Google has applied for a patent for a device, potentially a smartwatch, that can remind you to take one or more ingestible substances, such as medications, when you eat. The device could also relay the notification to other devices by way of text message or email reminders.
Two Google employees based in Israel, Asaf Zomet and Michael Shynar, first sought the patent in July 2014, and it was published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) on Thursday.
John Martinis used the arm of his reading glasses to indicate the spot where he intends to demonstrate an almost unimaginably powerful new form of computer in a few years. It is a cylindrical socket an inch and a half across, at the bottom of a torso-sized stack of plates, blocks, and wires of brass, copper, and gold. The day after I met with him this fall, he loaded the socket with an experimental superconducting chip etched with a microscopic Google logo and cooled the apparatus to a hundredth of a degree Celsius above absolute zero. To celebrate that first day of testing the machine, Martinis threw what he called “a little party” at a brewpub with colleagues from his newly outfitted Google lab in Santa Barbara, California.
Google says it has proof that a controversial machine it bought in 2013 really can use quantum physics to work through a type of math that’s crucial to artificial intelligence much faster than a conventional computer.
An artificial intelligence engine that Google uses in many of its products, and that it made freely available last month, is now being used by others to perform some neat tricks, including translating English into Chinese, reading handwritten text, and even generating original artwork.
The AI software, called Tensor Flow, provides a straightforward way for users to train computers to perform tasks by feeding them large amounts of data. The software incorporates various methods for efficiently building and training simulated “deep learning” neural networks across different computer hardware.
Early this week the Austrian security company SEC Consult found that more than three million routers, modems, and other devices are vulnerable to being hijacked over the Internet. Instead of giving each device a unique encryption key to secure its communications, manufacturers including Cisco and General Electric had lazily used a much smaller number of security keys over and over again.
Google today announced the launch of an early access program for Brillo, the open-source Android-based operating system intended for Internet-connected devices.
The battle is on between Google’s Android Auto and Apple’s CarPlay. The prize is the chance to be the brains running on top of tomorrow’s generation of intelligent and Internet-connected cars.
Google is today introducing the Expeditions Pioneer Program, a new initiative to help teachers and students use virtual reality in schools around the world.
At the center of the new program — which follows Google’s introduction of Expeditions in May — is, of course, the Google Cardboard virtual reality headset, or the View-Master augmented reality headset from Google and Mattel. But Google will also include in the kits Android-based ASUS smartphones and routers that let headsets work offline.
That Google and other companies track our movements around the Web to target us with ads is well known. How exactly that information gets used is not—but a research paper presented last week suggests that some of the algorithmic judgments that emerge from Google’s ad system could strike many people as unsavory.
Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University and the International Computer Science Institute built a tool called AdFisher to probe the targeting of ads served up by Google on third party websites. They found that fake Web users believed by Google to be male job seekers were much more likely than equivalent female jobseekers to be shown a pair of ads for high paying executive jobs when they later visited a news website.
