Day: October 25, 2016

Latest WikiLeaks Reveal Suggests Facebook Is Too Close For Comfort With Clinton

MojoKid writes: As we quickly approach the November 8th elections, email leaks from the Clinton camp continue to loom over the presidential candidate. The latest data dump from WikiLeaks shines a light on emails between Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager, John Podesta and Facebook Chief Operating Officer, Sheryl Sandberg. In one email exchange, dated June 6th, 2015, Sandberg expresses her desire for Clinton to become president, writing to Podesta, “And I still want HRC to win badly. I am still here to help as I can.” While that was a private exchange, Sandberg also made her zest for seeing Clinton as the 45th President of the United States publicly known in a Facebook post on July 28th of this year. None of that is too shocking when you think about it. Sandberg has every right to endorse whichever candidate she wants for president. However, a later exchange between Sandberg and Podesta showed that Mark Zuckerberg was looking to get in on the action a bit, and perhaps curry favor with Podesta and the Clinton camp in shaping public policy. Donald Trump has long claimed that Clinton is too cozy with big businesses, and one cannot dismiss the fact that Facebook has a global user base of 1.7 billion users. When you toss in the fact that Facebook came under fire earlier this year for allegedly suppressing conservative news outlets in the Trending News bar, questions begin to arise about Facebook’s impartiality in the political race. The report also notes that Sandberg is at the top of the list when it comes to picks for Treasury Secretary, if Clinton wins the election. In an interview with Politico, David Segal, executive director for Demand Progress, said “[Sandberg] is a proxy for this growing problem that is the hegemony of five to ten major Silicon Valley platforms.” Lina Khan, a fellow with the Open Markets Program at the New American think tank adds: “If a senior Cabinet member is from Facebook, at worst it could directly interfere [in antitrust actions]. But even in the best of cases there’s a real worry that it will have a chilling effect on good-faith antitrust efforts to scrutinize potential anti-competitive implications of dominant tech platforms.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Latest WikiLeaks Reveal Suggests Facebook Is Too Close For Comfort With Clinton

Curious Tilt of the Sun Traced To Undiscovered Planet

An anonymous reader writes: Planet Nine – the undiscovered planet at the edge of the solar system that was predicted by the work of Caltech’s Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown in January 2016 — appears to be responsible for the unusual tilt of the Sun, according to a new study. The large and distant planet may be adding a wobble to the solar system, giving the appearance that the Sun is tilted slightly. “Because Planet Nine is so massive and has an orbit tilted compared to the other planets, the solar system has no choice but to slowly twist out of alignment, ” says Elizabeth Bailey, a graduate student at Caltech and lead author of a study announcing the discovery. All of the planets orbit in a flat plane with respect to the Sun, roughly within a couple degrees of each other. That plane, however, rotates at a six-degree tilt with respect to the Sun — giving the appearance that the Sun itself is cocked off at an angle. Until now, no one had found a compelling explanation to produce such an effect. “It’s such a deep-rooted mystery and so difficult to explain that people just don’t talk about it, ” says Brown, the Richard and Barbara Rosenberg Professor of Planetary Astronomy. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Curious Tilt of the Sun Traced To Undiscovered Planet

Uber’s Self-Driving Truck Went on a 120-Mile Beer Run To Make History

An anonymous reader writes: In the arms race to build self-driving vehicles, Uber-owned Otto just reached a landmark milestone by completing the first-ever commercial cargo run for a self-driving truck. On October 20, the self-driving truck left Fort Collins, Colorado at 1 a.m. and drove itself 120 miles on I-25 to Colorado Springs. The driver, who has to be there to help the truck get on and off the interstate exit ramps, moved to the backseat alongside a crowd of transportation officials to watch the historic ride. 2, 000 cases of Budweiser beer filled the trailer. “We’re just thrilled. We do think this is the future of transportation, ” James Sembrot, senior director of logistics strategy at Anheuser-Busch, told Business Insider. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Uber’s Self-Driving Truck Went on a 120-Mile Beer Run To Make History

Renewables Now Exceed All Other Forms of New Power Generation

Last year, renewable energy accounted for more than half of all new forms of power generation produced worldwide. It’s an unprecedented milestone for our civilization—one that points to a bright future for solar and wind power. Read more…

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Renewables Now Exceed All Other Forms of New Power Generation

Hack a Cheap Plastic Pumpkin to Play Custom Sounds When People Get Close

Plastic pumpkins are a mainstay around Halloween, but if you want to give the ubiquitous little candy holder a bit more character, Adafruit has a guide for adding lights and custom sounds. Read more…

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Hack a Cheap Plastic Pumpkin to Play Custom Sounds When People Get Close

AT&T Wants to Sell You a Hundred Streaming Channels for $35 a Month

AT&T—the same people trying to buy Time Warner—announced Tuesday that it will be launching an online-only TV service dubbed DirecTV Now . It’s cheaper than cable, too. Read more…

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AT&T Wants to Sell You a Hundred Streaming Channels for $35 a Month

Warner Bros Claims Agency Ran Its Own Pirate Movie Site

Warner Bros Entertainment has sued talent agency Innovative Artists, claiming that the agency ran its own pirate site when it ripped DVD screeners and streamed them to associates via Google servers. TorrentFreak adds: In a lawsuit filed in a California federal court, Warner accuses the agency of effectively setting up its own pirate site, stocked with rips of DVD screeners that should have been kept secure. “Beginning in late 2015, Innovative Artists set up and operated an illegal digital distribution platform that copied movies and then distributed copies and streamed public performances of those movies to numerous people inside and outside of the agency, ” the complaint reads. “Innovative Artists stocked its platform with copies of Plaintiff’s works, including copies that Innovative Artists made by ripping awards consideration ‘screener’ DVDs that Plaintiff sent to the agency to deliver to one of its clients.” Given its position in the industry, Innovative Artists should have known better than to upload content, Warner’s lawyers write. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Warner Bros Claims Agency Ran Its Own Pirate Movie Site

3D printed ‘heart on a chip’ is an alternative to animal testing

3D printing’s potential to create custom objects, parts and tools has enormous potential for the medical field, where bespoke organs could be created on demand, saving lives that wouldn’t survive waiting for donors. This year has already had standout applications: back in February, scientists successfully implanted printed tissue and organs into animals while another group created a new jaw for a cancer survivor. But Harvard researchers got closer to human-ready organs when they built the first entirely 3D-printed organ-on-a-chip with integrated sensors that scientists can use to test the efficacy of their synthetic tissues, instead of inserting them in animals. The organs-on-chips, known in the scientific community as microphysiological systems (MPS), are synthetic replacements for human internals — not just hearts and livers but also bone, cartilage, microvasculature, and other tissues. But the Harvard researchers crucially integrated sensors into their MPS’s, which provide non-invasive, electronic readouts on structures within the body. The Harvard researchers developed six different “inks” into a cardiac microphysiological device — aka, a heart on a chip. The integrated sensors allowed them to bypass the typically work-intensive process of collecting data, which otherwise requires microscopy or high-speed photography. To prove the efficacy of the 3D-printed organ, they applied the MPS to study drug responses and the development of stem cell-derived cardiac tissue, as the Harvard team reported in their paper published in Nature . Using the integrated sensors, future scientists will be able to study tissue performance after they’ve been inserted. Source: Harvard press room

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3D printed ‘heart on a chip’ is an alternative to animal testing