Group items tagged

"The ship will be equipped with a GPS and various types of sensors, including lidar, radar, and cameras-much like self-driving cars. The ship will be able to steer itself through the sea, avoid other ships, and independently dock itself."

"The ships would use the internet of things - connecting a range of devices over the internet - to gather data, such as weather conditions and shipping information, and plot the shortest, most efficient and safest routes. By removing the potential for human error, the companies believe the technology could dramatically cut the number of accidents at sea."

"Kim Zetter asked them, on behalf of the New York Times, if their products shipped with backdoors allowing remote parties to access and alter them over the internet, they told her unequivocally that they did not engage in this practice. But now, in a letter to Senator Ron Wyden [D-OR], they admit that they lied, and that they "provided pcAnywhere remote connection software … to a small number of customers between 2000 and 2006.""

"Many of these cameras have no easy, networked means of getting a firmware update, either, making their zeroday bugs into foreverday bugs. Some of these bugs were simple programmer error, but Philips, ah, Philips: they shipped an Internet-connected home spycam whose default root login was admin and /ADMIN/. Security. "

"Unskilled manual laborers have felt the pressure of automation for a long time - but, increasingly, they're not alone. The last few years have been a bonanza of advances in artificial intelligence. As our software gets smarter, it can tackle harder problems, which means white-collar and pink-collar workers are at risk as well. Here are eight jobs expected to be automated (partially or entirely) in the coming decades. Call Center Employees call-center Telemarketing used to happen in a crowded call center, with a group of representatives cold-calling hundreds of prospects every day. Of those, maybe a few dozen could be persuaded to buy the product in question. Today, the idea is largely the same, but the methods are far more efficient. Many of today's telemarketers are not human. In some cases, as you've probably experienced, there's nothing but a recording on the other end of the line. It may prompt you to "press '1' for more information," but nothing you say has any impact on the call - and, usually, that's clear to you. But in other cases, you may get a sales call and have no idea that you're actually speaking to a computer. Everything you say gets an appropriate response - the voice may even laugh. How is that possible? Well, in some cases, there is a human being on the other side, and they're just pressing buttons on a keyboard to walk you through a pre-recorded but highly interactive marketing pitch. It's a more practical version of those funny soundboards that used to be all the rage for prank calls. Using soundboard-assisted calling - regardless of what it says about the state of human interaction - has the potential to make individual call center employees far more productive: in some cases, a single worker will run two or even three calls at the same time. In the not too distant future, computers will be able to man the phones by themselves. At the intersection of big data, artificial intelligence, and advanced

"A submarine can hide from a few noisily obvious ships and planes, but it is harder to hide from a swarm of small, virtually undetectable drones. The robots being developed here can potentially be made cheap and expendable, and capable of being deployed in large numbers to cover vast expanses of sea."

"In the meantime, I actually like how most of these islands represent an attempt by education institutions to embrace the weirdness of the web. The current crop of education startups seem bland and antiseptic in comparison to these virtual worlds. I can't take a Coursera class on a pirate ship, or attend office hours in front of an edX campfire. And honestly, that's probably a good thing. But it makes the web slightly less interesting."

"Microsoft has pulled its latest Windows 10 update offline after some users complained of missing files. It's the latest in a string of incidents with regular patches and Microsoft's larger Windows 10 updates that have been causing issues for some PC users this year. While Microsoft tests Windows 10 with millions of beta testers, there are signs that this public feedback loop isn't always working. Earlier this year Microsoft delayed its April 2018 Windows 10 update due to last minute Blue Screen of Death issues, and then had to fix desktop and Chrome freezing issues after it was shipped to more than 600 million machines. "

"This week, the company released a new form of facial recognition called periocular recognition, which can supposedly identify individuals by just their eyes and eyebrows. Rank One says the new system uses an entirely different algorithm from its standard facial recognition system and is specifically meant for masked individuals. Rank One says it will ship the technology to all of its active customers for free."

"Every year, Amazon ships hundreds of millions of parcels in Germany. Just a few clicks and a little later the delivery driver is at your door. An investigation by CORRECTIV.Lokal takes a look behind the scenes of the logistics chain and shows a system built on pressure, surveillance, and extreme stress. An insight into the gears of a machine where no idling is allowed."