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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

Microsoft: Nearly One In Three Azure Virtual Machines Now Are Running Linux

Mary Jo Foley, reporting for ZDNet: Microsoft’s self-professed Linux love is helping the company in the cloud. During his keynote at DockerCon 2016 in Seattle today, Azure Chief Technology Officer Mark Russinovich showed off some of the new and upcoming ways Microsoft is adding more container support to its cloud and server products. He also revealed a couple of new interesting datapoints. In the past year, Russinovich said, Microsoft has gone from one in four of its Azure virtual machines running Linux to nearly one in three. The other two-thirds of Azure customers are running Windows Server in their virtual machines. Russinovich showed off the promised Windows Server support that officials said would be coming at some point to the company’s Azure Container Service (ACS). Microsoft made Azure Container Service generally available in April 2016, but for Linux containers only. Last year, company execs said Microsoft also would bring Windows Server support to ACS. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Microsoft: Nearly One In Three Azure Virtual Machines Now Are Running Linux

Adobe Rolls Out Big Update for Photoshop CC, Smaller Updates for the Rest of Its Apps

Adobe’s pushing out a big update to its suite of creative cloud apps, most notably to Photoshop, which gets a slew of new features, including content-aware crop, match font, and more. Read more…

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Adobe Rolls Out Big Update for Photoshop CC, Smaller Updates for the Rest of Its Apps

Drone Footage Inside a 19th-Century Church Looks Too Incredible to Be Real

The talented pilots and cinematographers of France’s BigFly skillfully piloted a camera-equipped drone through the sanctuary of the 137-year-old Église Saint-Louis de Paimbœuf . Given the church is filled with priceless art and architecture, the skills needed to ensure the drone didn’t hit anything are easily as impressive as the stunning footage they captured. Read more…

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Drone Footage Inside a 19th-Century Church Looks Too Incredible to Be Real

Adobe Photoshop adds Content-Aware Crop and font suggestions

Adobe usually announces significant updates to Creative Cloud every six months , and its delivering another right on schedule. While the changes are scattered across all of the apps in the company’s software subscription and its stock photo service, we’ll focus primarily on Photoshop. For its popular photo-editing app, Adobe is adding a Content-Aware Crop to the collection of smart design tools. Here, the software automatically fills in any gaps that are created when you either rotate and image or expand it beyond its original size. This new cropping option joins the handy Content-Aware Fill and other tools that make quick work of photo edits. Photoshop’s Liquify tool, a feature that’s used to tweak facial features , is getting an update as well. It’s now “Face-Aware, ” which means it’ll keep the subject’s face in proportion while you make those subtle adjustments. The application also has a new font-recognition tool that will not only identify licensed fonts, but it will suggest similar options that are available on your computer or through Adobe’s TypeKit service. A notable chance across all Creative Cloud apps include the ability to set permissions for design assets in CreativeSync. This means that when you’re working with a team, you can determine who sees what rather than having all of the images, fonts and other files available to everyone inside the CC software. There are also new search filters to that you can narrow results to still photos, video, vectors and illustrations. Adobe Premiere Pro, the company’s video-editing app, continues to add on the VR-related tools. This time the software gets a “field of view” preview mode to check progress on that immersive content. In After Effects, you can now match an animated character’s speech and movement with a real-life actor thanks to the Character Animator Preview. For Illustrator users, expect to easily export assets and artboards in multiple formats and resolutions with one click, rather than having to save separate files individually. All of the above updates are available now in Creative Cloud for subscribers, included in the cost of the software plan. Those prices are set at $10/month for the photography option (Lightroom and Photoshop only) and $50/month for the full suite of apps.

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Adobe Photoshop adds Content-Aware Crop and font suggestions