You need to enable JavaScript to view this site.The news: A , made by combining light-sensing electronics with a on a single tiny chip, can make sense of what it’s seeing in just a few nanoseconds, far faster than existing image sensors. Why it matters: is integral to many applications of AI—from to to smart sensors that act as our eyes in remote locations—and machines have become very good at responding to what they see. But most image recognition needs a lot of computing power to work. Part of the problem is a bottleneck at the heart of traditional sensors, which capture a huge amount of...…You need to enable JavaScript to view this site.The news: A , made by combining light-sensing electronics with a on a single tiny chip, can make sense of what it’s seeing in just a few nanoseconds, far faster than existing image sensors. Why it matters: is integral to many applications of AI—from to to smart sensors that act as our eyes in remote locations—and machines have become very good at responding to what they see. But most image recognition needs a lot of computing power to work. Part of the problem is a bottleneck at the heart of traditional sensors, which capture a huge amount of...WW…

You need to enable JavaScript to view this site.Gina Assaf was running in Washington, DC, on March 19 when she suddenly couldn’t take another step. “I was so out of breath I had to stop,” she says. Five days earlier, she’d hung out with a friend; within days, that friend and their partner had started showing three classic signs of covid-19: fever, cough, and shortness of breath. Assaf had those symptoms too, and then some. By the second week, which she describes as “the scariest and hardest on my body,” her chest was burning and she was dizzy. Her friend recovered, but Assaf was still...…You need to enable JavaScript to view this site.Gina Assaf was running in Washington, DC, on March 19 when she suddenly couldn’t take another step. “I was so out of breath I had to stop,” she says. Five days earlier, she’d hung out with a friend; within days, that friend and their partner had started showing three classic signs of covid-19: fever, cough, and shortness of breath. Assaf had those symptoms too, and then some. By the second week, which she describes as “the scariest and hardest on my body,” her chest was burning and she was dizzy. Her friend recovered, but Assaf was still...WW…

You need to enable JavaScript to view this site.You might know Bluetooth best for helping you pair your headphones and smartphone, but the 21-year-old wireless technology is getting a new wave of attention now that it’s at the heart of contact-tracing apps designed to show whether you might have been exposed to the novel coronavirus.  Google and Apple, for example, are building a to track contact between people who might spread the disease. The idea is simple: since Bluetooth is constantly scanning for other devices, your phone can use wireless signals to see who you’ve been near....…You need to enable JavaScript to view this site.You might know Bluetooth best for helping you pair your headphones and smartphone, but the 21-year-old wireless technology is getting a new wave of attention now that it’s at the heart of contact-tracing apps designed to show whether you might have been exposed to the novel coronavirus.  Google and Apple, for example, are building a to track contact between people who might spread the disease. The idea is simple: since Bluetooth is constantly scanning for other devices, your phone can use wireless signals to see who you’ve been near....WW…

You need to enable JavaScript to view this site.The global effort to halt the spread of the deadly coronavirus has stalled much the global economy, setting up an unintended experiment on the impact on carbon emissions. China’s GDP may have (on a ). The US’s GDP could drop anywhere from 30% to 50% by summer. And Britain’s economic output by 25% this quarter. The ardent hope is that economies will bounce back later in the year as the pandemic recedes, but annual output is still likely to decline in many nations. US GPD, for instance, may fall about 5%, . So what’s all that going to add up to...…You need to enable JavaScript to view this site.The global effort to halt the spread of the deadly coronavirus has stalled much the global economy, setting up an unintended experiment on the impact on carbon emissions. China’s GDP may have (on a ). The US’s GDP could drop anywhere from 30% to 50% by summer. And Britain’s economic output by 25% this quarter. The ardent hope is that economies will bounce back later in the year as the pandemic recedes, but annual output is still likely to decline in many nations. US GPD, for instance, may fall about 5%, . So what’s all that going to add up to...WW…

You need to enable JavaScript to view this site.The coronavirus pandemic and the protests sparked by the May 25 murder of George Floyd have been the defining events of 2020 so far, and in both cases one 17-year-old has played a major role online: Avi Schiffmann, the creator of the web’s preeminent and, more recently, . The trackers have garnered praise for providing concise, instantly updated information. Schiffmann’s coronavirus tracker is so thorough, in fact, that epidemiologists have used it to predict the disease’s spread. Schiffmann has earned the Webby Person of the Year award along...…You need to enable JavaScript to view this site.The coronavirus pandemic and the protests sparked by the May 25 murder of George Floyd have been the defining events of 2020 so far, and in both cases one 17-year-old has played a major role online: Avi Schiffmann, the creator of the web’s preeminent and, more recently, . The trackers have garnered praise for providing concise, instantly updated information. Schiffmann’s coronavirus tracker is so thorough, in fact, that epidemiologists have used it to predict the disease’s spread. Schiffmann has earned the Webby Person of the Year award along...WW…

You need to enable JavaScript to view this site.The news: In a fresh spin on manufactured pop, OpenAI has released that can generate catchy songs in a variety of different styles, from teenybop and country to hip-hop and heavy metal. It even sings—sort of.  How it works: Give it a genre, an artist, and lyrics, and Jukebox will produce a passable pastiche in the style of well-known performers, such as , or . You can also give it the first few seconds of a song and it will autocomplete the rest. Old songs, new tricks: Computer-generated music has been a thing for 50 years or more,...…You need to enable JavaScript to view this site.The news: In a fresh spin on manufactured pop, OpenAI has released that can generate catchy songs in a variety of different styles, from teenybop and country to hip-hop and heavy metal. It even sings—sort of.  How it works: Give it a genre, an artist, and lyrics, and Jukebox will produce a passable pastiche in the style of well-known performers, such as , or . You can also give it the first few seconds of a song and it will autocomplete the rest. Old songs, new tricks: Computer-generated music has been a thing for 50 years or more,...WW…

You need to enable JavaScript to view this site.Researchers have demonstrated that they can fool a modern face recognition system into seeing someone who isn’t there. A team from the cybersecurity firm McAfee set up the attack against a facial recognition system similar to those currently used at airports for passport verification. By using machine learning, they created an image that looked like one person to the human eye, but was identified as somebody else by the face recognition algorithm—the equivalent of tricking the machine into allowing someone to board a flight despite being on a...…You need to enable JavaScript to view this site.Researchers have demonstrated that they can fool a modern face recognition system into seeing someone who isn’t there. A team from the cybersecurity firm McAfee set up the attack against a facial recognition system similar to those currently used at airports for passport verification. By using machine learning, they created an image that looked like one person to the human eye, but was identified as somebody else by the face recognition algorithm—the equivalent of tricking the machine into allowing someone to board a flight despite being on a...WW…

You need to enable JavaScript to view this site.The news: When Twitter banned, and then unbanned, links to a questionably sourced New York Post article about Joe Biden’s son Hunter, its stated intention was to prevent people from spreading harmful false material as America heads into the final stretch of the election campaign. But thanks to the cycle of misinformation—and claims from conservatives that social-media platforms are deliberately censoring their views—Twitter managed to do the opposite of what it intended.  According to Zignal Labs, a media intelligence firm, shares of the...…You need to enable JavaScript to view this site.The news: When Twitter banned, and then unbanned, links to a questionably sourced New York Post article about Joe Biden’s son Hunter, its stated intention was to prevent people from spreading harmful false material as America heads into the final stretch of the election campaign. But thanks to the cycle of misinformation—and claims from conservatives that social-media platforms are deliberately censoring their views—Twitter managed to do the opposite of what it intended.  According to Zignal Labs, a media intelligence firm, shares of the...WW…

You need to enable JavaScript to view this site.The telescope is projected to launch in 2023. A bit of a mouthful: This week, NASA announced it will create the Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer: SPHEREx for short. It’ll look at how our universe has changed, and how common the ingredients of life are in the Milky Way. What it will do: It will collect data on more than 300 million galaxies and 100 million Milky Way-based stars using optical and near-infrared light. SPHEREx will search for water and organic molecules in stellar...…You need to enable JavaScript to view this site.The telescope is projected to launch in 2023. A bit of a mouthful: This week, NASA announced it will create the Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer: SPHEREx for short. It’ll look at how our universe has changed, and how common the ingredients of life are in the Milky Way. What it will do: It will collect data on more than 300 million galaxies and 100 million Milky Way-based stars using optical and near-infrared light. SPHEREx will search for water and organic molecules in stellar...WW…

You need to enable JavaScript to view this site.As the coronavirus spread from China across the world earlier this year, two friends in Sydney watched in horror. Milton Zhou is a cofounder of a renewable energy company called the Maoneng Group, which developed some of . Saul Khan is a former partner in an energy efficiency consultancy. They met in a Facebook group for startups, where they bonded over a discussion about using blockchain to track goods as they’re shipped internationally. They had experience buying solar panels and other products from China, and they expected the medical...…You need to enable JavaScript to view this site.As the coronavirus spread from China across the world earlier this year, two friends in Sydney watched in horror. Milton Zhou is a cofounder of a renewable energy company called the Maoneng Group, which developed some of . Saul Khan is a former partner in an energy efficiency consultancy. They met in a Facebook group for startups, where they bonded over a discussion about using blockchain to track goods as they’re shipped internationally. They had experience buying solar panels and other products from China, and they expected the medical...WW…