Google Hands Feds 1,500 Phone Locations In Unprecedented ‘Geofence’ Search

According to Forbes, Google has sent 1,494 device identifiers to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to help them investigate arsons carried out across Milwaukee, Wisconsin, throughout 2018 and 2019. “The requests, outlined in two search warrants obtained by Forbes, demanded to know which specific Google customers were located in areas covering 29,387 square meters (or 3 hectares)…

Researchers Report Breakthrough In ‘Distributed Deep Learning’

Using a divide-and-conquer approach that leverages the power of compressed sensing, computer scientists from Rice University and Amazon have shown they can slash the amount of time and computational resources it takes to train computers for product search and similar “extreme classification problems” like speech translation and answering general questions. Tech Xplore reports: In tests on an Amazon search dataset that…

Detecting solar flares, more in real time

Computers can learn to find solar flares and other events in vast streams of solar images and help NOAA forecasters issue timely alerts, according to a new study. The machine-learning technique, developed by scientists at CIRES and NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI), searches massive amounts of satellite data to pick out features significant for space weather. Changing conditions on…

Scientists confirm Europa’s water vapor geysers … maybe

New observations appear to confirm the existence of water vapor geysers on Europa. The findings are tantalizing, but some scientists are not convinced yet. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/europa-water-vapor-geysers-goddard…

‘Royalty-Free’ Music Supplied By YouTube Results In Mass Video Demonetization

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: A YouTuber who used a royalty-free track supplied by YouTube itself has had all of his videos copyright claimed by companies including SonyATV and Warner Chappell. According to the music outfits, Matt Lownes’ use the use of the track ‘Dreams’ by Joakim Karud means that they are now entitled to all of his…