August 2018 – Page 7

Artificial Intelligence, Business, Crime Prevention, IBM

IBM patenting watermark technology to protect ownership of AI models

August 6, 2018

Digital properties such as photos and videos get stolen frequently, which is why many creators of such forms of content employ watermarking methodologies so that ownership is easier to claim in case of theft. Another less-known digital property that can get stolen are artificial intelligence (AI) models, that have been developed by researchers after months, and sometimes years of effort.

IBM is now developing a technique to allow AI researchers to “watermark” these models. The technology is currently “patent-pending”.

Continue reading… “IBM patenting watermark technology to protect ownership of AI models”

Animals, Crazy Photos, Crazy Stuff

The booming business of luxury chicken diapers

August 5, 2018

It’s Instagram’s fault.

Julie Baker never intended to become a figurehead of the luxury chicken-diaper industry. Before she launched her brand Pampered Poultry in 2010, she had never even heard of chicken diapers.

Around 10 years ago, Baker was raising chickens with her daughter on their small farm in Claremont, New Hampshire when she first saw a YouTube video of a chicken wearing what looked to be an upside-down apron that stretched across its backside. The diaper, so to speak, was used to catch chicken poop so the birds wouldn’t leave droppings everywhere (chickens do not urinate separately from defecation. Their urine is technically in their excrement). “I’m like, ‘Oh my goodness, I so need to do that,’” Baker said. Baker’s daughter liked to bring her favorite chicken, an Old English hen named Abigail, inside their house, and because chickens poop close to a dozen times per day, Baker needed a better system for managing Abigail’s excrement.

Continue reading… “The booming business of luxury chicken diapers”

Big Problems, brain-computer interfaces, Future

Disrupting death: Technologists explore ways to digitize life

August 5, 2018

New technologies are opening the door to near-everlasting life as well as a myriad of ethical and philosophical questions.

Technologists are working on a variety of ways to avoid death — including uploading your brain to a computer.

Entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley and beyond are attempting to disrupt what has long been seen as one of the only inevitabilities of life: death.

Computer scientists and artificial intelligence specialists are developing programs that allow people to theoretically avoid death, opening the door to near-everlasting life as well as a myriad of ethical and philosophical questions.

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Augmented Reality, Entertainment, Games

This VR horror game is exactly as scary as your body can handle

August 4, 2018

A HORRIFYING EXPERIENCE. On July 13, game developer Red Meat Games released its fifth virtual reality (VR) project, Bring to Light. It was particularly appropriate to release it on Friday the 13th, since the developers designed the VR horror game to quite literally push players to their terror limits with the help of a biometric sensor.

Continue reading… “This VR horror game is exactly as scary as your body can handle”

Breakthrough Thinking, Engineering, Inventions, new technology

Cell-sized robots can sense their environment

August 4, 2018

Made of electronic circuits coupled to minute particles, the devices could flow through intestines or pipelines to detect problems.

Researchers at MIT have created what may be the smallest robots yet that can sense their environment, store data, and even carry out computational tasks. These devices, which are about the size of a human egg cell, consist of tiny electronic circuits made of two-dimensional materials, piggybacking on minuscule particles called colloids.

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3D Printer, Architecture, Housing, NASA

Here’s what NASA thinks Mars houses could look like

August 3, 2018

They’ve awarded cash prizes as part of an ongoing competition.

NASA has selected five winners in an ongoing contest it has been running to get smart ideas about how to build a 3d-printed habitat on Mars.

The winners have passed level one of the 3D-Printed Habitat Centennial Challenge, which required developing about 60 percent of the design. Level Two will require greater complexity with 100 percent completion and an understanding of the hydraulics of each build. The teams will then create virtual structures and, on April 29, build them for real on the campus of Bradley University in Peoria, Ill.

The teams have different approaches and their video entries reflect that. First-place Team Zopherus, for example, highlights the autonomous robots that build out their modular structures. Using the Martian soil, their robots would build structures from the ground up.

Continue reading… “Here’s what NASA thinks Mars houses could look like”

Culture, Globalism, government

One of Estonia’s first “e-residents” explains what it means to have digital citizenship

August 3, 2018

An online community survey recently asked me where I’m based. Without hesitation, I answered “Estonia.” You might ask: as a US citizen, why in the world did I do that? But as crazy as it may sound, Estonia is the country to which I feel most loyal today. I am one of the country’s first “e-Residents,” and I feel more welcome there than pretty much anywhere else in the world.

Hold on: an e-what?

I’m an Estonian e-Resident. A virtual resident, sort of. Let me explain.

In 2014, Estonia, a country previously known as much for its national singing revolution as anything else, became the first country in the world to launch an e-Residency program. Once admitted, e-Residents can conduct business worldwide as if they were from Estonia, which is a member of the EU. They are given government-issued digital IDs, can open Estonian bank and securities accounts, form and register Estonian companies, and have a front-row seat as nascent concepts of digital and virtual citizenship evolve. There is no requirement to have a physical presence in Estonia.

Continue reading… “One of Estonia’s first “e-residents” explains what it means to have digital citizenship”

Housing, Latest Trend, New Viewpoints

Are real estate agents still relevant in the age of tech?

August 2, 2018

Technology has forever changed how Americans shop for homes. Thanks to sites like Zillow, Trulia and the dozens of others like them, buyers can now brown se listings, find homes and narrow their search all on their own—without ever calling in an agent.

And with online mortgage lenders cropping up left and right, they can even take it a step further, getting pre-qualified for a loan long before they’ve honed in on that dream home.

But though tech has allowed homebuyers to do all this legwork themselves, in most cases, they’re still forced to go through agents to finalize the transaction. And those agents? They get the same 3% commission they did decades ago—for seemingly doing a fraction of the work.

Continue reading… “Are real estate agents still relevant in the age of tech?”

Analysis, Automation, Employment, Future

Will you be employed? Skills demanded by the changing nature of work

August 2, 2018

In 1997, Garry Kasparov, one of the greatest chess players in history, lost a chess match to a supercomputer called Deep Blue. Some years later Kasparov developed “advanced chess,” where a human and a computer team up to play against another human and computer. This mutation of chess is mutually beneficial: the human player has access to the computer’s ability to calculate moves, while the computer benefits from human intuition.

This is the future of work – not just machines replacing humans but also machines augmenting humans. The future is: Human & Machine.

However, our collective imaginations (say for instance in Hollywood) continue to be gripped by dystopian visions of machines replacing humans wholescale. Researchers are paying attention to these ideas. One paper suggests that around 47 percent of US employment is at risk of automation.

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Breakthrough Thinking, Energy, Engineering, new technology

Will Lockheed Martin change the world with its new fusion reactor?

August 1, 2018

TEXAS, USA – JUNE 21: A F-35 fighter jet is seen as Turkey takes delivery of its first F-35 fighter jet with a ceremony at the Lockheed Martin in Forth Worth, Texas, United States on June 21, 2018. (Photo by Atilgan Ozdil/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

Lockheed Martin’s secretive Skunkworks laboratory registered a patent in March for a revolutionary technology that could solve the world’s energy problems for good – but don’t pop the champagne yet. The design is for a compact fusion reactor (CFR) which theoretically produces cheap, clean, near limitless energy – all from a device that could fit on the back of a semi. If it sounds far-fetched, that’s because it is. The sustained generation of a fusion reaction has evaded scientists since the idea was first conceived over 70 years ago.

Lockheed Martin thinks they can change that.

Continue reading… “Will Lockheed Martin change the world with its new fusion reactor?”

Batteries, Battery, Breakthrough Thinking, Energy

A new flow battery prototype aims to store vast amounts of renewable power for the grid

August 1, 2018

This ‘flow battery’ could power green homes when the sun goes down and the wind stops blowing.

With solar and wind electricity prices plunging, the hunt is on for cheap batteries to store all this power for use around the clock. Now, researchers have made an advance with a flow battery, the type of battery being developed to soak up enough excess wind and solar power to fuel whole cities. They report the discovery of a potentially cheap, organic molecule that can power a flow battery for years instead of days.

Continue reading… “A new flow battery prototype aims to store vast amounts of renewable power for the grid”

Alternative Transportation, China, Elon Musk, Engineering, Transportation

Chinese city signs up for hyperloop project

August 1, 2018

The city of Tongren, in the southwestern Chinese province of Guizhou, has signed an agreement with Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HyperloopTT) to develop the futuristic tube-travel system envisaged by Elon Musk.

HyperloopTT and Tongren Transportation & Tourism Investment Group announced the agreement yesterday, saying HyperloopTT would provide technology, engineering expertise and equipment, while Tongren will be responsible for certification, the regulatory framework and construction of the system.

Continue reading… “Chinese city signs up for hyperloop project”