Technology

“We don’t have much ground truth in biology.” According to Barbara Engelhardt, a computer scientist at Princeton University, that’s just one of the many challenges that researchers face when trying to prime traditional machine-learning methods to analyze genomic data. Techniques in artificial intelligence and machine learning are dramatically altering the landscape of biological research, but Engelhardt doesn’t think those “black box” approaches are enough to provide the insights necessary for understanding, diagnosing and treating disease.

The moon will get its first mobile phone network next year, enabling high-definition streaming from the lunar landscape back to earth, part of a project to back the first privately funded moon mission.

Vodafone Germany, network equipment maker Nokia and carmaker Audi (VOWG_p.DE) said on Tuesday they were working together to support the mission, 50 years after the first NASA astronauts walked on the moon. Vodafone said it had appointed Nokia as its technology partner to develop a space-grade network which would be a small piece of hardware weighing less than a bag of sugar.

Did your screen just turn black or your laptop freeze without warning? Maybe your hard drive has started chirping. Worse yet, maybe you suddenly can’t save to your home partition.

All these signs of a corrupted or failing drive can cause you to sweat, but there’s no reason to immediately throw away your computer. Keep reading to learn about five Linux tools that can help you retrieve your data and get your digital life back on track.

Facial recognition and machine learning programs have officially been democratized, and of course the internet is using the tech to make porn. As first reported by Motherboard, people are now creating AI-assisted face-swap porn, often featuring a celebrity's face mapped onto a porn star's body, like Gal Gadot's likeness in a clip where she's supposedly sleeping with her stepbrother. But while stopping these so-called deepfakes has challenged Reddit, Pornhub, and other communities, GIF-hosting company Gfycat thinks it's found a better answer.

Microsoft has added Windows 10 Pro support for palm-vein authentication, as part of its Windows Hello facial and fingerprint-recognition system.

The palm-vein authentication comes by way of a collaboration with Fujitsu, a Windows 10 enterprise hardware partner that is in the process of deploying its own palm-vein biometric technology to 80,000 employees in Japan.

Sixteen years ago, on a cold February day at Yale University, a poster caught Gil Kalai’s eye. It advertised a series of lectures by Michel Devoret, a well-known expert on experimental efforts in quantum computing. The talks promised to explore the question “Quantum Computer: Miracle or Mirage?” Kalai expected a vigorous discussion of the pros and cons of quantum computing. Instead, he recalled, “the skeptical direction was a little bit neglected.” He set out to explore that skeptical view himself.

In early 2014, Srikanth Thirumalai met with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. Thirumalai, a computer scientist who’d left IBM in 2005 to head Amazon’s recommendations team, had come to propose a sweeping new plan for incorporating the latest advances in artificial intelligence into his division.

In the early ’90s, Elizabeth Behrman, a physics professor at Wichita State University, began working to combine quantum physics with artificial intelligence — in particular, the then-maverick technology of neural networks. Most people thought she was mixing oil and water. “I had a heck of a time getting published,” she recalled. “The neural-network journals would say, ‘What is this quantum mechanics?’ and the physics journals would say, ‘What is this neural-network garbage?’”

I just picked up a Vivo phone, laid my thumb on its screen and voila: I unlocked it. That might not sound like much, but titans like Apple and Samsung have reportedly struggled to squeeze fingerprint sensors beneath their own displays. And yet here I am, with a prototype phone from a company most have never heard of, touching a finger to glass and watching a phone come to life.

As soon as the iPhone X became official, various reports said that Android device makers will be quick to steal one its signature features, the 3D facial recognition system that’s more sophisticated than what’s found on Android counterparts.

Since then, more reports have emerged detailing Apple’s various moves to secure 3D modules supply for future device supposed to support Face ID, including 2018 iPhone X successors and new iPads. Android device makers are also looking to make use of the same components, but they may take their time copying Face ID.