Mark Zuckerberg will use Facebook Live to chat with the ISS
Live video is all the rage for Facebook right now, and next week CEO Mark Zuckerberg will show off the feature with some help from NASA. On Wednesday, June 1st, Zuckerberg will host a 20-minute livestream with NASA astronauts Tim Kopra and Jeff Williams along with the ESA’s (European Space Agency’s) Tim Peake, all three of whom are currently working onboard the ISS. The trio will take questions submitted to NASA’s Facebook page, which is also where the stream will be shown. Things kick off at 12:55 PM ET, so set a reminder if you want to tune in.
Source: NASA (PR Newswire)
How I learned to stop worrying and love the Keurig for baby milk
It was in the drafty lounge, just days after our daughter was born, that the health visitor warned us against buying Tommee Tippee’s Perfect Prep. She leant in, conspiratorially, and faux-whispered “between you and me, they’re unsafe” with eyes darting left and right as if looking for hidden microphones. A week or two later, a consultant echoed the sentiment, saying “they [sic] claim to have done the research, but won’t prove it.” That sort of universal condemnation for a baby gadget that promised to revolutionize the way we parent piqued my interest. I just had to try it out for myself.
Most reputable medical organizations recommend that babies should be breastfed by their mothers for the first six months of their life. But there are some people out there who, thanks to a quirk of biology, simply can’t do it, and have to resort to formula milk. In 2007, the World Health Organization guidelines on how infant feed was prepared, changed. Instead of mass-producing bottles, you now had to make each meal fresh on-demand.
But making up a bottle can take up to an hour, so in 2013, Tommee Tippee launched the Perfect Prep, a Keurig-style device for almost-instant formula preparation. Push the device’s one large button and it’ll spray a “hot shot” of 70 degree celsius (158f) water into the bottom of a bottle. Add the requisite quantity of powdered baby formula and, once you’ve shaken to mix, push the button again. The bottle is then filled with filtered cold water, bringing the temperature down to one that an infant can drink straight away. 70 degrees, FYI, is the temperature warm enough to kill two harmful bacteria: Cronobacter sakazakii (Enterobacter) and Salmonella.
So, one weekday afternoon, I handed £65 ($95) to Amazon, where it was on sale, and set about trying to determine what exactly was so bad about it. The first issue is that with traditional formula preparation, you’re using boiled water that’s then left to cool for 30 minutes. The Perfect Prep, meanwhile, uses a filter that, the company claims, has holes too small for water-borne bacteria to pass through. I can’t prove its efficacy, but I also can’t say with any certainty that it’s unsafe, and the science behind the idea is sound, at least.
The other issue centers around the “hot shot,” although the only semi-official criticism I have found comes from the First Steps Nutrition Trust. In 2015, it published a paper that quoted unpublished university research, saying that the hot shot didn’t stay warm enough for long enough. So, the first scoop of powdered formula may hit the water when it was 70 degrees, and therefore hot enough to kill any bacteria inside. But the third, fourth and fifth may be added when the water dropped below that temperature, and that’s dangerous.
Thankfully, you don’t need to be an expert to determine the efficacy of this, and so armed with a stopwatch and temperature probe, I tested it. The “hot shot” actually came out of my machine at 77 degrees celsius (170.6f) , a little warmer than the company promises in its material. It took an average of 50 seconds before the temperature hit 70 dead, but after that, we’d hit the red zone. Naturally, water will cool at different rates depending on the ambient temperature, but I was satisfied that there is a safe margin.
It’s easy to infer that the two minute timer is a safety feature.
The manual for the Perfect Prep says that you have two minutes to add the powdered formula to the bottle before it’ll beep to say that you’re too late. But by two minutes, the temperature had dropped to just 63 degrees (145.4f), far too low to kill enough bacteria. It’s an issue that I raised with the company’s representatives, who clarified that the two minute timer isn’t a safety feature. Instead, it’s the amount of time that elapses before the device resets itself, which isn’t made particularly clear in the documentation. It’s something that, I sincerely hope, the company will look to alter in future versions of the manual.
One of the reasons that it’s so hard to speak with any certainty about this device is because the debate has been hijacked. Advocacy groups with an anti-formula milk stance like Baby Milk Action reported on the device, calling it the “Perfect Violation.” Individual NHS staffers will speak out against it off the record, but the service itself has no official position on its use. I even contacted the National Centre for Clinical Excellence, which said that it has never been asked to study the safety of the hardware.
But once my daughter was six weeks old, and therefore stronger, we decided to try using the device to produce her feeds. We’d satisfied ourselves to the best of our ability that, if we were smart, and added the formula in one go, it would hit the water while it remained over 70 degrees. We added pre-filtered water to the reservoir to reduce any burden on the built-in filter, keep a constant watch for any visible bacterial growth on the device and monitor our daughter’s stools for any feed-based issues. I can’t be certain that this device is killing all potential bacteria, but we weighed up the pros and cons of what could happen and I think that there’s an acceptable level of risk.
Our days now are no longer spent simply hovering over kettles with stopwatches while we try to comfort a mewling baby. The hours that were devoted to milk preparation has been reallocated to spending with our little girl and watching her grow. Night time feeding was the bane of our lives, but now we can just hit a button as soon as she stirs and have milk ready for when she wakes. It’s also enabled us to discard feeds after 45 minutes, rather than eking out each precious bottle for as long as possible. She gets fresher, warmer bottles and we get a third of our day back, it seems like a fair deal.
But just because I’m a convert, doesn’t mean that I’m going to recommend everyone get one sight unseen. Gadgets like this are potentially dangerous in the wrong hands because they may not understand the science that underpins it. A few days of trawling through parenting forums showed me how little understanding some people have about basic biology. One horrifying thread even suggested that it was safe to make infant formula with water from the hot tap rather than a kettle*. If you’re smart then I see no reason to be scared of this device, but if you’re not… well, there’s a reason that packets of Silica Gel have “do not eat” written on them.
* Don’t do this.
Banking service SWIFT adds new security plan following hacks
Banks use a service to send secure messages built by the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT) to send financial transaction instructions. But recently it hasn’t been so secure: Hackers stole $12 million from Ecuador banks earlier this week, the latest in a slew of thefts. Today, SWIFT released a plan to work with its customers (the banks) to shore up the messaging system’s security.
The plan is rooted in some standard anti-cyber attack strategies: Share information on breach attempts, beef up safety tools and enforce security protocols at all staff levels. While SWIFT’s core business has been passing authenticated messages between banks, the security overhaul includes checking whether those messages are consistent with past activity, much like how banks flag suspicious activity on personal accounts.
But the outline seems more plaintive than commanding, urging SWIFT customers to obey its security protocols rather than requiring adherence to use the service. As SWIFT CEO Gottfried Leibbrandt said in a statement, “While each individual SWIFT customer is responsible for the security of its own environment, the security of global banking can only be ensured collectively.”
This year has already seen numerous instances of fraudulent SWIFT requests funneling money into hackers’ dummy accounts. Earlier this month, a Vietnamese bank prevented an attempted heist, while a typo tipped off bank officials to an attempt in Bangladesh back in February — but not before the thieves made off with $81 million. The latter group of hackers have also been connected to SWIFT-breaching attempts in the Philippines and other Southeast Asian countries.
Via: Reuters
Source: SWIFT
Jawbone is reportedly stopping production on all of its fitness trackers
Jawbone has struggled to gain traction in the fitness-tracking market for some time, despite being one of the first to the market. Now, it looks like the company is ready to cash it in entirely. A report from Tech Insider claims the company has stopped making its Up line of fitness trackers and sold all of its remaining inventory to a third-party distributor. While the door remains open for the company to try again, it certainly feels like it’s ready to exit the market.
Furthermore, a separate report from Fortune claims that Jawbone is also looking to sell off its speaker business. The Jawbone Jambox was one of the first portable Bluetooth speakers and was generally well-recevied — unlike its wearables, which have been hit-or-miss. The company hasn’t produced a new one in well over a year, during which Fitbit has essentially dominated the fitness tracker market with little competition to speak of. Between speakers and wearables, the company wouldn’t have much of anything left to sell to consumers.
The company raised $165 million in funding this past January, and CEO Hosain Rahman told Tech Insider earlier this year that Jawbone had ambitions to develop a “clinical-grade” fitness tracker. The door still appears to be open for that to happen, but it’s feeling like the days of the company focusing on consumer-grade products may be at an end.
A Jawbone spokesperson said the company had no comment on today’s reports.
Source: Tech Insider, Fortune
Senator behind biometric privacy act tries to remove its teeth
The Illinois Biometric Privacy Act became law in 2008, making it illegal in the state to capture a person’s biometric identifiers — things like fingerprints, iris scans or faceprints — without explicit consent. This has led to three lawsuits against Facebook, Google and Snapchat, each over the companies’ use of face-scanning or -tagging technology. Now, Illinois State Senator Terry Link is attempting to add language to the bill that would make these practices legal in the state, effectively ending the lawsuits, The Verge reports. Note that Link is the senator who originally introduced the Illinois Biometric Privacy Act.
Link’s proposed changes alter the definition of a “scan” to be an in-person experience only. The new language defines a scan as “data resulting from an in-person process whereby a part of the body is traversed by a detector or an electronic beam.” The revision also adds “physical or digital” photographs to the list of items that are not biometric identifiers. The changes are attached to HB6074, a bill that tackles unclaimed property procedures. The alterations were proposed just before the legislature is set to recess for the long Memorial Day weekend, The Verge notes.
Christopher Dore is a partner with Edelson, the firm working on the lawsuit against Facebook, and he thinks the social network had something to do with the revisions.
“We believe that Facebook is a lobbyist that is a part of this,” Dore said, according to The Verge. “The changes that have been proposed certainly mirror the arguments that have been made in our case.”
Earlier this month, a judge denied Facebook’s motion to dismiss the Illinois case against its face-scanning technology.
Regarding this week’s proposed revisions, a Facebook spokesperson tells Engadget, “We appreciate Sen. Link’s effort to clarify the scope of the law he authored.”
Source: The Verge
Hulu may lose most of its anime catalog come June
Hulu might be best known for its catalog of network TV shows, but for fans of Japanese animation it’s been a great resource for anime titles both new and old. That looks like it’s changing on June 1st, with a significant bulk of Hulu’s anime catalog disappearing as the service streamlines its catalog to include only the most popular titles.
The list of expiring anime includes programs from Anime Network, Funimation, Sentai Filmworks, Toei Animation, NIS America and Viz Media. But it’s not Attack on Titan and InuYasha fans who need to worry about losing access to their favorite shows — the list is limited to older and more obscure titles like RahXephon, Le Chevalier D’Eon and Excel Saga.
Justin Sevakis of Anime News Network says that Hulu stopped accepting back catalog programs months ago, and has been gradually purging lower-performing titles since then. June 1 just represents a grander sweep — possibly an attempt by Hulu to streamline its offerings before it begins offering live TV in 2017.
Viewers who’d still like to give some of these titles a spin aren’t completely out of luck — many of the expiring titles are still available on anime-dedicated services like Funimation, Crunchyroll and Anime Network. However, some titles like Alien 9, Arjuna and Strawberry 100% aren’t available on any streaming service or DVD and Blu-ray, leaving those fans high and dry.
Aniplex/Bandai/TMS titles below expire Jun 1 https://t.co/TmL4YcoYxO https://t.co/CwSnY33TRO https://t.co/JEcaDUJ7GG pic.twitter.com/tg7wWQHqzT
— WTK (@WTK) May 24, 2016
Been working out the damage from the Great Hulu Anime Purge, this is what I have so far. All of these will be SOL. https://t.co/0c3Lspkhve
— Detroit Smash City (@rootsofjustice) May 27, 2016
Anime fans aren’t the only media devotees who will find a lot less to watch on Hulu; the launch of Turner Classic Movie’s FilmStruck service means that the Criterion Collection will be leaving Hulu in December.
We’ve reached out to Hulu for comment, and will update if we get a response.
Source: Anime News Network
MacRumors Giveaway: Win a Bundle of ‘Eve’ HomeKit Products From Elgato
For this week’s giveaway, we’ve teamed up with Elgato to give away the full line of Elgato Eve HomeKit-connected products, including the Eve Room, Eve Weather, Eve Energy, and Eve Door & Window, which perform a range of functions from monitoring a room to motion sensing to turning “dumb” products smart.
Eve Room, designed for use inside a home, can tell you the temperature and humidity in the room, plus it can measure air quality. A sensor inside analyzes volatile organic compounds and it will let you know when air quality declines because of cooking, smoking, cleaning products, and more.
Eve Weather is similar to Eve Room, but meant to be used outside. It doesn’t include air monitoring capabilities, but it will give you accurate temperature and humidity readings outdoors and over time. It’s IPX3 water resistant, so it can stand up to the elements.
Eve Energy is a smart outlet that allows whatever’s plugged in to be controlled via Siri. It also measures the amount of energy being consumed, so it’s ideal for products that can potentially use a lot of power, like space heaters or fans.
The final product, Eve Door & Window, monitors whether a door or window is open or closed and how long it was open or closed. It’s ideal for making sure a door in the house is secure when away, and it also enables motion-based HomeKit features.
The Eve line of devices connect to your iPhone or iPad via Bluetooth and can be controlled through the Elgato Eve app. No hub is required and in addition to being able to be controlled through the Eve app, the products are also compatible with Siri and can be accessed in other HomeKit apps and when away from home with an Apple TV. With the Eve products, you can ask Siri a long list of questions like “What’s the temperature in the living room?” or “Is the fan on?” or “Is the door open?”
I reviewed the Elgato Eve lineup when the products first became available last year. I had problems with them because HomeKit was still in the early stages of development, but since then, there have been a number of under-the-hood changes that have improved the functionality of HomeKit products. The Bluetooth-enabled Eve Weather and Eve Room are now some of my most reliable HomeKit devices.
The full line of Eve products can be purchased from Amazon. The Eve Energy is priced at $50, the Eve Door & Window is $40, the Eve Room is $80, and the Eve Weather is $50. One MacRumors reader will be able to get all four products for free through our giveaway. To enter to win, use the Rafflecopter widget below and enter an email address. Email addresses will be used solely for contact purposes to reach the winner and send the prize.
You can earn additional entries by subscribing to our weekly newsletter, subscribing to our YouTube channel, following us on Twitter, or visiting the MacRumors Facebook page. Due to the complexities of international laws regarding giveaways, only U.S. residents who are 18 years of age or older are eligible to enter.
a Rafflecopter giveawayThe contest will run from today (May 27) at 11:00 a.m. Pacific Time through 11:00 a.m. Pacific Time on June 3. The winner will be chosen randomly on June 3 and will be contacted by email. The winner has 48 hours to respond and provide a shipping address before a new winner is chosen.
Tags: Elgato, giveaway, Eve
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Jawbone Ceases Production of Fitness Trackers, Seeks Buyer for Speaker Business
It appears speaker and fitness tracker company Jawbone is struggling and could be on the verge of going out of business, with news today suggesting production has ceased on all of its current products.
According to a report from Tech Insider, Jawbone has fully ended production on its line of fitness trackers and has sold the remaining inventory to a third-party reseller, and a report from Fortune says the company is also seeking a buyer for its speaker business.
Jawbone has reportedly struggled to sell its fitness trackers in an increasingly competitive market, forcing it to offer all remaining UP2, UP3, and UP4 tracking accessories to a third-party reseller at a discounted price in order to keep the business afloat.
As for its speaker line, Jawbone is said to be courting potential buyers and liquidating its remaining speaker inventory. Jawbone has not commented on either decision, leaving it unclear whether the company will aim to produce additional fitness trackers in the future, but Fortune says Jawbone is selling its speaker business so it can focus on health and wearables.
Jawbone has been floundering for several months as interest in its fitness trackers and speakers has dwindled. No new products have been released since the early months of 2015, and in November, Jawbone laid off 15 percent of its global workforce, closed offices in New York, and downscaled its operations in Sunnyvale and Pittsburgh.
The company did raise $165 million in funding in January, but its valuation dropped from $3 billion to $1.5 billion.
Tag: Jawbone
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Restokitch Recipes & Cookbook is an ambitious cooking app and foodie social network
Overview:
Restokitch is a recipe sharing app and foodie social network that offers a primarily Indian menu and some ambitious features.
Developer: Restokitch
Cost: Free
Impressions:
Restokitch is a recipe app that does a bit more than just offer some interesting and simple dishes. It also markets itself as a sort of social network for aspiring foodies and professional chefs, sort of like an Instagram or Twitter for cooks only. Features like followers and a hotline for answering user questions make this app stand out from other such recipe apps on Google Play.
Restokitch primarily focuses on Indian cuisine, but there are some Western dishes mixed in as well.
Most of the recipes are fairly simple to prepare and feature readily available ingredients that you can find at your local supermarket. However, some recipes can stretch a bit long for a smartphone screen, so you may have to scroll down to read more, not ideal when cooking and your hands are full of food, I would have liked to see a better format for small screen reading to avoid this issue.
The social features of Restokitch are what make it stand out but
unfortunately, they aren’t very robust yet. The Hotline feature, a forum for asking questions or seeking tips about cooking, doesn’t have a ton of activity as of now- a lot of recent questions have gone unanswered after more than a week. The app also boasts cooking contests that are live and global, but there has only been one and it was in March 2016.
For professional chefs and food bloggers, Restokitch offers a
channel where you can post your own recipes, and gather followers and Trust, a sort of reputation system. This is by far the most fleshed out feature of the app, with a good number of frequent posters and all of them with a few hundred followers each. I would have liked to see even more social features incorporated with this, but for what it is, it works more or less fine.
One complaint I do have is the requirement to log in with Facebook. I would have preferred an anonymous option or at least some varied log in choices so I’m not forced to attach my Facebook account to the app just to read some recipes.
Conclusion:
I would recommend Restokitch to someone who was very interested in learning to cook Indian cuisine, or who just loves to eat it. The amount of diverse and quality recipes alone justifies the download for those interested, but the lackluster social aspect makes this app just another face in the crowd.
Download Restokitch from the Google Play Store
NYNE Edge review: Portable, bike-ready, and more than enough sound
As the weather continues to get nicer by the week, many of us find ourselves outside for various reasons. Be it for some basic yard work, poolside chilling, family time at the park, or something else, there’s plenty of reason to get out and in the world.
I love nothing more than to spend a few hours riding a bicycle and unplugging from everything. Typically, that means plugging in some headphones or pairing earbuds. Lately, however, I’ve been using the NYNE Edge Bluetooth speaker. And, while it’s certainly not a private listening experience, it’s one I’ve enjoyed.
Designed exactly like a shrunken, miniature version of the NYNE Rock, the NYNE Edge fits easily into your hand. The contoured shape lends itself nicely to portability and the soft materials feel great. It’s very convenient to pick up and take it to the deck to listen to a ball game.
If there were one word to describe to size of the speaker, it would have to be deceiving. The sounds that comes of this guy is downright incredible. To be sure, it’s louder than anything I need considering its primary function. More than capable of filling a room, it’s plenty of sound to liven up a patio party. You can really crank the speaker up before you start to hear sort of distortion. In my testing, I’ve never had a reason to turn the NYNE Edge up over halfway.
The NYNE Edge, while nice to have in the traditional speaker sense, really shines when you use it on a bike. Indeed, the speaker comes with a universal handlebar bicycle clamp accessory that lets one take the speaker on the road. And when I say “shines” I mean that literally, too. The rear of the unit houses an LED flashlight with four light effects: low, high, flashing, and SOS.
I’ve found that regardless of what I am listening to, I simply don’t need to harness the full power of the NYNE Edge while biking. Sure, it faces me for the most part, but it’s still rich enough sound that pedestrians and other riders are hearing things. This is fantastic, however, if you like to ride in groups and share similar listening habits. Maybe it’s my own insecurities, but I feel like the people around me are judging me for my podcast or music selection. Personally, I’ve come to love the sound and quality of the speaker for all-purposes reasons.
Like its much bigger sibling, the NYNE Edge is waterproof and offers up a couple of convenient features. You’ll find NFC for quick pairing, a built-in battery and USB port for charging, and a 3.5mm headphone jack. Moreover, there’s a five-light indicator that lets you know how much juice is left in the speaker.
Battery life is listed at up to 15 hours on the NYNE website. I found this to be accurate for the most part. Understanding the size and capabilities, I might have liked a couple more hours but that’s really just me being picky. Note that charging your phone through the speaker and using the light will naturally affect how long the battery lasts.
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In terms of buttons, the NYNE Edge comes with the usual fare. You’ll find power, volume up and down and buttons to skip or go back on tracks. The play and pause button also lets users take phone calls, too. Yep, you can chat up the wife while riding around town… if that’s your thing. Rounding things out is the flashlight button which cycles through the four aforementioned modes.
If you’re looking for a very portable speaker that delivers tremendous sound and plays nicely with bikes, you’re gonna spend roughly a hundred bucks or so. That’s exactly the price point you’ll find with the NYNE Edge. Considering it comes with the bike clamp I would have pegged the price to be $120 or so. At $99.99 it’s a terrific value. Pick one up from NYNE’s website, Amazon, or eBay today.
AIVAnet 