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Tech Update

MWC 2018: Samsung Galaxy S9 is not fixing what already works well, but packs better cameras

by Loknath Das
written by Loknath Das

Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+ will start rolling out in stores in some countries from 16 March onwards, with prices very similar to the launch prices of the S8 and the S8+.

Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+ will start rolling out in stores in some countries from 16 March onwards, with prices very similar to the launch prices of the S8 and the S8+.

The Samsung Galaxy S8 and the Galaxy S8+ were undoubtedly the Android flagship torchbearers of 2017, and why change something that works well? Samsung clearly doesn’t want to tinker with a winning formula, and that is perhaps why this year’s Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+ take a lot of inspiration from the predecessors. The phones will start rolling out in stores in some countries from 16 March onwards, with prices very similar to the launch prices of the S8 and the S8+.

The S9 and S9+ have the same bezel-less designs with the tall 18.5:9 aspect ratio screens. The 5.8-inch screen in the S9 and the 6.2-inch screen in the S9+ are the same Super AMOLED panels as before, but Samsung claims to have boosted the brightness levels this time around. While the design remains the same, the new phones are slightly different in terms of the dimensions, which means if you are upgrading, the same cases and covers may not work.

While some markets will get the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor with 4GB or 6GB RAM, other markets such as India will get Samsung’s latest Exynos processors.

The big change this time around is the camera system in the S9 and the S9+. The S9 has a single camera while the S9+ has a dual camera. The S9 is the first flagship phone from Samsung that features a mechanically adjustable aperture which can switch between f/1.5 for low light situations and f/2.4 for better lit environments. Till now, the LG V30 had the widest aperture in a smartphone thus far, with its glass lens capable of f/1.6 aperture. This, Samsung claims, lets in 28% more light than the S8’s f/1.7 aperture. The S9’s 12-megapixel camera sensor also has a new dual pixel autofocus technology called Super Speed Dual Pixel, which is faster and locks focus more reliably, reduces noise and distortions and can record up to 960 frames per second of slow motion video—something that is straight out of Sony’s Xperia camera handbook.

Samsung has a slightly different take on the animated emoji feature, also seen in the Apple iPhone X. Samsung calls this AR Emoji, and instead of a lion or a monkey, this maps over 100 points of your face using the front camera and lets you animate your own face. You can then customize this with different hairstyles and more.

Samsung has upgraded the Bixby virtual assistant as well, with a new augmented reality vision section. There is a live translate feature that uses Google’s Translate service, while the service now links up better with some of the camera features too.

It is quite a guarantee that the S9 and the S9+ will again be the Android flagship phones that will set the pace this year, and are a tough act to follow for any competition.

[“Source-livemint”]

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Tech Update

The Threat From Artificial Intelligence May Already Be Here

by Loknath Das
written by Loknath Das

The Threat From Artificial Intelligence May Already Be Here

You know the scenario from 19th- century fiction and Hollywood movies: Mankind has invented a computer, or a robot or another artificial thing that has taken on a life of its own. In Frankenstein, the monster is built from corpses; in 2001: A Space Odyssey, it’s an all-seeing computer with a human voice; in Westworld, the robots are lifelike androids that begin to think for themselves. But in almost every case, the out-of-control artificial life form is anthropomorphic. It has a face or a body, or at least a human voice and a physical presence in the real world.

But what if the real threat from “artificial life” doesn’t look or act human at all? What if it’s just a piece of computer code that can affect what you see and therefore what you think and feel? In other words – what if it’s a bot, not a robot?

For those who don’t know (and apologies to those who are wearily familiar), a bot really is just a piece of computer code that can do things that humans can do. Wikipedia uses bots to correct spelling and grammar on its articles; bots can also play computer games or place gambling bets on behalf of human controllers. Notoriously, bots are now a major force on social media, where they can “like” people and causes, post comments, react to others. Bots can be programmed to tweet out insults in response to particular words, to share Facebook pages, to repeat slogans, to sow distrust.

Slowly, their influence is growing. One tech executive told me he reckons that half of the users on Twitter are bots, created by companies that either sell them or use them to promote various causes. The Computational Propaganda Research Project at the University of Oxford has described how bots are used to promote either political parties or government agendas in 28 countries. They can harass political opponents or their followers, promote policies, or simply seek to get ideas into circulation.

About a week ago, for example, sympathisers of the Polish government – possibly alt-right Americans – launched a coordinated Twitter bot campaign with the hashtag “#astroturfing” (not exactly a Polish word) that sought to convince Poles that anti-government demonstrators were fake, outsiders or foreigners paid to demonstrate. An investigation by the Atlantic Council’s Digital ForensicResearch Lab pointed out the irony: An artificial Twitter campaign had been programmed to smear a genuine social movement by calling it . . . artificial.

That particular campaign failed. But others succeed – or at least they seem to. The question now is whether, given how many different botnets are running at any given moment, we even know what that means. It’s possible for computer scientists to examine and explain each one individually. It’s possible for psychologists to study why people react the way they do to online interactions – why fact-checking doesn’t work, for example, or why social media increases aggression.

But no one is really able to explain the way they all interact, or what the impact of both real and artificial online campaigns might be on the way people think or form opinions. Another Digital Forensic Research Lab investigation into pro-Trump and anti-Trump bots showed the extraordinary number of groups that are involved in these dueling conversations – some commercial, some political, some foreign. The conclusion: They are distorting the conversation, but toward what end, nobody knows.

Which is my point: Maybe we’ve been imagining this scenario incorrectly all of this time. Maybe this is what “computers out of control” really look like. There’s no giant spaceship, nor are there armies of lifelike robots. Instead, we have created a swamp of unreality, a world where you don’t know whether the emotions you are feeling are manipulated by men or machines, and where – once all news moves online, as it surely will – it will soon be impossible to know what’s real and what’s imagined. Isn’t this the dystopia we have so long feared?

 [“Source-gadgets.ndtv”]
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