Author: kenmay

Instagram will start automatically translating image captions soon

(credit: Instagram) On the heels of announcing that it has reached 500 million active monthly users, Instagram says it will soon add a translation feature to its app. Through a post on the image-sharing app, the company announced that within a month, users will be able to translate image captions, comments, and profile bios using a new translate button. The Facebook-owned social media app will structure its translations similarly to its parent company. When you come across a post you want to translate into a language that isn’t your default language, you can hit the “See Translation” button to convert it into the language you’ve chosen in your profile’s language settings. Both Facebook and Twitter have translation features already, so this addition brings Instagram up to par with its competition in that respect. Considering that  80 percent of Instagram’s user base lives outside the United States, this feature will likely be welcomed by many. There’s no word on how many languages Instagram will support with the first rollout of this feature. The company does explain on its Help website that if a translation isn’t showing up, it might be because the app doesn’t currently support that language or couldn’t detect the initial language being used. It also warns users that translations may not be available for older posts. The full translation feature should be ready for most users by July. Read on Ars Technica | Comments

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Instagram will start automatically translating image captions soon

Advertiser That Tracked Around 100M Phone Users Without Consent Pays $950,000

Mobile advertising firm InMobi will be paying a fine of $950, 000 and revamp its services to resolve federal regulators’ claims that it deceptively tracked locations of hundreds of millions of people, including children. Ars Technica reports:The US Federal Trade Commission alleged in a complaint filed Wednesday that Singapore-based InMobi undermined phone users’ ability to make informed decisions about the collection of their location information. While InMobi claimed that its software collected geographical whereabouts only when end users provided opt-in consent, the software in fact used nearby Wi-Fi signals to infer locations when permission wasn’t given, FTC officials alleged. InMobi then archived the location information and used it to push targeted advertisements to individual phone users. Specifically, the FTC alleged, InMobi collected nearby basic service set identification addresses, which act as unique serial numbers for wireless access points. The company, which thousands of Android and iOS app makers use to deliver ads to end users, then fed each BSSID into a “geocorder” database to infer the phone user’s latitude and longitude, even when an end user hadn’t provided permission for location to be tracked through the phone’s dedicated location feature. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Advertiser That Tracked Around 100M Phone Users Without Consent Pays $950,000

Xiaomi’s foldable electric bicycle costs just $460

Xiaomi may not yet have a drone that can carry people , but at least it has an electric bicycle now, and it’ll only cost you 2, 999 yuan or about $460/£307. The Mi Qicycle is the second product from the Xiaomi-backed startup, iRiding, who released the premium 19, 999 yuan (about $3, 000/£2045) Qicycle R1 just back in March. This time round, iRiding is able to slap Xiaomi’s “Mi” brand on its latest ride to target the mass market. While the Mi Qicycle weighs a total of 14.5kg (almost twice that of the carbon fiber-made R1), it can be folded into half its size for easier storage. It comes with a 3-speed hub plus a 250W motor which offers pedal assist, and that’s good for up to 45km (about 28 miles) on a single charge. Since the Mi Qicycle is a smart bike, there’s Bluetooth connection for your smartphone’s companion app to check on the bike’s status, ride stats and GPS navigation. It also has its own little display on the handlebar to show you the time, speed, distance, dynamic power and battery charge, as well as to let you toggle between these modes: “Fitness, ” Power-saving, ” “Balanced” and “Extra power.” And as you’d expect, the bike has a front light and a red brake light at the back. As with many of the best products from Xiaomi, chances are you won’t be able to buy the Mi Qicycle outside of China. If you’re lucky enough to live there or know someone who does, then you can already head over to Xiaomi’s Mijia app to back this bike’s crowdfunding campaign. Source: Xiaomi

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Xiaomi’s foldable electric bicycle costs just $460

The Cheapest Kindle Just Got Better

Amazon has just announced some nice improvements to the cheapest Kindle . The price is still crazy good at $80, and the battery still lasts for weeks. (It also still has a middling 167 ppi display.) But it’s also thinner, lighter, and now comes in black and white. Read more…

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The Cheapest Kindle Just Got Better

CRISPR gene-editing approved for first human trials

A federal ethics and biosafety panel has approved the first ever human trials of the CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing technique. Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania aim to modify the immune system “T cells” in patients, helping them better fight off several kinds of cancer. The work will be funded by the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, founded earlier this year by tech billionaire Sean Parker. While the federal ethics panel nod was a big hurdle, researchers still need approval from the FDA and the hospitals conducting the studies before they can start. CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing has never been tried on humans, so early studies will focus on the safety and efficacy of the tech. Scientists will remove T cells from up to 15 patients with three types of cancer: multiple melanoma, melanoma and sarcoma. The cells will be modified with CRISPR so that they can fight the malignant cells normally, then reinserted back into the patient. The trial will take place at MD Anderson Cance Center in Texas, USC San Francisco and Penn. Sean Parker with human genome pioneer Craig Venter The technology holds a vast amount of promise in medicine — if a patient lacks a gene that makes them more susceptible to cancer or other diseases, it can simply be edited back in. Scientists also believe that it could be used to permanently eliminate diseases like Down syndrome or Sickle-Cell Anemia . If embryonic cells are “repaired, ” the recipient can never pass on a genetic disease to his offspring. However, the technique is controversial, and scientists fear it could cause unintended side effects. Scientists in China used CRISPR on human embryos to repair a gene that causes a fatal blood disorder. The technique worked on half the embryos, but failed on the other half. As a result, the team called off the study, calling it “too immature.” Nevertheless, scientists on the federal panel that gave the go-ahead for the Penn State trials were enthused, calling the study “exciting.” The decision means that CRISPR-Cas9 tech will be used even earlier on humans than expected — a company called Editas Medicine said it would hold the first trials to treat blindness in 2017. Via: Techcrunch Source: Stat News

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CRISPR gene-editing approved for first human trials

Japan is deploying pirated anime-hunting human personnel

Japan’s automated bootleg-hunting software isn’t quite as effective as its government would like. So, it’s boosting its anti-piracy campaign by hiring human employees to manually scour forums, torrents and video-streaming websites for illegally distributed anime and live video content. See, it’s pretty easy to slip through the clutches of an automated system — all people have to do is change the video a bit to make sure it’s not an exact match to what Japan’s computers are looking for. That tactic obviously won’t work on human personnel. As Motherboard noted, Japan is betting on anime and manga to boost its economy. Animation studios have recently made their creations more available to audiences outside the country, but they’re still not as easy to access as Western media. Hulu, for instance, dropped a ton of titles from its anime catalogue in May. As such, illegal distribution of anime is still so widespread that its estimated cost of damage is a whopping $20 billion. According to RocketNews24 , the government will start this new project next week with one hire, perhaps to test things out. The employee will have to determine whether the pirated video he finds affects the copyright holder financially. If it does, the government will assess the legal actions it can take. Via: Motherboard Source: Yahoo Japan

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Japan is deploying pirated anime-hunting human personnel

15 years later, new Ecco the Dolphin game leaks onto Dreamcast

The Dreamcast Ecco sequel you never expected is now available as a prototype download. (credit: Hidden Palace ) You probably thought that Sega’s official abandonment of the Dreamcast back in 2001 meant we wouldn’t see any new, Sega-produced Ecco the Dolphin games for that system. If so, you thought wrong. That’s because a newly unearthed prototype of the Dreamcast’s cancelled Ecco II: Sentinels of the Universe has hit the Internet, more than 15 years after it was made. The prototype build, uploaded by the game preservationists at Hidden Palace , is dated February 19, 2001, less than a month after Sega announced it would stop supporting the Dreamcast and step away from the hardware business for good. It comes to the Internet via a large lot of Ecco Dreamcast assets acquired by Hidden Palace , and the site promises “more exciting (and long overdue) [ Ecco ] stuff in the weeks to follow.” In addition to the ripped GD-ROM version, which is fully playable on PC Dreamcast emulators, Hidden Palace also released a self-boot CDI image that can be burned to disc and played on actual Dreamcast hardware (and hopefully on a real CRT television, for that authentic 2001 console gaming experience). We can thank the Dreamcast’s extremely broken copy protection technology for that little wrinkle and for the widespread piracy that  helped doom and/or popularize the system back in its day. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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15 years later, new Ecco the Dolphin game leaks onto Dreamcast