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Comment You want machine learning? You want IBM's Watson. (Score 4, Interesting) 56

by mmell (#47251897) Attached to: Microsoft To Launch Machine Learning Service
That machine wasn't merely a decision engine or a huge database - it was a learning system which was given a few months to learn all it could on a broad variety of subjects by crawling the internet. It wasn't programmed with rules to pair an answer with the correct question; it was a system which "learned" how to associate concepts. It was programmed to permit it to weigh its questions against how well they correlated to the answers - to determine a confidence level - but it wasn't specifically programmed to devise questions associated with answers. That's why the next publicly stated idea for the system was in medical diagnostics. It's another area where the ability to relate multiple seemingly disparate items of information with a non-static data store seemed to be of value.

Giving the right programming, it might even hold a conversation better than a 13 year old Ukrainian boy.

Submission + - Starbuck's Wireless Charging Stations Won't Won't Work On Nearly All Devices (computerworld.com)

Submitted by Lucas123
Lucas123 writes: Starbucks today announced that after beta-testing wireless charging in several locations, it will roll it out to all of its cafes in the U.S. Unfortunately, the Powermat wireless chargers they chose to use doesn't support the overwhelming number of mobile devices that are enabled for wireless charging using the Qi standard. Of the 20 million consumer devices estimated to have shipped in 2013 with wireless charging capabilities, nearly all were built with the Qi specification, according to IHS. The majority of the Qi technology was built into devices such as the Google Nexus 4 and 5 smartphones, Google's Nexus 7 second-generation tablet and a number of models in Nokia's Lumia smart phone range. The battle between the three wireless charging consortiums is expected to continue to adversely impact adoption of the technology.

Submission + - Japanese stem cell debacle could bring down entire center (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Shutting down the research center at the heart of an unfolding scientific scandal may be necessary to prevent a recurrence of research misconduct, according to a report released at a press conference in Tokyo today. A committee reviewing conduct at the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology (CDB) in Kobe, Japan, found lax oversight and a failure on the part of senior authors of two papers in Nature outlining a surprisingly simple way of reprogramming mature cells into stem cells. The committee surmised that a drive to produce groundbreaking results led to publishing results prematurely. "It seems that RIKEN CDB had a strong desire to produce major breakthrough results that would surpass iPS cell research," the report concludes, referring to another type of pluripotent stem cell. "One of our conclusions is that the CDB organization is part of the problem," said committee chair Teruo Kishi Kishi. He recommends a complete overhaul of CDB, including perhaps restructuring it into a new institute. "This has to be more than just changing the nameplate."

Submission + - Game Characters controlled by Player's Emotions (youtube.com)

Submitted by vrml
vrml writes: As the player feels inner anger rising, the in-game character gets angry too and starts shouting and smashing things. Then, the player relaxes and the game character calms down and smiles. This is the kind of game control supported by a system demonstrated in a video released today by the Human-Computer Interaction Lab of the University of Udine. The system detects player's emotional state by using physiological sensors to measure player's skin conductance, facial muscles activity and cardiac parameters. It has been used to build gamified relaxation training and stress inoculation training applications.

Submission + - US pushing local police to keep quiet on cell-phone surveillance technology (yahoo.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: The Obama administration has been quietly advising local police not to disclose details about surveillance technology they are using to sweep up basic cellphone data from entire neighborhoods, The Associated Press has learned.

Citing security reasons, the U.S. has intervened in routine state public records cases and criminal trials regarding use of the technology. This has resulted in police departments withholding materials or heavily censoring documents in rare instances when they disclose any about the purchase and use of such powerful surveillance equipment.

Federal involvement in local open records proceedings is unusual. It comes at a time when President Barack Obama has said he welcomes a debate on government surveillance and called for more transparency about spying in the wake of disclosures about classified federal surveillance programs.

Submission + - Are the Glory Days of Analog Engineering Over? (eetimes.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Controversy has been swirling for years over the question of whether analog engineers are relevant in a digital world. Analog engineers themselves are lining up against management in the tussle over whether there really is a shrinking pool of engineers to do the work, or whether companies have unrealistic expectations. As one former analog engineer puts it, "The job descriptions for analog engineers today ask for expertise in all these analog areas, then they throw in 'must know VHDL' [a digital programming language]. Your head would explode if you had to carry all the information in your head!

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