Tag: apple

Artificially Intelligent Russian Robot Escapes…Again

Slashdot reader Taco Cowboy brings a new report about Russian robot IR77, which has escaped from its research lab again… The story goes that an engineer working at Promobot Laboratories, in the Russian city of Perm, had left a gate open. Out trundled Promobot, traveling some 150 feet into the city before running out of juice. There it sat, batteries mostly dead, in the middle of a Perm street for 40 minutes, slowing cars to a halt and puzzling traffic cops A researcher at Promobot’s facility in Russia said that the runaway robot was designed to interact with human beings, learn from experiences, and remember places and the faces of everyone it meets. Other versions of the Promobot have been docile, but this one just can’t seem to fall in line, even after the researchers reprogrammed it twice. Despite several rewrites of Promobot’s artificial intelligence, the robot continued to move toward exits. “We have changed the AI system twice, ” Kivokurtsev said. “So now I think we might have to dismantle it”. Fans of the robot are pushing for a reprieve, according to an article titled ‘Don’t kill it!’: Runaway robot IR77 could be de-activated because of ‘love for freedom’ Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Artificially Intelligent Russian Robot Escapes…Again

Rhapsody Rebrands Itself As Napster

An anonymous reader writes: After completing its purchase of Napster in December 2011, Rhapsody has decided to rebrand itself as Napster. Rhapsody made the announcement on their blog, which states: “No changes to your playlists, favorites, albums, and artists. Same music. Same service. Same price. 100% the music you love. Stay tuned!” That’s it. The company didn’t elaborate as to why they decided to change their name now. Napster has made a name for itself as being a brand synonymous with illegal music downloads. It’ll be interesting to what kind of effect, if any, this has on Rhapsody. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Rhapsody Rebrands Itself As Napster

Russian Hackers Reportedly Stole Donald Trump Opposition Research From The DNC

Russian hackers were able to snatch all of the Democratic National Committee’s opposition research on Donald Trump, according to US officials who spoke to the Washington Post . The hackers were able to read emails and instant messages as a result of the breach. Read more…

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Russian Hackers Reportedly Stole Donald Trump Opposition Research From The DNC

iMessage for Android Would Change Everything

As is tradition, some last-minute rumors are sneaking their way into the news before Apple’s big reveal on Monday morning in San Francisco. We already have a good idea what of what we think is coming , but this latest bit that says iMessage is coming to Android is very intriguing. Read more…

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iMessage for Android Would Change Everything

Run Android on an iPhone – with some heavy engineering and caveats

Familiar with cramming one operating system into somewhere it doesn’t belong , developers at Tendigi have just created a homemade iPhone case that lets you run Android on your iOS smartphone. (Well, kind of). Fortunately, because of the Android Open Source Project , it gave Nick Lee the freedom to clone the mobile OS and build his own local hardware. Before he went that far, Lee decided to test the concept — streaming Android across to an iPhone through a cable — with a Nexus 5. He needed tools that could communicate with iOS, as well as services that let USB cables play nice with an iPhone. Lee also crafted software that transmitted what was happening on the Android devices’ screen to the iPhone, while also send touch-input back. The next challenge: cramming it all into an iPhone “case”. See it working after the break. He then made his own tiny Android development board (all the technical specifics are here ), linking it to the soon-to-be franken-iPhone and its own power supply, prototyping and 3D-printing an enclosure to house it all and attach to the iPhone. It’s not the prettiest case, and really you’re ‘streaming’ Android to your iPhone screen, but it’s the man-hours thought that counts, right? Source: Tendigi

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Run Android on an iPhone – with some heavy engineering and caveats

Microsoft now offering Surface Membership Plans

Microsoft has quietly introduced a Surface Membership Plan that allows small businesses to keep up with the latest Surface hardware and buy the devices on a monthly payment plan. Starting at $32.99 per month, business users get “the latest Surface devices, accessories, support, and training.” The membership plan includes the current generation Surface Book, Surface Pro 4, and Surface 3, but it also comes with free upgrades when newer models become available. As Thurrott.com points out , the membership program follows the iPhone Upgrade program that Apple introduced last year . The Surface memberships also include setup, personal training, in-store tech support, an extended service plan and Accidental Damage Protection. The monthly costs vary, depending on the model and whether you stretch out the payments over 18, 24 or 30 months, but the cheapest is a basic Surface Pro 3 for $33 per month over 30 months. The most expensive will run you about $221 per month for a tricked-out Surface Book with a 1TB hard drive, 16 GB RAM, Intel i7 processor and dual GPUs. That also means, at the end of the installments, you’ll have shelled out about $3, 978 for that Surface Book, versus $3, 448 for the same machine with just a two-year service plan and no other bundled deals (or $3, 199 if you live on the edge and skip the service plan). For the budget Surface 3, the membership plan works out to $990 total over two and a half years, versus $600 for the device with no extras. One other thing to note here: the plans are meant for business customers and not individuals, although you can still sign up to order only a single device, rather than a whole fleet. Also, in order to be approved for the membership plan, you’ll have to go through Microsoft’s financing partner LiftForward to handle all the monthly payments and credit applications.

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Microsoft now offering Surface Membership Plans

Apple Offers No Explanation for 7-Hour Outage

Apple services went offline for up to 7 hours Thursday — and the company has yet to offer an explanation. An anonymous reader writes: The outage affected the App Store, iTunes in the Cloud, Apple TV, Mail Drop, Find my iPhone, and Photos. During the outage, Apple responded to complaints on Twitter, “Thank you for the information. We’re aware of this issue and are investigating, ” Tech Times reports that the iCloud Music Library had also experienced an outage on Wednesday, and that just weeks ago Apple released an operating system update which bricked several iPad Pros. And yesterday Amazon also experienced a service outage. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Apple Offers No Explanation for 7-Hour Outage

Samsung Starts Mass Producing New 512GB NVMe SSD That’s Smaller Than a Stamp

An anonymous reader writes from a report via PCWorld: Samsung announced late Monday night that it has begun mass producing a new SSD that is tinier than a postage stamp. PCWorld reports: “The PM971-NVMe fits up to 512GB of NAND flash, a controller, and RAM into a single BGA chip measuring 20mm x 16mm x 1.5mm and weighing just one gram, the company said. Samsung says the PM971-NVMe will hit 1.5GBps read speeds and 800MBps write speeds. The PM971-NVMe is built using 20nm NAND chips and includes 4GB of LPDDR4 RAM as a cache. The NAND is triple-level cell but uses a portion as a write butter. The drive will come in 512GB, 256GB and 128GB capacities.” While on the topic of hardware, Intel unveiled its Broadwell-E family, which consists of an “Extreme Edition” Core i7 chipset that has 10 cores and 20 threads. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Samsung Starts Mass Producing New 512GB NVMe SSD That’s Smaller Than a Stamp

US Court Says No Warrant Needed For Cellphone Location Data

Dustin Volz, reporting for Reuters: Police do not need a warrant to obtain a person’s cellphone location data held by wireless carriers, a U.S. appeals court ruled on Tuesday, dealing a setback to privacy advocates. The full 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, voted 12-3 that the government can get the information under a decades-old legal theory that it had already been disclosed to a third party, in this case a telephone company. The ruling overturns a divided 2015 opinion from the court’s three-judge panel and reduces the likelihood that the Supreme Court would consider the issue. The decision arose from several armed robberies in Baltimore and Baltimore County, Maryland, in early 2011, leading to the convictions of Aaron Graham and Eric Jordan. The convictions were based in part on 221 days of cellphone data investigators obtained from wireless provider Sprint, which included about 29, 000 location records for the defendants, according to the appeals court opinion. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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US Court Says No Warrant Needed For Cellphone Location Data

Intel’s quad-core “Skull Canyon” NUC is a workstation for the size-obsessed

Andrew Cunningham Intel’s quad-core “Skull Canyon” NUC. 10 more images in gallery Every year when Intel refreshes its NUC mini PCs, it releases more models meant to cover a wider range of needs. There are cheap fanless NUCs, NUCs that can fit in full-size hard drives, and mainstream NUCs that are essentially little Ultrabooks inside boxes. This year is the first where Intel has tried to release a quad-core workstation-class NUC itself instead of leaving that field to OEM partners . This PC, also known as “Skull Canyon” because of Intel’s history of using skulls to promote performance-focused products, is quite a bit different from the other NUCs. It needs more space for cooling, so it’s around twice as wide as standard NUCs (though it’s a little shorter). But with that increased size comes a lot more flexibility and performance. Pricing and building Like other NUCs, the Skull Canyon version is sold as a “PC kit,” which means you have to add your own RAM, SSD, and operating system before you can actually use the thing. Assuming you want to equip it with fast PCI Express SSDs and a healthy amount of RAM, you’ll end up spending near $1,000—around $650 for the NUC itself, another $180 or so for a 256GB Samsung 950, $60-ish for 16GB of DDR4 RAM (Skylake supports up to 64GB), and $100 for your Windows 10 license if that’s the operating system you prefer to use. Read 21 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Intel’s quad-core “Skull Canyon” NUC is a workstation for the size-obsessed