Photo He was the only man I saw when we entered the nearly empty village in northern Iraq, which had just recently been liberated from the Islamic State. The first thing he did when he approached our car was ask my colleague for a light. That’s when I noticed the pack of cigarettes sticking out of Mohamed Ahmed Saleh’s shirt pocket. Just over a week after the […]
Researchers found that certain search terms revealed AI bias. Credit: Princeton University In debates over the future of artificial intelligence, many experts think of the new systems as coldly logical and objectively rational. But in a new study, researchers have demonstrated how machines can be reflections of us, their creators, in potentially problematic ways. Common machine learning programs, when trained with ordinary human language available online, can […]
The Power of Networks: Six Principles that Connect Our Lives • By Christopher G. Brinton and Mung Chiang • Princeton University Press • 310 pages • ISBN: 978-0-691-17071-8 • £27.95 We don’t normally think of our lives this way, but each of us is enmeshed in myriad networks — the real-life one of people, social media like Twitter and Facebook, and technical networks (internet, cellular). According to […]
The top 100 start-ups in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) together have raised over $1.42 billion in funding and each has raised more than $500,000 individually, according to new research. Following a record year of more than $870 million in startup investment, analysts MAGNiTT published a report into the backgrounds of the founders of MENA’s most successful start-ups. It said the 100 start-ups, including the […]
Data-driven analytics applications are eating the world and transforming every domain. But the world is also being eaten up in a different way by several non-sustainable practices. On Earth Day, we look at what we know about the relation between big data and the environment: how big data is used to measure sustainability and inform action, and what is the impact they have on the environment as […]
It’s been a busy week: Samsung and Google partnered on special version of Google Play Music and White House staffers’ favorite secure messaging app might not be that secure. Oh, and Facebook wants you to talk and listen your skin. Luckily, we’ve kept up for you. Each week, we round up the latest app news, along with a few of our favorite new and updated products, to […]
BOSTON Officials of two large California public retirement systems said Friday they are voting against nine of 15 Wells Fargo & Co directors up for election at the bank’s annual meeting next week, citing the bank’s phony-account scandal. Leaders of the largest U.S. state pension system, known as CalPERS, said in an email it is voting about 13.9 million shares against the bank nominees, including its chairman, […]
Waymo, the self-driving vehicle arm of Alphabet, renewed its legal attack on Uber on Friday as it claimed the car-hailing company had failed to disclose a key component it had built using Waymo’s intellectual property. The claim came as the Silicon Valley rivals head for a May 3 showdown, when a judge in San Francisco will decide whether to back Waymo’s demand for an injunction that could […]
He broadened his point to argue that much of the chaos gripping the Middle East today was a result of mistrust between communities over historical wrongdoings that no one is willing to confront. “The past is not the past in the Middle East,” he said. “This is the biggest obstacle to peace and stability in the Middle East.” Eric D. Weitz, a history professor at the City […]
Only a minority of the world’s pipelines can be cleaned with pigs like this one. Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto Around one-third of the world’s gas pipelines can be inspected using ‘pipeline pigs’. These cylindrical devices have figured in three James Bond movies, in one case being modified to secretly transport a person across borders. Back in the real world, the problem is that the other two-thirds of the […]
April 22, 2017 by: Kathrin Hille in Krasnoyarsk When Kremlin officials are asked about Alexei Navalny, they like to laugh off the Russian opposition politician’s chances of challenging president Vladimir Putin. But this week the Kremlin appeared to signal that it does take Mr Navalny seriously after all. In a video published on YouTube on Wednesday, the politician who organised protests in more than 80 Russian cities […]
The giants of cloud computing may have kicked off a new price war, this time over storage. Until recently, price cuts for cloud computing offerings have been mostly restricted to virtual machines, while other services provided constant or growing margins for providers. But according to analysts, cuts have now moved beyond compute, and into storage and databases. In an analysis of cloud pricing, 451 Research said the […]
Credit: CC0 Public Domain Will a robot take away my job? Many people ask that question, yet policymakers don’t have the kind of information they need to answer it intelligently, say the authors of a new study from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM). “Policymakers are flying blind into what has been called the fourth industrial revolution,” said Tom M. Mitchell, the E. Fredkin […]
There were five huge boxes sitting at the loading dock of The Poynter Institute yesterday, waiting for the FedEx truck to pick them up. They are filled with more than 125 file boxes containing the literary effects of Donald M. Murray, in my opinion the most influential writing teacher America has ever known. The precious content of those boxes — including 100 of Murray’s experimental daybooks — […]
For some, modding PC games is a step to cybercrime. Image: iStock Cybercriminals are likely to get started young, and the barriers to getting involved with online crime are lower than ever, police have warned. The Pathways into Cybercrime report from the National Crime Agency (NCA) — the UK’s main body in the fight against organised crime — warns that free and off-the-shelf hacking tools, such as […]
Good news! Soon, Gmail users can get their hands on the newest Windows 10 Mail & Calendar apps, according to Microsoft. Windows 10 Mail & Calendar Over the years, Microsoft has worked relentlessly to come with up architectural improvements to enhance and speed up Windows 10 Mail & Calendar apps’ performance. Earlier this year, the company excitedly announced several new features, which included: • Color categories for calendar […]
ABU DHABI // An app that helps Syrian refugees find jobs in Turkey and a device that limits water consumption were named winners at the New York University Abu Dhabi Hackathon. Eighty students from universities across the globe participated in the seventh edition of the event. Ten teams were given 72 hours to produce technology that promotes a social good. With the Hiat application, recruiters and businesses […]
Theranos, the embattled blood-testing start-up, set up a secret company to buy off-the-shelf machines, allowing it to hide the fact that it was generating patient results using commercial equipment rather than its own flawed devices, according to an investor lawsuit. Partner Fund Management, which invested $96.1m in Theranos in 2014, alleges the company created a wholly owned subsidiary, Protegic Procurement, to “secretly” buy the commercially available analysers, […]
The three cases are part of a campaign by Saudi women, who have been broadcasting daring videos with their cellphones, using Facebook to organize street protests and posting Twitter messages to challenge the very idea of male supremacy in their famously patriarchal society. Continue reading the main story The campaign, started by a loose network of activists who have enlisted young, media-savvy women, has gone far beyond […]
Emirates has announced that it will introduce a second daily service to the island of Bali in Indonesia on July 2. The new service will be added to meet the growing demand for travel to and from Bali, offering travellers more convenience and connectivity options, the Dubai-based airline said in a statement. The second daily flight will be operated by a Boeing 777-300ER aircraft in a two-class […]
Something has aroused the interests of the American people… perhaps one too many coincidentally ‘useful’ event means government facilitators have jumped the shark? (via Google Trends) Which is perhaps why, after discovering Project Gotham Shield, SHTFplan.com’s Mac Slavo warns, a false flag watch is now active. A general alert is out for something major in the near or immediate future. Hopefully, it is just another false alarm, […]
Microsoft demoed Windows 10 Enterprise edition running on a Qualcomm Snapdragon Processor late last year. Image: Microsoft Qualcomm has confirmed that new mobile Windows 10 PCs running its ARM-based Snapdragon 835 system on chip (SoC) will arrive by the fourth quarter. Microsoft and Qualcomm announced in December that a new line of always-on cellular Windows 10 PCs running on Qualcomm’s ARM chips would be on the way […]
A lead sulfide quantum dot solar cell developed by researchers at NREL. Credit: Dennis Schroeder Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have developed a proof-of-principle photoelectrochemical cell capable of capturing excess photon energy normally lost to generating heat. Using quantum dots (QD) and a process called Multiple Exciton Generation (MEG), the NREL researchers were able to push the peak external quantum […]
Oil producers are moving closer towards agreement on extending the Opec-led deal to limit output, Saudi Arabia’s energy minister said on Thursday, as the cartel battles excess stockpiles and a resurgent US shale industry that have weighed on prices. Khalid al-Falih said the deal could be run for another three to six months beyond the end of June. Under the terms of the existing accord, Opec members […]
