Foxconn is opening a $5B facility in Maharashtra; Huawei just got a green-light for a networking gear factory; Xiaomi already runs a phone assembly plant in Andhra Pradesh that will announcing new products today. Read the rest
Archaeologists working in the Sicilian Channel between Tunisia and Sicily have discovered a submerged 40-foot-long (8-meter) limestone monolith carved by Stone Age humans some 10, 000 years ago. Read more…
View original post here:
An Ancient Monolith Has Been Discovered in the Mediterranean Sea
You’ve probably seen “retweet to win” contests on Twitter, and maybe even won a t-shirt, concert tickets or marshmallows . But computer engineer Hunter Scott completely automated the idea and created a bot that entered every Twitter contest it could find — 165, 000 in total. As a result, he claims to have won four contests a day for nine months, for a total haul of over a thousand prizes . A lot of that swag was terrible, and a lot of it he couldn’t accept. But the interesting part was how he allegedly managed to beat Twitter’s system. The most difficult part of this project was preventing the bot from getting banned by Twitter. Scott said that “the most difficult part of this project was preventing the bot from getting banned by Twitter.” The social network has limits in place to stop such activities: unless you have a high follower count, you can only follow up to 2, 000 people yourself, for instance. At the same time, you can’t follow and unfollow users too rapidly or retweet too often. Luckily, Scott’s Python script was able to balance all that and follow every single contest it found. He said his win rate was “pretty miserable” considering the low quality of the prizes. He couldn’t claim the best one, a $4, 000 trip to New York’s fashion week because of taxes and fact that he didn’t live near New York. Nevertheless, he was fond of a few them, especially a cowboy hat autographed by actors in a Mexican soap opera. “It really embodies the totally random outcome of these contests, ” he said. Scott never revealed the name of his Twitter bot, so we’ve reached out to verify his claims — but the prizes appear to check out. Filed under: Internet Comments Source: Hunter Scott Tags: contests, HunterScott, Python, retweet, Twitter, Twitter bot
Visit link:
Coder wins a thousand Twitter contests using a bot
Mickeycaskill writes: A report from Adobe and anti-ad blocking startup PageFair says the number of ad block users worldwide has increased by 41 percent in the past 12 months to 198 million monthly active users. The study suggests the growing popularity of ad blocking software is set to cost online publishers $21.8 billion in 2015 and could reach $41.4 billion by 2016. “About 45 million of them are in the United States, with almost 15 percent of people in states like New York and California relying on these services. The figures are even higher in Europe, where 77 million people use versions of the software. In Poland, more than a third of people regularly block online ads.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Read the article:
Study: Ad Blocker Use Jumps 41 Percent
Do pendants and other wearable ornaments lack pizzazz for you? Alexander Zolotov has a way to spice things up… if you’re fond of 8-bit graphics gone haywire , at least. His Quantum VJ is small enough to hang around your neck, but clever enough to turn audio into wonderfully glitchy visuals on its 128 x 64 OLED display. As you’ll see below, the result is at once modest yet mesmerizing — plug in some tunes and you’ll have a tiny, synchronized light show several inches away from your face. It runs for 20 hours on a typical coin-sized battery, too, so it can distract passers-by all day long. This is currently a one-of-a-kind device that doesn’t even have video out, but Zolotov tells The Creators Project that future models might have output. If so, you may one day have a dance party backdrop dangling around your chest. Filed under: Misc , Wearables Comments Via: The Creators Project Source: WarmPlace.ru Tags: alexanderzolotov, audio, glitch, music, necklace, quantumvj, video, visualizer, vj, wearable
Follow this link:
Quantum VJ puts a glitchy audio visualizer around your neck
Those eggs you might have had for breakfast? They’re not just food — they may be the key to longer-running batteries in your devices. Scientists at MIT and Tsinghua University have developed a nanoparticle battery electrode whose egg-like design is built to last. Their invention, which houses a shape-changing aluminum “yolk” in a titanium dioxide cell, can go through charging cycles without degrading like the graphite electrodes in conventional power packs. That could improve not only the overall longevity of the battery, but also its capacity and maximum power. You’d have gadgets that not only hold out for longer between charges, but don’t need to be replaced quite so often under heavy use. This is still a lab experiment, but it’s closer to practical reality than you think. The manufacturing technique is simple, and these materials are relatively easy to find. The yolks already hold up well under stress, for that matter. Even with super-fast charging (which typically shortens a battery’s lifespan), a test unit had just over half its capacity after 500 cycles. So long as the team does get its tech into a shipping product, you could see a wave of hardware that reduces many of your energy-related woes, such as range anxiety in electric cars or phone batteries that die before you’re ready to upgrade. [Image credit: Christine Daniloff/MIT] Filed under: Science Comments Source: MIT News Tags: aluminum, battery, biomimicry, lithium-ion, lithiumion, mit, nanoparticles, science, TsinghuaUniversity
View original post here:
Nano-sized ‘yolks’ should lead to longer-lasting batteries
While the Spanish town of Pamplona hosts the world’s most well-known running of the bulls, other cities in Spain, Portugal, and nearby nations host their own annual runs where bulls run through city streets while locals and tourists run alongside—or away from—the giant beasts. For one participant of a Sunday bull run in Villasecra de la Sagra, Spain, trying to share his experience by way of a smartphone recording ended traumatically. According to details ascertained from a local Spanish-language report , an English-language AFP report , and bystander video of the incident, a 32-year-old man was gored from behind while attempting to film that city’s annual bull run. The bystander video, posted Sunday on Instagram (not linked here due to its graphic nature), showed the currently unidentified victim standing near a barricade so that he was behind other viewers and away from the general fray of the bull run. However, a stray bull appeared to become separated from the general herd, at which point it ran at full speed behind the crowd and struck the 32-year-old while he was holding a smartphone to film in the opposite direction. According to reports, after receiving brief treatment at a nearby bullring’s medical center, the victim was transferred to a hospital in nearby Toledo, where he was soon pronounced dead from neck and thigh wounds. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Originally posted here:
Spaniard fatally gored while trying to film bull run on smartphone
We’ve heard a lot lately about the release and reception of Windows 10; however, the Windows family includes more than just the most-seen desktop OS. Mark Wilson writes: Microsoft’s Gabe Aul has revealed that the company plans to release a new technical preview of Windows Server 2016 later this month. Responding to questions on Twitter, the company’s Corporate Vice President and face of the Windows Insider program also said that Windows 10 RSAT [Remote Server Administration Tools] will be launched in August. Unlike the preview builds of Windows 10, previews of the latest edition of Windows Server have been slower to creep out of Redmond. Sysadmins will be keen to get their hands on the latest builds to see just what direction Microsoft is taking with its server software after the decision to delay the launch. We don’t know anything about what the third technical preview of Windows Server 2016 might include, but it is likely to be little more than a collection of bug fixes and tweaks. It’s a little late in the game to expect any major changes to be made. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Read More:
Windows 10 RSAT, Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview 3 Coming This Month
Have you played any Zynga games lately? Yeah, we didn’t think so. And that’s exactly the problem: in two years, the social gaming company’s daily average users (DAU) has plummeted from 39 million to 21 million. Consequently, on Thursday, Zynga announced that it had lost $26.8 million in the second quarter of 2015, and a total of $73.3 million in the first half of the year. Assuming that rate of loss holds, the company is on pace to lose over $150 million in 2015, and that’s on top of the over $472 million the company already lost from 2012 through 2014. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Taken from:
In just 2 years, Zynga’s daily average users have fallen by half
An anonymous reader writes: IBM is purchasing a company called Merge Healthcare for $1 billion. The company specializes in medical imaging software, and it will be a key new resource for IBM’s Watson AI. Big blue’s researchers estimate that 90% of all medical data is contained within images. Having a trove of them and the software to mine that data should help Watson learn how to make more accurate diagnoses. IBM thinks it’ll also provide better context for run-of-the-mill medical imaging. “[A] radiologist might examine thousands of patient images a day, but only looking for abnormalities on the images themselves rather than also taking into account a person’s medical history, treatments and drug regimens.” They can program Watson to do both. The AI is already landing contracts to assist with medical issues: “Last week, IBM announced a partnership with CVS Health, the large pharmacy chain, to develop data-driven services to help people with chronic ailments like diabetes and heart disease better manage their health.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
See the article here:
IBM Drops $1 Billion On Medical Images For Watson