Google Group Members to Use Facial Recognition to Identify London Rioters. A new Google Group called “London Riots Facial Recognition” has appeared online, in the wake of the riots that rocked the U.K. capital over the weekend. The group’s goal is to use facial recognition technologies to identify the looters who appear in online photos. The group appears to be thoughtfully considering its actions, in threads titled “Ethical Issues,” and “Keeping Things Legal,” for example. They’ve also stated that “it’s important we only use legal sources for images.” However, there’s a major “creepy” factor to this undertaking, too. The idea that a group of people would team up online to use (misuse?)
Facial recognition technologies in this way, notably outside professional law enforcement channels, seems like a modern take on vigilante style justice, where the torches of the angry villagers have turned into APIs and algorithms. Image credit, top: DailyMail. Stock Market Drops. VCs Hold Partner Meetings. What Happens Next? This is a guest post by Mark Suster, a 2x entrepreneur turned VC with GRP Partners where he focuses on early-stage technology companies. Read more about Suster on his startup blog and on Twitter at @msuster. Venture Capitalists typically have partners’ meetings on Mondays. Why is that? Who knows. But probably because as a group we travel a lot.
Yesterday was a Monday. Rewind. It was a great learning time for me. By 2008 I had gotten more serious about championing companies through our investment process. I have always believed that TV was ripe for disruption. I introduced my partners, we spent weeks with the team and felt good rapport. The following is a 2-week graph of the end-of-week price of the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) in Autumn 2008. And while the market was off 24% in two weeks, it’s worth remembering 2 other things The market was actually off 40% from its Oct ’07 peakThe market wouldn’t bottom until Mar ’09.
We thought the following: It felt awful. Tl;dr summary Me? 1. 2. Silicon Valley tech leader Kenneth Oshman dies at 71. By Ellen Huet ehuet@mercurynews.com Posted: 08/09/2011 01:41:26 PM PDT0 Comments|Updated: 3 years ago Click photo to enlarge M. Kenneth Oshman (Courtesy/Oshman family) Malin Kenneth Oshman, whose technology career in Silicon Valley spanned over four decades and numerous companies, passed away Saturday at the age of 71 after a battle with lung cancer. Oshman was deeply involved in the growth of companies throughout the Valley, most notably serving as executive chairman, CEO, and president of Echelon Corporation in San Jose during various years from 1989 to the present.
After studying engineering at Rice University, he married his high school sweetheart Barbara Daily and moved from Texas to the Bay Area in 1963, where he began work at Sylvania and earned master's and doctoral degrees from Stanford University. Oshman went on in 1969 to found ROLM, a telecommunications equipment company, with three Stanford associates. But to Sonsini and others, Oshman was more than just his titles. IBM, NCSA Scrap Petaflop Supercomputer Plans -- InformationWeekIBM, NCSA Scrap Petaflop Supercomputer Plans - government Blog. Contract to build a 1-petaflop system for the Blue Waters project terminated, with IBM citing unexpected costs.
(click image for larger view) Slideshow: Inside Watson, IBM's Jeopardy Computer IBM and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) have cancelled plans to build a National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded supercomputer due to unexpected financial and technical costs, they said. Several days ago IBM terminated its $208 million contract with the University of Illinois to provide a 1 petaflop, 200,000 processor-core supercomputer based on its Power7 processor for the Blue Waters project.
NCSA is a part of the university. IBM's work was expected to be completed by next year and the finished project was meant to be one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world. Under the terms of the contract, IBM will return the money it received to date to build the supercomputer and the NCSA, in turn, will return the equipment IBM delivered. More Insights. Bitly Acquires Twitterfeed. FCC to combine reviews of AT&T's Qualcomm, T-Mobile deals - Brooks Boliek. Conceding that opponents of AT&T’s attempt to buy rival T-Mobile for $39 billion may have a point, the FCC decided late Monday to combine its review of that deal with a smaller one in which AT&T is attempting to purchase the wireless licenses currently held by Qualcomm.
In a letter issued by the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau, the commission concluded that there is enough evidence that the impact of the two deals is related and that they will be considered at the same time. Continue Reading “The commission's ongoing review has confirmed that the proposed transactions raise a number of related issues, including, but not limited to, questions regarding AT&T's aggregation of spectrum throughout the nation, particularly in overlapping areas,” wrote Wireless Telecommunications Bureau Chief Rick Kaplan.
A coalition of public interest groups pushed the agency to consolidate the two reviews in late April, arguing that the two deals in tandem give too much market power to AT&T. Yahoo Discount Means U.S. Web Portal Free in Takeover: Real M&A. Aug. 9 (Bloomberg) -- Yahoo! Inc. has cost its shareholders so much money that a buyer would now be able take over the most- visited U.S. Web portal for less than the value of its stakes in Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Yahoo Japan Corp. Yahoo has plummeted 91 percent over the past decade as it failed to keep Google Inc. and Facebook Inc. from siphoning off Internet users and advertising revenue. Sunnyvale, California- based Yahoo, which rejected an offer from Microsoft Corp. for as much as $47.5 billion three years ago, is now valued at $14 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Putting Yahoo up for sale may help Carol Bartz recoup the losses its owners have suffered since she became chief executive officer in January 2009. “What you get is the core U.S. business for free,” Di Zhou, Santa Fe, New Mexico-based analyst at Thornburg Investment, which oversees about $80 billion, including Yahoo shares, said in a telephone interview. Advertising Revenue Comparative Returns Yahoo!