During the past 25 years astronomers have discovered a wide variety of exoplanets, made of rock, ice and gas, thanks to the construction of astronomical instruments designed specifically for planet searches. Also, using a combination of different observing techniques they have been able to determine a large number of masses, sizes, and hence densities of the planets, which helps them to…
Tag: searches
Facebook, TikTok Least Trusted By Americans, Google Most Trusted, Says Survey
An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: Forty percent of Americans don’t trust Facebook and TikTok and Google appears to be winning the trust wars, according to a survey from SeoClarity. SeoClarity surveyed 1,057 American residents to gauge trust in tech companies and found a majority of US citizens think social media companies need more regulation. The findings are notable…
Can air pollution help us find alien life?
To find alien life in our universe, scientists have considered searches for optical lasers or even giant energy-harvesting structures known as Dyson spheres. Now they’re suggesting a more mundane sort of search, a hunt for air pollution in exoplanet atmospheres. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/can-pollution-help-us-find-alien-life…
Google Gave Top Spot For ‘Home Depot’ Searches to a Malicious Ad
“A malicious Home Depot advertising campaign is redirecting Google search visitors to tech support scams,” claims Bleeping Computer. Slashdot reader nickwinlund77 shares their report: BleepingComputer searched for ‘home depot’ and was shown the malicious advertisement on our first try. Even worse, the ad is the top spot in the research result, making it more likely to be clicked… [T]he ad clearly…
Intelligence Analysts Use US Smartphone Location Data Without Warrants, Memo Says
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: A military arm of the intelligence community buys commercially available databases containing location data from smartphone apps and searches it for Americans’ past movements without a warrant, according to an unclassified memo obtained by The New York Times. Defense Intelligence Agency analysts have searched for the movements of Americans within…
Is There a Tech Worker ‘Exodus’ From the San Francisco Bay Area?
The New York Times reports on an “exodus” of tech workers from the San Francisco Bay Area, where “Rent was astronomical. Taxes were high. Your neighbors didn’t like you” — and your commute could be over an hour. The biggest tech companies aren’t going anywhere, and tech stocks are still soaring… But the migration from the Bay Area appears real. Residential…
Google Employees Try Baking Recipes Created by AI
“Behold the cakie: It has the crispiness of a cookie and the, well, ‘cakiness’ of a cake.” So says a triumphant blog post by Google Cloud’s developer advocate and an applied AI Engineer for Google’s Cloud AI. “We also made breakies, which were more like fluffy cookies, almost the consistency of a muffin” (or bread). Food and Wine explains the project…
VP and Head Scientist of Alexa at Amazon: ‘The Turing Test is Obsolete. It’s Time To Build a New Barometer For AI’
Rohit Prasad, Vice President and Head Scientist of Alexa at Amazon, writes: While Turing’s original vision continues to be inspiring, interpreting his test as the ultimate mark of AI’s progress is limited by the era when it was introduced. For one, the Turing Test all but discounts AI’s machine-like attributes of fast computation and information lookup, features that are some of…
DeepMind’s AI Agent MuZero Could Turbocharge YouTube
DeepMind’s latest AI program can attain “superhuman performance” in tasks without needing to be given the rules. From a report: Like the research hub’s earlier artificial intelligence agents, MuZero achieved mastery in dozens of old Atari video games, chess, and the Asian board games of Go and Shogi. But unlike its predecessors, it had to work out their rules for itself….
Massachusetts Lawmakers Vote To Pass a Statewide Police Ban On Facial Recognition
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Massachusetts lawmakers have voted to pass a new police reform bill that will ban police departments and public agencies from using facial recognition technology across the state. The bill was passed by both the state’s House and Senate on Tuesday, a day after senior lawmakers announced an agreement that ended months of deadlock….