Tinder is using AI to figure out who you’ll really like

In 2015, Tinder introduced a new feature called the “Super Like.” We all know you can swipe right to let a user know you’re interested. But if you’re really interested, that’s where the Super Like comes in. Swiping up meant you Super Liked a person. Now, Tinder is launching a new feature called “Super Likeable,” and it uses AI to figure out who you’re likely to Super Like.

Users are limited to using Super Like once a day. But Tinder’s AI will present you with four different people it thinks are worthy of your Super Likes. You’ll get one free Super Like to use on one of these Super Likeable people. Users have no say over when Super Likeable people appear to them, and you can’t go out and find them; it’s just a feature you’ll occasionally find while using Tinder. It’s worth noting that this feature is similar to the way one of Tinder’s rivals works: Coffee Meets Bagel delivers matches it thinks you’ll like every day.

The feature is currently limited to users in New York and Los Angeles, but it will likely roll out to the wider Tinder audience soon. It will be interesting to see how spot-on the AI actually is in regard to the people it thinks users will Super Like.

Via: TechCrunch

Source: Tinder

Researchers create ultrasound needle for internal surgical images

Minimally invasive surgeries are appealing because they typically mean less scar tissue, shorter recovery times and a lower risk of infection. But they have their downsides as well. Getting a good look at the tissue being targeted during a minimally invasive surgery can be quite difficult, and often surgeons are limited to using external ultrasound probes and imaging scans taken prior to surgery. But new research published today in Light: Science & Applications presents a potential new option — an optical ultrasound needle.

Within the needle are two optical fibers. One generates ultrasonic pulses by delivering brief flashes of light and the other detects the light that’s reflected by the tissues in the body. “The whole process happens extremely quickly, giving an unprecedented real-time view of soft tissue,” Richard Colchester, an author of the study, said in a statement. “Using inexpensive optical fibres, we have been able to achieve high resolution imaging using needle tips under 1 mm,” said co-author Adrien Desjardins.

So far, the researchers have tested the ultrasound needle during heart surgery in pigs and they hope to test it out in other clinical applications that use minimally invasive techniques as well. They’re also working towards using the technology in humans. You can check out the video below for more info on the needle.

Image: Finlay et al. / Light: Science & Applications

Via: Phys.org

Source: Light: Science & Applications

Periscope’s stream tipping is available outside the US

Periscope’s livestream tipping system is no longer a US-only affair — the Twitter-owned service has expanded its Super Broadcaster program to Canada, Ireland and the UK. As before, livestreamers who’ve received enough Super Hearts (which viewers pay for with in-app purchases) can apply to become Super Broadcasters and trade those Hearts in for real money. Periscope will only take a $1 cut. Effectively, it’s a spin on Twitch’s cheers or YouTube’s Super Chat. You’re rewarding streamers you like and encouraging them to treat it as more of a business than a hobby.

Periscope will widen the program to more countries “as soon as we can.”

The Super Broadcaster initiative is a way for Twitter to improve Periscope’s viability as a business, but it’s also a bid to prevent the brand from sharing Vine’s ignominious fate. Vine was popular to the point where it had stars known primarily through their short looping clips, but there was no easy way for them to get paid. They eventually drifted to other, larger services where it was easier to rack up advertising deals. While Periscope’s move won’t necessarily stop some streamers from preferring services like Instagram (its 800 million-plus users are hard to ignore), it may be ideal for broadcasters who want to make an income from fan support rather than ad deals.

Via: TechCrunch

Source: Periscope (Medium)

Razer Phone review: A tough sell, even if it’s great for gamers

Razer is mostly known for its gaming hardware, so it was a little surprising when the company acquired phone-maker Nextbit earlier this year. Eleven months later, and it finally revealed the results of that acquisition: The Razer Phone. Just like the rest of Razer’s lineup, the company’s first smartphone was built with gaming in mind. Even so, the Razer Phone has features that would please non-gamers too. Whether it’s worth $700, however, is another question.

Hardware

At first glance, the Razer Phone looks like a larger, sturdier version of the Nextbit Robin, except that instead of plastic, the Razer is wrapped in anodized aluminum. I have to admit, however, that I was not immediately impressed with the Razer Phone’s design. It just looks like a boring black slab that doesn’t appear remarkably different from other Android handsets.

Measuring 6.24 inches long by 3.06 inches wide by 0.32 inch thick and weighing 6.95 ounces, it’s also sort of hefty. It was pretty hard to use one-handed with my small hands. What’s more, the Razer Phone has straight sides and sharp corners all the way around, which can dig into your hands. Still, the all-aluminum body does give the phone a premium feel, which can’t be said about the Robin.

Like the Robin, the Razer Phone has a power button on the right side that doubles as the fingerprint sensor. It worked well in my tests, and I was able to wake the phone with a slight touch. Sitting right above the power button is a slot for both the SIM and a microSD card. On the left side are two volume buttons, while the front-facing 8-megapixel camera sits above the display. On the back of the phone is a 12-megapixel dual-lens camera; one wide-angle lens with a f/1.7 aperture and a f/2.6 telephoto zoom lens. There’s a dual-tone LED flash next to the camera as well.

On the bottom is a lone USB-C port, and — just like the latest iPhones and Pixels — the Razer Phone does not have a headphone jack. Instead, it comes with a USB-C-to-headphone adapter that packs a 24-bit THX-certified digital-to-analog converter. Or, of course, you could just use a pair of Bluetooth headphones.

Internal specs include a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor, an Adreno 540 GPU, 8GB of RAM, 64GB of storage, and support for up to 2TB microSD cards.

Display and sound

If you’re going to boast that your phone is “made for gamers,” then the display had better deliver. Thankfully, for Razer, it certainly does. The screen is an absolutely gorgeous Sharp IGZO 5.7-inch QHD (1440 x 2560) IPS edge-to-edge display, with bright, rich colors and brilliant detail. What’s even more impressive is that the screen refreshes at rates as high as 120Hz, which is really unheard of in a globally available smartphone like this one — it’s the same refresh rate found on the iPad Pro and a Japan-only Sharp Aquos R Compact.

What this translates to is a wonderfully smooth gameplay experience, which is especially useful in action-packed titles like Titanfall Assault or Final Fantasy XV. Not all games can take advantage of the 120Hz refresh rate — most developers cap their games’ FPS in order to support all displays — but Razer is working with select devs to optimize their games for its display. Developers for games such as Shadowgun, Arena of Valor and Final Fantasy XV are already on board. Thankfully, you don’t need to be gamer to appreciate this higher-than-usual refresh rate: sifting through apps and scrolling down long webpages look smoother and more natural than on other devices. Once you see this super-fast refresh rate in action, you’ll wish it was the smartphone standard rather than the exception.

That’s not to say the screen itself is perfect, though. While it’s perfectly usable (and playable) indoors, the display is, unfortunately, hard to see in bright daylight. I often had to shield the screen with my hand just to check my notifications, and trust me, that’s not a great way to live.

Sandwiching the display on the top and bottom are two front-facing speakers, which are probably the best speakers I’ve heard on a smartphone. Each has its own amplifier and, as the phone is tuned with Dolby Atmos for Mobile, there’s hardly any distortion or crackling — even at high volumes. In short, the audio is loud, immersive and an absolute treat when playing games, watching shows on Netflix or just playing your favorite tunes on Spotify.

Software

The Razer Phone ships with Android 7.1 (Nougat) and though the UI is fairly clean, it does ship with the Nova Prime launcher preloaded. A favorite among Android users, the Prime launcher lets you customize everything from the look and feel of the desktop to mapping gestures to a variety of different functions. For example, you can map it so that swiping up will expand notifications, or so that double-tapping triggers Google Assistant. Of course, if you’d rather have vanilla Android, you can always remove the launcher. Razer is confident that it’ll get Android 8.0 (Oreo) in early 2018.

On top of that, Razer is also working with several game publishers to create custom themes that you can download from the Razer Theme Store. You’ll have to create a Razer ID account for this, but once you do, you can download and apply whichever gaming-inspired theme you fancy.

One preloaded app that I particularly like is called Game Booster. This app lets you customize the frame rate, resolution and processor clock speed for each individual game, which is great if you’d rather not make global changes that affect the entire phone. For example, if you want your games running at 120, you can set that accordingly, while leaving the rest of the phone at a lower refresh rate to conserve battery. The app also has a couple of automated adjustments. There’s Power Save mode, which automatically downscales settings to save battery, and Performance mode, which maxes out all the settings for the best gameplay experience possible.

When you do optimize the game for performance, the results are pretty great. I played a few graphically-rich games like Alto’s Adventure and Titanfall Assault and was very pleased with the rich colors and sharp detail. To be fair, they were very good even without the optimizations, but the higher resolution and increased refresh rate made them look that much smoother and sharper.

A word of caution: If you were expecting the cloud-backup solution that Nextbit’s Robin was known for, you won’t find that here. Instead of the phone offloading unused apps like Nextbit did, you’ll just have to store them the old-fashioned way — on local storage. Thankfully, the Razer Phone’s sizable 64GB of space (and up to 2TB of additional storage via microSD card) should be good enough for most people. As for documents and photos, you can store them in the cloud, thanks to Google Photos and Google Drive, just like any other Android phone.

Camera

The Razer Phone’s built-in camera is very basic, with the ability to toggle flash, HDR and a few extra features like a visual grid and a timer, but not much else. I appreciated the tap-to-focus ability, but that’s standard for most phones these days. Shutter speeds feel a touch slow, and if you do decide to use HDR, it’s even slower, with a delay of one to two seconds. You can quickly launch the camera by double-pressing the power key, and holding down the shutter button will take photos in burst mode. That’s really it.

The front-facing 8-megapixel camera takes decent selfies, with bright colors and sharp detail, but there was nothing that made me prefer it over other selfie cams. As for the photo quality of the rear camera, the results were OK but not great. Pictures taken in daylight were plenty sharp, but colors were a bit muted and weren’t as rich as I would like. Low-light photos were hit or miss as well — some looked acceptable given the right lighting conditions, but the ones that were less adequately lit looked fuzzy and noisy. As far as cameras go, you can do much, much better.

On the one hand, it’s really no surprise the camera is in the shape that it’s in. This is Razer’s first phone, and as we’ve seen with devices like the Essential PH-1, it’s very difficult for a team without loads of experience to nail a smartphone camera on their first try. That said, the Razer Phone’s camera falls well short of what we expected from a device that costs this much — I’m pretty sure gamers like to take nice photos, too. For what it’s worth, Razer has acknowledged these camera issues and it says it’s working on updates to improve the experience. We’ll see how things change once those updates are released, but for now, merely OK photos are the best you can hope for.

Performance and battery life

As mentioned earlier, the Razer Phone ships with a Qualcomm 835 Snapdragon processor as well as an Adreno 540 GPU and 8GB of RAM. I spent most of my time with the Razer Phone checking email, looking at Twitter, watching YouTube videos and playing games, with a lot of multitasking in between. For the most part, I had no noticeable issues with lag or slowdown. There were a few occasions when apps crashed during gameplay, but that didn’t happen often.

I was particularly impressed with the Razer Phone’s 4,000 mAh battery. During moderate use peppered with several intense gaming sessions, the phone easily lasted a day and a half between charges. I should note here that I used the phone under default settings, where the screen refreshes at 90hz and then changes depending on whether a higher frame rate game is running. The phone does get a little hot if you’re playing a particularly action-intensive game — Titanfall Assault, for example — but it cools down quickly. The Phone also comes with Qualcomm QuickCharge tech that lets it charge from zero to around 85% in just under an hour.

The competition

Due to the Razer Phone’s price, I thought it fair to compare it to phones of a similar price range. The Essential, for example, initially sold for around $700 (it’s since dropped to $500, however) and has a 5.7-inch QHD screen too. It doesn’t have the same refresh rate as the Razer, but that display is nothing to sneeze at, either. Yet, the Essential falters when it comes to its speakers and doesn’t do well when it comes to photo quality.

When compared to other Android flagships, the Razer Phone holds its own in terms of price and battery life. The Pixel 2 is $649 while the Pixel 2 XL is $849, and both also promise a pretty impressive battery life, each lasting more than a day with average use. The Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus up the ante with Super AMOLED “Infinity Displays” that wrap all the way around, with a design language that is far sexier than the Razer’s blocky look. The Samsungs also have great battery life, with the S8 Plus lasting around two days on average. But you’ll have to pay for that, as the S8 and S8 Plus are $750 and $850 each.

Wrap-up

Razer definitely nailed the “phone for gamers” ethos, with its beautiful display, buttery smooth performance and ear-tingling speakers. Its performance as a regular ol’ phone isn’t too bad either, as those same qualities are great for other fun activities like watching videos and listening to tunes. Plus, battery life is stellar, which is great news for gamers and non-gamers alike. That said, if you wanted a stylish phone with a good camera and a display that works great outdoors, we’d advise you to look elsewhere. For those who care about gaming above all else, though, Razer has your back yet again.

Samsung’s W2018 flip phone has a variable aperture camera

Smartphone makers are always pushing for the fastest-possible camera aperture, and until today, the record was held by LG V30 with its f/1.6 lens. But it didn’t take long before Samsung hit back with an even lower f-stop.

Earlier today, the Korean giant announced the W2018 which is its tenth extravagant dual-screen flip phone — likely priced at above $1,500 — made exclusively for China Telecom’s “Heart Of The World” charity series. To our surprise, rather than simply repackaging existing flagship components into this form factor, Samsung actually threw in some new tech this time: not only does its 12-megapixel main camera come with an even lower f/1.5 aperture, but it can also switch to f/2.4 for a deeper depth of field when lighting is ideal.

While this is the first time that variable aperture is applied to a smartphone’s fixed lens since the Nokia N86 MP, Samsung was surprisingly quiet about this rare feature. Thankfully, we came across a close-up video of the W2018’s main camera in action, and the mechanism appears to be a miniaturized version of conventional aperture blades, except it’s limited to two aperture settings. The effectiveness of such variable aperture on a smartphone camera remains to be seen, but at least this gives Samsung a good head start, especially if this tech does end up on the upcoming Galaxy S9 — we may find out as soon as January.

The camera is otherwise pretty much identical to those on the S8 series and the wide-angle imager on the Note 8: it features large 1.4um pixels, dual-pixel auto-focus and optical image stabilization.

Another first for Samsung’s premium line of flip phones here is the addition of Bixby, which started supporting Chinese voice input as of last month. Of course, this means you have a new dedicated button on the side of the phone to toggle Samsung’s very own digital assistant.

Much like its predecessor, the W2018 features two 4.2-inch 1080p Super AMOLED touchscreens, a rear fingerprint reader, dual SIM slots, NFC, a 5-megapixel f/1.9 selfie camera and a surprisingly small 2,300 mAh battery. Luckily, the rest is as you’d expect on a modern flagship device: Snapdragon 835 chipset, 6GB of RAM, a storage option of 64GB or a whopping 256GB plus a USB-C port (yes, the W2017 still had a micro-USB port). There’s even an iris scanner if you prefer using that to unlock, but it’s only accessible when you flip open the phone.

At the time of writing this article, neither Samsung nor China Telecom had yet to confirm the price for the W2018; we tend not to hear about it until much later on (not that any of us outside of China are going to buy one, anyway). But what we do know is that both parties have donated a total of four million yuan (about $605,000) to the China Youth Development Foundation to help build ten “Heart Of The World Samsung Smart Schools” in rural areas next year. Each of these schools will be equipped with PCs, tablets, smartphones and interactive whiteboards, in the hopes of helping impoverished children as well as influencing other schools by training teachers with these equipments.

Via: Engadget Chinese

Source: Jason Wang (Sina Weibo), Samsung, Sohu, Sina Tech

Chrome on Windows will block third-party apps that cause crashes

Google says that around two-thirds of Windows Chrome users use third-party applications that interact directly with the web browser, like antivirus or accessibility software. These apps have typically injected code into Chrome to work correctly, but people that use these kinds of code-injecting apps on Windows are 15 percent more likely to see Chrome crashes. To curtail this issue, Google will start blocking code injection apps from Windows Chrome in three phases, starting in July 2018.

Chrome 66, due out in April of next year, will start warning users after a crash, telling them that injected code is the culprit for their issues, and then helping them remove the specific software. In July 2018, Chrome 68 for Windows will start blocking code injected by third-party software. If that keeps Chrome from launching, the browser will restart and allow it, but will also request that the user remove the software. In January of 2019, Chrome 72 will block apps that try to inject code automatically, no questions asked (though some software will still be allowed, like accessibility software, input method editors and Microsoft-signed code).

Via: Ars Technica

Source: Google

Uber, but for toxic techbro culture

Some companies are just born with an infinite number of chances to keep doing everything wrong and yet somehow seem immune to the consequences. Uber is one of those companies. Uber’s latest scandal — a fat hack and its dirty cover-up — is just one in a long line of Uber-riffic examples on just how far a certain kind of privilege gets you.

The ride-sharing company only this week admitted to getting seriously hacked in October 2016. Its breach exposed personal information of 57 million users and leaked the license numbers of 600,000 drivers. Uber didn’t report the breach to anyone, especially not victims or regulators. The company paid $100K to the hackers in hush money (as if that actually works) and concealed the payment in an expense column called “bug bounty.”

Uber’s new CEO Dara Khosrowshahi found out about it just after he took over from Travis Kalanick in September, but sat on it for two more months while he ordered an internal investigation.

The company’s Chief Security Officer Joe Sullivan was ousted over the debacle, a mess that brought state lawsuits and federal questions. A few days after kinda-sorta facing the press over it, a letter emerged saying that Sullivan and his fellow security officers Craig Clark and Matt Henley insisted on using encrypted, disappearing messaging apps to avoid creating evidence that could be used in a lawsuit.

It’s a uniquely Uber state of affairs. Yet this wasn’t the first time Sullivan and Henley’s Uber team purposely used apps like Wickr to avoid leaving a trail.

Back in July 2016, four months before the hack and cover-up, a Yale researcher filed suit against Uber alleging price-fixing and violation of antitrust law. It later came out that Uber’s Chief Security Officer, the same Joe Sullivan, was asked by Uber lawyers to dig up dirt on the Yale researcher.

Sullivan — incidentally, Facebook’s former Chief Security Officer — forwarded the attorney’s request to the company’s head of Global Threat Intelligence, Mathew Henley — also incidentally Facebook’s former “e-crimes manager.” Court-obtained documents showed that both parties used Wickr and encrypted email “to avoid potential discovery issues.”

The kind of malignant hubris it takes to make the day-to-day of a security team into a premeditated harm machine is remarkable enough on its own. I mean, that’s quite a culture you’ve got there. Just imagine the interesting things Facebook’s security team must’ve gotten up to!

But hey. That was then, and this is Uber.

Uber launched in March 2009, when San Francisco was still reeling from the Great Recession. As is the custom, around every ten years a tech bubble bursts. All the techies helplessly watched as their mostly useless, perennially over-funded ideas exploded in their faces and made them as penniless as the poor people they’d previously stepped over to get their lattes.

The economy tanked; former high-rolling, coke-huffing, web-famous dot-com douchebags around town suddenly found themselves working in cafes, bitterly wondering why the meritocracy had forsaken them. Future Uber drivers, one and all.

All I’m saying is, it takes a special kind of person to fantasize about a white-glove, luxury, on-demand car service during a brutal recession — and launch it in a city with a world-famous homeless crisis. Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp, the two techbros who created Uber are those kind of people. The kind that start a company that not only embraced an obsession with flaunted wealth to rival the 1980s, but embodied the ideas and ideals of a libertarian playground.

And by “embodied” and “ideals,” I really mean “performed a Stanford Prison Experiment on everyone who wasn’t an executive.”

Uber was the ultimate “unicorn.” The darling of the startup scene. Uber’s early success meant that nearly every pitch by startup jocks “in Silicon Valley seemed to morph overnight into an ‘Uber for X’ startup.” Companies worshipped Uber, praying they could become the next “Uber for” anything, copying everything about Uber they possibly could.

And indeed, some were — like Wag, the “Uber for dog walking.” Companies and founders humiliated themselves by saying they were going to be “Uber for shipping,” “Uber for beauty,” and “Uber for bike repair,” among many, many other things (even “Uber for Uber wanna-bes”).

For several long, truly repugnant years in the Bay Area, everyone wanted to be Uber.

The funny thing about libertarian playgrounds like Uber is that they’re really only a playground for the bros at the top. They didn’t name it “Uber” after some god of frat boys and indifference, but it would’ve made sense.

Echoing the aspirations of a slave-owning class was practically the company’s spiritual tagline, as well as the brutal reality of its company culture. Uber centered its business model on drivers as sweatshop labor. It’s re-invention of the workplace was a virulently insecure techbro’s wet dream. Uber onboarded its new employees by having them pledge to Uber’s 14 core values, the heart of which emphasize “meritocracy,” a Silicon Valley principle that has long proven to be foundational to the startup and tech world’s massive race and gender problem. Still, Uber’s prized values also included “toe-stepping,” making bold bets, and to “always be hustlin’.”

That “meritocracy” part is probably the most important piece of this little Grimm’s fairy tale for the ages. It’s the hallmark of white male privilege. If the White House was an engine, the lie of meritocracy — and its key component, white privilege — are its oil.

Not surprisingly, people of color haven’t been part of Uber’s core values. A study last year found that Uber and Lyft have a pattern of discrimination against black passengers. “Waiting times for black Seattle passengers were 35% longer, and Boston drivers cancelled rides for black passengers more than twice as frequently,” press reported.

Anyway, under the banner of “toe-stepping” Uber became Lord of the Flies. After an exhaustive investigation NYT wrote:

Interviews with more than 30 current and former Uber employees, as well as reviews of internal emails, chat logs and tape-recorded meetings, paint a picture of an often unrestrained workplace culture.

(…) One Uber manager groped female co-workers’ breasts at a company retreat in Las Vegas. A director shouted a homophobic slur at a subordinate during a heated confrontation in a meeting. Another manager threatened to beat an underperforming employee’s head in with a baseball bat.

It was almost as if Uber brought its own rope to the gallows. In a 2014 GQ article, Travis Kalanick referred to Uber as “Boober” because of how the company got him laid. Two years later, engineer Susan Fowler published a detailed blog post describing a deeply-ingrained system of discrimination and sexual harassment by her managers. She had gone ignored by Uber’s HR department.

No surprise there: when Eric Alexander was Uber’s president of business in the Asia Pacific he obtained the medical records of a customer who was a rape victim: He was sure she was lying.

Despite the arrest and sentencing of the driver, Alexander refused to believe the woman had actually been raped, and was keen to convince others of this belief. At the same time Kalanick bragged about “Boober” Alexander was showing the rape victim’s medical records to Kalanick and Uber’s SVP Emil Michael. “In addition,” press wrote, “numerous executives at the car-hailing company were either told about the records or shown them.”

According to press covering her post about sexual harassment at Uber, “Ms. Fowler said the culture was stoked — and even fostered — by those at the top of the company.” Shortly after, in an emergency board meeting about the issues Fowler raised one male board member cracked a sexist joke about women talking too much.

It’s hard to figure out which of the 14 core values covers user privacy violations. Would that be “toe stepping”? The most famous incident was when Josh Mohrer bragged in 2014 to a female reporter about tracking her movements in a Uber without her consent. Though the nonconsensual spying — Uber’s so-called “God view” — had been documented as far back as 2011. When the world found out Uber execs were using “God View” feature to nonconsensually spy on customers in real time, the company told press it had strong policies against employees accessing users’ trip information.

But according to Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting, the company wasn’t coming clean. “Uber’s lack of security regarding its customer data was resulting in Uber employees being able to track high profile politicians, celebrities, and even personal acquaintances of Uber employees, including ex-boyfriends/girlfriends, and ex-spouses,” a court declaration detailed.

Interestingly, these very roads led back to Uber’s security department. Former senior security engineer Michael Sierchio told Reveal that Uber’s privacy protections for users were pretty much just a gesture. “When I was at the company, you could stalk an ex or look up anyone’s ride with the flimsiest of justifications,” he said. “It didn’t require anyone’s approval.”

Uber’s company culture, and its conduct, are a reflection of Silicon Valley and all her tech companies. And it’s a free for all! Seriously. If Uber is the ultimate unicorn and a leading example of Valley success, and its playmate Facebook, no one here seems to care about anything but themselves, at least until they’re caught.

There is no end to Uber’s prison experiment on all of us, nor of its self-entitlement at any cost. Kind of like the Trump White House. In fact, it’s a lot like the Trump White House, with whom Kalanick stubbornly defended working with until he was all but forced to resign. Outcry over the Muslim Ban — and Uber’s breaking of the taxi strike at JFK during the detentions, prompted the #DeleteUber hashtag. The pressure for Kalanick to resign from within Uber mounted, as the hashtag cost the company 200,000 users.

Really, so many good times. Remember when California forced Uber to remove its self-driving vehicles from the road? That was last year, when the state canceled the company’s controversial pilot program in San Francisco after a week of reports of dangerous traffic violations, Uber denied the violations even happened, and state officials had to step in.

There was also “Greyball” as reported by the New York Times, “a worldwide program to deceive the authorities in markets where its low-cost ride-hailing service was resisted by law enforcement or, in some instances, had been banned.” But wait, there’s more! In August the public learned that the Justice Department “has taken preliminary steps to investigate whether managers at Uber Technologies Inc. violated a U.S. law against foreign bribery.”

This is all from the company that began this year as the most valuable startup in the world. Yet simultaneously, in January 2017, Uber had lost a historic amount of money in a record amount of time: $2.2 billion in 9 months.

I mean, in case you’re wondering exactly how much a bunch of techbros can get away with.

Kalanick stepped down as CEO in June, much to the outrage of his servile fellow techbros, but Uber still struggles to wrest control from his hands. The firing of security team lead Joe Sullivan after the hack and cover-up investigation seems positive, yet that new CEO Dara Khosrowshahi knew about it for months before its victims did isn’t exactly a great look for a new Uber. Travis Kalanik may be gone, his legacy permeates the walls, the framing, the foundation.

Travis Kalanick himself summed it up best perhaps, when he yelled at an upset driver to ‘take responsibility’ for his ‘own shit’.

Okay, I’ll stop now.

Images: Richard Levine/Corbis via Getty Images (Coffee shop); Mehdi Taamallah/NurPhoto via Getty Images (Wolf of Wall Street / DiCaprio); REUTERS/Danish Siddiqui (Kalanick / Uber)

Twitter is making excuses for allowing hate speech

Twitter sure is having a hard time explaining and enforcing its policies around hate speech. Earlier this week, the company responded to Trump’s retweet of violent anti-Muslim propaganda, telling Engadget that some videos may remain up if they are newsworthy or of public interest. Today, Twitter changed that position, saying that, instead, the tweets in question are still on the service because they are permitted based on the company’s current media policy.

However, Twitter’s policy against hate speech clearly states that “You may not promote violence against or directly attack or threaten other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or disease. We also do not allow accounts whose primary purpose is inciting harm towards others on the basis of these categories.”

The media policy today’s tweet references says that “Some forms of graphic violence or adult content may be permitted in Tweets when they are marked as sensitive media. However, you may not include this type of content in live video, or in profile or header images. Additionally, we may sometimes require you to remove media containing excessively graphic violence out of respect for the deceased and their families if we receive a request from their family or an authorized representative.”

Twitter’s two policies are vague and confusing at best, if not outright conflicting. It’s certainly not good for a platform that continues to be ripe for abuse and similar instances occur regularly. We’ve reached out to the company for further comment and will update this post when we hear back.

To clarify: these videos are not being kept up because they are newsworthy or for public interest. Rather, these videos are permitted on Twitter based on our current media policy. https://t.co/RqEQy3skgc

— Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) December 1, 2017

Source: Twitter

3D-printed bacteria ink could be used to treat burns

In a new study published today in Science Advances, researchers present a 3D-printable ink that contains bacteria and they say that depending on what species of bacteria it holds, the ink stands to have a number of useful applications. “Printing using bacteria-containing hydrogels has enormous potential, as there is such a wide range of useful bacteria out there,” Patrick Rühs, an author of the study, said in a statement.

The scientists behind the material have dubbed it “Flink,” for “functional living ink and it’s composed of a hydrogel mixed with both bacteria and the nutrients required to keep that bacteria alive. It can be 3D-printed into nearly any shape, but the challenge was finding the right texture. If the ink is too stiff, the bacteria aren’t be able to move and in some cases aren’t able to secrete useful products, limiting their benefits. However, if it’s too thin, the structures aren’t able to hold their shapes. “The ink must be as viscous as toothpaste and have the consistency of Nivea hand cream,” said Manuel Schaffner, a researcher on the project.

The research is in the early stages, but the ink could be used in many different ways. In the study, the researchers showed that with one type of bacteria, the ink could be used to break down a toxic chemical often produced as a byproduct in the chemical industry while a second type of bacteria that naturally secretes cellulose could be used in medical applications, like burn treatments and skin replacements, for example. With other species of bacteria, the researchers envision uses for cleaning up oil spills, sensing toxins in drinking water or studying how bacteria form biofilms.

The next steps are to find ways of speeding up printing times and scaling up production.

Via: The Verge

Source: Science Advances

MacRumors Giveaway: Win a ‘Baxter’ Storage Shelf for Your iMac

For this week’s giveaway, we’ve teamed up with Understands to give MacRumors readers a chance to win one of several “Baxter” storage solutions for the iMac.

Joe Baxter
Currently available through a Kickstarter project that launched this week, Baxter is a series of rear-mounted storage options designed to add more storage space to your iMac.

Nigel Baxter
There are several different Baxter configurations, each of which is made from a lightweight laminated birch wood and mounts to the back of an iMac. Every one of the Baxters is available with metallic paint, a walnut veneer, a stock image, or a custom print at varying price points. Configurations and starting price points are as follows:

• Nigel Baxter ($45) – A single shelf for the rear of the iMac, able to hold a few accessories.
• Shira Baxter ($45) – A six-shelf arrangement that’s designed to hold hard drives or other small accessories.
• Mary Baxter ($45) – Two wide shelves that can hold twice as much as the Nigel.
• Joe Baxter ($55) – Two shelves like the Mary Baxter, with 8 cable wraps for keeping your cords organized.
• Art Baxter ($75) – A customized backing for the iMac that does not include any shelves.

All of the Baxter prices listed above are entry level. Customization and walnut veneer are more expensive, but for those who have access to a laser machine or who are crafty, there are options to buy raw design files or a DIY kit at much lower prices. Design schematics can be purchased for as little as $2, while DIY kit pricing starts at $20.

Mary Baxter
Baxter storage solutions fit onto the back of iMacs with no tools or adjustments required, and they are compatible with both 21.5 and 27-inch iMac models. Understands says they’ve been manufactured to add stability to the Mac, so the weight of accessories should not be a problem.

Shira Baxter
Baxter storage solutions can be purchased right now from Kickstarter with an estimated ship date of January 2018, but we have 15 to give away to MacRumors readers. Winners can choose the configuration and color of their choice. 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 winners and send the prizes. 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 or older and Canadian residents (excluding Quebec) who have reached the age of majority in their province or territory are eligible to enter. To offer feedback or get more information on the giveaway restrictions, please refer to our Site Feedback section, as that is where discussion of the rules will be redirected.

a Rafflecopter giveawayThe contest will run from today (December 1) at 11:00 a.m. Pacific Time through 11:00 a.m. Pacific Time on December 8. The winners will be chosen randomly on December 8 and will be contacted by email. The winners will have 48 hours to respond and provide a shipping address before new winners are chosen.

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