Important announcements
Light-based neural network could lead to super-fast AI
It’s one thing to create computers that behave like brains, but it’s something else to make them perform as well as brains. Conventional circuitry can only operate so quickly as part of a neural network, even if it’s sometimes much more powerful than standard computers. However, Princeton researchers might have smashed that barrier: they’ve built what they say is the first photonic neural network. The system mimics the brain with “neurons” that are really light waveguides cut into silicon substrates. As each of those nodes operates in a specific wavelength, you can make calculations by summing up the total power of the light as it’s fed into a laser, and the laser completes the circuit by sending light back to the nodes. The result is a machine that can calculate a differential math equation 1,960 times faster than a typical processor.
You can read more here.
Facebook has reportedly built a tool to censor content in China
The tool is said to have been created with CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s blessings to help the social network gain entry into China, where Facebook has been blocked since 2009. To distance itself from the responsibility of blocking content, Facebook geared the tool for use by third parties, such as local companies in China. Those partner firms would have full control over which posts will appear in users’ feeds in the first place. Internally, the tool isn’t exactly a well-kept secret. Employees asked Zuckerberg about it at one of the company’s weekly Q&A sessions, to which he replied, “It’s better for Facebook to be a part of enabling conversation, even if it’s not yet the full conversation.” The revelation of a secret censorship tool in the works at Facebook points to a larger problem within the company. It seems like it’s blinded by its desire to grow, to the point that it’s willing to ignore basic ethical principles.
More info are available here.
Microsoft’s mobile holoportation lets you transmit holograms from inside your car
One of the interesting applications to come out of Microsoft’s HoloLens division is the idea of “holoportation”. Using this technology, a person wearing a HoloLens can see another person as a hologram, leading to a very futuristic way of communicating. Up until now though, holoportation required specially-designed rooms filled with cameras, and a high-speed internet connection. But Microsoft Researchers have managed to scale down some of the tech involved, especially in terms of bandwidth needed for data transfers, and managed to make holoportation into a mobile experience. The team says it got bandwidth requirements down to 30-50 Mbps, a reported 97% reduction compared to their standard rigs. They were also able to use only two depth-sensing cameras, though the more of these you have the higher the hologram quality is.
You can read more here.
Top new products
HTC 10 Evo boasts waterproof all-metal body, adaptive audio
HTC has added another premium handset to its portfolio, with the introduction of the HTC 10 Evo. It features a 5.5-inch display, with a 2560 x 1440 pixel resolution, so it’s up there pushing the pixels. It packs in a 16-megapixel rear and 8-megapxiel front camera, offering a full run of pro shooting features, like manual control and RAW capture. This is the first HTC unibody phone that also boasts waterproofing with an IP57 rating – presumably a precursor to the HTC Ocean offering the same in 2017. Finally, the HTC 10 Evo comes with Android 7.0 Nougat with HTC Sense, making it one of the most up-to-date Android handsets on the software front.
You can read more here.
Acer Spin 5 and Spin 7 convertible laptops now available
The Spin 5 is a 13.3-inch version of the fully featured Spin 7. The Acer Spin 7 and its impossibly thin design were awarded the CES 2017 Innovations award. Designed from the ground up to be the thinnest 2-in-1 on the market, the Acer Spin 7 is remarkably fast for such a compact notebook. Boasting an Intel Core i7-7Y75 processor, 8GB of LPDDR3 RAM, and a 256GB SSD, the Acer Spin 7 is small in size but offers up impressive performance chops and eight hours of battery life. The Spin 5 can reportedly last for about 10 hours on a single charge and has an Intel Core i5-6200U processor and a standard 256GB SSD.
More info here.
BLU Vivo 6
The Vivo 6 has a 5.5-inch Full HD display with Corning’s Gorilla Glass 3 sitting on top for protection against scratches. You’ll find the 64-bit Mediatek Helio P10 processor clocked at 1.8 GHz under the hood, alongside 4 GB of RAM and 64 GB of expandable storage. Looking at the back, the main camera has a Sony IMX258 sensor with 13 MP (1080p video), Phase Detection Autofocus (PDAF), and an f/2.0 aperture. There’s also an 8 MP wide-angle selfie snapper at the front. The fingerprint sensor is embedded in the Home button below the screen and should wake up the device in less than 10ms. Android 6.0 Marshmallow runs the show while the 3,130 mAh battery keeps the lights on.
You can read more here.
Top interesting info
Google’s AI translation tool seems to have invented its own secret internal language
The method is called “zero-shot” translation and can translate new pairs of languages without the software needing to be taught how to do so. Google Neural Machine Translation (GNMT) is the new system powering Google Translate. It’s built on a neural network, a kind of computer system modeled on the human brain that can learn from past actions to solve new problems without being specifically programmed to do so. While Google’s already boasted about improved translation accuracy thanks to machine learning, the new Google Translate can translate from one language to another even if those two languages weren’t paired by the system previously. A post on the Google Research blog explained how: “Let’s say we train a multilingual system with Japanese to English and Korean to English examples… [GNMT] shares its parameters to translate between these four different language pairs… It can generate reasonable Korean to Japanese translations, even though it has never been taught to do so… To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time this type of transfer learning has worked in Machine Translation.”
You can read more here.
Twitter to developers: public APIs, Gnip cannot be used for surveillance
Twitter issued a reminder to developers that its public application-programming interfaces and data products are not to be used for surveillance purposes. In its new statement, the company claims it has not forgotten its commitment to “social justice.” It adds: “Using Twitter’s Public APIs or data products to track or profile protesters and activists is absolutely unacceptable and prohibited.”
Twitter says that devs caught violating its policies could be suspended or have their access to its API and data products terminated. It will also examine requests to use its tools on a case-by-case basis, and withhold the right to reject all or part of a request.
The company concluded by stating the vast majority of developers respect its users, and that it appreciates the creative and innovative work they do.
More info can be found here.
Apple has launched its second iPhone repair program in less than a week
This time it deals with a battery issue on some iPhone 6S handsets that causes them to suddenly shut down without warning even when there’s plenty of juice remaining. According to Apple, the flaw affects devices that were manufactured between September and October 2015, which is when the phone launched. Anyone with an iPhone 6S that’s been experiencing the issue is told to visit an Apple Store or one of its authorized outlets to get their phone’s serial number checked to confirm eligibility for a free battery replacement. In a message on its website posted on Sunday, the tech titan said the problem affects only “a very small number” of iPhone 6S devices and is “not a safety issue.”
You can read more here.
