1// SwiftKey for Android taps Microsoft Translator to translate as you text. SwiftKey, the mobile keyboard company owned by Microsoft, has added a new translation feature to the Android version of its app. The real-time translation feature uses Microsoft Translator to convert your incoming mobile messages into more than 60 languages. Once users tap the Microsoft Translator icon on the SwiftKey keyboard, the app translates as they type and translates incoming messages that users copy.

Now users won’t have to leave the keyboard in order to do the translations, thanks to the new feature. The app also remembers users’ preferences, eliminating the need to scroll through the full list of the more than 60 available languages to select which languages to translate to and from each time the feature is engaged, explains an official blog post.

The translation capability is available offline to SwiftKey users who have also downloaded the Microsoft Translator app, enabling translations of emails composed, for example, during an overseas flight on a business trip. Microsoft Translator is a part of Azure Cognitive Services, a collection of AI algorithms. The translation feature is currently available for users of SwiftKey on Android devices, a user base that data indicates is global and highly multilingual, Microsoft said.

Source: Microsoft Blog

2// Facebook announces $399 Oculus Quest. At the Oculus Connect developer conference on Thursday, Facebook CEO took the stage to announce a new virtual reality headset. Called the Oculus Quest, the long-awaited headset would arrive early next year with a $399 price tag.

The stand-alone device would be compatible with existing Oculus software. It would allow you to jump right into the action—with no PC, no wires, and no external sensors. “This is the all-in-one VR experience we’ve all been waiting for,” Zuckerberg said. “This is it.” Motion tracking technology is what differentiates the Oculus Quest over other standalone VR headsets. Facebook said it has lined up more than 50 titles for launch, with even more in the works including some of your favorite Rift games like Robo Recall, The Climb, and Moss.

Source: Oculus Blog

3// Tesla CEO Elon Musk is in deep trouble after his August tweet, in which he claimed to have “funding secured” to privatize the electric vehicle company. The US Securities and Exchange Commission has charged Musk with securities fraud for misleading investors last month about taking Tesla private, as per court documents filed Thursday.

In its complaint, the SEC sought to impose fines and force Musk’s removal from Tesla, besides asking the federal court to bar him from leading any publicly traded company serving on the board of one if found guilty. Musk, on the other hand, rejected these allegations as “unjustified” as he “never compromised” his integrity. “This unjustified action by the SEC leaves me deeply saddened and disappointed,” Musk told CNBC.

Source: CNBC

4// Apple’s future QuickType keyboard to tap AI to read whole documents. If you have been a user of QuickType – Apple’s predictive keyboard, you know how it gets smarter as you use it. But if a current project at Apple gets completed successfully, QuickType could also use all of a document’s content to guess what word you would be typing next.

Mostly current techniques for training word embeddings capture the local context of a given word in a sentence as a window containing a relatively small number of words. The research team at Apple’s Machine Learning (ML) said in a blog post that “global semantic context” could result in better language models. The team concluded that using bi-LSTM RNNs to train global semantic word embeddings could indeed lead to improved accuracy in neural language modeling. A multitask training framework has the potential to deliver the best of both worlds by leveraging both local and global semantic information, it added.

Source: Machine Learning Journal