Project Fi now supports data-only devices like tablets

Google’s Project Fi MVNO is a very unique experiment that uses both T-Mobile and Sprint cellular networks to make a hybrid network that boasts some pretty solid coverage across the United States. However, since it is often bridging two foreign legacy networks it uses some interesting magic to make things work well. Since there is so much witchcraft going on and Google has needed to have full control over the phones that are connected to it (and technology restrictions pretty much bar anyone else), the MVNO has been exclusive to the Nexus 6, 5X, and 6P…until now.

Starting now, you can bring tablets to the Project Fi network, pop in a SIM, and go to town. According to the documentation on the Project Fi website, any unlocked tablet or data-only device should be capable of working with Project Fi but they have only tested and confirmed compatibility with the following tablets:

• Nexus 7 – K009 (US LTE)
• Nexus 9 – 0P82300 (US LTE)
• iPad Air 2 – Model A1567
• iPad mini 4 – Model A1550
• Galaxy Tab S – Model SM-T807V

Otherwise they’re pretty much just saying you’re on your own as far as support is concerned if it’s not one of those five tabs. What’s particularly great about this new setup is that it doesn’t cost any extra money dollars to add a tablet to your Fi account. As long as you have a Fi account you can request a data-only SIM (or 9) and pop them into your favorite tablets. You can have up to 9 data-only devices on your account but there’s no restriction from swapping cards around between your other 14 tablets. Data costs the same $10/GB as it does on your phone (and draws from the same data), so it’s just like tethering to your phone except you don’t have to do that.

You may have also noticed that there are some non-Google devices among those listed above. They’re able to support this (which has been confirmed by Android Police) by having the data-only SIM cards basically just be T-Mobile MVNO cards. You will only be able to connect to the T-Mobile LTE network with these cards, so plan accordingly (and be wary of what bands your tablet will support).

All of this adds up to a fairly great deal from Project Fi as long as you don’t plan on using a ton of data. If you do, maybe you’d be better off with one of the offerings from the big carriers.

Source: Project Fi

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An algorithm can tell if your face is forgettable

Some faces are more memorable than others. The brain processes visual cues to decide if a face or an image will stay lodged in the memory bank. What if a network could be trained to imitate that response? You could potentially alter the visuals for a greater impact. A team of researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) has built MemNet, a deep learning based algorithm that predicts the “memorability” of your photographs almost as well as the human brain.

The key to hacking the brain is knowing what makes it tick. “People tend to remember and forget the same set of images on average,” Aditya Khosla, team lead on MemNet and researcher at MIT’s CSAIL told Engadget. “Even though we all have different backgrounds and experiences, somehow our brains are wired in a way that we tend to remember a similar set of images.”

To understand that visual experience and reaction, the researchers turned to Amazon Mechanical Turk for a crowdsourced experiment. They made about 5,000 online participants look at a set of images and asked them to press a key every time an image looked familiar to them. Based on their responses, the crew assigned a memorability score to each image. “We found that there’s a large consistency,” says Khosla. “Even though people came from a variety of backgrounds, the memorability of the images was preserved.”

The images with the scores were then put through MemNet, which used Convolutional Neural Networks (described in an accompanying paper) to make predictions that were almost as accurate as the memorability scores from a diverse group of humans. According to an MIT report, it performed 30 percent better than existing software and was within a few percentage points of the average scores collected from the online experiment. What makes the predictive tool particularly useful is that it throws up a heatmap along with the score, highlighting bits that are likely to be remembered and those that aren’t.

Khosla calls that feature an “instant focus group.” The heatmap could potentially change the way advertisers place products in a commercial or it could help educators’ present information to students in a more memorable way. “If we can understand what drives our memory and what kind of images stick in our memory, we might be able to modify the way content is presented in education to make it easier to remember,” he says. “We would essentially exploit the structure of the brain to make that content sink in a lot better.”

In previous research, the team tweaked faces in photos to make them more memorable. But this time they included general images, which can be harder for an algorithm to process. To meet that challenge, the team employed the deep-learning approach to train the network to sift through giant heaps of data and visual cues to find a memorability pattern that imitates the human visual experience. “While deep-learning has propelled much progress in object recognition and scene understanding, predicting human memory has often been viewed as a higher-level cognitive process that computer scientists will never be able to tackle,” Aude Oliva, principal research scientist, said in the report. “Well, we can, and we did!”

MemNet could have a significant impact on the way we click selfies (an app that can predict memorability is reportedly underway) or help an advertiser be more efficient, but the algorithm isn’t ready for subtle details that are picked up by the human eye just yet. “It can do a reasonable job of predicting which face in a group is more memorable,” says Khosla. “But if we want to go into small details, [detecting] different poses or [picking] the right logo for a company, for instance, it won’t be terribly informative.”

[Image credit: CSAIL]

Congress will give NASA nearly $20 billion next year

In a surprise move, the Republican-controlled Congress has promised to give NASA roughly $19.3 billion dollars next year as part of its 2016 omnibus spending bill. That’s nearly a billion dollars beyond the $18.5 billion that the Obama administration had requested and $1.23 billion more than the agency received last year.

Those extra funds are earmarked for NASA’s new commercial crew program. With that cash infusion, the agency should be able to meet the program’s 2017 launch goal. Once that happens, NASA will no longer be beholden to Russia for its rocket launches — as it has been since the demise of the shuttle program back in 2011.

Source: US House of Representatives

The FIFA 2014 World Cup was streamed by 280 million people

FIFA. Oh, FIFA. There are so many things to say regarding football’s governing body. But today we’re not here to talk about how its top officials are facing corruption charges, or that suspended FIFA president Sepp Blatter is hiding in a bunker somewhere trying to avoid the wrath of Loretta Lynch, the US Attorney General. No, that’s not it. It’s been nearly a year and a half since the 2014 World Cup came to a close, but FIFA has just now released final viewership numbers from the tournament. Most notably, according to FIFA and Kantar Media research, an estimated 280 million people watched it online or via a mobile device.

In a statement, FIFA said this is a “sign that more and more fans are embracing new technology for sports content.” FIFA also revealed one billion people tuned into to the World Cup Final in Brazil, a match which saw Germany lift the trophy over Lionel Messi’s Argentina. To put this in perspective,the 2015 Super Bowl, between the New England Patriots and Seattle Seahawks, had roughly 112 million viewers total — a record figure for The Big Game. Still, that doesn’t come remotely close to FIFA’s numbers for the 2014 World Cup Final.

Football, soccer or whatever you choose to call it, is a pretty big deal, folks.

Source: FIFA

Rdio will bow out next week

In November, Pandora announced it would be absorbing Rdio for $75 million while extending job offers to around 100 employees that were with the acquired company. Rdio, shortly after the deal was made public, said that subscriptions would be ended later in the month. A shutdown date for the service was not provided; however, this week the company finally provided that date.

Rdio has declared it will be shutting down on December 22. Here’s the kind note that the team left:

“We’re honored to have connected you with the music you love. We know you want to find a home for that music, so we’re providing ways for you to take it with you.”

As previously stated, Rdio employees have been given the opportunity to continue working in the music streaming world with Pandora.

Source: Rdio

Come comment on this article: Rdio will bow out next week

‘Steve Jobs’ Available on Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital HD in February

Universal Pictures has announced the Digital HD and Blu-ray release dates for the underperforming Steve Jobs film, set to launch digitally on February 2 and then in retail locations two weeks later on February 16 of next year.

The studio noted that some of the Blu-ray special features include:

-Inside Jobs: The Making of Steve Jobs

-Feature Commentary with Director Danny Boyle

-Feature Commentary with Writer Aaron Sorkin and Editor Elliot Graham

The home release of the film coincides with the 88th Annual Academy Awards ceremony, set to kick off Sunday, February 28.

Given Universal’s original Oscar push for Michael Fassbender and Kate Winslet in the lead roles, it makes sense for the studio to try and get the film in front of more people after pulling it from over 2,000 of its screening locations around the United States due to its poor box office performance.

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