Just what i find

I still believe that we have to change the way we're consuming the earth's resources if we want to leave to our children anything like the planet we inherited from our parents. But the products like this need to work on the marketing. Who wants to eat algae 🙂 https://spectrum.ieee.org/video/green-tech/conservation/we-grew-algae-and-asked-spectrum-editors-to-taste-it Algae could be the environmentally-friendly superfood we’ve all been waiting for. But will anyone actually eat it? Continue reading →

It's interesting to see how Apple and Facebook are approaching the problem of "fake news" differently. Facebook is sticking to it's "algorithmic" approach, which i guess would be far more scalable if (and it's a big if) it can be demonstrated to work. Apple's employing more people to review the news that's presented through the hardware/software giant's own apps, teaching us: 1. the scale of the problem facing Facebook's is simply orders of magnitude larger (Apple only curates content from a chosen set of sources, not any joe schmoe writing a blog), and 2. Apple's convinced it can avoid human… Continue reading →

I'm skeptical about the true market for bike sharing. I can see the perceived benefits, and when i lived closer in to central London I used to use Boris Bikes more often, i've recently tried to rent "dockless" bikes from several of the companies around London and although they never seem to be available nearby when i want them, cities all around the world (e.g. http://theconversation.com/to-end-share-bike-dumping-focus-on-how-to-change-peoples-behaviour-90016) are struggling with how to stop bike "dumping" – the natural "clustering" of bikes at the end of common commuter journeys. https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/2/17526892/lyft-buys-motivate-bike-sharing-expansion The ride-share company will take on Motivate’s existing contracts, like New York’s… Continue reading →

A new alloy promises sensors in temperatures of up to around 980°C – high enough to instrument engine blocks in cars, or drill heads in industrial machinery. As it's also conductive, it could be used to make solid state high current switching gear too. https://www.asme.org/engineering-topics/articles/manufacturing-design/superalloy-rescues-mems-sensors null Continue reading →

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://www.npr.org/2018/07/02/625299978/scientists-capture-first-birth-of-a-planet Photographs of a young planet orbiting a star provide useful information about how planets form and grow. Continue reading →

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… Continue reading →

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://www.alizila.com/alibaba-debuts-ai-copywriter/ The technology… Continue reading →

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 (http://advances.utc.sk/index.php/AEEE/article/download/2202/1271), 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… Continue reading →

This discussion about automation in the luxury goods market (https://www.ft.com/content/dfb9088a-7079-11e8-92d3-6c13e5c92914) reminded me of the chapters in The Man In the High Castle (https://smile.amazon.co.uk/dp/0241246105) where it's suggested that some hand crafted items are so beautiful that they possess a factor, wu, that makes them desirable, and one of the character's acquaintances wishes to clone them as "most of the masses still believe in magic". But cloning the items removes what is intrinsically valuable. To me, automation manufacture of luxury goods seems to follow the same path – removing the skill and artisan nature of their creation threatens the very soul of… Continue reading →

As AI becomes closer than ever to creating digital artifacts which are indistinguishable from those generated in real life, I'm left wondering how we manage the risks to our understanding of law and justice – think perhaps of a generated "CCTV recording" of a political opponent committing a crime being submitted as evidence in court, and no person nor machine can definitively prove whether it's fake or genuine. https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/16/facebooks-new-ai-research-is-a-real-eye-opener/ There are plenty of ways to manipulate photos to make you look better, remove red eye or lens flare, and so on. But so far the blink has proven a tenacious… Continue reading →