A version of the pre-Trump EPA website is online

Longing for a time when the White House didn’t actively deny the effects humans were having on climate change? You aren’t alone. Following the sweeping changes made on Inauguration Day this year, at least three Freedom of Information Act requests were made (per Gizmodo) to bring a pre-Trump-presidency version of the Environmental Protection Agency’s website online.

“This is not the current EPA website,” a red banner on the page reads. “To navigate to the current EPA website, please go to http://www.epa.gov. This website is historical material reflecting the EPA website as it existed on January 19, 2017. This website is no longer updated and links to external websites and some internal pages may not work.”

On the page you’ll find information about the effects of acid rain, climate change (it exists!) and greenhouse gasses. Hell, there’s even a press release about Fiat Chrysler violating the Clean Air Act. But, as Gizmodo notes, it’s a mirror and can’t host everything thanks to the limitations of it not being a full website. For images from AirNow, info regarding the Historic Air Technology Transfer Network, a database of press releases from the EPA or graphs from the Radiation Network, you’ll have to navigate away from the site.

It doesn’t differ too much from the official EPA website that’s online now, but that could change in a heartbeat. Considering the current candidate to run the federal environmental watchdog agency, Scott Pruitt, is a vehement climate change denier, keeping this mirror site up and running could prove pretty valuable.

In his time as attorney general in Oklahoma, Pruitt sued the EPA more than a dozen times over the Clean Power Plan that curtails greenhouse gases, among other reasons. Pruitt’s LinkedIn page describes him as “a leading advocate against the EPA’s activist agenda.”

Via: Gizmodo

Source: 19January2017

Play a piano duet with Google’s AI partner

When Google tries to educate public about its AI research, it often releases tools that playfully explain the grittier, technical corners of artificial intelligence. Like, say, neural network software that looks at objects through your device’s camera and spits rhymes about everyday objects. But they also launch fun tools, like AI Duet, an interactive web-based app that accompanies your piano plinking.

Musician Yotam Mann first debuted the app at an event back in November after staying at Google Creative Lab in New York, then open-sourced the code for it. But since it was a bit of a pain to install, the search giant cleaned it up and released it with a simpler web-based interface. On desktop, your home keys activate a slice of the piano’s middle notes, while mobile users can tap directly on the screen. It’s playful and easy to use, if not totally intuitive about when your AI partner will jump in already.

The app runs off Tone.js, an audio library that Mann built himself, but its accompaniment logic is built off Magenta, Google’s TensorFlow framework for deep learning. But as Mann tells in the video above, it’s not just the AI that’s adjusting to humans: As their digital partner riffed new tones off their original notes, folks kept playing to build a simultaneous harmony, creating a continual play loop. Now that’s some biotech synergy.

Via: VentureBeat

Source: AI Duet

NASA crowdsources better ways to poop in spacesuits

Back in December, NASA and X Prize competition website HeroX announced the Space Poop Challenge to find a hands-free human waste solution that would work for six days in spacesuit. The winning entry was designed by Air Force Colonel Thatcher R. Cardon, Commander of the 47th Medical Group at Laughlin Air Force Base in Del Rio, Texas. Cardon’s background as a family physician and a flight surgeon certainly helped informed his system which features a hygiene wand.

Officially called the MACES Perineal Access & Toileting System (M-PATS), Inverse reports that the wand is covered in tubular fabric that can be used in place of toilet paper. The M-PATS also includes maxi pad-like underwear that unfold inside the space suit. Cardon was awarded a $15,000 prize for the winning entry.

The second place solution, the Air-Powered Urine and Stool Handling (Air-PUSH) system, was also designed by a team of doctors who met while studying chemical engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. Air-PUSH uses body movements to keep waste away from the astronaut before it disinfects and dries it to keep things as clean as possible. Third place went to London-based designer Hugo Shelley who came up with SWIMSuit, a pair of zero-gravity underwear that offer waste management for up to six days.

Now that the competition is over, NASA says its engineers will test different options for waste management as it designs its new spacesuit. Judges selected the winners of the Space Poop Challenged based on which ones could potentially be turned into a viable solution within the next three or four years. Since astronauts typically have to wear spacesuits for several hours, any solution that’s more sanitary than the diapers that are currently used would certainly be a welcome change.

Via: Inverse

Source: HeroX

Google opens massive virtual collection of US presidential history

If you’re an American history buff, you’re in luck. To celebrate President’s Day, Google arts and culture team has just kicked off a monumental historical project focusing on our country’s top office with the American Democracy program.

History geeks will thrill to find out that George Washington’s dentures weren’t actually wooden, as is popularly thought, but rather made from human and cow teeth (and some ivory). Fans of more recent presidents might like to see Barbara Bush’s handwritten taco recipe, which features Doritos as the first ingredient.

That’s just two of the more than 2,000 artifacts in the collection, which includes 158 exhibits in total — a ton of information to get lost in. There are virtual tours of presidents’ homes, insights into their childhoods and even sections on favorite pastimes. That’s all in addition to our commander-in-chiefs’ more public accomplishments.

The massive archive includes pictures, video and text sourced from more than 30 institutions from across the nation, including individual presidential libraries, museums and historical institutions from across the nation. It joins the rest of Google’s plans to bring important cultural, artistic and historical works to the web.

In addition to the thousands of artifacts in this new collection, Google has made 17 new 360-degree virtual tours available, as well. Google Cardboard will let you access places like Mount Rushmore, the Lincoln Memorial and the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. If you’re a teacher, you can use Google Expeditions to guide your students through 14 presidentially-themed tours, including an inside look at the White House.

Via: Mashable

Source: Google

President Trump plans to order a new travel ban next week

President Donald Trump said he will sign an executive order next week that updates his contentious January 27th ban on travelers and refugees from seven majority-Muslim countries. Last week, a federal appeals court ruled to keep a stay on the president’s travel ban, which has been openly opposed by leaders in the technology industry including Google and Facebook. The new executive order will address the legal pitfalls that have paused the first travel ban, Trump said at a press conference today.

“The new order is going to be very much tailored to what I consider to be a very bad decision,” he said. “But we can tailor the order to that decision and get just about everything, in some ways more, but we’re tailoring it now to the decision.”

The January 27th order places a 90-day ban on travelers from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen, halts all refugees from entering the US for 120 days, and places an indefinite ban on accepting refugees from Syria. The ban was enacted immediately, causing large-scale confusion and protests at airports, and spawning multiple lawsuits. More than 100 technology companies signed an amicus brief in support of lawsuits against the order.

State of Washington v. Donald Trump led a judge to put a stay on the travel ban. In a unanimous ruling on February 9th, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals denied the Justice Department’s attempt to overturn the stay.

In that hearing, Washington Solicitor General Noah Purcell argued the state had the right to sue on the grounds of proprietary harms, including lost tax revenue, and parens patriae. He also claimed the Trump administration drafted the executive order as a way to discriminate against Muslims, which would be unconstitutional. Purcell said there was “shocking evidence of intent to discriminate against Muslims” by the Trump administration, including public statements and tweets from the president and his aides.

The Justice Department argued, in part, that Trump’s decision was “unreviewable” because it pertained to the president’s authority to direct national security. The Ninth Circuit judges decided there was “no precedent to support this claimed unreviewability” and that this defense ran “contrary to the fundamental structure of our constitutional democracy.”

At today’s press conference, the president maligned the court’s ruling. “We’re going to put in a new executive order next week some time,” he said. “But we had a bad decision. That’s the only thing that was wrong with the travel ban.”

Trump claimed that the rollout of the travel ban was “perfect” and “very smooth.” However, it led to scenes of panic at airports as travelers were detained or denied boarding their flights to the United States entirely. The State Department estimates 60,000 visas were revoked under the original ban, and that’s not including refugees in the process of legally entering the US. It may have barred an additional 64,000 admitted refugees from entering the country.

The president also said today he initially wanted a one-month waiting period before the ban was implemented, but Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly advised him to enact it immediately. “And he was right,” the president said.

Source: The White House

AT&T will offer unlimited data for all customers tomorrow

Well that didn’t take long. Just a few days after Verizon announced it would start offering an unlimited data plan after years of selling capped data packages, AT&T will be doing the same. As of tomorrow, AT&T will let any current or potential customer buy an unlimited data plan; until now, only DirecTV customers were able to purchased unlimited data from the carrier. Just like Verizon, AT&T offered unlimited data back in the early days of the smartphone boom but moved to limited tiered data packages way back in 2010.

AT&T’s plans are very similar to what T-Mobile, Verizon and Sprint are already offering. That is, unlimited data customers will get full LTE speeds up to 22GB, after which AT&T will reserve the right to de-prioritize those customers’ speeds in times of congestion. Verizon is doing that after 22GB, while T-Mobile de-prioritizes customers after 28GB.

From a cost perspective, AT&T says that four lines of unlimited data will cost $180 a month (plus any device payments you have on your account). AT&T’s press release didn’t say anything about if there would be any HD video or tethering restrictions, and there isn’t any pricing info yet for plans with less than four lines. But it looks like the company’s “stream saver” feature will be on by default, which limits video to standard definition — you should be able to turn that off, at least. We’ll have to check AT&T’s site tomorrow to get all the details, but we’ve also reached out to the carrier and will update this post with anything else we learn.

Source: AT&T

Samsung’s South Korean leader has been arrested for bribery

That took a little longer than expected. Samsung’s vice chairman Lee Jae-yong (better known as Jay Y. Lee) has been arrested over charges of bribery, according to Bloomberg. In early January a court had yet to approve the warrant.

Developing…

Source: Bloomberg

iPhone 8 Expected to Have 3D Facial Recognition Instead of Touch ID

Apple’s widely expected 5.8-inch iPhone with an edge-to-edge OLED display will feature a front-facing 3D laser scanner for facial recognition, corroborating previous rumors, according to JPMorgan analyst Rod Hall.

Hall said the scanner will replace Touch ID on the so-called iPhone 8, as Apple plans to remove the Home button to allow for the edge-to-edge display. His research note claims the so-called iPhone 7s and iPhone 7s Plus could also have a 3D laser scanner based on increased volume of the module within Apple’s supply chain.

The scanner is said to add $10 to $15 per module to the iPhone 8’s bill of materials, which coupled with the OLED display, glass casing, and other increased production costs, could make its retail price up to $100 more expensive than it would be without those features, if Apple looks to maintain a similar profit margin.

The increased costs are in line with a recent report claiming the iPhone 8 could cost upwards of $1,000 in the United States.

Hall believes the switch to facial recognition will help alleviate consumer frustration when Touch ID does not work under wet conditions. He added that facial recognition will potentially be more secure than Touch ID, which could increase Apple Pay adoption among banks and merchants.

The research note said the 3D laser scanner could eventually be used for other purposes, such as augmented reality, but likely not until 2018 at the earliest.

One obvious and potentially most compelling use would be AR/VR experiences in which the user’s hands and other real world objects are being scanned and integrated into a field of view provided by the iPhone mounted into a Google Daydream-like headset. This would open up many interesting entertainment and gaming experiences not available today and might give Apple something extra in an AR/VR accessory compared to Google and others.

He also believes that Apple is likely to eventually open up a 3D scanning API to developers, who could use it to do “everything from determining your shoe size for online orders to helping make sure you are properly fitted on your bike.”

Hall expects a strong iPhone 8 replacement cycle later this year, and he said an announcement about the product is possible as early as WWDC 2017, which kicks off June 5. Apple has not made any iPhone hardware announcements at WWDC since 2010, so treat this claim with a proverbial grain of salt for now.

Related Roundup: iPhone 8 (2017)
Tag: JPMorgan
Discuss this article in our forums

AT&T to Launch New Unlimited Data Plan

Following in the footsteps of T-Mobile and Verizon, AT&T today announced plans to debut a new unlimited data plan that’s available to all of its postpaid customers. The unlimited plan will be available starting tomorrow.

AT&T previously offered an unlimited data plan, but it was limited to customers who were also DirecTV or U-Verse customers.

According to AT&T, the new plan will provide unlimited talk, text, and data on four lines for $180, which is more expensive than T-Mobile’s ONE data plan for four customers and on par with Verizon’s pricing, also at $180 for four lines. A single line is priced at $100.

AT&T is including unlimited calls from the U.S. to Canada and Mexico and unlimited texts to more than 120 countries around the world. Customers are also able to talk, text, and use data in Canada and Mexico with no roaming charges.

“We’re offering unlimited entertainment on the nation’s best data network where and when you want to enjoy more of what you love,” said David Christopher, Chief Marketing Officer of the AT&T Entertainment Group.

AT&T’s $180 price point is after a $40 credit for the fourth smartphone line, which will start after two billing periods. Prior to then, customers will need to pay $220 per month for the plan.

The company’s fine print says that AT&T “may slow speeds” during periods of network congestion for customers who consume more than 22GB of data, which is not a surprise as T-Mobile and Verizon’s plans contain similar caveats. The unlimited plan also includes the Stream Saver feature, which downgrades video to 480p. Stream Saver is enabled by default, but can be turned off online.

With AT&T now offering an unlimited plan for all of its customers, all of the major carriers in the United States have unlimited data plans available, which is impressive because for the last several years, carriers like AT&T and Verizon have been heavily focused on eliminating their unlimited customers.

Sprint and T-Mobile have offered unlimited data plans since August, and T-Mobile’s growing popularity and regular feature additions at an affordable price appears to have inspired AT&T and Verizon to re-adopt unlimited plans.

Verizon announced its unlimited plan earlier this week with inclusions like 10GB of tethering data and HD video streaming, spurring T-Mobile to implement similar changes. With T-Mobile’s new tethering offerings and higher-quality video streaming, it continues to offer the best value at $70 per month for a single subscriber (Verizon’s plan is $80). Sprint’s plan is priced at $55 per month, but its coverage can’t compete with T-Mobile, Verizon, and AT&T, and AT&T’s plan is the most expensive of the four at $100 for a single line.

Tag: AT&T
Discuss this article in our forums

Pokémon Duel: An unoptimized but amusing addition to the franchise (review)

You can probably put the name “Pokémon” on a rock and you would be able to sell it. After the massively successful Pokémon Go, The Pokémon Company wants to keep the momentum and build its mobile portfolio for the franchise. The result is Pokémon Duel, a very polished board game with an incredible amount of depth, modes and replay value.

Developer: The Pokemon Company
Price: Free

Setup

As is the case with more and more games these days, when starting up Pokémon Duel, it starts to download assets by itself. These are rather large, so expect to be stuck on the initial loading screen for quite some time. After this, a short introduction will appear and you will your duel set, get to choose your name and customize your character.

Pokémon Duel Setup

1 of 5

The character customization is fairly acceptable, with several skin colors, hairstyles and hair colors to choose from. If you see a character named RedBlue dressed like Maximillion Pegasus (I know, wrong franchise), and you manage somehow to win, then take a screenshot and I’ll publicly acknowledge your superiority.

Overview

The Pokémon Wheel Pieces in action.

There’s a lot to analyze on this game, because it has a lot of different stuff. Let’s start with the basics of the game. You control six Pokémon tokens. The board has two entry points for each player, and one goal point. Your mission is to get any of your tokens on your opponent’s goal point.

Your Pokémon can move a maximum of four spots per turn. In your turn you can summon a new monster, move a token or attack your opponent. If you decide to attack, then you will get two roulettes on the screen, one for the attacking Pokémon and one for the defending one.

Each specific Pokémon has a roulette associated with it, called Wheel Piece, and this can include attacks, dodge, miss, and attacks with a special effect, such as Confuse Ray or Thunder Wave. These attacks will vary depending on the Pokémon and its rarity. The rarer the Pokémon, the better their attacks.

Attacks have a power value associated with it. For example, Tackle in a Rattata has a power value of 10, but Thunder in a Pikachu has 100. There’s a huge theory behind attacks, so I won’t go into details, but the easy, short way of explaining it is that if the attack you draw is more powerful than your opponent’s, then you knock out that opponent. If you draw something else, then you should see its color. Most of the time, gold is the strongest one, followed by purple and blue. Still with me? Good.

There’s also something called Plates, which are the equivalent of items in the normal Pokémon games. These can be used for increasing your attack, having a chance of spinning again, cure status ailments and so on.

There’s a lot of strategy involved because of the amount of combinations you can have and the style of gameplay you want to apply. Want to be very direct and get to the goal as fast as you can? Then use Pokémon that can move three spots, but at the expense of having weaker attacks at your disposal. Want to kill all of your opponents? Use stronger Pokémon that move less spots. Some Pokémon have special abilities, such as being able to move across an opponent or not being able to become paralyzed. Plates also add a layer of strategy.

Offline or online? That is the question

Online battles are very entertaining.

You can either complete solo quests against the CPU or duel with people online based on the rank you have. The solo quests are very similar to gym leaders in the regular Pokémon games. There are several hotels you have to conquer in order to have the chance of conquering the final grand tower.

You play against different opponents and then fight against a leader. Each opponent, called concierge, will give you a prize at the end, either coins or a new Pokémon token. The hotel owner will give you an emblem, and with that, a new gym… Err, hotel will unlock.

The online part is more interesting. Winning duels increases your rank, and also gives you keys, which can be collected in order to get new figures. At the end of duels you will also receive Time Boosters, which are boxes that you will be able to open after several hours.

Because these are duels against humans, they are much more competitive and fun to do. You will find all sorts of strategies and tokens here, and the most entertaining moments I had while playing this game were there. There’s no way of explaining the happiness of winning against a Lugia and a Giratina with a Charmander.

Oh, the glory, the grandeur, the triumph…

Fusions, Training Center and Shop

Sometimes you will also get some rare metal blocks as part of your boosters. These are experience blocks, which you can use to increase the experience of your tokens. With enough experience, your Pokémon will level up, and you will be able to shift the proportions of your Wheel Piece. With this, you can decrease the area of your Miss blocks, and increase the chances of getting a more powerful attack when spinning the wheel.

Since you only have 50 slots available for Pokémon and blocks, then you can also fuse Pokémon in order to increase experience. Be wary, though, if you fuse a Raichu into your Skarmory, the Skarmory will increase its experience points, but the Raichu will be lost forever.

Gems are kind of expensive but they’re easily obtainable through other means.

In the Training Center, you are able to hone your skills and fight with predefined decks in order to learn tips and tricks about the game’s different strategies. This is also a good way of getting Plates and new figures. If you fulfill some challenges, you will also get some gems in the process.

As in many, many, many games in the Play Store, you have coins and gems at your disposition. Coins are used to fuse Pokémon, while gems are used for different stuff, but primarily to buy new boosters and to open the time boosters you get when playing online. It is not complicated to get them from playing the game, thanks to quests, daily missions and the training center.

However, the easiest way of getting them (well, if you have a credit card and a job or overly-generous parents) is by paying real money from them. Obviously, getting more will yield a higher dollar-per-gem ratio. But let’s put it in perspective. Buying a booster costs 50 coins, while buying 57 coins costs $3.98. This means that each Pokémon commands a $3.49 price.

In the shop you can buy four boosters for 200 gems, with the guarantee that at least one Pokémon will be of rarity EX or R (the highest ones). As expected, there is no way of buying 200 coins in the shop, only 120 for $7.94 or 360 por a whopping $19.88. In-app purchases can get as high as $81.05 for 1960 gems, and you can only buy 50000 gems monthly, in a very vague attempt of balancing the game.

General Impressions

As previously said, there is a great amount of strategy required to build your deck, and then playing the game itself gives you a million possibilities. I found myself constantly saying “one more round,” and ended up playing until 3AM, which is a good sign. With The Pokémon Company behind it, there’s probably much more planned for the game, like special events, online tournaments and similar.

Easy as pie.

Even though luck is a big part of your success and failure, you still need to think your movements through, use Plates at the right time and use the game’s mechanics to your advantage.

However, things go wrong when you evaluate the performance of the game. It’s not like Pokémon Duel stutters or skips frames, but navigating through it is very slow. “Glacial,” to quote Leonard Hofstadter. Each press of an element will show you a “Connecting…” progress at the bottom. This makes going from one screen to another an almost painful experience.

There are more than 200 Pokémon tokens to collect.

Also, I found a lot of problems in which my game lost connection for no reason. Once I was utterly dominating a match, was one or two steps away from winning, and got a “Connecting…” overlay that never went away, which made me lose the game because I ran out of time. After the duel, the overlay never went away, forcing me to stop the game and start it again.

Once I even had game crashing on me when I accessed the stuff. The one place that makes money on the game, crashed on me.

There’s several reviews that talk about corrupted saved data, but I haven’t experienced any. However, plenty of people are complaining about the various connection issues I’ve also seen. Some reviewers point out a very worrisome fact: there’s no Google Play Games integration or any other form of account retrieval. If your phone gets misplaced or damaged, say goodbye to your progress.

Another annoying aspect of the game is that every time I open it, there are new files being downloaded. It seems like the game doesn’t update its files through the Play Store but through its own means, slowing the launch process.

If you are able to cope with the slow navigation and connection issues, though, there’s a very enjoyable game behind, one that could entertain you for months to come and that could turn even better after The Pokémon Company starts adding stuff to it.

Graphics

The game features interfaces very similar to what you would expect from a Pokémon game. Interfaces are colorful, locations are very flashy and futuristic and graphics and Pokémon tokens are very detailed.

Graphics are exactly what you would expect from a Pokémon game.

There are some very cool effects, such as when you open a booster and the Pokémon shows up. Also, although other characters are static, their models sometime change their face expression depending on the situation, which adds a nice touch of reality to them. If you’ve played a recent Pokémon game, then you’ll feel right at home with the design.

The attacks that the monster perform are very basic, though. You will see some electricity rays on Pikachu’s electric attacks, some water on Blastoise’s Surf, and a cool-looking ray when something uses Solarbeam, but don’t expect them to be as good as the latest iterations of Pokémon games have been.

Also, I’ve had some instances of Pokémon tokens not loading and very small visual glitches that interrupt the game’s otherwise impressive graphic performance.

Sound

The sound effects and music on this game are very good. Background music changes on various circumstances, so you won’t hear the same song all over again. Also, when someone is close to capturing their opponent’s base, the music changes to a faster tempo one, which creates a sense of urgency when you are on the verge of losing, and makes you anxious when you’re about to win. It is really effective and adds a lot to the game itself.

Sound effects for every action are spot on. Each button has its own distinctive sound, but it isn’t overwhelming or anything. From the roulette spinning to a Pokémon being destroyed to opening a booster pack, everything has a very nice sound effect accompanying it. Pokémon games are normally praised for their sound and music production, and this one remains true to its roots and reputation.

Conclusion

Pokémon Duel provides endless hours of fun and a lot of replay value thanks to a well-thought gameplay and several game modes using the now ubiquitous Pokémon franchise. Unfortunately, it suffers a lot from performance issues, such as never-ending loading screens, crashes, visual glitches and reported instances of game data loss. It is a shame, since the game itself has a lot going for it. However, I encourage you to give it a try and hope that The Pokémon Company will address problems in subsequent updates.

Download and install Pokémon Duel from the Google Play Store.