The Daily Populous

Saturday May 13rd, 2017 morning edition

image for Watch this AI drone teach itself how to fly through trial and error

Why it matters to you Drones need to be able to autonomously fly better to cope with the complexities of the real world.

You know the saying, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again?”

Well, it also counts for drones.

At least, that is the takeaway message from a recent paper titled “Learning to Fly by Crashing,” published by roboticists from Carnegie Mellon University.

They subjected hapless drones to 11,500 collisions in 20 different indoor environments, spread over 40 hours of flying time, to prove it.

We can use human experts and ask them to fly drones, but such data is small in size and biased towards success since the number of crashes is very low.”.

In their study, the drones were instructed to fly slowly until colliding with something, after which they would return to the starting position and set off in a new direction. »

Hollywood fearing worst box office summer in a decade

Authored by independent.co.uk

2 currently sits atop the worldwide box office, Disney and Marvel’s sequel having already grossed over $500 million.

The publication states how many executives are worried there are just too many sequels and franchises overflowing the market.

Whereas sequels were once guaranteed hits, thanks to more savvy cinema-goers — in part, thanks to social media — they have begun flopping. »

NHS services in England and Scotland hit by global cyber-attack

Authored by theguardian.com

The NHS has been hit as part of a global cyber-attack that threw hospitals and businesses in the UK and around the world into chaos.

In the UK, computers in hospitals and GP surgeries simultaneously received a pop-up message demanding a ransom in exchange for access to the PCs.

Other hospitals have now been warned not to open these emails – all trusts communicate with each other.”. »

SpaceX Must Pay $4 Million for Thousands of Underpaid Employees

Authored by inverse.com
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But it’s certainly unreasonable to expect employees to operate the same way — and it looks like Musk is paying for it now.

On Wednesday, SpaceX finally closed up a settlement for a class action lawsuit in which thousands of employees alleged the Hawthorne, California-based company did not properly compensate them.

One third of that payout — about $1.3 million — will go to the plaintiffs’ lawyers. »