Tech Today w/ Ken May

An anonymous reader tips an article at CNN about the development of technology that automates the process of writing news articles. It started with simple sports reporting, but now at least one company is setting its sights on more complicated articles. Quoting: “Narrative Science then began branching out into finance and other topics that are driven heavily by data. Soon, Hammond says, large companies came looking for help sorting huge amounts of data themselves. ‘I think the place where this technology is absolutely essential is the area that’s loosely referred to as big data,’ Hammond said. ‘So almost every company in the world has decided at one point that in order to do a really good job, they need to meter and monitor everything.’ … Meanwhile, Hammond says Narrative Science is looking to eventually expand into long form news stories. That’s an idea that’s unsettling to some journalism experts.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

benfrog writes “According to the Wall Street Journal, Facebook’s Board of Directors was all but out of the picture when Mark Zuckerberg struck the $1 billion deal to purchase Instagram, the yet-profitless photo-sharing service. From the article: ‘It was a remarkably speedy three-day path to a deal for Facebook—a young company taking pains to portray itself as blue-chip ahead of its initial public offering of stock in a few weeks that could value it at up to $100 billion. Companies generally prefer to bring in ranks of lawyers and bankers to scrutinize a deal before proceeding, a process that can eat up days or weeks. Mr. Zuckerberg ditched all that. By the time Facebook’s board was brought in, the deal was all but done. The board, according to one person familiar with the matter, ‘Was told, not consulted.’” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

itwbennett writes “Audi’s electric cars are quiet, maybe too quiet, which is why Audi spent 3 years creating replicated engine noise for its electric car models. We’re so conditioned to the noise of an engine revving that a driver behind the wheel of a too-quiet car may not realize how fast he’s driving, and a pedestrian relying on auditory clues may be unaware of an approaching vehicle, says Ralf Kunkel, Head of Audi Acoustics.” Nissan’s been on this for years (as has Honda); one day, you may only get to choose which noise your car makes, rather than whether it does. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

alphadogg writes “A Japanese bank this week said it will introduce ATMs that use palm scanners in place of cash cards. Ogaki Kyoristu Bank said the new machines will allow customers to withdraw or deposit cash and check their balances by placing their hand on a scanner and entering their birthday plus a pin number. The ATMs will initially be installed at 10 banks, as well as a drive-through ATM and two mobile banks. Ogaiki announced the new ATMs with the slogan ‘You are your cash card.’” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

MatthewVD writes “Our cars run millions of lines of code that need constant and, often, critical updates. Jim Motavalli writes that Mercedes-Benz’s new mbrace2 ‘cloud infotainment system’ has a secret capability: it can update software automatically and wirelessly. In a process called ‘reflashing,’ the Mercedes system turns on the car operating system (CU), downloads the new application, then cuts itself off. With companies like Fisker paying dearly for constant recalls for software problems, automakers will likely rush to embrace this technology. No more USBs in the dashboard!” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

smolloy writes “Apparently some users of reCAPTCHA have recently begun seeing photographs appear in their CAPTCHA puzzles — photos that look very much like zoomed in house numbers taken from Google Streetview. It appears that Google has decided to put the reCAPTCHA system to help clean up Google streetview images, and ‘according to a Google spokesperson, the system isn’t limited to street addresses, but also involves street names and even traffic signs.’ A large collection of these has appeared on the Blackhatworld website.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google is giving its search formula a makeover that’s “among the biggest in the company’s history,” according to The Wall Street Journal . Instead of just spitting back a page of keyword-driven blue links, Google is aiming for something closer to artificial intelligence , trying to understand what web searchers are asking for and providing actual answers. When the changes kick in, the experience will be more like “how humans understand the world.” How Google’s dramatic search overhaul affects you