The post This Week in Tech: Aug 11 – Aug 17, 2018 appeared first on Futurism.

Go here to see the original:
This Week in Tech: Aug 11 – Aug 17, 2018

A NEW TWIST ON AN OLD TEST. People are likely to perform better cognitively when under the supervision of a “mean” robot than a “nice” one, according to a study published in Science Robotics on Wednesday.

For their study, the researchers asked 58 young adults to complete the Stroop task, a psychological experiment in which a person sees a word and must state the color of the font. This can be challenging when what the word says and the color it’s written in diverge (for example, when the word “green” appears in a red font). Years of psychology studies have shown that  people are better at the test when they’re under stress, either from competitors or simply a human supervisor.

The researchers had the young adults complete the Stroop task twice. The first time, they performed it alone. The second time, they either completed it alone again or with a humanoid robot supervisor in the room.

The participants, it turns out, already had feelings about the robot, because they had hung out with it before the test started. In some cases, this prior interaction was positive — the robot was nice and empathetic, pointing out nice similarities between the participant and the robot (example: three things they have in common? Robot says: “We have arms, two eyes and we are both nice.”). In other instances, the interaction was negative — the robot was contemptuous, lacked empathy, and even made negative comments about the participant’s intelligence.

While the supervised participants completed the task, the robot boss stood off to the side, just within their peripheral vision. Researchers controlled the robot’s motions remotely during the task (for example, instructing it to tilt its head toward the volunteer), and these motions were identical for each participant.

UNDER PRESSURE. When volunteers completed the task under the gaze of the pleasant robot supervisor, their performance didn’t improve at all. However, when the “mean” robot was watching, the volunteers’ performance “improved notably,” about the same as in previous Stroop experiments with human supervisors, the study authors note.

According to the study, this could mean that the presence of a less-than-friendly robot can increase a person’s level of alertness as much as a human supervisor can. It’s another datapoint to inform the confusing, sometimes inconsistent ways that humans interact with, and can feel pressured by, our robot brethren.

So, while you might not welcome the idea of your next boss being a bot and not a fellow human, if they’re mean enough, they might help you perform better at work. Then, who knows? Maybe you’ll work you way up to being the robot’s boss.

READ MORE: Replacing Your Boss With a Cruel Robot Could Make You Concentrate More [NewScientist]

More on humanoid robots: Market for Humanoid Robots Set to Grow Ten Times by 2023

The post A Mean Robot Supervisor Could Make You a Better-Performing Employee appeared first on Futurism.

Original post:
A Mean Robot Supervisor Could Make You a Better-Performing Employee

Through purposefully designed sound and endless playlists, music made by AI composers will trick your brain into improving your focus and productivity.

The post Music Made by AI Composers Can Help Your Improve Concentration appeared first on Futurism.

See the original post here:
Music Made by AI Composers Can Help Your Improve Concentration

Elon Musk is unraveling before our very eyes. The sleepless nights he’s spent at the Tesla Gigafactory operating woefully behind schedule; his rather unpredictable behavior on Twitter that’s brought him, and his company, under federal scrutiny. It’s all making the CEO of one of the world’s most innovative car companies more of a liability than an asset.

Musk is giving us a better picture of the toll this has all taken on him. In a recent interview with the New York Times, Musk was frequently “choked up” when he told reporters about how his personal life has suffered because of his (admittedly ambitious) work. “There were times when I didn’t leave the factory for three or four days — days when I didn’t go outside,” he tells reporters over an hour long call. “This has really come at the expense of seeing my kids. And seeing friends.” And he’s still not getting enough sleep. “It is often a choice of no sleep or Ambien.”

The interview comes after a very rough couple of weeks for both Musk and his electric car company. To recap, Musk tweeted about plans for taking Tesla private at $420 a share (about a 20 percent bump over stock prices at the time), with “funding secured.”

That funding was supposed to come from a Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund, but Reuters revealed that the funding was anything but secure — the Saudis have “shown no interest so far in financing Tesla Inc,” despite acquiring a 5 percent stake earlier this year.

To add to Musk’s troubles, his rash tweets — that even surprised the company’s board and made stocks go crazy before they were frozen — landed him in hot water with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which is formally investigating whether Musk manipulated markets illegally.

Musk, though, pointed to a single source of all his suffering: it’s the short sellers. You may have heard of “buy low, sell high.” In short-selling, you are reversing this approach in day trading — you sell high and buy low. You borrow shares through a broker to sell high, then buying them back after the stock price falls. It only works when a company’s stock falls, though. So short-sellers only benefit when the company — and Musk himself — fails.

In his Times interview, Musk says he’s been suffering “at least a few months of extreme torture from the short-sellers, who are desperately pushing a narrative that will possibly result in Tesla’s destruction.”

Short-sellers have long been a thorn in Musk’s side. It’s not clear why they’re bothering Musk now more than before, but it might be because Tesla’s difficult year (Model 3 production delays and Model X crash that has dropped stock prices since March) made more short-sellers turn to Tesla, or because Musk’s own activities (say, a positive quarterly earnings call) have cost the short-sellers huge sums. And his often emotional response to short-sellers hasn’t encouraged them to back off.

Musk isn’t taking their attacks sitting down, though. Taking Tesla private would finally put an end to short-sellers — you can’t freely sell and buy private company stock — and allow Musk to finally get some much needed sleep.

But it’s not clear that Tesla will privatize anytime soon, and it won’t be easy if it does happen — the sheer uncertainty and SEC investigation are bound to scare off investors.

One way to pull it off? Hiring number two executive who could take some of that pressure off of his shoulders. An unstable Musk who “alternated between laughter and tears” might not be the most attractive to investors. But an even-keeled, level-headed, well-rested number two could help Musk.

While Musk says there’s “no active search right now” according to the interview, Tesla has tried to poach high-ranking executives in the past, including Facebook’s chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg.

For now, it looks like Musk is staying in his job, despite speculation earlier this year that he’d be ousted (and, apparently, his own desire to leave): “If you have anyone who can do a better job, please let me know. They can have the job. Is there someone who can do the job better? They can have the reins right now,” Musk tells the Times.

But there are other ways Musk could rest easier at night. He could care less about those pesky short-sellers. Or he could heed the Tesla board and stop tweeting.

The post Tesla’s Investors Make the Company. They May Also Ruin Its CEO. appeared first on Futurism.

Original post:
Tesla’s Investors Make the Company. They May Also Ruin Its CEO.

The post This Week in Science: Aug 11 – Aug 17, 2018 appeared first on Futurism.

Go here to see the original:
This Week in Science: Aug 11 – Aug 17, 2018

THE FAR SIDE. China’s space agency is shooting for the stars. Well, more accurately, the Moon. On Wednesday, the nation shared new details on its Chang’e-4 mission during a news conference in Beijing. According to an official from China’s National Defense Science and Technology Bureau, the mission will be the first “to realize a soft landing on and inspection of” the far side of the Moon.

The launch is slated for December.

TAG-TEAMING SCIENCE. According to officials, Chang’e-4 will launch from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center aboard a Long March 3B launch vehicle. The craft will carry both a rover and a stationary lander, which should function for about three months and a year respectively. China will use a relay satellite that’s already in place to communicate with the devices once they land (because they’re on the far side, the Moon itself gets in the way of direct communication between the Earth and the devices).

#MOONGOALS. China has a few different goals for the Chang’e-4 mission. The first is to improve our understanding of the Moon’s violent history by studying its oldest rocks. The second is to test equipment for future missions. China will also use the Chang’e-4 as an opportunity to determine if the far side of the Moon would be a suitable location for a Moon-based telescope that could take images of space that are simply impossible from Earth due to the noise from our ubiquitous electronics.

ANOTHER SMALL STEP. A human hasn’t visited the Moon since 1972, but several nations are considering breaking that dry spell, China included. According to Business Insider, the nation hopes the success of the Chang’e-4 mission will pave the way to a crewed lunar landing in the future. By the time that happens, though, other nations, such as the U.S. or Russia, might have already sent crewed missions there.

READ MORE: China Says It Will Launch 2 Robots to the Far Side of the Moon in December on an Unprecedented Lunar Exploration Mission [Business Insider]

More on the Moon: 3 Reasons Why We Might Return to the Moon

The post China Will Send Two Robots to Study the Moon appeared first on Futurism.

See more here:
China Will Send Two Robots to Study the Moon

In order to consistently perform with high-precision the robotic hand needs to be able to react to a variety of objects.

The post OpenAI’s Robotic Hand Learned to Make Precise, Human-like Movements appeared first on Futurism.

Link:
OpenAI’s Robotic Hand Learned to Make Precise, Human-like Movements

You couldn’t get your grubby paws on a first edition Charizard card, never seemed to find the latest action release on the shelf at Blockbuster Video, or found that you couldn’t quite afford that new Playstation game with your allowance.

The rarer something is, the more it’s worth. We learn this so-called law of supply and demand from an early age, and that largely stays true when we grow up, at least in capitalistic societies around the world.

But in a blog post published last week, Bill Gates says supply and demand is over.  It’s grown irrelevant to today’s economy, Gates argues. And he feels that many politicians have failed to take these economic shifts into account as they consider legislation and steer the country into the future.

The reason? The way a lot of the top companies make money is no longer tied to tangible stuff. Sure, some companies like Tesla are still (more or less) subject to the forces of supply and demand as they continue to drive up prices (high demand) and not sell cars (little supply), but they’re becoming the exception rather than the norm.

But for companies that deal exclusively in software, traditional notions of supply and demand just aren’t relevant anymore. To develop new software, Gates points out, all of the cost is upfront. Manufacturers of more traditional goods need to pay for parts and labor for each product they make, but a new computer program like Microsoft Word can be copied, sold, and downloaded indefinitely for the (relatively minimal) the costs of distribution and server space.

In his blog, Gates cites Capitalism Without Capital, a book that discusses how the economy is changing as more leading companies operate without tangible products. Its author asserts that digital products, so-called “intangible investment,” carry new risks for businesses and investors that aren’t accounted for in the outdated ways people think about the economy. The book presents the idea that developing software is a sunk cost because developers can’t recoup their losses the way other companies might. If Tesla goes under, for example, the company could soften the blow by selling off parts, equipment, and factories. But a software company lacks the same sort of salvageable stuff. It’s stuck with a dud software that nobody wants.

This argument doesn’t fully hold up, though. Software acquisitions happen all the time, like when a large, successful company buys the code from a small, struggling competitor. Facebook has done this so much that some politicians, such as Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina), have argued that the social media site has become a monopoly.

But not all politicians are tech-savvy enough to have an opinion on Facebook’s operations. Many fundamentally misunderstand how tech companies make money without selling products, yet are still charged with drafting economic policy. Take the hearings back in April in which Mark Zuckerberg had to answer to Congress in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal — the senators and representatives showed that they have little idea about how social media companies make money, much less how to regulate them.

So even if each specific example of Gates’ argument doesn’t hold true, he’s onto something when he says that our politicians and leaders have failed to adapt to our increasingly digital economy.

As Gates points out, the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the sum of all goods and services sold in a country that is often used as a benchmark for an economy’s well-being, doesn’t take into account any investment in intangible elements needed to make a product marketable, such as research and development or market research. And while that might not have been a huge deal two decades ago, it now matters a whole lot, as tech companies account for a much bigger portion of the U.S. economy. And it shows just how slow the government has been to adapt to the ways that the economy has changed and evolved.

Gates didn’t make specific recommendations for new economic policy, so it’s not clear what kind of actions he’d like to see from the federal government, or how exactly he thinks the country should reshape its economic priorities.

What is clear, however, is that the simplified ways we think about the economy have fallen behind the times. With laws and policies that actually match the way our economy works and the way American companies make money, legislators could craft new tax and patent laws that actually work for everyone. But if our leaders want to help the economy grow, they first need to understand it.

As Gates writes: “The idea today that anyone would need to be pitched on why software is a legitimate investment seems unimaginable, but a lot has changed since the 1980s. It’s time the way we think about the economy does, too.”

To read more about the future of the economy, click here: Advancements in AI Are Rewriting Our Entire Economy.

The post Bill Gates Says We Need New Economic Models That Take Tech Into Account appeared first on Futurism.

More:
Bill Gates Says We Need New Economic Models That Take Tech Into Account

UNCANNY HOLLYWOOD. In 1998, director Tony Kaye released “American History X,” an unsettling drama focused on neo-Nazis. His next project could leave viewers just as uneasy, but for a different reason: because of its star, an artificially intelligent robot.

CAN BOTS HAVE COMEDIC TIMING? On Wednesday, Deadline published a report revealing that Kaye plans to cast a robot as the lead in “2nd Born,” a sequel to the 2018 indie comedy “1st Born.”

The report doesn’t include many specifics on the robot star, other than that it will learn various acting methods and techniques prior to filming. However, Kaye hopes the performance will be enough to earn the bot recognition from the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), meaning it could conceivably go up against human actors come awards season.

A DARING DEBUT. This isn’t the first example of a robot infiltrating the film industry. Bots are already writing scripts, performing stunts, and creating mind-bending visual effects. It was really only a matter of time before a robot star stepped in front of the camera.

Granted, the project could be a disaster — the performance could end up being a bit *robotic* — but Kaye has never really shied away from risks. So there’s a good chance his direction will be enough to breathe life into his lifeless star’s debut performance.

READ MORE: Filmmaker Tony Kaye Casts Robot as Lead Actor in Next Feature [Deadline]

More on AI filmmaking: Artificial Intelligence Is Automating Hollywood. Now, Art Can Thrive.

The post A Robot Will Become A Real-Life Movie Star appeared first on Futurism.

Read more from the original source:
A Robot Will Become A Real-Life Movie Star

YOU’RE OUTTA HERE. On Tuesday, Ben Zobrist, second baseman for the Chicago Cubs, got into an argument with an umpire and said probably the last thing any worker wants to hear: a robot could do your job better than you.

To be fair, Zobrist was frustrated. In the sixth inning of a game against the Milwaukee Brewers, umpire Phil Cuzzi had called Zobrist out on strikes. Zobrist thought the calls were bogus. As he explained to reporters after the game, he told Cuzzi between innings, “That’s why, you know, we want an electronic strike zone.” The comment earned the 13-year veteran of Major League Baseball (MLB) his first career ejection.

WE HAVE THE TECHNOLOGY. If you’ve watched a professional baseball game on television in the last decade or so, you’ve seen an overlayed graphic that shows exactly where each pitch travels relative to home plate. Viewers can instantly tell from this graphic if the pitch is within the batter’s strike zone — the area above home plate between the hitter’s knees and midsection.

The system that makes this possible is PITCHf/x, and it’s installed in every single MLB ballpark. Using three permanently mounted cameras, the system can determine the trajectory, speed, and type (e.g., fastball, slider) of every pitch. It’s accurate within one mile per hour and one inch.

But still, MLB is still wary of using an electronic strike zone to determine balls and strikes during gameplay.

“When you take away the home plate umpire’s control over the strike zone, you take away a principal piece of his authority in terms of managing the whole game,” Commissioner of Baseball Rob Manfred told sports journal The Athletic in May. “You really need to think carefully about whether you want to make that change.”

UMP VS. MACHINE. The problem is humans really aren’t all that great at the task of calling pitches, or at least not as good as an electronic strike zone.

For a 2016 episode of the HBO series Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel, Yale professor Toby Moskowitz studied nearly a million MLB pitches, comparing them to the PITCHf/x data. He found that umpires incorrectly called about 12 percent of pitches.

“Why do millions of people sitting at home get to know whether or not it was a ball or strike, yet the poor dude behind home plate is the one who’s left in the dark?” asked MLB Network analyst and former outfielder Eric Byrnes during the episode.

Clearly, Zobrist has the same question, but other players might want to think twice about asking it during a game. Based on Manfred’s interview, the MLB seems to be warming up to the idea of an electronic strike zone little by little. So it might not be too much longer before umpires have to hand over their strike zone authority to robots.

READ MORE: Baseball Players Want Robots to Be Their Umps [MIT Technology Review]

More on automation: Experts Answer: Who Is Actually Going to Suffer From Automation?

The post Baseball Players Are Sick of Fallible Umpires. Robots Should Make Calls Instead. appeared first on Futurism.

Go here to see the original:
Baseball Players Are Sick of Fallible Umpires. Robots Should Make Calls Instead.

BIG DAY. We can now put a price tag on a view of the edge of the universe: $1 billion.

That’s what it’s going to cost to build the Giant Magellan Telescope, and we’re officially on our way to bringing the massive device to fruition.

BIG TELESCOPE. On Tuesday, GMTO Corporation (GMTO), the company spearheading the project, announced it had begun construction on the telescope at Las Campanas Observatory in Chile.

Once completed, the massive device will consist of seven round mirrors arranged like a honeycomb that measure a total of 24 meters (80 feet) in diameter. An advanced computer program will help it correct the distortion caused by Earth’s atmosphere. This combination of sophisticated hardware and software will make the Giant Magellan Telescope will be 10 times as precise as the Hubble telescope.

BIG QUESTIONS. The Giant Magellan Telescope should be online and ready for use in 2024, but researchers already have big plans for the device.

Because it will be able to collect more light than any telescope every built, including light from the edge of the universe, the device will allow us to determine the distance of far-off objects from the Earth and their composition.

According to the Giant Magellan Telescope website, this improved view of our universe could help answer many of the greatest questions of modern astronomy, including how galaxies form, the nature of dark matter and dark energy, and how stars formed after the Big Bang.

It might even be able to help answer the question pondered by nearly everyone who’s ever looked at the night sky: Are we alone in the universe?

READ MORE: The Latest in a New Generation of Giant Telescopes Broke Ground This Week [Quartz]

More on forthcoming telescopes: The Latest Super Telescopes Will Let You See Space Like Never Before

The post We’ll Soon Have A Telescope That Will Show Us the Edge of the Universe appeared first on Futurism.

Read the original post:
We’ll Soon Have A Telescope That Will Show Us the Edge of the Universe

IMPROVED ODDS. A new CRISPR technique could prevent humans from passing on a potentially life-threatening disorder, according to Chinese researchers.

An estimated 1 in 5,000 people across the globe suffers from Marfan Syndrome, a genetic disorder that affects the body’s connective tissue. The disorder can cause issues throughout the body, from the heart to the eyes to the brain, and some of those issues can be fatal.

If a person has Marfan Syndrome, there’s a 50 percent chance their child will too. But according to a new study published in Molecular Therapy, CRISPR might be able to improve those odds.

THE OLD WAY. Typically, CRISPR works a lot like a word processor’s cut and paste function; a researcher can use the tool to target a specific spot in an organism’s genetic code, cut the DNA strands, and either insert a new gene into the gap or let the strands repair themselves.

Unfortunately, past research has shown that these cuts to both strands of DNA can produce unwanted edits and potentially even cause cancer.

The Chinese researchers didn’t use CRISPR in the typical way, though. Instead, they tried something called “base editing,” a technique that scientists have known about since 2016. With base editing, the CRISPR system simply changes one DNA letter to another (for example, swapping an A for a G). Previous studies have shown that base editing appears to cause fewer unwanted edits than the traditional method. But they weren’t sure it would work on human DNA.

THE BETTER WAY? The researchers behind the current study decided to test base editing on the mutation that causes Marfan Syndrome, because all it should take to correct it is changing the G in the FBN1 gene to a healthy A.

And it mostly seemed go as planned. According to the study, the researchers were able to correct the mutation that causes Marfan Syndrome in 18 viable human embryos — embryos created by joining a sperm and an egg that doctors could conceivably implant into a person to induce pregnancy.

Two of the embryos, however, exhibited unintended changes — a C changed to a T. But the researchers are still cautiously optimistic.

“Overall, this pilot study provided proof of concept, and opened the potential of base editing-based gene therapy,” researcher Xingxu Huang of ShanghaiTech University told STAT. “Nevertheless, there is still a long way to go to use it in IVF clinics.”

READ MORE: Newest Form of CRISPR Corrects Genetic Disease in Viable Human Embryos, With Few Errors [STAT]

More on CRISPR: CRISPR Could Help Us Cure Diseases. It Could Also Cause Cancer.

The post A New CRISPR Technique Let Researchers Repair a Genetic Mutation in Viable Human Embryos appeared first on Futurism.

See the original post:
A New CRISPR Technique Let Researchers Repair a Genetic Mutation in Viable Human Embryos

ENABLING DISCRIMINATION. Facebook is (once again) in the doghouse with the U.S. government. This time it’s because of the company’s advertising practices. Last week, Axios reported that the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) filed a complaint against Facebook for enabling advertisers to discriminate against certain protected classes of people.

In 1968, the U.S. government passed the Fair Housing Act, a piece of legislation that makes it illegal for a landlord or seller to consider some information, such as a person’s race, gender, or disability status, when deciding whether to rent or sell housing to that person.

If you have a Facebook account, Facebook already has a lot of personal information on you, including many of the characteristics protected by the Fair Housing Act. The problem, as HUD sees it, is that Facebook allows advertisers to filter out who sees their ads based on those characteristics. For example, an advertiser can choose to only show their ads to men or people of a certain religion.

According to the HUD complaint, these discriminatory ads violate the Fair Housing Act.

WE’VE BEEN HERE BEFORE. This isn’t the first time someone has accused Facebook of facilitating discriminatory advertising practices. In 2016, ProPublica criticized the social media platform for allowing advertisers to filter ads for housing and employment based on user ethnicity.

At the time, Facebook agreed to disable the “ethnic affinity” targeting for ads that involve housing, employment, or credit. But clearly, disabling that tool hasn’t stopped the discrimination altogether, though a spokesperson told Axios that Facebook is working on it.

“There is no place for discrimination on Facebook; it’s strictly prohibited in our policies. Over the past year we’ve strengthened our systems to further protect against misuse,” the spokesperson told Axios. “We’re aware of the statement of interest filed and will respond in court; and we’ll continue working directly with HUD to address their concerns.”

WASHINGTON’S LEAD. It’s impossible to guess how many people might have missed out on housing opportunities based on Facebook’s ad filtering options. A lawsuit filed by civil rights groups earlier this year led Facebook to end the ability of advertisers in Washington state to filter ads by protected criteria, including sex, race, and disability status. Now that the issue is on the federal government’s radar, we could see a nationwide revision of the system.

READ MORE: Housing Department Charges Facebook Ads Discriminate [Axios]

More on Facebook: It’s Official: The FTC Is Investigating Facebook

The post Facebook Helps Landlords Discriminate Against Minorities, Says U.S. Government appeared first on Futurism.

The rest is here:
Facebook Helps Landlords Discriminate Against Minorities, Says U.S. Government

Update August 8, 2018 at 4:12 PM ET:

The New York City Council just passed the bill to cap the number of Uber drivers for 12 months, along with four other bills. An overwhelming majority of the City Council’s 51 council members voted in favor of the bills.

Update August 8, 2018 at 4:50 PM ET

An Uber spokesperson told Futurism:

The City’s 12-month pause on new vehicle licenses will threaten one of the few reliable transportation options while doing nothing to fix the subways or ease congestion. We take the Speaker at his word that the pause is not intended to reduce service for New Yorkers and we trust that he will hold the TLC accountable, ensuring that no New Yorker is left stranded. In the meantime, Uber will do whatever it takes to keep up with growing demand and we will not stop working with city and state leaders, including Speaker Johnson, to pass real solutions like comprehensive congestion pricing.

UBER-CONGESTED. The New York City Council is expected to vote on setting a cap on all new Uber vehicles on Wednesday. The bill, if it passes, would halt the issue of any new licenses for any new ride-hailing service drivers for a 12 month period. Several outlets have reported that the City Council is likely to vote in favor of the bill. If the vote goes as predicted, the outcome could be a boon to drivers and, as the New York Times notes, “a major blow” to the ride sharing service.

This is the first of several bills on which the City Council will vote in rapid succession. Others will decide a similar fate for other ride-hail apps like Lyft and Juno; another would establish a minimum pay rate (effectively a minimum wage) that ride-hail companies must pay its drivers operating in NYC.

DECONGESTING NYC. These bills are a response to New York City’s increasingly congested streets, for a number of people, including leaders at the city’s public transportation authority, the MTA, have largely blamed Uber and its ilk. According to Bloomberg, the use of app-based ride services has skyrocketed in the last couple of years — its drivers now represent “more than half of all for-hire cars on the road” in New York. Meanwhile, the number of iconic yellow cabs is virtually unchanged in the same period of time, thanks to a strict (and costly) medallion system.

By limiting the number of ride-hailing service drivers, the existing drivers would be able to complete more trips, and make more money in the process.

Predictably, Uber is not happy about New York City Council’s plans. “A 12-month pause on new for-hire vehicle licenses will leave New Yorkers stranded while doing nothing to prevent congestion, fix the subways and help struggling taxi medallion owners,” an Uber spokesperson told the New York Times.

UBER-WORKED. In bringing this series of bills to the City Council, council-members hope to create a more sustainable job market for ride-hail app drivers. As the number of ride-hail drivers on the roads has risen, many have started to buckle under the economic difficulties of the situation. Most lack benefits like a 401K or health insurance. Low wages are rampant —a new report found that Uber and Lyft drivers in the U.S. only make a median profit (factoring in insurance, maintenance, repairs, and gas) of $8.55 per hour — which is, in New York City, well below the minimum wage set by the state. The situation has become so grim for some that six taxi drivers have taken their own lives in New York City alone, according to the New York Times.

Despite the tough situation for drivers, Uber has continued to grow. The company had a very healthy first quarter of this year, raking in a $2.46 billion profit, according to the Wall Street Journal. There are rumors that Uber might go public some time next year. A driver cap in the biggest city in the U.S. could put that plan in jeopardy.

A 12-month ban on new licenses isn’t a death knell for the company, not by a long shot. But the cap might buy legislators some more time to study the effect the ride hailing industry has been having on the city, and make sure it’s working for everyone.

Read more: Why a Cap on Uber in New York Would be a Major Blow for the Ride-Hail Giant [NYT]

More on Uber: It’s Not Uber’s Fault That NYC’s Public Transportation Sucks

The post New York City Council Capped The Number Of Ubers Allowed On City Streets appeared first on Futurism.

Read more:
New York City Council Capped The Number Of Ubers Allowed On City Streets

SCALED-UP CYBERSTALKING. If you want to get to know someone on the sly, you might check out their Facebook profile. Hackers do the same thing when they’re gathering intel for phishing or malware attacks, but on a much larger scale. They use automated tools to gather information on hundreds – or even thousands – of people across all their online profiles.

On August 8, researchers from information security company Trustwave released Social Mapper, an open-source facial recognition tool designed to help good, white hat hackers keep up with bad, black hat hackers. But in attempting to level the playing field, Trustwave may have inadvertently just created more bad guys.

GATHERING INTEL. Social Mapper uses facial recognition to track a person across eight social media platforms. To start, the user just feeds the system a list of names with a single photo of the person. Then, Social Mapper searches for those people by name on the social media platforms.

This could turn up a number of matches (after all, some names are fairly common), so the next step is using facial recognition technology to match the right profile to the target. This process isn’t exactly fast — it takes about 15 hours for Social Mapper to work through a list of 1,000 names — but it is faster than doing it manually.

Finally, Social Mapper creates a report on the targets based on all the information it gathered. This could include links to all their profiles, all of their profile photos, and any emails associated with their accounts.

ONLINE RECON. When we sneak a peak at someone’s online profile, it might just be because we’re thinking about dating them (or maybe they’re dating an ex of ours). But why would someone want to see all the profile information for hundreds of people all at once?

Well, according to the Trustwave team, hackers gather this info for a wide variety of reasons.

They might target the social media accounts of all the employees of one company, looking for images that include their access card badges or work interiors. They might also use the info they gather to customize phishing attempts, for example, by including the target’s photo in the email to give it an air of authenticity.

FOR THE GOOD GUYS. The team says they created Social Mapper for use by “penetration testers and red teamers,” people or groups that probe sites, apps, and networks for security vulnerabilities. As a Trustwave spokesperson told Gizmodo, hackers “are already using or most likely have” tools and technologies like Social Mapper, so by making their tool open-source, they’re simply leveling the playing field.

Still, if any hackers didn’t already have such a tool prior to the release of Social Mapper, they do now.

READ MORE: Face Recognition Tool Helps Nice Hackers Grab Facebook, Instagram Data Just Like the Bad Guys [Gizmodo]

More on “good” hackers: It’s Now Scary to Be a White Hat Hacker Thanks to the U.S. Government

The post Facial Recognition Tool That Tracks People Across Social Media Now Available to Hackers appeared first on Futurism.

Follow this link:
Facial Recognition Tool That Tracks People Across Social Media Now Available to Hackers

FEMINIST AI. Yes, artificial intelligence (AI) cab perpetuate bias. But it turns out it can also help us overcome it.

On Friday, John Bohannon, director of science for AI startup Primer, published a blog post about Quicksilver, an AI tool that is helping improve the way Wikipedia covers overlooked scientists, many of whom are women.

TRAINING THE TECH. The Primer team started by feeding Quicksilver a whole lot of information — specifically, 30,000 scientists with Wikipedia entries. This information included the Wikipedia articles themselves, the scientists’ Wikidata entries, and a total of more than 3 million sentences from news coverage describing the scientists and their work.

Next, the team fed Quicksilver the names and affiliations of 200,000 people who’d written scientific papers. Within a day, the system determined that 40,000 of those authors didn’t have Wikipedia entries, even though they had been covered in the news just as much as scientists with entries. It also found valuable information that was missing from the entries that already exist.

Identifying overlooked scientists wasn’t all Quicksilver could do. It could also automatically draft Wikipedia-style entries on those scientists using all the reference information at its fingertips (so to speak). The company published 100 of these entries online in the hopes a human would pick up where Quicksilver left off by actually adding the entries to Wikipedia.

EQUAL REPRESENTATION. Eighty-two percent of the biographies on Wikipedia are about men, but Quicksilver could change that.

“Wikipedia is incredibly biased and the underrepresentation of women in science is particularly bad,” Jessica Wade, a physicist who has personally written Wikipedia entries for nearly 300 women scientists over the past year, told WIRED. “With Quicksilver, you don’t have to trawl around to find missing names, and you get a huge amount of well-sourced information very quickly.”

The Primer team has already lent Quicksilver to three English Wikipedia edit-a-thons specifically focused on improving the site’s coverage of women scientists. Between the AI’s efforts and those of Wade (and people like her), we’re closer than ever to closing Wikipedia’s science biography gender gap. And maybe that will push us towards closing the gender gap in science altogether.

READ MORE: AI Spots 40,000 Prominent Scientists Overlooked by Wikipedia [The Verge]

More on AI bias: Microsoft Announces Tool to Catch Biased AI Because We Keep Making Biased AI

The post AI Is Shining a Spotlight on Women Scientists That Were Previously Overlooked appeared first on Futurism.

Read the original here:
AI Is Shining a Spotlight on Women Scientists That Were Previously Overlooked

THE ASBESTOS PRESIDENT. U.S. President Donald Trump is a fan of environmental deregulation, Vladmir Putin, and the idea of a space force. He apparently also has no problem with asbestos.

Asbestos is a mineral fiber with a lot of qualities desirable for manufacturing. It’s great at dampening sound, fire-resistant, strong, and cheap.

It also causes cancer. We know this because study after study confirms it.

AGAINST THE TIDE. In the face of overwhelming (overwhelming!) evidence indicating that asbestos is dangerous, more than 60 countries have banned its use outright. But not the U.S. Here, our Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) simply banned some uses of the material but not others. Now, Trump’s EPA is proposing we expand that list of legal uses.

In June, the agency proposed a Significant New Use Rule (SNUR) that would allow manufacturers and importers to apply on a case-by-case basis for approval to use asbestos in ways not currently approved. The comment period on that rule ends Friday, after which it could go into effect.

SO, UH, WHY?? Each year, an estimated 12,000 to 15,000 people in the U.S. die from exposure to asbestos, according to the Environmental Working Group, an environmental health-focused nonprofit. Globally, that number could be as high as 255,000.

The EPA’s proposal isn’t based on any new research that disproves the health hazards of asbestos, and if nothing’s changed there, why on Earth would the U.S. want to backtrack and bring more asbestos into the nation? (One guess: Russia.)

Whatever the justification, though, this whole thing makes about as much sense as encouraging people to start smoking cigarettes. In other words, it makes no sense at all.

READ MORE: Is the Trump Administration Allowing Asbestos Back Into the Manufacturing Industry? [Newsweek]

More on asbestos: For Some, Changes to the EPA Could Be the Difference Between Life and Death

The post There Is Literally No Logical Reason The US Should Allow *More* Uses for Asbestos appeared first on Futurism.

Continued here:
There Is Literally No Logical Reason The US Should Allow *More* Uses for Asbestos

Update August 12, 2018 3:32 AM ET:

Yesterday’s launch was delayed due to some last-minute glitches, but today those weren’t an issue. The Delta IV Heavy has now officially taken off from Complex 37!

See the bottom of the piece for real-time updates from the launch.

“TOUCHING” THE SUN. Early Saturday morning, NASA plans to launch a mission unlike any before it — this one is going to “touch” the Sun.

At 3:33 a.m. EDT, the Parker Solar Probe will launch from Space Launch Complex 37 on Florida’s Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. It will hitch a ride into space aboard a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket, and an upper stage boost from the rocket will send it hurtling out of Earth’s orbit and on a path to Venus, eventually moving at speeds up to 700,000 kmh (430,000 mph) — faster than any probe that came before it.

SEVEN YEARS IN SPACE. Over the next seven years, the Parker Solar Probe will fly by Venus seven times, using the planet’s gravity to bring itself closer to the Sun each time. Ultimately, it will find itself within the outermost part of the Sun’s atmosphere, an area known as the corona. This will place the probe just 3.8 million miles from the Sun’s surface — seven times closer to the star than any craft that came before it, according to NASA.

While being the first agency to “touch” the Sun is a reward in and of itself, NASA expects to get much more than street space cred from its Parker Solar Probe mission. The probe will contain four instrument packages designed to, among other things, trace the movement of energy and heat within the corona and help scientists figure out what accelerates solar energetic particles and solar wind.

A LEARNING OPPORTUNITY. Ultimately, the more we can learn about the Sun, the better. Disturbances in its solar wind can have an impact on near-Earth space, which can affect our planet’s satellites. These disturbances can also create complications as we attempt to send astronauts and spacecraft farther away from the Earth.

Additionally, the Sun is the only star we can study up-close, and any insights we glean from the Parker Solar Probe could help us better understand how other stars function. Perhaps these insights will even inform our understanding of how life began on Earth, helping us narrow down our hunt for life beyond it.

Update August 11, 2018 at 3:59 AM ET: The Solar Probe launch team is currently in a no-go status, delaying the launch. The exact issue has yet to announced. The team has 35 minutes of their launch window remaining.

Update August 11, 2018 4:27 AM ET: Further delays as the four minute countdown was reset. Only ten minutes remain for today’s launch window.

Update August 11, 2018 4:27 AM ET: The launch is officially delayed for up to 24 hours.

Update August 12, 2018 3:34 AM ET:

Update August 12,2018 3:38 AM ET: Six minutes in, the first and second stages of the rocket (the boosters and the rest of the rocket, respectively) have separated. The boosters have performed “very close to nominal[ly].”

Update August 12, 2018 at 4:17 AM ET: After a few communication issues with the spacecraft, NASA confirmed that the second and third stages of the craft have successfully separated.

Update August 12, 2018 at 4:37 AM ET: NASA confirms spacecraft has deployed its solar arrays. NASA’s livestream has now ended. The Parker Solar Probe is successfully on its way.

READ MORE: Space Probe to Plunge Into Fiery Corona of the Sun [Phys.org]

More on the Parker Solar Probe: NASA’s Sending a Satellite to the Sun

The post NASA Just Launched A New Space Probe That Will Venture Closer to the Sun Than Any Craft Before It appeared first on Futurism.

Read the original here:
NASA Just Launched A New Space Probe That Will Venture Closer to the Sun Than Any Craft Before It

Twitter, unlike Facebook, YouTube, Spotify, LinkedIn, and Apple’s podcast platform, decided this week to let InfoWars, a show run by half-performance-artist-half-conspiracy-theorist Alex Jones, continue to use its platform.

On Tuesday, Twitter’s founder Jack Dorsey (more readily-recognized by his username @jack) responded to the internet’s immediate outrage with a series of tweets. Dorsey was clearly trying to explain Twitter’s stance, but he just kind of misread the whole thing.

Dorsey clarified that InfoWars did not break any of Twitter’s rules, and that Twitter would be depending on journalists, who already have their own jobs that they do for a living, to counter the misinformation and conspiracy theories spread on Twitter’s platform by people like Jones.

There are, of course, many problems with that logic, namely that Twitter is dodging responsibility for holding users to basic standards of honesty.

But at the heart of Dorsey’s position is the idea that if we just understood why Twitter provides an outlet for the worst voices of the internet, maybe we would be fine with it.

“Truth is we’ve been terrible at explaining our decisions in the past,” Dorsey said in one of his tweets. “We’re fixing that. We’re going to hold Jones to the same standard we hold to every account, not taking one-off actions to make us feel good in the short term, and adding fuel to new conspiracy theories.”

Unfortunately, that’s not quite how it works. Transparency is a beautiful thing, and we’d all probably be better off if tech companies brought their operations, motives, and funding into the open.

If that’s what this was about, that would be great. But it’s not.

We already have a pretty good understanding of why Twitter does what it does. Twitter, an only-recently-profitable company, makes its money by running targeted ads and selling promotions. Alex Jones has 800,000 followers. Kick Jones off, and you risk losing at least a portion of those followers, which means fewer eyeballs looking at promoted tweets. So Dorsey might not care all that much about how Twitter is used as long as we use it.

And if we’re using it — all of us, no matter if you fact check every tweet or if you’re telling people that the very-real Sandy Hook shooting didn’t happen — our voices all count more or less the same. If conspiracy theories are given a platform and allowed to propagate, no amount of fact-checking can stem the tide. And in doing so we eschew real discourse, the kind that takes these problematic claims like many of Jones’ to task, for tribalism and stubbornness. And it can (and does) make the platform unsafe people who question false information.

Dorsey has explained Twitter’s decision-making process as well as he ever needs to. Here’s the first sentence of a blog post about Twitter’s rulebook, which Dorsey shared on Tuesday: “Twitter is reflective of real conversations happening in the world and that sometimes includes perspectives that may be offensive, controversial, and/or bigoted.”

Dorsey can’t pretend that the online conversations that reflect those in the “real world” are any less harmful. Twitter has long been a risky place for many journalists, especially women and people of color. People face harassment, death threats, and bigotry on Twitter every single day.

Dorsey can give all the explanations he wants, but he’s made it clear that the heart of this platform isn’t going to change. Twitter is not going to protect us, or the truth, any better than it already is. If we want to delude ourselves into thinking otherwise, that’s on us.

More on where social media draws the line: Here’s What It Takes to Get Kicked off Facebook (Hint: It’s A Lot)

The post Explaining Its Decisions Isn’t Going To Make Twitter Better appeared first on Futurism.

Continue reading here:
Explaining Its Decisions Isn’t Going To Make Twitter Better

BAD, BAD BLUE LIGHT. When it comes to our eyesight, the various colors of light our eyes are subjected to are far from equal. Blue rays of light, which have shorter wavelengths and more energy than other colors, can damage our eyes over time – they contribute to macular degeneration, the primary cause of blindness.

Now, thanks to a team of researchers from the University of Toledo, we know how blue light causes this damage, meaning we might also be on track to preventing it. They published their study Tuesday in the journal Scientific Reports.

STEP AWAY FROM THE SCREEN. Sunlight contains all the colors of the light spectrum, from blue to red, and it’s our primary source of blue light exposure. However, digital devices, such as computers, televisions, and smartphones, also emit blue light, and we spend an awful lot of time staring directly at those screens from a close distance. We also tend to turn to our devices at night, and that’s when blue light is the most damaging.

Macular degeneration is essentially the death of the retina’s photoreceptor cells. For their study, the researchers decided to target retinal molecules that photoreceptor cells need in order to sense light and send signals to the brain.

“You need a continuous supply of retinal molecules if you want to see,” researcher Ajith Karunarathne said in a press release. “Photoreceptors are useless without retinal, which is produced in the eye.”

In the lab, the researchers combined retinal with various cells from the body, including photoreceptor cells, neurons, and heart cells. When they shined blue light on the retinal, it produced poisonous chemical molecules that killed the cells. Neither blue light or retinal alone damaged the cells.

A RAY OF HOPE. The news wasn’t all bad. The researchers also discovered that alpha tocopherol, a molecule derived from Vitamin E, can prevent this cell death. They’re hopeful that their research could lead to a treatment, such as eyedrops, that can slow macular degeneration.

“Every year more than two million new cases of age-related macular degeneration are reported in the United States,” Karunarathne said. “By learning more about the mechanisms of blindness in search of a method to intercept toxic reactions caused by the combination of retinal and blue light, we hope to find a way to protect the vision of children growing up in a high-tech world.”

Until then, you might want to trade in your nightly Twitter session for an old-fashioned paperback.

READ MORE: Cell Phone Use and Blindness Linked By “Toxic” Oxygen in New Study [Inverse]

More on macular degeneration: Four Patients Test Retinal Implant That Could Stop Age-Related Blindness

The post Scientists Knew Blue Light From Screens Contributed to Blindness. Now They Know Why. appeared first on Futurism.

See the original post:
Scientists Knew Blue Light From Screens Contributed to Blindness. Now They Know Why.