Author: kenmay

Facebook Nixes Access To Chats Outside Of Messenger Walled Garden

Tom Mendelsohn, reporting for Ars Technica: Some smartphone users of Facebook are reporting that they’re no longer able to access their messages from the mobile site, and that they’re being directed towards the free content ad network’s dedicated Messenger app. Users of the regular Facebook mobile app were shunted over to Facebook Messenger to access their chats a while ago. Now, folk who access the service on their phone’s Web browsers, or via third-party apps such as Tinfoil or Metal, are beginning to find that they can no longer view their messages. Complaints are popping up from users who are being told by Facebook that “your conversations are moving to Messenger.” Some Android users are even finding themselves automatically redirected to the download link on the Google Play store when they try and view their messages on the mobile site. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Facebook Nixes Access To Chats Outside Of Messenger Walled Garden

Scientists Announce Plans For Synthetic Human Genomes

An anonymous reader writes: After it was reported three weeks ago that scientists have held a secret meeting to consider creating a synthetic human genome, the participants of that meeting have officially published their plans. They announced a plan to launch a project that would radically reduce the cost of synthesizing human genomes — a revolutionary development in biotechnology that could enable technicians to grow human organs for transplantation. The Washington Post reports: “The announcement, published Thursday in the journal Science, is the latest sign that biotechnology is going through a rapidly advancing but ethically fraught period. The promoters of synthetic genomes envision a project that would eventually be on the same scale as the Human Genome Project of the 1990s, which led to the sequencing of the first human genomes. The difference this time would be that, instead of ‘reading’ genetic codes, which is what sequencing does, the scientists would be ‘writing’ them. They have dubbed this the ‘Genome Project-write.'” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Scientists Announce Plans For Synthetic Human Genomes

Wal-Mart Says It Is 6-9 Months From Using Drones To Check Warehouse Inventory

Multinational retail corporation Wal-mart announced on Thursday that it is six to nine months from starting to use drones to check warehouse inventories in the United States. The drones, which are capable of operating on autopilot, fly through the aisles snapping 30 images a second, and deliver real-time data to employees about whether the correct product is shelved in the proper place. From a Reuters report: Finding ways to more efficiently warehouse, transport and deliver goods to customers has taken on new importance for Wal-Mart as it deals with wages costs while seeking to beat back price competition and boost online sales. Wal-Mart said the camera and technology on top of the drones have been custom-built for the retailer. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Wal-Mart Says It Is 6-9 Months From Using Drones To Check Warehouse Inventory

Musk’s remarks at conference imply Tesla has huge autonomous car advantage

(credit: Mashable) On Wednesday night Elon Musk grandly told audiences at the Code 2016 conference that we might be living in a simulated universe . That comment has certainly sparked attention, but he said something else that’s still got us scratching our collective head: when asked about self-driving cars, Musk said that he considers it a “solved problem,” and that “we are probably less than two years away” from safe autonomous driving. This timeline is consistent with one that he gave Ars in 2015, but the head-scratchy bit is that every other expert we’ve spoken to thinks true self-driving cars (Level 4 autonomy according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) are at least a decade out. NHTSA defines a level 4 autonomous car as one that “is designed to perform all safety-critical driving functions and monitor roadway conditions for an entire trip. Such a design anticipates that the driver will provide destination or navigation input, but is not expected to be available for control at any time during the trip. This includes both occupied and unoccupied vehicles.” Even Google’s experimental self-driving cars are classed as Level 3 by the agency. Autonomous driving experts we’ve consulted at Audi , BMW , Ford , Mercedes, and Volvo (all of which have extremely active self-driving research programs) have consistently told us the same thing: it’s comparatively easy to make a car drive itself on a highway where every car is going the same direction and there’s no pedestrian traffic. But a car that can drive itself through a busy urban interchange—think Manhattan or Mumbai at rush hour—is closer to 2030 than 2020. Even sensor OEM Mobileye, which supplies Tesla with some of its autopilot hardware , won’t have its Level 3-ready EyeQ5 system on a chip ready until 2020. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Musk’s remarks at conference imply Tesla has huge autonomous car advantage

TeamViewer Servers Go Down, Users Believe They Are Hacked

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Softpedia: Something is happening with TeamViewers servers at the moment, and all clues point to a massive breach that has led to many users going on Reddit and complaining about having their computers hacked. Some users have reported finding new transactions in their PayPal and bank accounts, while others discovered someone had been poking around their email account. Other lucky users said they barely avoided getting hacked at the last minute, noticing their mouse starting to move across the screen, and hurrying to disconnect their Internet connection. On Twitter, the TeamViewer team wrote that they’re only experiencing issues in some parts of their network, but they denied any security breach, at least on their side. In the past months, we’ve seen malware use TeamViewer many times to infect computers, but most of those cases were because of users who used weak passwords, which is certainly not TeamViewer’s fault. It is strange that this time around, just when TeamViewer servers go down, multiple users also flock to social media to complain about getting hacked. This is either one huge strange cosmic coincidence or TeamViewer is really at fault and won’t be able to pin the blame on its users. On a semi-related note, PayPal will be suspending their business operations in Turkey after failing to obtain a new license for its service in the country. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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TeamViewer Servers Go Down, Users Believe They Are Hacked

NASA Satellite Finds 39 Unreported Sources of Toxic Air Pollution

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.Org: Using a new satellite-based method, scientists at NASA, Environment and Climate Change Canada, and two universities have located 39 unreported and major human-made sources of toxic sulfur dioxide emissions. A known health hazard and contributor to acid rain, sulfur dioxide (SO2) is one of six air pollutants regulated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The 39 unreported emission sources, found in the analysis of satellite data from 2005 to 2014, are clusters of coal-burning power plants, smelters, oil and gas operations found notably in the Middle East, but also in Mexico and parts of Russia. In addition, reported emissions from known sources in these regions were — in some cases — two to three times lower than satellite-based estimates. Altogether, the unreported and underreported sources account for about 12 percent of all human-made emissions of sulfur dioxide — a discrepancy that can have a large impact on regional air quality, said Chris McLinden, an atmospheric scientist and lead author of the study. The co-author of the study, Nickolay Krotkov, says quantifying the sulfur dioxide bull’s-eyes is a two-step process that would not have been possible without an improvement in the computer processing that transforms raw satellite observations from the Dutch-Finnish Ozone Monitoring Instrument aboard NASA’s Aura spacecraft into precise estimates of sulfur dioxide concentrations, and the ability to detect smaller concentrations using a new computer program that precisely detects sulfur dioxide that had been dispersed and diluted by winds. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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NASA Satellite Finds 39 Unreported Sources of Toxic Air Pollution

Uber Takes $3.5 Billion from Country Where Driving While Female Is Illegal

Uber, Silicon Valley’s moral compass, just accomplished perhaps the greatest-ever feat of brand synergy: The New York Times reports that the transit company just banked a $3.5 billion funding round from the Saudi Arabian government, which prohibits women from driving under penalty of lashing . Read more…

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Uber Takes $3.5 Billion from Country Where Driving While Female Is Illegal

Watch a Tunnel Get Built Under a Highway in Just One Weekend

It’s not like this is a big project or anything, right? All you have to do is chop a freeway in half, get rid of the mountain of dirt hidden underneath, slide a tunnel in, and then pave a new three-lane highway. All in one weekend. Read more…

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Watch a Tunnel Get Built Under a Highway in Just One Weekend

Google new tools let anyone create art using AI

Google doesn’t just want to dabble in using AI to create art — it wants you to make that art yourself. As promised , the search giant has launched its Magenta project to give artists tools for bringing machine learning to their creations. The initial effort focuses around an open source infrastructure for producing audio and video that, ideally, heads off in unexpected directions while maintaining the better traits of human-made art. Ultimately, Google doesn’t just want the technology to produce ‘optimal’ art based on what it learns from samples. It’s hoping for the same imbalance (that is, focusing on one element over others), surprise and long-term narratives that you see in people-powered projects. It should feel like there’s a distinct personality to a song or video. You can look at Google’s early Magenta code right now , and the company is vowing to accept both code and blog posts from outsiders who have something to add. If enough people rally around the idea, you could see a budding community of artists who add AI flourishes to their productions. Source: Magenta , GitHub

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Google new tools let anyone create art using AI

FullPageOS Automatically Boots Your Raspberry Pi Into a Full Page Web Kiosk Mode

One of the common uses for a Raspberry Pi is a low-cost information display, powering something like a magic mirror or an animated GIF photo frame . FullPageOS is a Raspberry Pi operating system that makes that process a little simpler. Read more…

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FullPageOS Automatically Boots Your Raspberry Pi Into a Full Page Web Kiosk Mode