Apple will deactivate Flash by default on Safari 10
You know that Maya Angelou quote that says “Never make someone a priority when all you are to them is an option?” If Flash were a person following that tenet, then it now has to drop Safari from its dwindling list of priorities. In a post on the WebKit blog, Apple engineer Ricky Mondello has revealed that the company is deactivating Adobe Flash by default on Safari 10. That’s the version of the browser shipping with macOS Sierra this fall.
If you access a website that has both Flash and HTML5, the browser will opt for the latter. But if the page requires Flash to work, then a prompt will pop up asking if you’d like to switch it on. You can choose to active it just for that session or to keep it on for that URL forever. If you’ll recall, Microsoft and Google have been distancing themselves from Flash for quite some time, as well. Edge only displays Flash if it’s a central element on the page you’re looking at (say, a game or a video), while Chrome has started blocking Flash ads late last year.
On the mobile side of things, Apple has announced at WWDC that it’s requiring all iOS apps to connect to the internet via HTTPS by January 1st, 2017. That means developers have to switch on a feature Cupertino launched with iOS 9 called App Transport Security. ATS forces apps to use a secure connection to help keep your data safe.
Via: MacRumors
Source: WebKit, TechCrunch
BBC to put major new drama series on iPlayer before it airs on TV
While the BBC is increasingly choosing to air new programmes on iPlayer before they appear on TV, the broadcaster has typically restricted output to low-risk shows and specials. However, with its new supernatural drama, The Living And The Dead, the Beeb has decided it’s time to change that mindset — it’ll debut all six episodes this Friday (June 17th), two weeks before they start being broadcast on TV.
The show, created by Life on Mars duo Ashley Pharoah and Matthew Graham, will become the first primetime BBC drama to delay traditional broadcasts in favour of a “binge-watch” model utilised by Netflix and Amazon. Earlier this month, New Blood became the first drama series to make select episodes available online first, but Peter Kay’s Car Share was the earliest BBC programme to premiere exclusively on iPlayer.
Speaking at a press screening on Tuesday evening, Controller of BBC One Charlotte Moore said: “Part of my mission at the BBC is to grow iPlayer into the future, and I will be exploring more premieres like this. But it’s fantastic to be doing this with The Living And The Dead.”
It shows that the BBC is working hard to change iPlayer from the catch-up service it once was into a portal capable of rivaling other streaming giants. The Living And The Dead “box-set” will be available online from June 17th, with weekly episodes appearing on BBC One at 9pm from June 28th.
Source: AOL UK
Former Android chief is betting on quantum computing and AI
Andy Rubin — one of the people who invented the Android platform — left Google in 2014, but he’s still helping shape the future of technology. At Bloomberg Technology Conference, he revealed that one of the startups his hardware incubator is backing has a pretty lofty goal: finding a way to commercialize quantum computing devices with the manufacturing processes we use today. Rubin said new computing platforms “happen every 10 to 12 years.” He believes it’s time to start building quantum computers and using them to run AI.
Quantum computers, in a nutshell, will be able to perform tasks much, much faster than typical computers by harnessing the power of atoms and molecules. It’s a complex topic, but Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau might be able to help you out. The technology is still in its infancy, but a few organizations, including Google and MIT, managed to create simple versions that could lead something bigger.
As you can imagine then, a quantum computer and an AI make a formidable combination. During the event, Rubin said the resulting machine could be so powerful, we’d need only one to power every connected device, such as smartphones. “If you have computing that is as powerful as this could be, you might only need one. It might not be something you carry around; it just has to be conscious,” he said, according to The Verge.
The idea of an extremely capable and conscious computer is both intriguing and terrifying. Remember Skynet? Rubin said we shouldn’t “be worrying about Skynet coming online,” though. We “should be worrying about what it means to compute at these magnitudes.”
Source: Bloomberg
iScout HUD helps drivers with directions and blind spots
Heads-up displays (HUDs) for cars never really caught on, but it’s not for lack of trying. However, Garmin’s unit is proprietary, Hudway’s concept is cool but simplistic and Navdy is a year late and still hasn’t shipped. A new contender called iScout addresses many of those issues. It works with any smartphone, shows notifications from apps like WhatsApp, takes or reject calls with a hand-wave, and has blind-spot cameras. Now comes the gotcha: It’s launching on Kickstarter, so before breaking out your plastic, bear in mind that it may never ship.
With that bit of pessimism out of the way, the company does have a solid-looking prototype and a lot of nice features. The “photochromic” display works in day and night conditions, and it has its own app and GPS to display heads-up route guidance. However, the device also connects with your smartphone over Bluetooth, letting you take or reject calls by waving your hand, for example, while still keeping the GPS on the screen. You can compose texts via voice dictation and see notifications from apps like WhatsApp and Twitter, or control music from Spotify and other apps.
As iScout can link up with the vehicle’s ODB plug, you can also see information like fuel levels. If you’re running out of gas, for instance, it can give you a warning and guide you to the nearest service station. The premium model also has blind spot cameras that automatically activate when you use your turn signals, helping keep your eyes on the road. Speaking of cameras, the device has a forward looking dashcam, in case any of any accidents (or meteorites).
The company is marketing the product as a safety device, but receiving notifications on the device may be nearly as distracting as checking them on your phone. That said, the device is about as safety-friendly as you’re going to get in a connected car. The display, for example “is focused into the distance and shown just below your line of sight,” according to the company. That means it’ll require very little of your attention to check your GPS, speed and other info compared to any other device.
The iScout is on pre-order starting at $269 for the basic edition without blind spot cameras and $299 for the premium model with them. Those models are ambitiously scheduled to ship this November, but you can jump the line and get one in September if you’re willing to pay $499 and help with final testing. Despite the caveat emptors about Kickstarter, and assuming the company’s claims pan out, that sum seems a fair price to pay for jet fighter-like situational awareness.
Source: Kickstarter
IBM’s AI can predict how we’ll react to the weather
According to the “butterfly effect” theory, weather is inherently hard to predict. But IBM thinks that if you throw even more computing smarts and data at it, you should be able to at least improve forecasts. Big Blue is marrying its own hyper-local weather models with global ones from (its own) The Weather Company and creating Deep Thunder, the best-named forecasting system ever. To analyze all the data, the company is building new deep-learning algorithms and training them using petabytes of historical data.
On top of providing forecasting, IBM will help businesses by relating other data to the weather. With forecast accuracy down to 0.2 to 1.2 miles of resolution, it can tell companies in very fine detail how the weather affects things like consumer buying behavior, so they can stock and market products appropriately. Utility companies can also use the data to figure out if telephone poles will be damaged in a storm so they can plan accordingly, for instance.
The business forecasting helps companies quantify our behavior better than ever, in case you thought we weren’t being tracked enough already. But improved weather forecasts will be particularly useful with the recent severe weather weirdness due to climate change. “The new combined forecasting model we are introducing today will provide an ideal platform [to help us] understanding the impacts of weather … for all kinds of businesses and industry applications,” says The Weather Company’s Mary Glackin.
The Internet of Things is coming to your hydroponic garden
It was only a matter of time. The Internet of Things has already come for our vaporizers, now it is back for our hydroponic grow ops. Behold the Gro.io, an all-inclusive hydro system that’s nearly fully automated. The brains behind this system is the Gro.hub. This central computing tower runs an embedded Linux OS on a 1GHz ARM Cortex-A8 Processor and processes signals from ten separate remote sensors. These monitor things like water temperature, level, pH and flow.
The Hub uses all of this information to keep track of system conditions and disperse the appropriate amount of nutrients, light and water to keep everything in balance. Additionally, instead of outputting all that information to a local monitor, the Gro.io will push it to the branded iOS app on your phone via the tower’s integrated Wi-Fi receiver. The app allows you to monitor the long term growth of your plants (presumably all eight weeks of it), adjust nutrient and light levels and receive notifications if anything goes awry. Like conventional systems, the Gro.io uses 20 gallon buckets to house individual plants under an array of either three or five 60W LED bulbs — 180W and 300W total output, respectively. That’s enough light to grow up to six plants simultaneously.
The Gro.io is curently on pre-sale. The Hub itself will retail for $1000, the rest of the setup will cost you an additional $700 to $1775 depending on how many buckets you go with (also how big they are) and what sort of lighting setup you chose. Of course, the system is totally modular so if you want to forgo the Hub or already have a set of lights, you can totally buy it piecemeal. The Gro.io is expected to ship in August 2016, while a UK version is reportedly still in the works.
Nanoflowers can detect bacteria before they make you sick
You typically won’t know you’re infected with E. coli until it starts wreaking havoc on your gut. That’s why a group of scientists from Washington State University are building a handheld biosensor that can sniff out even tiny amounts of pathogen in food. The biosensor will rely on flower-shaped nanoparticles the team developed. These nanoflowers can trap bacteria enzymes and amplify them, so they can be recognized by a simple pH strip. According to team leader Yuehe Lin, they plan to use the nanoflowers to create a simple biosensor similar to a pregnancy test strip that anyone can use.
They’re not stopping with E. coli, though: the group is actively working to expand their creation’s capabilities. They’re switching out the particle’s components to give it the power to spot other pathogens, such as salmonella. The researchers are also tweaking it further in an effort to create a version that detects disease markers for various illnesses, including cancer.
Source: Washington State University, Small
ICYMI: An accidental invention could create clean water
Today on In Case You Missed It: Some of the greatest inventions of our modern age, from the pacemaker to super glue, got their start as accidental discoveries. That’s why we’re focusing today’s show on a find by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, where scientists meant to make magnetic nanowires but created a kind of carbon nanorod instead. It might prove to be a wonderful mistake, since studying the nanorods shows they can harvest, hold and evaporate liquid from their fibers. The hope is that the material could create cheap and low-energy water purification systems, changing the game for clean water delivery.
We also showed you both the YouTube video where a ATM skimmer seller demonstrates how easy it is to scam money from those machines, and also a video of this dancing robot, because. As always, please share any interesting tech or science videos you find by using the #ICYMI hashtag on Twitter for @mskerryd.
Alleged Leaked Image of iPhone 7 Shows Touch-Sensitive Home Button
Photos have emerged online purporting to show the front of an iPhone 7 with a touch-sensitive home button flush with the front of the handset.
Ever since the launch of the original iPhone, Apple’s handsets have featured a physical button that users press to return to the home screen, and press and hold for other functions.
But photos passed to mobile tech site mobipicker.com appear to suggest that may no longer be the case for future iPhones.
The white handset in the image above appears to be missing the silver metal ring around the button that has been included in similarly colored iPhone handsets since the iPhone 5s and the introduction of Touch ID fingerprint recognition.
According to the website’s source, the button is level with the rest of the bezel and does not depress like a traditional clickable button. Instead, the button is said to be touch-sensitive, requiring users to perform taps, or tap-hold actions for functions like invoking Siri.
The handset in the photo also appears to have slightly narrower bezels and a repositioned front-facing camera and proximity sensor compared to the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus.
As is often the case, the latest alleged leak cannot be verified. However, some reports have suggested that Apple has been testing a touch-sensitive home button for its upcoming flagship handset.
In March, Apple was also granted a patent for a pressure-sensitive Liquidmetal home button that deforms slightly when pressed, but returns to its normal shape when the user removes their finger or thumb. Apple has annually renewed its exclusive rights to use the malleable alloy since 2010, but has yet to do so in a major way.
Other features rumored to be exclusive to the iPhone 7 and/or iPhone 7 Plus models include a Smart Connector, dual-lens cameras, no 3.5mm headphone jack, repositioned antenna bands, stereo speakers, wireless charging, and a larger battery, but Apple may hold off on some features until its next iPhone with OLED in 2017.
Related Roundup: iPhone 7
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Apple Launches Back to School 2016 Promotion in Europe, Free Beats With Qualifying Purchases
Apple has extended its Back to School promotion to countries in Europe, offering a free pair of Beats Solo2 Wireless Headphones with eligible purchases.
At the beginning of June, Apple launched its annual Back to School promotion in the U.S. and Canada, offering the headphones to qualifying students and select others that purchase an eligible iPhone or Mac with education pricing.
The same offer is now open to higher education students in the U.K., France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, and other countries in Europe. To qualify for the Beats Solo2 cans, customers must purchase an iMac, MacBook, MacBook Pro, Mac Pro or MacBook Air.
Apple is also offering a free pair of Powerbeats 2 Wireless Headphones with the purchase of an eligible iPhone or iPad with education pricing, including the iPhone 6s, iPhone 6, iPhone SE, and the iPad Air 2, iPad mini 4, iPad mini 2, and both the 9.7-inch and 12.9-inch iPad Pro.
The offer can be taken up online and at brick-and-mortar Apple Stores and is available through to September 5, 2016. Apple has outlined the full eligibility requirements for the program in its terms and conditions, available at the bottom of the promotion pages on Apple’s country-specific sites.
Tags: Beats Electronics, Back to School promotion, Apple retail
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