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Submission + - Google claims 100% facial recognition (arxiv.org)

Submitted by LeadSongDog
LeadSongDog writes: In "FaceNet: A Unified Embedding for Face Recognition and Clustering" a team at google are claiming that "On the widely used Labeled Faces in the Wild (LFW) dataset, our system achieves a new record accuracy of 99.63%. On YouTube Faces DB it achieves 95.12%."

It's official. You now have no place to hide.

http://findbiometrics.com/goog...

Submission + - Google caught altering search-results for profit (wsj.com)

Submitted by mi
mi writes: We've always suspected, this may happen some day — and, according to FTC's investigation inadvertently shared with the Wall Street Journal, it did.

In a lengthy investigation, staffers in the FTC’s bureau of competition found evidence that Google boosted its own services for shopping, travel and local businesses by altering its ranking criteria and “scraping” content from other sites. It also deliberately demoted rivals.

For example, the FTC staff noted that Google presented results from its flight-search tool ahead of other travel sites, even though Google offered fewer flight options. Google’s shopping results were ranked above rival comparison-shopping engines, even though users didn’t click on them at the same rate, the staff found. Many of the ways Google boosted its own results have not been previously disclosed.

Comment "Verrry intereshting,,, but shtupid!!!" (Score 1) 2

The idea's good, but they've missed the reason why that standard has survived so long: it's free. People will not cough up tens of dollars per cord when they can go bluetooth for less. If they can sell it for a buck or two, perhaps, but no way at tens of dollars each.

Submission + - Scientists: It's Time To Resolve the Ethics of Editing Human Genome (nytimes.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: We've previously discussed a system called CRISPR-cas9, which is dramatically reducing the cost and effort required to do gene editing. In fact, the barrier to entry is now so low that a group of biologists are calling for a moratorium on using the method to modify the human genome. Writing in the journal Science (abstract), the scientists warn that we've reached the point where the ethical questions surrounding DNA alteration can be put off no longer. David Baltimore, one of the group's members, said, "You could exert control over human heredity with this technique, and that is why we are raising the issue. ... I personally think we are just not smart enough — and won’t be for a very long time — to feel comfortable about the consequences of changing heredity, even in a single individual." Another group of scientists called for a similar halt to human germline modification, and the International Society for Stem Cell Research says it agrees.

Submission + - Giant lava tubes possible on the Moon

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: New analysis of the lunar geology combined with gravity data from GRAIL now suggests that the Moon could harbor lava tubes several miles wide.

David Blair, a graduate student in Purdue’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, led the study that examined whether empty lava tubes more than 1 kilometer wide could remain structurally stable on the moon. “We found that if lunar lava tubes existed with a strong arched shape like those on Earth, they would be stable at sizes up to 5,000 meters, or several miles wide, on the moon,” Blair said. “This wouldn’t be possible on Earth, but gravity is much lower on the moon and lunar rock doesn’t have to withstand the same weathering and erosion. In theory, huge lava tubes – big enough to easily house a city – could be structurally sound on the moon.”

You can read their paper here. If this is so, then the possibility of huge colonies on the Moon increases significantly, as it will be much easier to build these colonies inside these giant lava tubes.

Submission + - Sirius, the open-source intelligent personal assistant set to take on Siri (thestack.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Researchers at the University of Michigan have released an open-source virtual assistant Sirius, to rival Apple’s Siri and Microsoft’s Cortana. The new personal voice-activated assistant was created by developers at the university’s Clarity Labs. Unlike its commercial lock-in counterparts, Sirius is free and can be easily customized. Anyone can contribute to the open-source project via GitHub, with the code released under the BSD license making the software free both to use and to distribute. The project is supported by Google, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the National Science Foundation. Although the open-source assistant is perhaps not yet as streamlined as its rivals, Sirius does offer a greater range of capabilities through its integration with other well-established open-source solutions such as Sphinx and OpenEphyra.

Submission + - ATRIAS Bipedal Robot Can Take a Beating and Keep Walking (gizmag.com)

Submitted by Zothecula
Zothecula writes: The great tradition of designing robots inspired by the many beautiful forms of locomotion seen in the animal kingdom likely predates robotics itself, arguably stretching all the way back to Michelangelo's time. Standing on the shoulders of such giants is ATRIAS, a series of human-sized bipedal robots that remind us of other two-legged creatures like the ostrich or emu.

Submission + - "Open Well-Tempered Clavier" Project Completes: Score and Recording Online (welltemperedclavier.org)

Submitted by rDouglass
rDouglass writes: Open source music notation software MuseScore, and pianist Kimiko Ishizaka, have completed the Open Well-Tempered Clavier project and released a new studio recording and digital score online, under the Creative Commons Zero (CC0, public domain) license. Their previous project, the Open Goldberg Variations (2012), has shown its cultural significance by greatly enhancing the Wikipedia.org article on J.S. Bach's work, and by making great progress in supplying musical scores that are accessible to the visually impaired and the blind. The recording has also received very positive early reviews by music critics. Over 900 fans of J.S. Bach financed this project on Kickstarter.com, where a total of $44,083 was raised.

Submission + - AdBlock Plus Responds To Play Store Ban (techcrunch.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Yesterday Google began removing ad-blocking apps from its Play Store on the grounds that they violate part of its Developer Distribution Agreement. Now one of the removed apps, AdBlock Plus, has hit back publicly at what it dubs a "unilateral move by Google", putting out a statement slamming Mountain View for threatening consumer choice.

"By unilaterally removing these apps, Google is stepping all over the checks and balances that make the Internet democratic. People should be really alarmed by this move," said Till Faida, co-founder of Adblock Plus in the statement.

"I realize that advertising revenue is important to Google, but understand that AdBlock Plus does not automatically block all ads; we simply allow users the choice whether to block ads or whitelist them.

Submission + - France will block WWW sites that promote terrorism 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In the first use of government powers enacted after the Charlie Hebdo attacks, the French Interior Ministry on Monday ordered five websites blocked on the grounds that they promote or advocate terrorism. The action raises questions about how governments might counter groups such as the self-declared Islamic State on digital platforms.

captcha: skaters

Submission + - Personal, Healthcare Info Of Over 11M Premera Customers Compromised

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: US healthcare provider Premera Blue Cross has suffered a data breach that resulted in a potential compromise of personal, financial and health-related informationof as many as 11 million applicants and members. The breach was detected on January 29, 2015, and the investigation mounted by the company and by forensic investigators from Mandiant has revealed that the initial attack happened on May 5, 2014. The FBI has also been notified, and is involved in the investigation.

Submission + - The melting of Antarctica was already really bad. It just got worse. (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by mdsolar
mdsolar writes: A hundred years from now, humans may remember 2014 as the year that we first learned that we may have irreversibly destabilized the great ice sheet of West Antarctica, and thus set in motion more than 10 feet of sea level rise.

Meanwhile, 2015 could be the year of the double whammy — when we learned the same about one gigantic glacier of East Antarctica, which could set in motion roughly the same amount all over again. Northern Hemisphere residents and Americans in particular should take note — when the bottom of the world loses vast amounts of ice, those of us living closer to its top get more sea level rise than the rest of the planet, thanks to the law of gravity.

The findings about East Antarctica emerge from a new paper just out in Nature Geoscience by an international team of scientists representing the United States, Britain, France and Australia. They flew a number of research flights over the Totten Glacier of East Antarctica — the fastest-thinning sector of the world’s largest ice sheet — and took a variety of measurements to try to figure out the reasons behind its retreat. And the news wasn’t good: It appears that Totten, too, is losing ice because warm ocean water is getting underneath it....

That’s alarming, because the glacier holds back a much more vast catchment of ice that, were its vulnerable parts to flow into the ocean, could produce a sea level rise of more than 11 feet — which is comparable to the impact from a loss of the West Antarctica ice sheet. And that’s “a conservative lower limit,” says lead study author Jamin Greenbaum, a PhD candidate at the University of Texas at Austin.

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It's a naive, domestic operating system without any breeding, but I think you'll be amused by its presumption.

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