Month: October 2018

An Amazon Echo. (credit: Adam Bowie)

Amazon has patented technology that could let Alexa analyze your voice to determine whether you are sick or depressed and sell you products based on your physical or emotional condition.

The patent, titled "Voice-based determination of physical and emotional characteristics of users," was issued on Tuesday this week; Amazon filed the patent application in March 2017.

The patent describes a voice assistant that can detect "abnormal" physical or emotional conditions. "For example, physical conditions such as sore throats and coughs may be determined based at least in part on a voice input from the user, and emotional conditions such as an excited emotional state or a sad emotional state may be determined based at least in part on voice input from a user," the patent says. "A cough or sniffle, or crying, may indicate that the user has a specific physical or emotional abnormality."

Enlarge / The Google Plus (G+, or Google +) social network logo is seen in the company's offices behind Android toys on August 21, 2014 in Berlin, Germany. (credit: Adam Berry/Getty Images)

Three United States senators have demanded that Google provide answers about its recent disclosure of a security breach in its Google+ social network that led to its closure. Google only came forward after the Wall Street Journal broke the story on October 8.

So far, one federal proposed class-action lawsuit has been filed in the wake of the episode.

In a Thursday letter sent to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), and Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) have asked a number of pointed questions of the tech giant.

Enlarge / "You know what I really enjoy? Testing subjects with video games. Or just testing in general." (credit: Valve Software)

Below, you’ll find the second installment of the After On podcast interview with University of California, San Francisco neuroscientist Adam Gazzaley and his trailblazing work to develop the medical potential that may be latent in video games. Please check out part one if you missed it. Otherwise, press play on the embedded player or pull up the transcript—both of which are below.

Gazzaley and I open today’s installment discussing techniques that mad scientists like him can use to thwack the brain (legally and safely, of course) to increase its neuroplasticity. If Gazzaley's lab-crafted games can truly increase the brain’s resilience against neurological horrors like dementia and autism, upping its neuroplasticity during a playing session could multiply the benefits.

We then talk about the limits of medical imaging—and the lamentable fact that this technology isn’t rocketing down a Moore’s Law-like curve, which could improve it exponentially well in advance of the next Backstreet Boys reunion. Since Gazzaley and I recorded this conversation a year ago, Mary Lou Jepsen’s startup Open Water has gone public with its plans to refine neural imaging by a factor of a billion (yup, that’s a "b," not a typo).

Enlarge / The iPhone X in space gray (left) compared to the iPhone XS in gold (right). You can barely tell the difference from this angle. (credit: Samuel Axon)

Apple struck a huge deal that will push its chip-making ambitions forward. The tech giant agreed to pay $600 million in total to Dialog Semiconductor, a UK-based chipmaker that has been working with Apple since the first iPhones came out.

That large amount of money will go towards two things: $300 million in cash pays for a portion of Dialog's company, including licensing power-management technologies, assets, and over 300 employees who will now work for Apple. The company will pay the remaining $300 million to Dialog in advance for products to come out within the next three years.

"Dialog has deep expertise in chip development, and we are thrilled to have this talented group of engineers who’ve long supported our products now working directly for Apple," Johny Srouji, Apple’s senior vice president of Hardware Technologies, said in a statement. “Our relationship with Dialog goes all the way back to the early iPhones, and we look forward to continuing this long-standing relationship with them.”