Month: December 2019

Flip Phones Are Making a Comeback

If you’re the kind of person who hates this new generation of smartphone users and longs for a nostalgic past, you’re not far from the new target demographic for many commercial phone manufacturers. Major phone companies like Motorola and Huawei have been developing foldable versions of conventional smartphone designs, intended to be more versatile while

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How to stop AI from perpetuating harmful biases

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is already re-configuring the world in conspicuous ways. Data drives our global digital ecosystem, and AI technologies reveal patterns in data. Smartphones, smart homes, and smart cities influence how we live and interact, and AI systems are increasingly involved in recruitment decisions, medical diagnoses, and judicial verdicts. Whether this scenario is utopian

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How to stop AI from perpetuating harmful biases

{$inline_image}Artificial Intelligence (AI) is already re-configuring the world in conspicuous ways. Data drives our global digital ecosystem, and AI technologies reveal patterns in data. Smartphones, smart homes, and smart cities influence how we live and interact, and AI systems are increasingly involved in recruitment decisions, medical diagnoses, and judicial verdicts. Whether this scenario is utopian

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A look at the increasing prevalence of facial recognition and AI tech across the globe, as the US and EU governments' efforts to limit their use have stalled (Politico)

Politico: A look at the increasing prevalence of facial recognition and AI tech across the globe, as the US and EU governments’ efforts to limit their use have stalled  —  The result is an impasse that has left tech companies largely in control of where and how to deploy facial recognition. A look at the

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Macro Photography With Industrial Lenses

Line scan cameras are advanced devices used for process inspection tasks in industrial applications. Used to monitor the quality of silicon wafers and other high-accuracy tasks, they’re often outfitted with top-quality optics that are highly specialised. [Peter] was able to get his hands on a lens for a line-scan camera, and decided to put it

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ProtonMail launches E2E encrypted calendar app ProtonCalendar in public beta, tied to users' paid ProtonMail accounts, encrypting event info and participants (Paul Sawers/VentureBeat)

Paul Sawers / VentureBeat: ProtonMail launches E2E encrypted calendar app ProtonCalendar in public beta, tied to users’ paid ProtonMail accounts, encrypting event info and participants  —  Encrypted email provider ProtonMail has officially launched its new calendar in public beta.  The move is part of the Swiss … ProtonMail launches E2E encrypted calendar app ProtonCalendar in

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TikTok claims zero takedown requests from China in first transparency report

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge TikTok released its first transparency report yesterday, showing which countries have submitted requests for content removal as well as access to user data. China is notably absent from the report—the video sharing app, owned by Chinese tech giant ByteDance, claims it did not receive a single takedown request

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Trump signs TRACED Act into law to increase robocall fines, extend statute of limitations from 1 to 4 years, and require carriers to deploy STIR/SHAKEN protocol (Devin Coldewey/TechCrunch)

Devin Coldewey / TechCrunch: Trump signs TRACED Act into law to increase robocall fines, extend statute of limitations from 1 to 4 years, and require carriers to deploy STIR/SHAKEN protocol  —  The Pallone-Thrune TRACED Act, a bipartisan bit of legislation that should make life harder for the villains behind robocalls, was signed into law today

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Google will finally stop using controversial Irish and Dutch tax loopholes

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The era of Google using a pair of controversial loopholes to save billions of dollars in taxes on overseas ad revenue is coming to a close, according to a new report from Reuters. In 2020, the company will no longer take advantage of the so-called “Double Irish” and

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U.S. Army bans TikTok on military devices, signaling growing concern about app’s Chinese roots

The U.S. Army has banned military personnel from using the popular video app TikTok on government phones, following guidance from the Pentagon and highlighting growing tensions over the app’s Beijing-based parent firm. U.S. Army bans TikTok on military devices, signaling growing concern about app’s Chinese roots Source: Washington Post Tech

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IRS amends its deal with tax prep software firms, now barred from hiding free products from search, and ends its ban on making its own online filing system (ProPublica)

ProPublica: IRS amends its deal with tax prep software firms, now barred from hiding free products from search, and ends its ban on making its own online filing system  —  ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power.  Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published. IRS amends its

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New Apple patent imagines virtual speakers that can simulate sound from anywhere in the room

Image: USPTO Apple has just been granted a patent — concerning virtual positioning of audio — that could eventually lay the groundwork for new, more immersive audio applications. It builds on a previous patent Apple filed last month that enabled users to hear where people are physically located in a room through special headphone tech.

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Big trends and takeaways from the 2010s: the "capital as a moat" model has failed, machine learning has become table stakes for tech companies, and more (Fred Wilson/AVC)

{$inline_image} Fred Wilson / AVC: Big trends and takeaways from the 2010s: the “capital as a moat” model has failed, machine learning has become table stakes for tech companies, and more  —  My friend Steve Kane suggested I take a longer view in my pair of year end posts this year: … And so I

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