Google is rolling out a new visual overlay for Assistant that provides a snapshot of your day. It’ll proactively feed you information relevant to your schedule, location, habits, and more. It’s like a personal search engine that answers questions before you ask them. Back in May, at its I/O conference, Google previewed a number of upcoming features for its AI-powered personal assistant. You may not have heard about the visual overlay update, it kind of got lost in the wake of the announcement John Legend was lending his voice to Assistant and the jaw-dropping Duplex demo. But, despite the sexy nature of the two big announcements, I’ve been more excited for this visual overlay than either of those.
The Moorebot Zeus fighting robot is a pint-sized mechanical pugilist made for serious robotics enthusiasts. We wrote about it in January, during our CES coverage, but now I’ve finally gotten my hands on one. And I’m happy to report it was worth the wait. Credit: Nicole Gray As far as ‘fighting robots’ go, this isn’t the kind made famous by the BattleBots TV show. This one is built in a similar vein to the Super Anthony robot we reviewed a couple of weeks ago. It’s a fully articulated 35.5cm (14 in) tall biped that you control with a video game controller.
Facebook and Twitter have, within a few hours of each other, revealed new ad transparency measures this week. In both cases, the company in question reveals more details about what ads each account or page is running. It’s also offering further insights on political ads. Trouble is, it all depends on how much effort the users are willing to put into doing the research. Twitter opened its Ad Transparency Center, which allows anyone to look up a particular Twitter handle to see which ads the account has run in a massive public archive. You don’t need to be logged into Twitter or even have an account in order to use it.
It was just a few weeks ago we got a look at a supposed Pixel 3 prototype, but new CAD renders courtesy of @OnLeaks and MySmartPrice provide what appear to be our clearest look at the device yet. The leaks show off the device from pretty much every angle and reinforce much of what we’ve seen already: glass backs, one camera on the back, and two cameras on the front. The XL has a chunky chin and notch, while the smaller model sticks to bezels on both sides, albeit far smaller than those on its predecessor.
Super Anthony is a little fighting robot with the punching power of a full-grown person. It’s a premium-grade gadget that’s meant for serious enthusiasts. I got my hands on one to determine if it was a contender or pretender. It’s a bit difficult to figure out exactly what Super Anthony is all about at first. The 38 cm (14.9 in) tall machine is billed as a fighting robot and comes programmed with punches, kicks, and combat roll maneuvers. It weighs in at a diminuitive 2.1 kg (4.6 lbs) but manages a 45 kg (99 lb) punch thanks to its powerful servos.
WhatsApp is one of few developers that consistently delivered updates to its Windows Phone app, but a report by Windows Central suggests WhatsApp is actually getting ready to deliver a proper desktop app as well. Cncept art for a Universal Windows Platform (UWP) version of WhatsApp showed up on Behance before being promptly removed. It appeared to be anative Windows app with UWP design tenets like acrylic transparency. Furthermore, a description of the project suggested Microsoft and WhatsApp were working closely on the project.
Think you can solve a mystery that’s been baffling researchers and treasure hunters for over two hundred years? If you do — and assuming it’s not all one big 19th century prank — you might be able to claim a treasure worth millions. The treasure is that of Thomas Beale, supposedly buried in Bedford County, Virginia sometime in the 1820s. If you believe the lore, Beale found a treasure of gold, silver, and jewels out West, hauled it home to Virginia, and buried it. He then left three ciphers behind, supposedly with their precise location. Here are the two unsolved puzzles:
Nvidia this week unveiled its newest AI breakthrough in the form of a mind-blowing computer vision technique that can ‘inpaint’ parts of an image that have been deleted or modified. If you’re thinking Photoshop already does this, think again. This is something you have to see to believe. Nvidia’s researchers explain the difference between its novel method for inpainting images with deep learning and currently existing tech in a whitepaper published earlier this week: Previous deep learning approaches have focused on rectangular regions located around the center of the image, and often rely on expensive post-processing.
Facebook is working on a new feature to hook in the one market that they’ve struggled to dominate: teenagers. ‘High School Networks for Messenger’ appears to be its latest attempt to drag post-millennials to its platform, according to sources who shared screenshots with TNW. High School Networks appears to be a way for students to connect with their peers at the same school and/or taking the same classes. The details for the feature are limited at the moment, as the feature appears to be hidden and is yet to go live in the latest version of Messenger in the App Store.
