Tech News

article-image-fitness-app-polar-reveals-military-secrets

09 Jul 2018

3 min read

Fitness app Polar reveals military secrets

09 Jul 2018

You might remember that back in January, fitness app Strava was revealed to be giving away military secrets. The app, when used by military personnel, was giving the location of some potentially sensitive information. Well, it's happening again - this time another fitness app, Polar, is unwittingly giving up sensitive military locations. The digital investigation organization Bellingcat was able to scrape data from 200 sites around the world. From this, it gained information on exercises by nearly 6,500 Polar users. The level of detail Bellingcat was able to gain was remarkable. It was not only able to learn more about military locations - information that could be critical to national security - but also a startling level of information about the people that work on them. The investigation echoes the Strava data leak. It emphasizes the (disturbing) privacy issues that fitness tracking applications have been unable to confront. But Bellingcat explains that Polar is actually one of the worst apps for publicizing private data. On Strava and Garmin, for example, it's only possible to see individual exercises done by users. "Polar makes it far worse by showing all the exercises of an individual done since 2014, all over the world on a single map." Polar is reveals dangerous levels of detail about its users Some of the information found by Bellingcat is terrifying. For example: "A high-ranking officer of an airbase known to host nuclear weapons can be found jogging across the compound in the morning. From a house not too far from that base, he started and finished many more runs on early Sunday mornings. His favorite path is through a forest, but sometimes he starts and ends at a car park further away. The profile shows his full name." The investigators also revealed they were able to cross-reference profiles with social media profiles. This could allow someone to build up a very detailed picture of a member of the military or security personnel. Some of these people have access to nuclear weapons. Bellingcat's advice to fitness app users Bellingcat offers some clear advice to anyone using fitness tracking apps like Polar. Most of it sounds obvious, but it's clear that even people that should be particularly careful aren't doing it. "As always, check your app-permissions, try to anonymize your online presence, and, if you still insist on tracking your activities, start and end sessions in a public space, not at your front door." The results of the investigation are, perhaps, just another piece in a broader story emerging this year about techno-scepticism. Problems with tech have always existed, it's only now that those are really surfacing and seem to be taking on a new urgency. This is going to have implications for the military for sure, but it is also likely to have an impact on the way these applications are built in the future. Read next The risk of wearables – How secure is your smartwatch? Computerizing our world with wearables and IoT

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article-image-alibaba-introduces-ai-copywriter

Pravin Dhandre

09 Jul 2018

2 min read

Alibaba introduces AI copywriter

Pravin Dhandre

09 Jul 2018

2 min read

Alibaba, the ecommerce leader and multinational conglomerate surprises the advertising market with a smart copywriting tool, AI-CopyWriter. The digital marketing and big data arm Alimama developed artificial intelligence-powered copywriting tool. The tool is backed with powerful deep learning mechanism and natural language processing technology to deliver thousands of marketing content in just couple of seconds. This AI copywriting tool runs through the tens of millions of sampled data in the back end and generates copies for products in just few seconds. The tool delivers high efficiency with more than 20,000 copy lines in single second, reducing the repetitive copywriting jobs of advertising and marketing teams. This mind-blowing product is simple to use. One simply needs to insert the url link of a product page and the smart copy engine returns with results of numerous innovative copy ideas with just a button click away. According to Alimama, the AI Copywriting tool has been validated through the Turing test and can generate tens of thousands of copy lines in one second. This tool is capable of providing tone-specific copy lines such as funny, loving, poetical or a promotional one along with a adjustments of their word characters. Prior to this tool, the team at Alimama innovated a smart banner designer tool for small and mid-sized businesses which they can use to redesign and resize the advertising banners on e-commerce platforms with just a slide of a mouse. The team also recently released a smart video editing tool powered with AI technology, through which advertising and promotion teams can generate a quick 20 seconds video in almost less than minute. The tool has already been proven very successful by renowned apparel chain Espirit, US fashion brand Dickies and by website aggregators such as Taobao and Tmall. “The AI copywriter is a really amazing tool. Based on a massive database of existing copy and advanced AI technologies, the tool can reduce the repetitive and tedious copywriting workload for our teams.” says E-Commerce Head - Asia Pacific market at Esprit. Google’s translation tool is now offline Adobe to spot fake images using Artificial Intelligence Microsoft start AI School to teach Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence

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article-image-did-facebook-just-have-another-security-scare

Amarabha Banerjee

07 Jul 2018

3 min read

Did Facebook just have another security scare?

Amarabha Banerjee

07 Jul 2018

3 min read

Facebook’s public image suffered quite a few setbacks in recent times. The Cambridge analytica scandal has opened up a pandora’s box full of questions about user data security and privacy. In the recent senate hearings, Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg had an apologetic tone and he promised to give utmost importance to user data security. The misfortunes however, doesn’t seem to be over for Zuckerberg and Facebook. In a latest security scare, a bug had caused quite a ruckus for the tech giant. Facebook composer bug Now let’s talk about the bugs, yes, you read that correctly, there were more than one recent Facebook bugs affecting user data and privacy. The first bug was related to the Facebook message composer. According to Facebook’s Chief Privacy Officer Erin Egan, the bug affected composer’s privacy settings in a way that when the users were creating new posts, it automatically changed the privacy settings to public. This meant that user updates which might have been private, were available publicly. This bug had affected 14 million users worldwide and it was active during 18th May to 22nd May 2018. It took Facebook till 27th May to identify the bug and then rectify the problem. As a trust building measure, Facebook had sent notifications to all the users affected by this breach. A snapshot of the Facebook notification looked like this: Source: Techcrunch Automatic Unblocking bug The second incident occurred was between 29th May to 5th June. This particular incident was reported via a Facebook blog post which stated that a bug that had affected around 800k Facebook users, had temporarily unblocked contacts and enabled previously blocked contacts to message or view the details of the respective users. This security breach was in a way potentially dangerous since it openly allowed stalking or even harassment. Facebook had although stated that this bug had unblocked one contact per user. The official Facebook notification to the affected users looked like this: Source: Facebook Blog Facebook Analytics Data leak The story of bugs is not over yet. There were recent reports that the Facebook analytics data of around 3 percent Facebook apps were leaked to testers accidentally. This was due to a faulty automated email system according to Facebook. Although Facebook insists on the fact that no personal user data was leaked, still this incident doesn’t go down well keeping in mind the company’s latest record of user privacy and data secrecy. Facebook is trying to be transparent in its approach to tackle this menace of recurring bugs, but how successful their efforts will be, only time and their future actions will tell. The Cambridge Analytica scandal and ethics in data science Mark Zuckerberg’s Congressional testimony: 5 things we learned F8 AR Announcements

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article-image-microsoft-introduces-immutable-blob-storage-a-highly-protected-object-storage-for-azure

Savia Lobo

06 Jul 2018

2 min read

Microsoft introduces ‘Immutable Blob Storage’, a highly protected object storage for Azure

Savia Lobo

06 Jul 2018

2 min read

Microsoft released a new Chamber of Secrets named as ‘Immutable Blob Storage’. This storage service safeguards sensitive data and is built on the Azure Platform. It is the latest addition to Microsoft’s continuous development towards the industry-specific cloud offerings. This service is mainly built for the financial sector but can be utilized for other sectors too by helping them in managing the information they own. The Immutable Blob Storage is a specialized version of Azure’s existing object storage and includes a number of added security features, which include: The ability to configure an environment such that the records inside it are not easily deleted by anyone; not even by the administrators who maintain the deployment. Enables companies to block edits to existing files. This setting can assist banks and other heavily regulated organizations to prove the validity of their records during audits. The service costs of Immutable Blob Storage is as same as Azure’s regular object service and the two products are integrated with another. Immutable Blob Storage can be used for both standard and immutable storage. This means IT no longer needs to manage the complexity of a separate archive storage solution. These features come on top of the ones that have been carried over to Immutable Blob Storage from the standard object service. This also includes a data lifecycle management tool that allows organizations to set policies for managing their data. Read more about this new feature on Microsoft Azure’s blog post. How to migrate Power BI datasets to Microsoft Analysis Services models [Tutorial] Microsoft releases Open Service Broker for Azure (OSBA) version 1.0 Microsoft Azure IoT Edge is open source and generally available!

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article-image-infosys-and-siemens-collaborate-to-build-iot-solutions-on-mindsphere

Savia Lobo

06 Jul 2018

2 min read

Infosys and Siemens collaborate to build IoT solutions on MindSphere

Savia Lobo

06 Jul 2018

2 min read

Infosys recently announced its partnership with Siemens to build applications for Siemens' open cloud-based IoT operating system, Mindsphere. Mindsphere connects real-world objects (industrial machinery, systems, equipments and so on) to the digital world with the help of IoT using advanced analytics. It provides industry applications and services to help businesses achieve success. With this collaboration, Infosys and Siemens will enable customers to leverage the true power of data generated by their devices. The initial focus as company plans will be on customers in the manufacturing, energy, utilities, healthcare, pharmaceutical, transportation, and logistics industry. How Infosys plans to help Siemen’s Mindsphere: Infosys plans to offer end-to-end implementation services and post-implementation support for Mindsphere It will be using its repository of Industry 4.0 accelerators, platform tools, etc. to help customers get quickly on board Will enhance customers to have an efficient experience by using data analytics features such as predictive maintenance and end-to-end factory visibility Customers will also benefit by monetizing new data-driven services Ravi Kumar S, President and Deputy COO, Infosys, says, “There is an increasing need for enterprises to accelerate their digital journey and to deliver new and innovative services. This partnership will help us bring exciting solutions to our customers that will combine strategic insights and execution excellence.” With Infosys’ expertise in the field of industrial engineering, industrial analytics, AR and VR and with Siemens’ strength in manufacturing industrial assets brings valuable digital services to customers from different sectors. Know more about the partnership alliance on the Infosys Blog post. 5 DIY IoT projects you can build under $50 Build an IoT application with Google Cloud [Tutorial] Google releases Android Things library for Google Cloud IoT Core

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Tech News

article-image-whats-new-in-the-windows-10-sdk-preview-build-17704

Natasha Mathur

06 Jul 2018

2 min read

What’s new in the Windows 10 SDK Preview Build 17704

Natasha Mathur

06 Jul 2018

2 min read

Microsoft keeps rolling out with updates. After Windows 10 SDK Preview Build 17115 which included Machine learning APIs, Microsoft has now released Windows 10 SDK Preview Build 17704, two days ago. The new preview SDK build can be used with Windows 10 insider preview build 17704 or greater. It includes bug fixes, MSIX support, and other development changes to the API surface area. In case you want to download the latest Windows 10 SDK Preview Build 17704, visit the developer section on Windows Insider. Key Updates Here’s what’s new in this latest SDK preview Build: MSIX Support Windows 10 SDK Preview Build 17704 has finally got MSIX support enabled. You can install and run these apps with MSIX support on devices having 17682 build or greater. Using the MakeAppx tool, you can package your applications with MSIX. Just click on the MSIX file to install the application. If you wish to know more about MSIX, check out the video below: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKCX4Rzfysk Source: Microsoft Developer MC.EXE Changes are made to the C/C++ETW code generation of mc.exe which is a message compiler. “-mof” parameter has been deprecated. The “-mof” parameter instructs MC.exe to generate the ETW code which is compatible with Windows XP and earlier. If “-mof” parameter is not used, the generated C/C++ header is compatible with both kernel-mode and user-mode, regardless of whether “-km” or “-um” was specified on the command line. The generated header supports several customization macros. If you need the generated macros to call something other than EventWriteTransfer, you can set the MCGEN_EVENTWRITETRANSFER macro. The manifest supports new attributes such as Event “names”, event “attributes”, event “tags”, etc. The “provider traits” can be now defined in the manifest (e.g. provider group). The EventRegister[ProviderName] macro will automatically register the provider traits, if they are used in the manifest. MC has the capability to generate Unicode (utf-8 or utf-16) output MC now with the “-cp utf-8” or “-cp utf-16” parameters. API Spot Light There is a new LauncherOptions.GroupingPreference property in the Windows 10 SDK Preview Build 17704. This helps assist your app in tailoring its behavior for Sets. Apart from these changes in the release, APIs have also been updated, added, and removed. More information about other known issues and improvements is available on the Windows Blog. Microsoft releases Windows 10 Insider build 17682! Microsoft Cloud Services get GDPR Enhancements

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article-image-biomind-ai-beats-chinese-doctors-in-a-tumor-diagnosis-competition

Amey Varangaonkar

06 Jul 2018

2 min read

AI beats Chinese doctors in a tumor diagnosis competition

Amey Varangaonkar

06 Jul 2018

2 min read

AI has trumped humans yet again - this time in diagnosing tumor accurately and quickly. The BioMind AI system, designed especially for neuroimaging recognition, has managed to beat a team of 15 top Chinese doctors by a margin of two to one. When diagnosing tumors of the brain in the 225 test cases, BioMind managed to complete the task in just 15 minutes, as opposed to the doctors who took 30 minutes to complete the same task. BioMind correctly detected a tumor with a staggering accuracy of 87%, as compared to the doctors who managed only 66%. What is BioMind? BioMind is an artificially intelligent system developed at the Artificial Intelligence Research Centre for Neurological Disorders at the Beijing Tiantan Hospital, in collaboration with the Capital Medical University. For training the system, it was fed thousands of images of different nervous system-related diseases, especially related to the brain, that the hospital had archived for over 10 years. Such a large data set allowed the AI to diagnose the common and not-so-common neurological diseases with a staggering accuracy of approximately 90% in comparison to a senior doctor at the hospital. AI not something to be afraid of, says hospital vice president Wang Yongjun, the executive vice president of the Tiantan Hospital which conducted this competition, expressed no concerns over this comprehensive victory of the AI over humans. He said the contest was not intended to pit humans against AI, but to help the doctors interact better with the technology. One of the doctors who lost against BioMind, Dr. Lin Yi, said she welcomes Artificial Intelligence as a friend and thinks it will reduce the doctors’ workload. Not just that, it will also push them to keep learning and improve their skills. The tumor diagnosis competition demonstrated a well-trained AI’s capability to outperform humans yet again. Only recently, a team of AI algorithms had beaten the world’s best human Dota 2 players in the multiplayer mode, proving they are capable of working in teams. The recent events only fuel further the debate of whether AI would replace human effort, or would augment human expertise to accomplish the tasks more efficiently. Read more Meet CIMON, the first AI robot to join the astronauts aboard ISS 7 Popular Applications of Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare Top languages for Artificial Intelligence development

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11267

article-image-baidu-releases-kunlun-ai-chip-chinas-first-cloud-to-edge-ai-chip

Savia Lobo

05 Jul 2018

2 min read

Baidu releases Kunlun AI chip, China’s first cloud-to-edge AI chip

Savia Lobo

05 Jul 2018

2 min read

Baidu, Inc. the leading Chinese language Internet search provider releases Kunlun AI chip. It is China’s first cloud-to-edge AI chip, which is built to handle AI models for both, edge computing on devices and in the cloud via data centers. K'un-Lun is also a place that actually exists in another dimension in Marvel’s Immortal Iron Fist. AI applications have dramatically risen to popularity and adoption. With this, there is increased demand for requirements on the computational end. Traditional chips have limited computational power and to accelerate larger AI workloads; it requires much more scaling, computationally. To suffice this computational demand Baidu released the Kunlun AI chip, which is designed specifically for large-scale AI workloads. Kunlun feeds the high processing demands of AI with a high-performant and cost-effective solution. It can be used for both cloud and edge instances, which include data centers, public clouds, and autonomous vehicles. Kunlun comes in two variants; the 818-300 model is used for training and the 818-100 model is used for inference purposes. This chip leverages Baidu’s AI ecosystem including AI scenarios such as search ranking and deep learning frameworks like PaddlePaddle. Key Specifications of Kunlun AI chip A computational capability which is 30 times faster than the original FPGA-based accelerator that Baidu started developing in 2011 A 14nm Samsung engineering 512 GB/second memory bandwidth Provides 260 TOPS computing performance while consuming 100 Watts of power The features the Kunlun chip include: It supports open source deep learning algorithms Supports a wide range of AI applications including voice recognition, search ranking, natural language processing, and so on. Baidu plans to continue to iterate this chip and develop it progressively to enable the expansion of an open AI ecosystem. To make it successful, Baidu continues to make “chip power” to meet the needs of various fields such as intelligent vehicles and devices, voice and image recognition. Read more about Baidu’s Kunlun AI chip on the MIT website. IBM unveils world’s fastest supercomputer with AI capabilities, Summit AI chip wars: Is Brainwave Microsoft’s Answer to Google’s TPU?

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24079

article-image-tensorflow-1-9-0-rc2-releases

Natasha Mathur

05 Jul 2018

3 min read

TensorFlow 1.9.0-rc2 releases!

Natasha Mathur

05 Jul 2018

3 min read

After the 1.9.0-rc0 release early last month, the TensorFlow team is out with another update 1.9.0-rc2, unveiling major features and updates. The new release includes latest improvements, bug fixes, and other changes. Let’s have a look at the noteworthy features in TensorFlow 1.9.0-rc2: Key features and improvements Docs for tf.keras namely the new Keras-based ‘get started’ page and the programmers guide page have been updated. Layers tf.keras.layers.CuDNNGRU and tf.keras.layers.CuDNNLSTM have been added. Python interface for TFLite Optimizing Converter is expanded. Command line interface (AKA: toco, tflite_convert) is added in the standard pip installation again. Data loading and text processing has improved with: Tf.decode_compressed, tf.string_strip, and tf.strings.regex_full_match Headers used for custom apps have moved from site-packages/external into site-packages/tensorflow/include/external. On opening empty variable scopes; replace variable_scope('', ...) by variable_scope(tf.get_variable_scope(), ...). Bug Fixes tfe.Network has now been deprecated. You can now inherit from tf.keras.Model. The layered variable names have changed for the conditions mentioned below: using tf.keras.layers with custom variable scopes using tf.layers in a subclass of tf.keras.Model class. In tf.data, DatasetBase::DebugString() method is now const. The tf.contrib.data.sample_from_datasets() API for randomly sampling from multiple datasets has now been added. In tf.contrib, tf.contrib.data.choose_from_datasets() is added and tf.contrib.data.make_csv_dataset() will now support line breaks in quoted strings. From make_csv_dataset, two arguments were removed.The tf.contrib.framework.zero_initializer supports ResourceVariable. "Constrained_optimization" is added to tensorflow/contrib. Other changes GCS Configuration Ops has been added. The signature of Makelterator has been changed to enable propagation of error status. The bug in tf.reduce_prod gradient has been fixed for complex dtypes. Benchmark for tf.scan has been updated in order to match ranges across eager and graph modes. Optional args argument added to Dataset.from_generator(). Ids in nn.embedding_lookup_sparse have been made unique which helps reduce RPC calls that are made for looking up the embeddings in case there are repeated ids in the batch. tf.train.Checkpoint is added for reading/writing object-based checkpoints. To get more information on the new updates and features in the latest TensorFlow 1.9.0-rc2 release, check out the official release notes. Use TensorFlow and NLP to detect duplicate Quora questions [Tutorial] TensorFlow.js 0.11.1 releases! Build and train an RNN chatbot using TensorFlow [Tutorial]

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Sunith Shetty

05 Jul 2018

3 min read

ggplot2 3.0.0 releases!

Sunith Shetty

05 Jul 2018

3 min read

ggplot2 team has announced a new version 3.0.0 with breakthrough changes. This new release brings some revolutionary changes within their library to ease advanced data visualizations and create appealing aesthetics. ggplot2 is an open source library in R which allows you to create visual representations. It follows a process of breaking up the advanced graphs into semantic components such as scales and layers. ggplot2 has grown in use considerably within the R community thus becoming one of the popular R packages used today. Some of the noteworthy changes in the library are: Tidy evaluation ggplot2 now supports tidy evaluation. This allows you to easily build plots in the same way you can programmatically build data manipulation pipelines with dplyr Now you can use quasiquotation in aes(), facet_wrap(), and facet_grid() ggplot2 is now more easily programmable and consistent with the rest of the tidyverse packages New features added to the library It supports all simple features using sf with geom_sf() and coord_sf() It can automatically align CRS across layers, draw a graticule, and can set up the correct aspect ratio New stat() function now offers a cleaner and better-documented syntax for calculated aesthetics variables You can use syntax aes(y = stat(count)), thus replacing the old traditional approach of surrounding the variable name with ... (Example - aes(y = ..count..)) A new tag label has been added for identifying plots in addition to title, subtitle and, caption. Layers: geoms, stats, and position adjustments Now you can arrange the horizontal position of plots with variable widths for bars and rectangles in addition to box plots using the new function position_dodge2() There are many other functions and new parameters added to enhanced the layers of the graphics. To know more, you can refer to the GitHub page. Scales and guides Improved support for ordered factors and mapping data/time variables to alpha, size, color, and fill aesthetics, including date_breaks and date_labels arguments Several new functions have been added to make it easy to use Viridis colour scales - scale_colour_viridis_c() and scale_fill_viridis_c() for continuous, and scale_colour_viridis_d() and scale_fill_viridis_d() for discrete To know more about the enhanced support, you can refer the GitHub page. Nonstandard aesthetics Improved support for nonstandard aesthetics. They can now be specified independently of the scale name. There is a huge list of bug fixes and improvements done to the library, if you want to refer to the changes done, you can refer Minor bug fixes and improvements page. You can find the complete list of new updates and changes done to the library along with how to handle common errors and ways to work around them in the breaking changes section of ggplot2 GitHub page. R interface to Python via the Reticulate Package Why choose R for your data mining project 15 Useful Python Libraries to make your Data Science tasks Easier

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article-image-ember-project-releases-v3-2-0-of-ember-js-ember-data-and-ember-cli

Sugandha Lahoti

04 Jul 2018

2 min read

Ember project releases v3.2.0 of Ember.js, Ember Data, and Ember CLI

Sugandha Lahoti

04 Jul 2018

2 min read

The Ember project released a new version of the three core sub-projects, Ember.js, Ember Data, and Ember CLI. Version 3.2.0 kicks off the 3.3 beta cycle for all sub-projects and consists of a variety of add-ons and deprecations. Ember.js Ember.js is the core framework for building web applications. The version 3.2.0 has a new feature and three deprecations, along with bug fixes, performance improvements, and minor deprecations. Ember.js has a new Block let template helper to create new bindings in templates. It is like with but without the conditional rendering of the block depending on values passed to the block. The deprecations are: Use of Ember.Logger is deprecated. You should replace calls to Ember.Logger with calls to console. In order to avoid collision with user-defined properties or methods, the Router#router private API has been renamed to Router#_router. Assigning computed properties directly is deprecated to support ES5 getter computed properties. Developers should replace these assignments with calls to defineProperty. Ember Data Ember Data is the official data persistence library for Ember.js applications. Ember-data v3.2.0 has three new features: Lazy Relationship Payloads are fixed in Ember Data 3.2.0; It is now compatible with polymorphic relationships. Ember Data Feature Flag are all removed in Ember Data 3.2. There is a new addon to support the ds-improved-ajax API. Ember CLI Ember CLI is the command line interface for managing and packaging Ember.js applications. There are two new features and one deprecation in the Ember CLI 3.2 release: The qunit-dom dependency will be added by default to all apps and addons to make DOM assertions more readable. The ember-cli-qunit dependency has been updated to ensure that the find() helper available in the Ember 3.0 style of testing. Ember CLI v3.2 deprecates ember-cli-babel 5.x. Babel 6 support has been out for a long time now and works quite well. Detailed list of updates with bug fixes and other performance improvements are available on the Ember project blog page. Getting started with Ember.js – Part 1 Getting started with Ember.js – Part 2

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Tech News

article-image-meet-cimon-the-first-ai-robot-to-join-the-astronauts-aboard-iss

Natasha Mathur

03 Jul 2018

3 min read

Meet CIMON, the first AI robot to join the astronauts aboard ISS

Natasha Mathur

03 Jul 2018

3 min read

A ball-shaped robot named CIMON (Crew Interactive Mobile Companion) joined the crew members for the SpaceX 15's launch of Falcon 9, aboard the International Space Station (ISS), two days ago. The robot is created to see if a bot with AI capabilities can boost the efficiency and morale of the crew while on longer missions. It has been built by IBM in conjunction with the German Aerospace Center. It is led by Alexander Gerst, DLR Astronaut. Source: SciNews Let’s have a look at CIMON’s functionalities and features. The AI robot comes with a language user interface which enables it to respond to spoken commands. It displays repair instructions on screen with a voice command. This keeps astronaut’s hands- free. It is also capable of displaying procedures for experiments, thereby, serving as the space station’s voice-controlled database. ISS performs tasks and activities which are quite complicated in nature, so AI robot can help with that. The AI bot can be easily called upon by astronauts for assistance. For instance, astronauts can ask the robot to display certain documents and media in their field of view. They can also ask CIMON to record or playback experiments with its onboard camera. CIMON is capable of sensing the tone of conversation among the crew. In fact, its behavior is quite similar to R2D2. It can also quote dialogues from famous movies like E.T. the extraterrestrial. It can move freely and perform rotational movements like shaking the head back and forth indicating disapproval. Key Features: The AI bot is ball-shaped with a flattened surface. It has of no sharp edges which makes it a safe equipment for the crew. It comes with 12 internal fans which allow it move in all directions. It is programmed with an ISTJ personality i.e. introverted, sensing, thinking and judging. It comes equipped with a kill switch. IBM’s Watson Technology is used for CIMON’S AI language and comprehension system. It costs less than 6 million dollars. And it took less than 2 years for the AI bot to develop. The SpaceX 15's launch of Falcon 9 that took place on 29th June was successful, and CIMON is now undergoing astronaut assistant training. To know more, check out the official post by NASA. Adobe to spot fake images using Artificial Intelligence Microsoft start AI School to teach Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence IBM unveils world’s fastest supercomputer with AI capabilities, Summit

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article-image-mongodb-4-0-now-generally-available

Amey Varangaonkar

02 Jul 2018

2 min read

MongoDB 4.0 now generally available with support for multi-platform, mobile, ACID transactions and more

Amey Varangaonkar

02 Jul 2018

2 min read

In the annual MongoDB World event that took place last week, MongoDB announced the general availability of the new MongoDB 4.0 release, along with several significant beta features related to the cloud. With 4.0, MongoDB aims to attack two domains at once - the traditional database support as well as the ease of database development on the cloud. Some major features of MongoDB 4.0 There were talks of MongoDB 4.0 including support for ACID transactions earlier in the year, extending to multiple documents. However, this support will be restricted only to a single replica for now, with distributed support across multiple clusters to be incorporated with the 4.2 release that is expected to be out later in the year. The 4.0 release also includes a public beta release for MongoDB Charts, a new in-database visualization feature, which can be used to visualize JSON documents. Some of the other important features include: MongoDB Stitch, a serverless compute environment designed for developers, now generally available A mobile-embedded version of MongoDB that runs on smartphones, tablets and IoT devices are now released as a private beta release in 4.0 A new multi-region capability for MongoDB Atlas, letting you deploy a cloud instance that is distributed across different regions throughout the world A beta version of Kubernetes Operator, which co-ordinates orchestration between Kubernetes and MongoDB Ops Manager is released A key milestone for MongoDB with 4.0 release MongoDB’s 4.0 is a quite significant release. It addresses the needs of modern businesses, who base their processes around cloud and serverless operations. Not just that, going multi-platform with support for mobile devices will be seen as a welcome addition by many users. Incorporating relational capabilities puts MongoDB on par with many popular relational databases as well. The ability to combine the power of business-critical transactional processes while offering the speed and ease of using non-relational databases can prove to be a real game-changer for MongoDB. Read more Why MongoDB is the most popular NoSQL database today 4 must-know levels in MongoDB security Connecting your data to MongoDB using PyMongo and PHP

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article-image-niantic-of-the-pokemon-go-fame-releases-a-preview-of-its-ar-platform

Sugandha Lahoti

02 Jul 2018

2 min read

Niantic, of the Pokemon Go fame, releases a preview of its AR platform

Sugandha Lahoti

02 Jul 2018

2 min read

Niantic gained worldwide popularity when they launched their popular AR game, Pokemon Go, two years ago. Now they are offering a preview of the technology they have been developing: the Niantic Real World Platform. According to the company's blog post, “This public preview will provide a sense of how committed Niantic is to the future of AR, and to furthering the type of experiences they have pioneered.” They will give select third-party developers access to their cross-platform AR tools. Niantic has also acquired the computer vision and machine learning company Matrix Mill, and along with their previous acquisition Escher Reality, they’ve been able to establish what the Niantic Real World Platform looks like today. https://youtu.be/7ZrmPTPgY3I The Niantic Real World Platform can digitize parks, trails, sidewalks, and other publicly accessible spaces and model them in an interactive 3D space that a computer can quickly and easily read. They also will work toward making this technology available to power-limited mobile devices. The Niantic Real World Platform makes use of advanced computer vision, to make AR objects understand and interact with real-world objects in unique ways–stopping in front of them, running past them, or maybe even jumping into them. They are also working towards Contextual AR, where they will explore ideas, for testing and creating demos that can think and visualize. For example, if the platform is able to identify and contextualize the presence of flowers, then it will know to make a bumblebee appear. Matrix Mill, their new collaboration will use computer vision and deep learning, to develop techniques to understand 3D space, enabling more realistic AR interactions than are currently present in the market. Their cross-platform AR technology will also facilitate shared AR experiences. They have developed proprietary, low-latency AR networking techniques for shared AR experiences with a single code base. Niantic will be selecting a handful of third-party developers to begin working with their AR tools later this year. Developers interested in news about the Niantic Real World Platform can sign up to get early looks of the platform. Apple’s new ARKit 2.0 brings persistent AR, shared augmented reality experiences and more Amazon open sources Amazon Sumerian, its popular AR/VR app toolkit Google open sources Seurat to bring high precision graphics to Mobile VR

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article-image-zefflin-systems-unveils-servicenow-plugin-for-red-hat-ansible-2-0

Savia Lobo

29 Jun 2018

2 min read

Zefflin Systems unveils ServiceNow Plugin for Red Hat Ansible 2.0

Savia Lobo

29 Jun 2018

2 min read

Zefflin Systems announced its ServiceNow Plugin 2.0 for the Red Hat Ansible 2.0. The plugin helps IT operations easily map IT services to infrastructure for automatically deployed environment. Zefflin's Plugin Release 2.0 enables the use of ServiceNow Catalog and Request management modules to: Facilitate deployment options for users Capture requests and route them for approval Invoke Ansible playbooks to auto-deploy server, storage, and networking Zefflin's Plugin 2.0 also provides full integration to ServiceNow Change Management for complete ITIL-compliant auditability. Key features and benefits of the ServiceNow Plugin 2.0 are: Support for AWX: With the help of AWX, customers who are on the open source version of Ansible can easily integrate into ServiceNow. Automated Catalog Variable Creation: Plugin 2.0 reads the target Ansible playbook and automatically creates the input variables in the ServiceNow catalog entry. This significantly reduces implementation time and maintenance effort. This means that the new playbooks can be onboarded in less time. Update to Ansible Job Completion: This extends the amount of information returned from an Ansible playbook and logged into the ServiceNow request. This enhancement dramatically improves the audit trail and provides a higher degree of process control. The ServiceNow Plugin for Ansible enables DevOps with ServiceNow integration by establishing: Standardized development architectures An effective routing approval process An ITIL-compliant audit framework Faster deployment An automated process that frees up the team to focus on other activities Read more about the ServiceNow Plugin in detail on Zefflin System’s official blog post Mastering Ansible – Protecting Your Secrets with Ansible An In-depth Look at Ansible Plugins Installing Red Hat CloudForms on Red Hat OpenStack

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Niantic, of the Pokemon Go fame, releases a preview of its AR platform

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