Lifeboat Foundation

Apple is set to expand ads to new areas of your iPhone and iPad in search of its next big revenue driver. Also: The company slows its pace of acquiring startups, and Peloton embarks on a major overhaul.

Last week in Power On: Apple’s delay of iPadOS 16 and Stage Manager keeps the focus on the iPhone 14.

When Carnegie Mellon University doctoral candidates I-Hsuan Kao and Ryan Muzzio started working together a switch flicked on. Then off.

Working in the Department of Physics’ Lab for Investigating Quantum Materials, Interfaces and Devices (LIQUID) Group, Kao, Muzzio and other research partners were able to show proof of concept that running an electrical current through a novel two-dimensional material could control the magnetic state of a neighboring magnetic material without the need of applying an external magnetic field.

The groundbreaking work, which was published in Nature Materials in June and has a related patent pending, has potential applications for data storage in consumer products such as digital cameras, smartphones and laptops.

Researchers have observed the formation of 2D ice on gold surfaces that were thought to be too hydrophilic and too rough to support this type of ice.

Mobile devices use facial recognition technology to help users quickly and securely unlock their phones, make a financial transaction or access medical records. But facial recognition technologies that employ a specific user-detection method are highly vulnerable to deepfake-based attacks that could lead to significant security concerns for users and applications, according to new research involving the Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology.

Mobile devices use facial recognition technology to help users quickly and securely unlock their phones, make a financial transaction or access medical records. But facial recognition technologies that employ a specific user-detection method are highly vulnerable to deepfake-based attacks that could lead to significant security concerns for users and applications, according to new research involving the Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology.

The researchers found that most application programming interfaces that use facial liveness verification—a feature of facial recognition technology that uses computer vision to confirm the presence of a live user—don’t always detect digitally altered photos or videos of individuals made to look like a live version of someone else, also known as deepfakes. Applications that do use these detection measures are also significantly less effective at identifying deepfakes than what the app provider has claimed.

“In recent years we have observed significant development of facial authentication and verification technologies, which have been deployed in many security-critical applications,” said Ting Wang, associate professor of information sciences and technology and one principal investigator on the project. “Meanwhile, we have also seen substantial advances in deepfake technologies, making it fairly easy to synthesize live-looking facial images and video at little cost. We thus ask the interesting question: Is it possible for malicious attackers to misuse deepfakes to fool the facial verification systems?”

Samsung unveiled the Galaxy Z Fold 4 and Z Flip 4 alongside new Galaxy Buds and the Galaxy Watch 5.

The 200-megapixel ISOCELL HP1 sensor uses advanced levels of pixel binning technologies to extract details and light in challenging situations.

“Hello, we’ve been trying to reach you about your car’s extended warranty.” After years of seemingly unstoppable scam robocalls, this phrase is embedded into the minds of many of us. Last month the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced it was ordering phone providers to block any calls coming from a known car warranty robocall scam, offering hope that U.S. phone users may hear that all-too-familiar automated voice a little less often.

But there is more work required to crack down on these calls. After all, car warranty warnings are only one type of scam. To understand how robocallers reach us, and why it’s so hard to stop them, Scientific American spoke with Adam Doupé, a cybersecurity expert at Arizona State University.

[An edited transcript of the interview follows.].

An Israeli startup is using over-the-phone voice analysis to detect atrial fibrillation, a common heart condition that is hard to find on a standard screening ECG.

Possibilities Are Endless — iHLS.

This post is also available in: עברית (Hebrew)

A new type of technology has recently been developed. AI technology that mimics the human eye. Researchers at the University of Central Florida have created a device for AI that replicates the retina of the eye. This new discovery can lead to AI that can immediately identify objects, such as automated descriptions of photos captured with a camera or a phone. This technology can potentially be used in autonomous robots and self-driving cars as well.

Continue reading “AI With a Human Eye — Possibilities Are Endless” »