Review: Amazon Echo is finally available to all Amazon Echo, the company's desktop, voice-activated personal assistant became available to the general public for the first time on Tuesday. Gizmag has been spending the past month with Echo and we've found it to be an exciting new product with plenty of potential and no real peers at the moment, but is it really ready for prime time? The hardest part of reviewing the Amazon Echo is first trying to figure out what it is – a desktop personal assistant? A voice-activated streaming audio system? Here's the basic concept: Take an attractive, cylindrical Bluetooth speaker, add a handful of top-notch microphones and a Siri-like voice interface capable of performing an ever-expanding menu of tasks from playing music to ordering products, looking up facts, news, weather and sports, managing your calendar, reading audiobooks and controlling certain smarthome appliances. An interesting added feature for the hack-minded is the ability to use Echo in conjunction with IFTTT.
How Hong Kong Protesters Are Connecting, Without Cell Or Wi-Fi Networks : All Tech Considered People check their phones at a pro-democracy demonstration in Hong Kong on Monday. Alex Ogle/AFP/Getty Images hide caption itoggle caption Alex Ogle/AFP/Getty Images People check their phones at a pro-democracy demonstration in Hong Kong on Monday. Alex Ogle/AFP/Getty Images As throngs of pro-democracy protesters continue to organize in Hong Kong's central business district, many of them are messaging one another through a network that doesn't require cell towers or Wi-Fi nodes. So far, mesh networks have proven themselves quite effective and quickly adopted during times of disaster or political unrest, as they don't rely on existing cable and wireless networks. And FireChat's popularity is surging in Hong Kong. Gizmodo explains why mesh networks can be critical during tense showdowns with governments: "Mesh networks are an especially resilient tool because there's no easy way for a government to shut them down.
Induction puzzles Induction puzzles are logic puzzles which are solved via the application of the principle of induction. In most cases, the puzzle's scenario will involve several participants with reasoning capability and the solution to the puzzle will be based on identifying what would happen in an obvious case, and then repeating the reasoning that: "as soon as one of the participants realises that the obvious case has not happened, they can eliminate it from their reasoning, so creating a new obvious case". Typical tell-tale features of these puzzles include any puzzle in which each participant has a given piece of information about all other participants but not themselves. Also, usually some kind of hint is given to suggest that the participants can trust each other's intelligence. Examples[edit] The King's Wise Men: The King called the three wisest men in the country to his court to decide who would become his new advisor. Solutions[edit] Suppose that there was one blue hat. See also[edit]
An INTPs Career Journey & Reflection - Page 2 Originally Posted by ArchitectPtah is the INTP missing child on the side of a milk container, 100% Grade-A home boy Interesting - it was similar for me. The earlier things (music, physics) were some kind of inferior craving I realize now. According to Drenth that's the usual way of it. Having an ISTP engineering oriented older brother meant (thankfully) I grew up around technology and computers, and I loved playing with them too. But I didn't take them very seriously. Lofty activities like music or physics was far more attractive.
Patents for technology to read people’s minds hugely increasing - News - Gadgets and Tech - The Independent Fewer than 400 neuro-technology related patents were filed between 2000-2009. But in 2010 alone that reached 800, and last year 1,600 were filed, according to research company SharpBrains. The patents are for a range of uses, not just for the healthcare technology that might be expected. The company with the most patents is market research firm Nielsen, which has 100. Other uses of the technology that have been patented include devices that can change the thoughts of feelings of those that they are used on. But there are still medical uses — some of those patents awarded include technology to measure brain lesions and improve vision. Loading gallery Gadgets and Tech News in Pictures 1 of 96 The volume and diversity of the patents shows that we are at the beginning of “the pervasive neurotechnology age”, the company’s CEO Alvaro Fernandez said.
Wars are not won by military genius or decisive battles | Aeon Ideas British Army gas casualties, April 1918. Wikipedia War is the most complex, physically and morally demanding enterprise we undertake. No great art or music, no cathedral or temple or mosque, no intercontinental transport net or particle collider or space programme, no research for a cure for a mass-killing disease receives a fraction of the resources and effort we devote to making war. Or to recovery from war and preparations for future wars invested over years, even decades, of tentative peace. War evokes our fascination with spectacle, and there is no greater stage or more dramatic players than on a battlefield. The idea of the ‘decisive battle’ as the hinge of war, and wars as the gates of history, speaks to our naive desire to view modern war in heroic terms. Visual media especially play on what the public wants to see: raw courage and red days, the thrill of vicarious violence and spectacle. There is heroism in battle but there are no geniuses in war.
IBM has built a digital rat brain that could power tomorrow’s smartphones If you’ve been thinking about applying for any of the US government’s expedited screening programs for frequent fliers—Global Entry, TSA PreCheck, and the like—don’t put it off any longer. The process is easier than you might imagine, and the benefits are as good as people say. We’ll take you through all the information you need. Which program is right for me? Global Entry: It’s the most expensive program, at $100 for five years, but comes with the best benefits: You can skip the lines at passport control and customs when entering the United States and also enjoy TSA PreCheck, Nexus, and Sentri (explained below). Who’s eligible: US citizens and permanent residents, and citizens of Germany, the Netherlands, Panama, South Korea, and Mexico. TSA PreCheck: TSA stands for the Transportation Security Administration, the people who screen you and your carry-on baggage. Who’s eligible: US citizens and permanent residents. Nexus: Choose this option if you want to save money and aren’t in a rush.
The liberal prepper movement is on the rise in Trump's America — Quartz A month before the 2016 US presidential election, Colin Waugh and his wife bought their first firearm. Donald Trump’s campaign was taking an unprecedented turn, with the candidate baiting gun-rights supporters to exert their influence and suggesting that a loss in November would be evidence of a rigged system. The gun, as Waugh frames it, was a form of insurance in case American democracy dissolved into a quasi-Mad Max society, and liberals became the hunted. When Trump won, Waugh felt “numb.” His wife was “catatonic.” They both feared for their lives. “For the first time in my life, I realized my own freedom was my own responsibility,” says Waugh. But even though he sought self-sufficiency in his new America, Waugh realized he would need a new community of sorts. The rise of the prepper movement “If somebody’s a dick, we boot them” Prior to accepting members, the group’s administrators typically vet requestors for alt-right iconography. The liberal refugees The psychology of prepping “Mr.
This App Wants To Change Email Forever -- By Getting Inside Your Head A new app called Crystal calls itself "the biggest improvement to email since spell-check." Its goal is to help you write emails with empathy. How? Crystal, which launched on Wednesday, exists in the form of a website and a Chrome extension, which integrates the service with your Gmail. With the personality profile, you'll see advice on how to speak to the person, email them, work with them and sell to them. Here's my profile: I would say that this is a pretty accurate representation of me, though I found that many of my coworkers' profiles were fairly similar to mine. "There are 64 different personality categories someone can be assigned from Crystal, and some are closer to each other on the spectrum than others," Crystal founder Drew D'Agostino told The Huffington Post in an email on Tuesday. As fun as it is to look up all of your coworkers and friends on Crystal, the really special part is how it helps you write emails.
The complexity of social problems is outsmarting the human brain | Aeon Essays When mulling over possible reasons for the alarming nastiness associated with the recent presidential election in the United States, I am reminded of my grade-school bully. Handsome, often charming, superbly athletic, the bully (let’s call him Mike) would frequently, usually without clear provocation, kick, punch and shove other classmates. Fortunately, for reasons not apparent at that time, he never bothered me. Fast-forward 20 years. As soon as his father spoke, I recalled Mike’s great difficulty reading aloud in class. Since running into his father, I’ve often wondered if Mike’s outbursts and bullying behaviour might offer an insight into the seeming association between anger, extremism and a widespread blatant disregard for solid facts and real expertise. If we are not up to the cognitive task, how might we be expected to respond? Imagine going to your family doctor for a routine physical exam. For those readers who immediately got the right answer, ask yourself a second question.
AI machine achieves IQ test score of young child Some people might find it enough reason to worry; others, enough reason to be upbeat about what we can achieve in computer science; all await the next chapters in artificial intelligence to see what more a machine can do to mimic human intelligence. We already saw what machines can do in arithmetic, chess and pattern recognition. MIT Technology Review poses the bigger question: to what extent do these capabilities add up to the equivalent of human intelligence? Shedding some light on AI and humans, a team went ahead to subject an AI system to a standard IQ test given to humans. Their paper describing their findings has been posted on arXiv. The team is from the University of Illinois at Chicago and an AI research group in Hungary. Results: It scored a WPPSI-III VIQ that is average for a four-year-old child, but below average for 5 to 7 year-olds "We found that the WPPSI-III VIQ psychometric test gives a WPPSI-III VIQ to ConceptNet 4 that is equivalent to that of an average four-year old.
Pied Piper’s New Internet Isn’t Just Possible—It’s Almost Here On HBO’s Silicon Valley, startups promise to “change the world” by tackling silly, often non-existent problems. But this season, the show’s characters are tackling a project that really could. In their latest pivot, Richard Hendricks and the Pied Piper gang are trying to create a new internet that cuts out intermediaries like Facebook, Google, and the fictional Hooli. Their idea: use a peer-to-peer network built atop every smartphone on the planet, effectively rendering huge data centers full of servers unnecessary. “If we could do it we could build a completely decentralized version of our current internet,” Hendricks says. “With no firewalls, no tolls, no government regulation, no spying, information would be totally free in every sense of the word.” But wait: Isn’t the internet already a decentralized network that no one owns? Storage Everywhere The closest thing to what’s described on Silicon Valley might be Storj, a decentralized cloud storage company. Mesh Go Back to Top.
AI for the Masses All of the big tech companies are now open sourcing their AI (deep learning) software. They are also open sourcing the hardware designs of the machines needed to train the software. That's a big deal. This new approach to AI is proving so powerful and useful, its use is growing exponentially (see image below). At this rate of adoption and with the barriers to participation dropping daily, I'm confident this technological revolution will upend the world in less than a decade. Here's an example of what is possible when a small company open sources a relatively "dumb" machine cognition software. What does it do? Very cool and very powerful and completely legal. With this amount of capability it wouldn't be hard to crowdsource an effort to track the movement of nearly every car in the country. A next generation deep learning program (like the one they are using at Facebook) would allow you to identify and track people, rather than cars, using a small body camera or a smartphone to do it.