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For the first time ever, two AI systems built to process and respond to human speech (created, respectively, by Microsoft and Chinese commerce giant Alibaba) outscored humans in a reading comprehension test designed by Stanford researchers. The Stanford Question Answering Dataset, SQuAD, is composed of a staggering 100,000 questions following brief reading passages. Created in…
Senate Democrats are getting serious about overruling the FCC’s recent decision to kill net neutrality protections. Republican Senator Susan Collins has joined 49 Democrats in the endorsement of a legislative measure that would reverse the FCC’s ruling. Only one more vote is necessary for the measure to pass the Senate. Democrats have seized on the…
Looking for a good reason to justify spending thousands of dollars on a gigantic 8K TV? Look no further than storm chaser Mike Olbinski’s latest timelapse, Breathe. It’s not only the first to be edited in full, eye-slapping 8K resolution, it’s also been edited in black and white, making the brewing storms Olbinski captured feel…
On Tuesday, people in Japan with national broadcaster NHK’s app installed on their phones were sent an alert urging them to take cover after a likely missile launch by North Korea. “NHK news alert. North Korea likely to have launched missile. The government J alert: evacuate inside the building or underground,” the notification read, according…
Peter Madsen, an eccentric inventor who gained notoriety for his DIY submarine and mini-rocket projects, has been charged with the murder of Kim Wall, a young journalist that was writing a story about him. After months of shifting stories, prosecutors believe that Madsen intentionally killed Wall and that the act was premeditated. In August of…
Google and Samsung are locked in a battle at the premium end of the Android smartphone market, and one of the reasons why you might pick a Google Pixel 2 over a Samsung Galaxy Note 8—or vice versa—is the on-board software. We put the two flagship devices side by side to see how Pixel Android…
Recently, OnePlus was on a roll. The OnePlus 5T is easily the best phone the company has ever made, and just before CES 2018, OnePlus released a rather attractive white color variant for its latest mid-range phone. However, things got derailed last week when OnePlus customers started reporting they were seeing unknown transactions hit their…
Google Home and Chromecast devices are reportedly killing peoples’ Wi-Fi. The problem, first reported by Android Police, originally seemed localized to users of the Google Home Max speaker and the cheap, but usually excellent, TP-Link Archer C7 router. However since Android Police first reported the problem, it seems to have spread to other Google devices…
On Sunday, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders used her official government Twitter account to complain that her two-year-old had allegedly ordered a $79.99 action figure by “yelling ‘Batman!’ over and over again at her Alexa-enabled Amazon Echo. Hmm. If this were true, it would certainly be a convenient way for Sanders to score…
The Chinese government is continuing to intensify its crackdown on the cryptocurrency market, Bloomberg reported, and is planning on extending its ban on crypto exchanges to pursue alternative “online platforms and mobile apps that offer exchange-like services.” Chinese regulators will seek to prohibit domestic access to foreign platforms that “enable centralized trading” as well as…
Workers at Lesotho’s Letšeng mine have discovered an absolute whopper of a diamond, rated at 910-carats. Roughly the size of two golf balls, the precious gem has an estimated value of $40 million. The rock, uncovered in the landlocked southern African country of Lesotho, is a 910-carat, D-color Type IIa diamond. This type of diamond…
Your poop is a living forest. Seriously! Hundreds of species of microbes thrive inside of you, helping you to live your best life. Everyone’s microbiome differs—yours from your neighbors’, and different populations’ from one another’s. But there is much scientists still don’t know about the human microbiome. And one team of scientists think they’ve made…
Do you love puzzles? Probably not as much as conceptual artist Martin John Callanan does. This mind-numbing, 11-minute timelapse shows him spending an entire work day painstakingly reassembling a five-pound mis-printed note that the Bank of England shredded to tiny bits. Getting your hands on a bag of shredded out-of-circulation currency is no easy feat;…
Nerf’s Rival blasters, which can fire small foam balls at speeds of up to 70 miles per hour, already make you a formidable opponent when office battles erupt. But it wasn’t enough for YouTube’s Captain Xavier, who hacked his Nerf Rival into a spinning minigun fed by a 2,000-sh0t backpack. It’s a mod that’s as…
After burning for nearly an entire week, the Sanchi oil tanker has finally plunged to the bottom of the East China Sea. A large, toxic oil slick now threatens the region, with models suggesting it won’t reach land for another three months. As reported in the BBC, the slick now measures 46 square miles (120…
If you’ve seen a lot of people suddenly sharing uncannily similar artistic doppelgängers of themselves recently, Google’s facial recognition abilities and massive database of art are to blame. The tech giant recently recently added a new feature to its Arts and Culture app which allows users to snap a photo and instantaneously get a list…
The Center for Disease Control’s January 16th special session advising Americans on what to do in the event of a nuclear war will now be about what to do in the event of, uh, flu season. Per the New York Times, the CDC announced on Friday the upcoming event would be about a completely different…
A “strong magnitude 7.1 earthquake” struck the southern coast of Peru on Sunday morning, leaving at least one dead, several missing, and dozens injured, CNBC reported. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the quake struck roughly 22.4 miles (36 kilometers) offshore centered about 25 miles (40 km) into the Pacific Ocean from the town of…
Former U.S. Army intelligence analyst, Wikileaks whistleblower, and trans activist Chelsea Manning has filed documents to run for a Senate seat in Maryland currently held by incumbent Democrat Ben Cardin, the Washington Post reported. Manning did not return requests for comment from the Post or CNN, though she filed the documents on January 11th with…
On Saturday, smartphones in Hawaii lit up with the ominous warning, “BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.” A minor panic almost immediately ensued as the public wondered whether a nuclear warhead was indeed about to obliterate part of the U.S. Officials also overrode Hawaiian television with a…
