#that one audio with the ai denying it was a robot

[ari-continues-to-exist]

But can you say the words “I am not a robot” ?

[fishybehavior]

His biggest heist [Part 1]

Borg tower; the pinnacle of technology, security, and the future. Filled with information and innovation. It was one of the symbols of New Ninjago City and has been propped up as unbreakable.

So Jay decided to break in.

And that wasn’t even the best bit, he was getting paid to do it too.

Eight hundred feet in the air, on a window washer lift making it go as high as it could go. It was 10 pm, and Borg industries were having its annual gala. Security was lax so high up, everyone focusing on the first dozen floors, anything about 50 should be bare of breathing guards. But then again, Borg Industries was known for unconventional guards. But that's where Jay’s secret weapon came into play.

“How’s the hacking going Zane?” Jay spoke into his mouthpiece, the familiar metallic voice on the other end huffing in reply.

“No, you’re still out of range. They work on a short-ranged signal for a reason.”

“Well sorry princess, I thought it’d be better now we’re halfway up this stupidly tall building.” He muttered as the lift would go any higher. They were hovering at about floor 55, and he needed to still get up another 20 or so floors. “Welp, I guess I’m just climbing the rest.” He sighed as he unclipped his harness rope from the lift, messing with the controls for his harness.

“What! Your free climbing? The wind speeds are 40mph, you’ll be blown off!”

Jay was messing with the new features he added to his gauntlets. “Don’t worry, I’ve been working on a feature that allows me to stick to glass with electro-static leftover from the residual power.”

“First, you can't just confuse me with technical language like everyone else to get me to stop talking. I know what you're saying, and secondly, that feature isn’t field-tested. You don't know how well it works in real-world conditions!”

“Well, I guess it's time to test them then!” He cheered as he stuck his hand on the glass, it stuck and he tested it before he put his foot out and allowed it to stick. Soon he was completely off the lift, attached to the glass window like gum. Laughing gleefully he started to climb up the wall.

He could still hear Zane mumbling, “I swear you have a death wish.”

Jay elected to ignore the comment, “Tell me when you're in range.” He continued to climb about 10 stories, quickly becoming used to his new life as a tree frog as he methodically climbed the architecture.

“You're in range,” Zane quipped, and Jay stopped, letting his partner take over for the next bit. Zane had to hack in the short wave connection of the android guards. Allowing him to enter without alerting them and without tipping off Borg something was off with his toys.

“Do you have it, Zane?” Jay questioned, he didn’t like sitting here like a duck. Ducks got spotted and fed bread, and he wasn’t hungry.

“Finished,” The AI boasted, “Those androids are ridiculously simple once I cracked the firewall. Their visual and audio inputs are on a loop, so as long as you don't touch them they won't know you're there.” Jay could practically hear him smile. Zane may not always like his criminal behavior, but he couldn’t deny that this was so much more fun than playing go-fish in his dorm.

Jay finally got to his floor, giving Zane a minute to disable the alarm, he cut through the two-inch-thick glass with his laser cutter. Pushing in quietly he stepped into a dim hallway, getting surprised as an android guard walked up to him. He had to step back, flatting himself to the wall so it wouldn’t touch him. But it walked by, disappearing into a door right next to him. Opening the door with its identification code.

Jay let it walk in and before the door could close he slipped followed after it. Walking into another dim hallway with three doors on the end, “Ok Zane, I should be close, can you get me through the doors?” All the doors needed an id to get through, but he couldn’t follow the same android, it was going through the left door and he had to go right.

“Already ahead of you. Do you need me to tell you where to go too? How about what we’re looking for too,” He asked slightly annoyed.

“Haha. You’re very funny.” Jay quipped back, going to the right door to enter. He knew that Zane hated doing all the work, but this wasn’t a simple museum where the most he needed was noticed when the police called. The security here was tight, and the only way he could do it is if he stayed unnoticed. And he couldn’t hack everything as quickly or as unnoticed as Zane could. And being quick was the key to getting in and out without being caught.

Zane provided a code, and Jay projected it onto the scanner beside the door, opening it and Jay slid through. Jay continued to sneak throughout the seemingly endless hallways, avoiding the android guards that stood by some doors, and others that walked up and down the hallway. Staying as far from them as he could, he trusted Zane’s hacking, but things could always go wrong. The deeper he got into the building, the dimmer the hallways became, telling Jay that the security here was taking more electricity than previous. Whenever someone would come here legally they would turn on the aux lights, but he wasn't being very legal at the moment. Not that it bothered him. His bionic eye was equipped with ocular adjustments more sensitive than his natural eyes, making the dimness seem brighter than it was.

Jay opened one more door and saw the door he was searching for, it looked like all the others, but it had android guards on either side. Approaching the machines he looked at the door, it opened just like all the others, with a scanner on the right side right behind the android. It gave him about four inches to maneuver, but that should be just enough. Taking a deep breath he slid his arm between the two, and with a flick, he activated the projector for the code right onto the scanner. The door giving a slight hiss as it opened, Jay froze waiting for the guards to attack him. But they didn’t even twitch as the door opened, sighing he pulled his arm back and walked in. The door shut behind him and lights flicked on automatically. Bathing the small room in harsh light. Hissing at the sudden brightness Jay tried to take in what he was seeing.

There was only one thing in the room. A red mask with white markings swirling about the face. The mouth was closed with big teeth prodding from the mouth. The eye holes were rimmed in black as the mask's impressive eyebrows squinted in discontentment. The mask was in a glass case, and there were four more guards at each corner of the display case.

"Ok Zane, what am I looking at?"

"A mask in a display case," Zane answered simply, and he could hear him chuckling as Jay facepalmed at his response. "I know I know." Zane chortled as he looked at the alarms and electronic triggers around the room. "By opening the door with a legal code, the room sensors were disengaged, but the androids are directly linked to the case. If it's opened without authentication, they will either attack you or attempt to destroy the mask."

Jay stepped closer to the mask, looking for any physical triggers too, "Ok, so what's the authentication key?"

He heard Zane hum as he tried to answer his question, "A vocal command it seems. A person who matches the vocal key and a certain phrase is needed, but I can't decipher what the phrase is." He huffed in frustration.

"Here show me. I'll help." And the code appeared on his gauntlets projector. The two looked at the code, slowly decoding what meant what. Finally, they were able to get a phrase, "Release alarm on case 198-021, by the authority of Cyrus Borg." Jay read aloud, chuckling at the unoriginal phrase. "Could you construct a synthesizer in Borg's voice?"

"I can certainly try, but it may take some time."

"How long?"

"At least ten minutes."

"Can you do it in seven, we don't have the luxury of time."

"I'm working as fast as I can, but you may need to try and find another way if you can't wait," Zane said, returning to work on the synthesizer.

Jay huffed, as he studied the case and the androids. He knew the blueprints of robots well, he could just short-circuit them. But he couldn't do all four at once. And anyway, once he took one out, every android not assigned to a position would converge on him. Not a welcome outcome, so he either had to get the voice key or find a way to keep the alarm system from triggering. But that was going to be tricky because it was a physical trigger on the glass case, either for pressure or an electrical current. If you disrupted it, the alarm would go off. Maybe he could cut into the glass itself? Take out the top and pull out the mask? He'd have to make sure that the mask itself wasn't on a pressure plate as well, but it would be a good option.

"Zane, how's the key going?"

"Poorly, I'm able to get the rest of the phrase, but the different pronunciation possibilities for 198-021 make it nye impossible to make a perfect key with no reference."

"Well, what you have now, will it work?" Jay questioned

"I'm uncertain. I don't know if the phrase needs to be verbatim to work. If it's not right, we'll set off the alarms." Zane hummed in thought, calculating the risk that going through with the vocal key would take.

"It's too much of a risk, we should try to break into the case itself. Zane is the mask on a pressure plate?" Jay questioned the AI, and he heard him hum in thought as he looked through the available resources.

"I can't tell for certain. There are two triggers, but I can't tell if one is for the mask, or if they're both for the case."

"No matter which one we choose, we risk an alarm. I'm going to try and cut into the top. Zane be at the ready. If the alarm does go off, I need you to deactivate the four androids here and the two at the door." Jay said, he knew that there wasn't a kill switch that would work for all the androids, needing to be turned off individually. But if he was going to get out without being caught, he had to depend on Zane's ability for multitasking and speed. Or he'd be a fish in a barrel.

"Of course," Zane hummed, setting up the code to try and find the kill switch. Once he activated it Borg would be notified that something was wrong and the other androids would converge on their location. Which drastically cut their chances of escape. Too much for Zane's comfort. "Ready when you are." He stated ready to kill the androids if needed.

Jay rolled his shoulders, loosening the stress that's been building for the last half an hour. He knew he only had about 10-20 more minutes before something happened. Either someone noticed the androids were on loop or would spot him on camera. He had to act now or get caught. Taking a deep breath he adjusted his laser for the thickness and type of glass he was cutting.

"Here we go," he breathed as he began to cut.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Companies target robots in disclosures

To understand financialized snake-oil, you must understand Goodhart's Law: "Any measure can become a target." Goodhart's Law explains why something that works really well at the outset quickly turns into an arms-race with grifters.

For a recent example, think of Pagerank, the original secret sauce of Google Search. Larry Page had a key insight: a link from one web page to another page was an indicator of significance.

The web was written primarily by human hands and making links took work. If a web-writer linked to something on the web, it meant that they thought it was important. Thus, you could assess the relative significance of a web page by counting the number of links pointing to it.

This worked far better than rivals' methods - Altavista's idiotic keyword-counting, for example (a page is relevant to the query "cat" if the word "cat" and its synonyms appear frequently on that page; pages with the most "cat"s go at the top of the listing).

At the outset, inbound links were a great measurement of significance. But once inbound links became a way to game search-rank, they became a target, too: web-writers found ways to garner inbound links, from the relatively benign "webrings" to gross "linkfarms."

Today, Google's search ranking considers hundreds of "signals," locked in an arms race scammers who want to chaff or spoof the system.

The same thing is going on in finance.

Public companies have a regulatory duty to publish financial disclosures, which range from fanciful (Warren Buffet's annual letters) to dry. Finance analysts once carefully pored over these reports looking for clues to a company's fortunes.

As natural language parsing tools and machine learning improved, this process was automated. The robots that digested these reports didn't confine their analysis to the numbers: they also used "sentiment analysis" to try to guess at the mental state of the reports' authors.

Sentiment analysis is a notoriously garbage technology, grounded in low-quality, unreplicable psych research. Even when implemented by the biggest corporate R&D labs, it is effectively ML graphology, pure pseudoscience.

https://homes.cs.washington.edu/~msap/pdfs/sap2019risk.pdf

The finance sector is full of superstitious nonsense. This is the industry whose "smartest investors" hand (literal) trillions to hedge funds that underperform simple index funds. It's not surprising that they were marks for slicksters selling sentiment analysis magic-beans.

Analysts' ratings control share-prices, and corporate executives derive the lion's share of their pay from stock in their own companies, and so corporate governance becomes a giant game of Goodhart's Law in which execs target the metrics that analysts rely on.

Share-based compensation is supposed to align managers' interests with the shareholders: instead, it aligns their interests with the prejudices of analysts.

Think of how Frontier went bankrupt after leaving $800m in profits on the table because the spending needed to get it was dispreferred by the analysts who controlled the company's share price (and thus its execs' take-home pay):

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/04/frontiers-bankruptcy-reveals-cynical-choice-deny-profitable-fiber-millions

Predictably, then: the modern financial disclosure is optimized for machine readability by analysts' robots, and it uses language that is designed to be interpreted as positive by sentiment analysis systems:

https://www.nber.org/papers/w27950

"Firms with high expected machine downloads manage textual sentiment and audio emotion in ways catered to machine and AI readers, such as by differentially avoiding words that are perceived as negative by computational algorithms as compared to those by human readers, and by exhibiting speech emotion favored by machine learning software processors."

-"How to Talk When a Machine is Listening: Corporate Disclosure in the Age of AI," Cao, Jiang, Yang & Zhang, NBER

The most grimly hilarious part of this: it will doubtless be offered as evidence for sentiment analysis, when the real lesson is a tautology: "If you speak in words that algorithms interpret as positive, the algorithms will interpret the speech in a positive light."

It's the finance version of self-driving car grifters who insist that their vehicles will be safe for pedestrians once we teach all the pedestrians to behave in ways that the cars can correctly interpret.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/30/death-to-all-monopoly/#pogo-stick-problem

[silvensei]

In This Mad Machinery

A human and an android swap bodies, resulting in identity crises, existentialism, philosophy with the boys, and fun!

Detroit: Become Human | gen | 20k | rated T | introspective comedy/sci-fi

Chapter 4 (2k words) | [AO3 link] | [first] | < prev | next >

- - - - - - - - - -

“And you’re sure Markus will be okay with…y’know, all this? Like it won’t freak him out if I just walk up to him as not you?”

“He is a leader for a reason: he’s reasonable.”

“Mm. Good reason.”

“Just explain it to him from the beginning. Offer to share the day’s memories if that’ll be easier—oh!” Connor shifted in the driver’s seat to fully face his partner and held up a hand. “Not a memory transfer! That’s a different process altogether. That’s what we did to switch. Markus technically is part of the same prototype series as me, so it might prompt for a complete memory transfer—don’t do that one!”

“I got it, Mom: Don’t accidentally kill myself.” Hank shut the door, leaning his forearms on the open window. “As for you, just lay low. You can tell Jeffrey that you’re you if you want, he’s probably heard worse from me before, but maybe don’t let it get out into the whole precinct. Not only would CyberLife get snippy about their secret plans leaking too much, but can you imagine the hell Gavin would raise? Christ.”

Connor paused. “I’m not sure if I can, but I’m sure he would be troublesome.”

Hank laughed. He had heard Connor laugh before, on very rare occasions, but he didn’t think it ever sounded this relaxed and easy. It really gave his rough voice an amicable quality. “Swing back here when you’re done? Or call if it’s more than an hour?”

“Can do, Lieutenant.”

He stepped away from the car as Connor shifted out of park. “Careful with the wheels,” he called before starting down the driveway toward the Manfred house.

In the corner of his vision, the external temperature reading increased to 67.7°F (19.8°C). Focusing on the readout expanded the widget: RH 58.1%, Precip. 12%, Wind 3 mph NW, Sunset 8:52 PM, Moon Phase—

He looked away. It was still there—being a heads-up display and all—but the gesture dismissed the weather. Who could possibly need that much information. No one. It’s been bombarding him from all sides with random facts and figures and updates ever since he woke up like this a couple hours ago (2 hr 32 m 57 s). No wonder Connor was such a know-it-all: his programming forced him to be. Hank slowed his stroll. What was Connor going through right now, free of his encyclopedia of trivia for the first time in his life? Hopefully not lost and unsure and uninformed. God, he hoped not.

He shook his head, quite literally to get his damn android brain to stop calculating the chances that his best friend was having an identity crisis or existential crisis or any number of other crises. Instead he thought about how his shoulders didn’t ache when he did that. His knees didn’t have that familiar creaking he’d grown so accustomed to, either. In fact, besides the pressure on the soles of his feet to keep him grounded and the near-imperceptible brush of fabric and sunlight against his skin, he didn’t feel much of anything. Thinking about his current body only brought up biocomponent specs and functionality reports (100% - Fully functional).

“Fucking-A…,” Hank muttered, noting once again he didn’t sound like himself. Being stuck in an android could be likened to sensory deprivation and informational oversaturation at the same time. If he dwelled on it too long, it’d drive him insane.

Something pinged him as he approached the door, and the door clicked open. “Welcome, RK800.”

Hank stepped into the foyer, marveling at its grandeur. It was a veritable mansion when compared with his single-story shack. It probably was a mansion. He wondered if Sumo would like living here, with the marble and the high ceilings. Maybe in the summer. The stone would keep him nice and cool. Air probably circulated well in here, too. Although the zebra rug didn’t look terribly comfortable

The double doors across from him slid open. Strolling in in an asymmetrical tee and jeans, Markus slipped a paint brush into the pocket of the smock tied at his waist. “Connor!” he called with a grin, wiping off some paint from his hands. “I thought you’d never take up my offer to stop on by!”

Hank returned the grin. He’d have to pass that comment on to Connor. “Hey, Markus.”

The android caught him in a brief hug before stepping back. “So what’s up? Care for a painting lesson?”

“Thanks, but not right now. Just have some…neat info we thought you would enjoy.”

“Oh, really?” He crossed his arms. “‘We’ as in you and the lieutenant? Isn’t sharing DPD intel kind of illegal?”

“Not exactly. I mean, yeah, but it’s not DPD.” Hank took a breath (UNNECESSARY; temperature nominal) and rocked on his feet. “We got an email from CyberLife this morning about some quack idea to define sentience. They wanted to see what would happen if they threw souls around, human and android alike.”

Markus scoffed. “Sounds a bit pompous. What makes them think they can even do that?”

Hank cocked his head and held open his arms. “They already have.”

Markus raised an eyebrow. He shifted his weight, looking the other over. “Connor…?” he asked slowly.

“Not at the moment. Hank Anderson.”

A half smile completed the look of surprise. “A human in an android body? And Connor is…?”

“Heading to the precinct. They called me in for something and he’s, well, me for the day.”

“Huh. You’re right, this is interesting. Temporary?”

“Yeah—here, Connor suggested I just…show you his memory—our memory—of today.”

“Sure, yeah.” Markus held out his hand. At Hank’s hesitation, he finally let out the chuckle he was holding back. “If you can figure out how to do it, that is?”

“Great, another snarky robot on my hands,” Hank grumbled, grabbing his hand. Markus caught another laugh and shifted his grip to his forearm instead. Their skin shied away from their touch, and the connection pinged his system. [RK200 #684 842 971] connected.

File copy requested: [Visuals; Audio] {-04:00:00.0}:{00:00.0}

Accept             Deny

The notification took up his vision in an instant. It didn’t say anything about a memory transfer like Connor warned, so he figured it would do. Just thinking about accepting the prompt completed the request, and the past four hours from his chassis’ perspective played back at breakneck speed. From Connor petting Sumo and reading a book exactly four hours ago to Hank’s latest quip, it all sped by, too fast to comprehend and yet with every detail intact and evident. He reeled, flinging his arm back.

He blinked rapidly. The only sign of the event was the text (Copy complete) fading from his vision. Markus, on the other hand, dropped his hand to his hip, unfazed. “Mimicking a nexus connection by adjusting and enhancing the brain’s natural electric field to induce a complete data transfer,” he mused. “That is genius! It doesn’t prove anything spiritual, that’ll require much more philosophical debate into the depth and scope of AI, but it certainly doesn’t disprove anything either.”

“How can you understand all that so fast?” Hank asked candidly.

Markus smiled. “Years of practice.” He untied his smock and beckoned him towards the door. “Why don’t we continue this in the den?”

The doors slid open into an absolutely spacious sitting room. As if the zebra pelt on the foyer floor wasn’t excessively extravagant enough, the first thing Hank saw was a giraffe in the corner, probably real, definitely stuffed. (Analysis: TAXIDERMY, est 16yr) He had to stop from rolling his eyes at its ostentatiousness. “Ritzy place ya got here,” he commented, hoping Connor’s voice defaulted to conversationally neutral.

“Yes. Carl doesn’t particularly like it either.” Damn. “However, the media seems to dote on and worry about an elderly millionaire more when they live a modest, humble life than when they look the part.” He gestured to one of the couches in the center of the room. “Please.”

“Y’know, based on news reports and the whole ‘led a revolution’ thing, you’re not exactly what I expected.” The couches were bright cherry red, fitting the theme of the room. He sank into the one closer to the door.

Markus sat across from him, crossing his legs. “Even celebrities need days off,” he pointed out. “I used to be a caretaker. That doesn’t define me anymore, and Carl has a new full-time caretaker anyway, but I still like to come check on him when I can. Get free painting tips while I’m here. But enough about me.” He folded his hands in his lap. “I’m dying to know what your day’s been like.”

“Playing shrink now? What about, just…general exposition?”

“Anything! This is unprecedented!” His eyes shone. Connor was 100% correct that Markus would be ecstatic. “All of our efforts these past months have been towards helping mankind understand androids as people, and now here you are, literally seeing things from our point of view! Walk a mile in the other’s shoes, as the proverb goes.”

“Okay….” Hank drummed his hands on his legs. His first instinct was to think back through the day, but the thought triggered another rapid memory replay. He stopped it and groaned. “It’s fuckin’ fast,” he said. “There’s a shit ton of information even without the router in my head. With it, it’s like I’m every computer at once.”

“That’s an interesting interpretation of it. Maybe a bit of an overstatement.”

He scoffed. “This android brain has involuntarily subjected me to more math in the last three hours than I have had to do in the last thirty years. Like, I don’t need a speedometer at all times, or news updates from Ghana, or access to all the fuckin’ bad memes of my youth. It’s excessive! Maybe not to you,” he added, holding out a hand, “but you’ve grown up with it…figuratively speaking.”

“That’s true.” Markus propped his chin in his palm. “I guess I’d be able to relate more to Connor’s side. I wonder how he likes being disconnected from the network.”

“Yeah, I wonder, too….” Hank pursed his lips. “The kid seemed really shaken up as soon as the whole ‘identity’ question came into play. Seemed like he’s been thinking about it for a while, so I figured…a break from the norm might do him some good. Hell, if I’m getting so overwhelmed by android stuff, maybe he’s finally got some underwhelming peace and quiet.”

“Perhaps. I can ask him later, though; you’re here right now. How about…colors? Does the world look any different? Any sharper, mayhap?”

“Bud, this place would look like a Crayola box to anyone.” Hank took a moment to look around, ignoring the scrolling list of crayon names in his periphery. Sure, it was bright and sharp, but he was fifty-three. If he stole literally anyone’s glasses, it’d improve his vision. “Yeah, I guess it’s all in shiny 4K. Look, Markus, I’m not really a conversationalist; words never were my strong point, so I’m not sure how well I can convey this, ah…ongoing out-of-body experience.”

Markus held up his hands in surrender. “Perfectly alright, Lieutenant. With only a few hours of android life, there’s no sense sitting around talking for all of it. Why not look to some action instead?”

“Action? What’s that mean?”

He stood up with a smile. “Have you ever seen The Matrix, Mr. Anderson?”

“Snuck into a theater to see it opening week.” He pushed himself up in suit. His balance had to correct itself when he was on his feet earlier than expected, being lighter, stronger, and without a whisper of joint pain. “And yes, my friends called me that for months after. Why?”

“Well, we could always spar with some newfound kung fu, but painting has always been more my style.”

“What the fuck are you—” He stopped, remembering the scene he was referencing. His computer brain also conveniently played it back for him, too. Thanks, CyberLife. “I can just download painting? Like that?” He snapped.

“The technical skills, yes; the creativity and style, though, you’d still have to practice yourself.” He picked up his smock and held it out. “How about that lesson?”

Hank raised an eyebrow. He had never pictured himself as a painter. Or an artist of any kind. Or an android. He shrugged. “Ah, what the hell. You’re on, Picasso.”

[next >]

[dailytechnologynews]

The world is utterly unprepared for artificial intelligence in the near-term: "Media Synthesis", the phenomenon which includes deepfakes, is further along than almost anyone realizes and is prepared for, and this will result in a lot of fun and angst come the 2020s

I run the /r/MediaSynthesis subreddit, collecting links and discussions surrounding this technology. The other day, I asked /r/MachineLearning about a topic that I've been tossing about my head for almost a full decade now: when will we be able to use style transfer on audio reliably?

In the simplest possible terms, "style transfer" is when you make one thing like another using machine learning. You upload a picture of a sunny day as an input, upload a bunch of pictures of night time as variables, and then get the original picture but now it's night time. The algorithm didn't fetch a picture of the scene at a different time of day. It altered the very pixels, turning day into night.

Here's a few examples:

Color transfer

Video transfer, turning a street scene with trees into one with buildings or more trees, among other things

Musical transfer, changing instruments and genres.

All of which are from 2017 or 2018.

There's a lot more, and this includes deepfakes which I'm sure plenty of people are aware of. The potential of this technology over the next 5 years— and yes, I'm saying five years, not fifteen or twenty five or fifty— is going to lead to people with no skill in machine learning or artistry to be able to alter existing media almost completely as well as generate some kinds of new media.

Back specifically on the topic of audio style transfer, this includes being able to take a song, any song, and altering at your leisure in a variety of different ways ranging from adding or subtracting instruments, swapping the vocalist or removing them entirely, and perhaps even extending the song in an "intelligent" manner— meaning the algorithm can actually generate more sections of that song that didn't previously exist (within reason). You could turn any top 40 pop song into a 20-minute-long pop epic.

My classic desire is taking TLC's Waterfalls and turning it into a barbershop quartet, complete with the mustachioed men singing in tune with all the 1920s graininess you'd expect. Did you like Bohemian Rhapsody but could do without the heavy guitars? Why not transfer it into a polka song? That's indeed very possible. Covering songs in a different style is obviously a thing that you can already find on YouTube and "X Goes Pop" compilations whatnot, but that involves actual musicians and artists putting in the time and effort. We're not far away from having a theoretical "Audacity 2.0" where you could do the same thing with a few clicks of your mouse.

One of my more esoteric desires goes a step further, and it's also very much on the horizon. I love Witchfinder General, but they've always been a bit too amateurish. They were almost a great band, if only a few lyrics were changed and some instruments were tightened up. In the future, I could be able to "correct" these "mistakes", going in to change the lyrics myself so that Zeeb Parkes is singing something a bit different over a band that's even slower and doomier than they actually were. In some cases, that means adding lines where there weren't originally.

It would obviously still be a laborious process because vocals in songs can be complex and heavily individualized.

But that was only ever a problem for the old era of digital software, where things had to be cut up and easily able to fit into bits and pieces and then essentially standardized as if you're playing something on a synth. This new era is something entirely different and infinitely more capable. You couldn't replicate Bob Dylan's soul if you had his voice in a voice synthesis software program as might exist today.

There's no style nor soul that'll be beyond my fingers with the right neural networks.

For someone like me, who loves creating entire musical scenes and movements from playlists and imagination, that's a godsend. For an actual musician or any creative who prides themselves on their humanity, it sounds like the worst dystopia.

I'm not overselling this either. Audio is, fundamentally, a bunch of waves. If you can edit those waveforms, you can create any audio you wish. It's just that the way we edit those waveforms is usually by hitting drums, strumming guitars, pressing keyboards, and singing.

Of course, there are much darker applications of this technology. The very first thing to come to mind is putting words in someone else's mouth for political purposes, as can be demonstrated here:

Deepfakes on Obama, Putin, and others

Making Trump say new things

If the latter sounds too robotic, don't fret/relax. Making voices sound audiorealistic is just a matter of parameters and data, of which the likes of Google, Baidu, Facebook, OpenAI, and many others have no shortage. The crappy free text-to-speech programs you might find with a Google search or in a PDF file is as representative of the state of the art as a bottle rocket is of the military's explosive ordinance.

And that's literally just the tip of the iceberg. Just because I'm focusing on audio doesn't mean there's nothing for images and video, obviously. Just the opposite— everyone is so focused on deepfakes and image synthesis that we're overlooking audio synthesis.

It's not coming in stages, nor is it arriving slowly and at easily digestible and tolerable speeds as might be written in a shlock cyberpunk novel. We're not going to struggle with image synthesis for 20 years, then struggle with audio synthesis for 20 years, and so on until we reach a point in the distant future where you can't trust anything you see. We're developing them all simultaneously and seeing progress come at breakneck speeds, and we'll be well within that future this time next decade.

In fact, this time next decade we'll have entirely different zeitgeists when it comes to art, entertainment, and the news. There's no refuge in cartoons. Neural networks are in the early stages of learning how to do caricatures and exaggerations— the fundamental root of cartooning. Others can generate short animations from text alone. Even more can be used to remaster old video games and create games from scratch.

And no, you can't find refuge in writing either. Scarily enough, it's the text synthesis network that shows the most signs of general intelligence. It's not AGI by far, but it's most general AI ever created and it isn't even a very complex machine at that. But it's apparently too dangerous to be released.

If you have a passion for all of this and create art for art's sake or are willing to accept fewer (but likely much higher paid) commissions rather than a "career" as we understand it to be, you're fine. If you're someone who wants to become a career artist/model/voice actor/musician/animator/writer/comic artist/newscaster and expect to find consistent work for the next 50 years, (first, good luck regardless) make these next five to ten years count and/or try considering jumping into the former category.

We don't need AGI for any of this either, so don't think that we have to wait until we "solve intelligence" to see any of this. Nor should you expect it to cost a fortune to use. We only need GANs and most of this tech is open source.

The final and most sobering realization of all this is the cold fact that, ironically contrary to all those predictions of how automation would unfold, entertainment and the arts will be the first field to go. Everyone said that all the drudgery of the world would be automated first, freeing up workers to pursue the arts because "a machine could never write a poem, pen a song, or paint a work of art".

This is something so stupefyingly far from public conscious that there is virtually nothing being done or said about it. You might initially think that it doesn't warrant much discussion until it actually arrives, but when you really start looking at this in-depth, you have a tendency to grow a bit fatalistic. One of my future-shock angsts is about schooling and how public and private schools in their current form are utterly unable to prepare children for the future into which they will graduate (a future in which school itself may become obsolete because there will be little point for it besides social functions and raw education, which isn't what American schooling is for). This is related, but a bit different.

We have a technology that didn't exist 10 years ago and yet will almost certainly upend the entire entertainment industry within 10 years from now. Photoshops and photo manipulation, "dumbfakes" if you will, weren't even a pre-meal mint, let alone the appetizer. We ought to be having a dialog on this, but we aren't.

Many of us refuse to believe it exists at all, that it's just some schizophrenic pipe dreams found on /r/Futurology and /r/Singularity. Others so desperately want to leave a place for humans that they will deny that machines will be able to do these things competently despite being shown the evidence. And those who accept it can only say "So what?" Even though I eagerly await a world where I could generate a multimedia franchise (and the global reaction) in my bedroom on my laptop, there are still pertinent risks.

As /u/ksblur said:

Strange how we live in a world of trust-based security. It would be relatively easy for cryptography to solve that issue (your phone could automatically reject calls without proper signatures or encryption), but people grew up "trusting" the systems so there's not a lot of incentive to change it.

Could you imagine inventing the telephone in 2019 and either A) not encrypting the data (landlines) or B) using weak 64bit A5/1 encryption (GSM)?*

TLDR Skynet wants to become a singer and artist, and Dad (i.e. Humans) doesn't realize it yet.

[thegoldendemon-blog]

// 0001 // GRIM.

     q: Kayla are you actually going all in on PROJECT and titling your introductory drabble after a Dan Terminus song       a: I finished Neuromancer today so unfollow me now this is all I’m going to post ab--

     Long after the soul within had ceased to be, the eye remained open, transient— and blinking.

     There’s defect in the ocular lens. Instead of white, the scelera is drab, dark brown, with the pupil oblong instead of round. It might’ve passed as a cheap implant in the red district off of somebody who lost one in a brawl: worse to look without than improperly with. But then comes the schism of electrical spasms as the whole body rises up and down to an ineffective cadence, shedding sparks like fur. The expression never changes off of gaping.

     A hand reaches down and wraps around synthlon flesh, beginning to pull it back.

    Wheeze. The spasms continue, creating a thimp-thump-thimp on the floorboards. Outside, past the window and the open balcony, is an endless day of neon suns and halogen captured in a bowl of acid rain and dark clouds.

    “Don’t,” the defect chitters.

    The skin peels farther.

    “Don’t,” it says. Thimp-thump-thimp. The spasms were catching up to it now. It could barely hold on to its voice, tone battered and sounding as if minced by a malfunctioning shredder.

    The hand stops once the skin reveals not organs or blood, but lattices of hollowpoint steel. Slow, deliberate—     —It removes a card, and the defect screams before its eye closes forever.

    “Hmm.” Jhin balances on his toes, examining the card between his fingers before inserting it in a fold between his coat and neck. “’Don’t’ is an unrecognized command. My interpreter suggests S-T-O-P,”

    He thocks the thick end of his gun into the head and watches as the metal, now ultrahot, flashes red then explodes.

    “But S-T-O-P is an unauthorized command to give.”

    Shrugging off bits of defect plastic, he saunters past and winds up on the balcony. The purview of the city is blotted out considerably by buildings tall as skyscrapers and the narrow passageways they carve out between sky-tunnels and airborne vehicles. In another body, he would’ve thought it claustrophobic, but claustrophobic is a memory, a fact, no longer a feeling, and for his chassis this environment is far from. The hum of inner city is surpassed only by an internal ding of the success of his cryptographic bypass.

    || TYPE: Personal Storage     || COMPANY: Non-PROJECT Affiliated, BL-RO Best Guess     || LAST RECORD: MKV Audio Log     || TRANSCRIBE?     || Yes.

    || TRANSCRIPTION COMPLETE. PLAYING…     || “I want that fucking thing dead.” Short voice.

    || Tall voice. “You can’t just kill it, you know. It doesn’t belong to an individual chassis. We’ve known this for months. Why do you think PROJECT itself is struggling to kill it?”

    || “Then what the hell is it? No virus is that sophisticated. No virus is going to have that kind of AI. It’s anathema to the concept. A virus isn’t supposed to think. It’s supposed to be just is. Just is to drop off its payload and de-interface. In and out. That thing, it thinks. It isn’t reacting to any known law of artificial intelligence. What does it have, a bloody neural network on its back?”

    || Lull. Murmuring in the back, unidentifiable. The recorder sits somewhere and the digitizer hums with a low, soft sigh.

    || Short voice starts again. “I’m going to have Stanwick over for dinner tonight,” it says. “If he can’t tell me what that thing actually is, it might as well be PROJECT’s attempt to self-destruct.”

    || TRANSCRIPTION CLOSED.     || DATA QUERY: “Stanwick”     || QUERYING…     || BEST GUESS: Nebukazar Stanwick, PhD in Informative Robotics, currently teaching at New Valoran University. Suspected black-coat ties to BL-RO after being denied a position of chairman for forgery and blueprint theft. STATUS: Not a replicant or augmented.    || CONTACT?    || Yes.

    “Ah.” Jhin’s mask splits open from front to back and out assembles a beaming, smiling face.

    “I wonder if Stanwick will enjoy breakfast for two.”

[kuma-kuro]

Lonesome Horizons Part I & II

This is a recap of my sci-fi D&D campaign that I’m noting down for funsies and my own notes. Characters: Azul, a hylotl (fishlike alien race), and a famous techno swing performer that's down on her luck.

Rigel Kent, a novakid (a glowing mass of incandescent gas in humanoid shape), and a pilot and gunslinger.

H1D4L60,  or Hidalgo, an AI robot, used to work in law enforcement. (We were originally using the text to speech feature in Discord for Hidalgo as a goof, but later abandoned it, but that’s why there’s so many Hidalgo quotes)

Our characters arrive on Shakti station, an old rundown space outpost, following news of employment. They made their way to "North Star Investments" where they met Marco Robinson and his secretary. Ignoring Marco's plight struggling to assemble his new desk, Marco informed them of a job transporting a shipment of genetically modified workers to Bhaga station as strikebreakers, noting that very few people are willing to take the job.

Rigel is immediately against the job, but wants to secretly liberate these workers. Hidalgo is also against the job. Azul needs the job, despite being a famous musician, for currently unknown reasons she is broke.

The three sign contracts and get paid 20 credits up front for expenses and are given the keys to 'The Pride of Kohl,' which is an extremely run down old ship and the crew have to pay out of pocket for repairs. The three rename their ship Ruffrage. (Alternate names included: Pride of Kohl’s Black Friday Door Buster Sales Event and the Friend Ship).

In order to scrounge up some extra credits Azul, using Hidalgo as a loud speaker and a hype man, busk on the street and manage to acquire more credits.

After 24 hours, the shipment arrives and Rigel signs for it with a fake name in Novaspeak.

The group sets off on their three day trek to Bhaga Station to deliver their passengers. Azul knows the GPS for the ship is located inside a panel underneath the ship's dashboard and asks Hidalgo to come unscrew the panel.

While deciding what to do with the GPS device, the crew is onslaught by space debris. Hidalgo mans the gunner seat to shoot down incoming debris as Rigel quickly maneuvers around it. Although managing to mostly avoid the debris, the ship takes a hit to life support. Azul and the miners, being the only ones that need life support, all manage to survive while the life support is damaged. It takes Hidalgo three attempts to repair the life support.

Reconvening in the cockpit, Azul and Rigel notice a list of files flicker onto a touchscreen near the pilot's seat. While most of these appear to be a playlist of music, the top file is a random string of numbers and letters. Calling Hidalgo to see if he understands or can translate what it means, it just appears to be just a random string. The three listen to the audio file, which appears to be the audio log of Kohl, the previous ship's owner. He recounts that he heard from Rus, a bartender on Yarzi station that a drunk at the bar was gossiping about a previously undiscovered planet, and that Abner, another bar regular, was putting together an expedition and was paying good money to hire people.

The name Bertha was also mentioned in the audio, a machine and possibly Kohl's partner, and almost as if on cue a metallic banging was heard from the main hallway of the ship. The banging was coming from beneath a metallic floor panel, and after several failures to lift it alone, Hidalgo needed Azul's help to lift the panel, revealing a gun turret, which began whirring its barrels. Hidalgo immediately slammed the panel back down and started to weld it shut. Looking through the computers files, they learned that the turret was Bertha and Azul tried to reason with it, asking yes or no questions with Bertha knocking twice for yes, once for no. The crew lifted Bertha out of the smuggling compartment they found her in and befriended her. Azul later noticed that Bertha had no ammunition.

Abandoning the plan to deliver the workers, the crew set off to Yarzi station, knowing only that they could find information about the mystery planet at a bar there. It took a week to travel there, Rigel setting the ship to auto-pilot and spending some time playing Solitaire, Azul spending the week writing some new songs, and Hidalgo taking time to study the passengers in their stasis pods below decks.

The crew arrive at Yarzi and find that there are three bars. Rigel wanders off to Rus's Bar, while the other two make plans to split up to the other two bars.

Azul goes to the Sonic Bar, a hipstery affair with bright neon lights everywhere and a robot bartender. The only patrons are an older human gentleman and two bird aliens chatting with each other.

Azul orders a Tom Bodett which the bartender gives to her on the house. The older gentleman at the bar she begins talking to is named Anthony, who has a very prominent food review blog. He states he's on his way to Gosei station to review a restaurant there and is having a drink to calm his nerves. He doesn't have any information about the mystery planet.

Hidalgo goes to Rusty's Bar, which turns out to be a big franchised sports bar. It's incredibly loud as a big game is occurring and the patrons there cheer after every goal. Hidalgo goes to question the bartender if he's heard about anything secret, including secret bets or planets. The bartender asks if Hidalgo is a cop, which Hidalgo adamantly denies. The bartender says all the gambling that happens at the bar is legal and that his shift is almost over and he has to leave. Hidalgo doesn't gather any meaningful information.

Meanwhile, Rigel overhears a voice at Rus's Bar that he can't quite place at first, but later realizes is Kohl's voice. He manages to begin drinking with Kohl and his associates gathered around a table. They're celebrating a big job they just got paid for. Rigel decides to attempt to pretend to be drunk in order to gain their trust, but his lack of knowledge in human or alien drunkenness does not help.

Both Azul and Hidalgo leave their respective bars and come to meet up with Rigel at Rus's. Azul also recognizes Kohl's voice and when asking Kohl what his name is he gives them the false name Jack. Logan, one of Kohl's associates at the table, recognizes Azul and is a huge fan. Hidalgo pretends to be Azul's bodyguard.

As Azul starts questioning Kohl about any secrets or rumors about planets he might know about, she starts catching him in lies and eventually questions him about the whereabouts of Abner. Kohl says he hasn't seen him in weeks, but knows where his ship is docked and says he'll give them the information for 500 credits. Azul manages to negotiate that instead of credits she does a live performance at the bar, to which Kohl reluctantly agrees. Logan is overjoyed.

Kohl mentions that Abner's ship is parked at dock C4 (which the three guess might be a trap). Azul delivers a sick burn to Kohl, saying that he should be more “careful of his Pride.” The three set out to find it, with Rigel quietly leaving afterwards so as not to draw suspicion.

[eurekakinginc]

"The world is utterly unprepared for artificial intelligence in the near-term: "Media Synthesis", the phenomenon which includes deepfakes, is further along than almost anyone realizes and is prepared for, and this will result in a lot of fun and angst come the 2020s"- Detail: I run the /r/MediaSynthesis subreddit, collecting links and discussions surrounding this technology. The other day, I asked /r/MachineLearning about a topic that I've been tossing about my head for almost a full decade now: when will we be able to use style transfer on audio reliably?In the simplest possible terms, "style transfer" is when you make one thing like another using machine learning. You upload a picture of a sunny day as an input, upload a bunch of pictures of night time as variables, and then get the original picture but now it's night time. The algorithm didn't fetch a picture of the scene at a different time of day. It altered the very pixels, turning day into night.Here's a few examples:Color transferVideo transfer, turning a street scene with trees into one with buildings or more trees, among other thingsMusical transfer, changing instruments and genres.All of which are from 2017 or 2018.There's a lot more, and this includes deepfakes which I'm sure plenty of people are aware of. The potential of this technology over the next 5 years— and yes, I'm saying five years, not fifteen or twenty five or fifty— is going to lead to people with no skill in machine learning or artistry to be able to alter existing media almost completely as well as generate some kinds of new media.Back specifically on the topic of audio style transfer, this includes being able to take a song, any song, and altering at your leisure in a variety of different ways ranging from adding or subtracting instruments, swapping the vocalist or removing them entirely, and perhaps even extending the song in an "intelligent" manner— meaning the algorithm can actually generate more sections of that song that didn't previously exist (within reason). You could turn any top 40 pop song into a 20-minute-long pop epic.My classic desire is taking TLC's Waterfalls and turning it into a barbershop quartet, complete with the mustachioed men singing in tune with all the 1920s graininess you'd expect. Did you like Bohemian Rhapsody but could do without the heavy guitars? Why not transfer it into a polka song? That's indeed very possible. Covering songs in a different style is obviously a thing that you can already find on YouTube and "X Goes Pop" compilations whatnot, but that involves actual musicians and artists putting in the time and effort. We're not far away from having a theoretical "Audacity 2.0" where you could do the same thing with a few clicks of your mouse.One of my more esoteric desires goes a step further, and it's also very much on the horizon. I love Witchfinder General, but they've always been a bit too amateurish. They were almost a great band, if only a few lyrics were changed and some instruments were tightened up. In the future, I could be able to "correct" these "mistakes", going in to change the lyrics myself so that Zeeb Parkes is singing something a bit different over a band that's even slower and doomier than they actually were. In some cases, that means adding lines where there weren't originally.It would obviously still be a laborious process because vocals in songs can be complex and heavily individualized.But that was only ever a problem for the old era of digital software, where things had to be cut up and easily able to fit into bits and pieces and then essentially standardized as if you're playing something on a synth. This new era is something entirely different and infinitely more capable. You couldn't replicate Bob Dylan's soul if you had his voice in a voice synthesis software program as might exist today.There's no style nor soul that'll be beyond my fingers with the right neural networks.For someone like me, who loves creating entire musical scenes and movements from playlists and imagination, that's a godsend. For an actual musician or any creative who prides themselves on their humanity, it sounds like the worst dystopia.I'm not overselling this either. Audio is, fundamentally, a bunch of waves. If you can edit those waveforms, you can create any audio you wish. It's just that the way we edit those waveforms is usually by hitting drums, strumming guitars, pressing keyboards, and singing.Of course, there are much darker applications of this technology. The very first thing to come to mind is putting words in someone else's mouth for political purposes, as can be demonstrated here:Deepfakes on Obama, Putin, and othersMaking Trump say new thingsIf the latter sounds too robotic, don't fret/relax. Making voices sound audiorealistic is just a matter of parameters and data, of which the likes of Google, Baidu, Facebook, OpenAI, and many others have no shortage. The crappy free text-to-speech programs you might find with a Google search or in a PDF file is as representative of the state of the art as a bottle rocket is of the military's explosive ordinance.And that's literally just the tip of the iceberg. Just because I'm focusing on audio doesn't mean there's nothing for images and video, obviously. Just the opposite— everyone is so focused on deepfakes and image synthesis that we're overlooking audio synthesis.It's not coming in stages, nor is it arriving slowly and at easily digestible and tolerable speeds as might be written in a shlock cyberpunk novel. We're not going to struggle with image synthesis for 20 years, then struggle with audio synthesis for 20 years, and so on until we reach a point in the distant future where you can't trust anything you see. We're developing them all simultaneously and seeing progress come at breakneck speeds, and we'll be well within that future this time next decade.In fact, this time next decade we'll have entirely different zeitgeists when it comes to art, entertainment, and the news. There's no refuge in cartoons. Neural networks are in the early stages of learning how to do caricatures and exaggerations— the fundamental root of cartooning. Others can generate short animations from text alone. Even more can be used to remaster old video games and create games from scratch.And no, you can't find refuge in writing either. Scarily enough, it's the text synthesis network that shows the most signs of general intelligence. It's not AGI by far, but it's most general AI ever created and it isn't even a very complex machine at that. But it's apparently too dangerous to be released.If you have a passion for all of this and create art for art's sake or are willing to accept fewer (but likely much higher paid) commissions rather than a "career" as we understand it to be, you're fine. If you're someone who wants to become a career artist/model/voice actor/musician/animator/writer/comic artist/newscaster and expect to find consistent work for the next 50 years, (first, good luck regardless) make these next five to ten years count and/or try considering jumping into the former category.We don't need AGI for any of this either, so don't think that we have to wait until we "solve intelligence" to see any of this. Nor should you expect it to cost a fortune to use. We only need GANs and most of this tech is open source.The final and most sobering realization of all this is the cold fact that, ironically contrary to all those predictions of how automation would unfold, entertainment and the arts will be the first field to go. Everyone said that all the drudgery of the world would be automated first, freeing up workers to pursue the arts because "a machine could never write a poem, pen a song, or paint a work of art".This is something so stupefyingly far from public conscious that there is virtually nothing being done or said about it. You might initially think that it doesn't warrant much discussion until it actually arrives, but when you really start looking at this in-depth, you have a tendency to grow a bit fatalistic. One of my future-shock angsts is about schooling and how public and private schools in their current form are utterly unable to prepare children for the future into which they will graduate (a future in which school itself may become obsolete because there will be little point for it besides social functions and raw education, which isn't what American schooling is for). This is related, but a bit different.We have a technology that didn't exist 10 years ago and yet will almost certainly upend the entire entertainment industry within 10 years from now. Photoshops and photo manipulation, "dumbfakes" if you will, weren't even a pre-meal mint, let alone the appetizer. We ought to be having a dialog on this, but we aren't.Many of us refuse to believe it exists at all, that it's just some schizophrenic pipe dreams found on /r/Futurology and /r/Singularity. Others so desperately want to leave a place for humans that they will deny that machines will be able to do these things competently despite being shown the evidence. And those who accept it can only say "So what?" Even though I eagerly await a world where I could generate a multimedia franchise (and the global reaction) in my bedroom on my laptop, there are still pertinent risks.As /u/ksblur said:Strange how we live in a world of trust-based security. It would be relatively easy for cryptography to solve that issue (your phone could automatically reject calls without proper signatures or encryption), but people grew up "trusting" the systems so there's not a lot of incentive to change it.Could you imagine inventing the telephone in 2019 and either A) not encrypting the data (landlines) or B) using weak 64bit A5/1 encryption (GSM)?*TLDR Skynet wants to become a singer and artist, and Dad (i.e. Humans) doesn't realize it yet.. Title by: Yuli-Ban Posted By: www.eurekaking.com

[bharatiyamedia-blog]

Android Q: Cheat sheet - TechRepublic

http://tinyurl.com/y3ceabbc Android Q’s options will remodel some telephones into extra user-friendly, customizable, and safe environments. Here is what builders, companies, and customers must learn about Google’s Android 10.0. Android Q: Cheat sheet Google’s Android Q gives various upgrades that may remodel your telephone into an much more user-friendly and customizable surroundings. Here is what builders, companies, and customers must learn about Android 10.0. Android continues to be essentially the most widely-used platform across the globe. With a market share that hasn’t shifted a lot because the final iteration (roughly 81.7% across the launch of Android Pie ), Google has a robust grip on the mobile sector. With the discharge of Android 10 (aka Android Q), customers will get a great mix of latest options and a sharpening of beforehand launched options. A few of Android Q’s new options will likely be eye-opening and will go a protracted solution to cement the platform on the prime of the cellular area. Learn this Android Q cheat sheet to rise up to hurry on Google’s subsequent OS. We’ll replace this useful resource periodically when there’s new details about Android Q. SEE: How to build a successful developer career (free PDF) (TechRepublic) What’s Android Q? Android Q (aka Android 10.0) would be the subsequent Android OS launched from Google. For the reason that preliminary launch of Android, Google has used names of varied desserts for the platform. These are the names that Google has used for Android variations. (Earlier than its launch, Android 1.1 was known as Petit 4 internally.) Android 1.5: Android Cupcake Android 1.6: Android Donut Android 2.0 – 2.1: Android Eclair Android 2.2 – 2.2.3: Android Froyo Android 2.3 – 2.3.7: Android Gingerbread Android 3.0 – 3.2.6: Android Honeycomb Android 4.0 – 4.0.4: Android Ice Cream Sandwich Android 4.1 – 4.3.1: Android Jelly Bean Android 4.4 – 4.4.4: Android KitKat Android 5.0 – 5.1.1: Android Lollipop Android 6.0 – 6.0.1: Android Marshmallow Android 7.0 – 7.1.2: Android Nougat Android: 8.0 – 8.1: Android Oreo Android: 9.0: Android Pie Now we arrive at Android 10 (Android Q). In the intervening time, we do not know what this launch will likely be known as; nevertheless, there have been loads of concepts circulating, together with: Android Quiche Android Fast Android High quality Avenue Android Quesito Android Quindom Android Qottab Android Queijadas Android Qurabiya Sameer Samet, Google’s Vice President of Product Administration for Android and Play, stated “We’re tremendous excited concerning the desserts….On the identical time, Q is a tough letter. However we’re it.” Extra assets: What new options include Android Q? Android Q has various thrilling options. A number of the new options will go a protracted solution to setting Android other than all different platforms, whereas others lastly carry the working system as much as par with others. Totally Gestural Navigation The largest change to the working system is the navigation management, which is much extra environment friendly than earlier strategies, particularly when utilizing a tool with one hand. Gesture navigation was launched in Android Pie, although what was dropped at the desk appeared like a bridge to one thing even higher. That one thing higher is Totally Gestural Navigation. This opt-in function (customers can select to go the old-school three-button methodology, the two-button methodology in Android Pie, or the brand new “no-button” methodology in Android Q) depends strictly on gestures for navigating the interface. The brand new navigation contains the next: Elimination of the Residence and Again buttons. Swipe up from the place the Residence button was to return to the house display screen. Swipe up from mid-screen to open the app drawer. Swipe right down to open the Notification Display. Brief swipe from both the left or proper fringe of the display screen to return. Brief swipe up (from the search bar) and launch to open the app checklist. SEE: All of TechRepublic’s cheat sheets and smart person’s guides (TechRepublic) New notification management function Notification management (Determine A) is getting a brand new function. With the lengthy press of an app alert within the Notification Shade, you possibly can choose Interruptive Reminders or Mild Reminders. Interruptive Reminders: Alerts will seem within the Notification Shade and the Lock Display. Mild Reminders: Alerts will solely seem within the Notification Shade. Determine A Lengthy urgent an alert means that you can configure the way it will behave. So, should you’re anxious concerning the delicate data of alerts from sure apps making it to the Lock Display, you now have management over which apps can show stated knowledge as an alternative of the function being On or Off. Darkish Theme From the workplace of “What took you so lengthy” comes the highly-anticipated Darkish Theme. When enabled, your complete Android interface will tackle a darker colour (Determine B). Determine B The Android Darkish Theme in motion Why is that this essential? Two causes: Battery life and eye pressure. Battery life: With the darkish interface, your show could have a much less taxing impact in your battery. Eye pressure: With the darkish interface enabled, you possibly can work along with your system for longer durations, with out affected by eye pressure, particularly when utilizing the system in darkish or dimmer environments. Reside Caption One other new function coming to Android Q is Reside Caption, which is able to robotically add subtitles to movies, podcasts, and audio messages. These captions are in actual time and system-wide so they don’t seem to be restricted to particular functions. The Reside Caption textual content field may be resized and moved across the display screen. Reside Caption won’t solely be useful for customers who discover themselves in conditions the place audio is not an possibility, however what’s much more essential is Reside Caption will likely be a boon to the listening to impaired. 5G appropriate Android Q will likely be 5G appropriate. Meaning as quickly because the infrastructure is rolled out, Android 10 will likely be able to make use of the brand new expertise. Undertaking Mainline Google is introducing Undertaking Mainline. With this new function, safety patches will likely be robotically pushed to telephones by the Google Play Retailer (in the identical manner apps are up to date). Updates are run within the background and loaded in the course of the subsequent time a tool is rebooted. Extra assets: What enhancements are in Android Q? Enlargement of Sensible Reply One Android function that is getting some much-needed polish by means of enlargement is Sensible Reply, which makes use of machine learning to anticipate what you may say in reply to a message. Though the function was out there in Android P, it was restricted to Google-only apps. With the discharge of Android Q, Sensible Reply is now constructed into the notification system, so any messaging app can recommend replies in notifications. Sensible Reply additionally makes use of AI to foretell your subsequent motion. For instance, if somebody texts you an handle, you possibly can faucet that handle to open it in Google Maps. Privateness options for Google Maps Talking of Google Maps, the app/service will likely be getting some privacy-specific options. One function is Incognito Mode. This mode will allow customers to seek for and navigate to places with out knowledge being saved to or linked again to a Google account. Digital Wellbeing’s Focus Mode Google’s Digital Wellbeing will get a brand new function known as Focus Mode that permits customers to pick sure apps they need to keep away from throughout a time frame. In the course of the chosen interval, these apps will likely be grayed out and their notifications hidden from view. Gender Inclusive emoji  For many who like to make use of emoji, Google will carry gender nonconforming emoji to Android 10. Referred to as Gender Inclusive, there will likely be 53 such emojis added to the platform. Extra user-friendly App Permissions App Permissions could have a way more user-friendly method. As an alternative of the app providing little greater than ON/OFF sliders for every app inside a service (corresponding to physique sensors, calendar, name logs, digital camera, and so forth.), the brand new format makes it very clear what apps have permission for a selected service and retains the simplicity of permitting or denying an app permission to entry any given service (Determine C). Determine C Per service permissions can now be configured. Extra assets: What safety features are in Android Q? There are just a few Android Q options that focus totally on safety. The primary function is known as Scoped Storage. So as to give customers extra management over their recordsdata, in addition to restrict file muddle, Android Q adjustments how all apps entry recordsdata discovered inside exterior storage. To make this safer, all apps on Android Q are given a sandboxed view into the exterior space for storing. Android Q additionally offers customers extra management over when apps are in a position to entry system location data (Determine D). Determine D Customers can outline when an app has entry to location data. Customers will be capable to configure if an app has entry to location data both whereas in use (foreground solely) or on a regular basis (foreground and background). In different phrases, should you go for foreground solely, when an app is not in use, it will not have entry to location data. Interruptions will turn into fewer with Android Q, due to new restrictions to background exercise begins. By proscribing when an app can begin actions, it won’t solely reduce interruptions for customers, it would additionally enable customers to regulate what’s proven on the system show. One new addition that ought to go a good distance for system safety is that Android Q will now transmit randomized MAC addresses by default. Alongside those self same strains, an app will need to have READ_PRIVILEGED_PHONE_STATE privileged permissions with the intention to entry a tool’s non-resettable identifiers (corresponding to IMEI and serial quantity). So as to shield consumer privateness, handbook configuration of the Wi-Fi networks checklist will likely be restricted to system apps and system coverage controllers. If an app would not fall into a type of two classes, configuration of Wi-Fi networks won’t be allowed. Extra assets: How can builders begin utilizing Android Q? Android Q is within the beta Three launch. Anybody with a supported system can join the Android Beta program. At present, the next gadgets are supported. In case your system is supported, putting in Android Q is so simple as signing up for the beta program and choosing your system. Extra assets: When will Android Q be typically out there? There are six deliberate beta releases and, as of Could 2019, solely the primary three have been made out there. For most of the people, Android Q needs to be out there in late Q3 or early This autumn. All Pixel gadgets will obtain the replace first, adopted shortly by smaller distributors, corresponding to Important and OnePlus. Bigger distributors (with service tie-ins), corresponding to Samsung, will then obtain the replace. Extra assets: Cellular Enterprise Publication BYOD, wearables, IoT, cellular safety, distant assist, and the most recent telephones, tablets, and apps IT professionals must learn about are among the subjects we’ll handle. Delivered Tuesdays and Fridays Enroll immediately Enroll immediately Picture: Juan Garzon/CNET Source link

[teamplushr13]

hr staffing solutions in bangalore

Recruiting and Managing Creative Talent to Inspire Innovation

 Technology and organizational strategies today are bound together in a world striving for performance improvement. It’s hard to dispute that every company has, in a sense, become a technology company. The digital world drives the hr staffing solutions in bangalore  material world to a tremendous extent these days. It’s a trend that shows no  signs of slowing.

 As economist Thomas Pinketty predicts in his groundbreaking work Capital in the Twenty-First Century, much of the economic growth we can expect to see between this year and 2025 will flow from advances in computing, artificial intelligence, data and robotics. Despite the positive impacts these developments could make, financially and functionally, there remain reasonable skeptics who have concerns about the income inequality and vocational losses this sort of  mechanized society might create. They offer dire scenarios in which robots replace all human labor -- the only monetary gains going to those who own, manufacture or control the machines.

 MIT Professor Zeynep Ton explains in The Good Jobs Strategy that these examples fail to paint a broader, more realistic picture. Even the most powerful systems require human input and judgment; a purely technological approach to work and civilization would eventually collapse. The relevance and importance of the human element can’t be ignored. Artificial intelligence (AI) can’t exist and grow without  the context of the human experience to inform it. Cognitive scientists  hr staffing solutions in bangalore refer to this discrepancy as the availability bias: people tend to place greater emphasis on information that’s easy to come by, such as data on a spreadsheet, rather than intangibles like the realities involved in the everyday interactions and operations of a business.

 So as we scramble to keep pace with technology and narrow our educational focus on STEM skills, we’re neglecting the very important role that creativity plays in the process.

 Creativity -- The Ghost in the Machine

 It’s easy to succumb to the notion that scientists are stuffy, smock-wearing, bespectacled people who are obsessed with numbers and formulas. Yet without a creative impulse, imagination, vision and an understanding of society, it’s hard to believe that any real scientific accomplishments would have arisen. Science hr staffing solutions in bangalore requires creativity for continued innovation. No invention was envisioned without curiosity and ambition: the dreamer gazing at the stars in wonder, the biologist fighting to cure a terrible disease, the electrical engineer helping to overcome obstacles in the way of communications, and other pioneers motivated by a need to improve our quality of life.

 This sentiment is articulately echoed by astrophysicists such as Neil deGrasse Tyson and Adam Frank. Both men of science not only acknowledge the necessity of the humanities, they embrace liberal arts as a crucial backbone to scientific achievement. In a recent piece for NPR, Frank advocated for the value of the arts in academia: “In spite of  being a scientist, I strongly believe an education that fails to place a heavy emphasis on the humanities is a missed opportunity. Without a base in humanities, both the students -- and the democratic society these students must enter as informed citizens -- are denied a full view of the heritage and critical habits of mind that mae civilization worth the effort.”

 Frank provides a solid reason for his conclusion: “The old barriers between the humanities and technology are falling. Historians now use big-data techniques to ask their human-centered  questions. Engineers use the same methods -- but with an emphasis on human interfaces -- to answer their own technology-oriented questions.”

 In the future, computers will probably assume a greater share of the work duties currently tasked to human talent, including programming and data analysis. We can’t presume that automation won’t replace or commoditize certain skill sets. Realistically, however, there’s a limit to what machines will be able to do. As Rally Health’s Tom Perrault observes in a recent Harvard Business Review article, “What can’t be replaced in any organization imaginable in the future is precisely what seems overlooked today: liberal arts skills, such as creativity, empathy, listening, and vision. These skills, not digital or technological ones, will hold the keys to a company’s future success. And yet companies aren’t hiring for them. This is a problem for today’s digital companies, and it’s only going to get worse.”

 Technology and Creativity Play Well Together

 Creative talent enjoy taking risks. They see these gambles as necessary systems of trial and error that lead to true innovation. Just like the world’s most renowned scientists, creative talent  operate empirically. Missteps and failures don’t deter them -- they instruct them.

 Not only do creative professionals take risks, they refuse to quit in the face of shortcomings, defects or even rebuke from colleagues, managers or others in their communities. They are inherently optimistic and see risks as opportunities. Henry Ford’s first vehicle, a motorized four-wheeled bike of sorts, failed. Miserably. Instead of throwing in the towel, he learned from the mistake and went on to hr staffing solutions in bangalore pioneer the Model T. While working for the Kansas City Star, Walt Disney was told by his editor that he lacked imagination and marketable ideas. Obviously, that harsh critique did little to stifle Mr. Disney’s formidable future achievements -- all symbols of imagination and clever marketing.

 Of course, the interesting corollary to these examples is how both creative geniuses promoted technology, instead of working against it. Ford radically shifted methods of transit and work. He absolutely threatened the horse-and-buggy industry, yet his company created countless more jobs around the world. Ford also renovated the nature of labor with assembly line processes that delivered inexpensive goods to consumers while supporting high wages for workers.

 Walt Disney is a grandfather of realistic audio animatronics. You can’t visit a Disney attraction and not marvel at the robotic characters at the heart of the rides. Yet, the magic of a Disney theme park isn’t all technology -- it’s the exceptional customer service and interaction provided by live talent. The same rings true for Disney and Pixar films. The leaps and bounds in computer animation technology never surpass the humanity of the stories, which comes from writers, artists and voice actors.

 Hiring Creative Talent

 Given the current employment situation, the fierce competition to secure skilled talent makes perfect sense. Yet the creative, intrapreneurial mavericks should not be omitted in the search. Creative workers can be the best hires for companies that are truly in motion, tolerant of change, serious about stirring the pot to innovate, and creating new environments that require a degree of risk and uncertainty. The creativity, drive and exploratory nature of these individuals help businesses discover and capitalize on new opportunities, break free from outdated and ineffective models, pioneer unique solutions, and avoid stagnation. They have the potential to be prized assets for a growing or rebranding company.

 Sourcing creative talent is itself a creative process. Elite staffing professionals excel at matching the right talent to the right business culture, often deploying unconventional recruiting  and screening processes. This is the job of staffing professionals -- one they consistently perform and refine. The best way hiring organizations, MSPs and their staffing suppliers can achieve client goals together is to focus on fit.

 MSPs, when tasked with managing a program concentrated on change and innovation, should spend a greater amount of time during discovery and voice of the customer meetings to get a clear picture of the client’s existing culture, its ability to loosen structures and policies, and its comfort level with creative talent who may operate outside traditional team structures or approval processes.

MSPs and their staffing partners must spend extra time communicating about the realistic nature of the client’s culture and flexibility.

Staffing professionals, combining this information with their expertise in sourcing creative talent, can more easily assess the best fits between hiring managers and maverick innovators.

The MSP, after coordinating with its staffing partners on submitted candidates, must also be willing to champion these selections to hiring managers, making cases for non-traditional yet innovative talent whose pros outweigh perceived cons.

If there’s a theme for the direction of business in this century, it’s punctuated by a recurring buzzword: innovation. In its assessment of 2014 business trends, Forbes discussed  how the lack of cultural change has suffocated growth. The old ways of doing things were discounted as “roadblocks to process improvements,” with “true breakthrough thinking” and recruiting “more progressive candidates” as the remedies.

 Then, toward the end of the piece, Forbes put all its cards on the table and exposed the challenges openly. “Some companies are indulging in new processes for creative innovation, birthing some big ideas that could open new markets,” the magazine declared. “Many CEOs openly extol innovation… Yet, very hr staffing solutions in bangalore few really embrace it, acting on the most relevant ideas to truly advance their company. Change is nerve-wracking, but promising new ideas, tested in advance, can work wonders for almost any business.”

 Machines and data can produce some wonderful things. Coming up with the next big idea that will lead to new iterations of these technologies -- that's best left to the dreamers, the philosophers, the artists and the creative minds behind the science.

hr staffing solutions in bangalore

[we-future-first]

The world is utterly unprepared for artificial intelligence in the near-term: "Media Synthesis", the phenomenon which includes deepfakes, is further along than almost anyone realizes and is prepared for, and this will result in a lot of fun and angst come the 2020s

I run the /r/MediaSynthesis subreddit, collecting links and discussions surrounding this technology. The other day, I asked /r/MachineLearning about a topic that I've been tossing about my head for almost a full decade now: when will we be able to use style transfer on audio reliably?

In the simplest possible terms, "style transfer" is when you make one thing like another using machine learning. You upload a picture of a sunny day as an input, upload a bunch of pictures of night time as variables, and then get the original picture but now it's night time. The algorithm didn't fetch a picture of the scene at a different time of day. It altered the very pixels, turning day into night.

Here's a few examples:

Color transfer

Video transfer, turning a street scene with trees into one with buildings or more trees, among other things

Musical transfer, changing instruments and genres.

All of which are from 2017 or 2018.

There's a lot more, and this includes deepfakes which I'm sure plenty of people are aware of. The potential of this technology over the next 5 years— and yes, I'm saying five years, not fifteen or twenty five or fifty— is going to lead to people with no skill in machine learning or artistry to be able to alter existing media almost completely as well as generate some kinds of new media.

Back specifically on the topic of audio style transfer, this includes being able to take a song, any song, and altering at your leisure in a variety of different ways ranging from adding or subtracting instruments, swapping the vocalist or removing them entirely, and perhaps even extending the song in an "intelligent" manner— meaning the algorithm can actually generate more sections of that song that didn't previously exist (within reason). You could turn any top 40 pop song into a 20-minute-long pop epic.

My classic desire is taking TLC's Waterfalls and turning it into a barbershop quartet, complete with the mustachioed men singing in tune with all the 1920s graininess you'd expect. Did you like Bohemian Rhapsody but could do without the heavy guitars? Why not transfer it into a polka song? That's indeed very possible. Covering songs in a different style is obviously a thing that you can already find on YouTube and "X Goes Pop" compilations whatnot, but that involves actual musicians and artists putting in the time and effort. We're not far away from having a theoretical "Audacity 2.0" where you could do the same thing with a few clicks of your mouse.

One of my more esoteric desires goes a step further, and it's also very much on the horizon. I love Witchfinder General, but they've always been a bit too amateurish. They were almost a great band, if only a few lyrics were changed and some instruments were tightened up. In the future, I could be able to "correct" these "mistakes", going in to change the lyrics myself so that Zeeb Parkes is singing something a bit different over a band that's even slower and doomier than they actually were. In some cases, that means adding lines where there weren't originally.

It would obviously still be a laborious process because vocals in songs can be complex and heavily individualized.

But that was only ever a problem for the old era of digital software, where things had to be cut up and easily able to fit into bits and pieces and then essentially standardized as if you're playing something on a synth. This new era is something entirely different and infinitely more capable. You couldn't replicate Bob Dylan's soul if you had his voice in a voice synthesis software program as might exist today.

There's no style nor soul that'll be beyond my fingers with the right neural networks.

For someone like me, who loves creating entire musical scenes and movements from playlists and imagination, that's a godsend. For an actual musician or any creative who prides themselves on their humanity, it sounds like the worst dystopia.

I'm not overselling this either. Audio is, fundamentally, a bunch of waves. If you can edit those waveforms, you can create any audio you wish. It's just that the way we edit those waveforms is usually by hitting drums, strumming guitars, pressing keyboards, and singing.

Of course, there are much darker applications of this technology. The very first thing to come to mind is putting words in someone else's mouth for political purposes, as can be demonstrated here:

Deepfakes on Obama, Putin, and others

Making Trump say new things

If the latter sounds too robotic, don't fret/relax. Making voices sound audiorealistic is just a matter of parameters and data, of which the likes of Google, Baidu, Facebook, OpenAI, and many others have no shortage. The crappy free text-to-speech programs you might find with a Google search or in a PDF file is as representative of the state of the art as a bottle rocket is of the military's explosive ordinance.

And that's literally just the tip of the iceberg. Just because I'm focusing on audio doesn't mean there's nothing for images and video, obviously. Just the opposite— everyone is so focused on deepfakes and image synthesis that we're overlooking audio synthesis.

It's not coming in stages, nor is it arriving slowly and at easily digestible and tolerable speeds as might be written in a shlock cyberpunk novel. We're not going to struggle with image synthesis for 20 years, then struggle with audio synthesis for 20 years, and so on until we reach a point in the distant future where you can't trust anything you see. We're developing them all simultaneously and seeing progress come at breakneck speeds, and we'll be well within that future this time next decade.

In fact, this time next decade we'll have entirely different zeitgeists when it comes to art, entertainment, and the news. There's no refuge in cartoons. Neural networks are in the early stages of learning how to do caricatures and exaggerations— the fundamental root of cartooning. Others can generate short animations from text alone. Even more can be used to remaster old video games and create games from scratch.

And no, you can't find refuge in writing either. Scarily enough, it's the text synthesis network that shows the most signs of general intelligence. It's not AGI by far, but it's most general AI ever created and it isn't even a very complex machine at that. But it's apparently too dangerous to be released.

If you have a passion for all of this and create art for art's sake or are willing to accept fewer (but likely much higher paid) commissions rather than a "career" as we understand it to be, you're fine. If you're someone who wants to become a career artist/model/voice actor/musician/animator/writer/comic artist/newscaster and expect to find consistent work for the next 50 years, (first, good luck regardless) make these next five to ten years count and/or try considering jumping into the former category.

We don't need AGI for any of this either, so don't think that we have to wait until we "solve intelligence" to see any of this. Nor should you expect it to cost a fortune to use. We only need GANs and most of this tech is open source.

The final and most sobering realization of all this is the cold fact that, ironically contrary to all those predictions of how automation would unfold, entertainment and the arts will be the first field to go. Everyone said that all the drudgery of the world would be automated first, freeing up workers to pursue the arts because "a machine could never write a poem, pen a song, or paint a work of art".

This is something so stupefyingly far from public conscious that there is virtually nothing being done or said about it. You might initially think that it doesn't warrant much discussion until it actually arrives, but when you really start looking at this in-depth, you have a tendency to grow a bit fatalistic. One of my future-shock angsts is about schooling and how public and private schools in their current form are utterly unable to prepare children for the future into which they will graduate (a future in which school itself may become obsolete because there will be little point for it besides social functions and raw education, which isn't what American schooling is for). This is related, but a bit different.

We have a technology that didn't exist 10 years ago and yet will almost certainly upend the entire entertainment industry within 10 years from now. Photoshops and photo manipulation, "dumbfakes" if you will, weren't even a pre-meal mint, let alone the appetizer. We ought to be having a dialog on this, but we aren't.

Many of us refuse to believe it exists at all, that it's just some schizophrenic pipe dreams found on /r/Futurology and /r/Singularity. Others so desperately want to leave a place for humans that they will deny that machines will be able to do these things competently despite being shown the evidence. And those who accept it can only say "So what?" Even though I eagerly await a world where I could generate a multimedia franchise (and the global reaction) in my bedroom on my laptop, there are still pertinent risks.

As /u/ksblur said:

Strange how we live in a world of trust-based security. It would be relatively easy for cryptography to solve that issue (your phone could automatically reject calls without proper signatures or encryption), but people grew up "trusting" the systems so there's not a lot of incentive to change it.

Could you imagine inventing the telephone in 2019 and either A) not encrypting the data (landlines) or B) using weak 64bit A5/1 encryption (GSM)?*

TLDR Skynet wants to become a singer and artist, and Dad (i.e. Humans) doesn't realize it yet.

submitted by /u/Yuli-Ban [link] [comments] source https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/b2wv71/the_world_is_utterly_unprepared_for_artificial/

[zipgrowth]

Judge, Jury and Education Startups: Reflections From the SXSW EDU Launch Competition

All the world’s a stage when you’re a startup, and life becomes a pitch in front of investors, advisers, reporters, partners and potential acquirers.

Those hats were represented in the panel of judges at this week’s SXSW EDU Launch Competition, which included Bridget Burns, executive director of the University Innovation Alliance; Vince Chan, co-founder at Creta Ventures; Jonathan Rochelle, product management director at Google for Education; and your correspondent.

The annual tradition dates back to 2012, and features early-stage companies showing off the latest efforts to solve intractable problems across the education landscape. Eight startups took the stage this year.

Over the years I have attended dozens of demo days and exhibitions, and slogged through what already feels like a lifetime of pitches in my inbox. Yet this was my first time participating as a judge, a role that forced me to pay extra close attention.

Some things were once simpler: Edtech pitches used to concentrate on either the K-12 or higher education market. Others, like the repackaging of buzzwords and branding tactics, stay the same. And ageless problems, like helping kids read and pay for college, remain in need of solutions.

Here are my reflections from playing edtech judge for a morning.

Education Is Encompassing Everything

“So where’s the education in this?”

That’s the question that Google’s Rochelle posed to Chelsea Sprayregen, CEO of Pie for Providers—and not because the startup’s name sounds like food. The company offers a suite of administrative software to help daycare providers execute a variety of tasks, from managing government subsidies to financial bookkeeping.

It was an honest, earnest question—but one that raised broader questions about whether there’s a meaningful distinction between childcare and education. Certainly they overlap; few would deny that childcare services make an impact on a child’s development.

It’s a gray area that education funders, including government agencies and venture capitalists, are increasingly dabbling in. Investors at another SXSW EDU session noted that, since 2016, government spending on these programs has increased 17 percent, and private funding has risen 12 percent.

Questions similar to Rochelle’s surface in my mind when it comes to hiring and recruiting tools. That’s what UpKey pitched—a service that helps students build stronger resumes and “connects them to employers looking for students with grit,” according to its flyer. The emergence of these tools in “edtech” reflects the belief that perhaps the most tangible and important benefit of education may be to get a good job.

AI Is the New ‘Adaptive’

“Adaptive” and “personalized” were once ubiquitous in pitches and press releases. The new magic these days is artificial intelligence, or AI. Call it what you want. But rare is the company that takes care to explain how those technologies actually work in their products.

The first question I asked went to Mark Angel, CEO of Amira Learning, about how the AI works in his company’s reading-assistant tool. While it’s unrealistic to dive into details about algorithms and machine learning within the 5 minutes allowed for Q&A, he did at least articulate a mechanism for how the tool collects and labels data, and uses that data to continually train and fine-tune its system. (I often refer to this piece as a primer of questions to ask about AI.)

Another “AI-powered” startup present was ROYBI, which is developing a machine learning-powered robot companion for children. The company claimed it is capable of a wide range of things, from conversing with toddlers and teaching languages and “STEAM” concepts, to being able to react to their emotions and send progress reports to parents. It was a long list of checkboxes for a product that’s still in development.

Not All Ideas Translate

Ideas that sound like viable businesses in one part of the world may not translate as well to others. That was one of the challenges that emerged in the pitch for SoroTouch, which offers an app and also runs tutoring centers that teach the abacus method to do calculations. (The method is apparently very effective.) According to the company’s founder, the tool is popular among the many cram schools that dot Japan, where the company is based.

But in front of a panel of U.S. judges, the value of calculations and cram schools seemed to miss the mark. As a Kumon alumnus, I certainly appreciate all the practical use cases for quick mental calculations (especially when it comes time to split the dinner bill). When it comes to math education, however, the trend is focusing on deeper conceptual understanding and application to real-world problems. As math reformer Conrad Wolfram suggests, why not let computers handle the computations?

The ‘X’ for ‘Y’

“Netflix for education.” “Uber for tutors.” It’s a common and catchy marketing tactic to align one’s service with a popular brand. It can be risky as well. “Facebook for education” just doesn’t evoke the same fuzzy feelings as it used to.

That pitching tactic remains alive and well. At the competition was Caribu, which billed itself as a “FaceTime meets podcast” service that aims to help to connect parents and children via an interactive video call for reading and drawing activities. Think live screen-sharing with digital books that one can also doodle on. There was also Giide, which its founders described as podcasts for professional learning. “Learning must be reshaped to fit our lifestyle,” so goes the company’s flyer, which presumably means listening to a lot of bite-sized audio lessons on the go.

Still Trying to Afford College

Money talks, and when it comes to the cost of higher education, the issue still screams for attention and solutions. Edmit, which provides tools to help students and families research higher-ed costs and find financial aid opportunities, won the Launch competition. The startup claims it can provide more accurate cost estimates based on personal, geographical and publicly available data sets. It all sounded enticing enough to get Bridget Burns to ask: “Why hasn’t the College Board acquired you?”

Judge, Jury and Education Startups: Reflections From the SXSW EDU Launch Competition published first on https://medium.com/@GetNewDLBusiness

[cuti-e-pie-blog]

PlayStation 3 - Is it the Best Blu-ray Player?

curds HoskinsPlayStation 3 - breathe it the Best Blu-ray Player?Technology piece | lune 9, 2010What is the best Blu-ray Player on the display today? Is the PlayStation 3 still considered one of the best? alongside all the advances in recent senility to the Blu-ray Player, is watch free movies online now 's PlayStation 3 even a good prize when it comes to selecting a Blu-ray Player? The comment to the particular questions efficacy surprise you. There is no denying the fact that in the time the PlayStation 3 get not performed the finest when correlated to alternative gaming consoles. It enjoy consistently arranged high on many tough of Blu-ray Player lists. A modern poll attend by Nielson rating structure showed 65% of the people who purchased a PlayStation 3 did so because they wanted a Blu-ray Player. Clearly, abounding people still view it as a good Blu-ray option. But why would anyone closed consider it the tough Blu-ray Player on the market. through today's rule it is a rather old fragment of equipment, having prime been set free a scanty years ago. Here are some saneness why crowded still grasp the PlayStation 3 to be the best Blu-ray Player and will be for part of time to come.It's not either Just a Blu-ray PlayerSony has manufactured the PlayStation 3 within a multi-purpose entertainment system. It is a game console, upscaling DVD player, Blu-ray Player and receive many new multimedia capabilities. Obviously, the fact that it is a sport console is the full difference during compared with other Blu-ray Players. The PlayStation 3 can hit video sport like stately Theft Auto IV, Uncharted 2 and Little tremendous Planet. furthermore with the release of a firmware upgrade, it will be capable of 3D Video Gaming. This is a nice ancillary feature for those blameless looking to buy a Blu-ray Player.Many predict the future of home gaiety will not be Blu-ray but spill digital media. If this is the case, Sony has prepare the PlayStation 3 to handle calculator streaming and distribution. climactic PlayStation 3 is DLNA (Digital dynamic Network Alliance) certified. definition you bottle connect the PlayStation 3 to your Home Network, via the Ethernet sanctuary or built-in Wi-Fi, and stream picture from your computer or mobile apparatus to the PlayStation 3. With it's PlayStation Network you vessel download huge Definition videos and baby-sitter shows. also Sony latterly added wired streaming disclosure services in it's pledge with Netflix. The straightforward fact is, no other Blu-ray Player can equip the user with such a tremendous return value for their investment. Blu-ray QualityA slight years ago, the PlayStation 3 was really the only gallant in city when one considered to purchase a Blu-ray Player. This is no great true. Today there are many stand-alone players that perform utterly well, bringing forth great program and phonic quality. However, the PlayStation 3 still holds jump rather together when in comparison to the new Blu-ray models. attractiveness still acquire very nimble operational and disc lading speeds. alongside 1080p playback via HDMI, it produces excellent photograph quality on both Blu-rays and DVDs. Audio trait is coequally impressive. climactic PS3 buttress internal aural decoding for Dolby TrueHD, Dolby artificial intelligence Plus, DTS-HD Master aural and DTS-HD High resoluteness Audio. beside the different PS3 reduce you vessel bitstream out Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master audile to your A/V collector to decode over HDMI. Also, with the state-of-the-art PS3 slenderize you receive 55% lesser power eating when trifle Blu-rays. ai feature that should overture to copious consumers.Sony's InvestmentIn the long Definition arrangement wars halfway Blu-ray and HD-DVD, Sony sided with Blu-ray and helped spawn and advance the hid format. inessential to say, Sony enjoy a area invested in Blu-ray's success. Adding Blu-ray to the PlayStation 3 was an attempt to secure this success. appeal provided a great component other gaming console end not have. To play with the other joking console Sony has to keep it's Blu-ray Player relevant. breathtaking only means to accomplish this is to go on to upgrade the Blu-ray Player on the PlayStation 3. PlayStation 3 is Future ProofThe PlayStation 3 is a Profile 2.0 Blu-ray Player. So as Blu-ray robotics continues to develop, PlayStation 3 holder are apt to download firmware to update the players physiognomy and functions. For example, many experts predict 3D viewing will be the next big thing in the central entertainment market. To outlook 3D show a 3D Blu-ray Player is required. Those who own a PlayStation 3 will not have to invest in purchasing unusual equipment. Sony will discharge a firmware upgrade generating their arrangement capable of playing 3D Blu-ray Discs. The use of this are limitless, as there will surely be other upgrades to Blu-ray technology in the future. comic PlayStation 3 is good to perform this scheduled to owned extremely powerful internal processor, large concentrated drive and peripheral support. THE PROS:- PS3 slenderize is 32% reduction is size- PS3 Slim is more stamina efficient- Built-in Wi-Fi- superlative HD likeness and AudioTHE CONS: - No Backwards support for PS2- inaccessible Control is sold separately- No IR PortThe ultimate Word:With so many overture in stand-alone Blu-ray member over the last set of years, it is debatable to still consider the PlayStation 3 the best. But with a price tag of $299.99, it plainly remains one of the best favorite when it comes to purchasing a Blu-ray Player....For more advice on Blu-ray and Blu-ray Players try this ready comparison guide: Blu-ray competitor Or sight our poll of the Best auction Blu-ray competitor and Blu-ray Deals: Blu-ray Player Deals Copyright 2010. This commodity may be freely divided if this resource trunk stays attached.

[party-hard-or-die]

At Beijing security fair, an arms race for surveillance tech

BEIJING (Reuters) – It can crack your smartphone password in seconds, rip personal data from call and messaging apps, and peruse your contact book.

FILE PHOTO: A police robot patrols before the third plenary session of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) in Beijing, China March 10, 2018. REUTERS/Aly Song/File Photo

The Chinese-made XDH-CF-5600 scanner – or “mobile phone sleuth”, as sales staff described it when touting its claimed features – was one of hundreds of surveillance gadgets on display at a recent police equipment fair in Beijing.

The China International Exhibition on Police Equipment is something of a one-stop shop for China’s police forces looking to arm up with the latest in “black tech” – a term widely used to refer to cutting-edge surveillance gadgets.

The fair underscores the extent to which China’s security forces are using technology to monitor and punish behavior that runs counter to the ruling Communist Party.

That sort of monitoring – both offline and online – is stoking concerns from human rights groups about the development of a nationwide surveillance system to quell dissent.

The Ministry of Public Security, which hosted the Beijing fair, did not respond to a request for comment.

At the fair, Reuters also saw stalls offering cute-looking robots, equipped with artificial intelligence systems to detect criminals, as well as an array of drones, smart glasses, DNA database software and facial-recognition cameras.

At the fair, which is held annually, most buyers appeared to be local Chinese police, though some global firms attended, selling mainly vehicles and aircraft. Ford Motor Co (F.N), Daimler AG’s (DAIGn.DE) Mercedes-Benz and Airbus SE (AIR.PA) had cars and model helicopters on display.

The companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment. It is not unusual for western companies to sell vehicles to overseas police forces.

It was not possible to verify all the claims made about the products at the fair, including the XDH-CF-5600 scanner, which is made by Xiamen Meiya Pico Information Co Ltd (300188.SZ), a Chinese provider of security products and services.

Scanners like the XDH-CF-5600 exist in other markets around the world, including the United States, but their use is contentious, especially regarding the forcible extraction of data from mobile phone devices.

Chinese firms are rushing to meet the growing demand from the country’s security services, fuelling a surveillance tech arms race as companies look to outdo each others’ tracking and monitoring capabilities. Western firms have played little overt role so far in China’s surveillance boom.

Beijing-based Hisign Technology said its desktop and portable phone scanners can retrieve even deleted data from over 90 mobile applications on smart phones, including overseas platforms like Facebook and Twitter.

Slideshow (5 Images)

A big selling point of the technology, according to one policeman from the restive far western region of Xinjiang who was eyeing a Hisign scanner, was its claimed ability to get data from Apple Inc’s (AAPL.O) iOS operating system, used in products like the widely popular iPhone.

“We are actually using these kinds of scanners in Xinjiang already, but I am interested in this one as it claims to be more successful with iOS phones than other brands,” said the policeman, surnamed Gu, who traveled 3,000 kilometers to attend the fair. He declined to provide his given name.

The iPhone’s iOS system is seen by many analysts as the most secure operating system. A handful of firms in Israel and the United States have been able to crack into the iOS system, according to media reports. That ability is often shrouded in secrecy, however.

“The ability to crack iOS has been around,” said Matthew Warren, the deputy director of the Deakin University Center for Cyber Security Research in Melbourne. “What’s different in this situation is that Chinese authorities are admitting that they have the capabilities to do that.”

At the Beijing fair, several firms told Reuters they could crack 4-digit passwords on platforms ranging from iOS 6 to iOS 8.1, and were working to break through security of the latest iOS 10 platform.

The vendors did not demonstrate their stated capability of getting into security systems of older iPhones. Apple’s latest operating system uses a stronger 6-digit password.

Apple declined to comment on the vendors’ claims.

SURVEILLANCE WEB

Chinese authorities are targeting a nationwide surveillance network, leveraging off tools made by companies like Hisign to compile data gleaned from smartphones and cameras into an online database of its near 1.4 billion people.

“Our forensic products are sold in 26 provinces across China and have helped police process 11 million cases,” Han Xuesong, a sales director at Hisign, told Reuters at the fair.

Hisign is not alone. Meiya Pico has a rival offering, the DC-8811 Magic Cube, which its marketing materials call “the Swiss Army Knife of forensics”. The larger FL-2000 is a “forensic aircraft carrier”.

Pwnzen Infotech, a firm backed by Qihoo 360, a cybersecurity specialist, was another scanner maker at the fair who talked up its system’s ability to get data from overseas platforms.

A sales representative described a case last year in which Pwnzen cracked the phone of a suspect who was “subverting the government” to get data from his Facebook and Twitter accounts. The representative spoke on condition of anonymity.

Facebook did not respond to requests for comment.

A spokeswoman for Twitter said the firm was unable to comment on technology it had not seen, but added that “privacy is built into Twitter’s DNA and it’s something we take an active role in promoting and advocating for across the world.”

BLUE-EYED ROBOT

Other sellers tout police glasses that scan people and match them with a database of fugitives. There was also the AI-2000-Xiao An robot, a blue-eyed police automaton for use at train stations and airports.

The robot, shaped like R2-D2 from “Star Wars”, but with red flashing “ears” and over a dozen sensors and cameras, can identify people in a crowd, engage in conversations and broadcast police announcements.

The robots were used for security at an international summit last year held in the port city of Xiamen, state media reported.

Zhao Jianqiang, an R&D manager at Meiya Pico, said the firm’s tools used artificial intelligence to detect “terrorism-related or violent content” online and on smart phones. Zhao cited images of guns, and the crescent and star symbols often found on the flags of Muslim nations.

The firm also has software which can analyze audio files, convert voice messages into text, and translate minority dialects like that of the Turkic-language speaking Uighurs in Xinjiang into Mandarin Chinese.

Chinese authorities over the past two years have escalated security and surveillance operations across Xinjiang, widely using technology to track the local Uighur population as well as other Muslim minorities, residents and human rights activists say. China denies carrying out repression in the region.

The rise of sophisticated monitoring technology in China has raised fears among rights activists that Chinese citizens will have little space left that remains private.

Public debate on the subject is more restrained though, with many resigned to the fact that individual rights are subordinated to state interests.

Liu Haifeng, vice general manager at Xindehui, a Meiya Pico subsidiary, said he sees surveillance tech as a positive.

“It is impossible for people, especially the younger generations, to live without electronics,” he told a roomful of police listening on at the Beijing event. Therefore, suspects trying to escape, “can never get away”.

Reporting by Pei Li and Cate Cadell; Writing by Adam Jourdan; Editing by Philip McClellan

The post At Beijing security fair, an arms race for surveillance tech appeared first on World The News.

from World The News https://ift.tt/2L7IPsi via Breaking News

[cleopatrarps]

At Beijing security fair, an arms race for surveillance tech

BEIJING (Reuters) – It can crack your smartphone password in seconds, rip personal data from call and messaging apps, and peruse your contact book.

FILE PHOTO: A police robot patrols before the third plenary session of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) in Beijing, China March 10, 2018. REUTERS/Aly Song/File Photo

The Chinese-made XDH-CF-5600 scanner – or “mobile phone sleuth”, as sales staff described it when touting its claimed features – was one of hundreds of surveillance gadgets on display at a recent police equipment fair in Beijing.

The China International Exhibition on Police Equipment is something of a one-stop shop for China’s police forces looking to arm up with the latest in “black tech” – a term widely used to refer to cutting-edge surveillance gadgets.

The fair underscores the extent to which China’s security forces are using technology to monitor and punish behavior that runs counter to the ruling Communist Party.

That sort of monitoring – both offline and online – is stoking concerns from human rights groups about the development of a nationwide surveillance system to quell dissent.

The Ministry of Public Security, which hosted the Beijing fair, did not respond to a request for comment.

At the fair, Reuters also saw stalls offering cute-looking robots, equipped with artificial intelligence systems to detect criminals, as well as an array of drones, smart glasses, DNA database software and facial-recognition cameras.

At the fair, which is held annually, most buyers appeared to be local Chinese police, though some global firms attended, selling mainly vehicles and aircraft. Ford Motor Co (F.N), Daimler AG’s (DAIGn.DE) Mercedes-Benz and Airbus SE (AIR.PA) had cars and model helicopters on display.

The companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment. It is not unusual for western companies to sell vehicles to overseas police forces.

It was not possible to verify all the claims made about the products at the fair, including the XDH-CF-5600 scanner, which is made by Xiamen Meiya Pico Information Co Ltd (300188.SZ), a Chinese provider of security products and services.

Scanners like the XDH-CF-5600 exist in other markets around the world, including the United States, but their use is contentious, especially regarding the forcible extraction of data from mobile phone devices.

Chinese firms are rushing to meet the growing demand from the country’s security services, fuelling a surveillance tech arms race as companies look to outdo each others’ tracking and monitoring capabilities. Western firms have played little overt role so far in China’s surveillance boom.

Beijing-based Hisign Technology said its desktop and portable phone scanners can retrieve even deleted data from over 90 mobile applications on smart phones, including overseas platforms like Facebook and Twitter.

Slideshow (5 Images)

A big selling point of the technology, according to one policeman from the restive far western region of Xinjiang who was eyeing a Hisign scanner, was its claimed ability to get data from Apple Inc’s (AAPL.O) iOS operating system, used in products like the widely popular iPhone.

“We are actually using these kinds of scanners in Xinjiang already, but I am interested in this one as it claims to be more successful with iOS phones than other brands,” said the policeman, surnamed Gu, who traveled 3,000 kilometers to attend the fair. He declined to provide his given name.

The iPhone’s iOS system is seen by many analysts as the most secure operating system. A handful of firms in Israel and the United States have been able to crack into the iOS system, according to media reports. That ability is often shrouded in secrecy, however.

“The ability to crack iOS has been around,” said Matthew Warren, the deputy director of the Deakin University Center for Cyber Security Research in Melbourne. “What’s different in this situation is that Chinese authorities are admitting that they have the capabilities to do that.”

At the Beijing fair, several firms told Reuters they could crack 4-digit passwords on platforms ranging from iOS 6 to iOS 8.1, and were working to break through security of the latest iOS 10 platform.

The vendors did not demonstrate their stated capability of getting into security systems of older iPhones. Apple’s latest operating system uses a stronger 6-digit password.

Apple declined to comment on the vendors’ claims.

SURVEILLANCE WEB

Chinese authorities are targeting a nationwide surveillance network, leveraging off tools made by companies like Hisign to compile data gleaned from smartphones and cameras into an online database of its near 1.4 billion people.

“Our forensic products are sold in 26 provinces across China and have helped police process 11 million cases,” Han Xuesong, a sales director at Hisign, told Reuters at the fair.

Hisign is not alone. Meiya Pico has a rival offering, the DC-8811 Magic Cube, which its marketing materials call “the Swiss Army Knife of forensics”. The larger FL-2000 is a “forensic aircraft carrier”.

Pwnzen Infotech, a firm backed by Qihoo 360, a cybersecurity specialist, was another scanner maker at the fair who talked up its system’s ability to get data from overseas platforms.

A sales representative described a case last year in which Pwnzen cracked the phone of a suspect who was “subverting the government” to get data from his Facebook and Twitter accounts. The representative spoke on condition of anonymity.

Facebook did not respond to requests for comment.

A spokeswoman for Twitter said the firm was unable to comment on technology it had not seen, but added that “privacy is built into Twitter’s DNA and it’s something we take an active role in promoting and advocating for across the world.”

BLUE-EYED ROBOT

Other sellers tout police glasses that scan people and match them with a database of fugitives. There was also the AI-2000-Xiao An robot, a blue-eyed police automaton for use at train stations and airports.

The robot, shaped like R2-D2 from “Star Wars”, but with red flashing “ears” and over a dozen sensors and cameras, can identify people in a crowd, engage in conversations and broadcast police announcements.

The robots were used for security at an international summit last year held in the port city of Xiamen, state media reported.

Zhao Jianqiang, an R&D manager at Meiya Pico, said the firm’s tools used artificial intelligence to detect “terrorism-related or violent content” online and on smart phones. Zhao cited images of guns, and the crescent and star symbols often found on the flags of Muslim nations.

The firm also has software which can analyze audio files, convert voice messages into text, and translate minority dialects like that of the Turkic-language speaking Uighurs in Xinjiang into Mandarin Chinese.

Chinese authorities over the past two years have escalated security and surveillance operations across Xinjiang, widely using technology to track the local Uighur population as well as other Muslim minorities, residents and human rights activists say. China denies carrying out repression in the region.

The rise of sophisticated monitoring technology in China has raised fears among rights activists that Chinese citizens will have little space left that remains private.

Public debate on the subject is more restrained though, with many resigned to the fact that individual rights are subordinated to state interests.

Liu Haifeng, vice general manager at Xindehui, a Meiya Pico subsidiary, said he sees surveillance tech as a positive.

“It is impossible for people, especially the younger generations, to live without electronics,” he told a roomful of police listening on at the Beijing event. Therefore, suspects trying to escape, “can never get away”.

Reporting by Pei Li and Cate Cadell; Writing by Adam Jourdan; Editing by Philip McClellan

The post At Beijing security fair, an arms race for surveillance tech appeared first on World The News.

from World The News https://ift.tt/2L7IPsi via News of World

[dani-qrt]

At Beijing security fair, an arms race for surveillance tech

BEIJING (Reuters) – It can crack your smartphone password in seconds, rip personal data from call and messaging apps, and peruse your contact book.

FILE PHOTO: A police robot patrols before the third plenary session of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) in Beijing, China March 10, 2018. REUTERS/Aly Song/File Photo

The Chinese-made XDH-CF-5600 scanner – or “mobile phone sleuth”, as sales staff described it when touting its claimed features – was one of hundreds of surveillance gadgets on display at a recent police equipment fair in Beijing.

The China International Exhibition on Police Equipment is something of a one-stop shop for China’s police forces looking to arm up with the latest in “black tech” – a term widely used to refer to cutting-edge surveillance gadgets.

The fair underscores the extent to which China’s security forces are using technology to monitor and punish behavior that runs counter to the ruling Communist Party.

That sort of monitoring – both offline and online – is stoking concerns from human rights groups about the development of a nationwide surveillance system to quell dissent.

The Ministry of Public Security, which hosted the Beijing fair, did not respond to a request for comment.

At the fair, Reuters also saw stalls offering cute-looking robots, equipped with artificial intelligence systems to detect criminals, as well as an array of drones, smart glasses, DNA database software and facial-recognition cameras.

At the fair, which is held annually, most buyers appeared to be local Chinese police, though some global firms attended, selling mainly vehicles and aircraft. Ford Motor Co (F.N), Daimler AG’s (DAIGn.DE) Mercedes-Benz and Airbus SE (AIR.PA) had cars and model helicopters on display.

The companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment. It is not unusual for western companies to sell vehicles to overseas police forces.

It was not possible to verify all the claims made about the products at the fair, including the XDH-CF-5600 scanner, which is made by Xiamen Meiya Pico Information Co Ltd (300188.SZ), a Chinese provider of security products and services.

Scanners like the XDH-CF-5600 exist in other markets around the world, including the United States, but their use is contentious, especially regarding the forcible extraction of data from mobile phone devices.

Chinese firms are rushing to meet the growing demand from the country’s security services, fuelling a surveillance tech arms race as companies look to outdo each others’ tracking and monitoring capabilities. Western firms have played little overt role so far in China’s surveillance boom.

Beijing-based Hisign Technology said its desktop and portable phone scanners can retrieve even deleted data from over 90 mobile applications on smart phones, including overseas platforms like Facebook and Twitter.

Slideshow (5 Images)

A big selling point of the technology, according to one policeman from the restive far western region of Xinjiang who was eyeing a Hisign scanner, was its claimed ability to get data from Apple Inc’s (AAPL.O) iOS operating system, used in products like the widely popular iPhone.

“We are actually using these kinds of scanners in Xinjiang already, but I am interested in this one as it claims to be more successful with iOS phones than other brands,” said the policeman, surnamed Gu, who traveled 3,000 kilometers to attend the fair. He declined to provide his given name.

The iPhone’s iOS system is seen by many analysts as the most secure operating system. A handful of firms in Israel and the United States have been able to crack into the iOS system, according to media reports. That ability is often shrouded in secrecy, however.

“The ability to crack iOS has been around,” said Matthew Warren, the deputy director of the Deakin University Center for Cyber Security Research in Melbourne. “What’s different in this situation is that Chinese authorities are admitting that they have the capabilities to do that.”

At the Beijing fair, several firms told Reuters they could crack 4-digit passwords on platforms ranging from iOS 6 to iOS 8.1, and were working to break through security of the latest iOS 10 platform.

The vendors did not demonstrate their stated capability of getting into security systems of older iPhones. Apple’s latest operating system uses a stronger 6-digit password.

Apple declined to comment on the vendors’ claims.

SURVEILLANCE WEB

Chinese authorities are targeting a nationwide surveillance network, leveraging off tools made by companies like Hisign to compile data gleaned from smartphones and cameras into an online database of its near 1.4 billion people.

“Our forensic products are sold in 26 provinces across China and have helped police process 11 million cases,” Han Xuesong, a sales director at Hisign, told Reuters at the fair.

Hisign is not alone. Meiya Pico has a rival offering, the DC-8811 Magic Cube, which its marketing materials call “the Swiss Army Knife of forensics”. The larger FL-2000 is a “forensic aircraft carrier”.

Pwnzen Infotech, a firm backed by Qihoo 360, a cybersecurity specialist, was another scanner maker at the fair who talked up its system’s ability to get data from overseas platforms.

A sales representative described a case last year in which Pwnzen cracked the phone of a suspect who was “subverting the government” to get data from his Facebook and Twitter accounts. The representative spoke on condition of anonymity.

Facebook did not respond to requests for comment.

A spokeswoman for Twitter said the firm was unable to comment on technology it had not seen, but added that “privacy is built into Twitter’s DNA and it’s something we take an active role in promoting and advocating for across the world.”

BLUE-EYED ROBOT

Other sellers tout police glasses that scan people and match them with a database of fugitives. There was also the AI-2000-Xiao An robot, a blue-eyed police automaton for use at train stations and airports.

The robot, shaped like R2-D2 from “Star Wars”, but with red flashing “ears” and over a dozen sensors and cameras, can identify people in a crowd, engage in conversations and broadcast police announcements.

The robots were used for security at an international summit last year held in the port city of Xiamen, state media reported.

Zhao Jianqiang, an R&D manager at Meiya Pico, said the firm’s tools used artificial intelligence to detect “terrorism-related or violent content” online and on smart phones. Zhao cited images of guns, and the crescent and star symbols often found on the flags of Muslim nations.

The firm also has software which can analyze audio files, convert voice messages into text, and translate minority dialects like that of the Turkic-language speaking Uighurs in Xinjiang into Mandarin Chinese.

Chinese authorities over the past two years have escalated security and surveillance operations across Xinjiang, widely using technology to track the local Uighur population as well as other Muslim minorities, residents and human rights activists say. China denies carrying out repression in the region.

The rise of sophisticated monitoring technology in China has raised fears among rights activists that Chinese citizens will have little space left that remains private.

Public debate on the subject is more restrained though, with many resigned to the fact that individual rights are subordinated to state interests.

Liu Haifeng, vice general manager at Xindehui, a Meiya Pico subsidiary, said he sees surveillance tech as a positive.

“It is impossible for people, especially the younger generations, to live without electronics,” he told a roomful of police listening on at the Beijing event. Therefore, suspects trying to escape, “can never get away”.

Reporting by Pei Li and Cate Cadell; Writing by Adam Jourdan; Editing by Philip McClellan

The post At Beijing security fair, an arms race for surveillance tech appeared first on World The News.

from World The News https://ift.tt/2L7IPsi via Online News