Google DeepMind will detect eye diseases with AI
Google’s DeepMind division is teaming up with another part of the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) to see if it can improve patient care. The artificial intelligence company, acquired by Google in 2014, will use machine learning to analyze one million anonymised eye scans supplied by the Moorfields Eye Hospital. In addition, it’ll be crunching anonymous information related to patient diagnosis, age and treatment. The hope is that such an approach can be used to examine scans with greater efficiency, or with a higher degree of accuracy, than traditional methods, thereby leading to earlier detection and intervention of eye diseases.
Moorfields Eye Hospital is one of the oldest and largest health centres for ophthalmic treatment, handling more than 600,000 patient visits each year. Staff conduct “many thousands” of optical coherence tomography (OCT) scans each week — these are complex and can take time for healthcare professionals to analyze. If DeepMind’s research is successful, this workflow could be accelerated and, as a result, ensure that many people retain their sight. Some conditions, such as diabetic retinopathy, can be prevented or severely limited provided they are detected early enough. “But that doesn’t always happen,” DeepMind explains.
The Google-owned team in London has collaborated with the NHS before. It’s currently working with the Royal Free Hospital to develop an app that’s capable of detecting acute kidney injury (AKI). The system, it’s hoped, will immediately review blood test results, looking for signs of deterioration, and then send an alert should there be any problems to an appropriate member of staff. The project has been criticised, however, for the sheer volume of data — 1.6 million patient records, to be exact — that DeepMind now has access to. The company has since defended its cybersecurity capabilities and offered patients the chance to opt-out of the research.
In a blog post, DeepMind has stressed that the eye scans it’ll be using have been collected by Moorfields over a long period of time. “This means it’s not possible to identify any individual patients from the scans,” the company claims. “They’re also historic scans, meaning that while the results of our research may be used to improve future care, they won’t affect the care any patient receives today.” In addition, the company has submitted its research methodology for open peer review. “We’ll also submit any results from this research to peer-reviewed journals, as is normal, so others in the medical community can analyze them.”
DeepMind, if you need a reminder, developed the AlphaGo computer program that beat Go world champion Lee Sedol in March. (Another match is also on the cards.) If its algorithm is half as effective at analysing eye scans, medical professionals will be very happy indeed.
Via: The Guardian
Source: Moorfields, DeepMind
Huawei confirms that smartphone cameras still aren’t DSLRs
It’s not the camera, it’s the photographer, right? Actually, sometimes it’s both, as Huawei just proved. It recently posted a lovely image, complete with a lens flare, implying that it was taken with its photo-centric P9 smartphone. “The #HuaweiP9’s dual Leica cameras makes taking photos in low light conditions like this a pleasure,” says the Google+ post caption. The only problem? It was actually taken with a Canon EOS 5D Mark III equipped with a very pricey 70-200mm F/2.8 lens worth $4,500 total, as the EXIF data clearly proves.
In retrospect, it’s pretty obvious that this is not a smartphone photo. The 5D Mark III’s shallow depth-of-field has blurred out the background, and the lens flare has a polygonal shape, another DSLR signature. As some Redditors have pointed out, the detail in the hair is also a bit too fine for a smartphone camera.
Huawei technically never said directly that its smartphone took the shot, but it’s strongly implied. It has since taken down the photo and given a statement to Android Police, saying, “the photo, which was professionally taken while filming a Huawei P9 advert, was shared to inspire our community. We recognize though that we should have been clearer with the captions for this image. It was never our intention to mislead. We apologize for this and we have removed the image.”
This isn’t the first time that a marketing team has had this bright idea — Nokia used “simulated” images to show off its PureView cameras back in the day. As one commenter pointed out, however, the least Huawei could’ve done was use a professional camera from its branding partner, Leica — we hear they’re pretty good.
Google UK’s ‘Summer Squad’ offers kids free coding lessons
As a parent, nothing brings more joy than the start of the summer holidays. Time spent at the park, visits to the local swimming pool and trips to the zoo often figure on many family’s six-week agenda, but activities laid on by Google are probably the last thing any mum, dad or grandparent expects to budget for. In a bid to help kids learn how to code, the search giant has launched “Summer Squad,” a free eight-week series of tech-focused classes for kids aged between 8 and 13.
Many of Google’s sessions focus on the Raspberry Pi and include coding sessions that let kids explore space, craft a virtual ferris wheel in Python and build a bespoke photo booth capable of snapping selfies. Children can also create simple robots using Lego’s Mindstorms EV3 kit and beat machines by navigating through a computer maze.
For each activity completed, kids will be rewarded with a special badge and a t-shirt. If all six badges are collected, Google says it will hand out a “secret” seventh badge. Google will host the activities between July 12th and September 1st in three of its official shops, which are basically Currys PC World locations with a Google theme.
Two are in London — one in Tottenham Court Road and the other in Fulham — with the third located in Thurrock, Essex. If that’s too long to wait, the search giant has created a special listing of Summer Squad coding apps, which can be found on Google Play.
Source: Google Summer Squad
Google offers four free months of Play Music for July 4th
Google Play Music is a competent streaming service, but it’s always sat in the shadow of larger, more aggressive competitors such as Spotify, Tidal and Apple Music. Google has tried everything to make it more popular — the occasional exclusive, free trials with Chromecast devices — heck, it’s even free with YouTube Red now. To celebrate July 4th in the US, the company has a new deal — four months of free music streaming, no questions asked. Or rather, almost no questions asked. As MacRumors notes, you’ll need to be in the US and a first-time Play Music listener.
Will this push the needle for Google and its streaming service? Probably not. The offer is only running this weekend, after all. But if you’re throwing a party on Independence Day and need some tunes to keep everyone entertained, this seems an easy and wallet-friendly way to do it.
Via: MacRumors
Source: Google
Google adds built-in Cast option to Chrome for desktop
Google has begun rolling out a built-in Cast option for Chrome 51. You simply have to right click a tab or click the hamburger button on the right-hand part of the desktop browser to find a line in the menu that says “Cast…” Doesn’t mean the old extension is completely useless now, though — you don’t need it to beam anything to your Chromecast anymore, but you could still use it as a shortcut. Besides, it looks like the feature isn’t available for everyone just yet, even for those with up-to-date Chrome browsers. If you still don’t have access to it, you may want to hold off on uninstalling the extension and checking your menus every now and then.
Google will also give you the power to mirror tabs into Google Hangouts when the stable version of Chrome 52 comes out. To be precise, it will enable you to Cast to cloud services including Hangouts, though it’s unclear what other services will work with it in the future.
Via: 9to5Google, Android Police
Source: Google (1), (2)
Sidewalk Labs’ smart city kiosks go way beyond free WiFi
The details of an ambitious plan from Google’s sister company Sidewalk Labs to create entire “smart neighborhoods” just got a little clearer. According to Sidewalk Labs’ pitch deck, which was obtained by Recode this week, the plan goes far beyond those free WiFi kiosks that are already on the streets of New York City. The kiosks will monitor everything from bike and pedestrian traffic to air quality and street noise.
“The Kiosk sensor platform will help address complex issues where real-time ground truth is needed,” one document read. “Understanding and measuring traffic congestion, identifying dangerous situations like gas leaks, monitoring air quality, and identifying quality of life issues like idling trucks.”
In addition to monitoring environmental factors like humidity and temperature, a bank of air pollutant sensors will also monitor particulates, ozone, carbon monoxide and other harmful chemicals in the air. Two other sensor banks will measure “Natural and Manmade Behavior” by tracking street vibrations, sound levels, magnetics fields and entire spectrums of visible, UV and infrared light. Finally, the “City Activity” sensors will not only be able to measure pedestrian traffic, it will also look for security threats like abandoned packages. While free gigabit WiFi on the streets sounds like a win for everyone’s data plan, it also comes at a cost: the kiosks will also be able to track wireless devices as they pass by, although it will most likely be anonymized.
The LinkNYC kiosks — about 200 of which have already been deployed — offer some of these features, but they lack the complete suite of sensors that Sidewalk Labs believes will give cities a better picture of how their citizens work and move around. (LinkNYC is not directly a Sidewalk Labs project, it is part of a consortium connected to Sidewalk Labs.) As the company explained it to Smart City Challenge winner Columbus, Ohio, “Each Kiosk includes data analytics [that would allow Columbus to] better understand the urban environment via environmental sensors and machine learning algorithms that integrate numerous data sources.”
In one such example provided by the documents, data collected from traffic cameras and passing devices could be used to re-calculate travel times in Google Maps — think Waze, but with data on the municipal level. In the end, however, it’s up to each city to decide which sensors they want included in the devices. While many have obvious practical uses, Recode also points out there are some significant costs involved. Although the Sidewalk Labs pitch offers to provide the kiosks for free, there’s still installation, setup and maintenance fees. All told, 100 “free” kiosks are expected to costs a city around $4.5 million in the first year.
Of course, that cost can be defrayed if the city is willing to allow Sidewalk Labs to install two 55-inch advertising screens on each kiosk. While Sidewalk will foot the bill for the ad space, it also gets to keep 50 percent of the profits. With 100 kiosks, a city stands to make back an estimated $3 million per year in advertising revenue.
Millions of Android devices have flawed full disk encryption
Hackers can use brute force to break into tens of millions of Android devices using full disk encryption, thanks to a series of security issues linked specifically to Android kernel flaws and Qualcomm processors, Neowin reports. The vulnerabilities were uncovered by security researcher Gal Beniamini, who is working with Google and Qualcomm to patch the problems — and some of the flaws have already been addressed. However, a few of the issues may not be patchable, instead requiring new hardware, the report says.
Any phone using Android 5.0 or later uses full disk encryption, the same security feature at the heart of Apple’s recent fight with the FBI. Full disk encryption makes all data on a device unrecognizable without a unique key. Even though modern Android devices use this security feature, Beniamini’s research found that an attacker can exploit kernel flaws and vulnerabilities in some of Qualcomm’s security measures to get that encryption key. Then, all that stands between the hacker and a device’s information is a password.
Since any attack on an Android device would still require brute force and additional hacking methods, this isn’t an immediate security threat for a majority of users. But, it is notable for those who put their complete trust in full disk encryption.
We’ve reached out to Qualcomm for comment on the flaw and will update this story as the company responds.
Update: A Qualcomm spokesperson gave Engadget the following comment:
“Providing technologies that support robust security and privacy is a priority for Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. (QTI). QTI continues to work proactively both internally as well as with security researchers such as Gal Beniamini to identify and address potential security vulnerabilities. The two security vulnerabilities (CVE-2015-6639 and CVE-2016-2431) discussed in Beniamini’s June 30 blog post were also discovered internally and patches were made available to our customers and partners. We have and will continue to work with Google and the Android ecosystem to help address security vulnerabilities and to recommend improvements to the Android ecosystem to enhance security overall.”
Source: Gal Beniamini
Google is inching its way to diversity
Google vowed to spend $150 million in 2015 to diversify its workforce, and the company did hire more women, Black and Hispanic employees last year. Unfortunately, its efforts aren’t enough to cause a big shift — the company is still overwhelmingly white and male. According to the latest data Mountain View released, women make up 31 percent of the current workforce, which is only one percent higher than 2014’s. Four and five percent of its hires in 2015 are Black and Hispanic, respectively. But just like in 2014, African-Americans still only make up two percent of company, while Hispanics only make up three percent.
That said, women did make up 21 percent of the big G’s technical hires in 2015, up two percent from the year before. Not to mention, Google has been encouraging women to nominate themselves for self-promotion ever since it found out that they’re not as inclined as men to do so. The company also said that while the percentages of minority employees didn’t change, it now has 880 (from 628 in 2014) black and 1,782 (from 1,428) Hispanic personnel.
Obviously, Google still has a ways to go. The good news is that the company is well aware of that, and it sounds like it’s not stopping its plan to achieve a truly diverse workplace. “We saw encouraging signs of progress in 2015, but we’re still far from where we need to be,” People Operations VP Nancy Lee wrote in a blog post. 
Source: Google, (Diversity)
Google is working on a VR version of Chrome for Android
Google had a lot to say about its VR ambitions at this year’s I/O, and it looks like a more immersive web browsing experience will be part of those plans. Road to VR reports that the latest versions of Chrome Beta and Chrome Dev for Android have a couple notable features that will make hopping around the web in VR a reality. The beta version of Chrome now has WebVR abilities that allows for more engaging experiences when you visit a website that’s designed for virtual reality. As was recently noted by Chromium guru François Beaufort, the Chrome Dev now offers a “VR shell” that would allow Cardboard and Daydream users to browse the internet with a headset.
As Road to VR notes, the VR shell isn’t full functional just yet, but should be only a matter of time before it and other virtual reality features pop up in stable beta versions. With the way VR on the web currently works, you have to take off that headset when you come to a site that isn’t properly equipped. However, Google’s pending solution for Android mean you wouldn’t have to do that as the so-called shell would accommodate those non-VR-ready sites.
Samsung already built a browser for its Gear VR. Of course, that headset only works with the company’s own handsets, so it’s not open for a wide audience. By adding virtual reality browsing for Chrome, Google can offer the feature to users of Cardboard and its upcoming Daydream setup. The company also revealed that Google Play would get a dedicated VR section so you’ll know exactly where to find the apps and content you’re after. For desktop users, Google is said to be working on a version of Chrome that supports the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive.
Source: Road to VR, François Beaufort
Google puts earthquake data directly in search results
For anyone who has had the pleasure of waking up to a rumbling apartment building, only to Google the USGS Earthquake map, the search giant is now saving you another click in your search results. Starting today, a Google search for “earthquake” or “earthquake near me” will put that same US Geological Survey data right in your search results.
An earthquake search will bring up fairly rich results, with a map of recent seismic activity and data for each incident. Since earthquakes also pose a very real danger, the results card will actually display tips for what to do in the aftermath as well. Anything under a 2.5 magnitude, which hardy Californians would scoff at anyway, won’t trigger the new feature.
As TechCrunch reports, the USGS usually posts the data within minutes of a quake in the US, and that data gets to Google seconds later. For other parts of the world, however, it can take the agency up to 30 minutes to verify and post the information. Regardless, the new “earthquake near me” search feature will work globally, but only in English for now. It’s also worth noting that if you have your location turned off, or just want to check another city, searching for “earthquake San Francisco” or “earthquake Los Angeles” will bring up the same information.
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