http://www.popsci.com/article/science/bot-has-written-more-wikipedia-articles-anybody?src=SOC&dom=fb

This Bot Has Written More Wikipedia Articles Than AnybodyIt's responsible for 8.5 percent of Wikipedia articles. By

Douglas Main

Posted 07.14.2014 at 1:15 pm

This is not the Wiki bot; the real bot is a computer program, which just looks like a string of random letters and numbers.

Golfi1812 / YouTube

You might think writing 10,000 articles per day would be impossible. But not for a Swede named Sverker Johansson. He created a computer program that has written a total of 2.7 million articles, making Johansson the most prolific author, by far, on the "internet's encyclopedia." His contributions account for 8.5 percent of the articles on Wikipedia, the Wall Street Journal reports.

But how can a bot write so many articles, and do it coherently? As Johansson--a science teacher with degrees in linguistics, civil engineering, economics and particle physics--explained to the WSJ, the bot scrapes information from various trusted sources, and then cobbles that material together, typically into a very short entry, or "stub." Many of the articles cover the taxonomy of little-known animals such as butterflies and beetles, and also small towns in the Philippines (his wife is Filipino).

Johansson's creation, known as Lsjbot, is certainly not the only bot to write articles meant for human eyes. For example, the Associated Press just announced that it will use robots to write thousands of pieces, and other news outlets use programs to write articles, especially finance and

sports stories. And on Wikipedia, half of all of the edits are made by bots.

Several long-time members of Wikipedia are not happy that so many articles are being written by non-humans. But Johansson defends his bot, pointing out that the articles it writes are accurate (although there have been some glitches that he claims have been corrected), and can very useful. For example, Lsjbot wrote a stub about the town of Basey, in the Philippines. When Typhoon Yolanda hit the town, causing deaths, people were able to visit this stub and find out more about the town and its location.

***imagine how the bot could be better if it could parse the information into ‘events’ – for example for a sporting match ***

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/528721/ge-device-measures-the-calories-on-your-plate/

Calories on Your PlateLow-energy microwaves can tell you the caloric content of food, providing a more accurate estimate of what is on your plate.

By Kevin Bullis on July 8, 2014

Why It MattersCounting calories for diets can be tedious and inaccurate.

Calorie counter: A prototype from GE measures calories in blended foods like the mixture shown here. The technology is about to graduate to solid foods.

Self-tracking devices like the Fitbit do a fair, if imperfect, job at measuring how much you move and then inferring how many calories you’ve burned in a day. But they don’t measure how many calories you consume. You can enter calorie estimates into an app, but doing so is a tedious and often inaccurate process.

GE researchers have a prototype device that directly measures the calories in your food. So far it only works on blended foods—the prototype requires a homogenous mixture to get an accurate reading. But they’re developing a version of the device that will determine the calories in a plate of food—say, a burrito, some chips, and guacamole—and send the information to your smartphone.

Matt Webster, the senior scientist in diagnostic imaging and biomedical technologies at GE Research who invented the calorie counter, says eventually the device might be incorporated into a microwave oven or some other kitchen appliance. Heat your food, and at the same time get a readout of the

precise calorie count, without measuring out portions and consulting nutritional charts.

Webster analyzed nutritional data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture—which contains detailed information on thousands of foods—and determined that it’s possible to get an accurate calorie estimate using just three pieces of data—fat content, water content, and weight. The calories from all the other constituents of food—such as sugar, fiber, and protein—can be approximated by subtracting the water and fat weight from the total weight.

In tests using the prototype to measure mixtures of oil, sugar, and water, results were within 5 to 10 percent of the results from standard, destructive means of measuring calorie content, such as the bomb calorimeter that measures food calorie content by burning it.

…

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/07/16/a-robot-with-a-little-humanity/?_php=true&_type=blogs&ref=technology&_r=0

A Robot With a Little HumanityBy JOHN MARKOFF July 16, 2014 9:00 amJuly 16, 2014 9:00 amComment

Photo

At almost a foot tall, the Jibo robot wirelessly connects to the Internet, and has a moveable LCD screen that in demonstrations displays an expressive orb, but not a human face

As a graduate student at M.I.T. in the 1990s, Cynthia Breazeal studied with the roboticist Rodney Brooks and explored the idea of “social” robots that were designed to interact and collaborate with humans.

In 2012 Dr. Brooks began selling a stationary robot, Baxter, bearing an expressive LCD-panel “face” and intended to collaborate with human workers in manufacturing and logistics.

Now Dr. Breazeal (pronounced bruh-ZILL), who is on leave from her teaching position at the M.I.T. Media Laboratory, is trying to bring similar ideas to the home in the form of a robot

companion: Jibo.Dr. Breazeal is best known for the creation of an elaborate robot head, Kismet , that contained actuators, sensors and computer technology for understanding and interacting with humans, primarily infants and young children. Kismet had eyes, ears and a mouth, was expressive and tried to mimic human emotional states.

Jibo, in contrast, is more of an abstraction. Almost a foot tall, weighing six pounds and wirelessly connected to the Internet, it has a moveable LCD screen that in demonstrations displays an expressive orb, but not a human face.

Jibo will be something of an alarm clock on steroids. The robot, which is a stack of three components allowing the display to swivel freely in any direction, is intended to be a family companion performing a variety of interactive tasks like sending messages, taking pictures, acting as a personal messenger and serving as a robotic stand-in during conversations between people in different places, as well as a “friend” with a personality.

The company is also hoping that software developers will seize on Jibo as a platform and create applications that will extend the robot’s functions to things like tutoring and coaching.

“It’s really important for technology to be humanized,” Dr. Breazeal said. “The next stage in computing, the next wave, is emotion.”

A promotional video of the Jibo robot, which is something of an alarm clock on steroids.

By placing an “intelligent” system in homes, she says, she is hoping to transform the nature of computer-human interaction — from today’s systems using mice, keyboards, windows and touch to something that is more natural and mimics the way humans themselves interact. Jibo also represents a model for robotics that is intended to extend or augment human capabilities rather than replace them.

Sony sold a robotic home pet, Aibo, from 1999 to 2006, and last month Softbank, a Japanese consumer electronics firm, announced that in early 2015 it would begin selling Pepper, a four-foot-tall, 65-pound home robot that is capable of “reading” human emotions. Pepper will cost $1,900.

Roboticists say the companies introducing home robots still face significant technical hurdles.

“Cynthia has been a great pioneer in this field, including her work at M.I.T. with Kismet,” said Tandy Trower, an engineer who led Microsoft’s robotics group and more recently founded Hoaloha Robotics to focus on elder care in the home. “However, delivering such an experience that is more than a toy is not easy, as it requires being able to replicate human interaction not just for a few hours, but day after day.”

Robots and computers that mimic human qualities are still highly controversial among computer scientists and technologists. Ben Shneiderman is a University of Maryland computer scientist who has argued for interface design where users directly manipulate virtual objects and has been opposed to the development of computer “agents” with imitation personalities. While both Apple and Microsoft have developed such humanized assistants with their Siri and Cortana smartphone assistants, Google has shied away from humanizing the speech-recognition functions of its Android phones.

…

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/07/09/ibm-wants-to-invent-the-chips-of-the-future-not-make-them/?ref=technology

IBM Wants to Invent the Chips of the Future, Not Make ThemBy STEVE LOHR July 9, 2014 5:00 pmJuly 10, 2014 12:19 pm9 Comments

IBM plans to spend $3 billion over the next five years on research and development for computer chips, both to stretch the limits of conventional semiconductors and to hasten the commercialization of exotic new designs.

The chip program, announced Wednesday, will be among the largest research initiatives at IBM, which spends about $6 billion a year on research and development. “We’re investing to really push the frontiers” of chip technology, said John E. Kelly, senior vice president and director of research at IBM.

The effort, Mr. Kelley said, will have two main goals. The first will be to wring further improvements from current silicon chip technology, by shrinking the tiny circuits from today’s 22 nanometers down to 7 nanometers, a few atoms wide. The second goal is to accelerate progress on novel and promising, if unproved, approaches — designs that employ quantum physics, carbon nanotubes and chips inspired by the brain, called neuromorphic chips.

To step up its chip research, Mr. Kelly said IBM would be hiring more scientists and investing in industry partnerships and academic collaborations.

The IBM research announcement is also an emphatic statement about the company’s unfolding strategy in the chip business. It will invest heavily in research, pursue streams of licensing revenue, and yet leave the manufacturing to others. For several months, IBM has been seeking to sell its chip-manufacturing operations, confirmed a person who has been briefed on the talks who would speak only on the condition of anonymity. The most likely buyer is GlobalFoundries, a large contract chip manufacturer, the person said, for a price of probably less than $2 billion.

IBM’s move to sell off its chip plants in East Fishkill, N.Y., and in Burlington, Vt., and its talks with GlobalFoundries and other companies were reported this year by The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg News. GlobalFoundries was created in 2009 when Advanced Micro Devices spun out its manufacturing operations, and it later acquired the chip factories of Chartered Semiconductor. Globalfoundries, based in Santa Clara, Calif., has manufacturing operations in Germany, Singapore and a new chip factory outside Albany, N.Y. IBM has worked with GlobalFoundries on manufacturing technology and skill.

…

http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2014/07/how-cia-partnered-amazon-and-changed-intelligence/88555/

How the CIA Partnered With Amazon and Changed Intelligence Frank Konkel Nextgov July 11, 2014

The intelligence community is about to get the equivalent of an adrenaline shot to the chest. This summer, a $600 million computing cloud developed by Amazon Web Services for the Central Intelligence Agency over the past year will begin servicing all 17 agencies that make up the intelligence community. If the technology plays out as officials envision, it will usher in a new era of cooperation and coordination, allowing agencies to share information and services much more easily and avoid the kind of intelligence gaps that preceded the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

For the first time, agencies within the IC will be able to order a variety of on-demand computing and analytic services from the CIA and National Security Agency. What’s more, they’ll only pay for what they use. 

Frank Konkel is the editorial events editor for Government Executive Media Group and a technology journalist for its publications. He writes about emerging technologies, privacy, cybersecurity, policy and other issues at the intersection of government and technology. He began writing about ... Full Bio

The vision was first outlined in the IC Information Technology Enterprise plan championed by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and IC Chief Information Officer Al Tarasiuk almost three years ago. Cloud computing is one of the core components of the strategy to help the IC discover, access and share critical information in an era of seemingly infinite data. 

For the risk-averse intelligence community, the decision to go with a commercial cloud vendor is a radical departure from business as usual.

…

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/528846/travel-app-can-recommend-places-by-looking-at-them/

Travel App Can Recommend Places by Looking at ThemWeb News

Travel App Can Recommend Places by Looking at ThemSoftware that counts dogs, martini glasses, and mustaches in Instagram photos provides a novel way to rate businesses.

By Caleb Garling on July 14, 2014

Why It MattersSoftware that can understand the contents of images could provide valuable new data sources.

Food finder: Jetpac works out good places to eat by extracting data from photos shared on Instagram.

A travel app called Jetpac hopes to tackle two of the most pressing questions of our time: how can machines reliably extract information from images, and what exactly is the definition of a hipster?

Jetpac provides a consumer guide to local restaurants, bars, and coffee shops. But unlike competitors such as Yelp, it doesn’t rely on customers writing up reviews. Instead the company uses software to process public Instagram photos tagged with the business’s name and measures things like the number of smiles in the picture or amount of blue sky. Jetpac uses that information to help people searching for a tranquil coffee shop with outdoor seating or suitable venue for a social gathering.

“It’s like you stuck your head in the bar,” says Jetpac CTO Pete Warden. “Photos have a lot of signals in them.” Those include whether a bar is dog-friendly (which can be determined by counting pooches per picture) or high-class (by looking for clues such as martini glasses rather than beer cans).

Jetpac’s image analysis can also reveal things about specific Instagram users that guide its recommendations. Gastronomes tend to snap Instagram pictures of their groceries, so restaurants they frequent are likely to be foodie favorites. If the majority of an Instagram user’s photos are in Seattle and suddenly a few smiling pictures appear in Boston, Jetpac takes it as a signal that person is visiting a good tourist spot.

Jetpac does turn to humans to help its software with more qualitative measures, though. To inform the app’s “hipster finder,” which tries to point people to the coolest places in a city, Warden and his team used the crowdsourcing service Mechanical Turk. People were asked to label photos with key markers, like mustaches, plaid clothing, or chunky glasses, providing baseline data that allowed software to look for similar patterns in future photos to peg establishments with high hipster attendance.

…

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/528916/israeli-rocket-defense-system-is-failing-expert-analysts-say/

Israeli Rocket Defense System Is Failing, Expert Analysts SayAlthough it appears to hit incoming Hamas rockets, Israel’s system could be falling short of detonating the rockets’ warheads.

By David Talbot on July 10, 2014

Why It MattersIsrael and the United States have invested hundreds of millions of dollars to enable Israel to defend against rocket and missile attacks.

Flawed technology: Analysts question whether Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system, seen here firing to intercept a rocket headed for Tel Aviv, is achieving its aims.

Even though Israel’s U.S.-funded “Iron Dome” rocket-defense interceptors appear to be hitting Hamas rockets in recent days, they are almost certainly failing in the crucial job of detonating those rockets’ shrapnel-packed explosive warheads, expert analysts say.

As a result, rockets fired from Gaza are probably plunging to the ground with intact explosives. The fact that they aren’t causing injuries or deaths in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and other cities is mainly a matter of luck, the analysts add.

On Thursday, the Israel Defense Forces said missiles from the system had intercepted 56 rockets fired out of Gaza, preventing

strikes in several cities. Yet Richard Lloyd, a weapons expert and consultant who is a past Engineering Fellow at Raytheon Integrated Defense Systems, says that because these interceptions had almost certainly not detonated the rockets’ warheads, the system is essentially failing.

The Iron Dome system—meant to hit rockets traveling tens of miles from launch to landing—is a smaller cousin to the Patriot system, which attempts to hit much longer-range, faster incoming missiles. Iron Dome fires interceptors six inches wide and 10 feet long and uses sensors and real-time guidance systems to try to zero in on the rockets.

…

http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/09/forget-ok-glass-mindrdr-is-a-new-google-glass-app-that-you-control-with-your-thoughts/

Forget “OK Glass,” MindRDR Is A Google Glass App You Control With Your ThoughtsPosted 19 hours ago by Ingrid Lunden (@ingridlunden)

Google Glass has made a name for itself (somewhat infamously) as head-mounted hardware that you can control with your voice and a sliding finger. Now, a team based out of interactive studio   This Place   in London, is launching a new app that it hopes will kickstart an even more seamless way of interacting with the device: with the power of your mind.

MindRDR, as the app is called, links up Google Glass with another piece of head-mounted hardware, the Neurosky EEG biosensor, to create a communication loop.

The Neurosky biosensor picks up on brainwaves that correlate to your ability to focus. The app then translates these brainwaves into a meter reading that gets superimposed on the camera view in Google Glass. As you “focus” more with your mind, the meter goes up, and the app takes a photograph of what you are seeing in front of you. Focus some more, and the meter goes up again and the photo gets posted to Twitter. Like this:

It’s an early, and somewhat primitive vision of how your mind can control Glass.

Yes, there are devices out there that have even more sensors on them, although that can start to get very expensive (the Neurosky retails for £71 in the UK, while Google Glass costs £1,000 and the app is free).

And to be honest, the current hook-up is pretty primitive, too. When I arrived for a demonstration earlier today, one of This Place’s account managers was cooling Glass down under the air conditioner.

And that’s before you start to put on two different bits of headgear. It can be a little clumsy.

But all this isn’t the point: The idea here is that this is a minimum viable product, a first step that can be developed further — for example, to create applications to “train” people to concentrate better, or to play games, maybe to help suggest places to get a coffee when your sensor picks up that you’re tired, or for medical applications, for example for people with mobility problems.

…

http://www.wired.com/2014/07/qylur-security-world-cup/?mbid=social_fb

how to questify – how to do the collaboration in a manner consistent with QuEST?

Not as engineered - thus the point of the challenge - what they've engineered is a means to have the system find stuff that looks like the stuff the human wants to have examined - what are the links that the human used to determine this should be of concerned - that it is anomalous is NOT captured - that is what you would have to do - possibly have a google glass or something attached to the human as they find these anomalous items stating why they are concerned - but of course as we know they will not know all of the reasons they find it anomalous (type 1 stuff down in their gut they will confabulate explanations for) -

Capt amerika / Adam

The Brilliant Machine That Could Finally Fix Airport Security

By Alex Davies  

Fans at a World Cup game at Arena de Baixada stadium in Curitiba, Brazil use the Qylatron to

go through security. Qylur

Australian fans pumped to see their team take on Spain during the first round of the World Cup were intrigued by the honeycomb-like machine that had replaced the standard manual search process at Arena de Baixada stadium in Curitiba, Brazil. They were less thrilled when the machine spotted the toy kangaroos they were trying to sneak into the match.

That machine is the Qylatron Entry Experience Solution, and it could soon replace a crappy experience of going through security checks at airports and other venues with one that’s faster and less invasive. Instead of having a human poke around in your bag, the machine scans it for a variety of threats in just a few seconds. Searching those Aussies and other soccer fans may prove to be a watershed moment for the system, a successful test of how well it can spot trouble and move people through security, efficiently and with their dignity intact.

The system is the work of Silicon Valley-based Qylur Security Systems, and it consists of five pods that sit around a central sensor. The process is a much closer to being pleasant than having your stuff searched by hand at a stadium or going through the mundane horrors of TSA security. You don’t have to open your bag or let any else touch it. And with five people moving through at once, you’re through security before you have time to really get annoyed.

…

http://money.cnn.com/2014/07/09/technology/security/ransomware/index.html

The new plague: Computer viruses that extort youBy Jose Pagliery  @Jose_Pagliery July 10, 2014: 11:20 AM ET

The FBI cut off communication between the Cryptolocker ransomware network and victims' computers. But the virus lives on. NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

Ransomware, a particularly annoying breed of computer virus, is spreading like the plague. This malware locks you out of your computer files until you pay up -- and it is proving incredibly difficult to exterminate.

A major ransomware operation called Cryptolocker was supposedly halted by the FBI in May. Not so fast, security experts say. It's only a setback.

Cryptolocker used a massive network of hijacked computers called a "botnet" to spread the virus. The FBI, foreign law enforcement and private security companies teamed up to cut off communication between that botnet and victims' devices. They seized Cryptolocker's servers and replaced them with their own.

But as antivirus maker Bitdefender points out, all that accomplished was to stop Cryptolocker's virus delivery system. Cryptolocker lives on, and its criminal masters just need to find a new botnet to start delivering viruses to new computers once again.

If the criminals tweak the virus' code and find a different set of servers, law enforcement is back at square one.

"All the attackers need to do is update the malware," said Bogdan Botezatu, Bitdefender's senior threat analyst.

In just nine months, Cryptolocker had kidnapped the files of 400,000 people -- most of them Americans. Victims were told to pay $300 within three days in order to receive the key to their files. Only a tiny fraction of them paid up, but the criminals still collected more than $4 million.

…