Milo Yiannopoulos has resigned from Breitbart News
Editor for Breitbart News, Milo Yiannopoulos, announced that he is resigning his position at the news network effective immediately. The move comes amid a firestorm of criticism after a video recently surfaced in which he advocated for adults to be able to have sex with minors.
Break: MILO resigns from Breitbart pic.twitter.com/pSQnJ0b9vA
— Michael M. Grynbaum (@grynbaum) February 21, 2017
This of course isn’t the first time the self-styled “provocateur” and prominent white nationalist has faced backlash over his incendiary rhetoric. He was permanently banned from Twitter last year after leading an army of trolls in harassing actress Leslie Jones over her role in the Ghostbusters reboot. A recent speaking engagement at UC Berkeley drew thousands of protesters as well as a few rioters.
However the final straw for not only Breitbart but also the American Conservative Union, which uninvited him this week from speaking at its conference, and Simon & Schuster, the publishing house that just cancelled his book contract, was a video in which Yiannopoulos defended pedophilia.
“We get hung up on this sort of child abuse stuff,” Yiannopoulos states. “To the point where we are heavily policing consensual adults.”
“In the homosexual world, particularly, some of those relationships between younger boys and older men — the sort of ‘coming of age’ relationship — those relationships in which those older men help those young boys discover who they are and give them security and safety and provide them with love and a reliable, sort of rock, where they can’t speak to their parents,” he continued.
Source: Michael Grynbaum (Twitter)
NASA to announce a ‘discovery beyond our solar system’ tomorrow
Exoplanets, those that orbit stars beyond our own Sun are the most likely places that we’ll discover extraterrestrial life. On Wednesday, February 22nd, NASA is planning to announce a “discovery beyond our solar system” at a press conference in Washington DC.
There’s no word on what the announcement will entail beyond “new findings” on exoplanets, that information is under embargo with the journal Nature until the press conference starts. But given that they’re pulling in prominent researchers from around the world to speak, chances are this is going to be a big deal.
NASA will be broadcasting the event live at NASA TV beginning at 1pm ET. Members of the public are encouraged to follow along and ask questions via twitter using the #askNASA hashtag. The agency also plans to hold an AMA on Reddit at 3pm for anyone that wants additional information.
Via: The Independent UK
Source: NASA
Snail venom provides a new way to treat chronic pain
The Conus regius’ venom is bad news for its prey, and it’s been proven harmful to humans as well. For instance, a 2009 clinical case describes a diver who had trouble moving his arm for 12 hours after an attack. However, scientists from the University of Utah see hope in the ocean dweller’s powerful venom. In fact, research suggests it could be used to develop a new treatment for chronic pain.
This could mean a viable alternative to opioids, which are widely abused in the US. New York officials reported the number of deaths related to Oxycodone, Hydrocodone, and other narcotic medications in the state was 1,227 in 2013, nearly four times the amount in 2004. These drugs are addictive because they overstimulate the brain’s reward system with dopamine, which leads to chemical dependence. However, a compound isolated from the venom, Rg1A, works differently, according to The University of Utah. The newly discovered compound blocks a type of pain pathway receptor known as nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChR). This is a non-opioid pathway, meaning that pain relief can be achieved without habit-forming amounts of narcotics.
In tests, rodents were treated with chemotherapy drugs, which made them very sensitive to cold and touch. Some of the rats were injected with the compound, and unlike their unmedicated peers, didn’t feel pain. The effects proved to be long-lasting, too. The compound passed through the rats’ bodies in about four hours, but the researchers found that it continued to dull pain a full three days after the injection.
This has J. Michael McIntosh, M.D., a professor of psychiatry at the University of Utah Health Sciences, optimistic about Rg1A’s potential not to just treat pain, but to prevent it.
“Once chronic pain has developed, it is difficult to treat,” he said. “This compound offers a potential new pathway to prevent pain from developing in the first place and offer a new therapy to patients who have run out of options.”
Current pain-relief drugs work primarily on opioid-based pathways and aren’t effective enough to truly alleviate chronic pain, the university notes. These developments make it possible to treat chronic pain by targeting it through different means. Assuming human testing goes well, we could see the use of narcotics drop and the rise of pain-free patients rise.
Source: The University of Utah
‘Complicit’ is an undercover look at the dangers of making gadgets
Even though Apple and Foxconn vowed to improve factory worker conditions back in 2012, life is still pretty rough for the people building the gadgets we use every day. Complicit, a new documentary from Heather White and Lynn Zhang, hopes to shine a light on what it’s really like for Foxconn factory workers, who produce devices for Apple and other companies.
The film, which was mostly shot undercover, follows Yi Yeting, a former Foxconn employee who was diagnosed with leukemia at the young age of 24. The cause? Benzene poisoning from a cleaning agent that was used while making the iPhone and iPad. Apple banned the substance, along with n-hexane, from its assembly lines back in 2014, following reports that it was leading to leukemia among factory workers. But Yeting is still fighting for Foxconn and other companies to acknowledge benzene poisoning and other issues.
Complicit will screen during the Human Rights Watch Film Festival in March, and hopefully it’ll be widely available soon.
VTech’s new Android tablet has its own kid-friendly messaging system
VTech’s tablets and other kids’ gadgets have always focused on creating a child-safe walled garden, but it’s fallen far short of having an ecosystem like what children can get on an iPad or Amazon Fire Kids Edition. Its new Android tablet for children four and older opens things up a bit by allowing app downloads from outside the VTech ecosystem, as well as messaging with iOS and Android devices — all with a parent’s supervision.
The unnamed handset is being billed as a “smart communication and gaming device,” and that’s what the 40 included apps generally focus on. There are learning games for subjects like math, spelling and music in keeping with VTech’s general product line. But there’s also a web browser with parental controls so a child can do a little surfing over WiFi in their downtime.
The included messaging app, KidiCom, allows kids to send text, pictures and small animations to people on their contact list, even if they’re not using a VTech device. Anyone with an Android or iOS can download the program and request permission to chat — but first, they have to be approved by the child’s guardian, who can also review all communications to make sure things are on the up and up.
If a kid gets tired of learning and chatting, or just wants to check out some hot new app, parents have the ability to download new programs onto the device via the Amazon app store. It’s not quite Amazon’s robust Freetime Unlimited service — parents will have to pick out content à la carte and pay for some apps, but it’s definitely a much larger selection of content than VTech can provide on its own.
The 5-inch touchscreen isn’t exactly Gorilla Glass but it is shatter resistant, and the device is chunky thanks to the generous bumpers on each side. A 2MP camera at the top does double duty as both a front and back shooter thanks to the ability to swivel. And if your kid fills up the 8GB tablet with apps or photos, no need to worry — the device takes microSD cards up to 32GB.
The tablet might not have a name yet, but it’ll run you $100 when it’s released this fall. That’s the same amount a Fire Kids Edition costs, which at this point offers you a lot of the same features and content along with a two-year protection plan. The inter-device messaging is certainly intriguing though, and hopefully won’t suffer from any privacy breaches like the one that plagued the company a few years ago.
Ants run on tiny treadmills to help track their behavior
It’s relatively easy to study animals’ movement by plunking them on treadmills, but how do you do that with a creature as small and fragile as ants? Build a tiny custom treadmill, that’s how. Scientists have crafted a contraption that let them study the homing behavior of ants on a treadmill for the first time. In many ways, it amounts to an optical mouse flipped on its back. An air-cushioned styrofoam ball serves as the actual running surface, giving the ant freedom to move as far as the tether (dental floss) allows without falling off; optical sensors from computer mice track their gait, speed and changes in direction.
The actual treadmill run revealed new insights into how ants behave. It confirmed existing techniques that ant use to get back to their nest, such as counting their strides and using the Sun’s position as a guide. However, it also revealed that lost ants jump into a search pattern where they slow down and loop around until they have some sign of where to go.
While the machine was designed for a specific test, it’s easy to see the broader possibilities. This should be useful for experiments where researchers want to study insects in controlled conditions without imposing too many restrictions on the critters in question. While ants and other species frequently act as collectives, this could shed a lot of light on what they do when they’re on their own.
Via: Live Science
Source: Company of Biologists
Qualcomm’s and Intel’s Latest LTE Modems for Smartphones Exceed Gigabit Speeds
Ahead of Mobile World Congress next week, Qualcomm and Intel have separately announced the latest LTE modems for smartphones with theoretical download speeds exceeding so-called “Gigabit LTE,” aka 1 Gbps. Apple sources LTE modems for iPhones from both chipmakers.
Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon X20 modem is the first-announced modem to support Category 18 download speeds up to an ultra fast 1.2 Gbps, with Category 13 upload speeds of up to 150 Mbps. That builds upon Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X16, which has a peak download speed of 1 Gbps.
Qualcomm said the Snapdragon X20, built on a leading-edge 10nm FinFET process, supports more combinations of LTE carriers and a higher number of total LTE spatial streams. This “vastly expanded flexibility” will for more operators around the world to deploy Gigabit LTE in the future.
Qualcomm said the first products with the Snapdragon X20 modem are expected to be available in the first half of 2018.
Intel’s new XMM 7560 modem [PDF] supports LTE Advanced Pro for up to Category 16 download speeds “exceeding” 1 Gbps, and Category 13 upload speeds of up to 225 Mbps. The XMM 7560 modem is Intel’s fifth-generation LTE modem, and the first to be manufactured based on its 14nm process.
Intel said the XMM 7560 modem is expected to sample in the first half of this year and move into production soon afterward.
Both modems support 5x carrier aggregation, 4×4 MIMO configurations, up to 256-QAM, and other technologies. Both chips also work with a number of cellular technologies, covering most LTE, CDMA, and GSM standards, meaning that equipped smartphones will be usable on most networks around the world.
Overall, Qualcomm appears to remain a step ahead of Intel, but it’s a rather moot point for now given that Australian carrier Telstra currently has the only Gigabit LTE network in the world. There are also no Gigabit LTE-capable smartphones, although the first ones are expected to be announced at Mobile World Congress next week.
Nevertheless, the broader availability of Gigabit LTE is on the horizon. More smartphones will inevitably support the faster speeds in the future, while AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile are all testing or plan to deploy Gigabit LTE this year in the United States, on the bigger path towards next-generation 5G networking.
But even then, it is important to remember these are just theoretical speeds. In the latest OpenSignal testing, based on aggregated data from nearly 170,000 smartphone users, average LTE download speeds at AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile ranged between 8 Mbps and 17 Mbps—a far cry from 1 Gbps.
Apple could theoretically include the Snapdragon X20 or Intel XMM 7560 in a future iPhone, thereby making it a Gigabit LTE-capable smartphone, but it may elect to wait until more networks are up to speed.
iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus are equipped with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X12 or Intel’s XMM 7360 depending on the model. The X12 has a theoretical peak download speed of up to 600 Mbps, while the XMM 7360 reaches up to 450 Mbps. Qualcomm models were unsurprisingly found to be faster in subsequent testing.
Tags: Intel, Qualcomm, LTE
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Some 2016 MacBook Pro Owners Experiencing Keyboard Problems
Apple’s latest line of notebooks introduced an entirely revamped keyboard featuring flatter keys built using a second-generation butterfly mechanism, designed to optimize for stability while also maximizing travel. The butterfly mechanism was originally introduced in the ultra thin MacBook, but a newer version was implemented in the MacBook Pro.
There have been mixed opinions about the keyboard of the 2016 MacBook Pro due to its vastly different feel compared to previous-generation MacBook Pro models, and it appears the new butterfly mechanism may also be less reliable compared to older construction techniques.
A growing number of customers who have purchased a 2016 MacBook Pro are running into issues with the keyboard, including non-functional keys, strange high-pitched sounds on some keys, and keys with a non-uniform feel. There are dozens of threads both on MacRumors and on the Apple Support site.
One of the most significant issues appears to be keys that make different higher-pitched sounds than other keys in some cases, a problem that was caught on video by MacRumors user monstermac77. As is demonstrated, when the caps lock key is pressed, it makes a sound that’s much different than the other keys on the keyboard.
According to monstermac77, the issue is only reproducible when the Mac is warm, a complaint that has been echoed by several other MacBook owners in the thread, suggesting heat plays a role in activating the problem. Some users are experiencing the overly-clicky sound without heat, though.
Within a few hours of using my Late 2016 MacBook Pro 15″ with Touch Bar, I noticed some of my keys made a very high pitched click on-key-up (when I lifted my finger from the pressed down key). The affected keys: Caps Lock, left Option, and very occasionally: Delete, ‘H’, and ‘C’.
The high-pitched clicking sound is irritating, but it isn’t as serious as some of the other issues MacBook Pro owners have been having with the keyboard. In some cases, certain keys on the MacBook Pro miss clicks, enter double letters, or refuse to respond at all, a problem that we here at MacRumors have also experienced. MacRumors reader rroch describes the problem:
My 2016 15” MacBook Pro arrived yesterday (as one of the first). 63 of the 64 keys work fine. But the i-key most of the time types the letter twice. I suggest you test out your keyboard thoroughly. With auto-correct it can be easy to think it works. However, my password contains the letter i, and I quickly became super frustrated not being able to get my password right (come to think about it, maybe that’s why they added Touch ID, so you don’t need the keyboard for passwords). So take a document, turn off auto-correct, and check all the keys. I found that the failure happens more frequently with a slight delay before releasing the key.
It’s not clear what’s causing the issue with the keys that suddenly become non-functional, but the butterfly mechanism is sensitive and can be interrupted by something as simple as a bit of dust. In our case, with the machine we had that was experiencing issues with a specific key, the problem cleared up on its own, but other MacBook owners have not been so lucky.
One other minor keyboard complaint is an inconsistent feel across keys, with some keys that feel spongier than others or that don’t press down consistently. This seems to be related to a problem with the butterfly mechanism which some users report having fixed with a needle or other thin tool, but most people should not try that sort of repair at home.
While many of the complaints seem to be focused on the 15-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar, some users have also had problems with both the 13-inch model with a Touch Bar and the 13-inch model with no Touch Bar.
Customers who are experiencing keyboard problems should visit an Apple Store or an Apple Authorized Service Provider. In most cases, Apple is offering repairs and replacements for affected users, especially those who have verifiable hardware problems related to skipping keys, but some MacRumors readers have needed to go through several replacement machines to find a keyboard that doesn’t experience issues.
Keyboard replacements are also not a simple matter on a machine as complex as the MacBook Pro, and users should expect repairs or replacements to take multiple days. According to reports from customers who have sought repairs, Apple is outright replacing most Touch Bar models while sending non-Touch Bar models out for repairs.
Related Roundup: MacBook Pro
Buyer’s Guide: MacBook Pro (Neutral)
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The Average iPhone User in the U.S. Spent $40 on Apps in 2016
iPhone owners in the United States spent an average of $40 on premium apps and in-app purchases on each of their devices in 2016, according to new data shared by analytics company Sensor Tower. That’s up from an average of $35 in 2015.
Unsurprisingly, most iPhone users are spending their money on games. 80 percent of U.S. App Store revenue in 2016 was generated by games, and on average, iPhone users spent $27 on game-related content.
Spending on apps in the entertainment category – such as Netflix and Hulu – was at $2.30 on average, compared to $1.00 in 2015, perhaps due to Netflix starting to offer in-app subscription options at the end of 2015. According to Sensor Tower, Netflix contributed over $58 million in gross revenue to the entertainment category in 2016, up from $7.9 million in 2015.
Average spending on music also rose slightly in 2016, from $3.40 to $3.60, and social networking went from $1.80 to $2.00. Spending on apps in the photo and video category jumped from $0.30 to $0.70 during 2016.
While spending on apps is up across the board, Sensor Tower saw a decline in the average number of apps installed on each iPhone – 33, down from 35 in 2015. Games continues to be the most popular app category, with an average of 10 games installed on each iPhone.
According to Sensor Tower, its estimates are based on data pulled from 132 million active iPhones in the United States during the 2016 calendar year (January 1 to December 31). The numbers use estimates from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners and the company’s own Store Intelligence platform.
All revenue estimates included in the report are gross amounts spent by consumers before deducting Apple’s 30 percent revenue cut.
Tags: App Store, Sensor Tower
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