DIRS.INFO The most relevant business & tech news

☆ How to increase your attention span amid digital overload
▼ + stars: | 2024-08-11 | by ( Riane Lumer | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +10 min

While a dwindling attention span is not due to a personal failing (despite individual variability) a majority of the time, experts say there are changes you can make to regain control over your mind. “Tech companies and ad marketing companies use this information to construct profiles about us, and then they design algorithms that are targeted to capture our attention,” Mark said. “We have a tank of attentional resources (that) gets drained when we keep switching our attention,” Mark said. Additionally, he suggested using an app that places time limits on social media or websites you find yourself addicted to using. “The way I feel at the moment is like somebody is pouring itching powder over us all day,” Hari said.

Persons: I’m, it’s, Gloria Mark, Mark, Graham Burnett, ”, Burnett, Henry Charles Lea, ” Mark, Shoshana Zuboff, “ I’m, Johann Hari, ” Hari, Hari, ’, There’s Organizations: CNN, University of California, Computing Systems, Institute, Strother School, Princeton University, “ Tech, Harvard Business School, Facebook, New York Times, Association of Computing Locations: Irvine, Brooklyn , New York, New Jersey, Boston, Silicon Valley

☆ A young Duke professor won $250,000 for her algorithms that could find symptoms of heart disease when they start
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-01 | by ( Jenny Mcgrath | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Amanda Randles creates virtual simulations that incorporate data from patients' wearable devices. To that end, Randles, a professor of biomedical sciences at Duke University's Pratt School of Engineering, spends her time building some of those virtual simulations. Tracking cancer cellsWhen cancer cells circulate through the bloodstream, they can sometimes acclimate in a different part of the body and form new tumors, which is known as metastasis. In her simulations, Randles changes different parameters, like how the size of the cell's nucleus affects its movement. Advertisement"What is it about the cancer cells that are making them more likely to go to the brain or to the breast," she said.

Persons: Amanda Randles, —, Randles, Salil Parekh, It's Organizations: Duke University, Computing, Service, Business, Duke University's Pratt School of Engineering, Association for Computing, Infosys, Apple Watch

☆ Computer Theorist Wins $1 Million Turing Award
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-11 | by ( Cade Metz | More About Cade Metz | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

On Wednesday, the Association for Computing Machinery, the world’s largest society of computing professionals, announced that this year’s Turing Award will go to Avi Wigderson, an Israeli-born mathematician and theoretical computer scientist who specializes in randomness. Often called the Nobel Prize of computing, the Turing Award comes with a $1 million prize. The award is named for Alan Turing, the British mathematician who helped create the foundations for modern computing in the mid-20th century. Other recent winners include Ed Catmull and Pat Hanrahan, who helped create the computer-generated imagery, or C.G.I., that drives modern movies and television, and the A.I. researchers Geoffrey Hinton, Yann LeCun and Yoshua Bengio, who nurtured the techniques that gave rise to chatbots like ChatGPT.

Persons: Turing, Avi Wigderson, Alan Turing, Ed Catmull, Pat Hanrahan, Geoffrey Hinton, Yann LeCun, Yoshua Bengio Organizations: Association for Computing Machinery Locations: Israeli, British

☆ Why experts are studying how to improve tablets for parrot use
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-11 | by ( Taylor Nicioli | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +7 min

By designing a balloon-popping tablet game and collecting data from 20 pet parrots, the researchers found that birds’ interest in the game indicated mental stimulation could be a potential benefit. Each parrot popped virtual balloons by using its tongue and beak, with eyes often very close to the screen. Rébecca KleinbergerResearchers designed the tablet game to be used by a parrot in collaboration with the bird's caretaker. One bird showed more interest in playing the game after researchers adjusted the tablets to only account for one tap per 300 milliseconds, she added. Mobile games for parrot enrichmentIf a parrot owner is looking to introduce tablets into a pet’s schedule, it’s important to remember that the activity should be collaborative between the owner and the bird, Pepperberg said.

Persons: Rébecca Kleinberger, ”, Kleinberger, Irene Pepperberg, Pepperberg, Rébecca, ” Kleinberger, Gabriel Miller, Kurt Sladky, Sladky Organizations: CNN, ACM, of Computing Machinery, Computing Systems, Northeastern University, Boston University, University of Wisconsin, Madison’s, of Veterinary Medicine, Mobile Locations: Boston

☆ AI for cars: An excerpt from Walter Isaacson's new biography of Elon Musk
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-09 | by ( Walter Isaacson | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +7 min

The "neural network planner" that Shroff and others were working on took a different approach. Faced with a situation, the neural network chooses a path based on what humans have done in thousands of similar situations. By early 2023, the neural network planner project had analyzed 10 million clips of video collected from the cars of Tesla customers. By mid-April 2023, it was time for Musk to try the new neural network planner. "Oh, wow," he said, "even my human neural network failed here, but the car did the right thing."

Persons: Elon Musk, Mozart, Mark Zuckerberg, Dhaval Shroff, OpenAI, Musk, Shroff, Alan Turing, Uber, James Bond, Ashok Elluswamy Organizations: Tesla, Computing Machinery, Intelligence, Palo Locations: Palo Alto, Buffalo , New York

☆ Opinion | It’s the End of Computer Programming As We Know It. (And I Feel Fine.)
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-02 | by ( Farhad Manjoo | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +3 min

could transform computer programming from a rarefied, highly-compensated occupation into a widely accessible skill that people can easily pick up and use as part of their jobs across a wide variety of fields. In situations where one needs a “simple” program … those programs will, themselves, be generated by an A.I. Welsh’s argument, which ran earlier this year in the house organ of the Association for Computing Machinery, carried the headline, “The End of Programming,” but there’s also a way in which A.I. could mark the beginning of a new kind of programming — one that doesn’t require us to learn code but instead transforms human-language instructions into software. Everyone is a programmer now — you just have to say something to the computer.”

Persons: —, DeepMind, ” Matt Welsh, there’s, “, ” Jensen Huang Organizations: Google, Apple, Association for Computing Machinery, Nvidia Locations: Google’s, Taiwan

☆ Computing networking pioneer Metcalfe wins top industry prize
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-22 | by ( Stephen Nellis | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

March 21 (Reuters) - Computing networking pioneer Bob Metcalfe on Wednesday won the industry's most prestigious prize for the invention of the Ethernet, a technology that half a century after its creation remains the foundation of the internet. The Association for Computing Machinery credited Metcalfe, 76, with the Ethernet's "invention, standardization, and commercialization" in conferring its 2022 Turing Award, known as the Nobel prize of computing. The Ethernet got its start when Metcalfe, who later went on to co-found computing network equipment maker 3Com, was asked to hook up the office printer. Metcalfe said previous generations of AI "died on the vine because of a lack of data." And the brain teaches us that connecting them is where it's at," Metcalfe said.

Search resuls for: "Computing Machinery"

7 mentions found