WASHINGTON — For years, President Obama has struggled to reconcile a civil libertarian’s belief in personal privacy with a commander-in-chief’s imperatives for the nation’s security. This week, security won. The decision by Mr. Obama’s Justice Department to force Apple to help it breach an iPhone used by...
After a federal court ordered Apple to help unlock an iPhone used by an attacker in a December mass shooting in San Bernardino, Calif., the company’s chief executive, Timothy D. Cook, penned a passionate letter warning of far-reaching implications beyond the case. The response from other...
A new, multiyear competition to build the world's coolest artificial intelligence could win you $5 million. The prize for the challenge comes from IBM, TED and the X Prize Foundation, who want to stimulate research on AI "to tackle some of the world's grand challenges."...
Anyone frustrated with telemarketers may have a new best friend. A Los Angeles man with an unusual passion for phone systems created a new robotic answering service that wastes telemarketers’ time. Roger Anderson started the Jolly Roger Telephone, which lets users start a three-way call with...
Tech companies have spent years developing better, cheaper devices to immerse people in digital worlds. Yet they are still figuring out how to make virtual reality the kind of technology that people cannot live without. So for inspiration, they are turning to science fiction....
With the emerging ecosystem of connected devices – often dubbed the “Internet of Things” – consumers are rightly worried about the security and privacy implications associated with always-on hardware in their homes that listen, watch, observe and then store data in the cloud. Today, a...
Construction process is revealing more layers of procedure needed to elevate the industry's clinical and business model, experts say. From its conceptual roots in the 1990s to adapting to the present-day issues of value-driven care, the healthcare industry has targeted interoperability as essential in optimizing clinical...
At New York’s Toy Fair trade show over the weekend, Mattel unveiled its new, $300 3D Printer, the “ThingMaker,” which will allow children to print their own toys at home. The device works in conjunction with a 3D printing app developed in collaboration with Autodesk...
When computers speak, how human should they sound? This was a question that a team of six IBM linguists, engineers and marketers faced in 2009, when they began designing a function that turned text into speech for Watson, the company’s “Jeopardy!”-playing artificial intelligence program. Eighteen months later,...
To many startups, search engine optimization (SEO) is a task that sits on their company’s back burner. With features to launch and customers to support, the idea of spending time fiddling with your title tags can seem like a fool’s errand. That’s especially true when there’s...