest time of the year. Earlier in 2015, Amazon began leasing planes for the so-called Prime Air that gave it more control over shipping logistics here in the US.
Source: The Wall Street Journal
from Engadget http://ift.tt/2jtK2iu
via IFTTT
Apple published its first paper on AI last month and now the company is set to join five others in a newly-formed research group. The Partnership on AI announced today that Apple would become its sixth founding member, adding to a lineup that already touts Amazon, Facebook, Google, IBM and Microsoft. The group was first formed last September as a means of supporting research, establishing ethical guidelines and promoting both transparency and privacy when it comes to AI studies.
In today’s announcement, the Partnership on AI explained that Apple has already been working with the group before it was made official last fall, but now the company is a full member alongside those other tech titans. Part of today’s news was also that the group selected its board of trustees that will oversee the initiative. In addition to each member company having a seat on the board, the Partnership on AI also included six independent members from other artificial intelligence organizations, universities and the ACLU. The board is scheduled to meet for the first in early February and we expect to bear more details shortly after.
Apple pledged to share some of its AI work in early December before publishing the aforementioned paper a few days later. The typically secretive company showed signs of opening up in the name of improving research efforts around machine learning. That was the latest in a string of recent AI-related moves for Apple as it acquired Seattle-based machine-learning company Turi back in August. In October, it hired Carnegie Mellon computer science professor Russ Salakhutdinov to lead its artificial intelligence research.
Via: Bloomberg
Source: Partnership on AI
from Engadget http://ift.tt/2jZrvcB
via IFTTT
Despite troubles plaguing the company, BitTorrent has brought its peer-to-peer live streaming app to Android, a few weeks after making the iOS version available. The app can be downloaded from the Google Play Store, where it has already garnered a lukewarm rating of 3.2.
BitTorrent Live lets you watch TV broadcasts for free, and features programming curated by the company. It includes livestreams of "alternative voices in news," as well as sports and cultural content. Since Live is a peer-to-peer system, the quality of its streams will depend on the number of users tuning in. Based on the Play Store reviews, it appears the Android app lacks Chromecast support, and needs to work on improving its interface and library.
Meanwhile, BitTorrent recently lost one of its CEOs who was involved with its ad-supported video and music-streaming service Now, causing speculation that the service was in trouble. BitTorrent later said it "remains focused on the media space." Bringing BitTorrent Live to Android is a good follow-through on that commitment, but given the turmoil reportedly going on at the company, the future of BitTorrent Live is uncertain.
Source: Google Play Store
from Engadget http://ift.tt/2k1j5S7
via IFTTT
We’ve been dealing with USB for about two decades now, and to be honest, we’re not usually asking that much from it. Plug in an adapter, microphone or game controller, then keep it moving. All of that changes, however, when it comes to virtual reality. As Oculus explains, plugging in a bunch of room scale sensors sends enough data through the ports to potentially overwhelm the 400MB/s capacity of the controller chip on your motherboard.
Because of this, the answer isn’t to simply plug in a hub and get more high-speed USB 3.0 ports, in fact, Oculus says you should probably get good results by using two USB 3.0 connections, plus one older USB 2.0 port if you need to go beyond two sensors to get some more mobility in your VR experiences. The blog is currently helping gamers get through the setup process, so go ahead and check out all of the posts to make sure everything is positioned and working correctly.
Source: Oculus Blog
from Engadget http://ift.tt/2kweDe5
via IFTTT