The Helper
Nov
05
Machine learning could become a useful tool in helping to detect Medicare fraud, according to a new study, potentially reclaiming anywhere from $19 billion to $65 billion lost to fraud each year.
Researchers from Florida Atlantic University’s College of Engineering and Computer Science recently published the world’s first study using Medicare Part B data, machine learning and advanced analytics to automate fraud detection. They tested six different machine learners on balanced and imbalanced data sets, ultimately finding the RF100 random forest algorithm to be most effective at identifying possible instances of fraud. They also found that imbalanced data sets are more preferable than balanced data sets when scanning for fraud.
“There are so many intricacies involved in determining what is fraud and what is not fraud, such as clerical error,” Richard A. Bauder, senior author and a Ph.D. student at the school, said. “Our goal is to enable machine learners to cull through all of this data and flag anything suspicious. Then we can alert investigators and auditors, who will only have to focus on 50 cases instead of 500 cases or more.”
In the study, Bauder and colleagues examined Medicare Part B data from 2012 to 2015, which held 37 million cases, for instances such as patient abuse, neglect and billing for medical services that never occurred. The team narrowed the data set to 3.7 million cases, a...
Researchers from Florida Atlantic University’s College of Engineering and Computer Science recently published the world’s first study using Medicare Part B data, machine learning and advanced analytics to automate fraud detection. They tested six different machine learners on balanced and imbalanced data sets, ultimately finding the RF100 random forest algorithm to be most effective at identifying possible instances of fraud. They also found that imbalanced data sets are more preferable than balanced data sets when scanning for fraud.
“There are so many intricacies involved in determining what is fraud and what is not fraud, such as clerical error,” Richard A. Bauder, senior author and a Ph.D. student at the school, said. “Our goal is to enable machine learners to cull through all of this data and flag anything suspicious. Then we can alert investigators and auditors, who will only have to focus on 50 cases instead of 500 cases or more.”
In the study, Bauder and colleagues examined Medicare Part B data from 2012 to 2015, which held 37 million cases, for instances such as patient abuse, neglect and billing for medical services that never occurred. The team narrowed the data set to 3.7 million cases, a...
Nov
02
Phone makers promise “all-day battery life.” Sure, and you haven’t stolen any of the kids’ Halloween candy.
If you recently bought a new flagship phone, chances are its battery life is actually worse than an older model.
For the last few weeks, I’ve been performing the same battery test over and over again on 13 phones. With a few notable exceptions, this year’s top models underperformed last year’s. The new iPhone XS died 21 minutes earlier than last year’s iPhone X. Google’s Pixel 3 lasted nearly an hour and a half less than its Pixel 2.
Phone makers tout all sorts of tricks to boost battery life, including more-efficient processors, low-power modes and artificial intelligence to manage app drain. Yet my results, and tests by other reviewers I spoke with, reveal an open secret in the industry: the lithium-ion batteries in smartphones are hitting an inflection point where they simply can’t keep up.
“Batteries improve at a very slow pace, about 5 percent per year,” says Nadim Maluf, the CEO of a Silicon Valley firm called Qnovo that helps optimize batteries. “But phone power consumption is growing up faster than 5 percent.”
Blame it on the demands of high-resolution screens, more complicated apps and, most of all, our seeming inability to put the darn phone down. Lithium-ion batteries, for all their rechargeable wonder, also have some...
If you recently bought a new flagship phone, chances are its battery life is actually worse than an older model.
For the last few weeks, I’ve been performing the same battery test over and over again on 13 phones. With a few notable exceptions, this year’s top models underperformed last year’s. The new iPhone XS died 21 minutes earlier than last year’s iPhone X. Google’s Pixel 3 lasted nearly an hour and a half less than its Pixel 2.
Phone makers tout all sorts of tricks to boost battery life, including more-efficient processors, low-power modes and artificial intelligence to manage app drain. Yet my results, and tests by other reviewers I spoke with, reveal an open secret in the industry: the lithium-ion batteries in smartphones are hitting an inflection point where they simply can’t keep up.
“Batteries improve at a very slow pace, about 5 percent per year,” says Nadim Maluf, the CEO of a Silicon Valley firm called Qnovo that helps optimize batteries. “But phone power consumption is growing up faster than 5 percent.”
Blame it on the demands of high-resolution screens, more complicated apps and, most of all, our seeming inability to put the darn phone down. Lithium-ion batteries, for all their rechargeable wonder, also have some...
Oct
29
New research provides evidence that delusion-prone individuals, dogmatic individuals, and religious fundamentalists are more likely to believe fake news. The study, which appears in the Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, suggests that the inability to detect false information is related to a failure to be actively open-minded.
The rise of online social media has led to growing concerns about the spread of unsubstantiated rumors, misleading political propaganda, and blatantly false articles designed to create viral web traffic. Even the U.S. Army has become involved in efforts to understand and combat disinformation in cyberspace.
“Our interest in fake news is grounded in a general interest in understanding the common experience of believing things that are not true,” explained study author Michael V. Bronstein of Yale University.
“Some false beliefs are relatively harmless (e.g., children believing in the tooth fairy), while others might cause significant distress (e.g., incorrectly believing that others are trying to hurt you) or may be potentially harmful to society as a whole (e.g., false beliefs about global warming or vaccines).”
“Research suggests that vulnerability to several different kinds of false beliefs may be determined (at least in part) by similar cognitive factors. For example,...
The rise of online social media has led to growing concerns about the spread of unsubstantiated rumors, misleading political propaganda, and blatantly false articles designed to create viral web traffic. Even the U.S. Army has become involved in efforts to understand and combat disinformation in cyberspace.
“Our interest in fake news is grounded in a general interest in understanding the common experience of believing things that are not true,” explained study author Michael V. Bronstein of Yale University.
“Some false beliefs are relatively harmless (e.g., children believing in the tooth fairy), while others might cause significant distress (e.g., incorrectly believing that others are trying to hurt you) or may be potentially harmful to society as a whole (e.g., false beliefs about global warming or vaccines).”
“Research suggests that vulnerability to several different kinds of false beliefs may be determined (at least in part) by similar cognitive factors. For example,...
Oct
29
Look, we get it: Bluetooth headphones are convenient. Popular models like Apple’s AirPods are for all intents and purposes the K-cup coffee machines of audio. Just like those liquid sadness brewers, Bluetooth offers a disappointing, expensive facsimile of the real deal — but many enjoy it all the same.
Testing done for our sister site SoundGuys confirmed it’ll get you 90 percent of the way there — but not everybody is willing to accept the excuses behind ditching the headphone jack. Since USB Type-C headphones aren’t where they need to be, we have to examine the consumer audio technology’s performance in a world where the headphone jack is disappearing.
A more in-depth description of the testing process and findings can be found here, but here are the broad strokes:
Bluetooth audio has come a long way since its noisy beginnings, but it’s still...
Testing done for our sister site SoundGuys confirmed it’ll get you 90 percent of the way there — but not everybody is willing to accept the excuses behind ditching the headphone jack. Since USB Type-C headphones aren’t where they need to be, we have to examine the consumer audio technology’s performance in a world where the headphone jack is disappearing.
A more in-depth description of the testing process and findings can be found here, but here are the broad strokes:
- Every single Bluetooth codec has measurable quality issues, though not all significant.
- Not a single codec or set of Bluetooth headphones available can meet wired signal quality.
Bluetooth audio has come a long way since its noisy beginnings, but it’s still...
Oct
26
The Autoblow AI, a sex toy made for penis-possessing individuals, consists of a rubbery sleeve and a motor housed inside a canister that aims to simulate oral sex. It launched its Indiegogo campaign last week and quickly hit its goal of $50,000. Its biggest advertised advantage over the original model from 2014, the Autoblow 2, is a machine learning algorithm that “continually changes technique” in order to pleasure the user in new and exciting ways.
Instead of repetitive, mechanical motions, this "AI mode" promises to replicate the nuanced and unpredictable motions of a real, human blowjob. In order to do this, the company asked a team of six people to watch and annotate 109 hours of porn and hired machine learning engineers to create a model to take all that data and translate it into what the toy does. This entire process took three years.
The result of this research is the Blowjob Paper, a (definitely not peer-reviewed) study that’s full of sexy—or at least, sexually-themed—algorithmic research: “In this work, we seek to quantify the ‘common’ or ‘typical’ movements involved in oral sex performed on males,” the paper begins. “ To do so, we analyze a dataset containing over 108 hours of...
Instead of repetitive, mechanical motions, this "AI mode" promises to replicate the nuanced and unpredictable motions of a real, human blowjob. In order to do this, the company asked a team of six people to watch and annotate 109 hours of porn and hired machine learning engineers to create a model to take all that data and translate it into what the toy does. This entire process took three years.
The result of this research is the Blowjob Paper, a (definitely not peer-reviewed) study that’s full of sexy—or at least, sexually-themed—algorithmic research: “In this work, we seek to quantify the ‘common’ or ‘typical’ movements involved in oral sex performed on males,” the paper begins. “ To do so, we analyze a dataset containing over 108 hours of...
Oct
26
Research published in PLOS One provides evidence that nature exposure improves well-being by expanding space perception, which in turn may reduce impulsive decision-making.
Numerous studies have linked exposure to nature with improved health and well-being. The new research helps explain some of the mechanisms underlying the nature-health connection.
In the study, 609 adults from across the United States completed a survey via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. The researchers found an indirect effect of nature exposure on health via impulsive decision-making.
People who reported being closer to a park or nature preserve, lived in neighborhoods that were more green, and spent more time outdoors tended to have lower levels of impulsivity, which in turn was associated with improved health. This association held after controlling for the participants’ level of education and household income.
The researchers followed up their survey with an experiment on 66 undergraduate students. The students were randomly assigned to view either photographs of natural scenery or photographs of buildings, cities and roads while they completed a delay-discounting task.
Delay discounting is the tendency to take a smaller reward that is available immediately, rather than a larger reward that will be delivered in the future. In this case, the participants were asked whether they would prefer fewer number of...
Numerous studies have linked exposure to nature with improved health and well-being. The new research helps explain some of the mechanisms underlying the nature-health connection.
In the study, 609 adults from across the United States completed a survey via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. The researchers found an indirect effect of nature exposure on health via impulsive decision-making.
People who reported being closer to a park or nature preserve, lived in neighborhoods that were more green, and spent more time outdoors tended to have lower levels of impulsivity, which in turn was associated with improved health. This association held after controlling for the participants’ level of education and household income.
The researchers followed up their survey with an experiment on 66 undergraduate students. The students were randomly assigned to view either photographs of natural scenery or photographs of buildings, cities and roads while they completed a delay-discounting task.
Delay discounting is the tendency to take a smaller reward that is available immediately, rather than a larger reward that will be delivered in the future. In this case, the participants were asked whether they would prefer fewer number of...
Oct
26
A new ruling from the Librarian of Congress is good news for video game preservation. In an 85-page ruling that covered everything from electronic aircraft controls to farm equipment diagnostic software, the Librarian of Congress carved out fair use exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) for video games and software in general. These exemptions will make it easier for archivists to save historic video games and for museums to share that cultural history with the public.
“The Acting Register found that the record supported granting an expansion in the relatively discrete circumstances where a preservation institution legally possesses a copy of a video game’s server code and the game’s local code,” the Librarian of Congress said. “In such circumstances, the preservation activities described by proponents are likely to be fair uses.”
These rules are definitely good news for single-player games. "The big change for single-player games happened during the last DMCA review process in 2015, when the Copyright Office decided that museums and archives could break the online authentication for single-player titles that were just phoning home to a server for copy protection reasons," Phil Salvador—a Washington,...
“The Acting Register found that the record supported granting an expansion in the relatively discrete circumstances where a preservation institution legally possesses a copy of a video game’s server code and the game’s local code,” the Librarian of Congress said. “In such circumstances, the preservation activities described by proponents are likely to be fair uses.”
These rules are definitely good news for single-player games. "The big change for single-player games happened during the last DMCA review process in 2015, when the Copyright Office decided that museums and archives could break the online authentication for single-player titles that were just phoning home to a server for copy protection reasons," Phil Salvador—a Washington,...
Oct
24
A 4chan poster may have solved part of a very tricky math problem that mathematicians have been working on for at least 25 years. The user was just trying to figure out the most efficient way to watch episodes of a nonlinear anime series, but the result has generated considerable interest from mathematicians around the world who have no way to identify the anonymous user.
Yesterday, Robin Houston, a computer scientist and mathematician tweeted about the bizarre intersection of 4chan and mathematics, inadvertently setting off a wave of public interest in the story. Within hours of his tweet, his phone was vibrating constantly. “It started to go mad,” he says. “My phone started going crazy.”
The 4chan part of this saga began on September 17th, 2011, when a poster posed a question: if you wanted to watch 14 episodes of the anime The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya in every possible order, what’s the shortest string of episodes you’d need to watch?
There are 14 episodes in the first season of Haruhi, a 2006 anime based on a series of Japanese light novels. The episodes, which feature time travel and are otherwise chronologically challenging for the viewer, originally aired in a nonlinear order. When the series went to DVD, the episodes were rearranged, and it’s become something of an obsession for fans to rewatch the series over and...
Yesterday, Robin Houston, a computer scientist and mathematician tweeted about the bizarre intersection of 4chan and mathematics, inadvertently setting off a wave of public interest in the story. Within hours of his tweet, his phone was vibrating constantly. “It started to go mad,” he says. “My phone started going crazy.”
The 4chan part of this saga began on September 17th, 2011, when a poster posed a question: if you wanted to watch 14 episodes of the anime The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya in every possible order, what’s the shortest string of episodes you’d need to watch?
There are 14 episodes in the first season of Haruhi, a 2006 anime based on a series of Japanese light novels. The episodes, which feature time travel and are otherwise chronologically challenging for the viewer, originally aired in a nonlinear order. When the series went to DVD, the episodes were rearranged, and it’s become something of an obsession for fans to rewatch the series over and...
Oct
22
Apple often overestimates the cost of repairs to its products and threatens third-party shops who are willing to fix them for a fraction of the price, a CBC News investigation has learned.
Customers who enter an Apple Store with a seemingly minor hardware problem, such as a flickering screen, are often faced with a large bill because they are told they need to replace major parts of the device.
Apple only allows its devices to be repaired by Apple Store technicians or "authorized" service centres in order for them to remain within warranty.
Jason Koebler, who regularly covers Apple as the editor-in-chief of VICE Media's technology and science news site Motherboard, said this is a common problem.
"I've broken my MacBook before and taken it to Apple and they wanted $700 to fix the screen. I ended up doing it myself for $50. This happens all the time," he said.
"There are many third-party people out there who can fix things that Apple won't do because it's not profitable to do it at scale, or Apple would rather replace it altogether. There are a lot of reasons why people wouldn't want to become authorized and work, essentially, for Apple, when they can work for themselves."
Read more here. (CBC Canada)
Customers who enter an Apple Store with a seemingly minor hardware problem, such as a flickering screen, are often faced with a large bill because they are told they need to replace major parts of the device.
Apple only allows its devices to be repaired by Apple Store technicians or "authorized" service centres in order for them to remain within warranty.
Jason Koebler, who regularly covers Apple as the editor-in-chief of VICE Media's technology and science news site Motherboard, said this is a common problem.
"I've broken my MacBook before and taken it to Apple and they wanted $700 to fix the screen. I ended up doing it myself for $50. This happens all the time," he said.
"There are many third-party people out there who can fix things that Apple won't do because it's not profitable to do it at scale, or Apple would rather replace it altogether. There are a lot of reasons why people wouldn't want to become authorized and work, essentially, for Apple, when they can work for themselves."
Read more here. (CBC Canada)
Oct
20
Back in the days before we got our music from the cloud using Spotify and Pandora, we would use MP3 players to play our music. When it came to players, there was (is?) no player more popular than Winamp.
Whether you like the vintage skins, the visualizers, or just a media player with a ton of options, Winamp had it all. Guess what? The world's most famous media player - Winamp - is back with changes that make it compatible with today's modern operating systems such as Windows 8.1 and Windows 10.
When Radionomy purchased Winamp from AOL in early 2014, they promised to keep Winamp alive. Those promises were hollow as no new updates were released in the past 4 years.
That is until recently through leaks and hype, Radionomy officially released Winamp 5.8 in all its nostalgic glory. With its expanding control panels, car stereo like skins, hard core settings, and its visualizers that you can stare at for hours, Winamp is ready to rock and roll!
Read more here. (BleepingComputer)
Whether you like the vintage skins, the visualizers, or just a media player with a ton of options, Winamp had it all. Guess what? The world's most famous media player - Winamp - is back with changes that make it compatible with today's modern operating systems such as Windows 8.1 and Windows 10.
When Radionomy purchased Winamp from AOL in early 2014, they promised to keep Winamp alive. Those promises were hollow as no new updates were released in the past 4 years.
That is until recently through leaks and hype, Radionomy officially released Winamp 5.8 in all its nostalgic glory. With its expanding control panels, car stereo like skins, hard core settings, and its visualizers that you can stare at for hours, Winamp is ready to rock and roll!
Read more here. (BleepingComputer)
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