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Sight Machine reveals what AI "thinks" about us
The Kronos Quartet has recently played a concert at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. While the musicians were playing, a computer screen that was placed about the quartet was showing the audience what a network of computers were "seeing" and "thinking" about the event.
Dozens of cameras were capturing live video on the scene, feeding it to a rack of data processing units that were processing the series of images using advanced data processing algorithms that are typically used by smartphones, self-driving cars and law enforcement agencies.
Telecom operators are betting big on 5G
5G is the new generation of cellular data technology. Today's smartphones use 4G data networks, a significant upgrade from the old 3G technology. On average, people using 4G experience download speeds of 10-20 Mbps, a decent value when we consider the size of the smartphones, which makes it almost impossible to fit high-gain antennas into our tiny devices.
The good news is that 5G is here to stay, and it will make streaming 4K HDR on the go possible. The promised data transfer speeds are supposed to exceed 1 Gbps, and the key benefits of the technology don't stop here. More devices will be able to connect simultaneously to the nearby cell towers, and latency will be significantly diminished.
Sony allows cross-play on the PS4
According to a recent blog post, the company will soon allow its gaming console users to play multiplayer games in cooperation with, or against people who use competing consoles. People can already test this exciting feature by downloading and running Fortnite, the hit that can now be played on Sony's PS4, Microsoft's Xbox One, Nintendo's Switch, PCs, Macs and mobile devices.
As you can probably tell, game developers are excited as well; their user base can significantly grow this way, and this is a godsend, especially for companies who have built products that make use of in-game purchases, monthly subscriptions, and so on.
Blue light generated by smartphones leads to blindness
If you like to use your phone or tablet in the dark, it is important to know that the blue component that is generated by the display's light source may lead to blindness, according to a group of researchers from the University of Toledo. Apparently, increased exposure to blue light will create poisonous molecules in the eye's cells.
The researchers have utilized a blue LED light source of 4W, which was powered on for only 30 minutes to demonstrate the eye cells' permanent damage, so the problem is very serious. Fortunately, several applications that can be found in the mobile app stores have been created for the very purpose of countering this problem by reducing the amount of blue light and/or increasing the quantity of red light.
FBI asks people to reboot their routers
According to the FBI, a group of Russian hackers have created malware that has infected hundreds of thousands of routers. Researchers from Cisco's Talos security team have discovered that the virus, which is known as VPNFilter, has infected devices made by Linksys, Mikrotik, Netgear, QNAP and TP-Link.
To get rid of the malware piece, people are encouraged to perform a factory reset, or at least to reboot their routers. On a side note, it is always a good idea to reboot your router every few days; this way, its memory will be flushed, and optimal Internet performance will be restored.
Microsoft is building a cheap Surface tablet
The affordable Surface is reportedly going to be powered by Intel Pentium processors, which aren't as powerful as the Core i5 and i7 models, but provide several other advantages: passive cooling, reduced costs, etc.
It looks like the utilized Intel Pentium Gold CPUs will be based on the Kaby Lake architecture, running at 1.66 GHz. Storage space will be either 64 GB or 128 GB; in addition to this, people will be able to choose a device that's got 4 GB or 8 GB of RAM. I presume that the lower-end model won't be that useful for serious work, but the more expensive one could be a lightweight laptop killer, provided that the price is right.
Smartphone gadget displays baby ultrasounds
A new Israeli invention allows women to view ultrasounds of their babies using regular smartphones. PulseNmore LTD has invented a gadget that plugs into any smartphone, and then displays an ultrasonic-based image of the baby, which can also be sent to the doctor, if needed.
Women who are anxious because they can't feel the movement of their babies can use the device to "see" what is happening in real time. This is not a real medical device, of course, but it can be very useful under certain circumstances. According to PulseNmore, the price of the gadget will be under $200.
Government spyware found in legitimate downloads
The Citizen Lab has recently discovered that several Sandvine/Procera Networks Deep Packet Inspection middleboxes were used to deliver nation-state malware in Turkey, and to covertly raise money through affiliate ads and cryptocurrency mining in Egypt.
People who have tried to download legitimate applications have been redirected to modified versions of the software, which included spyware components as well. The targeted applications were Avast Antivirus, CCleaner, Opera and 7-Zip, and the infections were possible because the targeted download portals weren't using the https protocol to encrypt website traffic.
