Using Apple Watch; Controlling AI; and more [Weekly Computing Newsletter]

February 19, 2015 Weekly Computing Newsletter

NEWS What’s the Apple Watch Good For? Developers and designers debate whether the Apple Watch will find its purpose.       REVIEW Are We Smart Enough to Control Artificial Intelligence? A true AI might ruin the world—but that assumes it’s possible at all.       NEWS How do you Make Films for Virtual Reality? A Montreal-based film studio is making movies that you’ll watch with a virtual-reality headset, pointing the way to a whole new form of entertainment.       TECHNOLOGY What It’s Like to Try Magic Leap’s Take on Virtual Reality A startup is betting more than half a billion dollars that it will dazzle you with its approach to creating 3-D imagery.Availability: 1-3 years     NEWS Mainstream Use of Bitcoin May Be Plateauing at a Low Level Despite a big increase in the number of merchants accepting Bitcoin, the cryptocurrency doesn’t have much momentum in retail transactions.     NEWS App Creates Your Own Reality TV Channel Broadcasting everything your smartphone sees and hears could be the next trend in social media.     NEWS A Google-Backed Research Project Aims to Automate Data Analysis Software that can discover patterns in data and write a report on its findings could make it easier for companies to analyze it.     NEWS How Technology Might Help Twitter Curtail Harassment Harassment has become a major issue online. Twitter’s efforts to crack down on problem users might suggest a broader solution.     VIEW Not Only the NSA Knows How to Make Unerasable Malware Hacking tools linked to U.S. intelligence that burrow inside hard disk drives could also be made by nongovernment hackers.       VIEW The Face Detection Algorithm Set to Revolutionize Image Search The ability to spot faces from any angle, and even when partially occluded, has always been a uniquely human capability. Not anymore.       VIEW Human Face Recognition Found In Neural Network Based On Monkey Brains A neural network that simulates the way monkeys recognise faces produces many of the idiosyncratic behaviours found in humans, says computer scientists.     VIEW Seven Stories You Shouldn’t Miss (Week Ending February 14, 2015) Another chance to catch the most interesting, and important, articles from the previous week on MIT Technology Review.     VIEW Did the FAA Kill Drone Delivery, or Was It Already Going Nowhere? Commercial drones faced serious technological obstacles even before federal regulators proposed tight restrictions this week.     VIEW Recommended from Around the Web (Week Ending February 14, 2015) A roundup of the most interesting stories from other sites, collected by the staff at MIT Technology Review.     SEE MORE STORIES »

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