1. Google’s new AI detects breast cancer more accurately than doctors

• Google LLC’s health unit has hit the ground running in 2020, today detailing a homegrown artificial intelligence model that it says can identify breast cancer more accurately than human radiologists.
• The project is the fruit of transatlantic research collaboration. Google Health worked together with Cancer Research UK Imperial Centre, Northwestern University, Royal Surrey County Hospital and DeepMind, Google parent Alphabet Inc.’s AI development unit.
• The search giant taught the machine learning model to identify cancerous tissue by training it on anonymized mammograms from more than 91,000 women in the U.S. and the U.K. Then, Google put the neural network to the test by having it analyze a separate dataset of scans from 28,000 patients.

2. New Apple patent imagines virtual speakers that can simulate sound from anywhere in the room

• Apple has just been granted a patent — concerning virtual positioning of audio — that could eventually lay the groundwork for new, more immersive audio applications. It builds on a previous patent Apple filed last month that enabled users to hear where people are physically located in a room through special headphone tech. Today’s patent does exactly the same thing, but with built-in MacBook speakers.
• According to 9to5Mac, it’s a virtual acoustic system that works by using crosstalk canceling, which makes users feel like sound is coming from a different place than loudspeakers. (Crosstalk, here, refers to the overlapping sound waves that the ears receive from the left and right channels of a speaker.) The effect, as reported by Patently Apple, is to allow audio signals to contain “spatial cues” that let a sound be positioned virtually in a space. The patent was originally filed in 2018, according to Patently Apple.

3. The smoke app brings parts of Valve’s Steam to the Apple Watch

• For people who want to check in on their gaming achievements in Steam or stay up to date with the latest sales, this Apple Watch app has you covered.
• Smoke gives Apple Watch users access to their Steam account, but that doesn’t mean people have the ability to play games from their wrist. The app exists to let you stay up to date on gaming news and to see what friends are playing while you might be away from your PC. There’s an ability to save news articles that come up in the Apple Watch and read them in Smoke’s companion app for iOS, according to 9to5Mac.
• The full list of features Smoke brings to Apple Watch users includes:- View the games you own as well as your achievement statuses and total play time
  – View the store information for the games you and your friends own (Price, review and player numbers, genre etc.)
  – See if your friends are online and the games they have recently played
  – Find news articles for the games you own.
  – Tap a news article to save it to your phone!
  – Customize the iOS app by choosing the theme color and changing the app icon
  – Share saved news articles with friends
• The app is available now on the App Store. Just note: it’s not made by Valve, but by independent developer Damien Sheridan. So it may not have full access to your profile in the way a Valve-made piece of software would.

4. Xiaomi, ISRO In Talks To Include Qualcomm-Made NavIC Chipsets For Smartphones In India

• Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi might be the first smartphone OEM to feature the Indian Space Research Organisation’s NavIC, the Indian version of Global Positioning System (GPS). This was confirmed by an ISRO official who said that Xiaomi and ISRO are in the advanced stage of talks on the provision of chipsets that can support NavIC.
• The chipset will be manufactured by US chipmaker Qualcomm Technologies. The chip is expected to be released later this month. And if the deal with Xiaomi gets finalized, we may see a “mid-range” smartphone in about 7 months according to the official. This inclusion of NavIC in smartphones might finally let ISRO take its technology to the masses.
• In terms of accuracy, NavIC is said to provide a position accuracy of better than 20 meters in its primary service area. In comparison, the US’s GPS and Russia’s GLONASS offer accuracy of less than 5 meters while Europe’s Galileo offers an accuracy of less than 1 metre.

5. Instagram Starts Fact-checking Photos And Videos On Platform To Fight Misinformation

• It was earlier this year in May when Instagram began working with third-party fact-checkers in the US to identify, review, and label false information. And now Instagram is expanding its fact-checking feature globally to allow fact-checking organizations to analyze and rate misinformation, reports FirstPost.
• The fact-checker pop-up can be spotted on Instagram Stories and for posts that are detected to be factually incorrect, the images are blurred with a ‘False Information’ warning. You’d also be able to spot an option below the warning, stating why the image has been blocked. You’d also be able to check details surrounding the fact-checker, authenticity of the content, and more after you tap on the option.
• When content has been rated as false by a third-party fact-checker, Instagram reduces its distribution by getting rid of it from Explore and hashtag pages. The labels applied to the posts would be visible to everyone around the world in their feed, profile, stories, and direct messages.

6. Samsung To Reveal An Invisible Keyboard That Makes Use Of Selfie Camera And AI To Type

• CES 2020 is only a week away and will be conducted between January 7, 2020, and January 10 Jan 2020. A slew of different companies would gather together to showcase their different innovations and projects. Samsung also plans to reveal several projects at CES 2020 including a new SelfieType, which would allow smartphone users to type on their devices using a virtual keyboard via the phone’s selfie camera, reports Samsung.SelfieType project that Samsung plans to reveal is a part of Samsung’s C-Lab Inside projects. This system would make use of the phone’s selfie-camera and an Artificial Intelligence engine which would help analyze the user’s finger movements. These finger movements are then converted into text via QWERTY keyboard inputs. This new system wouldn’t require any additional hardware and is applicable to a large number of devices including smartphones, tablets, laptops, et al.

7. Samsung ‘The Wall’ Experience: A Viewing Experience Meant For Royalt

• Samsung recently unveiled its large-format display called ‘The Wall’ in India and while that name sounds like just another name you’d probably come up with for a super high-end TV, its anything but just a super premium TV and you’ll have to see it to believe it. The reason I say this is because reading about a monstrous 4K, 6K or 8K modular display is quite different than experiencing one and I’ve been waiting to see ‘The Wall’, ever since it was first revealed at CES almost two years ago. Why?
• Well, firstly, instead of using an LCD or OLED panel, ‘The Wall’ uses individual LED clusters to form its picture. Called microLED, this breakthrough display tech involves each microscopic LED emitting its own light. Now, ‘The Wall’ uses multiple cabinets, each with a resolution of 960×540 pixels to form a unit. What I mean is, unlike your regular high-end OLED TV, ‘The Wall’ has to be assembled in blocks of at least 16 micro-LED cabinets, mounted flush with one another, to fit into your space.
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fakRw0_WtME&feature=emb_logo