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IBM Chip Processes Data Similar to the Way Your Brain Does
A chip that uses a million digital neurons and 256 million synapses may signal the beginning of a new era of more intelligent computers.A new kind of computer chip, unveiled by IBM today, takes design cues from the wrinkled outer layer of the human brain. Though it is no match for a conventional microprocessor at crunching numbers, the chip consumes significantly less power, and is vastly better...
Black Hat: Google Glass Can Steal Your Passcodes
Footage of people unlocking their phones can be used to steal mobile passcodes even if the typing can’t be seen.Criticism of Google Glass has often focused on the way its camera makes surreptitious video recording too easy. Now researchers have shown that footage captured by the face-mounted camera could also pose a security threat.
Black Hat: Most Smartphones Come with a Poorly Secured Back Door
A system designed to let carriers remotely install software on phones, or change their settings without a user noticing, is open to abuse.A powerful remote-control system installed on most smartphones could be used by hackers to secretly take control of many devices, allowing theft of data or eavesdropping on communications.
Computational Linguistics of Twitter Reveals the Existence of Global Superdialects
The first study of dialects on Twitter reveals global patterns that have never been observed before.
WEDNESDAY 6. AUGUST 2014
Stacking Cells Could Make Solar as Cheap as Natural Gas
A novel manufacturing method could make it practical to stack solar cells and convert more of the energy in sunlight into electricity.When experts talk about future solar cells, they usually bring up exotic materials and physical phenomena. In the short term, however, a much simpler approach—stacking different semiconducting materials that collect different frequencies of light—could provide...
European Space Agency Reaches Verge of Breakthrough Comet Landing
Images sent back from space probe bring a historic comet mission into clear focus.This is no ordinary rock. It’s the surface of a comet somewhere between Jupiter and Mars, and it took a European space probe known as Rosetta 10 years to get there before it sent back these unprecedented images today.
Challenges Remain for Technologies to Fight Ebola
Efforts to contain Ebola in West Africa suffer from a lack of effective tools to treat and prevent the disease, although several are in development.As of last week, the Ebola outbreak in West Africa has claimed the lives of 88 percent of the more than 1,000 confirmed cases. While several technologies for controlling the spread of the disease are under development, deploying them will not be...
TUESDAY 5. AUGUST 2014
This Company Thinks Your Car Wants Google Glass
A heads-up display could be safer than glancing at your smartphone while driving—but some features may be more distracting than others.If you own a smartphone, you’ve no doubt been tempted to take a look at a map or see what message just popped up on the screen while you’re behind the wheel of a car.
How A Simple Spambot Became The Second Most Powerful Member Of An Italian Social Network
The surprising story of how an experiment to automate the creation of popularity and influence became successful beyond all expectation.
The Amazon Fire’s Fanciest Features Fail to Impress
The Amazon Fire Phone tries hard to impress, but often ends up just being annoying.The Amazon Fire is a good smartphone, but not because of all the high-tech new features Amazon is touting. In fact, some of those features are more wearying than truly useful.
MONDAY 4. AUGUST 2014
A Room Where Executives Go to Get Help from IBM’s Watson
Researchers at IBM are testing a version of Watson designed to listen and contribute to business meetings.Photocopiers, PCs, and video conferencing rooms all rose from being technological novelties to standard tools of corporate life. Researchers at IBM are experimenting with an idea for another: a room where executives can go to talk over business problems with a version of Watson, the computer...
SUNDAY 3. AUGUST 2014
Other Interesting arXiv Papers (Week ending August 2, 2014)
The best of the rest from the Physics arXiv preprint server.Your Voice Assistant is Mine: How to Abuse Speakers to Steal Information and Control Your Phone
FRIDAY 1. AUGUST 2014
How Yahoo Research Labs Studies Culture As A Formal Computational Concept
The ultimate goal: a truly computational understanding of human society, say Yahoo’s computational anthropologists.
Mobile Gadgets That Connect to Wi-Fi without a Battery
Simple devices that can link up via Wi-Fi but don’t need batteries could make it easier to spread computing throughout your home.A new breed of mobile wireless device lacks a battery or other energy storage, but it can still send data over Wi-Fi. These prototype gadgets, developed by researchers at the University of Washington, get all the power they need by making use of the Wi-Fi, TV, radio,...
Seven Must-Read Stories (Week Ending August 2, 2014)
Another chance to catch the most interesting, and important, articles from the previous week on MIT Technology Review.
Using Your Ear to Track Your Heart
Although smart watches and fitness bands are proliferating on wrists, there could be an even better spot on the body for wearable tech.If you’re going to choose a place on the body to measure physical signals, Steven LeBoeuf says two places are far and away the best: the ear or the rear.
THURSDAY 31. JULY 2014
Recommended from Around the Web (Week Ending August 2, 2014)
A roundup of the most interesting stories from other sites, collected by the staff at MIT Technology Review.Hold the Phone: A Big-Data Conundrum If nothing else, big data suggests we’re all conspiracy theorists. —Will Knight, news and analysis...
Panasonic Agrees to Help Tesla Build Its Gigafactory
Panasonic support is crucial if Tesla is to make the world’s largest factory for making electric car batteries.Tesla Motors says it has reached an agreement with Panasonic, a major lithium-ion battery supplier based in Japan, to help the electric car maker build a previously announced massive battery factory. The factory, which Tesla calls a gigafactory, is expected to be able to produce more...
Chinese GMO Research Outpaces Approvals
The fact that China hasn’t approved of any commercial GMO planting since 2009 reflects public fears.Despite recent research advances, such as a new strain of wheat that resists destructive mildew (see “Chinese Researchers Stop Wheat Disease with Gene Editing”), commercial planting of genetically modified food crops has stalled in China, the world’s most populous nation and one with a...
WEDNESDAY 30. JULY 2014
Three Questions for J. Craig Venter
Gene research and Silicon Valley-style computing are starting to merge.Genome scientist and entrepreneur J. Craig Venter is best known for being the first person to sequence his own genome, back in 2001.
The Curious Evolution of Artificial Life
When it comes to research into Artficial Life, commercial projects have begun to outpace academic ones.The term “Artificial Life” emerged in 1986 when the American computer scientist Christopher Langton coined it while organizing the first “Workshop on the Synthesis and Simulation of Living Systems.” Since then the idea of artificial life has spread through computer science into gaming,...
A Batteryless Sensor Chip for the Internet of Things
A prototype sensor saves power by using transistors that never fully turn “on.”The promise of the Internet of things is, in a sense, passivity. Our homes and offices will monitor us, and respond to our needs without instruction. But for tiny wireless sensors all over us and our things to really be feasible, we’ll have to replace today’s power-needy devices with more self-sufficient...
Adaptive Material Could Cut the Cost of Solar in Half
A new material, combined with a cheap tracking system, could unleash the promise of concentrated solar power.A material with optical properties that change to help it capture more incoming sunlight could cut the cost of solar power in half, according to Glint Photonics, a startup recently funded by the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy...
TUESDAY 29. JULY 2014
What’s a Moon Shot Worth These Days?
Google X’s project to study human health is no Apollo 11.The term “moon shot” has been getting tossed around a lot lately, mostly by Google X, the search company’s publicity arm.
Software That Can See Will Change Privacy Forever
Advances in machine vision will let employers, governments, and advertisers spot you in photos and know exactly what you’re doing in them.When I was an undergraduate 20 years ago, I was so excited about computer vision that I chose to implement a cutting-edge paper on recognizing machine parts as my final-year project. Even though those parts were simple silhouettes of basic shapes like...