James Vincent | Vox

Google has given its open-source machine learning software a big upgrade

2019-03-06T05:14:32-05:00

Last November, Google opened up its in-house machine learning software TensorFlow, making the program that powers its translation services and photo analytics (among many other things) open-source and free to download. Now, the company is giving TensorFlow the machine learning equivalent of smart pills, releasing a distributed version of the software that allows it to run across multiple machines — up to hundreds at a time.

This sounds like an obvious way to improve TensorFlow, and, well, it is. Machine learning software only gets to be clever by analyzing large amounts of data — looking for common properties and trends like facial features in photographs, for example. Letting TensorFlow run these sorts of operations on networks of computers simultaneously rather than individual machines means users can make smarter systems, and improve them faster.

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This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

MasterCard to Roll Out ‘Selfie’ Security Checks

2019-03-06T05:17:49-05:00

MasterCard says it plans to bring “selfie pay” security checks to more than a dozen countries. Last year, the company started trials of the technology –which uses facial recognition to authenticate users’ identity — but now says it has firm plans to roll the feature out to users after positive reactions from testers.

To use selfie pay, customers will have to download MasterCard’s app to their phone or tablet. Then, after entering their credit card information as usual during an online payment, they’ll hold their device up to their face to take a quick picture. Users will have to blink to prove that they’re not holding a photograph in front of the camera, and MasterCard says its algorithms can tell when someone is trying to fool the system by using a video.

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This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

‘Five-Dimensional’ Glass Discs Can Store Data for Up to 13.8 Billion Years

2019-03-06T05:17:28-05:00

Photographs fade, books rot, and even hard drives eventually fester. When you take the long view, preserving humanity’s collective culture isn’t a marathon, it’s a relay — with successive generations passing on information from one slowly failing storage medium to the next. However, this could change. Scientists from the University of Southampton in the U.K. have created a new data format that encodes information in tiny nanostructures in glass. A standard-sized disc can store around 360 terabytes of data, with an estimated lifespan of up to 13.8 billion years, even at temperatures of 190°C. That’s as old as the universe, and more than three times the age of the Earth.

The method is called five-dimensional data storage, and was first demonstrated in a paper in 2013. Since then, the scientists behind it say they’ve more or less perfected their technique and are now looking to move the technology forward and perhaps even commercialize it.

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This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

Asics Keeps Pace With Adidas With Runkeeper Acquisition

2019-03-06T05:17:18-05:00

Running apps and sportswear companies go together like, well, running apps and sportswear companies. Last year, Under Armour bought MyFitnessPal and Adidas bought Runtastic — now, it’s the turn of Asics, which has entered into a “definitive agreement” to buy Runkeeper for an undisclosed sum.

The app’s founder, Jason Jacobs, announced the news in a Medium post, saying that there was a “strong alignment” between the two brands and their core values. He added that even Runkeeper’s own Shoe Tracker feature shows that Asics gear is most popular with its runners.

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This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

T-Mobile Squeaks Past Verizon for Title of Fastest LTE Network

2019-03-06T05:16:45-05:00

Who really gives you the fastest download speeds in the U.S.? According to a new report on America’s mobile networks from OpenSignal, the answer is T-Mobile. The carrier easily took the top spot when it came to downloads on 3G (an average speed of 3.5 megabits per second compared to second place AT&T’s 2.2 Mbps), and just narrowly clinched the top spot for 4G (12.3 Mbps download speeds compared to Verizon’s 12 Mbps). Both Verizon and Sprint performed pretty badly on 3G (0.7 Mbps and 0.6 Mbps respectively), while AT&T and Sprint did marginally better on 4G (7.9 Mbps and 6.6 Mbps respectively).

To keep these figures in context, the average download speed on an LTE network in the U.S. was 9.9 Mbps — fine for loading Web pages and keeping your apps ticking over, but short of the global average of 13.5 Mbps and well behind top performers like New Zealand and Singapore (average LTE speeds of 36 Mbps and 33 Mbps respectively in last year’s report). The U.S. does make up for this in terms of coverage, though, with subscribers getting an LTE signal 81 percent of the time — putting it in the top 10 worldwide, impressive for such a large nation.

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This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

Microsoft Is Experimenting With Underwater Data Centers

2019-03-06T05:38:41-05:00

When your laptop or your smartphone gets hot, you know it’s crunching a lot of data. So you can imagine the amount of heat generated by the racks upon racks of servers that store and process the world’s digital lives. Keeping these data centers cool is such a problem that tech companies like Facebook and Google prefer to move them to colder countries rather than pay the air conditioning bill. But for Microsoft, there’s an even better home for all that data: Under the sea.

This morning, Microsoft unveiled Project Natick, an ongoing research project into subsea data centers that could be both cost effective and environmentally friendly. The company started exploring the idea in 2013 after Microsoft data center employees wrote a white paper about the concept (one of the authors had experience on a Navy sub). Development of a physical prototype began in 2014 and in August last year, the company deployed its first ever submarine server — a steel capsule some eight feet in diameter — off the coast of California. It ran for 105 days in total, with Microsoft’s engineers saying it was more successful than expected.

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This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

Stanford Study: T-Mobile’s Binge On Is ‘Likely Illegal’

2019-03-06T05:14:09-05:00

The debate over the potential harm of T-Mobile’s Binge On continues, with a new study from Stanford University claiming that the perk violates key net neutrality principles and is “likely illegal.”

Binge On lets T-Mobile subscribers watch videos from streaming services such as Netflix and Hulu without eating into their data plan. It’s proved popular with users, with T-Mobile claiming video views on its network have “more than doubled” since the deal was introduced, but critics say it’s creating a tiered Internet service, with the Uncarrier given the unfair advantage of deciding who wins and who loses.

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This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

Facebook, Microsoft and Google Say U.K. Spying Laws Are ‘Step in the Wrong Direction’

2019-03-06T05:13:13-05:00

America’s biggest tech companies have united to criticize new digital surveillance laws proposed in the U.K.

In evidence submitted to the committee assessing the legislation, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Twitter warned that the U.K. government’s actions could have “far reaching implications.” The companies anticipate that “other countries will emulate” the proposed Investigatory Powers Bill, which includes controversial measures such as forcing ISPs to keep a record of every citizen’s Internet activity for the past year.

The bill was introduced by U.K. Home Secretary Theresa May last year, who says it will help fight organized crime, terrorism and cyberbullying. However, the bill has been roundly criticized by industry experts for its potential overreach and vague language.

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This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

Qualcomm Video Shows How Much Smarter Drones Will Get in 2016

2019-03-06T05:39:42-05:00

Earlier this year, chipmaker Qualcomm announced it would be producing a custom version of its widely used Snapdragon chipset for drones. The company says that its Snapdragon Flight processors will bring down the cost of drones, improve their battery life and make advanced features more widely available.

A new video from Qualcomm offers a preview of Snapdragon Flight’s capabilities, showing a drone autonomously dodging obstacles and mapping out 3D spaces with built-in sensors.

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This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

Samsung Unveils a Trio of Experimental Gadgets

2019-03-06T05:46:16-05:00

At CES in January, Samsung will show off for the first time ever a trio of devices from its Creative Lab or C-Lab program — a startup incubator within the company dedicated to developing employees’ experimental product ideas.

The devices include Welt (a “smart belt” that tracks users’ waist size and activity), TipTalk (a product that lets people listen to sound from smartwatches by simply “touching their finger to their ear”) and Rink (a motion controller for virtual reality devices).

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This article originally appeared on Recode.net.