Lifeboat Foundation

Facial recognition is a technology that can identify or verify a person’s identity based on their face. It can be used for various purposes, such as unlocking smartphones, verifying identities at airports, or finding missing persons. However, facial recognition also seriously threatens personal privacy, as it can be used to track, monitor, or profile people without their consent or knowledge. For example, some governments or companies may use facial recognition to spy on citizens, customers, or competitors or to collect and sell their data.

How can we prevent facial recognition from invading our privacy?

To protect our facial privacy, some researchers have proposed different methods to prevent facial recognition from working. These methods, collectively called anti-facial recognition (AFR), aim to hide, distort, or replace the faces in images or videos. For instance, some AFR methods use masks, makeup, glasses, or hats to cover or alter facial features. Other AFR methods use software to blur, pixelate, or swap the faces in digital media.

BlackSky is close to completing its SMART satellite network which uses AI to revolutionize global monitoring and security with unprecedented efficiency.

BlackSky has won Phase III of IARPA’s SMART program to develop the U.S. agency’s AI-driven satellites for global monitoring.

Apple’s latest gadget, the Apple Vision Pro, is a mixed-reality headset that promises to immerse users in a new dimension of spatial computing. But what makes this device so special, and how does it work?

To find out, the folks at iFixit did what they do best: they took it apart. In their usual fashion, they documented the process in a video and an article, giving us a glimpse of the inner workings of Apple’s most advanced hardware ever.

Continue reading “Apple Vision Pro teardown reveals the secrets of its mixed-reality magic” »

Gemini is the new Bard

Bard, which debuted in 2022, is Google’s attempt to create a generative AI chat experience that can do anything from writing poems and stories to generating images and code. The chatbot has been constantly evolving, adding new features and capabilities. Last year, Google upgraded Bard with Gemini, a multimodal AI model that can handle text, images, audio, and video. Last month, Bard added an image generator to create realistic pictures from text descriptions.

Apple has always been known for its innovative products, but its latest creation might be its most ambitious. The Apple Vision Pro is a headset that promises to revolutionize how we interact with technology by seamlessly blending the digital and physical worlds.

The device, which costs a whopping $3,500, has already hit the stores and attracted much attention. Some people are eager to try out the new possibilities of spatial computing, while others are mocking the sight of people wearing the bulky and futuristic-looking gadget.

One of the first to test the Apple Vision Pro in the real world was Casey Neistat, a popular social media personality and filmmaker. In a video posted on Saturday, he showed how he used the device in its passthrough mode, allowing him to see his surroundings through cameras and screens while accessing various virtual features.

Amid an intractable real estate crisis, fake luxury houses offer a delusion of one’s own.

According to Russian media reports, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko is set to make history on Sunday as he will surpass the world record for the longest cumulative time spent in space.

Kononenko, who is currently on his fifth space mission, will clock a total of 878 days, 11 hours, 29 minutes, and 49 seconds in orbit by 11:30:08 Moscow time (0830:08 GMT), breaking the previous record held by his fellow countryman Gennady Padalka, who retired in 2017.

The 59-year-old Kononenko, also the commander of the Roscosmos cosmonaut corps, will extend his record until September 23, when he is scheduled to return to Earth after completing his current expedition. By then, he will have spent 1,110 days in space, equivalent to nearly 2 1/2 years.

A start-up called Perplexity shows what’s possible for a search engine built from scratch with artificial intelligence.

Facebook turns 20 years old today, and if you don’t like it, I’m sure you have your reasons.

Mark Zuckerberg launched Facebook on February 4, 2004, in his Harvard dorm room. Thomas Lake says there are valid reasons today to dislike Facebook, but for him and many others it’s a living journal of 21st-century life — a virtual museum that otherwise would not exist.

Continue reading “As Facebook turns 20, I have something to confess” »