In early March, as the coronavirus pandemic forced America to contemplate a nationwide shutdown, Dan St. Louis started to get nervous. St. Louis runs a facility in Conover, North Carolina, called the Manufacturing Solutions Center, which prototypes and tests new fabrics and other materials; most of its funding comes from contracts with what remains of […]
Author: nafees
A college kid’s fake, AI-generated blog fooled tens of thousands. This is how he made it.
At the start of the week, Liam Porr had only heard of GPT-3. By the end, the college student had used the AI model to produce an entirely fake blog under a fake name. It was meant as a fun experiment. But then one of his posts found its way to the number-one spot on […]
Who owns your face?
Police have a history of using FaceID to arrest protestors—something not forgotten by activists since the death of George Floyd. In the last of a four-part series on facial recognition, host Jennifer Strong explores the way forward for the technology and examines what policy might look like. We meet: Artem Kuharenko, NTechLabDeborah Raji, AI Now […]
Apple Removes Fortnite from App Store for Violating In-App Payment Guidelines
Apple has acted against Epic Games and removed Fortnite from the App Store. Yesterday, Fornite introduced an update with a direct payment method on iOS. It accounts for a direct violation of App Store guidelines that mandate In-App purchases. Apple has been taking the flak for its 30 percent App Store commission, and despite the […]
iOS 13.6.1 vs iOS 13.6 Speed Test
Apple yesterday released the iOS 13.6.1 update for all compatible iPhones. This is a minor release from Apple that fixes some underlying bugs with the OS. But does it bring any performance improvements? Continue reading → Powered by WPeMatico
England has started testing a contact tracing app—again
The news: England’s revamped covid-19 contact tracing app has finally been launched for testing by the public, after its previous version was scrapped for technical problems. The new program went live for residents of the Isle of Wight on Thursday, August 13, and will shortly become available for people living in the London borough of […]
Facebook Testing Short Videos Feature like TikTok
Earlier this month, Trump announced a ban on TikTok unless it is sold to an American company by Sept. 15. Microsoft expressed interest and is apparently in talks with TikTok. In the meantime, other social media platforms like Instagram, Snapchat are working towards new TikTok rivaling feature. Now Facebook has joined the list and is […]
Every country wants a covid-19 vaccine. Who will get it first?
The Chinese company Sinovac Biotech developed an experimental vaccine for SARS back in 2004. That disease went away after killing just 800 people, and the project was shelved. But it meant that when the new coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, exploded in China last January, the company had a road map for what to do next. Four months […]
Machines can spot mental health issues—if you hand over your personal data
When Neguine Rezaii first moved to the United States a decade ago, she hesitated to tell people she was Iranian. Instead, she would use Persian. “I figured that people probably wouldn’t know what that was,” she says. The linguistic ambiguity was useful: she could conceal her embarrassment at the regime of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad while still […]
The human cost of a WeChat ban: severing a hundred million ties
In January, 1989, my 26-year-old father uprooted his life to move to the other side of the world. He had never been on a plane, let alone outside of China. But an American professor had offered him a postdoc, an opportunity he couldn’t refuse. When he landed, he made only one call at an airport […]