Fitbit tracking data comes up in another court case
When you wear Fitbit or any other fitness tracker and smartwatch, you not only monitor your physical activities, you also collect data about yourself — data that can apparently be used against you in investigations. In Lancaster, Pennsylvania cops responded to a 911 call by a woman who claimed she was raped by a home invader. The woman told the police she woke up around midnight with the stranger on top of her, and that she lost her tracker while struggling against her assailant. Unfortunately authorities found her Fitbit, and the device recorded her as active, awake and walking around all night. Combined with the evidence that was missing (tracks outside in the snow from boots she said the attacker was wearing, or any sign of them inside), an investigation led to her facing misdemeanor charges.
This isn’t the first time authorities used Fitbit data as evidence: last year, a Canadian law firm presented the plaintiff’s tracker info in court to show reduced physical activity for an injury lawsuit.As we know however, wearable data isn’t always 100 percent accurate, so we hope it isn’t used as a sole source of evidence. In this case, the evidence of a staged scene and testimony from the owner of the home are also reasons why the wearer is being charged with three misdemeanor counts. The case is headed to trial, but we already have enough evidence to suggest making sure the stories we tell match up with the ever-ubiquitous tracking devices on our wrists and in our pockets.
Filed under: Wearables
Via: Trusted Reviews
Source: Lancaster Online
Inhabitat’s Week in Green: hoverboards and a 3D-printed car
Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week’s most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us — it’s the Week in Green.
A working hoverboard has been the elusive dream of Back to the Future fans and transportation nerds for decades. Now, Lexus claims that it has built a prototype. The company’s SLIDE hoverboard uses magnetic levitation technology, similar to high-speed bullet trains, and it is cooled by liquid nitrogen. In other transportation news, the US Department of Defense is working with Malloy Aeronautics to develop a hoverbike for the Army. Getting stuck behind a big truck isn’t just annoying — it can be very dangerous. So tech giant Samsung has designed “see-through” trucks with rear-mounted video panels that display the road ahead.
Elon Musk’s high-speed Hyperloop could completely revolutionize transportation, but what will it be like to actually ride in it? Argo Design recently released detailed renderings showing its vision for a Hyperloop pod. Tesla’s electric vehicles are obviously better for the environment than traditional internal-combustion cars, but how do they actually perform? A new video shows the Tesla Model S P85D squaring off against some of the world’s fastest drag racers, and it more than holds its own. Tesla also celebrated the fact that Model S drivers racked up 1 billion all-electric miles, which translates to 570,000 tons of CO2 saved. Fans of classic sports cars can now go electric, too: British car company Morgan just announced plans to produce an all-electric version of its classic, sporty 3-Wheeler. And startup Divergent Microfactories unveiled the world’s first 3D-printed supercar.
Evaporation moves vast quantities of water through the air every day. But could that process be harnessed to produce renewable energy? Researchers at Columbia University believe it can, and they’ve created two devices that generate renewable energy from evaporation. In other clean energy news, the Indian government recently announced plans to boost the country’s solar production from 4.5 gigawatts to 100 gigawatts by 2022. Tesla’s Powerwall home battery could be a game changer that disrupts the existing energy grid. Last week, Inhabitat rounded up the many ways the Powerwall will change the energy landscape. C.F. Møller Architects just unveiled plans to build a massive 25,000-square-meter school in Copenhagen that will be entirely solar-powered. As attached as we’ve all become to our smartphones, they all need a recharge sooner or later. Soofa, a woman-owned company, is currently in talks with the city of New York to launch a line of innovative solar-powered benches that double as charging stations.
Bionic hand technology has taken some major steps forward in recent years. A 26-year-old woman from London recently received the world’s most advanced bionic hand, which can make precise movements and is anatomically accurate. In other tech news, the Japanese company Aldebaran has created a robot named Pepper that’s designed to understand your feelings. The robot sold out online in less than 60 seconds. London’s Design Museum has selected an unusual new technology as the winner of its Design of the Year contest: microchips covered in human cells that are designed to imitate the complexity of human organ tissue. The designers hope the microchips will eventually replace animals for drug and cosmetic testing. Rhinos are critically endangered, largely because of horn poaching. In hopes of curbing poaching, a San Francisco-based biotech company is planning to flood the market with 3D-printed synthetic rhino horns that are genetically identical to the real thing. Lego recently announced plans to invest $150 million to develop sustainable manufacturing materials that could one day replace the plastic used in Lego bricks. The bindi is a common ornamental mark that Indian women wear on their foreheads, and now one NGO is producing bindis that deliver essential nutrients directly to the skin. And in other wearable tech news, researchers in Australia have created a new type of stretchy sensor that could be worn on clothing or even skin to alert people about exposure to toxic gases.
Filed under: Cellphones, Misc, Household, Robots, Transportation, Wearables, Science
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket breaks up shortly after launch (updated)
Today is not a good day for private spaceflight. SpaceX and NASA have confirmed that a Falcon 9 rocket broke up shortly after launching on a resupply mission for the International Space Station. It’s not clear what caused the failure at this stage, but the vehicle started smoking right before it fell apart. The destruction won’t create immediate problems for the Space Station. However, it comes at a very bad time for SpaceX. The company has lost yet another chance to land its reusable rocket on a sea barge, and it only just got clearance to launch valuable missions for both NASA and the US Air Force — Elon Musk and crew may have to work overtime assuring officials that this kind of disaster won’t happen again.
Update: Musk reports that the explosion might have been due to an “overpressure event” in the rocket’s upper-stage liquid oxygen tank. At a press conference, neither NASA nor SpaceX had enough information to say what went wrong besides ruling out a problem with the first (lower) stage. NASA notes that the ISS crew still has a comfortable four-month supply buffer, but is understandably concerned that there have been three supply mission failures in the space of several months. Microsoft is no doubt worried, too, since the HoloLens headsets for its astronaut assistance project were on the SpaceX flight.
[Image credit: SpaceX, Flickr]
Filed under: Transportation, Science
Ryan Seacrest’s iPad keyboard is surprisingly good, but expensive
It’s hard to expect much from Typo, a company that was co-founded by Ryan Seacrest and whose legal tango with BlackBerry has forced it to stop selling phone keyboards. But with its new iPad keyboard, Typo has at least proven it’s worth keeping an eye on. For $189, you get a Bluetooth keyboard that actually feels like a decent laptop keyboard, as well as a cover to protect your iPad. There’s no shortage of iPad keyboards on the market, but Typo’s offering might be compelling to anyone who wants a premium laptop-like experience with their iPad. The only problem? It’s far too expensive for what you get.
Typo’s keyboard is made up of two main components: a case that fits around your iPad Air or iPad Air 2 (there’s also one for the iPad Mini), and a keyboard unit. A magnetic latch hooks the two pieces together, and the kickstand on the iPad case stabilizes everything. They keyboard portion sports a comfortable soft plastic wrist rest and a matte bottom finish, while the iPad cover is made of tougher plastic, offering a decent amount of protection. Once everything’s put together, the Typo cover ends up making your iPad look like an ultra-thin laptop — at the expense of a bit more thickness and weight.
I didn’t have any trouble pairing the Typo keyboard with my iPad Air over Bluetooth, and, most importantly, reconnecting to the Typo after turning it off took just a few seconds. That’s been a source of frustration for me with other Bluetooth keyboards. The keyboard itself is reminiscent of Microsoft’s Surface Type Cover (which is a bit curious after Typo’s legal brawl with BlackBerry). The keys have a surprising amount of depth to them when pressed down, especially since the Typo is so thin. For the most part, it felt similar to typing on a mid-range chiclet laptop keyboard. Typo is rechargeable via USB, and it lasted me several days with intermittent usage.
When it came to typing, I saw around 80 to 90 percent of my typical touch-typing speed. That’s pretty similar to what I’ve seen from most other tablet keyboards, though it wasn’t nearly as comfortable as Microsoft’s larger Surface Pro 3 keyboard. Typo also takes some getting used to: It’s not truly full-sized, and plenty of lesser-used keys (like the colon/semi-colon key) have been shifted around to make up for the lack of space. The main thing that slowed me down with the Typo was figuring out where many of those keys were moved to.
Like many laptop keyboards today, Typo also includes several device-specific buttons along its top row, which also houses the traditional function keys. The very first of these keys on Typo replicates the iPad’s home button, and there are also keys for launching spotlight search, contacts, calendar and media controls. I also grew to enjoy having Siri instantly accessible on the F5 key, which was ever so slightly faster than holding down the home button.
I was able to type this entire article on the Typo keyboard in multiple orientations — on a desk, on a park bench and while sitting on my couch — without much fuss. Given its kickstand, Typo is best used on solid surfaces, but I was also surprised by how functional it was on my lap (as long as you keep your legs straight). Typo’s biggest issue is that the magnetic connection between the keyboard and case is incredibly weak. Simply holding up the iPad on its own is enough to disconnect the keyboard. My iPad screen also fell hard on my legs several times when I tried to readjust Typo (the metal kickstand was especially painful).
As useful as it is for typing, the Typo cover ends up being pretty cumbersome if you just want to read or play games on your iPad. It adds a noticeable amount of weight to the svelte iPad Air and Air 2, and the protruding kickstand hinge made the tablet harder to hold. I ended up just yanking the Typo cover off when I wanted to browse Twitter, read digital comics and do other typical iPad-y things. The company was clearly more focused on delivering a decent typing experience than anything else.
For the most part, Typo is going up against Logitech’s iPad keyboards, which offer similarly great typing and Bluetooth connectivity for almost half the price (Logitech’s latest Ultrathin keyboard is currently retailing for $100 or less). And if you don’t need a wireless keyboard, you can save a bit more and get Logitech’s wired keyboard for $60. While Typo’s offering feels a tad more premium than the competition, it’s definitely not enough of a difference to justify that high price.
The biggest issue for Typo? It’s betting pretty much everything on its iPad keyboards. And while that’s a potentially lucrative market, especially since iOS 9 will make iPads more PC-like, Typo’s keyboards are simply too expensive to compete with widely available competitors like Logitech. There are many people who might want an iPad keyboard, but I’d imagine there are fewer who would pay around half the price of their iPad for the privilege of physical keys.
Filed under: Peripherals, Mobile
Apple Music arrives June 30th at 11AM Eastern, Beats 1 an hour later
Determined to try Apple Music and its accompanying Beats 1 radio the very moment they’re available on June 30th? The streaming service’s senior director, Ian Rogers, is happy to help those early adopter impulses. He says that iOS 8.4 (and thus Apple Music) will be available at 11AM Eastern on that day, and Beats 1 will go on the air one hour later. It’s not clear what you’ll hear if you tune in to the station right away, but the first slate of programming will include an interview with Eminem as well as appearances from everyone from Cara Delevigne to (unsurprisingly) Beats brand co-founder Dr. Dre.
And no, Apple hasn’t forgotten about iTunes Match and streaming the songs you already have. Eddy Cue notes that Apple Music will not only share the feature, but expand on it — the company is aiming to match up to 100,000 songs in your library (versus today’s 25,000) by the time iOS 9 shows up this fall. Unless you have a mind-numbingly huge music collection, you can safely assume that it’ll be available in the cloud.
Filed under: Internet, Mobile, Apple
Via: MacRumors
Source: Fistfulayen, Beats 1 (Twitter), Zane Lowe (Twitter)
Can the question of morality and self-driving cars be solved through an algorithm?
Utilitarianism and deontology.
Two words that many don’t know the meaning behind, yet we’ll have to side with one or the other sooner than later. And the topic? Self-driving cars. Automated vehicles are the world’s next big phenomenon, with Google touting that it’s self-driving vehicles, in years of testing, have only been in 11 minor incidents, which were all mostly due to human error.
That’s a staggering figure. In six years of testing, only a handful of minor accidents? Imagine all of the lives we could save with this self-driving technology. One thing’s for certain, self-driving software is much more attentive to the road than the human eye will ever be.
The technology is jaw-dropping, and so are the figures. But, that’s not the only factor we need to look at before letting self-driving cars run a large portion of our lives. After all, in the event of an incident, the self-driving car would rather drive off a cliff, killing one person, over driving into oncoming traffic, causing multiple casualties. that could involve multiple lives. It would rather sacrifice one life, the person in the driver’s seat, than potentially harm or kill multiple lives.
It’s called the trolley problem. Should you kill one life to save five others or should you kill six lives to save one? The solution for most is obvious: one must die to save five others–it’s the most logical solution with the best possible outcome. But, it’s not that easy. Change up the variables–what if that one person was your child? It gets much more complicated.
Click here to view the embedded video.
“Ultimately, this problem devolves into a choice between utilitarianism and deontology,” said UAB alumnus Ameen Barghi. “Utilitarianism tells us that we should always do what will produce the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people,” he explained. In that case, allowing one to die in place of the lives of five others is the solution. But, then again, maybe not.
Deontology says that “some values are simply categorically always true,” Barghi said. “For example, murder is always wrong, and we should never do it. Even if shifting the trolley will save five lives, we shouldn’t do it because we would be actively killing one,” Barghi said.
In other words, our self-driving cars should not be programmed to actively decide whether to sacrifice one person for five others, as they are told to do now. The problem goes even deeper, though. The car isn’t the one that would take your life in this hypothetical situation. No, the car is immoral, the software is immoral. Neither is inherently good or evil. “It just runs programs,” Ben and Crosby said in comedy sci-fi film Short Circuit.
I’m certain we can all agree on that.
Therefore, the death would be on the hands of the person who pushed the idea of having it in self-driving cars. That person certainly wouldn’t be prosecuted, but by these standards, it would be on his or her conscience. But, I can guarantee that that person isn’t out to purposely kill others with self-driving technology. No, that person is trying to make our lives better by reducing the number of fatalities in the world related to automobile accidents. Not only that, but said person is also trying to reduce time on the road and make it more efficient.
So, the problem doesn’t just lay on that person’s hands, but it goes even deeper than that.
The real question is, can morality be solved by a simple math equation or algorithm?
source: University of Alabama at Birmingham
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‘Zoom for Instagram’ lets you zoom into your favorite Instagram photos
Third-party developer Taptigo has brought Zoom for Instagram to the Google Play Store. The new application has one simple goal: to let users zoom into their Instagram photos, and Zoom for Instagram does this really well.
To get started, make sure Zoom for Instagram is downloaded on your device. Next, open up the official Instagram app, select one of your favorite images, tap the menu in the top right corner, and select “Copy Share URL.” After that, the image should open in Zoom and you can begin zooming in and out of your photos.
It’s actually a handy feature, but you can easily do this but just heading into your device settings and enabling magnification gestures. Either way, hopefully it’s a feature we’ll eventually see Instagram support. But in the meantime, there’s Zoom for Instagram!
The only real disappointing thing about the third-party app is that it watermarks all of your photos, and to disable that, you’re going to have to pick up the paid version of Zoom, which might be a huge turnoff some some. If you’re interested, just scan the QR code or hit the download link below.
Come comment on this article: ‘Zoom for Instagram’ lets you zoom into your favorite Instagram photos
Android 5.1 soak test officially begins on Verizon’s Moto X (2014) and Moto G (2013)
Motorola’s David Schuster took to Google+ again to announce that Android 5.1 soak tests are officially rolling out for the Moto X (2014) and Moto G (2013) with LTE in the US. We earlier saw unofficial leaks of a Moto X (2014) running Android 5.1 on Verizon’s network.
While this is certainly good news, Schuster also explained that they were running into issues with Android 5.1 on the Moto E. Those have since been resolved, and testing has resumed in Brazil and India, so if all goes well, it shouldn’t be too long before an official update is seen.
So far, the only device that has seen a final release build without many issues is the Moto X (2014) Pure Edition.
There seems to be some unofficial reports that are saying that the Moto X (2014) on AT&T has begun its soak test as well. However, Schuster hasn’t mentioned anything yet. But with his track record thus far, it shouldn’t be long before we see something more official.
source: David Schuster (1), (2), (3)
Come comment on this article: Android 5.1 soak test officially begins on Verizon’s Moto X (2014) and Moto G (2013)
Pip-Boy wearable will house many popular smartphones, including the Galaxy S4 and S5
Last week before all of the E3 2015 excitement began, developer Bethesda Softworks announced the anticipated Fallout 4, along with a Collector’s Edition said to include a wearable Pip-Boy housing. Now, the company is saying that the Pip-Boy will come with foam inserts to fit all kinds of smartphones, including some of Samsung’s most popular devices, the Samsung Galaxy S4 and Galaxy S5.
Bethesda says:
The Pip-Boy included will have foam inserts that fit iPhone 6, iPhone 5/5s, iPhone 4/4S, Samsung Galaxy 5, and Samsung Galaxy 4. In addition, using the customizable foam insert you should be able to fit most other popular smartphone devices. As we wanted to stay faithful to the dimensions of the in-game model, any smartphones larger than the models listed will not fit inside the wearable device. For these larger devices, our Pip-Boy companion app will still be available.
While Bethesda officially mentioned the Samsung Galaxy S5, it should also work with the Galaxy S6 since its about the same size as the former. Note users are obviously out of the luck, though. Thankfully, there’s at least the Pip-Boy companion app to get in on the real-life Fallout action.
Keep in mind that to get a Pip-Boy wearable, you’re going to need to act fast. Bethesda already sold out of its Collector’s Editions where its included, and now sometime this week they’ll be adding limited quantities again at BestBuy, GameStop, and Amazon. So keep your eyes peeled on those websites if you want a chance to get your own Pip-Boy wearable!
source: Bethesda Softworks
Come comment on this article: Pip-Boy wearable will house many popular smartphones, including the Galaxy S4 and S5
Google will end support for Android Developer Tools in Eclipse later this year
Google yesterday took to its Android Developers Blog to announce that it would be ending all development and support for the Android Developer Tools (ADT) in Eclipse. The search giant plans on focusing its efforts on its own IDE, Android Studio. “This specifically includes the Eclipse ADT plugin and Android Ant build system,” Google says.
While this is certainly hard news to hear, especially if Eclipse was your go-to platform for Android, Google has put together a handy guide to migrating your Android projects and source code from Eclipse into Android Studio 1.3. It’s an easy process, and should only take you a few minutes, if you’re making the jump.
Google will continue to support Eclipse until the end of the year. In the meantime, they’re hard at work migrating the rest of their standalone performance tools, such as DDMS and Trace Viewer, over to Android Studio in addition to building better support for the Android NDK in the IDE.
For more info and a guide on how to switch your projects from Eclipse to Android Studio, hit the source link below.
source: Android Developers Blog
Come comment on this article: Google will end support for Android Developer Tools in Eclipse later this year
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