GadgetGuide

Apple’s AI director on advances in machine learning for its self-driving car project

Apple’s secretive autonomous car project has shifted focus over the years, but this year, it seems to be picking up speed. In April, the company received a permit to test self-driving cars in California, while in June, Apple CEO Tim Cook confirmed that they were working on software that could allow cars — and maybe other things — to drive themselves. During a talk on Friday, Apple’s director of artificial intelligence research, Ruslan Salakhutdinov, spoke about some of the company’s recent advances in machine learning that would be useful for such a project.

Wired reports that Salakhutdinov spoke before a group of AI experts at the end of this year’s Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS) conference in Long Beach, California….

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Why reading aloud makes you remember better

The majority of people stop reading aloud once they’re past the stage of sounding out the letters, but a small study suggests that doing so will help us remember, and tells us more about why.

For the study published in Memory, scientists recorded 75 students saying 160 words aloud. Two weeks later, they studied 80 of these words in a variety of ways: hearing their own recording of the words, hearing a recording of someone else say them, reading them silently, reading aloud to themselves. To make sure the order wasn’t important, various students used the techniques in different orders.

Next, they were shown a word and had to say whether they had just studied it. The most effective study method was reading the words aloud (77 percent…

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Stranger Things season 3 might not debut until 2019

Did you finish the latest season of Netflix’s Stranger Thingsand are impatient to see what happens next? You might have to wait a bit longer than expected: in a new interview with Variety, David Harbour says that the next season might not premiere on the streaming service until 2019.

Netflix has already ordered a third season for the show, but Ross and Matt Duffer are still working on the season’s scripts, according to Harbour and he adds that they likely won’t begin filming until April. “Like any good thing,” he says, “[Ross and Matt] need time. And those guys work so hard. I mean, they just sit in their apartment and write for 12, 14 hours a day.”

The show was a surprise hit for Netflix when it debuted in 2016, but Netflix had a…

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A new trailer for Netflix’s Altered Carbon introduces an improbable murder

Netflix debuted a new trailer for its upcoming cyberpunk show, Altered Carbon, introducing the main story for the show: after he’s murdered, Earth’s richest man hires an ex-soldier to track down his killer.

The streaming service released an announcement trailer last week that introduced the show’s main McGuffin: humans have developed a technology that allows for someone to transfer their consciousness from one body to another. The rich and powerful can now afford to become effectively immortal, jumping from body to body, while murder victims can be brought back to life to testify against their killers.

In the trailer, Laurens Bancroft (James Purefoy) says that at the age of 365, he was killed. The police think think that he killed…

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Just Doug is one of the few good Facebook Watch series in a sea of clickbait

In the short time since the new video streaming platform Facebook Watch went live in September, clickbait videos have risen to the front page of the platform, obscuring smaller producers from the spotlight. It’s bad news for guys like Doug Kim, who bet $165,000 of his own money on producing his Facebook Watch series, Just Doug.

Kim describes Just Doug as a mix between Togetherness, the HBO drama about two couples pursuing their dreams, and Bojack Horseman, Netflix’s madcap show about an anthropomorphic horse who is also a failed actor. He co-wrote, executive produced and starred in the series, where he plays a version of himself in a semi-autobiographical tale about how Kim, a former professional poker player turned struggling actor,…

Just Doug is one of the few good Facebook Watch series in a sea of clickbait published first on http://ift.tt/2uQVASU

Uber vs. Lyft: What’s the Difference and Which Should I Use?

Uber and Lyft are two very similar services. Both are “ride-sharing” apps you pull up on your phone to quickly get a ride somewhere from driver using their own car. These two services have become more and more similar over the years, but there are still some major differences between them.
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Building tools with GCP to help developers be more efficient

Editor’s note: Today’s post comes from Tomoaki Kobayakawa and Yoshiyuki Mineo of Rocro Inc., a subsidiary of Sony Network Communications. They take us through how they used Google Cloud Platform to create three SaaS products to help developers both inside and outside of Sony.

SaaS services are becoming more critical for developers working large-scale software developments. At Sony we know this all too well. So back in spring 2015, we set off to create three CI SaaS products that could dramatically reduce the amount of time it took to review source code, generate and manage API documents, and perform load testing. After enthusiastic results internally, we decided this year to establish a new company, Rocro Inc, and release those three products—Inspecode, Docstand and Loadroid—to the public.

Even though our chief objective was to create robust tools that would be embraced by our internal developers, our goal from the beginning was to release our services externally as well. So, to build tools that had the speed, flexibility and reliability to serve all our users—whether inside or outside Sony—we turned to Google Cloud Platform.

Google App Engine was the main reason we chose GCP. When we started out, our team was very small, and we couldn’t afford to hire a dedicated infrastructure engineer. App Engine is a fully managed platform that provides the user with an infrastructure abstraction, so you don’t need an infrastructure engineer to begin with. With App Engine, we’re able to work more efficiently because each developer can deploy services whenever they want. Our team has now grown substantially in size, yet to this day we haven’t needed a dedicated infrastructure engineer.

In addition to App Engine, we also use Kubernetes Engine, Cloud Storage, and Cloud Datastore for our storage and database systems. The Kubernetes Engine kubernetes management service is very helpful for us. Both Inspecode and Docstand use the “Job” feature of Kubernetes—every time you use the git push command, it runs a new job, automating the source code analysis and documentation process. Each job functions in an isolated environment, which means it’s safe and stable to operate with individual containers for each user. Plus, jobs can be easily removed, which reduces both unnecessary labor and costs. Kubernetes can also restrict the use of CPU per job, so even if a particular user were to run a job under a heavy load, it wouldn’t have a negative impact on other users. This is essential for operating multi-tenant services in a stable manner.

GCP updates frequently, so our team benefits from access to the latest technologies relatively early. We’re now experimenting with Cloud Functions, and we hope the trend towards using serverless technologies can help us reduce the cost of keeping instances up and running for less frequently used features.

Both Rocro and Google Cloud save engineers a lot of trouble, helping them focus on the more creative elements of their work. We’re looking forward to experimenting with what’s next from GCP.

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Announcing Google Cloud Next 2018

Google Cloud Next ‘18 is coming! Mark your calendars for July 24-27, 2018 at Moscone Center in San Francisco.

Google Cloud Next is where customers, partners, developers, influencers and the greater global cloud community get inspired and learn. Together, we’re working to make the cloud useful and accessible to everyone.

Dive deep into Google Cloud technology through hundreds of breakout sessions, code labs, demos and hands-on training, covering everything from infrastructure to devices, and security to machine learning. You’ll get the chance to connect with the entire Google Cloud team, including our engineers, product leadership, developer advocates and more to unlock new opportunities for your business.

At Next ’17, more than 250 Google speakers and 70+ customer speakers presented at 200 breakout sessions. We made 100 announcements at Next ’17, and we’re gearing up for more big news next year. Next ’18 will feature tracks that encompass all aspects of our Google Cloud portfolio: application development, containerization, collaboration & productivity, data & analytics, infrastructure & operations, hybrid cloud, machine learning & artificial intelligence, maps, security, mobility & devices and much more. Be on the lookout for information on how to register coming in March 2018.

Know someone we can all learn from, or want to contribute yourself? We’re actively soliciting proposals for speaking sessions that will educate and engage attendees. If you have an interesting idea or expertise that you would like to share at Next ’18, please submit your proposal by January 26, 2018. The earlier the better.

We’re excited to create an inclusive space that brings people together, fosters collaboration and inspires innovation at Next ’18. We can’t wait to see you in July!

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Jessica Jones’ second season gets its first teaser

When we last saw Jessica Jones in Netflix’s The Defenders, she escaped from the destruction of Midland Circle along with Luke Cage and Danny Rand, who all look to move on with their lives after stopping The Hand. Netflix debuted the first trailer for the next season of Marvel’s Jessica Jones, showing that while Jones is trying to move on, her past is catching up to her.

In the teaser, we see that Jones is back to working as a private investigator, musing that people have their secrets, or at least someone else’s. It seems that there’s still some surprises in her past: her friend Trish telling her that knowing what was done to her might be helpful. Jones isn’t sold on the idea, asking “what if facing it makes me worse?” Along the way,…

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You can now let a prospective buyer know that you accept Bitcoin on Craigstlist

Next time you have something to sell on Craigslist, you can let your prospective buyers know that they can pay using Bitcoin or another cryptocurrencies.

Blockexplorer News spotted the feature (via Engadget and Business Insider): sellers can now check a box that says “cryptocurrency okay” when you submit your posting.

Cryptocurrencies are becoming a part of the larger financial system, so it makes sense that platforms like Craigslist might want to provide it as an option for its users. The site already doesn’t take payment and doesn’t vet buyers or sellers, so the anonymous nature of the digital currency feels like it could be a good fit for the site. Plus, the instantaneous, peer-to-peer design of Bitcoin and others…

You can now let a prospective buyer know that you accept Bitcoin on Craigstlist published first on http://ift.tt/2uQVASU