Plus the lady and the Glass, the problem for music streaming services, train to be a patent juror!, and more
A burst of 11 links for you to chew over, as picked by the http://www.techblown.com/ team.
Note: compiled before 1 April.
You can follow Guardian http://www.techblown.com/
 |
| The human influenza A virus. (Not actual size.) Photograph: Phototake Inc/Alamy/Alamy |
A burst of 11 links for you to chew over, as picked by the http://www.techblown.com/ team.
Note: compiled before 1 April.
Google Flu Trends Still Appears Sick: An Evaluation of the 2013-2014 Flu Season by David Lazer, Ryan Kennedy, Gary King, Alessandro Vespignani >> SSRN
David Lazer and colleagues wrote a Science paper on Google Flu Trends's inaccuracy. Google tweaked it. They looked again:In response to its poor performance during the 2012-2013 flu season, Google Flu Trends (GFT) engineers announced a redesign of the GFT algorithm. Two changes were made: (1) dampening anomalous media spikes and (2) using ElasticNet, rather than regression, for estimation. This paper identifies several problems that persist in the new algorithm.Is the problem with GFT the exception or the rule in this sort of big data processing? The impossibility of getting a response is very like other services.
'I wanna get this white trash on tape': Google 'Glass' user releases video from bar attack >> The Raw Story
The California woman who said she was the victim of a "hate crime" for wearing Google Glass eyewear in a bar released a profanity-filled video taken just before her dispute with patrons became physical.It's the video she took herself, if that isn't clear. Warning: contains asterisks.
"I wanna get this white trash, this trash on tape for as long as I can," tech writer Sarah Slocum said in the video, apparently shot before she was attacked last month at Molotov's, a bar in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury neighbourhood.
In response, an unidentified man can be seen approaching her, saying, "Get out of here," then reaching for the eyewear.
Purported iPhone 6 pictures show protruding camera, rounded edges >> 9to5Mac
Images posted on Weibo claim to show an iPhone 6 under testing at Foxconn, via GforGames. The validity of these images cannot be confirmed, but the shots do line up with previous rumours. The iPhone 6 depicted here has a protruding camera (similar to the current design of the iPod touch), rounded edges and a considerably thinner profile than the current iPhone 5S.The most enjoyable part is that the computers being used for the CNC are clearly running Windows XP.
Researchers use game theory to identify potential problems for bitcoin >> MIT Technology Review
Miners earn newly minted bitcoins for adding new sections to the blockchain. But the amount awarded for adding a section is periodically halved so that the total number of bitcoins in circulation never exceeds 21m (the reward last halved in 2012 and is set to do so again in 2016). Transaction fees paid to miners for helping verify transfers are supposed to make up for that loss of income. But fees are currently negligible, and the Princeton analysis predicts that under the existing rules these fees won't become significant enough to make mining worth doing in the absence of freshly minted bitcoins.Won't be popular.
The only solution Kroll sees is to rewrite the rules of the currency. "It would need some kind of governance structure that agreed to have a kind of tax on transactions or not to limit the number of bitcoins created," he says. "We expect both mechanisms to come into play."
The price of music >> Re/code
Smart analysis by David Pakman:So, the data tells us that consumers are willing to spend somewhere around $45–$65 per year on music, and that the larger a service gets, the lower in that range the number becomes. And these numbers have remained consistent regardless of music format, from CD to download.Which means, logically, that something's gotta give. And you're not going to get those huge numbers of people to suddenly spend more on music, when that hasn't happened over generations - we spend no more, on average, than our parents did on music. (Pakman has been at the sharp end: he used to work at eMusic.)
Curiously, the on-demand subscription music services like Spotify, Deezer, Rdio and Beats Music are all priced the same at more than twice consumer spending on music. They largely land at $120 per year (although Beats has a family-member option for AT&T users at $15 per month.)
▶ The Patent Process: An Overview for Jurors >> YouTube
The official US courts presentation that is shown to jurors who are going to be trying patent trials. Pretty much guaranteed to suck all the excitement out of the event, if anyone had any delusions going in. But at least we have an authoritative pronunciation of "patent". (Via @Smurfuhrer.)Toyota prototypes laser radar for autonomous driving, etc >> Tech-On!
Toyota Central R&D Labs Inc developed a system that can be installed in a vehicle and three-dimensionally recognise pedestrians, other vehicles, structures, etc around the vehicle by using near-infrared laser radar.
Toyota Central R&D Labs announced the results of an experiment in which a prototype of the system was tested at the 61st JSAP Spring Meeting, which runs from March 17 to 20, 2014, in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan (lecture number: 17p-E9-5). The company confirmed that the prototype can detect a board looking like a human from a distance of 80m.
Why it's time for Google to fix Google Now >> Gigaom
Janko Roettgers:The puzzling thing about Now is that it often fails spectacularly when it should know better, which makes you wonder whether Google just hasn't done a good job integrating the service with its other offerings.It's not so much "fix" as "hugely enhance to match my vision". But what if that's just too much to ask? Should we assume that Google Now (and other systems) will have no limits - in which case, how long should we accept their baby steps?
One example: The other day, I drove down to Mountain View for a meeting. Ahead of the trip, I looked up the traffic on Google Maps on my desktop, and then actually used the Google Maps app on my phone for navigation. So what did Google Now do when I checked it after my meeting was done? Suggest how to get back home via public transit, of course.
Currently, Google Now still depends too much on default settings. Instead, it should learn from real-life behavior. I, for one, wouldn't actually mind to help train it if it occasionally asked me things like: How, exactly, did you get to work today? It's something that activity tracking apps like Moves already do really well.
Hullcoin: the world's first local government cryptocurrency? >> Coindesk
The idea to use cryptocurrency came about when Shepherdson was asked by the Hull City Council Welfare Rights Manager, Lisa Bovill, to investigate the possibility of using an alternative currency (in the sense of the Brixton Pound-type of local currencies) as a means to provide an anti-poverty framework in Hull.The first, and one hopes the last. "Hull residents in financial distress can take part in voluntary activities and receive HullCoins in exchange," it explains. So people who are poor get stuff stored in digital wallets that need comparatively expensive computers and high levels of expertise to access?
This was to be part of the 'Hull People Premium' scheme, aimed to help the people of Hull save money, and gain access to advice and aid for food, fuel and finance.
Meet Lucy H. Koh, a Silicon Valley Judge >> NYTimes.com
Engaging profile:Judge Koh has a reputation for keeping strict control of her courtroom. In the first Apple-Samsung patent trial, when Apple bid to block testimony from a Samsung witness, she said: "I don't trust what any lawyer tells me in this courtroom. I want to see actual papers."Like it.
BlackBerry wins court order against TV host Ryan Seacrest's Typo >> Reuters
BlackBerry Ltd won a preliminary injunction on Friday to ban Ryan Seacrest's Typo Products LLC from selling a $99 iPhone case after a judge agreed that television host's company had likely infringed on BlackBerry's patents.Easier to get an injunction on hardware than software, even without the case being proven.
US District Judge William Orrick in San Francisco said that the Canadian mobile phone maker had established a "likelihood" of proving that Typo infringed its patents, while mentioning that Typo had not sufficiently challenged the patents in question.
The preliminary injunction prohibits Typo from the sale of its keyboard, which is a part of the relief sought by Blackberry.
You can follow Guardian http://www.techblown.com/
0 comments:
Post a Comment