TMCnet News

Boot up: net makes smart?, iPhone displays figured, clone wars
[August 25, 2014]

Boot up: net makes smart?, iPhone displays figured, clone wars


(Guardian Web Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) A burst of 9 links for you to chew over, as picked by the Technology team States with faster internet access have smarter people >> High Speed Internet blog Despite several doomsday claims that the Internet is breeding a generation of morons, new analysis suggests the opposite may be true.



We gathered the 2013 average ACT scores for each state from act.org and compared them with the 2013 Internet speed data from Akamai that was highlighted in a recent Broadview article. We found a correlation of .57. Given that a 0 is no correlation and a 1 is perfect correlation, this strong correlation of .57 shows that students from states with faster Internet speeds have higher ACT scores on average.

This sound like something from Tyler Viglen's Spurious Correlations site - which manages far better correlations, such as the divorce rate in Maine having a 0.992 correlation with US per capita consumption of margarine.


Conjecture regarding larger iPhone displays >> Daring Fireball John Gruber: after giving it much thought, and a lot of tinkering in a spreadsheet, here is what I think Apple is going to do: • 4.7-inch display: 1334?×?750, 326 PPI @2x• 5.5-inch display: 2208?×?1242, 461 PPI @3x@2x means the same "double" retina resolution that we've seen on all iOS devices with retina displays to date, where each virtual point in the user interface is represented by two physical pixels on the display in each dimension, horizontal and vertical. @3x means a new "triple" retina resolution, where each user interface point is represented by three display pixels. A single @2x point is a 2?×?2 square of 4 pixels; an @3x point is a 3?×?3 square of 9 pixels.

I could be wrong on either or both of these conjectured new iPhones. I derived these figures on my own, and I'll explain my thought process below.

iPhone 5 battery replacement program >> Apple Support Apple has determined that a very small percentage of iPhone 5 devices may suddenly experience shorter battery life or need to be charged more frequently. The affected iPhone 5 devices were sold between September 2012 and January 2013 and fall within a limited serial number range.

If your iPhone 5 is experiencing these symptoms and meets the eligibility requirements noted below, Apple will replace your iPhone 5 battery, free of charge.

US and China only at present; will be extended to other countries from 29 August. You have to input your serial number if you think you're affected on the page; it doesn't offer the range.

Swing Copters, clones and the dismal failure of the 'open' app store >> Polygon Ben Kuchera: This is also how we end up with games like Combat Trigger: Call of the Modern Shooter Dead Duty 3D. I'm not one to shy away from optimizing for search, you can check out this story's URL for yourself, but there has to be a line somewhere. This isn't the title of a game that anyone took seriously as anything other than a honeypot.

This isn't one problem, it's a series of problems. It's not localized in one place, but literally everywhere apps are sold. There's not a ton of incentive for platform holders to kick ass and clean things up, because they get paid regardless, and asking for refunds is often a long, tedious process that likely isn't worth the buck or two you may have lost.

Which is, of course, part of the reason clones, scam apps and SEO releases are so attractive. It's all about scale.

There's no easy solution, and fighting back is impossible without Apple, Google or Microsoft onboard. But games are being strangled, customers are losing money and no one is happy. Something has to give.

Chinese search giant Baidu thinks AI pioneer Andrew Ng can help it challenge Google and become a global power >> MIT Technology Review Robert Hof: Andrew Ng, newly appointed chief scientist at Baidu, China's dominant search company, is here to talk about his plans to advance deep learning, a powerful new approach to artificial intelligence loosely modeled on the way the brain works. It has already made computers vastly better at recognizing speech, translating languages, and identifying images — and Ng's work at Google and Stanford University, where he was a professor of computer science, is behind some of the biggest breakthroughs. After his talk, the audience of about 200 entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and tech workers sends him off with two rounds of applause.

The avid reception helps explain why Baidu has made Ng, 38, the linchpin of an effort to transform itself into a global force. The company hired him in May to head its research organization, which includes a new artificial-intelligence lab in Silicon Valley and two labs in Beijing, one focused on deep learning and the other on large-scale data analysis. Often called China's Google, the company plans to invest $300 million in the new lab and a development office on the same floor over the next five years.

Hear HERE – "Halbherr is Not Here Anymore." >> Telemapics Mike Dobson looks at the departure of Nokia HERE's boss: I doubt that Nokia can afford to compete in the mapping wars with Google and Apple.

The last potentially meaningful data we have on Navteq's database development and delivery was that it spent $273 million in the first nine months of 2007 in the pursuit of a better database. At that time the amount that NAVTEQ spent during a partial year far outstripped the combined expenses of all of its competitors for several years. I doubt that HERE is now spending at a comparable rate to maintain and expand its database.While the amounts that Google is spending to expand its mapping/navigation/location databases may not be sustainable in the long run, the large investments in mapping that they continue to be willing to make have put them far ahead of anyone in the mapping arms race. Perhaps the more important issue is that few potential acquirers will understand that the amount of money HERE is spending on database development is grossly inadequate to grow the business in the mapping/navigation/location marketplace or to compete with Google or Apple in the future.

Market monitor: Q2 2014: China, LTE & smartphones >> Counterpoint Technology Market Research Neil Shah: Global smartphone market grew to a record all-time-high shipment volumes surpassing 300m units in Q2 2014 surpassing the Q4 2013 holiday season surge • Smartphone shipments now account to 70% of all mobile phone shipped during the quarter, highest ever• China was the big factor this quarter clocking record high smartphone shipments, more than 100m units• China now accounts to more than a third of the global smartphone volumes up from a quarter, eight quarters ago• The major growth in China is as a result of unparalleled demand for smartphones: almost 94% of the total phones shipped compared to the US, where smartphone still represents 88% of the total phones shipped in Q2 2014• During the quarter, LTE was one of the big factor driving smartphone volumes and the LTE phenomenon is just getting started in China• Within three quarters or so, China has raced to become the second largest market globally in terms of LTE smartphone volumes, almost a fourth of global LTE volumes and almost non-existent LTE volumes in the same quarter a year ago A niche of a niche >> CCS Insight Demographics don't always correlate with the realities of the market. Smartphones for seniors seems an obvious niche given the expanding penetration rate of smartphones and the growing elderly population. However, it appears there's been limited demand for such devices.Yesterday, Doro, a Swedish phone manufacturer specialising in handsets for seniors, reported that its smartphone makes up only 7% of its mobile device sales. The company's portfolio has several simplified, big-button feature phones and one smartphone: the Liberto 810. Doro has stripped away levels of complexity in its user interfaces and made the hardware large and clear, with screens optimised for older eyes and sound optimised for older ears.

Contains the phrase "younger seniors", which may be a first.

The golden age of neuroscience has arrived >> WSJ Michio Kaku: The Pentagon, witnessing the human tragedy of the wounded warriors from Iraq and Afghanistan, has invested more than $150 million in the military's Revolutionary Prosthetics program, so that injured veterans can bypass damaged limbs and spinal cords and mentally control state-of-the-art mechanical arms and legs. Already, the technology exists to let you walk into a room and mentally turn on the lights, control appliances, surf the Web, write and send emails, play videogames, dictate articles, control a distant robot or avatar, and even drive a car.

Not just our bodies, but even our memories are now being digitized. Last year at Wake Forest University and the University of Southern California, scientists for the first time were able to record and upload memories directly into an animal brain, which is something straight out of a sci-fi movie like "The Matrix." Scientists there trained mice to perform certain simple tasks, which can be recorded by sensors placed in their brains. After they forget the task, the digitized memory can be reinserted back into their brain, allowing them to remember.

Kaku is a professor of theoretical physics at the City College of New York.

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