Tag: silicon valley

Take a look at Apple’s self-driving test vehicle

Photos obtained by Bloomberg are giving us our first look at what appears to be a testbed for Apple’s self-driving car technology. An observer caught the Lexus SUV (looking similar to the demo vehicle above) rolling out of an Apple facility in Silicon Valley, rocking an extensive kit including Velodyne LiDAR units and radar sensors, which help the car observe the world around it. Apple picked up a permit to test its autonomous technology on California streets a couple of weeks ago, and it apparently isn’t waiting to get started. According to an expert cited by Bloomberg, the kit observed appears to consist of “off the shelf” sensors from third parties like Velodyne , instead of custom hardware. It’s unclear what form the scaled-back Project Titan plans could eventually take, but getting time on the road is a big first step. Here’s the car that #Apple ‘s using to test its autonomous car technology. Story with @mhbergen . https://t.co/jHLnJDRjoS pic.twitter.com/zTezUmcZwC — Alex Webb (@atbwebb) April 27, 2017 Source: Bloomberg

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Take a look at Apple’s self-driving test vehicle

Tanium exposed hospital’s IT while using its network in sales demos

Enlarge / Orion Hindawi, co-founder and chief technology officer of Tanium Inc. Information security company Tanium is a relatively well-established “next-generation” cybersecurity vendor that was founded 10 years ago—far ahead of the wave of the venture capital-funded newcomers, like Cylance, who have changed the security software space. (Tanium has reached a market valuation of more than $3 billion, though there are no indications of when it will make an initial public offering.) Starting in 2012, Tanium apparently had a secret weapon to help it compete with the wave of newcomers, which the company’s executives used in sales demonstrations: a live customer network they could tap into for product demonstrations.There was just one problem: the customer didn’t know that Tanium was using its network. And since the customer was a hospital, the Tanium demos—which numbered in the hundreds between 2012 and 2015, according to a Wall Street Journal report —exposed live, sensitive information about the hospital’s IT systems. Until recently, some of that data was shown in publicly posted videos. In 2010, Tanium’s software was installed at Allscripts Healthcare Solutions’ El Camino Hospital  (which markets itself as “the hospital of Silicon Valley”) in Santa Clara County, California. The hospital no longer has a relationship with Tanium. While Tanium did not have access to patient data, the demos showed desktop and server management details that were not anonymized. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Tanium exposed hospital’s IT while using its network in sales demos

The first self-driving taxis are cruising around Singapore

Uber announced that it will start self-driving trials in Pittsburgh later this month, but it was beat to the punch by a much less well-known company. Starting today, nuTonomy will offer rides to Singapore residents in specially equipped Mitsubishi i-MiEV or Renault Zoe electric vehicles. As with Uber, passengers won’t be alone with a robotic driver like Silicon Valley ‘s hapless Jared. A nuTonomy engineer will be along to monitor the vehicle, and a safety driver will “assume control if needed to ensure passenger comfort and safety, ” the company wrote. The rides will be free to start with, and the company will stick to an area called “One-North” for the tests. Municipal officials designated the 2.5-square-mile residential zone specifically for self-driving trials in an effort to reduce congestion in the city, where 5.5 million residents live in a region about three times the size of Boston. Pick-ups and drop-offs will also be limited to certain areas to avoid traffic concerns. nuTonomy, which spun off from MIT in 2013, equipped its EVs with six Lidar sets and two cameras to detect obstacles, lanes and traffic light changes. Just a few dozen passengers have signed up so far, but the company says it will open the trials to thousands of users in the coming months. The aim, it says, is to “collect and evaluate valuable data related to software system performance, vehicle routing efficiency, the vehicle booking process, and the overall passenger experience.” With the city’s cooperation, other companies, including Delphi, plan their own self-driving tests in Singapore. However, nuTonomy appears to be the farthest along, and plans to launch its robotic service there as early as 2018. There are still some bugs to work out, though. An Associated Press reporter noted that the safety driver had to hit the brakes when a parked vehicle moved suddenly into the oncoming lane. Via: Associated Press

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The first self-driving taxis are cruising around Singapore

Silicon Valley banks offer tech giants’ new hires 100% mortgages on 24 hours’ notice

What to do if you’ve just signed up to work in one of the most expensive real-estate markets in the world, with almost all of your net worth tied up in illiquid shares in your employer’s company? Just ask a Silicon Valley bank for a 100% mortgage, which they’ll cheerfully supply on 24 hours’ notice, with all the “white-glove service” trappings you could ask for. (more…)

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Silicon Valley banks offer tech giants’ new hires 100% mortgages on 24 hours’ notice

Dropbox’s Lepton lossless image compression really uses a ‘middle-out’ algorithm

 The “middle-out” algorithm that has its roots in the most infamous (and probably funniest) scene in HBO’s “Silicon Valley” may have been fictional, but something like it can be found in Lepton, a cool new lossless image compressor created by Dropbox. Read More

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Dropbox’s Lepton lossless image compression really uses a ‘middle-out’ algorithm

XBMC’s Kodi media player officially hits the Play Store

Kodi’s media player got a name change last year and now it has something even better — official Android status. The app formerly known as XBMC is now available on the Google Play store for all takers. It actually arrived to the store last month in beta form , but prior to that could only be sideloaded on Android. Version 15 (codenamed Isengard) now supports Android 5-specific features like 4K and variable refresh rates on certain Android TV devices, like NVIDIA’s Shield . Another new trick on all platforms is “adaptive seeking” that lets you search material faster by tapping a key several times. There’s also new audio and subtitle lists, an updated add-on manager, improved video queuing and better live TV closed-captioning. It has other minor tweaks and fixes (check the source), and the XBMC foundation said that the next release would support DirectX 11. You can grab the app now on Google Play, but just remember that Kodi is a deep app, so leave yourself some time (and possibly some help ) to get it working. Filed under: Cellphones , Home Entertainment Comments Source: Kodi

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XBMC’s Kodi media player officially hits the Play Store

This Guy Just CCed All of Microsoft By Accident

A little Friday advice: if you work for one of the great mammoths in the history of technology, and your faltering CEO just emailed to say he’s departing , make sure you click the right buttons when you reply. Read more…        

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This Guy Just CCed All of Microsoft By Accident

HBO Just Greenlit a Silicon Valley Comedy By Mike Judge That Could Actually Be Good

If Bravo’s Start-Ups: Silicon Valley makes you gag and, in turn, makes your gags want to gag , you could be in luck. HBO has bought the pilot for a very different Silicon Valley that might serve as an effective antidote to that reality TV schlock. More »

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HBO Just Greenlit a Silicon Valley Comedy By Mike Judge That Could Actually Be Good