As large car manufacturers seek to reinvent themselves as ‘mobility companies’ in an effort to compete for global leadership in the growing autonomous driving sector, a Ford Executive has predicted that self-driving cars will only last four years. Only Four Years? The prediction of four-year lifespan for self-driving cars came from John Rich, the operations chief of Ford Autonomous Vehicles, in a recent interview with the Telegraph. Why Four Years? The idea that a driverless car will only last four years stems from the fact that these cars will be part of fleets that have continuous use and will, therefore, wear [...]

Google has already been criticised by some for not calling out China over disinformation about Hong Kong, but despite disabling 210 YouTube channels with suspected Chinese state links, Google’s new move to label Hong Kong YouTube videos hasn’t gone down well. Big Social Media Platforms Act Facebook and Twitter recently announced that they have banned a number accounts on their platforms due to what the popular social media platforms are calling “coordinated influence operations”. In other words, Chinese state-sponsored communications designed to influence opinion (pro-Beijing viewpoints) and to spread disinformation.  Twitter and Facebook are both blocked in mainland China anyway [...]

The Amazon-owned producer of spoken audio entertainment ‘Audible’ is facing a lawsuit from the Association of American Publishers (AAP) on the grounds that its new “Audible Captions” speech-to-text subtitles feature may violate copyright law. Audible Captions  Audible Captions, which was announced by the largest producer of audiobooks via a YouTube video back in July, is a feature that allows text captions to appear on-screen and progressively highlights the words as a novel is narrated. The feature also highlights and gives definitions for certain words in the captions and allows the user to translate text into other languages. Objections - Lawsuit  [...]

Google has announced that it is rolling out new real-time, AI-powered spelling and grammar correction capabilities for G Suite users and personal Gmail accounts. Real-Time, As-You-Type The real-time, as-you-type spelling autocorrection is now available to all G Suite users and personal Gmail accounts, but the Grammar suggestion feature is only available to G Suite users. Autocorrection Spelling The new features use AI to spot and highlight mistakes with spelling and grammar, and even the use of tenses. The autocorrection spelling feature uses coloured (red) squiggly underlines to highlight spelling mistakes, the mistakes can be auto-corrected, and the changes are temporarily [...]

If you’d like to be even more productive and be able to multi-task while using your iPhone or iPad, the ‘Split’ web browser app allows you to run two browser tabs side by side. The app works in portrait and landscape views, and for each website that’s split in the browser you have a back button, you can bookmark a page, and you can open one of the websites into full-screen mode and simply tap to go back to the split-screen. The Split app is free from Apple’s App Store, and similar split browser apps are also available for Android.

Researchers from SMU’s (Southern Methodist University) Darwin Deason Institute for Cyber-security have found that the sound waves produced when we type on a computer keyboard can be picked up by a smartphone and a skilled hacker could decipher which keys were struck. Why? The research was carried out to test whether the ‘always-on’ sensors in devices such as smartphones could be used to eavesdrop on people who use laptops in public places (if the phones were on the same table as the laptop) e.g. coffee shops and libraries, and whether there was a way to successfully decipher what was being typed [...]

It has been reported that more than one million fingerprints have been exposed online by biometric security firm Suprema which appears to have installed its standard Biostar 2 product on an open network. Suprema and Biostar 2 Suprema is a South Korea-based biometric technology company and is one of the world’s top 50 security manufacturers.  Suprema offers products including biometric access control systems, time and attendance solutions, fingerprint live scanners, mobile authentication solutions and embedded fingerprint modules. Biostar 2 is a web-based, open, and integrated security platform for access control and time and attendance, manage user permissions, integrate with 3rd [...]

The UK’s data protection watchdog (the Information Commissioner’s Office  i.e. the ICO) has said that it will be investigating the use of facial recognition cameras at King’s Cross by Property Development Company Argent. What Happened? Following reports in the Financial Times newspaper, the ICO says that it is launching an investigation into the use of live facial recognition in the King's Cross area of central London.  It appears that the Property Development Company, Argent, had been using the technology for an as-yet-undisclosed period, and using an as-yet-undisclosed number of cameras. A reported statement by Argent (in the Financial Times) says that [...]

San Francisco-based start-up, Starship Technologies, has announced that it will be putting food delivery robots that respond to phone app orders on 100 U.S. university campuses in the next 24 months. The Bots It has been reported that 25 to 50 of the (23Kg battery-powered, six-wheeled) Starship bots will be let loose on each campus, with the ability to roam around seven days a week, from 8 am to 2 am. The self-driving bots drive at 4 mph and use 10 cameras, radar, ultrasound sensors, GPS, computer vision and neural networks to process what they see in order to negotiate their [...]

Apple has launched its ‘Apple Card’ in the US in partnership with Goldman Sachs and with processing by Mastercard. Card The Apple Card can now be applied for by customers in the US through the Wallet app on iPhone (iPhone 6 and later).  The physical laser-etched card, which is made of titanium and has a typically clean Apple design has no card number, no CVV security code, and no expiration date or signature on it.  Although you can buy using the card, the real Apple Card product is incorporated in the Wallet on the customer’s iPhone and works through Apple [...]