German officials have told Tesla to stop using the term ‘Autopilot’ for its driver assistance tools. It argues the name gives a false impression of how little attention users can pay while driving with the feature. Rather than being a full-blown autonomous/self-driving vehicle system, Autopilot is more of an enhanced version of established features such […]
Google has tweaked its “deep learning” AI to use an external memory bank. It’s an attempt to replicate the way human brains use short term memory to simplify reasoning. The company demonstrated the approach by having the system teach itself the London Underground (subway) map and figure out the quickest route between stops. It’s a […]
Fun as it might be to trawl thrift stores and flea markets for a mint condition Famicon and Disk System, it turns out there’s a perfect place to look: Nintendo’s storage rooms. The company has just dug out a pile of both the consoles and disk systems in their original boxes which appear to have […]
President Obama has renewed a call for an American crew to walk on Mars by the 2030s. He says such a mission will require collaboration between private companies and government agencies. It’s the same timetable Obama gave in speeches in 2010 and 2015. However, articles by both Obama and NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden published this […]
Apple and Samsung are headed to the Supreme Court today in a battle that could have a major impact on the “patent wars” that have dominated the tech sector. As usual with the Supreme Court, this week’s hearing isn’t about the facts of the case as such. A lengthy series of hearings and appeals in […]
Britain’s Prime Minister has reportedly banned cabinet members from wearing Apple Watches during meetings. The move is said to be inspired by fears of Russian hackers. The Telegraph newspaper says Theresa May’s decision beefs up an existing policy which meant ministers had to leave their smartphones outside the room during meetings. That was driven by […]
British soap viewers who also enjoy Star Trek had a double-take when they saw a character with a definite hint of Captain Kirk in her clothing. The costume department working on Coronation Street did not intend character Izzy Armstrong’s garb to be quite so out of this world. However, actress Cherrylee Houston noticed the combination […]
Roku has announced three new devices including a $30 ‘Express’ model that’s clearly being pushed as a rival to Chromecast and more expensive models with 4K upscaling. The company is ditching its policy of numbering its products, reasoning that as it’s launching new entry-level devices, the old “higher number = better device) system might get […]
A new California law gives some actors the right to force sites such as IMDb to stop listing their age. Supporters of the law say it will fight age discrimination while critics call it an attack on free speech. The law comes after a previous court case in Washington State that ruled that sites are […]
Google says its algorithm can correctly caption a photograph with nearly 94 percent accuracy. The company says the improvements come in the third version of its system named Inception, with the score coming from a standardized auto-caption test named ImageNet. It reports the first version scored 89.6 percent, the second 91.8 percent and the new […]