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These smart glasses could be a game changer for hearing-impaired theatergoers

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London’s National Theatre just took a big step toward inclusivity and accessibility, and it’s all thanks to smart glasses that look a bit like Google Glass. The glasses offer hard-of-hearing audience members live subtitles through augmented reality so they always know what witty dialogue is being bandied about by the actors on stage.

[Photo: courtesy of James Bellorini Photography/National Theatre]
The smart glasses are the latest inclusivity measure by the National Theatre. In the past, it staged special performances where it projected captions on screens on either side of the stage. However, it wanted to do more, and technology is making that possible. While it undoubtedly would have been easier for the theater to let audience members follow along on their phones, it opted for the glasses as a a more “discreet and immersive” experience that “wouldn’t disturb anyone.” (Presumably everyone will get the sick-glasses-bro selfies out of the way before the curtain goes up.) The other option would be to hire someone like Snoop Dogg’s sign language interpreter, but not everyone who is hard of hearing is fluent in sign language. The glasses are for anyone who can’t quite hear the words, but still wants to enjoy the National Theatre’s lineup of Ibsen retellings and Molière comedies.

The glasses took two years to develop, according to an interview with Jonathan Suffolk, the theater’s technical director, in the New York Times. The biggest challenge was creating software that displayed the dialogue as it was being delivered onstage, so that everyone could, say, laugh at a joke at the same time. It’s a particularly tricky problem, because actors tend to speak at different rates, and the theater wanted technology that could respond to that. What the developers came up with was a software link that follows live speech patterns and recognizes stage directions, so the subtitles appear at the right time and place. The glasses aren’t cheap, costing around $1,050 a pair.

The National Theatre has long been at the forefront of bringing tech to the theater. The immersive storytelling studio it runs with Accenture uses virtual reality to help patrons lose themselves in the theater, one story at a time.


Think you’re stressed? Try living in New Jersey

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If you live in New Jersey, Georgia, or Florida, it may not be news to you that you’re stressed from a slog through rush hour traffic, long hours, and an inability to afford your home (which is likely quite far from your place of business).

In fact, 10 states ranked high (or low, depending on how you look at it) in terms of the stress levels of their denizens:

  1. New Jersey
  2. Georgia
  3. Florida
  4. California
  5. New York
  6. Louisiana
  7. Maryland
  8. North Carolina
  9. Virginia
  10. Mississippi

People living in the above states often find themselves dealing with longer-than-average commute times, longer hours worked, and higher housing-to-income costs. They also tend to live in more densely populated areas that have higher-than-average unemployment, and a higher percentage of uninsured residents.

The data analysis and ranking was done by Zippia, and measured from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey for 2012-2016. Zippia ranked each state from 1 to 50 (with 1 being the most stressed) across these six factors.

In New Jersey, for instance, long hours, long commutes, and a high home-price-to-income ratio pushed the Garden State to the top of the ranking. Mississippi, on the other hand, has the highest unemployment rate in the nation and ranked high for their uninsured rate. When residents do have a job, they often work long hours.

What if paying rent on time boosted your credit score?

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For the growing number of Americans–around 43 million households–that rent their homes, nonpayment of monthly fees can lead to disastrous consequences, including eviction. Paying late can create bad blood with landlords over time. While those people who do pay rent on time are more likely to be able to remain in place, those renters see few other benefits. Unlike owning a home, which enables people to build wealth and benefit from tax deductions, renting often feels akin to dropping one’s paycheck through a sieve. And there’s another crucial difference between owning and renting a home: On-time mortgage payments are factored into individual credit scores, and rent payments are not.

A robust credit score is necessary for accessing essentials like bank loans, and useful for receiving discounts on anything from insurance plans to phone contracts to, ironically, credit cards themselves–a Catch-22 that keeps many people, especially low-income people of color and immigrants, locked out of this sector of the financial system. Around 45 million people in the U.S. currently lack a credit score, yet many of those people have a solid track record of meeting significant financial obligations in the form of on-time rent payments, which often constitute up to 35% of someone’s income.

[Source Image: bitontawan/iStock]
Last year, New York City comptroller Scott M. Stringer investigated how rent payment data could be included as a factor in people’s credit scores. Partnering with the credit bureau Experian, the comptroller’s team released a report showing that if rent payments were treated as a factor in credit scores, around 76% of renters in New York City would see their scores rise significantly, and around 28.7% of renters paying less than $2,000 per month would gain a credit score for the first time. Significantly, the average credit score for all renters paying less than $2,000 monthly would rise to around 700–a prime, or good, credit score that would help unlock access to loans and better credit card options.

Out of that report, the comptroller’s office is now rolling out a series of pilot programs to scale up the practice of rent-payment reporting for lower-income New Yorkers. In the Ocean Bay Apartments, an affordable housing development in the Rockaways where the mean credit score is 578, residents of 1,400 units will now be able to factor their rent payments into their scores, and tenants of 27 buildings in the South Bronx are also participating in the pilot. The comptroller’s office aims to scale up the program to reach residents in the five boroughs, potentially providing a model for other cities to follow.

[Source Image: bitontawan/iStock]
Experian, according to RentBureau director Emily Christiansen, has been examining ways to scale up the weight of rent payments in credit scores since 2010. “We’ve been working to advance this idea for several years,” she tells Fast Company. As of 2015, both VantageScore and FICO–the two main credit scoring mechanisms in the U.S.–have stated that they will count rent payment data toward credit scores. The issue, Christiansen says, is that rent payment transactions are often kept between landlord and tenant, and never reach the credit bureaus like Equifax and Experian. Experian’s work has largely revolved around working with property-management companies and landlords to get them to provide rent payment data to credit bureaus.

Admittedly, this sounds like it could spell disaster for renters who do not or cannot pay on time. But the irony, Christiansen says, is that the penalty for renters in that position often makes its way into credit scores anyway. If someone stops paying their rent and it goes to collections, or their landlord evicts them, their credit score will drop. “If you weren’t paying your rent, ultimately, it will find its way to your credit file, but if you were paying it, it won’t,” Christiansen says. In essence, for renters, the credit system is very good at penalizing delinquency, but terrible at rewarding the type of financial consistency it’s supposed to reflect.

As a result, the comptroller’s office found that incorporating rent payment information to credit scores created net positive effects. The comptroller’s office and Experian worked together to analyze a sample of New Yorkers paying less than $2,000 per month who already report their rent payment data to Experian. The two agencies then analyzed the credit scores of those individuals with and without rent payments factored in, and found a noticeable lift after the inclusion of rent-payment data. Around 57% of renters saw their scores increase by up to 10 points; 19% saw increases of 11 points or more, and 18% saw no change. Just a total of 6% saw any decrease in score with the inclusion of rent payments. While the study is limited to New York City, the findings have implications for other cities and populations.

[Source Image: bitontawan/iStock]
The effects are especially profound in areas of concentrated poverty, or where large percentages of people of color live. In the comptroller’s findings, zip codes where the average credit score was below 630 and where the effects of rent reporting would be most felt were 90% black and Hispanic, and the average income level hovered around $34,475.

As the comptroller’s office works to scale up pilot programs for residents, it also wants to get banks and credit unions involved. “By innovating new services that forward rent information to credit bureaus on behalf of renters, banks and credit unions could potentially gain new consumers interested in improving their credit,” Stringer writes in the report. “Banks, credit unions, and other financial institutions are already proficient in navigating the complex regulatory environment that surrounds credit reporting, making them well positioned to develop a product that could reach new consumers and markets.” It will also be crucial for banks, credit unions, and property managers–along with a network of more tenant-facing nonprofits–to educate renters about the benefits of reporting their payments.

National nonprofits like Credit Builders Alliance, which oversees a network of hundreds of smaller member nonprofits that aim to help people bolster their credit, are also working with affordable housing providers to encourage wider-scale rent payment reporting practices for tenants. Ultimately, Christiansen is hopeful that the type of work that the comptroller’s office is doing will push rent payment reporting into the mainstream–which will be crucial as the share of renters continues to reach new highs. “There’s a recognition that rent is one of the biggest payments that people make each month,” Christiansen says. “These people are essentially disadvantaged because they’re not receiving credit for making the payment.”

“Cancel Kavanaugh” protesters hit the streets of D.C. after FBI report

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With a floor vote to confirm U.S. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh looking more and more likely, opponents of the controversial, beer-loving judge are not giving up.

Protesters descended on Capitol Hill today for a round of “Cancel Kavanaugh” demonstrations meant to pressure lawmakers into picking someone else to sit on the high court. Some preliminary reports put the number of protesters in the thousands, with attendees including celebrity heavy hitters like Amy Schumer and Whoopi Goldberg. Big-name Democrats, like Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, were also in attendance.

“I believe Christine Blasey Ford,” Warren said, referring to the California professor who accused Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her when they were teenagers. “I am angry on behalf of women who have been told to sit down and shut up one time too many.”

A number of Twitter users posted images, videos, and live streams of the demonstrations.

The FBI finished its supplemental investigation of Kavanaugh in less than a week, and some senators who were thought to be swing votes—including Republicans Jeff Flake of Arizona and Susan Collins of Maine—have indicated that they are satisfied. Democrats, meanwhile, are blasting the investigation as rushed.

Nevertheless, senators are expected to hold a procedural vote tomorrow morning, with a full floor vote on Kavanaugh to take place as early as Saturday, according to CNN.

These 16 shows desperately want to be the next Game of Thrones

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With the news that Netflix is creating a new TV series and film projects around C.S. Lewis’s children’s fantasy book series The Chronicles of Narnia, the stakes have been raised (again) in the arms race to create the next Game of Thrones-like TV sensation. 

The HBO series, which will finally conclude next year, has of course been the phenomenon of all phenomena in television for the past seven years. A sprawling, action-packed adventure set in a mystical past, GoT is also a serious drama that is as much about familial infighting and betrayal as battle scenes. It’s that rare series that attracts both geeks and sophisticates–i.e., people who love The Walking Dead as well as those who still deconstruct scenes from The Sopranos–and racks up Emmy awards along the way. In a world of fractured audiences who increasingly search out their own niche-interest entertainment on YouTube and Netflix, GoT has been a unifying force that still can draw a huge crowd: Last season, the show averaged more than 30 million viewers across platforms.

So it comes as no surprise that as it begins to wind down, everyone–including HBO–is desperately trying to find a GoT heir. In general, this means acquiring a pre-existing property, whether it’s books, comics, or even a painting–GoT is based on the series by George R.R. Martin–that combines fantasy, action, and deep, compelling, and often complicated storytelling. (There are actually several dozen more, but these seem like the likeliest to be made and have a pre-sold audience.)

This whole idea may be a faulty premise: After all, the next Sopranos–a deep, compelling, and often complicated storytelling sensation–was not another mob drama.

But you never know! Herewith is a guide to some of the biggest projects that Hollywood and Big Tech alike are trying to hoover up in order to engineer their own post-GoT smash.

Netflix

1. The Chronicles of Narnia

Netflix plans to take C.S. Lewis’s seven, best-selling young adult novels and turn them into a “Narnia universe” of TV series and films. The most famous, of course, is The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, which tells the story of a group of children enter into the fantastical world of Narnia through a magical wardrobe. Netflix isn’t the first to go Narnian. Disney released two movie adaptations of Lewis’s books—The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and Prince Caspian—in 2005 and 2008, respectively.  

2. The Witcher

The eight novels and story collections in this series by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowsky follow “witchers,” or hunters who develop supernatural abilities at a young age to battle deadly monsters. The main witcher is Gerald of Rivia, and he’ll be played in the series, which debuts next year, by Henry Cavill (Man of Steel). The best-selling series has already been turned into a video game franchise, comic books, and tabletop games. 

3. Cursed

Based on a YA novel by famed comic book writer-artist Frank Miller (Sin City) and writer-producer Tom Wheeler that will be published this fall, Cursed is a reimagining of the King Arthur legend. The story is told through the eyes of Nimue, a teenage heroine with a mysterious gift who is destined to become the famed Lady of the Lake. She sets out with Arthur to find Merlin and deliver an ancient sword. The book and TV series were created simultaneously, and the idea is that the series will explore characters more deeply than in the book.  

4. Recursion

Scandal creator Shonda Rhimes and Matt Reeves, the writer-director who rebooted The Planet of the Apes movies, are teaming up to create a franchise based on a sci-fi book by Blake Crouch that’s coming out next summer. Recursion“explores what happens when a brilliant scientist invents a powerful technology that allows people not just to reactivate their most visceral memories but to completely reinvent them,” according to the Hollywood Reporter. Rhimes says she sees it as “an opportunity to explore a multi-genre universe in innovative ways.”

Amazon

1. Lord of the Rings

Amazon is shelling out over $1 billion in production and other expenses to make a new series based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy novels set in Middle Earth. This makes Amazon the biggest spender—by far—when it comes to the GoT arms race. As well as the most confident: It’s already committed to a five-season run of the show, which will be a prequel to The Fellowship of the Ring. The Middle Earth business has strong synergy potential for Amazon, which sells Tolkien’s novels and other LOTR-related merchandise.  

2. The Wheel of Time

This series is based on Robert Jordan’s epic, female-driven fantasy series that kicked off in 1990 with The Eye of the World. The franchise spans 14 novels that are set in a world where magic exists, but only women can use it. Amazon’s series will start with the 2004 prequel New Spring, which follows Moiraine, a member of a shadowy and all-female organization, Aes Sedai, as she embarks on a world-spanning journey. 

3. Consider Phlebas

This is the first installment of Iain M. Banks’s space opera series, Culture, that consisted of 10 books released between 1987 and 2012. Amazon has described the series as a “kinetic, action-packed adventure on a huge canvas” that is about “a highly advanced and progressive society that ends up at war with the Idirans, a deeply religious, warlike race intent on dominating the entire galaxy.” 

4. Ringworld

This series will be based on Larry Niven’s classic sci-fi collection from the 1970s. The books tell the story of Louis Gridley Wu, a bored man celebrating his 200th birthday in a technologically advanced future. After being offered a position on a space voyage, he joins a young woman and two aliens to explore Ringworld, the remote artificial ring beyond “Known Space.” 

6. Lazarus

Written by Greg Rucka (Jessica Jones), Lazarus is based on his comic book about an alternative future in which the world has been divided among 16 rival families who run their territories via a feudal system. As the families clash and try to quell uprisings among them, they rely on their own Lazarus: a one-person killing squad. 

7. Snow Crash

Based on Neal Stephenson’s cult novel, this is planned as a one-hour sci-fi drama. The series follows Hiro Protagonist, who delivers pizza for Uncle Enzo’s CosoNostra Pizza, Inc. But in the Metaverse he’s a warrior prince who’s on a search-and-destroy mission to find the villain behind a new computer virus. 

Hulu

The Vampire Chronicles

Hulu is developing this series based on Anne Rice’s best-selling novels about Lestat de Lioncourt, a French nobleman turned vampire in the 18th century. The character was famously played by Tom Cruise in the 1994 movie adaptation of the first books Interview with the Vampire. Rice is coproducing the series along with her son Christopher.  

Apple

Foundation

Based on Isaac Asimov’s classic sci-fi trilogy, Foundation was originally published as a short story series in Astounding Magazine in 1942. The books tell the story of The Foundation, a band of exiles living under the rule of the Galactic Empire. Apple is pushing the gas pedal on the project, having made a straight-to-series, 10-episode order. David S. Goyer (The Dark Knight) and Josh Friedman (Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles) are running the series. 

HBO

1. Game of Thrones Prequel(s)

Of course. HBO is developing not one but five GoT prequels in an attempt to keep the magic–and ratings–alive. Last year, HBO announced that it would put several GoT offshoot scripts into development, and this year committed to filming a pilot for one of them, making it the most likely to progress to the screen. GoT show runners Dan Weiss and David Benioff will not be involved with the prequels (they’re off writing StarWars movies for Disney), but will be attached as executive producers. George R.R. Martin wrote the story for the pilot, which is set in an era known as the Age of Heroes, along with Jane Goldman, cowriter of the Kingsman movies. 

2. Watchmen

HBO’s adaption of the DC graphic novel will debut next year with a cast that includes Jeremy Irons, Regina Kin, and Don Johnson. Damon Lindelof (Lost, The Leftovers) is writing and exec producing the series. He’s said that it will be the “New Testament” to the original Watchmen‘s Old Testament, and that it will be influenced by current politics and figures like Donald Trump, Theresa May, and Vladimir Putin in the way that the first book was a product of the Cold War. HBO has said the show is “set in an alternate history where superheroes are treated as outlaws.” 

Disney

Star Wars

As Disney prepares to launch its family entertainment app in late 2019, it’s been readying content to make the service a viable rival to Netflix. The most high-profile of these is a new Star Wars, live-action TV series that Jon Favreau is writing and executive producing. It was just revealed that the new show will be called The Mandalorian. On Instagram, Favreau posted that it’s “set after the fall of the Empire and before the emergence of the First Order. We follow the travails of a lone gunfighter in the outer reaches of the galaxy far from the authority of the New Republic.”

This crowdsourced map helps people find the kind of bathroom they need

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Almost four years ago, Christina Ingoglia and her husband David Nykodym had a daughter named Lilly, who was diagnosed with Mowat-Wilson Syndrome. The condition causes delayed development, so Lilly is nonverbal and has yet to learn to walk. That makes potty training difficult and diapers necessary.

Lilly now weighs 30 pounds and has also outgrown baby changing tables. For her parents, that makes traveling especially difficult. “We just found it brutal to find a place where she had some privacy and we had room to do what we needed to do to help her bathroom,” Ingoglia says. “A wide stall in a restroom that’s gender specific is just not going to help us anymore.”

Then one day the couple was driving around and following directions on navigation app Waze when inspiration struck: “I said, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if we could crowdsource information to make a map that says where there are restrooms for people like us?'” recalls Ingoglia, who is an English professor.

Nykodym, who is a GIS analyst for the state of Missouri, agreed and decided to build it. The result is called MoDE’s Restroom Map, a web-based app that that allows people to plot the addresses of gender-neutral or single occupancy public restrooms on a map so that others can plan trips around them. Missouri Disability Empowerment (MoDE), a nonprofit organization that was formalized this June and is classified a 501c4 so that it can engage in campaign-related advocacy work, has supported the effort. Ingoglia is MoDE’s vice president.

The app went live with Missouri-specific destinations in August and expanded nationally in September. It is designed on Esri’s Crowdsource Reporter, a mapping platform hosted on ArcGIS, and allows users to add geographic markers that appear in different shapes and colors depending on the type of facility. There’s Unisex (orange dot), Family (blue diamond), Family with Adult Sized Changing Table (green star), and Other (yellow dot) for some spot that might have equally important but non-standard benefits.

So far, the public has designated 260 spots around the country. To expand the list, Ingoglia is in early discussions with several state public transportation departments to add their own rest-stop information. She sees the app as a valuable resource to her family and many other constituencies that might need more privacy or security in the restroom.

As people plot more points, she hopes that activity will increase. Then the map can work two ways, both highlighting important spaces for those who need them, and potentially motivating people who don’t see enough options in their own area to advocate for new ones. “We think we’ve coined the term restroom desert,” she adds. “Because there are whole swathes of the country where people can’t participate civically, or go to a house of worship, or even go shopping with a person who has special needs in the restroom area because there’s nowhere to change them properly.”

Eventually, MoDE hopes that the concept proves effective enough that big tech companies like the one that inspired her might step in and really accelerate growth. “So in a way we’re trying to build this thing, prove that there’s a need, advocate, and meanwhile, if we can put ourselves out of business, that will be great. We’re hoping that an app like Waze or Apple Maps will just integrate a button that shows this information, and that could also be potentially crowdsourced.”

The Wing may be exclusive, but its new incubator won’t be

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It’s a good time to be a female founder seeking female investors. Today, The Wing is launching its own accelerator in tandem with _able, an early investor, which will ultimately invest more than $100,000 across at least four women-run businesses. It is appropriately dubbed The Wingable Challenge.

[Image: courtesy of The Wing]
The program, which is taking applications for the next two weeks, will run for four months and end with a Pitch Day in late January. The startups that are chosen to pitch will be mentored by female founders who have successfully raised capital and built their own startups—from The Wing’s cofounders, Audrey Gelman and Lauren Kassan, to Zola CEO Shan-Lyn Ma and SoulCycle’s Melanie Whalen.

This is also an opportunity for The Wing to open its doors to women who aren’t usually granted entry to its cozy cocoon, which has an admission fee of $215 per month. Anyone in the “Wing community” is welcome to apply. That includes Wing members but also extends to women who follow The Wing on Instagram or subscribe to the magazine.

“Given our mission is the the professional, civic, social, and economic advancement of women through community, we felt like this was the perfect chance to extend our platform to other women who might not have access to an opportunity like this otherwise,” says communications head Zara Rahim.

With this accelerator, The Wing joins the likes of Bumble—which recently started a fund—in using a women-first platform to make investments in other women and build networks of female investors and founders. Investment decisions for The Wingable Challenge will be made by _able partners Amanda Eilian and Lisa Blau, as well as additional investors who are being recruited; those investors will pledge to make their own investments in addition to the $100,000 already promised by _able.

Brands respond to soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo’s rape allegations

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Italian soccer giants Juventus are sticking by their man. The Series A club today tweeted out its support for Cristiano Ronaldo, who transferred to the club this past summer after nine years at Real Madrid, amid rape allegations.

Late last week, Kathryn Mayorga filed a lawsuit filed in Clark County, Nevada, accusing Ronaldo of a 2009 rape in a Las Vegas hotel room. The lawsuit also says that Ronaldo and his legal team coerced her into signing a $375,000 settlement and nondisclosure agreement in 2009. The suit, which seeks to void the agreement, follows a detailed investigative report in the German magazine Der Spiegel, and the Las Vegas police have reopened the investigation.

The 33-year-old Juventus and Portugal star is the face of many brand campaigns, including for Nike and EA Sports’s FIFA franchise, and took to Instagram Live on Wednesday to deny the accusations. “What they said today, fake–fake news. They want to promote by my name. It’s normal. They want to be famous–to say my name. Yeah but it’s part of the job. I’m (a) happy man and all, all good.”

Juventus’s response is in sharp contrast to what appears to be that of EA Sports. Ronaldo was originally announced as one of two cover stars on FIFA 19, the latest edition of EA’s insanely popular FIFA franchise. He was also the cover star for FIFA 18. As of now, the FIFA 19 site shows no sign of the cover star.

In a statement to the Hollywood Reporter, the company said, “We are closely monitoring the situation, as we expect cover athletes and ambassadors to conduct themselves in a manner that is consistent with EA’s values.”

Ronaldo’s other highest profile (and lucrative) endorsement deal is with Nike, which is a reported lifetime contract worth an estimated $1 billion. In a statement to Fast Company, a Nike spokesperson said, “We are deeply concerned by the disturbing allegations and will continue to closely monitor the situation.”


Baidu researchers are testing tech that can match job candidates with postings

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Guidance counselors can keep their copies of What Color Is Your Parachute? to themselves, because neural networks may soon find you the right job.

In a recent paper, Baidu researchers revealed they’ve been working on a neural net that can match resumes with skills listed in job postings, finding the exact right match for positions, MIT’s Technology Review reports.

The neural network, bluntly called Person-Job Fit, identifies words and phrases in job listings, like “program management” and “project development,” and matches them to skills listed on a candidate’s resume, like “developing projects” and “managing projects.” If the algorithm identifies relevant experience on someone’s job history, the candidate will be flagged as a potential match for the job opening.

The network has a little learning to do, though. According to Technology Review, when it came time to sorting people by educational requirements, the algorithm was stumped because nearly every job required a “bachelor’s degree or higher” (Get your degrees, folks) and nearly every candidate had a bachelor’s degree or higher, which made it difficult for the algorithm to match candidates to jobs. Guess those guidance counselors and HR departments still have a job to do (for now).

Apple hits back hard at Bloomberg over Chinese spying report

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Bloomberg Businessweek this morning published a bombshell story that had all the juicy elements: spying, tech giants, foreign intrigue. According to the report, tiny microchips were found hidden on servers sold to top tech companies and were used for network intrusion. These companies included Amazon, Apple, as well as major banks, and the servers were reportedly made by the manufacturer Super Micro. The authorities have reportedly been secretly looking into this espionage campaign for years.

All of the companies involved in this story denied Bloomberg‘s claims. Perhaps most forceful was Apple, which not only gave a lengthy statement to Bloomberg before publishing, but also just re-published it as a blog post on its own site. “The October 8, 2018 issue of Bloomberg Businessweek incorrectly reports that Apple found ‘malicious chips’ in servers on its network in 2015,” the post says. “As Apple has repeatedly explained to Bloomberg reporters and editors over the past 12 months, there is no truth to these claims.”

In addition to denying the claims, Apple’s post adds some color and further rebuttals that weren’t in its original statement to Bloomberg. Here are some of the important points:

  • “Despite numerous discussions across multiple teams and organizations, no one at Apple has ever heard of this investigation. Businessweek has refused to provide us with any information to track down the supposed proceedings or findings. Nor have they demonstrated any understanding of the standard procedures which were supposedly circumvented.”
  • “No one from Apple ever reached out to the FBI about anything like this, and we have never heard from the FBI about an investigation of this kind — much less tried to restrict it.”
  • “Apple has never found malicious chips in our servers.”
  • “Finally, in response to questions we have received from other news organizations since Businessweek published its story, we are not under any kind of gag order or other confidentiality obligations.”

These seem like very clear and frank rebuttals of the report. The article, for example, claims that Apple found suspicious chips in 2015 and reported it to the FBI. The company says this is false. It also clearly states it is not being silenced by any gag orders or other agreements. In short, with such a vigorous denial, we are forced to believe that one of the parties is misinformed.

The forcefulness of Apple’s response stands out. Organizations like Facebook and Twitter are frequently the focus of stories about data mishandling, but their responses are often either calculated and vague or apologetic. Apple, in contrast, is very specific and clear.

A spokesperson for Bloomberg offered me this statement about the magazine’s report:

Bloomberg Businessweek‘s investigation is the result of more than a year of reporting, during which we conducted more than 100 interviews. Seventeen individual sources, including government officials and insiders at the companies, confirmed the manipulation of hardware and other elements of the attacks. We also published three companies’ full statements, as well as a statement from China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. We stand by our story and are confident in our reporting and sources.

Given that the news outlet independently confirmed its information, it’s standing by the investigation. We’ll have to see if Apple tries to respond further.

Twitter-fingered Elon Musk just took a shot at the SEC

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Less than a week after settling a lawsuit with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Tesla’s fast-fingered CEO, Elon Musk, is taking digs at the government agency. Shortly after releasing Tesla’s quarterly safety report, Musk called out the agency, renaming it the “Shortseller Enrichment Commission.”

So in case you were worried that Musk had changed in any substantial way, don’t worry—he’s still petty.

The tweet follows a settlement with the SEC over an August tweet. Musk tweeted about taking Tesla private, naming a share price, and indicating the funding for such a transaction was already in hand. The company’s stock immediately shot skyward, inciting an SEC investigation into potential fraud. On Saturday, Tesla and the SEC agreed that Tesla would pay a $20 million fine and Musk would give up his post as chairman of the board for the next three years. A U.S. federal judge is now in the process of reviewing the settlement.

Musk is known for his irreverent tweets, which are Trump-like in tone. He noticeably does not like criticism. But Musk’s antics have been especially brazen this year. In May, during the second-quarter earnings call, he interrupted analysts, calling their questions “bonehead” and “dry,” and instead took questions from a YouTube blogger. In July, after Musk’s attempts to lend a hand to a team of divers rescuing a boys’ soccer team from a cave in Thailand were rebuffed, he called the leader of the expedition “a pedo.”

And on the Monday, following the settlement, Musk tweeted a link to the track “O.P.P.” with the caption “Naughty by Nature,” which is the name of the song’s artist, and a winky-face emoji. Twitter users speculated over the meaning of the tweet, which references a song about cheating, though some saw it as a shot at the SEC.

During the third-quarter earnings, Musk apologized several times to investors for his behavior on the previous call and it looked like his behavior might take on the cadence of a more traditional CEO. That no longer appears to be the case.

In the wake of this latest tweet, Tesla’s stock is down 4.4% in after-hours trading.

Tim Berners-Lee endorses Ro Khanna’s Internet Bill of Rights–here’s all 10

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Silicon Valley representative Ro Khanna has been working with think tanks, big tech companies, and government IT pros to create a list of principles to protect the data privacy of Americans. He must have done it well, because the list has been endorsed by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web.

“This bill of rights provides a set of principles that are about giving users more control of their online lives while creating a healthier internet economy,” Berners-Lee said.

Under the principles, Americans should have the right:

  1. To have access to and knowledge of all collection and uses of personal data by companies;
  2. To opt-in consent to the collection of personal data by any party and to the sharing of personal data with a third party;
  3. Where context appropriate and with a fair process, to obtain, correct, or delete personal data controlled by any company and to have those requests honored by third parties;
  4. To have personal data secured and to be notified in a timely manner when a security breach or unauthorized access of personal data is discovered;
  5. To move all personal data from one network to the next;
  6. To access and use the internet without internet service providers blocking, throttling, engaging in paid prioritization, or otherwise unfairly favoring content, applications, services, or devices;
  7. To have internet service without the collection of data that is unnecessary for providing the requested service absent opt-in consent;
  8. To have access to multiple viable, affordable internet platforms, services, and providers with clear and transparent pricing;
  9. Not to be unfairly discriminated against or exploited based on your personal data; and
  10. To have an entity that collects your personal data have reasonable business practices and accountability to protect your privacy.

The principles came to life when California Senator Nancy Pelosi asked Khanna to assemble them. Turning the principles into something with the power of law could be a hard political fight given the current Republican majority’s deregulatory mania, but with the midterm elections coming up, the playing field might look very different on November 7.

Sooner or later Big Tech will have to show that its support for data privacy regulation is more than lip service. “This is a 15-year fight, but I do not think tech is immediately primed against it and Congress is more willing to be strong on regulation,” Khanna told the New York Times‘s Kara Swisher.

Regardless, Khanna gets points for his efforts so far, and for his measured view of Silicon Valley: “Tech is amoral–it is great in many ways but not as great in others,” the congressman said, “and they need to now spend the next 10 years thinking about how they shape that tech for public good.”

This photographer is capturing images of dying species before they disappear

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On Tuesday at the Berlin Zoo, a black-mantled tamarin–a small, dark, serious-looking monkey that lives in the northwestern Amazon in the wild–climbed into a small photo tent to pose for a portrait. Next was an Ansell’s mole rat, a buck-toothed rodent from Zambia. For the photographer Joel Sartore, they were among the more than 8,000 species that he has documented over the last 13 years. His goal: to photograph every species living in the world’s zoos and wildlife sanctuaries, many of which risk extinction.

The project began in 2005 when Sartore’s wife was diagnosed with breast cancer. Sartore, a National Geographic photographer, was thinking both about the fragility of life and what he wanted to do with the rest of his life if she survived. The series, which eventually became National Geographic Photo Ark, started at the local zoo on days when his wife was feeling better. “We started out with a naked mole rat and a couple of poison dart frogs, and pretty soon I ended up photographing about every species they had,” he says. He has since visited zoos and sanctuaries in more than 40 countries.

At a time when the Earth is losing mammal species at a rate of 20 to 100 times faster than in the past–leading some researchers to suggest that the world is beginning the sixth mass extinction–Sartore wanted to document animals that most people have never heard of and don’t realize are at risk. “Very few of us have heard of 90% of the things I photograph,” he says. Since he takes pictures of every species, the project includes less-cute animals like mole rats or mussels that tend to get less support in conservation efforts.

By taking close portraits, he aims to create a sense of connection. “People don’t think of ourselves as primates, but we are,” he says. “We really respond to eye contact. I figured if we had these animals lit well on plain black-and-white backgrounds, we would really be able to look in the animals’ eyes and see that there’s great intelligence and beauty there. These are animals that are just well worth saving.”

A vulnerable clouded leopard (Neofelis nebulosa) cub with photographer Joel Sartore, Columbus Zoo, Columbus, Ohio. [Photo: © Joel Sartore/National Geographic Photo Ark]
He isn’t under the illusion, he says, that he can save every species. But he hopes that when people see the photographs, they’ll think about how the trajectory of extinction can be changed. “If people can look at these animals and fall in love with them the way I have, maybe it will change behaviors a little bit from eating less meat to driving a smaller car or using public transportation . . . We hope that it lets people start to think about something other than politics, and who won the ballgame,” he says. “We really do need to move beyond that, because we’re talking about a matter of life or death for all species on this planet.”

A selection of the photos will be on display at the Annenberg Space For Photography in Los Angeles from October 13 to January 19, 2019. Sartore also continues to add to the collection; in a decade, he estimates, he may be able to photograph all of the 12,000-plus species currently in captivity.

2018 Nobel Peace Prize goes to duo for their work against sexual violence

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The Norwegian Nobel Committee has announced that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2018 has been awarded to Nadia Murad and Denis Mukwege “for their efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed conflict.”

Mukwege is a gynecologist from the Democratic Republic of Congo who treats victims of sexual violence in the war-torn country and Murad is a Yazidi activist and survivor of sexual slavery by ISIS in Iraq who speaks publicly about the abuses she and others have suffered.

Announcing the winners of the Nobel Peace Prize, the Norwegian Nobel Committee said “Both laureates have made a crucial contribution to focusing attention on, and combating, such war crimes.”

Uber and Lyft are offering free rides to the polls on election day

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Uber’s CEO Dara Khosrowshahi has announced that on November 6, 2018, the company will partner with #VoteTogether and Democracy Works to provide free rides to the polls. The offer of free rides is being made because lack of transportation is one reason people cite for not voting. As Khosrowshahi explained:

With the 2018 elections around the corner, many organizations and companies across the country are going the extra mile to support our democratic process. At Uber, we want to do our part, too—by helping voters register and get to the polls on Election Day.

Using our technology and resources, we can help make it easier for every Uber rider in the U.S. to get to their polling place at the push of a button. We’re also partnering with nonprofit organizations to register voters before state deadlines and provide free rides to the polls on November 6.

Uber will also be inserting a “Get to the Polls” button inside its app on Election Day that will allow anyone to quickly find their polling place and book a ride to it as well as partnering with When We All Vote to provide users with easy-to-use voter registration tools.

Uber follows Lyft, who in August also offered 50% discounts and free rides to the polls on Election Day to those in underserved communities that face significant obstacles to transportation. As Lyft pointed out in a blog post, an estimated 15 million people were registered but didn’t vote in 2016 because of transportation issues.


A Lego genius has built an 85,000-piece model of Apple’s spaceship campus

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And it’s incredible. The builder, known only as Spencer_R built the miniature Apple Park out of 85,000 Lego blocks over a two year period. But perhaps “miniature” isn’t the right word. Spencer’s creation measures in at a whopping 6.8 feet x 4.5 feet and weighs almost 80 pounds. As Spencer notes (via 9to5Mac):

In 2014 I came across some drone footage of an enormous circular excavation being dug into the California earth. When I discovered this was the start of the foundation for a new low-rise Apple “spaceship” campus, I knew I had found an interesting and suitable candidate.

But not only did Spencer recreate the main “spaceship” building, he also recreated the entire area of the campus, including shrubbery, employee parking garages, a historic barn that is located on the campus, the glass-walled Steve Jobs Theater, and even basketball and tennis courts.

A few overview shots of Spencer’s recreation are below but check out his portfolio on Flickr to see the massive Lego structure in all its detailed glory.

California is banning weak passwords

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The Information Privacy: Connected Devices bill (SB-327) will make it illegal for companies who manufacture an internet-connected device, such as a router or webcam, to set a weak default password on the device. Right now many routers came with the administrative password “admin” or “password,” which users are then expected to change to something more complex after they set it up in their home.

Of course, most users rarely do this, meaning hackers have a very easy time accessing their networked devices. From 2020, it will be illegal for manufacturers of internet connected devices to set such simple default passwords on those devices. The bill will require manufacturers to set complex, unique admin passwords on their devices or have a start-up procedure that requires the user to create a strong password when setting up the device for the first time.

As the BBC points out, simple admin passwords for internet connected devices led to hackers being able to take major sites like Twitter, Spotify, and Reddit offline. The new law goes into effect in California on January 1, 2020.

Inside a penthouse designed just for Instagram influencers

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At a light, airy loft in the heart of SoHo, Manhattan, Instagrammers pose and shoot on the millennial pink sofa, in the big, white-tiled bathroom, on the boho roof deck and the brass canopy bed, hawking products like face masks, hair treatments, sweaters, and bras. And because this place is custom made for their photoshoots, they don’t have to worry about the clutter of real life getting in the way of the perfect image.

The 2,400-square-foot studio belongs to the advertising agency Village Marketing, which lets influencers book time to shoot photos in the drool-worthy space. It costs $15,000 to rent for the month, which is worth it for Village Marketing: The agency’s founder, Vickie Segar, realized that influencers were booking hotel rooms or shooting in furniture stores to get the photos they wanted, and decided to create the perfect Instagram lifestyle shoot location.

[Photo: Seth Caplan]

The e-commerce furniture company Wayfair designed and decked out the entire space in the company’s furniture for free, in exchange for all the social media impressions that the space will bring. Influencer marketing is a big business these days, with some brands paying as much as $100,000 for a single post. Wayfair even has a team devoted to it, and will often pay influencers to promote products as well as providing furniture.

Since the SoHo space opened in August, Wayfair has received about 5 million Instagram impressions–the company estimates it will bring in millions more as influencers continue to use the space and tag the company. “All the posts are totally organic and they’re tagging us because they want to, not because they have to,” says Wayfair media relations manager Lindsey Graziano. “That’s a win in our book.”

How does one design an apartment for Instagram? To find out, I spoke to Maggie Lydecker, a design manager at Wayfair who was in charge of designing the space.

[Photo: Seth Caplan]

Yes, millennial pink is still a thing

Lydecker used so much of the color that one of the project’s challenges was to find a balance between millennial pink and other colors. “It was a fine line between doing it right and overdoing it,” she says. Though based on Instagram, can there ever be too much millennial pink?

[Photo: Seth Caplan]

Don’t design rooms, design “vignettes”

Rooms are so 2005. Lydecker designed the Village loft by focusing on small “vignettes” that would make a good backdrop for a lifestyle shot. Each one has a statement piece of furniture: When you first walk in, a pair of bright blue velvet chairs arranged around a marble table is the first “moment” to steal the spotlight. The dining area has a branch-like chandelier with large round light bulbs suspended from the ceiling. The living room’s standout is a plush sofa in–you guessed it–millennial pink.

[Photo: Seth Caplan]

Skip the curtains

Village Marketing chose this particular loft because it has so much natural light–that intangible thing that makes you look good in your photos. To retain as much of this cherished resource as possible, and to showcase the views of downtown Manhattan, Lydecker decided not to add any window coverings at all. While it might look pretty in pictures, it also means the studio isn’t a great place to actually live–or get a good night’s sleep.

[Photo: Seth Caplan]

Texture is everything

With so much pink and white in the space, Lydecker broke up the monotony with texture: Rich velvets, shaggy faux fur, and shiny chromes to “add a glam factor,” she says.

[Photo: Seth Caplan]

Variety is the spice of life

In a space that hosts so many shoots, one of the goals was to widen the variety of spaces so that not every photo looks the same. The studio’s roof deck, which Lydecker calls her “pride and joy for the project,” features an antique indoor-outdoor rug, lounge seating, and lots of pillows and trees. Influencers have already booked the space to use for images of yoga retreats.

Now Instagram might let Facebook spy on your location

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Well, it looks like it didn’t take long after Instagram’s cofounders bailed for Facebook to make the popular photo-sharing app into spyware. It is being reported that Facebook is testing a new location sharing “feature” that would see it scoop up your Instagram location data to use as it pleases (i.e., serving you location-based ads). But worse, as app researcher Jane Manchun Wong discovered, is that this feature would send Facebook your location data gathered through Instagram even when you aren’t actively using the app:

Here’s the full description of the new feature being tested:

“Location History is a setting that allows Facebook to build a history of precise locations received through Location Services on your device. When Location History is on, Facebook will periodically add your current precise location to your Location History even if you leave the app. You can turn off Location History at any time in your Location Settings on the app.

When Location History is turned off, Facebook will stop adding new information to your Location History which you can view in your Location Settings. Facebook may still receive your most recent precise location so that you can, for example, post content that’s tagged with your location. Location History helps you explore what’s around you, get more relevant ads, and helps improve Facebook. Location History must be turned on for some location feature to work on Facebook, including Find Wi-Fi and Nearby Friends.”

In other words, the new feature uses Instagram to take your exact GPS location data and sends it to Facebook where it is displayed via your Facebook Activity Log, which maps the locations of everywhere you go. Facebook issued a statement to TechCrunch confirming they are in fact prototyping the feature:

“To confirm, we haven’t introduced updates to our location settings. As you know, we often work on ideas that may evolve over time or ultimately not be tested or released. Instagram does not currently store Location History; we’ll keep people updated with any changes to our location settings in the future.”

If Facebook does indeed roll this “feature” out to all users, people could block it by turning off Instagram’s access to location data on your Android device or iPhone, but then you would be blocking the ability to tag Instagram posts by location. In other words, this looks to be a case of “let us track you even more or lose access to the existing features you already have.”

So why are we still on Facebook again?

How AI is helping Amazon become a trillion-dollar company

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Swami Sivasubramanian lives in a wooded area in the Seattle suburbs that’s a favorite with opportunistic local bears. From time to time, usually on garbage night, the animals wander into Sivasubramanian’s backyard to pillage his trash. But try as they might, he and his family had never managed to spot the intruders.

“My wife really wanted to see these bears in action,” says Sivasubramanian, Amazon’s VP of machine learning. “She will always try to stay up looking for bears to visit, and she wants me to give her company.”

Sivasubramanian cops to being kind of lazy on that front. But as a technologist, he’s much more proactive. He founded his solution in DeepLens, a new video camera system from Amazon Web Services that lets anyone with programming skills employ deep learning to automate various tasks. DeepLens let him placate his wife by building “a machine learning model that actually detects a bear and sends a text to her phone, so that she can wake up, saying, ‘Hey, a bear is right there digging up the trash,’ ” he says.

DeepLens can perform plenty of other machine-vision tricks, such as figuring out if food is a hot dog or not a hot dog (yes, that’s a Silicon Valley reference). It can also transfer an artistic style from one image to an entire video sequence. It’s just one of a myriad of ways that Amazon is utilizing AI and machine learning across its many businesses, both for carrying out internal processes and for improving customers’ experience.

Since its earliest days, Amazon has used AI to come up with product recommendations based on what users already said they liked. The algorithms behind those systems have been tweaked again and again over the years. These days, thanks to machine learning, the recommendations have gotten more dynamic, says Jeff Wilke, the CEO of Amazon’s worldwide consumer division. “Say there’s a new piece of fashion that comes into the fall season,” he explains, “In the past it might take longer for the algorithms that we use to realize that people who bought these shoes also bought this top. And with some of the new techniques we can detect those things earlier, those correlations. And then surface the new top earlier in the season.”

The Echo Dot–and every Alexa-powered device–is infused with Amazon AI. [Photo: courtesy of Amazon]
Other Amazon AI and machine-learning efforts power the Alexa voice assistant, give users of Amazon Web Services access to cloud-based tools, allow shoppers to grab items and walk immediately out of Amazon Go stores, guide robots carrying shelves full of products directly to fulfillment-center workers, and much more. And while the technology is vital to Amazon across most of its businesses, the range of its applications is still stunning. It’s also a key reason why the company (briefly) hit $1 trillion in market cap, and stands every chance of getting back there for the long haul.

A company-wide mantra at Amazon is that every day is “Day One,” a humble contention that for all Jeff Bezos’s brainchild has accomplished, it’s just getting started. When it comes to AI and machine learning, Sivasubramanian doesn’t just pull out the standard “Day One” reference. He jokes that “it’s Day One, but it’s so early that we just woke up and haven’t even had a cup of coffee yet.”

Dance of the robots

Deep inside Amazon’s 855,000-square-foot fulfillment center in Kent, Washington, 18 miles south of Seattle, a bunch of orange Amazon robots are doing a dance. Balanced on top of each of the orange machines is a yellow pod with nine rows of product-packed shelves on each of four sides. Powered by AI, each of the robots automatically sprang into action when someone somewhere in the Pacific Northwest purchased something on Amazon.com, and each is now autonomously maneuvering its way around the others in a bid to get to a station at the edge of the fenced-off robotic field where a worker will pluck the item in question and put it on a conveyor belt toward another worker who will box it up.

At the scale that Amazon processes orders, peak efficiency is essential. Magnified over millions upon millions of orders a year, even a second or two saved per order makes a huge bottom-line difference.

For some time, Amazon has used machine learning in its fulfillment centers “to improve our ability to predict what customers are ordering and place it in the right place,” says Wilke, “And also to improve the efficiency and speed with which we get things to consumers.”

It might not seem all that sexy, but a recent AI-based innovation that allows workers in those fulfillment centers to skip one manual item scanning step per order is a big win for the company. The new technique is being applied to Amazon’s long-standing stowing process, which lets workers store items that have arrived from distributors and manufacturers anywhere on a warehouse’s shelves–so long as their location is recorded in a computer so that they can be found again on the first try. The method which has been in use has involved workers grabbing an item out of a box, using a bar-code scanner to scan it, placing it on a shelf, and then scanning the shelf. The dual scanning associates the item with its location.

Now, thanks to a combination of advanced computer vision and machine-learning technology, workers will be able to simply pick up an item in both hands, slide it under a scanner mounted nearby and place it in a bin. The system is smart enough to recognize where the item was placed and record it for future reference, without the worker having to scan the bin.

Brad Porter, Amazon Robotics’ VP of engineering at Amazon Robotics, says that freeing up the hand that would have been used to wield a bar-code scanner is a big boon to efficiency. “After about five minutes of doing it myself, I realized that I could pick up five or six small items… hold them in my left hand, grab one, scan it, put it in, grab one, scan it, put it in,” he says. “It’s super natural, super easy.”

Robots at an Amazon fulfillment center. [Photo: courtesy of Amazon]
The new system, which took about 18 months to develop, uses computer vision and machine learning algorithms to evaluate how a worker is touching items and determine when those items have been placed in a bin. Porter characterized the algorithms as among the “more sophisticated” news Amazon is using, given the need to tell whether a worker is holding up an item alongside a bin or actually placing it inside one. The system has to be able to work in different lighting conditions, and regardless of how full the bins are–something that can vary dramatically depending on time of year.

In recent weeks, Amazon has turned the new system on at its Milwaukee fulfillment center and is getting ready to do the same in about 10 other centers. Given that any changed methods must not introduce inefficiencies in Amazon’s fulfillment centers without a massive negative impact, Porter’s team had to be sure the new innovation was ready. They asked, “Are we going to turn the [system] on for peak [holiday season] this year,” he says, “and we pretty much made the decision that we’re ready to go.”

It’s not clear when–or even if–Amazon will roll out the new system at all of its fulfillment centers. Regardless, Porter is already thinking about how to improve it. That boils down to leveraging advances in camera technology and machine-vision processing speed. He imagines upgrading the system with more cameras involved, making it possible to recognize bar codes on a package without the worker even having to orient it towards a scanner. It might only save half a second per item, but at Amazon’s scale, that makes it very sexy indeed.

Grab and go

Given that the heart of the new fulfillment center system involves using cameras and AI software to detect someone holding an item and placing it on a shelf, you might think that the same technology is in use at Amazon Go, Amazon’s automated grocery stores that allow customers to walk in, grab what they want, and simply walk out the door, with everything being charged to their account automatically.

Not so, says Porter. Although there is likely some consultation going on between AI scientists across the company, Go’s hardware, which includes color and depth cameras, as well as weight sensors and algorithms, was independently developed. It reflects five years of work developing systems capable of tracking people’s handling items in a wide variety of sizes, shapes, and colors in complex environments like crowded grocery stores.

As of now, there are only four Amazon Go outlets–three in Seattle and another in Chicago, with more on the way. But they are able to handle a steady flow of customers who can scan their phone upon entry, shop as much or as little as they want, pick thing off of shelves and put them back, and accurately track what they end up leaving with, regardless of numerous potential pitfalls along the way.

Amazon Go only looks like a typical small grocery on the outside. [Photo: courtesy of Amazon]
Dilip Kumar, the vice president of Amazon Go, says that the very act of customers picking up an item presents a challenge to the system, since it blocks the cameras’ view of an item. Go’s systems must be capable of tracking what each customer in the store has picked up–possibly including multiple identical items–regardless of how crowded the store is and even if two people dressed identically are standing side by side and reaching across each other for purchases. “You could be picking up an item here, [or] I could be picking an item there. We still need to be able to associate my pick to me and your pick to you,” Kumar says. “The challenge with all of this is not just being able to build a sensor, but also dealing with varying lighting conditions. You can look at color temperature. Things vary. What’s pink is not always pink throughout the day.”

To deal with all of this, Kumar’s team designed algorithms that analyze what the cameras are seeing and look for interactions people have with products. In order to work, they have to be able to determine who took what at “the moment of truth” as an item is removed from a shelf.

Kumar won’t say how accurate Go’s systems are, but it’s clear the company wouldn’t make them available to the public if they were prone to high error rates. Fo over a year, the original Seattle store–which is on the ground floor of the headquarters building in which Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos works–was accessible only to employees as the company fine-tuned the system.

Next up for the Amazon Go technology, Kumar says, is to boost its algorithms so that they’re more powerful “per unit of compute” and to take advantage of cheaper sensors. Combine those two factors and Go’s systems could well be capable of more quickly identifying new items in stores without having to train the algorithms to recognize them. That’s important, he points out, when between 20% and 30% of items are new at any given time.

Asked if Amazon plans on porting the Go platform to its Whole Foods empire, Wilke says that’s not likely. Rather, he sees Go as just one of many ways–including Amazon Pantry, Amazon Fresh, Whole Foods, and others–of getting groceries and other items to customers. Ultimately, Wilke says, machine learning is an “advancing” technology, “which allows us to make some of these experiences better.” He adds that “real estate is hard,” and that Amazon doesn’t have long-standing expertise in it. But if a recent story by Bloomberg’s Spencer Soper is correct–he reported that Amazon is considering opening 3,000 Amazon Go stores over the next few years–the company isn’t fazed by the prospect of learning as it goes.

Alexa skills for all

Odds are that when most people think of Amazon and AI, they think of the company’s digital assistant, Alexa. To date, people have bought millions of Alexa-powered Echo devices, and third-party developers have built more than 45,000 skills–essentially voice-powered apps–that can do everything from help with recipes to play family games to read the news.

Along with cranking out its own Alexa gizmos at a furious rate, Amazon has been working on helping third-party hardware manufacturers integrate Alexa directly into their products. Known as Alexa Voice Service, the initiative has spawned about 100 products so far from companies like Sonos, Ecobee, Sony, Lenovo, and others. Rabuchin explains that Alexa Voice Service is essentially a set of APIs in the cloud that enable hardware makers to utilize Alexa. Amazon makes its front-end audio algorithms available to the third parties, as well as guidance for building Alexa-powered devices.

Amazon is also working with institutions to let them create customizable skills for Echo devices placed in college dorms or hotel rooms. As an example, Steve Rabuchin, VP for Alexa voice services and Alexa skills kit, recalls staying in a Marriott hotel and being able to get Alexa to turn the lights on and off, turn on the TV, change the channel, and ask where the gym was located.

The next frontier for Alexa is letting consumers create their own custom skills. In the past, that required some basic software development knowledge. But Amazon wanted to democratize the Alexa skills creation process, so it launched what it calls Blueprints–a template-based Alexa skills creation tool that just about anyone can figure out.

Blueprints let anyone teach Alexa new tricks, no coding required.

Creating a skill with Blueprint is as easy as filling in a few fields and hitting save. And while the skills generally won’t be as sophisticated as ones built by professional developers, and can’t be made publicly available, they do allow for custom skills nearly any Alexa user to leverage AI for some highly personal purposes–such as giving instructions to a housesitter or stepping through a workout regimen.

Amazon’s Echo Plus [Photo: courtesy of Amazon]

Amazon AI everywhere

One of the primary drivers of Amazon’s rise to a near-trillion-dollar company has been Amazon Web Services, its massive cloud-based storage and server business. AWS has become a cloud standard for companies and developers wanting access to the same kind of AI and machine learning technology that powers Amazon offerings suxch as Alexa, Amazon Go, Amazon Prime Video’s X-Ray feature, estimates for product delivery times on Amazon.com, and more. “Our mission in AWS,” says Sivasubramanian, VP of Amazon machine learning, “is to put those machine learning capabilities in the hands of every developer and data scientist.”

Sivasubramanian says that there’s excitement about machine learning’s potential in nearly every sector of the economy. But while executives at countless companies see how it can help their businesses, “it’s still in its infancy. [Those executives] look to us and say, ‘How can you actually help us take advantage of these machine learning capabilities to transform our customer experience?’ ”

To date, Sivasubramanian says, there are tens of thousands of customers using AWS-based machine learning services across sectors including retail, real estate, fashion, entertainment, health care, and others. Those customers have a variety of levels of AI competence. Some are what Sivasubramanian calls experts–people with PhDs in machine learning–while others are simply app developers. Amazon has tailored its AI and machine learning offerings to match both sorts of customers’ needs.

Some of those users have deep experience and the ability to build their own machine learning models; others just want to take advantage of models that have been created for them. That’s why Amazon built SageMaker, an end-to-end machine learning service meant to help developers build and train machine learning models and run them either in the cloud or on devices such as smartphones.

Sivasubramanian ticks off a wide variety of examples of corporate customers using AWS’s AI and machine learning services. Among them include Intuit which is using SageMaker to build fraud-detection models; Grammarly, which predicts what a user is writing and what corrections are required; CSPAN, which analyzes thousands of hours of video in order to recognize celebrities and specific politicians, as well as to double the number of videos it has indexed; DuoLingo, which is using Amazon’s Polly text-to-speech service to generate individual language learning sessions; Liberty Mutual, which is using Amazon’s conversational API as a service, Lex, to build a chatbot that enables the insurance company to handle many users’ questions; and the NFL, which is analyzing plays in order to predict what the next one will be.

He says that usage of AWS’s machine learning tools has grown 250% over the last year, and that since last November, AWS added more than 100 new features or services to its machine learning portfolio.

One of them is DeepLens. Designed so that developers can build and fully train a machine learning model within 10 minutes of unboxing, the camera system is already being used in many ways Amazon never imagined.

Of course, among those unorthodox applications is the project Sivasubramanian built to satisfy his wife’s request. And what he learned was that DeepLens was smarter than he even realized. “Initially, I had it notify for any animal, including my dog,” he says. “But this is the fun of machine learning: you constantly tune it to make sure you exclude things that are false positives, to make sure it gets more and more accurate. It’s an ongoing project so [my family] can have the best bear detector in the world.”

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