Neither April has arrived yet, nor Google has announced details for the April security update. However, that isn’t stopping Samsung from rolling out the patch, which has already started hitting Galaxy J3 (2017) units in some markets. Specifically, Netherlands and Luxembourg are the regions where the update is currently live. Needless to say, there’s currently no information on what all issues are fixed in the patch. Given the roll out has just begun, it may take time for the notification to pop up on your handset’s screen, so be patient. Via
Are you convinced that just a handful of Reddit communities stir up the majority of trouble? You now have some data to back up your theory. Stanford researchers have released a study showing that just 1 percent of subreddits instigate 74 percent of a… Engadget RSS Feed
He will be making investments in real estate, e-commerce, and innovation in China and India.
Travis Kalanick announced on Wednesday that he is starting his own investment fund. The former CEO of Uber, who only recently resurfaced publicly since his June 2017 ouster, wrote that he has been working on what his next move will be over the last few months.
To that end, he’s been making personal investments in both for-profit and not-for-profit companies, and is creating this new fund to manage those ventures. Kalanick wrote that the fund, called 10100, would focus on “large-scale job creation” with investments in e-commerce, real estate and emerging tech in China and India.
In other words, Kalanick will be keeping himself busy by financing and sitting on the boards of companies, at least until he finds his next full-time job. Fresh off selling almost a third of his Uber shares to SoftBank Capital, Kalanick certainly has cash to spare. That transaction netted Kalanick almost $ 1.4 billion.
Many have questioned whether Kalanick would be able to take a step back from his role at Uber following his departure, or if he would attempt to continue to run the company from his board seat. But, the SoftBank transaction also came with governance changes that whittled his voting power and that of other board members. Now the number of shares directly correlate to the amount of decision-making power.
Kalanick did not respond to requests for more information at the time of publication.
Despite its overwhelming success, the human brain peaked about two million years ago. Lucky for us, computers are helping us understand our brains better, but there may be some consequences to giving AI a skeleton key to our mind. A team of Japanese researchers recently conducted a series of experiments in creating an end-to-end solution for training a neural network to interpret fMRI scans. Where previous work achieved similar results, the difference in the new method involves how the AI is trained. An fMRI is a non-invasive and safe brain scan similar to a normal MRI. What differs is the…
Malek Murison explains how a drone-racing startup has started using its technology to help first responders in disaster zones.
Edgybees first arrived on the scene at the start of 2017, with an AR racing game designed for use with DJI drones. Back then, the ability to design an augmented track and compete in the sky against friends was an exciting, if niche, application.
But all that has changed. Edgybees has moved beyond drone racing and is now applying its AR technology to solving real-world problems, such as in search and rescue, and disaster/emergency responses.
The Israeli startup today announced that it has raised $ 5.5 million from backers including Verizon and Motorola. The funding will enable the company to expand its augmented reality (AR) drone software into new verticals.
Edgybees’ First Response application can give life-saving insights to emergency responders. The most obvious use is orientation: labelling areas on a map from above can give recovery teams on the ground key reference points.
The technology was put to the test in the Florida Keys in the aftermath of Hurricane Irma. Mapping overlays allowed officials to identify distress calls in flooded areas. The First Response app was also used by firefighters battling blazes in Northern California in October.
From drone racing to life saving
Using AR technology to save lives is a world away from saving gamers from boredom. Edgybees Co-founder and CEO Adam Kaplan said, “The overwhelming response by commercial and industrial drone users looking to leverage AR, and partner with us in the fields of fire, public safety, and search and rescue, has been amazing. We can’t wait to expand the next set of drone applications into new markets.”
Motorola Solutions chief technology officer, Paul Steinberg, represents one of several backers that see Edgybees’ technology as having use cases beyond public safety.
“Motorola Solutions is committed to exploring technology-driven solutions to our customers’ challenges,” he said. “We see powerful potential for Edgybees’ AR software to help us deliver rich, real-time intelligence to public safety and commercial users during the moments that matter.”
The combination of augmented reality and drones is an exciting one for commercial service providers and first responders. The ability for pilots to draw and label areas while flying can provide vital orientation to teams on the ground, as well as reference points in emergency situations.
Edgybees has followed a similar path to DroneBase, a US pilot platform that has also secured venture funding to expand its augmented reality application, AirCraft, in commercial markets. Meanwhile DJI itself has expanded from making toys to owning 85 percent of the consumer drone market worldwide.
I/O news is abound these days: yesterday we saw that the registration for the ticket raffle was closed and then the preliminary schedule was published revealing focus on Assistant, Chrome and the Web, a new Android Wear session, but still no signs of TV and Auto (though they might be added later). Now we have the first sign of ticket invites being issued to those who tossed their name in the hat.
A Florida man claims that one of his AirPods started smoking while he was listening to music. As reported by WFLA, Tampa resident Jason Colon was working out at his local gym when he noticed his right AirPod “billowing” smoke…
In the dead of winter 20 years ago, Netscape — inspired in part by a treatise on Linux and free software development — released the source code for its Netscape Communicator web browser. The move was unprecedented. This was a publicly tra… Engadget RSS Feed
Solar geoengineering has been touted as a promising method of ensuring that our planet remains habitable by artificially cooling the climate. However, embarking on such a path could have grave consequences if the process were to be abruptly reversed, a new study finds.
Geoengineering takes many different forms, many of which use radically different principles to achieve the same end goal. Solar geoengineering revolves around the use of aerosols to reflect sunlight back into space. The technique doesn’t have a direct impact on carbon in the atmosphere, so it’s not a definitive solution to climate change. However, its proponents say that it can reduce temperatures, giving us some extra time to remove more carbon from the atmosphere.
A new study led by Christopher Trisos, an ecologist at the National Socio-environmental Synthesis Center, assesses the risks of taking such an action for a limited period of time. The paper, published in Nature Ecology & Evolution, suggests that the sudden termination of a solar geoengineering program could cause greater harm than climate change itself.
“The study looks into a rapid start and a rapid termination of solar geoengineering, which is probably not the way the world would do it,” said Janos Pasztor, executive director of the Carnegie Climate Geoengineering Governance Initiative, speaking to Futurism. “But we live in a not-so-perfect world. Things can happen. I share the implied worry of the authors that there is a plausible scenario that a single country, or a small group of countries, or even a wealthy individual could actually engage in solar geongineering deployment. That could result in exactly this kind of rapid start and rapid stop.”
This kind of geoengineering, the study finds, would have a massive impact on regional ecosystems. The researchers compared changes to temperature and precipitation in a scenario where a solar geoengineering project ran from 2020 to 2070 to one where it was not. The former recorded changes to local climates that were between two and four times more dramatic.
This would mean that species would be forced to travel in one direction to maintain a similar level of precipitation, and another to pursue the temperature they are accustomed to. It’s thought that areas that are rich in biodiversity, like tropical oceans and the Amazon basin, would be at the greatest risk.
“Certain trees grow in certain temperature zones, certain animals live in certain temperature zones, and so on – that’s the normal balance of things. If you change the temperature slowly, some animals can move with the temperature. We’ve seen some fish move north as the waters become warmer. Some plants can move too, but of course much slower.”
Look Before You Leap
The problem with a quick start and a quick termination of a solar geoengineering project is that even if species are able to adjust to the initial changes to their environment, further changes would come just a few decades later.
“Solar radiation management would have to be sustained and increased to offset increased greenhouse gas warming,” said Dennis L. Hartmann, a professor in the University of Washington’s department of atmospheric sciences, when he spoke to Futurism in November 2017. “If the solar radiation management is halted for any reason, then a rapid warming would result, with likely catastrophic consequences.”
One of the biggest challenges in implementing solar geoengineering is the fact that any project would have to be subject to political proceedings spanning decades. It could only ever come to fruition if there was an international agreement to pursue these changes, at which point an institution would have to be put in place to ensure that it’s upheld.
The Carnegie Climate Geoengineering Governance Initiative maintains that further exploration of the risks and benefits, and a shared governance framework are prerequisites for any deployment of solar geoengineering. This is because, they say, the consequences of a rapid deployment are far from the only potential problem.
“This [study] feeds in to exactly what is needed,” said Pasztor. “It’s just one of many, many issues where we need to know more, but this is clearly in that direction, so I salute this kind of study.”
“We will unveil new smartphones when it is needed. But we will not launch it just because other rivals do,” said LG Electronics Vice Chairman Cho Sung-jin. After, an anonymous official from the company told The Korea Herald that Cho ordered the LG G7 development team to start over from scratch. This will likely push back the unveiling from March to April. A new time frame will be selected later, perhaps around the Lunar New Year (February 16). The company has been struggling to find a strong selling point for the current LG G7 prototypes, according to in-house speculation from LG (as…
Are you convinced that just a handful of Reddit communities stir up the majority of trouble? You now have some data to back up your theory. Stanford researchers have released a study showing that just 1 percent of subreddits instigate 74 percent of a…
In the dead of winter 20 years ago, Netscape — inspired in part by a treatise on Linux and free software development — released the source code for its Netscape Communicator web browser. The move was unprecedented. This was a publicly tra…
