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University of Columbia Researchers Translate Brain Signals Directly Into Speech Published on February 01, 2019 at 12:30PM dryriver writes: There is good news for people who have limited or no ability to speak, due to having suffered a stroke for example. Researchers at Columbia University have managed to turn brain signals in the auditory cortex of test subjects into somewhat intelligible speech using a vocoder-like system with audio output cleaned up by neural networks. The findings have been published in the journal Nature. Here's an excerpt from the Zuckerman Institute's press release, which contains example audio of a number sequence being turned into robotic speech: "In a scientific first, Columbia neuroengineers have created a system that translates thought into intelligible, recognizable speech. By monitoring someone's brain activity, the technology can reconstruct the words a person hears with unprecedented clarity. This breakthrough, which harnesses the powe

Following the takedown of hundreds of pages and groups linked to Iran on Thursday , Facebook has continued its cull in Indonesia. The social media giant has been targeting "coordinated inauthentic behavior" on the platform, announcing on Thursday the removal of accounts, pages, and groups linked to the Saracen Group. SEE ALSO: Some Facebook employees considered quitting over Apple mess Described as a "fake news syndicate," the Saracen Group has been under the spotlight for its smear campaigns against Indonesian politicians and other people.  According to The Straits Times , the syndicate reportedly charged $5,600 for a customised fake news article, which would then be disseminated to its hundreds of thousands of followers. Read more... More about Facebook , Politics , Social Media , Indonesia , and Social Media Companies from Mashable http://bit.ly/2ShUT1m

Nintendo is releasing yet another game for your phone. The company is set to release its puzzle game Dr. Mario World for iOS and Android devices sometime during the "early summer" of this year, as per an announcement on Thursday. SEE ALSO: Meet the kid who paid for college by creating a Roblox game There's not a whole lot of detail yet, aside from the fact that the game will be free to download, but as you can expect, it will come with in-app purchases.  The doctor is in! Mario puts on the white coat once again in the mobile game Dr. Mario World, targeting an early summer 2019 global release #DrMario https://t.co/DTRBympHj0 pic.twitter.com/RfMZbbs3Mp — Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) January 31, 2019 Read more... More about Entertainment , Gaming , Nintendo , Mario , and Entertainment from Mashable http://bit.ly/2BczpJF

Scientists Create Super-Thin 'Sheet' That Could Charge Our Phones Published on February 01, 2019 at 09:00AM An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Scientists at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have created super-thin, bendy materials that absorb wireless internet and other electromagnetic waves in the air and turn them into electricity. The lead researcher, Tomas Palacios, said the breakthrough paved the way for energy-harvesting covers ranging from tablecloths to giant wrappers for buildings that extract energy from the environment to power sensors and other electronics. Details have been published in the journal Nature. Palacios and his colleagues connected a bendy antenna to a flexible semiconductor layer only three atoms thick. The antenna picks up wifi and other radio-frequency signals and turns them into an alternating current. This flows into the molybdenum disulphide semiconductor, where it is converted into a direct electrical current. [M]

Giving the Humble Stethoscope an AI Upgrade Could Save Millions of Kids Published on February 01, 2019 at 08:10AM the_newsbeagle writes: The stethoscope is a ubiquitous medical tool that has barely changed since it was invented in the early 1800s. But now a team of engineers, doctors, and public health researchers have come together to reinvent the tool using adaptive acoustics and AI. Their motivation is this statistic: Every year, nearly 1 million kids die of pneumonia around the world, with most deaths in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. The death toll is highest among children under the age of 5. The researchers, from Johns Hopkins University, designed a smart stethoscope for use by unskilled workers in noisy medical clinics. It uses a dynamic audio filtering system to remove ambient noise and distracting body sounds while not interfering with the subtle sounds from the lungs. And it uses AI to analyze the cleaned-up signal and provide a diagnosis. Read more of this story a

Facebook's questionable research tactics has led Apple to remind them who's boss. After TechCrunch revealed Facebook misused Apple's Enterprise Developer Certificate program to spy on consumer phone and web activity through its "Research" app, Apple pulled the plug. SEE ALSO: Facebook is making more money than ever because nothing matters Facebook relies on Apple's program to run internal apps on iOS devices, from simple things like bus schedules to communication tools like Workplace and Messenger. That led to plenty of frustration within Facebook's workplace, as employees were unable to get work done due to the shutdown, as reported in the New York Times . Read more... More about Tech , Facebook , Apple , Social Media Companies , and Big Tech Companies from Mashable http://bit.ly/2G5Tohh

Facebook may have just been caught spying on teens' phones under the guise of "market research," but the company isn't about to apologize for it. In a company memo published by Business insider , Facebook's VP of Production, Engineering, and Security Pedro Canahuati , attempts to explain the company's ongoing drama with Apple that resulted from news of its "research" app being made public. SEE ALSO: 'F*ck ethics. Money is everything': Facebook employees react to scandal on gossip app Apple earlier revoked Facebook's Enterprise Certificate, which allows companies to distribute apps internally outside of its App Store. Thousands of Facebook employees rely on these apps for day-to-day work. On Thursday, Apple granted Facebook a new Enterprise Certificate, but the company now has to rebuild "a few dozen" apps, as Canahuat explained in his memo to employees. Read more... More about Tech , Facebook , Tech , and Social Media

Second China-Bound Apple Car Worker Charged With Data Theft Published on February 01, 2019 at 07:30AM schwit1 shares a report from Bloomberg: An Apple hardware engineer was charged by the U.S. with stealing the iPhone maker's driverless car secrets for a China-based company, the second such case since July amid an unprecedented crackdown by the Trump administration on Chinese corporate espionage. Jizhong Chen was seen by a fellow Apple employee taking photographs Jan. 11 with a wide-angle lens inside a secure work space that houses the company's autonomous car project, about six months after he signed a strict confidentiality oath when he was hired, according to a criminal complaint in federal court in San Jose, California. Prosecutors said Chen admitted to taking the photos and backing up some 2,000 files to his personal hard drive, including manuals and schematics for the project, but didn't tell Apple he had applied for a job with a China-based autonomous vehicle compa

Tesla Reports Second-Consecutive Profit; CFO Retires Again Published on February 01, 2019 at 07:05AM Rei writes: Yesterday, Tesla reported their 4th quarter earnings, representing their second consecutive profit. While earnings per share missed analyst expectations ($1.93 vs. $2.20), revenue beat expectations by around $100 million and free cash flow ($910 million) was more than double the First Call consensus of $395 million. Model 3 margins were maintained at an impressive 20% level despite significant reductions in the average sale price in Q4; labor hours fell by 20% in Q4 and 65% in the second half of 2018 alone. With $3.7 billion in the bank, Tesla is now well positioned to repay its $920 million March convertible bond obligations in cash. Severance costs and an increase in inventory in transit due to shipments to Europe and China are expected to hurt Tesla's profits in Q1, but guidance for Q2 onward in 2019 is strong. Highlights planned for 2019 include introduction of fas

Windows Setup Error Messages Will Soon Actually Help Fix Problems Published on February 01, 2019 at 06:40AM An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The next major Windows release, the Windows 10 April 2019 Update (codenamed 19H1), is going to offer some significant improvements [to error messages]. Microsoft described them on its Windows Insider webcast, and they were spotted initially by WinFuture. Currently, the best case during installation is something like this screen. The message says that an incompatible application is detected, and a Knowledge Base article is referenced. It turns out that most Windows users don't know what "KBxxxxxxx" actually means, and the article isn't hyperlinked to make accessing it any easier. Issues detected through the other setup experience aren't much better. Windows will offer to uninstall problem applications, but often the better solution is to upgrade the application in question. The new setup process aims to

H-1B Visa Lottery Will Now Favor Masters, Doctorate Degree Holders Published on February 01, 2019 at 06:00AM McGruber shares a report from The San Francisco Chronicle: The Department of Homeland Security announced a rule change Wednesday that will transform the lottery that decides who gets the 85,000 H-1B visas granted to for-profit companies every year. Previously, an initial lottery granted 20,000 visas only to those holding advanced degrees granted by U.S. institutions -- master's degrees or doctorates -- and then a general lottery granted 65,000 visas to all qualified applicants. The Department of Homeland Security switched the order of these lotteries, it said in a notice of the final rule change, which will bolster the odds for highly educated foreign nationals. The change reduces the likelihood that people with just a bachelor's degree will win in the general lottery, said Lisa Spiegel, an attorney at Duane Morris in San Francisco and head of the firm's immigratio

Hacker Spoke To Baby and Hurled Obscenities At Couple Using Nest Camera, Dad Says Published on February 01, 2019 at 05:20AM pgmrdlm shares a report from CBS News: An Illinois couple said a hacker spoke to their baby through one of their Nest security cameras and then later hurled obscenities at them, CBS station WBBM-TV reports. Arjun Sud told the station he was outside his 7-month-old son's room Sunday outside Chicago and he heard someone talking. "I was shocked to hear a deep, manly voice talking," Sud said. "My blood ran cold." Sud told WBBM-TV he thought the voice was coming over the baby monitor by accident. But it returned when he and his wife were downstairs. The voice was coming from another of the many Nest cameras throughout the couple's Lake Barrington house. "Asking me, you know, why I'm looking at him -- because he saw obviously that I was looking back -- and continuing to taunt me," Sud said. Later that night, Arjun Sud noticed

Fake News Sites Are Changing Their Domain Name To Get Around Facebook Fact-Checkers Published on February 01, 2019 at 04:40AM An anonymous reader quotes a report from Mashable: In order to avoid Facebook's fact checking system, the site formerly known as YourNewsWire, one of the most well-known purveyors of fake news online, has simply rebranded. The site now goes by News Punch and posts fake news content similar to what it published under their former name, according to a report by Poynter. YourNewsWire co-founders Sinclair Treadway and Sean Adl-Tabatabai, who reside in California, founded the site in 2014. The two completely migrated the website from the "yournewswire.com" domain name to "newspunch.com" in November 2018. Treadway told Bloomberg at the time that they move was made due to declining revenue thanks to Facebook's fact-checking system. Under this program, fact-checking outlets like Snopes are able to mark content posted on Facebook as false, w

UltraViolet Digital Movie Locker is Shutting Down Published on February 01, 2019 at 04:00AM UltraViolet, one of the entertainment industry's first attempts at creating a comprehensive digital locker service, is shutting down on July 31st. Users should link their libraries to the service of at least one retailer which can then be used to access their films and TV shows after the shutdown. From a report: UltraViolet's days were numbered ever since Disney, the only major Hollywood studio not to join, launched its expanded Movies Anywhere locker service in 2017. Not only did it offer broad studio support, but it could also be connected to major digital retailers like iTunes, Amazon, and Google Play, unlike UltraViolet. Additional resources: How to safeguard your UltraViolet library. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google is joining Facebook in iOS hell. Apple has now revoked Google’s Enterprise Certificate, breaking all of the search engine’s internal apps, according to The Verge . A source familiar with the situation informed the news outlet that pre-release beta versions of Google’s iOS apps have stopped working as of Thursday. These apps include new builds of Gmail, Google Maps, and Hangouts. Apps meant for internal company use, such as the search engine’s cafe app and Gbus transportation app have also ceased working. “We’re working with Apple to fix a temporary disruption to some of our corporate iOS apps, which we expect will be resolved soon,” said a Google spokesperson in a statement provided to Mashable. Read more... More about Facebook , Google , Apple , Tech , and Social Media Companies from Mashable http://bit.ly/2G1g6XC