October 2016 – Page 3 – Tech Today w/ Ken May

AI-Powered Body Scanners Could Soon Speed Up Your Airport Check-in

An anonymous reader shares a report on the Guardian:A startup bankrolled by Bill Gates is about to conduct the first public trials of high-speed body scanners powered by artificial intelligence (AI), the Guardian can reveal. According to documents filed with the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Boston-based Evolv Technology is planning to test its system at Union Station in Washington DC, in Los Angeles’s Union Station metro and at Denver international airport. Evolv uses the same millimetre-wave radio frequencies as the controversial, and painfully slow, body scanners now found at many airport security checkpoints. However, the new device can complete its scan in a fraction of second, using computer vision and machine learning to spot guns and bombs. This means passengers can simply walk through a scanning gate without stopping or even slowing down — like the hi-tech scanners seen in the 1990 sci-fi film Total Recall. A nearby security guard with a tablet is then shown either an “all-clear” sign, or a photo of the person with suspicious areas highlighted. Evolv says the system can scan 800 people an hour, without anyone having to remove their keys, coins or cellphones. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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AI-Powered Body Scanners Could Soon Speed Up Your Airport Check-in

A Skin Patch to Treat Peanut Allergies Just Passed a Crucial Test

A wearable patch used to treat peanut allergies has shown tremendous promise in a recently concluded clinical trial, performing particularly well among young children. Read more…

Microsoft Juices Its Surface Book With More Power and 16-Hour Battery Life

Microsoft blew our minds last year when it announced the Surface Book—and its crazy detachable display. This year, the company’s refreshing the product, and claims it has stuffed two times as much processing power and 30 percent more battery life in the exact same design. Read more…

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Microsoft Juices Its Surface Book With More Power and 16-Hour Battery Life

Windows 10 ‘Creator’s Update’ coming for free next spring

Even though the Surface line of convertible PCs has made Microsoft a hardware contender, its world still revolves around Windows 10. At today’s event, the company has revealed a lot of details about the next Windows 10 release, dubbed the “Creator’s Update.” That all starts with a new version of Paint it previewed earlier this month that’s far from version you may have created a pixelated doodle with. Instead, it allows you to scan objects from the real world and bring them into a 3D environment. “If we want to make 3D creation for everyone. It has to be as easy as taking a photo, ” Saunders says. The new app lets you scan real objects and get them into Paint as a full 3D object. She showed off the new Capture 3D tool, by walking slowly around a sand castle model with a smartphone and capturing it in full 3D. There’s also a new Community pane that allows you to find and pull in creations from other users. During the demo, Saunders pulled in a 3D cloud created by another user, and used it in montage featuring her daughters. She was able to then transform that into a complete 3D object and, naturally, share the whole thing on Facebook. Naturally, as this is Microsoft, the company showed how such 3D objects can be used in PowerPoint. Developing …

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Windows 10 ‘Creator’s Update’ coming for free next spring

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.

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

Tech Today w/ Ken May

Month: October 2016