Friday, October 2, 2020
The digital transformation of boomers and beyond during the pandemic
Google research lets sign language switch ‘active speaker’ in video calls
An aspect of video calls that many of us take for granted is the way they can switch between feeds to highlight whoever’s speaking. Great — if speaking is how you communicate. Silent speech like sign language doesn’t trigger those algorithms, unfortunately, but this research from Google might change that.
It’s a real-time sign language detection engine that can tell when someone is signing (as opposed to just moving around) and when they’re done. Of course it’s trivial for humans to tell this sort of thing, but it’s harder for a video call system that’s used to just pushing pixels.
A new paper from Google researchers, presented (virtually, of course) at ECCV, shows how it can be done efficiency and with very little latency. It would defeat the point if the sign language detection worked but it resulted in delayed or degraded video, so their goal was to make sure the model was both lightweight and reliable.
The system first runs the video through a model called PoseNet, which estimates the positions of the body and limbs in each frame. This simplified visual information (essentially a stick figure) is sent to a model trained on pose data from video of people using German Sign Language, and it compares the live image to what it thinks signing looks like.
Image Credits: Google
This simple process already produces 80 percent accuracy in predicting whether a person is signing or not, and with some additional optimizing gets up to 91.5 percent accuracy. Considering how the “active speaker” detection on most calls is only so-so at telling whether a person is talking or coughing, those numbers are pretty respectable.
In order to work without adding some new “a person is signing” signal to existing calls, the system pulls clever a little trick. It uses a virtual audio source to generate a 20 kHz tone, which is outside the range of human hearing, but noticed by computer audio systems. This signal is generated whenever the person is signing, making the speech detection algorithms think that they are speaking out loud.
Right now it’s just a demo, which you can try here, but there doesn’t seem to be any reason why it couldn’t be built right into existing video call systems or even as an app that piggybacks on them. You can read the full paper here.
Coinbase says it has added support for "instant" withdrawals in nearly 40 countries, including the US, the UK, and many in Europe, via a linked debit card (Robert Stevens/Decrypt)
Coinbase says it has added support for “instant” withdrawals in nearly 40 countries, including the US, the UK, and many in Europe, via a linked debit card — Coinbase has hastened its withdrawal times for EU, UK and US customers. — San Francisco-based cryptocurrency exchange …
ESET details XDSpy, a hacking group which had been undetected for nine years with operations targeting government agencies in countries like Belarus and Russia (Catalin Cimpanu/ZDNet)
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Tribe Capital is close to announcing Firstlook, a program for individuals with a net worth +$1M and annual income of $200k to co-invest in startups with Tribe (Zoë Bernard/The Information)
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Blossom Capital appoints Carmen Alfonso Rico as its newest partner
Blossom Capital, the early-stage venture capital firm founded by Ophelia Brown, has recruited its latest partner: Carmen Alfonso Rico has joined from Samaipata VC, where she led the U.K. office. Before that she was at Felix Capital and is also a co-founder of the London outpost of “community-driven” VC, The Fund.
During her time at Felix Capital and Samaipata, Alfonso Rico is said to have sourced and invested in a number of promising European startups, such as virtual events platform Hopin and social networking app Peanut, along with scale-ups Goop, Deliveroo and Mirakl.
She’s also been an entrepreneur herself, having founded two companies, both with limited success but plenty of learnings. Vinpho was a Spanish crowdsourced journalism platform (you can read the early pitch deck here), and Reconnect was a U.K.-based direct-to-consumer lifestyle and fashion brand for pregnant women.
“It actually came about quite unexpectedly,” Alfonso Rico tells me on a call discussing her latest career move. “Ophelia and I like to joke now that it was almost like generating a deal and when founders are not looking to raise because I was not looking to move at all… We had breakfast and discussed Blossom and I very quickly realised that Blossom was a very, very interesting platform and that it had a lot of the kind of deal-making mindset that I was looking for”.
That’s a partial reference to the firm’s “high conviction” investing pitch, which sees the Series A and sometimes seed investor back fewer companies by writing larger cheques. Alfonso Rico says she was also attracted to the way Blossom is structured, being an all-partner firm where investments are worked on together and one that it isn’t particularly thesis-driven with regards to sectors or geography, unlike much of her previous VC experience. And, of course, there’s Brown’s own ambition.
“I think you know Ophelia [Brown], she is quite bold and very hungry and I think she projects that into Blossom,” says Alfonso Rico. “I immediately got very interested but we did take a lot of time to get to know each other, we spent weeks discussing deals, we spent some time together, actually properly together, to just make sure that there was that personal fit. And at the end, it was kind of an obvious decision”.
Although Blossom’s partner team isn’t “strictly segmented,” in terms of individual focus areas, Alfonso Rico says her investing and entrepreneurial background includes consumer, where she has an established network and some “muscle [memory]” analysing consumer companies, and digital platforms and marketplaces, both B2C and B2B. She’s also long-been obsessed with the “power of communities” and how they can be leveraged to support the success of products and brands regardless of sector.
“Following that customer love, that power of the community, has led me to my best investments, and I plan on continuing down that path,” she adds.
Startup IonQ unveils its next-gen quantum computing system, which it claims sets a new record of 4M+ for quantum volume, a common industry metric (Fortune)
Startup IonQ unveils its next-gen quantum computing system, which it claims sets a new record of 4M+ for quantum volume, a common industry metric — Our mission to help you navigate the new normal is fueled by subscribers. To enjoy unlimited access to our journalism, subscribe today.
New malware infects Android TVs, IoT devices in 84 nations
Thursday, October 1, 2020
Facebook's Workplace partners Deloitte to help companies work remotely
President Trump: “Melania and I tested positive for COVID-19”
Enlarge / White House in Washington, DC. (credit: Getty)
Hours after White House aide Hope Hicks reportedly tested positive for COVID-19, President Donald Trump told the public that both he and First Lady Melania Trump had also tested positive for the virus, as determined by a test administered on Thursday.
"Tonight, @FLOTUS and I tested positive for COVID-19," Trump stated on his Twitter account on early Friday morning. "We will begin our quarantine and recovery process immediately." This was followed by White House physician Sean Conley saying he'd "received confirmation" of that news, adding that the couple "plan[s] to remain at home within the White House during their convalescence." As of press time, no further details have been disclosed about either the President or First Lady's physical condition.
Reports about Hicks' contraction of the virus mention a timeline of her exhibiting mild symptoms on Wednesday while traveling with Trump, followed by a reportedly positive test result Wednesday evening. Later on Thursday, after Trump had already traveled to a fundraiser at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, NJ, he described Hicks' test results. Hours later, he disclosed his own test result.
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HP debuts 14-inch Spectre x360 laptop with a 3:2 aspect ratio, 11th-gen Intel processors, Thunderbolt 4, and AI-based noise removal features, starting at $1,199 (The Verge)
HP debuts 14-inch Spectre x360 laptop with a 3:2 aspect ratio, 11th-gen Intel processors, Thunderbolt 4, and AI-based noise removal features, starting at $1,199 — Plus updates for Spectre x360 13 and HP's Envy lineup — HP has just announced several new laptops, including …
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Arizona's Maricopa County is set to have the second largest concentration of US data centers by 2028, as the state races to increase electricity production (Pranshu Verma/Washington Post)
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Jake Offenhartz / Gothamist : Since October, the NYPD has deployed a quadruped robot called Spot to a handful of crime scenes and hostage...
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