The Very Large Telescope has been used to capture the birth of a planet around a star for the first time. Astronomers have long thought that planets grow through accretion of dust collected around stars – and this series of photographs shows this in action, giving us further evidence of the way our own solar system formed.
https://rob.al/2IQAp7g
Photographs of a young planet orbiting a star provide useful information about how planets form and grow.
We are trying to put accessibility at the core of everything we do, and it's hard – often people see "designing for accessibility" as expensive or time consuming. But it doesn't have to be. For a start, it's much cheaper to implement from the beginning than to try to retrofit, and accessible applications are easier for everyone to use, not just those with disabilities or impairments. Most of the pointers in this article are so obvious they shouldn't have to be stated – but unfortunately many people aren't even aware of the need to think about them, let alone possessed of the skill to design for accessibility.
https://rob.al/2KyTO2k
Seven easy-to-implement guidelines to design a more accessible web ❤️
Chinese Tech Titan Alibaba has introduced a new feature to help sellers write compelling and useful copy for adverts with a few clicks of the neural network. Producing millions of suggestions each day, the "AI Copywriter" aims to reduce the "repetitive, low-value work" activities associated with creating multiple formats of an advert for different media. Claiming that the system "allows people to devote more energy to richly creative work", this will clearly put lower priced (although not necessarily lower skilled) copywriters in a difficult spot, and would concentrate spend on a smaller number of more "elite" copywriters.
https://rob.al/2lOKvwi
The technology has passed the Turing test and is capable of producing 20,000 lines of copy in a second, said digital marketing arm Alimama.
Self driving cars always seem to be "tomorrow's promise". One major reason is the way that machine learning struggles with "generalising" from more specific data. A child doesn't need to be shown every possible type of chair to learn what a chair is – but throw a few pixels out and your CNN is likely to miscategorise that wolf as a bear (https://rob.al/2u3owoW), which could have catastrophic consequences, especially if the knowledge is used maliciously. The Verge is asking whether this limit on capability is leading to a dead end – without significant progress in generalisation driving may be simply too unpredictable to be achieveable
https://rob.al/2z7dswK
Skeptics say full autonomy could be farther away than the industry admits