Wednesday, January 22, 2020
UN Experts Demand Probe Into Alleged Saudi Hack of Amazon Boss Bezos
Austin-based Vapor IO, an edge computing startup, raised $90M from Berkshire Partners and wireless infrastructure giant Crown Castle, says total raise $100M+ (Mary Ann Azevedo/Crunchbase News)
Austin-based Vapor IO, an edge computing startup, raised $90M from Berkshire Partners and wireless infrastructure giant Crown Castle, says total raise $100M+ — Edge computing startup Vapor IO announced today the close of its $90 million Series C from private equity firm Berkshire Partners …
Why Airtel, Vodafone-Idea's trouble is bad news for mobile subscribers in India
Banned cryptocurrency to uphold integrity of banking system: RBI
Twitter is rolling out a pop-up feature that lets users add an emoji reaction to a Direct Message, similar to a feature in iMessage (Chance Miller/9to5Mac)
Twitter is rolling out a pop-up feature that lets users add an emoji reaction to a Direct Message, similar to a feature in iMessage — Twitter is taking a page out of Apple's playbook with its latest messaging feature. The social network announced today that it is rolling out support …
ISRO sets up a team to study technology
Twitter updates Android app after users report glitch
Yo Facebook & Instagram, stop showing Stories reruns
If I watch a Story cross-posted from Instagram to Facebook on either of the apps, it should appear as “watched” at the back of the Stories row on the other app. Why waste my time showing me Stories I already saw?
It’s been over two years since Instagram Stories launched cross-posting to Stories. Countless hours of each feature’s 500 million daily users have been squandered viewing repeats. Facebook and Messenger already synchronized the watched/unwatched state of Stories. It’s long past time that this was expanded to encompass Instagram.
I asked Facebook and Instagram if it had plans for this. A company spokesperson told me that it built cross-posting to make sharing easier to people’s different audiences on Facebook and Instagram, and it’s continuing to explore ways to simplify and improve Stories. But they gave no indication that Facebook realizes how annoying this is or that a solution is in the works.
The end result if this gets fixed? Users would spend more time watching new content, more creators would feel seen, and Facebook’s choice to jam Stories in all its apps would fee less redundant and invasive. If I send a reply to a Story on one app, I’m not going to send it or something different when I see the same Story on the other app a few minutes or hours later. Repeated content leads to more passive viewing and less interactive communication with friends, despite Facebook and Instagram stressing that its this zombie consumption that’s unhealthy.
The only possible downside to changing this could be fewer Stories ad impressions if secondary viewings of peoples’ best friends’ Stories keep them watching more than new content. But prioritizing making money over the user experience is again what Mark Zuckerberg has emphasized is not Facebook’s strategy.
There’s no need to belabor the point any further. Give us back our time. Stop the reruns.
Babylon Health is building an integrated, AI-based health app to serve a city of 300K in England
After announcing a $550 million fundraise last August, U.K. AI-based health services startup Babylon Health is putting some of that money to use with its widest-ranging project to date. The company has inked a 10-year deal with the city of Wolverhampton in England to provide an integrated health app covering 300,000 people, the entire population of the city.
The financial terms of the deal are not being disclosed, but Babylon confirmed that the NHS is not taking a stake in the startup as part of it. The plan is to start rolling out the first phase of the app by the end of this year.
Babylon Health is known for building AI-based platforms that help diagnose patients’ issues. Babylon’s services are provided as a complement to seeing actual clinicians — the idea being that the interactions and AI can speed up some of the work of getting people seen and into the system. Some of Babylon’s best known work to date has been a chatbot that it built for the NHS in the U.K., and, in addition to working with a number of private businesses on their employee healthcare services, it is also now in the process of rolling out services in 11 countries in Asia. (In August, Babylon said it was delivering 4,000 clinical consultations each day, or one patient interaction every 10 seconds; covering 4.3 million people worldwide; with more than 1.2 million digital consultations completed to date.)
Even with all these milestones passed — milestones that have helped catapult Babylon to a $2 billion valuation — its latest project will be its most ambitious to date: it will be the first time that Babylon works on a project that combines both hospital and primary medical care into an all-in-one app.
“We are extremely proud of this exciting 10-year partnership with RWT which will benefit patients and the NHS as a whole,” said Ali Parsa, CEO and founder of Babylon, in a statement. “We have over 1,000 AI experts, clinicians, engineers and scientists who will be helping to make Digital-First Integrated Care a reality and provide fast, effective, proactive care to patients. Together with RWT, we can demonstrate this works and help the NHS lead healthcare across the world.”
The plan is for Babylon and the Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust — the local health authority and body that will oversee the work for the city’s population — to build an app that will not only provide remote diagnoses, but also live monitoring of patients with chronic conditions (using wearables and other monitoring apps) and the ability to connect people with doctors and others remotely.
Other services will include the ability to let patients access their own medical records and review their own consultations; book appointments; renew prescriptions; view a “digital twin” of their own state of health based on medical history and other details; and manage their rehab after a procedure, illness or injury.
The gap in the market that Babylon is tackling is the fact that many countries are seeing populations that are both growing bigger and generally living longer, and that is putting a strain not just on public health services, but also those that are managed completely or partly privately. This has been a particularly painful theme in Babylon’s home market, the U.K., where healthcare is nationalised and is regularly facing budgetary and human capital shortages, but there is no infrastructure (or consumer finance) to supplement that for the majority of people.
The aim, however, goes beyond simply filling NHS gaps; it’s also about trying to build services that fit better with how people live, for example to provide them with certain services at home to save them from coming into, say, a hospital to be treated if the condition merits it.
“We know from our active engagement with patients of all ages and backgrounds that they are keen to use technology that will improve access and give them greater control of their own health, wellbeing and social inclusion,” said Trust Chief Executive David Loughton, CBE, in a statement. “For example, it should be normal for a patient with a long-term condition to take a blood-test at home, have the results fed into their app which alerts the specialist if they need an appointment. The patient chooses a time to meet, has the consultation through the app, works with their specialist to build a care plan, and the app encourages them to complete it whilst assessing the impact it’s having. This is our vision for properly joined-up and integrated care.”
AI has become a major theme in the drive to improve healthcare and medicine overall, primarily through two main areas: providing diagnostic and other services to patients in situations, acting in roles that would otherwise be played by humans; and in research, acting as a “super brain” to help perform complex calculations in the quest for better drug discovery, disease pathology and other areas that would take humans far longer to do on their own.
Well aware of the strains on health systems, startups, investors and other stakeholders have jumped into using AI in the hopes of creating more efficiency and potentially better outcomes. But that doesn’t mean that all the outcomes have actually been better. Google’s DeepMind encountered a lot of controversy around how it handled patient data in its own NHS deals, leading to questions and investigations that have now stretched into years. And BenevolentAI — which has been working on drug discovery — found itself raising money last year in round that devalued the loss-making company by half.
Paul Bate, Babylon’s MD of NHS services, noted in an interview that Babylon is mindful of patient privacy and consent, and notes that the service is opt-in and transparent in its data usage when engaging users. He declined to comment on how and when data will be retained by the NHS or by Babylon (or both) but said it would be made clear in the app when it is launched.
“It’s not a simple answer to say whether one body or another will keep it, but it will be transparent, both for US and the NHS, when it launches,” he added.
This ultrasonic gripper could let robots hold things without touching them
If robots are to help out in places like hospitals and phone repair shops, they’re going to need a light touch. And what’s lighter than not touching at all? Researchers have created a gripper that uses ultrasonics to suspend an object in midair, potentially making it suitable for the most delicate tasks.
It’s done with an array of tiny speakers that emit sound at very carefully controlled frequencies and volumes. These produce a sort of standing pressure wave that can hold an object up or, if the pressure is coming from multiple directions, hold it in place or move it around.
This kind of “acoustic levitation,” as it’s called, is not exactly new — we see it being used as a trick here and there, but so far there have been no obvious practical applications. Marcel Schuck and his team at ETH Zürich, however, show that a portable such device could easily find a place in processes where tiny objects must be very lightly held.
A small electric component, or a tiny oiled gear or bearing for a watch or micro-robot, for instance, would ideally be held without physical contact, since that contact could impart static or dirt to it. So even when robotic grippers are up to the task, they must be kept clean or isolated. Acoustic manipulation, however, would have significantly less possibility of contamination.
Another, more sinister-looking prototype.
The problem is that it isn’t obvious exactly which combination of frequencies and amplitudes are necessary to suspend a given object in the air. So a large part of this work was developing software that can easily be configured to work with a new object, or programmed to move it in a specific way — rotating, flipping or otherwise moving it at the user’s behest.
A working prototype is complete, but Schuck plans to poll various industries to see whether and how such a device could be useful to them. Watchmaking is of course important in Switzerland, and the parts are both small and sensitive to touch. “Toothed gearwheels, for example, are first coated with lubricant, and then the thickness of this lubricant layer is measured. Even the faintest touch could damage the thin film of lubricant,” he points out in the ETHZ news release.
How would a watchmaker use such a robotic arm? How would a designer of microscopic robots, or a biochemist? The potential is clear, but not necessarily obvious. Fortunately, he has a bit of fellowship cash to spend on the question and hopes to spin it off as a startup next year if his early inquiries bear fruit.
Epic Systems, a leading provider of digital medical records, calls on large hospitals to oppose proposed US rules that would open up access to patient records (Christina Farr/CNBC)
Epic Systems, a leading provider of digital medical records, calls on large hospitals to oppose proposed US rules that would open up access to patient records — - Epic Systems is urging its health system customers to take a stand against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' proposed rules …
Tuesday, January 21, 2020
Chhattisgarh PSC 2020 – State Service (Mains) Merit List Released
CGPSC State Service Exam Result 2020 – Merit List Released
JMRC Recruitment 2020 – Apply Online for 39 Station Controller, Jr Engineer & Other Posts
Sources: amid the Iran war, Asian bankers say rising power prices and energy security are becoming a bigger consideration in data center financing decisions (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg : Sources: amid the Iran war, Asian bankers say rising power prices and energy security are becoming a bigger consideration in ...
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The first project we remember working on together was drawing scenes from the picture books that our mom brought with her when she immigrate...
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