A few years ago, Joelle Pineau, a computer science professor at McGill, was helping her students design a new algorithm when they fell into a rut. Her lab studies reinforcement learning, a type of artificial intelligence that’s used, among other things, to help virtual characters (“half cheetah” and “ant” are popular) teach themselves how to move about in virtual worlds. It’s a prerequisite to building autonomous robots and cars. Pineau’s students hoped to improve on another lab’s system. But first they had to rebuild it, and their design, for reasons unknown, was falling short of its promised results. Until, that is, the students tried some “creative manipulations” that didn’t appear in the other lab’s paper.
Category: News and Views
Facebook has a gaping loophole in its fight against fake news | Mashable
Facebook has a major loophole that allows nefarious users to get around its strategy to stop fake news.
The social media giant has been taking its fight against misinformation and fake news more seriously in recent years. The company has taken action against malicious accounts spreading disinformation. Its updated its policies to keep misinformation off the platform. Studies have even shown that the steps Facebook has taken are working. That’s all good news!
However, a recently discovered loophole proves that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and the rest of his company still have a lot more work to do.
Amazon is hiring 30,000 workers. Here’s how to find out more | CNN
Amazon is looking to fill 30,000 jobs and, to help accomplish that goal, it plans to host career days in six cities across the US next week.
The open spots span a variety of skill and experience levels, from entry-level positions at Amazon’s (AMZN) fulfillment centers to software development engineers. All of the jobs are permanent, and most of them are full-time posts. They all pay at least $15 an hour with benefits.
Amazon’s Career Day will take place on September 17 in Arlington, Virginia (the location of the company’s second headquarters), as well as in Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Nashville and its hometown of Seattle. The company said it expects to see significant growth in these cities in the future.
Teen’s Junk Food Diet Caused Him to Go Blind, Doctors Say | Live Science
A teen who ate nothing but fries, chips and other junk food for years slowly went blind as a result of his poor diet, according to a new report of the case.
The case highlights a perhaps little-known fact about poor diets: In addition to being tied to obesity, heart disease and cancer, they “can also permanently damage the nervous system, particularly vision,” according to the report, published today (Sept. 2) in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine.
The teen’s problems began at age 14, when he went to the doctor’s office complaining of tiredness.
8 states and D.C. investigate Facebook over antitrust issues. | Fast Company
New York attorney general Letitia James is leading a multistate investigation into whether Facebook violated antitrust laws, she said in a statement Friday.
“I am proud to be leading a bipartisan coalition of attorneys general in investigating whether Facebook has stifled competition and put users at risk,” James said. “We will use every investigative tool at our disposal to determine whether Facebook’s actions may have endangered consumer data, reduced the quality of consumers’ choices, or increased the price of advertising.”
She’s joined in the investigations by the attorneys general from Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nebraska, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, and the District of Columbia.
Pulse Technology Uses Electricity to Quickly Defrost Frozen Windows | Digital Trends
Nobody likes the winter ritual of defrosting windows on a cold morning. Thanks to an international team of researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Japan’s Kyushu University, however, such indignities may not hang around for too much longer. They have developed a new way of removing ice and frost from surfaces with impressive efficiency — requiring less than 1% of the energy and 0.01% of the time required for traditional defrosting methods. In addition to car windows, it could be used for other surfaces, such as defrosting airplanes.
Pound sinks after general election speculation | BBC News
The pound has continued to fall on currency markets amid intensified political uncertainty over Brexit.
Reports of a possible snap general election weighed on sterling as MPs mulled efforts to push for a further three-month Brexit extension.
Against the dollar, it sank more than a cent to $1.2050, while against the euro, it fell below the €1.10 mark
Ford says its Autonomous Cars will Last Just Four Years | TechCrunch
The automotive industry has been promoting self-driving cars as a kind of panacea that will solve numerous problems that modern society is grappling with right now, from congestion to safety to productivity (you can work while riding!).
Unfortunately, a very big question that has been almost entirely overlooked is: how long will these cars last?
The answer might surprise you. In an interview with The Telegraph in London, John Rich, who is the operations chief of Ford Autonomous Vehicles, reveals that the “thing that worries me least in this world is decreasing demand for cars,” because “we will exhaust and crush a car every four years in this business.”
Lambda School’s For-Profit Plan to Solve Student Debt | WIRED
Early this summer, tech entrepreneur Austen Allred was on Reddit, as he often is, when he noticed something suspicious. The coding forums he frequents, where people usually talk about JavaScript bugs and command line functions, were being suffocated by rants and raves on a particular topic: a coding bootcamp called Lambda School, which Allred happens to run.
To Allred, the posts looked suspiciously robotic. Perhaps a competitor was posting spam to get any mention of Lambda banned from the forums. Maybe it was a bootcamp critic on a tear. Allred had heard that people were spreading rumors he was behind the accounts, trying to gin up more exposure, good or bad, for his startup. “People want us to fail,” he says, casting a glance from under the brim of his signature grey and red trucker hat, emblazoned with the eponymous Greek letter. “People want to think that Lambda is a scam, because they want to believe the results we’re producing are impossible.”
Should You Start a Business Without a College Degree? | Business News Daily
Entrepreneurship can be a great way to financial freedom, but building a successful business takes a lot of time, hard work and perseverance. Many young workers are left wondering when they should start a business and what education is required to do so.
A college degree is not required to start a business, but it certainly helps. College not only teaches students educational topics that can be helpful in starting a business, but also soft skills, like how to be lifelong learners.
Dispatches From The Front 