While many websites offer a way to opt out of targeted advertisements or unwanted emails, we discovered in our recent research that exercising privacy choices isn’t always easy. But that helped us formulate some simple solutions that could make things easier for users around the web.
If you’re a Gmail user, you might have recently noticed a ghost-like presence in your email account. It’s light grey, and it comes and goes, sometimes when you’re not expecting it. And, like most ghost sightings, glimpses of it have been reported to be a little creepy.
More than 200m homes now have a smart speaker providing voice-controlled access to the internet, according to one global estimate. Add this to the talking virtual assistants installed on many smartphones, not to mention kitchen appliances and cars, and that’s a lot of Alexas and Siris. Because talking is a fundamental part of being human, it is tempting to think these assistants should be designed to talk and behave like us. While this would give us a relatable way to interact with our devices, replicating genuinely realistic human conversations is incredibly difficult. What’s more, research suggests making a machine sound human may be unnecessary and…
Drones are revolutionizing the way scientists observe, measure and monitor the natural environment. From mapping the patterns of wildfires, like those in California, to measuring the size of jellyfish populations, drones have the potential to improve our understanding of the natural environment.
Here’s what you need to know about DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH). A new technology promises to make your web browser more private than ever, keeping your internet activity from prying eyes. But some argue your data won’t actually be all that private. And others are worried it could actually help criminals including child abusers to avoid justice.
The latest industrial robots look like petting zoo versions of the big machines found in many modern factories – small, cute and you can play with them. But don’t be deceived by their cuddly appearance. They have the potential to change the way humans work with machines and disrupt the existing market for industrial robots.
The Large Interactive Virtual Environment Laboratory (LIVELab) at McMaster University is a research concert hall. It functions as both a high-tech laboratory and theatre, opening up tremendous opportunities for research and investigation.
The tech giants Amazon, Google and Facebook have all begun to use machine learning to give you tips on what to wear. Is fashion styling the next field to be disrupted by artificial intelligence (AI), or will the human eye remain supreme?
So far, though, attempts to build supercomputer brains have not even come close. A multi-billion-dollar European project that began in 2013 is now largely understood to have failed. That effort has shifted to look more like a similar but less ambitious project in the U.S., developing new software tools for researchers to study brain data, rather than simulating a brain.
Big data hasn’t levelled the playing field. It has simply allowed wealthy organisations and individuals to further entrench their dominance. And regulators can’t keep up. New technologies make it almost impossible to trace the global flow of money World4Brexit may receive to fund its political campaigning
