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Amazon To Take On UPS, FedEx Via ‘Shipping With Amazon’

According to a report by The Wall Street Journal, Amazon is planning to take on UPS and FedEx with a new shipping service named “Shipping with Amazon” (SWA). The new service will reportedly roll out in Los Angeles in the coming weeks. Ars Technica reports: Aside from first starting in LA, SWA will first serve third-party merchants that already sell on Amazon. The company plans to send drivers to pick up shipments from these businesses and deliver the packages for them. While shipping and delivery will mostly go through Amazon, anything outside of the retailer’s reach will be given to the USPS and other shipping services for the “last mile” portion of the delivery. In the future, Amazon reportedly wants to open up SWA to businesses that aren’t affiliated with the site — meaning Amazon could ship and deliver packages from companies of all sizes. Amazon also believes it can compete with UPS and FedEx by making SWA more affordable for business customers, but its pricing structure hasn’t been revealed. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Amazon To Take On UPS, FedEx Via ‘Shipping With Amazon’

Google explores texting from your browser

Google’s Android Messages app could soon get a dramatic makeover with some interesting new features, judging by an APK teardown by XDA Developers and Android Police . Most significantly, it looks like you’ll be able to pair your phone with a computer and text directly from a browser like Chrome, Firefox and Safari, much as you can with Google’s Allo messaging app. Unlike Allo, however, Android Messages could allow you to send mobile SMSes rather than web messages, making texting a fair amount easier. To use it, you may have to scan a QR code on your PC or Mac, then pair your device each time you want to text. The feature appears to be partially implemented in the latest Android Messages 2.9 APK , but you can’t yet send an actual text. The APK also hints at the ability to send and receive payments, likely via Google Pay , potentially opening that service up to many more users. There are also signs that something called Google Enhanced Messaging, probably similar Smart Replies for Gmail, Allo and Inbox, is coming to Android Messages. All told, Google appears to be transforming Android Messages into an Allo-like app, except for mobile SMS texts instead of web-based ones. It could also be monetizing it to a degree via Google Pay. Considering the power it yields over the Android smartphone ecosystem, that could amount to a lot of dollars. Take all the changes with some salt, though, because APKs don’t necessarily mean features are set in stone, and some of the aforementioned features are still half-baked. Source: XDA Developers , Android Police

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Google explores texting from your browser

Researchers grew a fully mature human egg in a lab

Researchers in the UK and the US have taken human eggs in their most early stage and developed them to maturity in a lab for the first time. It’s a big achievement that could open up new avenues for infertility treatment and give scientists a better understanding of how the egg development process works and how it can go wrong. While this has been done before in mice, experiments of which have resulted in live offspring, this is the first time it has been done with human eggs. The research team had previously developed a protocol wherein they could take eggs in later stages of development and bring them to maturity, and they expanded that protocol in an attempt to develop eggs from start to finish in the lab. They took samples of ovarian tissue from 10 women while they were undergoing caesarean section surgery and cultured sections of that tissue that have the ability to release an egg, structures known as follicles. The follicles were cultured in a multi-step procedure that allowed for eggs to develop. At the end of each step, follicles, and eventually eggs, that had successfully matured further were moved to the following step. The team initially isolated 87 follicles and by the end of the 21-day procedure, nine eggs reached a stage of maturity that would in theory allow them to be fertilized with sperm and develop into an embryo. While only 37 percent of the early-stage follicles resulted in a fully grown egg and only 10 percent achieved levels of maturity that could allow for reproduction, it’s still an important step in the study of egg development, or oogenesis. Ali Abbara, an endocrinology senior lecturer at the Imperial College of London who wasn’t involved with the study, told Reuters , “The technology remains at an early stage, and much more work is needed to make sure that the technique is safe and optimized before we ascertain whether these eggs remain normal during the process, and can be fertilized to form embryos that could lead to healthy babies.” Evelyn Telfer, a researcher at the University of Edinburgh and the leader of the study, told Reuters that the team is now working on optimizing this process and evaluating how healthy the resulting eggs are. One next step is to try to fertilize the eggs with sperm to see if they can result in a viable embryo — work that requires a licence that the team doesn’t yet have. This work could help improve IVF treatments in the future and could particularly help girls with cancer. They typically have pieces of their ovaries removed and preserved prior to receiving cancer treatments that might damage their follicles. However, if there’s a chance that the tissue has cancer cells, it can’t be reimplanted later on. If doctors could mature those eggs outside of her body, those eggs could still be used without introducing risk to the woman. Additionally, in cases where women have a condition that prevents the development of their eggs, this type of research could help scientists understand why that happens. “There are several conditions in which women lose their eggs much earlier in life, or they don’t grow, ” Telfer told New Scientist . “If we could understand the process…we could develop treatments for that.” The research was published in Molecular Human Reproduction . Via: Reuters Source: Molecular Human Reproduction

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Researchers grew a fully mature human egg in a lab

Attackers Drain CPU Power From Water Utility Plant In Cryptojacking Attack

darthcamaro writes: Apparently YouTube isn’t the only site that is draining CPU power with unauthorized cryptocurrency miners. A water utility provider in Europe is literally being drained of its CPU power via an cryptojacking attack that was undetected for three weeks. eWeek reports: “At this point, Radiflow’s (the security firm that discovered the cryptocurrency mining malware) investigation indicates that the cryptocurrency mining malware was likely downloaded from a malicious advertising site. As such, the theory that Radiflow CTO Yehonatan Kfir has is that an operator at the water utility was able to open a web browser and clicked on an advertising link that led the mining code being installed on the system. The actual system that first got infected is what is known as a Human Machine Interface (HMI) to the SCADA network and it was running the Microsoft Windows XP operating system. Radiflow’s CEO, Ilan Barda, noted that many SCADA environments still have Windows XP systems deployed as operators tend to be very slow to update their operating systems.” Radiflow doesn’t know how much Monero (XMR) cryptocurrency was mined by the malware, but a recent report from Cisco’s Talos research group revealed that some of the top un-authorized cryptocurrency campaigns generate over a million dollars per year. The average system would generate nearly $200, 000 per year. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Attackers Drain CPU Power From Water Utility Plant In Cryptojacking Attack

Careful phasing of a photonic qubit brings light under control

Enlarge / Splitting photons up into a collection of neighboring frequencies may help with quantum computation. (credit: NIST ) Way back when I started writing for Ars , experimental quantum computing had just started to take off. At the time, the big demonstrations of quantum computation were very simple calculations, performed using single photons as repositories of quantum information. Back then, demonstrating even a single logical gate was a challenge. Light ruled the roost, and charged particles were reduced to the status of not-quantum-enough. That changed, of course. Now, all the big demonstrations make use of charged particles: little superconducting current loops , rows of ions , or others . Light, it seems, has been reduced to a way of moving qubits between charged particles. But a recent result shows that there is life left in photon-based quantum computers and that the degree of parallelization available to a photon-based quantum computer will be difficult to beat using other qubit technologies. Read 19 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Careful phasing of a photonic qubit brings light under control

Watch these adorable baby octopuses hatch

If you’ve never seen an octopus hatch, now is your chance. These cute baby Caribbean reef octopuses, the size of a pinky nail, were hatched at the Virginia Aquarium. The way they immediately darken to purple is a fun surprise. According to The Verge : The video, posted by the Virginia Aquarium, shows a baby Caribbean reef octopus (Octopus briareus) no bigger than a pinky nail hatching from a bundle of eggs. As for the color change, these octopuses are known to be masters of disguise. “It was going into an instant camouflage as soon as it came out of the egg,” says Julie Levans, senior curator at the aquarium. These octopuses use specialized muscles to open and close little sacs of pigment in their skin called chromatophores — and this little guy was probably responding to the black tabletop beneath its tank. The baby octopus’s mom arrived at the aquarium about six months ago, and four months later, she laid between 100 and 200 eggs. Since this softball-sized species is solitary and also sometimes cannibalistic, this octopus lives alone at the aquarium. The eggs themselves weren’t surprising — female octopuses typically lay eggs. “What did catch us by surprise was the fact that they were fertilized,” Levans says. ICYMI: Your daily squee has arrived. #octobabies pic.twitter.com/D9e5T5bkun — Virginia Aquarium (@VAAquarium) February 7, 2018

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Watch these adorable baby octopuses hatch

Inside Hong Kong’s insanely cramped and illegal "coffin homes"

Photographer Benny Lam spent several years documenting grim living conditions in Hong Kong where people live inside tiny “coffin cubicles” within illegally divided apartments. The images are grim glimpses of life in the city with the most expensive housing market in the world. The photo series is titled “Trapped.” From National Geographic : Pushed out by soaring rents, tens of thousands of people have no other option than to inhabit squatter huts, sub-divided units where the kitchen and toilet merge, coffin cubicles, and cage homes, which are rooms measuring as small as 6’ x 2.5’ traditionally made of wire mesh. “From cooking to sleeping, all activities take place in these tiny spaces,” says Lam. To create the coffin cubicles a 400 square flat will be illegally divided by its owner to accommodate 20 double-decker beds, each costing about HK$2000 (over $250 USD) per month in rent. The space is too small to stand up in.

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Inside Hong Kong’s insanely cramped and illegal "coffin homes"

FDA Declares Popular Alt-Medicine Kratom an Opioid

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NBC News: The Food and Drug Administration declared the popular herbal product kratom to be an opioid on Tuesday, opening a new front in its battle to get people to stop using it. New research shows kratom acts in the brain just as opioids do, FDA Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb said in a statement. And he said the agency has documented 44 cases in which kratom at least helped kill people — often otherwise healthy young people. “Taken in total, the scientific evidence we’ve evaluated about kratom provides a clear picture of the biologic effect of this substance, ” Gottlieb wrote. “Kratom should not be used to treat medical conditions, nor should it be used as an alternative to prescription opioids. There is no evidence to indicate that kratom is safe or effective for any medical use.” The FDA released detailed accounts of several of the deaths. The victims often had mixed kratom with other substances, including chemicals taken out of inhalers and found in over-the-counter cold and flu drugs. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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FDA Declares Popular Alt-Medicine Kratom an Opioid

Chandelier containing living microalgae to "purify the air"

https://youtu.be/Lxd43iH-CX0 Artist, inventor, and bio-hacker Julian Melchiorri created “Exhale, the Bionic Chandelier,” a hanging electric light that “purifies the air indoors through photosynthesis performed by living microalgae enclosed into leaf modules.” Exhale is now part of the Victoria and Albert Museum’s permanent collection. From the project page: Exhale is also the first living object which continuously grows while performing biologically-driven depurative functions. The light of the chandelier illuminate the space but also stimulates photosynthesis performed by tiny microalgae, this living microorganisms feed on carbon dioxide while releasing breathable oxygen into the room. This biological process performed by the chandelier establishes and explores a new symbiotic relationship between object and people where life-giving resources are constantly exchanged, and where each other waste enables respective metabolic processes. This exchange recalls how biospheric systems work, where waste ultimately doesn’t exists but is a valuable resource for other elements in that system. Bionic Chandelier (via The Kid Should See This )

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Chandelier containing living microalgae to "purify the air"

Foxconn Unit To Cut Over 10,000 Jobs As Robotics Take Over

According to Nikkei Asian Review, “Foxconn’s panel arm Innolux is planning to slash more than 10, 000 jobs this year as part of the company’s aggressive efforts to increase the use of automation in manufacturing.” Honorary Chairman Tuan Hsing-Chien said in a press conference on Tuesday: “We will reduce our total workforce to less than 50, 000 people by the end of this year, from some 60, 000 staff at the end of 2017.” From the report: Innolux is a liquid crystal display-making affiliate of major iPhone assembler Hon Hai Precision Industry, better known as Foxconn Technology Group. Tuan is also a technology adviser to Foxconn, Sharp and Innolux. Tuan said up to 75% of production will be fully automated by the end of 2018. Most of Innolux’s factories are in Taiwan. Tuan’s pledge came a few days after Foxconn Chairman Terry Gou said the company would pour in some $342 million to overhaul its manufacturing process by using artificial intelligence. Read more of this story at Slashdot.