Day: December 6, 2016

Google Says It Is About To Reach 100 Percent Renewable Energy

Google said today it will power 100 percent of its sprawling data centers and offices with renewable energy starting next year. The company said today it has bought enough wind and solar power to account for all the electricity it uses globally each year. In comparison, 44 percent of Google’s power supplies came from renewables last year. From a blogpost: To reach this goal we’ll be directly buying enough wind and solar electricity annually to account for every unit of electricity our operations consume, globally. And we’re focusing on creating new energy from renewable sources, so we only buy from projects that are funded by our purchases. Over the last six years, the cost of wind and solar came down 60 percent and 80 percent, respectively, proving that renewables are increasingly becoming the lowest cost option. Electricity costs are one of the largest components of our operating expenses at our data centers, and having a long-term stable cost of renewable power provides protection against price swings in energy. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Google Says It Is About To Reach 100 Percent Renewable Energy

Enterprise has a lot to look forward to with Windows 10 Creators Update

Enlarge / The announcement of the Creators Update in October 2016. For consumers, next spring’s Windows 10 Creators Update is going to bring integrated virtual reality and 3D creativity. Today, Microsoft described what it will have to offer to enterprise customers. The Anniversary Update added Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) that extended the Defender anti-malware to include cloud-based intelligence to detect anomalous behavior. Microsoft gave us a real-world example of this: a previously unknown (and hence, able to bypass antivirus software) cryptolocker variant was noticed to be deleting System Restore points prior to encrypting user data. This is an unusual thing for a piece of software to do, so much so that it was flagged, enabling the infected system to be isolated and the malware dealt with. This ATP has also been integrated with Office 365 so that, for example, a malicious file can be correlated with the e-mail it was sent in. Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Enterprise has a lot to look forward to with Windows 10 Creators Update

ReMarkable e-Ink sketching slate pitched at "paper people"

reMarkable ‘s 10.3″ tablet has an e-ink display with a paper-like texture, a digital pencil with 2048 levels of pressure sensitivity, and promises to finally replace all that paper in your workspace. The pitch: read, write and sketch, all on one gadget . Unlike traditional paper, reMarkable connects to the digital world when you need it to. Your thoughts, whether they’re words or sketches, are instantly synced to reMarkable’s cloud service and made available on all your devices. Documents and ebooks are easily transferred for reading and reviewing with pen in hand. reMarkable connects to the internet for easy sharing and collaboration across devices. You can even take notes on one device and have it appear on a second device, in real time. It’s 10.2″ by 6.9″ and a quarter inch thick. It weighs less than a pound, and the 1872 x 1404 pixel display works out at 225 pixels per inch. It runs a Linux and has an ARM Cortex-A9 CPU, 512MB of RAM and WiFi. It claims a latency of 55ms and the demo video shows performance similar to the iPad Pro, which they say has 60ms latency. Wacom tablet hardware polls at

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ReMarkable e-Ink sketching slate pitched at "paper people"

Watching This Multi-Armed Feather Star Swimming Freaks Me Out

The ocean is chock full of incredibly weird creatures that couldn’t possibly exist anywhere but under the sea. Like the crinoid , more commonly known as the feather star, which uses countless flapping arms to propel itself through the water—but that’s not the weirdest part. Read more…

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Watching This Multi-Armed Feather Star Swimming Freaks Me Out

This New Law Will Protect Your Negative Yelp Reviews

Last week, Congress passed a law that will make it illegal for companies to retaliate against U.S. consumers who post negative reviews online. Yes, soon you’ll be able to give a bad business one star without having to worry about being bullied or sued . Read more…

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This New Law Will Protect Your Negative Yelp Reviews

POV of Tesla Driving While Equipped with Autopilot Full Self-Driving Hardware

When Tesla announced that every car they produce is now coming out of the factory with full self-driving hardware, I was a little stunned. I figured the relatively easy highway stuff was one thing, but that navigating towns, cities and crosswalks would be another. Nevertheless, while it’s true that they’ll have to wait for legislators to get their acts together before rolling it out, Tesla has achieved fully self-driving cars that can navigate within complex environments. In this real-world demonstration video, a guy takes a ride to work (to a Tesla facility, naturally) while his car does all of the driving. It navigates a town environment, tons of traffic and twisty roads while avoiding pedestrians: While we’re only shown three camera views, Tesla’s system uses eight cameras that provide a 360-degree view. The camera footage is combined with sonar and radar to provide a “neural net” that “provides a view of the world that a driver alone cannot access, seeing in every direction simultaneously and on wavelengths that go far beyond the human senses.” One temporary setback is that Tesla’s updated system doesn’t yet have the “experience” generated by their last-generation system. This means that, temporarily, new Tesla owners will actually have less capabilities than first-gen owners. As the company explains: Before activating the features enabled by the new hardware, we will further calibrate the system using millions of miles of real-world driving to ensure significant improvements to safety and convenience. While this is occurring, Teslas with new hardware will temporarily lack certain features currently available on Teslas with first-generation Autopilot hardware, including some standard safety features such as automatic emergency braking, collision warning, lane holding and active cruise control. As these features are robustly validated we will enable them over the air, together with a rapidly expanding set of entirely new features. As always, our over-the-air software updates will keep customers at the forefront of technology and continue to make every Tesla, including those equipped with first-generation Autopilot and earlier cars, more capable over time.

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POV of Tesla Driving While Equipped with Autopilot Full Self-Driving Hardware

Google Is Rolling Out Android 7.1.1

Google is rolling out Android 7.1.1 for Pixel and Nexus smartphones, including the Nexus 6, Nexus 5X, Nexus 6P, Nexus 9, Pixel, Pixel XL, Nexus Player, Pixel C and General Mobile 4G (Android One). You can download it over-the-air when it becomes available “over the next several weeks” or flash it yourself. Engadget details some of the new features found in Android 7.1.1: As for what you can find from a feature perspective, Google has added support for its “image keyboard” that lets you easily find and send pictures and GIFs without leaving your messaging app of choice. Google says it’ll work inside of Hangouts, Allo, and the default Messaging app. Ironically enough, the feature has been available in the Gboard iOS keyboard that Google launched in the spring, but it’s good to see it coming to more Android phones now. Android 7.1.1 also includes Google’s latest set of more diverse emoji, specifically focused on showing a “wider range of professions” for women. And it also contains the excellent app shortcut feature that originally launched on the Pixel — if you press and hold on an app’s icon, a sub-menu of shortcuts will show up. You’ll be able to quickly send a message to a specific contact or navigate to a saved location using these shortcuts, for example. They’re very much like the “force touch” shortcuts found on the iPhone, but that doesn’t make them any less useful. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Google Is Rolling Out Android 7.1.1