Category Archives: Technology

Courts dont always know how to address emerging technologies in rulings.

Sergey Zolkin/Unsplash

Last week, the New York Court of Appeals issued a ruling that could have ensured that law enforcement requests for text, photos, videos, and other data in New York state are not dragnets. In the case in question, the Manhattan District Attorneys Office had presented Facebook with 381 search warrants as part of a disability fraud investigation. Facebook counsel Thomas Dupree Jr. argued that the warrants were overbroad and lacked particularity, and if the judges had agreed with him, it would have created an important precedent.

But instead of addressing the privacy issues, the court chose to look at a much more narrow jurisdictional question of whether warrants for information under the Stored Communications Act are more akin to administrative subpoenas, which are appealable. The majority ruled that orders related to warrants in criminal proceedings cannot be appealed.

Some courts wont delve into privacy at all.

In a blistering dissent, Judge Rowan Wilson agreed with Dupree. Wilson called for searches and seizures of telecommunications to be subject to a higher standard of review, quoting Justice Louis Brandeis 1927 opinion in Olmstead v. United States: The evil incident to invasion of the privacy of the telephone is far greater than that involved in tampering with the mails as a means of espionage, writs of assistance and general warrants are puny instruments of tyranny when compared with wiretapping.

The majoritys reluctance to wade into the privacy issues in the case is not unique to this opinion. In privacy cases, some courts have sidestepped sweeping pronouncements involving new technologies. In these instances, they tend to prefer narrowly tailored decisions. Sometimes, instead of a pivotal privacy decision, they rule on jurisdictional or other procedural issues. Some judges urge the legislature to address privacy issues that arise from changes in technology. Sometimes there isnt enough technical information. But whatever the excuse, many courts are not effectively handling these privacy invasions.

Privacy isnt mentioned in the Constitution, but a body of law has evolved since the adoption of the Bill of Rights. Perhaps most prominent are cases exploring the Fourth Amendment, especially ones that analyze the constitutionality of searches. The trickiest privacy areas lie where technology and criminal procedure meet. Illegal searches of homes and people tend to get more constitutional protectionsand sympathythan comprehensive searches of electronic footprints. In cases involving warrants, judges tend to defer to law enforcement. Some are reluctant to award digital privacy protections, especially when they involve suspicious or criminal behavior.

Some courts wont delve into privacy at all. In United States v. Ganias, U.S. Army Criminal Investigation agents seized 11 hard drives that were copied and retained for a fraud investigation. For more than two years, the government failed to find on them any data relevant to the original investigation. But then another warrant for the data was issued as part of a tax evasion probe, which led to a conviction. The defendant moved to suppress the evidence became it stemmed from the seized hard drives. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit held in May that in this case, there was no Fourth Amendment violation. The court determined that the agents acted in good faith when they relied on a warrant that was properly issued and had no reason to believe the warrant was flawed, rather than explore the complex and rapidly evolving technological issues, and the significant privacy concerns. A petition for Supreme Court review was denied.

At times, courts have avoided making grand privacy declarations by saying that U.S. law doesnt apply to the communications at hand. In July the 2nd Circuit ruled that the government could not force Microsoft to provide customer emails on a server in Dublin because the messages were outside of U.S. jurisdiction. According to the opinion, the Stored Communications Act neither explicitly nor implicitly envision[s] the application of its warrant provisions oversees. Because privacy invasions occur when and where data is seized, the warrant was invalid. The confusing decision seemed to be an unwitting win for privacy.

The fact that many of these cases involve the cloud, which can scatter data across jurisdictions, confuses things further. In August, the FBI received a warrant for three Google accounts for a trade secrets investigation, but the company responded that it could not produce electronic records stored outside the United States. Like Facebook and Microsoft, Google asserted that the warrant was overbroad because it does not describe with particularity which services there is probable cause to search. The government responded that it wanted all of the data. The Eastern District of Pennsylvania determined in a February ruling that even though some of the data were stored overseas, the fluid nature of Googles cloud technology makes it uncertain which foreign countrys sovereignty would be implicated when Google accesses the content of communications. The court went on to explain that Googles architecture not only divides user data among centers but also partitions user data into shards and that data automatically moves from one location to another. In other words, the information wasnt protected because Google cant (or wont) say which sovereignty would be implicated when Google accesses the communications.

Indeed, the Microsoft decision may not be a privacy victory after all, because of what appears to be an emerging split. This week, a magistrate judge in Florida ordered that the government could obtain Yahoo emails in a criminal investigation even though some of the communications or data associated with it may be stored outside the United States. Part of the rationale was that the warrant functioned more like a subpoena because it requires Yahoo to disclose information under its control. The order cited the 2nd Circuits conclusion that the focus of the Stored Communications Acts warrant provisions is on protecting users privacy interests in stored communications. In other words, the requirement that a warrant show probable cause that a crime has been committed at the place to be searched or that evidence exists at that location addresses the privacy concerns. In February, a Milwaukee magistrate judge followed this reasoning in a case involving warrants for the disclosure of two Google accounts regardless of where the data might be stored. When Google requested the court to address the complex and important issues that the warrant application raised, the court said that because Google did not file a motion to quash the warrant, it could not review the order.

Even when courts actively advocate for privacy interests, they are limited by the fact that many existing privacy doctrines are in danger of becoming stale. One of the prime examples of this is the Katz standard, named for a Los Angeles gambler who used a public telephone to place bets. The FBI wiretapped a public telephone and charged him with wagering information across state lines. In 1967, the Supreme Court ruled that attaching a listening device to the outside of the phone booth was unconstitutional because it constituted an illegal search. The Fourth Amendment protects people, not places, wrote Justice Potter Stewart. The ruling established the reasonable expectation of privacy standard.

But applying the Katz standard can be complicated for new technologies, even though it is cited frequently. Privacy advocates celebrated Katz because the Fourth Amendment prohibition against illegal searches and seizures was expanded to protect telephone conversations in public phone booths. But data is now borderless. The Katz standard is based on a telecommunications infrastructure that no longer exists.

Another privacy standard that hasnt stood the test of time is the third-party doctrine, established in the 1970s, which says that the government can access documents that people voluntarily disclosed to banks, schools, utilities, internet service providers, and others. For instance, the 381 warrants that the Manhattan District Attorneys Office sought were for information that users had happily shared with Facebook. It has become increasingly controversial because new technologies afford law enforcement and others access to data that would not have been compromised in previous years. In the 2012 case U.S. v. Jones, Justice Sonia Sotomayor noted in a concurring opinion that it may be necessary to reconsider the premise that an individual has no reasonable expectation of privacy in information voluntarily disclosed to third parties.

Perhaps the best example of this is cellphone location data. Law enforcement agencies are increasingly using devices, like the Stingray, that allow officers and other law enforcement officials to essentially track cellphones. They work by mimicking cell towers to deceive providers into sending location data. Its powerful technologybut courts are not uniform on whether there is a reasonable expectation of privacy in cellphone location data. There is now a split among federal appeals courts over whether a warrant is required for cell site location information from these devices. In United States v. Graham, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit decided that a warrant wasnt required to use cell site location information from T-Mobile, an armed robbers cellphone provider, because there was no search under the Fourth Amendment. The 6th Circuit similarly ruled last year that the government does not need a warrant to access cell site location data. But last summer, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York held in United States v. Lambis that a simulator Drug Enforcement Agency agents used to pinpoint a users location violated the Fourth Amendment because there was no warrant. The opinion offers a good reminder of why the third-party doctrine, like many involving privacy, is outdated: With the cell-site simulator, the Government cuts out the middleman and obtains the information directly. Without a third party, the third party doctrine is inapplicable.

It was a good decision from the federal judge who, in 2013, upheld the National Security Agencys bulk collection of data. (The decision was appealed to the 2nd Circuit, which declared the program unconstitutional.) Courts cant keep sidestepping the fact that increasingly sophisticated data is subject to the whims of law enforcement and Silicon Valley. The inconsistencies and lack of uniformity are not only baffling but also too important to dodge.

This article is part of Future Tense, a collaboration among Arizona State University, New America, and Slate. Future Tense explores the ways emerging technologies affect society, policy, and culture. To read more, follow us on Twitter and sign up for our weekly newsletter.

Follow this link:

How Courts Avoid Ruling on Issues of Technology and Privacy - Slate Magazine

Source: elearningindustry.com

Because of our ages, my brother and I are pretty fluent in technology. For the most part, we have minimal problems navigating through societys various gizmos and gadgets. I usually have more than one technology item going at once with schoolwork, and I actually find it hard to locate a portion of my life where technology isnt heavily present.

My parents are older, though. They grew up at a time where there were no computers or cell phones. While my mother, stepfather, and stepmother have started to embrace the various ways that technology makes your life somewhat easier, my father seems stuck in his childhood.

My father still owns a flip phone. He just learned how to text message last year, and he only learned it because his boss was constantly texting him and he felt like he needed to know how to reply ok or yes. He has a laptop for his job, but the extent of his knowledge is how to work excel spreadsheets for order guides; some days, he can sign into his email without calling me from the other room or on the phone for help. He recently got an iPad for Christmas and he is able to work YouTube pretty proficiently; the thing is, he doesnt believe that YouTube is only one of the billions of sites held in the web. To him, YouTube is the billions of sites.

I remember one point where I had to print a paper for school. I printed it double sided, and when it was printing he happened to be standing there watching.

How did you get the paper to print on both sides!? he asked me.

Oh its easy, I explained, you just click the little check box. See? I then printed the paper again and handed it to him.

Thats the most incredible thing Ive seen in all my years, he said before running off to tell my stepmom about the cool new thing I just did.

Ive been printing double sided since I learned how to do it in high school.

I used to get so impatient with my dad because I couldnt wrap my mind around how he couldnt wrap his mind around technology. While I could toggle my laptop, phone, iPad, television, and DVD player all at once, he was sighing in exasperation when he wanted to watch a DVD. It took a couple years of patience and some terse exchanges before I came to some realizations.

My dad is such a smart man. But hes not good with technology because he wasnt raised with it. While my other parents had an easier time learning how to maneuver the controls, Dad never had to. So, tech left him behind.

Now, I approach tech time as a bonding time and a teaching moment. When he needs help, I now sit down instead of hovering. Instead of showing him once, we go through the steps two or three times. When he needs to send a text and doesnt remember how to input a new number, we practice it. Because he doesnt understand bookmarking on a laptop, we work on inputting websites into a browser so he can get to his work email. Same with the television remote; DirecTV remotes are confusing, so when he needs help, someone usually sits down and walks him through what he needs to do to get to anything other than regular television. He can reach the DVR, so we are getting somewhere.

I think what kids need to realize about parents and technology is that they werent born with this stuff. Unlike us, they didnt grow up learning computers from third grade on. Dad still talks about writing research papers with a card catalog, bless his soul. If I ever had to work with a card catalog, the cards would be on the ceiling and I would be red as a tomato. Generational differences are apparent.

Be patient with those who are learning to navigate through the confusing world of technology. While it seems inherent to us, its actually a really confusing and elaborate thing to them. If you step back and look at it, technology is overwhelming. Show some patience, sit down, use it as a bonding moment. Its so difficult not to get frustrated with them sometimes, but theyre trying. I cant get mad at those who try.

Go here to see the original:

Technology as a teaching moment. - Albany Times Union (blog)

Countless decisions must soon be made about how Britain navigates the world, having cut itself adrift from the European Union. And alongside the obvious things like trade deals and immigration rules, we ought too to make choices about who and how we want to be as a society. What is Britain in the 21st century? What do we value? What do wefight for?

Perhaps, as I have worked in the internet sector my whole life, I view things through biased eyes. But it seems to me that our digital economy must be at the centre of all this: not just the startups that innovate or the speed of the infrastructure, but the ethics and morals that will guide us.

We are in an age of marvellous technology but also of staggering incomprehension. We rely on technology for almost everything ourbanks, our healthcare, our transport but we have no idea how it might work or how to hold it to account. At best, that leads to understand the necessary hashtags-style blunders. At worst, it leads to companies having the freedom to make foolish or unethical decisions that put our privacy and security at risk.

These are massive issues, ones yoked to nearly every aspect of our lives and nearly every level of our government. And yet no society in the world has yet stood up to demand greater control over its digital destiny. No country has committed itself to building technology as fair as it is convenient. It is here, in the space where ethics and tech meet, that Britain could become a world leader.

The EU is working on a plan to allow young people to delete their internet history aged 18

Like the Swiss with luxury and the Germans with efficiency, Britain should build a future based on decency. In this brave new post-Brexit world, letschoose to be a country that believestechnology in and of itself is not enough that demands it be fair, ethical, and sustainable as well.

So what might such a country look like? It could be one that celebrates notjust digital skills but digital understanding the ability to both use technology and to comprehend, in real terms, the impact that it has on our lives. Estonia has been investing in tech education since 1998, when all schools in the country went online; today, companies such as Skype are worth billions of dollars and, as co-founder Taavet Hinrikus told the Economist back in 2013, high-school students now dream of being entrepreneurs instead of rock stars.

It could be one that builds a sector where the people who make and maintain our technology are as diverseas the people who use it. Francehas just announced a new programme to promote gender equality in start-ups asmart move, since diverse teams areprofitable teams.

It could be one that stops asking what our government can do for tech companies and starts asking tech companies what they can do for the government. The United States Digital Service imports private-sector experts for tours of duty to redesign their federal products and services, making tech consultancy a patriotic act.

It could be one that lets young people explore the online world in anonymity as they grow. The EU is working on a plan to allow young people to delete their internet history aged 18, tackling head-on one of the major anxieties faced by parents and teachers alike.

Or it could be one that calls on every sector to build innovative, forward-thinking cyber security. Consider how Israel has private companies, venture capitalists, research universities and the military all working to make sure their nation is safe from digital attack.

These are not revolutionary ideas. Beneath the shiny words cyber security, venture capitalists lie some of our oldest, purest values. We must educate our children. We must fight for fairness. We must protect ourselves. Britain has been doing this since time immemorial it is only the tools at our disposal that have changed.

So let us educate our children by teaching them as much as we can abouttechnology. We need to go beyond basic skills to raise the first generation of native digital understanders people who, unlike most of the rest of us, know where and how their technology is made. Imagine a Britain where tech no longer scares or dazzles us, where it is as useful but unremarkable as a wristwatch. In such a society, we would be less likely to fall prey to scams, make bad policy choices, or be taken in by gadgets that serve no purpose and solve no problem.

Let us fight for fairness by demanding a tech sector as diverse as the population it serves. We have far and away the largest digital economy in Europe, but it is shockingly monolithic: according to Tech Citys 2017 Tech Nation report, men outnumber women three to one in more than half of our digital businesses. Imagine a Britain where more girls chose Stem (science, technology, English and maths) careers and more women built our tech products and services. It would be one that avoided a digital skills gap entirely by training up the 51% of the population it has so far failed to reach.

And let us protect ourselves by settingfirm rules about digital safety. After the second world war, we decidedthat civilians should never be targets of violence. Nearly 70 yearslater,we still abide by the humanitarian guidelines of the fourth Geneva convention. Imagine a Britain that pushed for a digital Geneva convention one that safeguarded us virtually as well as physically. It would be one that,like Switzerland, would be remembered in history books for making the world a more just place.

This is not just about tech. It is about finding the future of Britain. Were aboutto become a smaller country, more alone in a large world. We need something to anchor ourselves to something to remind us of who we are and where were heading. We are nothing if not strongly moral, and we are headed nowhere more rapidly thana digitally enabled future. There is no society morefit to lead the world in ethical technology, and so the role isours for the taking.

Lets be honest: we are never goingtobe Silicon Valley. Good digital strategies notwithstanding, the value ofthe entire European tech sector is just7% of that of Americas. Instead, lets be the first nation to recognise thattechnology is not some sort of arcane art. It is, like everything else, the work of people people who deserve protection, who need encouragement, who want more control.

Lets lead the world with our ethical,fair, sustainable and responsibletechnology. It is here, in themost human part of the sector, where Britain can soar.

Here is the original post:

Technology is a marvel now let's make it moral - The Guardian

The people, the food and the storytelling are what I love most about the Passover seder I go to, but I also really like the updates to the ritual. We spill drops of wine as we name the ten Biblical plagues, but we count off ten modern plagues as well, like hunger and terrorism. Traditional symbols are on the table, like horseradish for the bitterness of slavery and salt water for tears, but theres also an orange, an innovation from the 1970s, standing for feminism and against homophobia. (An orange? Seriously? Theres a story.)

Im especially partial to this twist: We sing Avadim Hayinu, Once were slaves in Egypt, but we also ask the question I began with, as a metaphor, and in the present tense. The Hebrew word for Egypt, Mitzrayim, is derived from mtzarim, meaning narrow straits, a tight place. In the story the Book of Exodus tells, the enslaved Jews are liberated from Egypt. Our seder asks us, What pharaoh owns you? What tightness binds you? What constriction do you need to free yourself from?

Im writing this before the first night of Passover, so this is a prediction, but a safe one: Ill be amazed if theres anyone at our seder who wont have a little Egypt in their pocket or purse. Everyone will of course silence their ringers, but Id be surprised if a few of us dont manage to sneak a peek at our screens; if many of us wont be fighting a compulsion to do that several times an hour; and if most of us, in the moments between seder and meal, dont check out what came in while we were asking why this night is different from all other nights.

On all other nights, there are smartphones on the table.

Ill admit it: Im rarely without my iPhone, even for a few minutes (you know: in case of an emergency, or my kids are trying to reach me, or I dont want the plumber to go to voicemail). Some studies say that on average, people check their phones every six-and-a-half minutes, 150 times a day; some say yikes as many as 2,617 times a day. Whatever my own number is, its bound to be embarrassing. Like most people, I can rattle off one reason after another to excuse that frequency. Its for work. Its for news. Its for stoking my civic outrage at you know who. Its for Yelp or Uber or Google or Netflix. Its for weather, scores, maps, directions, texting, posting, liking, Skyping, tweeting, eating, friending, mating. Its for playing games, taking pictures, getting a jump on my email, working out to my playlists, killing time while Im riding an elevator, standing in line, waiting for the water to boil.

This is madness.

Were as adept at justifying being phone junkies as addicts are at rationalizing their habit. Were hooked on stimulation, on that spike of happy that hits our neurons when a NEW! NOW! NEXT! attracts our attention. Boredom terrifies us; to endure it without our iBlow would be like going cold turkey ten times as hour. But as MIT professor Sherry Turkle says, theres a downside to calling our dependence on digital devices an addiction. It implies that our behavior is personal weakness, that its futile to resist. What needs our attention isnt the cause of what ails us, but its toll on our wellness. What wants therapy is how our gizmos narrow the rest of our lives how, as Turkle writes in Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age, they constrict our capacity to be alone and together, how they contract our ability to understand others and be heard.

Turkle identifies a crisis of solitude and a crisis of empathy in our lives. As we struggle to truly pay attention to ourselves, to experience boredom and anxiety and the rich, messy and demanding feelings inherent in human relationships, we struggle to pay attention to each other. The more time we spend online, or itching to be online, the less time for the risks of face-to-face conversation. But its there that empathy is born and intimacy thrives. Its often when we stumble, or struggle for our words, or are silent, that we reveal ourselves most to each other and to ourselves.

Turkle is no Luddite. She describes the moment when, very nervous, about to give the first talk of a book tour, setting her iPhone on the podium to start a timer, she got a text from her daughter: Mom, you will rock this. Yes, the message was digitally delivered. But that didnt undo its affect or its effect. It was like a kiss.

We need an intervention. We need to practice undivided attention to each other, in conversation, and to ourselves, in solitude. We dont have to give up our phones, she says, but we have to use them more deliberately, by working to protect sacred places, spaces without technology, in our everyday lives.

Our madness is recent. The iPhone is just 10 years old. Still, thats long enough for me to want a new ringtone: Let my people go.

Read more from the original source:

This Passover, I'm setting myself free from technology - Salon

In the first six months of 2016, Pennsylvania hospitals reported 889 medication errors or close calls that were attributed, at least in part, to electronic health records and other technology used to monitor and record patients treatment.

A majority of the errors pertained to dosages either missed dosages or an administration of the wrong dose. Of the 889 errors, nearly 70 percent reached the patient. Among those, eight patients were actually harmed, including three involving critical drugs such as insulin, anticoagulants and opioids.

The extent of the injuries was not detailed, although no deaths were recorded.

Those are the stark numbers in a new analysis by the Pennsylvania Patient Safety Authority, an independent state agency that looks at ways to reduce medical errors.

But interpretations of the reports significance and specifically the overall benefits and risks of information technology in a hospital setting cross a wide spectrum.

Do 889 errors signal a major patient safety hazard? Critics believe they could, but probably hundreds of thousands of dosages were administered in Pennsylvania hospitals over that period and the total of eight patients harmed would barely register as a percentage of the total.

On the other hand, errors are notoriously underreported and any software error may mask multiple more errors if system flaws go undetected or unreported.

This is the classic tip of the iceberg, said pharmacist Matthew Grissinger, manager of medication safety analysis for the Patient Safety Authority in Harrisburg and co-author of the analysis with fellow pharmacist Staley Lawes. We know for a ton of reasons not every error is reported.

Mr. Grissinger cautioned that the findings are absolutely not an indicator that patients are less safe, as hospitals have moved from paper to electronic records incorporating health information technology.

But the authors did conclude that technology meant to improve patient safety has led to new, often unforeseen types of errors due to system problems or user mistakes.

Hospitals implementation of electronic health records, boosted by financial incentives by the federal government as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, address an array of patient safety issues. But some medical professionals remain uneasy with the technology.

Frustration with the technology

In January 2015, 35 physician groups including the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Family Physicians and the American Society of Anesthesiologists sent a nine-page letter about electronic health records to the national coordinator for health information at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Their purpose was to convey their growing frustration with the way EHRs are performing, the letter stated.

Many physicians find these systems cumbersome, do not meet their workflow needs, decrease efficiency, and have limited, if any, interoperability. Most importantly, certified EHR technology can present safety concerns for patients.

Physician Scot Silverstein, a medical informatics specialist at Drexel University in Philadelphia and vocal critic of electronic health records, calls the software legible gibberish better designed for handling warehouse inventory than managing and monitoring patient care in a clinical setting.

Electronic health records are a massively complex computer application, far too complex than is needed for a clinic taking care of patients, he said in a phone interview. EHRs need to be toned down, be less complex, and be used less.

Opportunities for mistakes are numerous, he said, as a physician may have to scroll through multiple screens, while each screen with a dozen or more columns plus an array of drop down menus. Some systems, he said, allow doctors to keep screens on multiple patients open simultaneously, increasing the chances of a medication mix-up.

The software needs to be designed better.

Dr. Silverstein, who says his mothers death was precipitated by a heart medication mix-up involving her electronic health record, cites federal initiatives giving hospitals financial incentive to implement electronic health systems as pushing the programs without sufficient vetting.

The thinking was, Computers plus doctors equals better medicine, period. But the technology was not and is still not ready for that kind of push.

Instead, he recommends some combination of paper, with paper imaging capability so records are accessible, and electronic systems. I dont think paper should or ever will go away completely, he said.

A need for better training

Anesthesiologist Andrew Gettinger, acting deputy national coordinator for health information technology in the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, disagrees with Dr. Silverstein.

He identified three key components to a successful electronic health record system good design and implementation and the users good understanding of the system.

What we find is that many clinicians who complain vociferously about the software and how many clicks it takes, and how user unfriendly it is, have not actually taken the time to understand the system, he said.

Quite frankly, doctors are not always the best at signing up for training and taking the training, and some of the training is not always the best.

He allowed that the usability criticism is a very legitimate thing to look at but he defended the federal incentives, saying they defrayed the cost to hospitals while encouraging vendors to develop better systems.

A system that is well designed and well implemented, and used by the clinician in the way it is designed, actually is pretty strong and pretty good.

In the patient safety analysis, Mr. Grissinger and his colleague found health information technology errors occurred during every step of the medication-use process.

They make several recommendations such as encouraging more reports of errors and near misses, training to ensure new staff are familiar with the technology before using it in patient care, and limiting distractions when performing critical tasks such as ordering medications.

The full report can be viewed online at the authoritys website, http://www.patientsafetyauthority.org.

The hope, said Mr. Grissinger, is that by tracking errors hospitals can check for possible weak spots as they introduce and monitor electronic health records systems into their hospitals.

The potential to make this safer for the patient and the provider is absolutely there.

Steve Twedt; stwedt@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1963.

Visit link:

Medication errors in hospitals don't disappear with new technology - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Augmented reality can help you find your lost wallet, and more.

Pixie Technologyhas a way to find your lost wallet or misplaced keys. It uses a combination of tracking chips, which the company dubbed the location of things, along with augmented reality technology.

Los Altos, Calif.-based Pixie sells Bluetooth LE-connected fobs that create a connection with each other. When you are holding a fob, such as the one attached to your smartphone,it establishes a connection to the nearby fob. And then it uses the location information to guide you to the other fob. Thats where the AR technology comes in. You turn on the Pixie app on your smartphone and point your smartphone camera in a particular direction. If you are within range of another fob, you can see it appear on your camera screen as a digital overlay on the cameras view. If you move closer, you can home in on the lost item.

Above: A full kit of Pixie Points.

Image Credit: Pixie Technology

If the item is out of range, Pixie will show the street address, time, and date of whenit was last seen by the app.

The location of things could be an important cousin of the Internet of Things, or making everyday objects smart and connected, said Amir Bassan-Eskenazi, CEO and cofounder of Pixie, in an interview with VentureBeat. Each Pixie Point is like a location pin for the real world, he said.

I was trying to find a smart location solution, and I didnt find one, Bassan-Eskenazi said. I thought about it, and so I started to create one. People thought of lost keys as a hardship, a fact of life you have to live with. I thought of it as a problem that you can solve.

Pixie raised $18.5 million last year in a second round of funding led by Spark Capital, with participation from Cedar Fund, Our Crowd, and private investors. Bassan-Eskenazi cofounded the company with Ofer Friedman, chief technology officer, in 2011. A pack of four Pixie Points costs $100.

Pixie uses mesh networking technology to enhance the precision and expand the range of its location-based fobs.Mesh networking allows devices on a network to talk to each other, rather than relying on a central hub (e.g. a mobile phone). Through triangulation, Pixie provides a more exact location of your lost items, Bassan-Eskenazi said.

Its like a compass, he explained. Instead of pointing to the north, it points to what you are looking for. You see on the map where you are and where it is.

Rivals include Tile and Trackr. The Pixie Points are about an inch long (47 millimeters x 35 mm x 3.4 mm), which makes them a little bulky to put on your keychain, smartphone, or in your wallet. But it can give you peace of mind that youll be able to find your lost item if needed.

There are a couple of ways to locate things. With a motion similar to taking a panoramic photo, a simple scan of the roommaps the immediate environment and triangulates Pixified items positions relative tothe user.

Above: Pixie Points can be attached to your keys.

Image Credit: Pixie Technology

Or thePixie app can point a user to the location of the item with thePixie Pointer, an arrow icon that shows both the direction to move in and the current distance from the object. And if you press the show me button, Pixie displays an AR overlay consisting of Pixie Dust that swarms to a part of a camera picture where the item is in the room. The PixieDust and Pointer can even see through walls and objects toguide users to items that are hiding behind a cushion, in adrawer, or in an adjoining room.

Once users are within five feet of the lost item,the Pixie app acts like a metal detector to accurately zeroin on the target. During this stage, the Pixie app providesvisual and audio guidance to tell users as they are gettingcloser or farther away from the exact location of theobject.

The range is about 150 feet outdoors, while its about 30 to 50 feet indoors. The Pixie Points include a Bluetooth LE radio, proprietary Pixel signaling protocols that allow each Pixie Point to communicate with any other using the 2.4 gigahertz band, and distance sensors utilizing UWB PHY in the 4 gigahertz range. The latter uses two-way Time ofFlight (ToF) measurement for high-accuracy indoor ranging.

The finder is accurate to about one foot. The non-replaceable battery lasts about 12 months and the device runs on iOS 9 and up and supportsiPhone 7, iPhone 7+, iPhone 6s and 6s+, and the iPhone SE and 5S. Pixie has filed for 10 patents. Pixie Technology plans to open its location-of-things platform to developers and partners in 2017. To date, the company has raised $24 million.

This post by Dean Takahashi originally appeared on VentureBeat.

Tagged with: Pixie Technology

Read the original here:

Pixie Technology Uses Fobs and Augmented Reality to Locate Your Lost Wallet - UploadVR

April 9, 2017 by Marisa Kendall, The Mercury News The finalized prototype of Google self-driving car.

First, it was just a dream. Then it became a quirky research project undertaken by a handful of the nerdiest engineers in the robotics industry.

Now self-driving cars are on the brink of transforming transportation. The industry creating the technology for autonomous vehicles has morphed from a collaborative space of free-flowing ideas into a high-speed road race where the winners will seize a market expected to reach $77 billion by 2035, and the losers will be left in the dust.

"The money involved - the money expended in these research efforts and the money expected if they're successful - has just ballooned and become so much more concrete and attainable," said Bryant Walker Smith, a scholar with Stanford Law School who specializes in self-driving car law.

Major players - Google's Waymo, Tesla and Uber - are fighting to set the industry standard for consumer-ready autonomous vehicles. Each has much at stake - for Uber, autonomous vehicles could be the ride-hailing startup's best shot at profitability. But the road ahead is marred by potholes and speed bumps.

The intense competition already has spawned at least two significant lawsuits. Coveted engineers working on autonomous cars are regularly switching companies. And a new class of scrappy startups creating self-driving software has emerged, poised to take market share from the established giants.

Meanwhile, the major automakers, such as GM, Ford, Fiat Chrysler and Mercedes-Benz parent Daimler, are staking out their claims to the industry by investing in and partnering with the key tech players. It's too soon to tell what these marriages will yield, but several teams appear to be eyeing ride-hailing networks that could pose an added threat to Uber and Lyft.

Nowhere is the tension better illustrated than in the contentious court battle between Google's Waymo and Uber. Waymo says its former engineer, Anthony Levandowski, downloaded more than 14,000 confidential company files before leaving to found his own autonomous vehicle startup. The documents allegedly included designs used in Waymo's LiDAR sensor - one of the key technology components that lets self-driving cars "see" the road.

Levandowski founded Otto, an autonomous trucking startup later acquired by Uber. Now Waymo says Uber is employing trade secrets to replicate Waymo's LiDAR sensors, and has asked a federal judge in San Francisco to prohibit Uber from using that technology - an order that could potentially devastate Uber's self-driving car program. A hearing is set for the first week of May, and Uber is scheduled to respond to Waymo's allegations this week.

Trade secret fights are common in Silicon Valley, but one thing that makes this one unique is Google's involvement, which highlights the priority it is placing on its self-driving car program.

"Google doesn't sue people - period," said Eric Goldman, director of Santa Clara Law's High Tech Law Institute. "It's very exceptional to find Google as a plaintiff."

The self-driving car industry was once a close-knit community, Stanford's Smith said, but the Waymo lawsuit illustrates how far it's come since those early days.

"A lot of people were doing a lot of the same things at the same time - working at a university, consulting with a company and starting their own startup," he said. "Researchers were pretty freely sharing information."

Tesla filed a similar lawsuit against a former employee in January. The suit accuses former Autopilot program manager Sterling Anderson of nabbing Tesla's confidential information and trying to recruit at least a dozen of the company's engineers before leaving to found a competing startup.

Anderson and Chris Urmson, the former chief technology officer of Google's self-driving car program, recently launched self-driving car startup Aurora Innovation.

"Tesla understands that some employees may decide to pursue other opportunities or even to create a startup of their own, and Tesla is typically supportive of their personal ambitions and respectful of their decisions," the company's lawyers wrote. "However, Tesla cannot sit idly by when an employee like Anderson abuses his position of trust."

A lawyer for Aurora did not respond to a request for comment.

Tesla, which says two of its engineers ended up following Anderson to Aurora, isn't the only company struggling to retain its top talent. A wave of nearly 20 people left Uber's Pittsburgh-based, self-driving car program in November and December, said a person familiar with the matter, with many of them joining Argo AI - a competing startup founded by an ex-Uber engineer. And last year, two of Google's top self-driving car executives left to start self-driving car startup Nuro.ai.

Seeing those key people depart is especially painful in the self-driving car space, experts say, where there already is a shortage of talent because of the nascent state of the technology.

"Finding and recruiting the top talent is really the name of the game," said Karl Iagnemma, co-founder and CEO of nuTonomy, a Massachusetts-based startup working on software for self-driving cars. "It's intense competition to get those people."

Data also is a priority - companies must collect hours of driving data to teach their software to navigate the road. Google got an early start - the company began testing self-driving Prius cars in 2009, and its spinoff Waymo now has about 60 cars collecting data.

Uber gathers information in a similar way, operating dozens of self-driving cars in San Francisco, Pittsburgh and Tempe, Ariz. Tesla is mining data from the thousands of customers driving with its cars' Autopilot feature.

Some smaller startups are taking a different approach. Palo Alto-based Nauto charges $400 for kits that let taxi drivers, fleet operators and Uber and Lyft drivers retrofit their cars with cameras that give alerts when a driver is doing something unsafe like tailgating. Those sensors funnel driving data back to the company, which is working on fully autonomous software.

Apple, meanwhile, reportedly is working on a secretive self-driving car initiative called Project Titan, though details remain scant.

So does information on how some of the industry's main players plan to profit from their self-driving technology. But as hints of future business plans emerge, there are signs of overlap that could add to the competition. Uber is betting its future on autonomous vehicles that can someday replace human drivers in its ride-hailing network. Tesla has expressed interest in creating its own ride-hailing network, and Waymo is rumored to be eyeing similar plans.

When it comes to the actual technology behind their cars, the companies are even more tight-lipped. One key feature most autonomous vehicles share is LiDAR - sensors that use lasers to create a 3-D image of the car's surroundings. That's the technology at the heart of the Waymo v. Uber lawsuit. Waymo says it invested tens of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of engineering hours to build its own sensors, which would cost up to $60,000 off the shelf, only to have Uber copy that work.

Trade secrets related to that technology are so precious to Waymo that when the court fight began, Waymo refused even to tell Uber which secrets it was accusing its rival of misappropriating.

However the case plays out, it could have major repercussions for the industry.

"If Google were to get everything that it is seeking," Smith said, "it could stop Uber's self-driving car program."

Explore further: Uber fires back at Google spinoff in self-driving car case

2017 The Mercury News (San Jose, Calif.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Uber is scoffing at claims that its expansion into self-driving cars hinges on trade secrets stolen from a Google spinoff, arguing that its ride-hailing service has been working on potentially superior technology.

A self-driving car company founded by Google is presenting new evidence to support allegations that a former manager stole technology sold to Uber to help the ride-hailing service build its own robot-powered vehicles.

Uber says it is resuming its self-driving car program in Arizona and Pittsburgh after it was suspended following a crash over the weekend.

The race to develop self-driving vehicles took a new turn on Thursday when Google's parent company Alphabet filed a lawsuit against Uber, accusing it of stealing technology.

Uber says its self-driving cars remains suspended in Arizona and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, following a crash over the weekend.

Google's spinoff self-driving car division Waymo announced Monday it added 100 Chrysler Pacifica minivans to its fleet of self-driving vehicles being tested.

First, it was just a dream. Then it became a quirky research project undertaken by a handful of the nerdiest engineers in the robotics industry.

Facebook on Thursday launched its digital assistant named "M" for US users of its Messenger application, ramping up the social network's efforts in artificial intelligence.

YouTube TV, Google's new streaming package of about 40 television channels, is the tech industry's latest bid to get cable-shunning millennials to pay for live TV over the internet. It offers intriguing advantages over rivals, ...

Researchers at the University of California, Riverside have found an innovative new use for a simple piece of glass tubing: weighing things. Their glass tube sensor will help speed up chemical toxicity tests, shed light on ...

Proteins are the most abundant substance in living cells aside from water, and their interactions with cellular functions are crucial to healthy life. When proteins fall short of their intended function or interact in an ...

Britain's High Court ruled Wednesday that it can decide what mobile phone manufacturers should pay to use patented technology that is essential to make mobile networks function.

Adjust slider to filter visible comments by rank

Display comments: newest first

It is a wonder how much money and other resources are being put into a technology most people simply do not want. As the technology matures, there will doubtless be areas where autonomous vehicles will be viable options. But unless there is a massive change in people's desires, there will not be a market large enough to cover the massive costs of development.

70 years ago video phones could have been mass produced. Today FaceTime is possible. YET people want to be comfortable in their unpreparedness when answering calls, that they prefer not to be seen by the caller. Even under most conventional circumstances peoples' preference is to not be seen by the opposite party.

Similarly 70 years ago the autonomous vehicles were buses... the population has voted on their preference.

Not everyone, of course, but many who have a daily commute or drive long trips will welcome this.

And those unable to drive will love them.

gkam, There are certainly people who want autonomous vehicles. But my comment was that most people do not want it. Far more people don't want it than want it.

It may take a generation to be fully accepted and used all the time.

Some of us give up hard.

Having had my neck broken and rebuilt, and no longer being able to drive, the autonomy of being able to tell my car where to go (aside from to hot regions in anger) has a lot of appeal anymore. When I had my surgery and found how limited I was, and the meds they wanted me to be on, I went down and turned in my Drivers License for the State ID instead. Has been 14 years now and not being Able to drive is a major limitation, having to depend on others or buses or the like is not always the needed answer. Having a car that woud drive itself to where I needed to go, without having to depend on other people, would set me free again in so many ways. If I had the money, other than being on SSI, I would buy one for sure, especially if electric.

Please sign in to add a comment. Registration is free, and takes less than a minute. Read more

See the original post:

Inside the car-eat-car world of self-driving technology - Phys.Org

Cincinnati police chief uses technology to stop crime Sacramento Bee The Enquirer reports (http://cin.ci/2p08BUf) that Eliot Isaac has sought to expand the force's technology efforts since becoming chief in 2015. Isaac's three-point plan includes new gun violence technology, body cameras and a witness advocacy program. and more »

See the original post:

Cincinnati police chief uses technology to stop crime - Sacramento Bee

The Hindu

Indian team in US for defence technology talks The Hindu A Defence Ministry delegation is in the U.S. to discuss the entire range of cooperation under the Defence Technology and Trade Initiative (DTTI). Nine working groups have been established under the initiative, which aims to promote co-development and ... and more »

Originally posted here:

Indian team in US for defence technology talks - The Hindu

PIKE COUNTY, Ky. (WYMT) - On Sunday afternoon, many search and rescue crews learned how drone technology can be used to respond in a crisis situation.

"It can go up and cover a square mile in just a matter of minutes," Steven Childers, owner of Kentucky Drone Services, said. "Versus what it would take a day for a mobile ground crew to be able to search."

Childers said that performing rescue missions in the mountains can be treacherous. Using drone technology gives departments an upper hand.

"Departments can use this as tool," Childers said. "The same way they would use a ladder or an ax. It's a tool and it can only benefit."

Crews took turns practicing life saving techniques. Childers explained that drones create faster response times and allow crews to work more efficiently.

"The benefits of drones within fire departments is time," Childers said. "Within search and rescue, time is of the essence."

Drones can be used to aid in swift water rescues, locating bodies and some drones have thermal technology.

"Drones can be used in any kind of emergency situation," Steve Collier, Pike County Technical Rescue, said.

Many believe this technology is needed in the mountains.

"If we could save one life with this, or just find someone that is hurt, I mean that's what these are about," Ralph Mullins, Chief of Shelby Creek Rescue Squad said.

Mullins said he is hopeful that this technology will protect the community in the future.

Many fire departments were present for this training and are looking into getting drones for their departments.

Read more:

Fire departments look to drone technology to save lives - WSAZ-TV