Google finally breaks ground on its impressive ‘landscraper’ campus in London
For years, the plans for Google’s London campus were just that— plans. The ambitious project stayed stuck on the drawing board, with the web giant abandoning parts of the original plan and then swapping architecture firms as it dithered over the final look.
Having finally settled on a striking design that’s become known as the “landscraper” — for being much longer than it is tall — the company’s CFO Ruth Porat and its U.K. managing director Ronan Harris on Tuesday broke ground at the site in the city’s vibrant King’s Cross district.
They were joined by London mayor Sadiq Khan, who hailed the project as further confirmation of “the capital’s reputation as one of the world’s leading technology hubs.”
Designed by Heatherwick Studio and Bjarke Ingels Group, the campus will be home to 7,000 Google employees when it opens. The 11-story structure will stretch for 330 meters and cover some 100,000 square meters. Google will occupy about 65 percent of the space, with the first floor given over to stores and an open market hall.
Well known for its love of offbeat workspaces, the landscraper will offer Googlers a multi-use games area for a slew of sports activities as well as a three-lane, 25-meter swimming pool. Massage rooms and nap pods will be available, too, should the stresses of London life become too much at any point.
L to R: Joe Borrett of Real Estate & Construction; Google CFO Ruth Porat; London mayor Sadiq Khan; Google U.K.’s Ronan Harris
More opportunities to chill out will be available on the roof, where workers will find a lush garden stretching almost the entire length of the building. Workers will be able to lose themselves among wildflowers and woodland plants, or simply kick back and enjoy a drink or bite to eat at its coffee shop.
And yes, the landscraper will have some areas set aside for work, too.
Google has been working on the design of its London office for more than four years. The original plan, which featured an exterior similar to the final design, was dreamed up by British architecture firm Allford Hall Monaghan Morris (AHMM) and was given the go ahead in 2013. But a short while later, Google had second thoughts and asked AHMM to rethink the plan before the two ended their collaboration in 2015. Google ended up settling with Heatherwick Studio and Bjarke Ingels Group, which changed parts of the design according to Google’s requests. Now they just have to build it.
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Xiaomi’s excellent Mi Robot Vacuum is on sale for just $269
Xiaomi’s Mi Robot Vacuum, Mi Max 2 phablet, and Mi Note 2 are heavily discounted right now.
Xiaomi’s Mi Robot Vacuum is one of the best products in this category. It’s affordable, has a minimalist design aesthetic, and features a powerful 1800Pa motor that does a magnificent job of cleaning the entire house. And starting today, you’ll be able to get your hands on the vacuum cleaner for just $269 using coupon code XIAOMIVAC when ordering through GearBest’s China warehouse, or XMIVCHK for orders through the Hong Kong warehouse.
The Mi Robot Vacuum relies on an ultrasonic radar sensor, a gyroscope, cliff sensor, and an accelerometer to intelligently map out the interior of your house, plotting out a course automatically cover all corners. It goes back to its charging base automatically once cleaning is completed, or if the battery level is low.
Xiaomi Mi Robot Vacuum review
One of the best features of the Mi Robot Vacuum is its ability to sync with the Mi Home app, which lets you set automated cleaning schedules, area covered by the vacuum cleaner, battery life, and the route the vacuum is taking in real-time. If you’re interested, hit up GearBest from the link below and use coupon code XIAOMIVAC or XMIVCHK to get the vacuum for $269.
See at GearBest
Mi Max 2 and Mi Note 2 also see price cuts
The Chinese retailer is also discounting other Xiaomi products, including the Mi Max 2. The Mi Max 2 made its debut earlier this year, offering a 6.44-inch 1080p display backed by a Snapdragon 625, 4GB of RAM, 64GB storage, 12MP back camera, and a massive 5300mAh battery.
Xiaomi Mi Max 2 review: Bigger is better
The Mi Max 2 has limited LTE bands (1/3/5/7/8/38/39/40/41), but if you’re in a market where you can access LTE on those bands, GearBest is running an enticing deal. The retailer is selling the Mi Max 2 for $209 with coupon code Bfriday038.
See at GearBest
Finally, last year’s Mi Note 2 is now available for just $299. This particular variant of the device doesn’t have global LTE bands, but it will work with most carriers in India and the UK (1/3/5/7/38/39/40/41).
The hardware isn’t all that bad either: the Mi Note 2 features a Snapdragon 821, 4GB of RAM, 64GB of internal storage, dual-curved 5.7-inch 1080p display, 22.5MP camera at the back, 8MP front shooter, and a 4070mAh battery with Quick Charge 3.0.
See at GearBest
Google voice recognition could transcribe doctor visits
Doctors work long hours, and a disturbingly large part of that is documenting patient visits — one study indicates that they spend 6 hours of an 11-hour day making sure their records are up to snuff. But how do you streamline that work without hiring an army of note takers? Google Brain and Stanford think voice recognition is the answer. They recently partnered on a study that used automatic speech recognition (similar to what you’d find in Google Assistant or Google Translate) to transcribe both doctors and patients during a session.
The approach can not only distinguish the voices in the room, but also the subjects. It’s broad enough to both account for a sophisticated medical diagnosis and small talk like the weather. Doctors could have all the vital information they need for follow-ups and a better connection to their patients.
The system is far from perfect. The best voice recognition system in the study still had an error rate of 18.3 percent. That’s good enough to be practical, according to the researchers, but it’s not flawless. There’s also the matter of making sure that any automated transcripts are truly private and secure. Patients in the study volunteered for recordings and will have their identifying information scrubbed out, but this would need to be highly streamlined (both through consent policies and automation) for it to be effective on a large scale.
If voice recognition does find its way into doctors’ offices, though, it could dramatically increase the effectiveness of doctors. They could spend more time attending patients and less time with the overhead necessary to account for each visit. Ideally, this will also lead to doctors working more reasonable hours — they won’t burn out and risk affecting their judgment through fatigue.
Via: 9to5Google
Source: Google Research Blog, ArXiv.org
ProtonMail will use encryption to lock down your contacts list
About a year and a half ago, ProtonMail opened up its previously invite-only beta encrypted email service to the public, along with a couple of mobile apps. A couple of months ago, ProtonMail created a free tier for its VPN service, too. Now the company is offering ProtonMail Contacts, which it’s calling “the world’s first encrypted contacts manager.”
The service works within ProtonMail’s email system, and includes both zero access encryption (which means that even ProtonMail won’t know what’s stored on their servers) and digital signature verification (which makes sure no one else has tampered with your data). You can encrypt specific fields of your contact data, including phone numbers and note fields. Email addresses are not protected this way, says the company, so that it can filter your emails and know where to deliver your message. ProtonMail notes the many benefits of this sort of protection. “For example, if you are a journalist with a confidential source,” writes the company in a blog post, “it is very important to protect the phone number or address of that source.”
How does it work, though? The company says that it creates a new private and public key pair for each email account; it’s used only for contact encryption. The private key is made on the client side and uses a derivative of your own password so that ProtonMail won’t have access. Contact fields that are encrypted use your contacts public key and can only be decrypted by your private key. The digital signature is verified with your private key, too, which ensures your privacy above and beyond ProtonMail itself.
Via: The Verge
Source: ProtonMail
Belgium moves to ban ‘Star Wars Battlefront 2’-style loot boxes
We learned last week that Belgium’s gambling authority was investigating loot crates in Star Wars Battlefront II over concerns that they constitute gambling. Now, the decision is in, and the answer is a resounding yes, according to Dutch-language publication VTM Nieuws. The commission claims that purchasable add-on boxes, the contents of which are randomized, mix “money and addiction” and thus are a form of gambling.
Belgian Minister of Justice Koen Geens added: “Mixing gambling and gaming, especially at a young age, is dangerous for the mental health of the child.” The commission will now reportedly work through the European Union’s process to execute a total ban. We’ve reached out to Belgium’s Gaming Commission for more details on its next steps and the legal implications of the ruling.
The country isn’t alone in its stance on loot boxes. Just hours ago, Rep. Chris Lee (D) from Hawaii denounced EA’s “predatory behavior” in a speech uploaded to YouTube (first spotted by Kotaku). In the clip, Lee also talks of the detrimental affect micro-transactions have on children, with specific reference to Battlefront II, which he describes as a a “Star Wars-themed online casino, designed to lure kids into spending money”.
Lee is proposing legislation for Hawaii that would prohibit the sale of games containing loot boxes to minors. He claims that introducing a change on the state-level could influence others to follow suit, which would make things sticky for game publishers even if a federal law isn’t introduced.
He also jumped on Reddit to add: “While we are stepping up to act in Hawaii, we have also been in discussions with our counterparts in a number of other states who are also considering how to address this issue.” He continued: “Change is difficult at the federal level, but states can and are taking action.”
Of course, the impact of such a move will reverberate throughout the gaming industry. Although, EA is getting dragged for the game-breaking pay-to-win content in Battlefront II, it’s not the only publisher profiting from micro-transactions. Let’s not forget that Overwatch was also part of the Belgium Gaming Commission’s investigation.
But, despite the inference from the Belgian regulators, the message may have already been heard. Less than a week ago, EA pulled in-game purchases from Battlefront II (albeit temporarily) following the backlash.
Source: VTM Nieuws, Rep. Chris Lee (YouTube)
Uber wants riders to consider more carefully how they rate drivers
In light of the recent revelation of Uber’s hack cover-up, its riders and drivers might want to give the company a big fat zero rating right now.
But when it comes to riders rating drivers, Uber announced on Tuesday it’s making some changes to its five-star system in a bid to ensure they give fairer assessments of their driver at the end of a journey. That’s hugely important when you consider that a driver can lose their chance to work for the ride-hailing giant if their rating slips too low.
Uber’s Aaron Schildkrout said the changes will “make ratings clear and balanced on every trip, and that give drivers more protections and feedback when they need it.”
One notable change is that if a rider wants to give a driver four stars or less, they’ll have to add an explanation via the app first. The idea is that it’ll make the rider consider why they’re giving that particular rating, and allow drivers to find out how they can improve.
Also, if the reason for a sub-five-star rating relates to something like the route taken or heavy traffic, Uber won’t count it toward the driver’s average.
The changes are coming into effect soon, according to Mashable. Uber already applies some of these rules to POOL trips where people can share rides with strangers taking the same route.
Other efforts to discount bad ratings focus on riders’ rating behavior. So if an Uber passenger has a habit of giving drivers a bad rating, the company is more likely to prevent them from affecting the driver’s overall rating.
To help riders better understand how the platform makes sense of ratings and therefore how they might impact a driver’s overall rating, Uber is also introducing an in-app scale that explains precisely what each star means.
This latest change is the second effort this year by Uber to improve its rating system. In April, the company made rider ratings more visible within the app so that it might make them consider their behavior more during subsequent rides. That’s something that might help Larry …
Other efforts by Uber HQ to keep drivers onside include the introduction of an in-app tipping feature, and the ability for passengers to send a compliment about a ride direct to the driver. Earlier this year, research suggested Uber was having trouble holding onto its drivers, which could be for any number of reasons, though anger among some drivers over Uber’s changing compensation policies could be a significant factor.
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OnePlus 5T is now the company’s fastest selling phone
After just six hours of sales, the OnePlus 5T becomes the company’s fastest selling device.
Availability of the OnePlus 5T kicked off yesterday, and the company is now announcing that after six hours of sales, the phone is its fastest selling device yet. The OnePlus 5T brings a new 18:9 display with minimal bezels and a new secondary camera at the back, while retaining the same great internal hardware as the OnePlus 5.
OnePlus didn’t share any sales figures, but the company said the same of the OnePlus 5 earlier this year. Based on launch-day sales alone, it looks like the OnePlus 5T outperformed its predecessor.
Record-breaking launch day sales – in just 6 hours, the #OnePlus5T has become our fastest selling device. Order now. https://t.co/vErBcGRqXX pic.twitter.com/0DvxL1dqUA
— OnePlus (@oneplus) November 22, 2017
The phone is marginally more expensive when compared to the OnePlus 5, with a starting price of $499 (versus $479). That’s not the case in India, where the OnePlus 5T is retailing at the same price point as the OnePlus 5.
Did you pick up the OnePlus 5T? Let us know in the comments below.
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Live-action Pokémon movie lands its lead actor
We’re one step closer to finding out what a live-action Pokémon film looks like. Legendary Pictures has already nabbed writers for its Detective Pikachu movie (in the form of Guardians of the Galaxy scribe Nicole Perlman and Gravity Falls penman Alex Hirsch), and now it’s secured a lead as well. Rising talent Justice Smith — best known for playing the protagonist on Baz Luhrmann’s short-lived Netflix show The Get Down — has been tapped to star in the film based on the Nintendo 3DS game, according to Variety. Rob Letterman (Monsters vs. Aliens, Goosebumps) is directing.
It’s unclear at this stage who Smith is playing in the flick — we’re guessing he won’t don a yellow onesie for the role of the titular character (although, he could be voicing a CGI Pikachu). Before then, the 22-year-old is on track to gain a lot more exposure, thanks to the upcoming Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.
Meanwhile, Pokémon fever is currently in full swing, courtesy of the latest Pokémon Go event, which has already seen players catch over 500 million pocket monsters just days since it kicked off. And, in case you didn’t notice, the franchise’s latest anime film Pokémon the Movie: I Choose You! briefly graced theaters earlier this month.
Despite the abysmal fate of Assassin’s Creed, Hollywood hasn’t given up on video game adaptations. Next year’s contenders include a live-action take on the classic arcade game Rampage, starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, and a Tomb Raider reboot. Rather more exciting is news that Nintendo is exploring a Super Mario Bros. animated movie.
Source: Variety
Amazon’s Fire 10 HD tablet is only £110 right now (UK)
Amazon has slashed the price of its Fire tablets with the 10 HD coming in at only £110!
For a limited time only — this promotion will only last until stock runs out, and at these prices, we bet it won’t take long! — Amazon UK is offering some substantial discounts on its Fire tablets. The Fire 8 is only £49.99 and the Fire 10 HD is just £109.99, perfect for gifts this upcoming holiday season.
The Fire 10 HD is Amazon’s value-driven tablet, offering some incredible bang for your buck. Not only does it have Alexa, but also access to all of the online retailer’s services like video, music, and books. Just like the Fire 8 tablet, you won’t find the most powerful processors, nor will you be blown away by the display, but at under £50 and £110 for the two offerings, you really cannot go wrong.
Read our Fire 10 HD review
If you’re thinking about getting a tablet for the kids to keep them occupied and provide entertainment, knocking a full £30 off the Fire 8 and £40 off the Fire 10 HD is an enticing deal indeed.
See Fire 8 at Amazon See Fire 10 HD at Amazon
Dark streaks on Mars may not be caused by flowing water
In 2015, scientists analyzing mysterious dark streaks on the surface of Mars found evidence that they were formed by liquid water — an exciting discovery that meant microbial life might be supported on the planet. But new findings published this week in Nature Geoscience suggest it might not be liquid water after all.
The dark streaks in question are known as recurring slope lineae (RSL), first spotted in 2011, and they’re found on Martian hills. Intriguingly, they come and go with the seasons, which is one of the reasons why water was suspected to be involved. But in 2016, researchers using the Mars Odyssey’s Thermal Emission Imaging System found that there was probably very little water in those dark streaks — just above 3 percent by weight, which is about the same level of dryness as the Atacama Desert.
The new findings out this week support that assessment. Using the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera attached to the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, researchers found evidence that the streaks were more likely caused by shifting sand and dust, not flowing water. The scientists observed that the streaks were only found on steep slopes — steep enough for solid matter to slip downhill — whereas if water were the culprit, the streaks should be found on less steep hills as well.
Though liquid water may not be the cause of the RSL, water probably still plays a role. Researchers have already discovered hydrated salts in the RSL — salts with water molecules trapped in their crystal structures — and that could explain why the streaks appear during warmer times of the year and go away when it gets cold. But the new study says “liquid water volumes may be small or zero.”
What’s clear though is that Mars has some interesting geology and figuring out how much water it has, when it had more of it and where is an ongoing investigation. “RSL probably form by some mechanism that is unique to the environment of Mars,” Alfred McEwen, a researcher on the project, said in a statement, “so they represent an opportunity to learn about how Mars behaves, which is important for future surface exploration.”
Via: CNET
Source: Nature Geoscience
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