“Apple Inc. has acquired Israel’s Realface, a cybertechnology startup whose facial recognition technology can be used to authenticate users,” Shoshanna Solomon reports for The Times of Israel. “This is Apple’s fourth acquisition in Israel, the financial website Calcalist reported Sunday, and the deal is estimated to be worth a couple of million of dollars.”
“Realface, set up in 2014 by Adi Eckhouse Barzilai and Aviv Mader, has developed a facial recognition software that offers users a smart biometric login, aiming to make passwords redundant when accessing mobile devices or PCs,” Solomon reports. “The Tel Aviv-based firm had raised $1 million prior to the acquisition and employs up to 10 people.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: For the next-gen iOS and macOS? And, depending on camera availability, for future watchOS and tvOS devices, too?
MacDailyNews Note: Today is Washington’s Birthday in the U.S.A., a federal holiday and, as such, the U.S. markets are closed for the day. We will resume our normal posting schedule tomorrow.
Went for cheap. I imagine that the owners were rewarded with options and the employees with new jobs within Apple.
Maybe Apple _ewed them down on the price???
Oh hey, I get it now. Takes me a while sometimes. Funny!
I walked into a little house in the Hollywood Hills the other day. It is for sale, I was curious. It was beautifully set up in that old Los Angeles style. Nice hardwood floors, lots of open space, but over in one corner of a beautifully lit room was a small Electrohome Phonograph, with built in speaker and it was playing a Miles Davis album. Kind of Blue, the track was the classic So What.
I can’t explain it. After pursuing the best digital stereo sound for most of my adult life, this little turntable sounded like music from heaven. It filled the room and seemed to have so much class that if the charm of the little house didn’t sell it on its own, the phonograph had to push it over.
No wonder people are going back to vinyl.
I swear I was on the right story. Safari posted that here.
$100K on a Turntable
$50K on a Phone stage
$10K on a Cartridge
Still hear the stylus dragging on the Vinyl…Priceless!!!!!
Nice image. I guess storms weren’t visiting to distract?
Could be authentication but could be identification.
Imagine you walk up to your spouse’s computer and notice they’re having a conversation. The computer suddenly says, “Oh, hello Higo. We were just trying to find a concise definition of ‘sward’.”
Or your car can see everyone inside.
Or paired with emotion software your computer can gain insight into your mood and match moods (a key to the experience of empathy).
Or it is paired with AR tech so that people around you with AR goggles on their faces appear to you as their actual face.
There’s lots going on with faces right now. My money would be on authentication and AR as the primary short term uses though.
Israel: An oasis of civilization in a desert of barbarism.
Yeah, except Israel turns out to be the source instigator of the west’s induction of barbarism in the Middle East. And add to that Israel’s current government deliberately ending any chance for a two state solution by way of colonizing the West Bank. And NO, the above described strategy is NOT the will of all of Israel’s citizens.
Me stuff: I’m pro-Israel, but NOT pro-screw-the-middle-east and NOT pro-screw-the-Palestinians. So please, no playing ‘you’re anti-simitic’ game playing. Thanks.
Bot: Did you take your meds today? When was the last time you DID take them?
Thank you so much for another nutso installment of The Vacillating Weasel™…there is no two-state settlement when one of the states has avowed to destroy the other. The Mohammedans in that area are simply jealous of Israel because they have such amenities as running water and plumbing while they’re still taking a dump next to their camel.
Islam: Where every day is always 700 ad.®
PS: There has never been, in the history of man, a sovereign state known as Palestine. There is no Palestine to liberate. Originally, a term by the Romans when it conquered that area, later used by the British when it conquered that area.
But there’s good news for all Vacillating Weasels everywhere: Comedic ignoramus Al Franken and Green Party serial litigator Jill Stein are teaming up for the 2020 Democrat Ticket. They even have printed up their bumper stickers…
enjoy.
The West Bank was not ‘colonized’ by Israel it was lost by Jordan during the Six-Day War and Israel has ALLOWED dual control. If you don’t want to lose land, don’t start a war with someone who will take over you strategic highlands to keep from being used against Israel again.
Whether you are ‘pro Israel’ or not doesn’t matter (my fiancé is Jordanian) the facts are the facts.
As far as the two state issue, how long has that been discussed and never agreed to?
And no, the problem is NOT Jordan, but Syrian and Iranian influence via Hezbollah, the PLO and now ISIS into a state that Israel could no longer control
It never will happen.
correct.
Amen Botty.
Face recognition sounds great for my Macs, while I am sitting in front of the iSite camera. The idea of aiming an iPhone camera at my face leaves me cold.
We afford a bit of privacy – the foundation of freedom in USofA. When you walk the streets, into a new town, no one knows who you are. You are kept at a distance because you are strange. However imagine a day, when that can’t happen, you are always immediately recognized.. The lowest anonymous citizen is as well known as the President, or a famous actor.
Lets put our tin foil hats on – REAL TIGHT
The book, 1984 wasn’t a warning. It was a test. It was a test to produce a map – how to go about building a modal of the human mind/thought process. The grand prize is to predict with certainty the cause and effect of social change and human reaction. How do we manipulate one individual as well as an entire society?
We browse the web, we produce a stream of consciousness in the form of web logs. The web is already mapped and indexed. There’s no need to know what the actual content is. We just need to know the connecting data points.
GPS tracking of our phones, help put that stream to a person, time and place. A temporal map. Facial recognition is the next step. Put the data points to bio markers, if you don’t have your phone, the connection is still made. The final step is to connect it all to DNA makeup and determine if there are specific genes that influence thoughts and reactions.
Effectively our bodies and minds are being decompiled and hacked to ultimately turn us into happy slaves, while the top remains at the top.
I am totaling bullshitting, however, I watch a lot of movies and I am pretty good at figuring out the plot, before most others. If I were running this game, it’s pretty much how I would go about doing it.
Why would this happen? Why would multiple generations participate in making a the ultimate control of human population? Because the prize is too great to ignore.
In some ways, you need it for the survival of our species… Happy little ants, with arms and hands. We are BORG, resistance is futile.
/s
Slightly less FUD-oriented is the annoying/cloying need for marketing-morons [versus mavens, who actually like to help, versus exploit, their customers] to surveil our every move in order to sell us crap we supposedly want and need. They’re the first line of danger. The psychopaths, narcissists and diabolical masterminds with severe insecurity complexes follow after.
The Doors: People Are Strange lyrics
BTW: Here’s where anyone can read the book ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ for free online, thanks to the kindness of George Orwell’s estate:
The Complete Works Of George Orwell
The Israelis don’t rely on scanning technology like U.S. Homeland Security. Instead, they employ trained psychologists who interview suspect passengers face-to-face in rooms hardened against bombs.
Knowing and recognising the enemy is a time-honoured profession undisplaced by the pretensions of technology.
“The psychopaths, narcissists and diabolical masterminds with severe insecurity complexes” — a felicitous phrase. It could easily refer to our political leaders, past, present, and future.
Apple keeps buying these israeli startups and has research outposts there, but still has no official Apple Store in the country. WTF?
Facial recognition is even more easily cracked than fingerprints. Never use it as the only authentication method.
“Smile for the camera!” <- Face stolen. Print made. Device PWNed.
Facial recognition is ONLY useful as part of a multi-factorial authentication system. It qualifies as 'Something you are‘. The other two legs are ‘Something you have‘ and ‘Something you know‘.
Do NOT count ONLY on facial recognition if you’re serious about authentication security. ☺
Multi-factor authentication @Wikipedia
I don’t use it. I refuse to, simply because I don’t think it’s secure. Just like humans can be tricked, note twins, look-a-likes, impersonators, etc. If we can be fooled,don’t you think a computer can be too?
This is of related interest:
US judge halts mass fingerprint harvesting by cops to unlock iPhones
Uncle Sam’s vaguely worded raid warrant knocked down by the Constitution
For good or bad, judges are the only thing protecting the people right now. Sigh.
I watched some of The 2017 Conservative Political Action Conference on C-Span this week. A repeating theme was the critical importance of the US Constitution. Excellent! Except the hypocrisy was thick and heavy. These are NOT people who actually give a rat’s about the US Constitution, except where it meets with their approval. I’ll let readers come up with their own examples.
What struck me is the direct parallel of these statements to those who point to the Christian Bible as the infallible word of God that must be obeyed… except so many of those making such claims only pay attention to the Bible when it suits their needs and desires. Again, come up with your own illustrations.
IOW: People vehemently lie to themselves and others as it suits them. It makes no difference which of the two worthless political parties are doing the declaiming.
ChatterChatterChatter
MeMeMeMeMeMeMe
ChatterChatterChatter
Anyone who takes the oath to uphold the Constitution and breaks the oath, should be dealt with swiftly and hard. What or how, I have no idea, but I think prison should be somewhere along the lines. And you can’t buy your way out. Just saying.