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O post Mentirinhas #582 apareceu primeiro em Mentirinhas.

A concept video of a 13-inch "iPad Pro" running a full version of OS X has been posted by Italian consulting company SET Solution (via Funky Space Monkey). The iPad in the video is depicted as having a large form factor with very thin bezels, and is shown displaying OS X Mountain Lion with touch controls. The video also shows off the ability to easily connect an Apple Wireless Keyboard and Magic Mouse to the iPad, enabling a full desktop-like environment.


The possibility of Apple combining OS X and iOS into one unified platform has been a popular topic of discussion recently, as both have begun to share a common sense of design principles. However, an interview with Apple executives Phil Schiller and Craig Federighi in Macworld last month revealed that the company sees the combination iOS and OS X as a "non-goal", with the former saying that the effort would be a "waste of energy" and the latter saying that Apple is focused on building the best products for unique purposes.

Despite this public dismissal, J.P. Morgan analyst Mark Moskowitz predicted earlier this month that Apple is indeed working on a platform that combines OS X and iOS, which is termed as "iAnywhere." Specifically, the analyst states that the combo operating system would work in tandem with an iOS device docked to a secondary display, running as a full-blown computer. Various other companies have experimented with dual operating systems and other hybrid solutions in the past, but mostly to no acclaim from the general public.

Overall, it is unlikely that Apple will debut a tablet running a full version of OS X as seen in the video or a combo operating system anytime soon. However, recent reports do point to Apple releasing a 12.9-inch iPad running a next-generation version of iOS sometime in the future, with a launch projected for late this year or early next year.

Basis, the company behind the Basis Health fitness tracker, has put itself up for purchase and has discussed the possibility of a buyout with tech companies including Apple, Google, Samsung, and Microsoft, reports TechCrunch.


Basis Health Tracker 2014 Edition

The price we’ve heard for any possible activity is “sub-hundred million” which could mean a small return for investors like Norwest Venture Partners, Mayfield Fund and Intel Capital, who have poured over $30 million into the company.

While it is unknown as to how much interest Apple has in purchasing the San Francisco-based company, an acquisition would make sense. Recent reports have suggested that the iWatch will include optical sensors to measure physical functions, and Basis' experience in developing advanced fitness tracking products would make them a natural fit as Apple looks to integrate more health-centric technology into its smart watch product.

Furthermore, Basis' most recent tracker includes the ability to monitor health-related metrics such such as heart rate, sleep activity, movement, perspiration levels, and skin temperature, which is similar to what past reports have indicated as tracking features for the iWatch. Apple is also said to be developing a "Healthbook" app for iOS 8 which could also be bolstered by the technologies currently found in Basis' products.

Over the past few months, Apple has also hired a number of health experts in fields related to heart rate monitoring and fitness tracking. Two executives from pulse-oximetry company Masimo joined Apple, which includes its former Chief Medical Officer. Other health-related hires have also been from C8 MediSensors, a company that develops non-invasive blood monitoring sensors.

Overall, details on the iWatch have been mostly limited, but more information is likely to be revealed as the product's release grows closer. It is unknown when Apple plans to launch the iWatch, but a fall release date alongside iOS 8 and a next-generation iPhone is likely.

doubleTwist, the company behind the popular multi-platform iTunes-compatible doubleTwist Media Player, today brought its new AirPlay Recorder app to the Mac, allowing iTunes users to capture and save streaming audio for offline use.

First introduced for Android in January, AirPlay Recorder is designed to record audio, such as streaming songs from iTunes Radio, using AirPlay. After downloading and installing the app, it will appear as an AirPlay device within iTunes and will record audio after being selected from the AirPlay device list.


The app will record any audio or radio stream played within iTunes to a "Recorder" folder within the Music folder for offline playback. Recording audio is done in real time, which means a four minute song will take four minutes to record, and a reliable Internet connection is necessary because the app checks recording quality.

Apps like AirPlay Recorder, such as Audio Hijack Pro have been previously available, but at a higher price. The legality of AirPlay Recorder and similar apps is unclear, but according to doubleTwist co-founder Monique Farantzos, who spoke to Engadget back in January, the company is unconcerned about the app's legal status.

"Recording has been around for decades, from audio cassettes (remember mix tapes?) to TuneIn radio's recording feature. Given that Apple built their iPod empire on letting millions of people rip CDs based on fair use, we don't see how they could object to this app."

Along with Farantzos, doubleTwist also boasts Jon Lech Johansen as a co-founder, one of the developers behind DeCSS, a computer program able to decrypt content on commercially produced DVDs. Johansen was prosecuted in Norway back in 2002 for developing the software, but was later acquitted.

doubleTwist's AirPlay Recorder for Mac can be downloaded for free from the doubleTwist website. The free version allows users to record 10 second samples while full recording capability can be unlocked for $9.99.

Já presente no cenário brasileiro, apesar de que apenas para demonstração da tecnologia, o Renault Zoe acaba de ganha no mercado europeu um reboque-gerador. O objetivo é ampliar a autonomia do hatch elétrico francês, que originalmente é de 210 km.

O reboque é equipado com um pequeno gerador a gasolina com 600 cm3. Batizado de EP Tender, o motor de origem Tata Motors (o mesmo do Nano) utiliza um alternador para manter as baterias do Renault Zoe em bom nível de carga. Assim, a autonomia chega a 500 km.

A noticia Renault Zoe ganha reboque-gerador para ampliar autonomia (vídeo) foi publicada no site Notícias Automotivas - Carros.

lenaprado:

Power Structure of Oppression

For those that didn't hear the news from earlier this week, the Plan 9 operating system out of Bell Labs has now been relicensed under the GPLv2...

Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Mathematician Edward Frenkel writes in the NYT that one fanciful possibility that explains why mathematics seems to permeate our universe is that we live in a computer simulation based on the laws of mathematics — not in what we commonly take to be the real world. According to this theory, some highly advanced computer programmer of the future has devised this simulation, and we are unknowingly part of it. Thus when we discover a mathematical truth, we are simply discovering aspects of the code that the programmer used. This may strike you as very unlikely writes Frenkel but physicists have been creating their own computer simulations of the forces of nature for years — on a tiny scale, the size of an atomic nucleus. They use a three-dimensional grid to model a little chunk of the universe; then they run the program to see what happens. 'Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom has argued that we are more likely to be in such a simulation than not,' writes Frenkel. 'If such simulations are possible in theory, he reasons, then eventually humans will create them — presumably many of them. If this is so, in time there will be many more simulated worlds than nonsimulated ones. Statistically speaking, therefore, we are more likely to be living in a simulated world than the real one.' The question now becomes is there any way to empirically test this hypothesis and the answer surprisingly is yes. In a recent paper, 'Constraints on the Universe as a Numerical Simulation,' the physicists Silas R. Beane, Zohreh Davoudi and Martin J. Savage outline a possible method for detecting that our world is actually a computer simulation (PDF). Savage and his colleagues assume that any future simulators would use some of the same techniques current scientists use to run simulations, with the same constraints. The future simulators, Savage indicated, would map their universe on a mathematical lattice or grid, consisting of points and lines. But computer simulations generate slight but distinctive anomalies — certain kinds of asymmetries and they suggest that a closer look at cosmic rays may reveal similar asymmetries. If so, this would indicate that we might — just might — ourselves be in someone else's computer simulation."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes "Researchers at the US Army Natick Soldier Research, Development and Engineering Center have created a pizza that can be stored for up to three years while still remaining edible. 'It pretty much tastes just like a typical pan pizza that you would make at home and take out of the oven or the toaster oven,' said Jill Bates who heads up the lab. 'The only thing missing from that experience would be it's not hot when you eat it. It's room temperature.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes "Could you imagine being arrested for failing to return a movie you rented 9-years earlier? Well that's just what happened to one South Carolina woman. 'According to a Feb 13 arrest report, 27-year-old Kayla Finley rented Monster-in-Law in 2005 from now defunct video store Dalton video. The woman failed to return the video within the 72 hour rental limit, eventually leading up to her arrest 9 years later.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

KentuckyFC writes "The only planets never to have been the subjects of bespoke space missions from Earth are Neptune and Uranus. Now European astronomers are planning to put that straight with a mission called Odinus, which involves twin spacecraft making the journey in 2034. Their justification is that the mission will help explain how the Solar System formed, how it ended up in the configuration we see today and may also explain why 'hot' Neptune-class planets are common around other stars. They also have to overcome the common misconception that Neptune and Uranus are just smaller, less interesting versions of Jupiter and Saturn. Nothing could be further from the truth. For a start, Neptune and Uranus and made of entirely different stuff--mostly ices such as water, ammonia and methane compared with hydrogen and helium for Jupiter and Saturn. That raises the question of how they formed and how they got to the distant reaches of the Solar System. However it happened, Uranus ended up lying on its side, probably because of a cataclysmic collision. And Neptune's largest moon Triton orbits in the opposite direction to its parent's rotation, the only moon in the Solar System to do this. How come? Another question still unanswered is who's going to pay for all this. The team are pinning their hopes on the European Space Agency which has already expressed interest. But would an international collaboration be a better option?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nerval's Lobster writes "Earlier in February, Tribune Company completed the $170 million acquisition of Gracenote, a deal originally set in motion in late 2013. The merger is an unusual one: Gracenote owns a massive library of media metadata, and the Tribune Company is best known as the publisher of print newspapers and tabloids, most notably its flagship paper in Chicago. Regardless of the Tribune Company's specific plans for Gracenote's datasets and technical infrastructure, it spent a hefty amount of cash on an entity devoted solely to compiling metadata about copyrightable works owned by third parties: In other words, Gracenote still commands a nine-figure price tag when its primary product, to put it bluntly, amounts to footnotes and annotations to media for which it doesn't have licenses or rights. But here's where it potentially gets a little spooky: while the titles of the songs in your playlists shouldn't be conflated with records of your phone calls, services such as Gracenote's upcoming Rhythm Internet-radio service (which leans heavily on user preferences and behavior) may help Gracenote partially convert its library of media metadata into a library of user data. 'We do have big hopes for that part of our business going forward,' Gracenote president Stephen White confirmed to Slashdot. That makes privacy advocates a little nervous. 'We're seeing, especially with the ad space, that companies are trying to get user information from all different sources, and it's not just what brands are looking for anymore,' Ari Kamdar, an activist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told Slashdot. 'They're trying to get location data, financial data, habits, family so I'm not surprised that audio data could be one of the big facets.' (For his part, White insists that Gracenote is careful with data collection.) The Gracenote saga suggests that metadata — even the type that doesn't come from phones or social networks — is more valuable than ever, which is liable to get some companies really excited... and make a whole lot of people very, very nervous."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Claire Cain Miller, writing for the NYT (ran on the front page of yesterday’s print edition):

The value of Plus has only increased in the last year, as search advertising, Google’s main source of profits, has slowed. At the same time, advertising based on the kind of information gleaned from what people talk about, do and share online, rather than simply what they search for, has become more important.

The conventional wisdom about Google is that they’re selling our privacy to advertisers. That’s no longer a fringe opinion — it’s the consensus. They’re breeding resentment.

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In 2011-12, the VFX company Rhythm & Hues created the astounding effects for Ang Lee's gorgeous movie The Life of Pi. Then they went bankrupt, fired their staff, and went out of business. Two weeks later they won an Oscar. The new documentary Life After Pi shows how this insanity was made possible.

Read more...

O Viber é um app que evoluiu em pouquíssimo tempo, de uma alternativa interessante para um concorrente de peso do Skype. Diferentemente do software da Microsoft, as versões mobile, para desktop e Windows 8 conversam entre si, permitindo transferir conversas de um dispositivo para outro, além do serviço realizar ligações para números fixos e móveis em todo o mundo por preços muito mais atrativos.

Claro que um produto tão promissor atrai interessados, e quem resolveu pagar para ver é o Rakuten Group, uma das maiores empresas de e-commerce do Japão. Ela já vem ampliando seu portfólio a um certo tempo, que hoje conta com a linha de e-readers e tablets Kobo (que ela adquiriu da Barnes & Noble) e o serviço de streaming com legendas colaborativas Viki. Buscando abocanhar o mercado de VoIP e softwares de comunicação, o Viber passa a ser sua mais nova aquisição, tendo desembolsado US$ 900 milhões para adquirí-lo.

A grande cifra investida no Viber deixa claro as intenções do Rakuten em se tornar “a empresa de serviços de internet número um do mundo”, batendo de frente com seu principal concorrente: a Amazon. E o app sai ganhando também, pois poderá oferecer seus produtos à base instalada dO Rakuten, que conta com atualmente cerca de 225 milhões de usuários. Some-se a isso os 300 milhões de pessoas que usam o Viber e tenha uma ideia de como seu alcance foi expandido.

O CEO do Viber Talmon Marco (que o Nick entrevistou na Campus Party 2014) reconhece a importância do Rakuten Group e como ele, assim como sua própria empresa cresceu muito nos últimos tempos. E está confiante:

Esta parceria nos permitirá uma incrível oportunidade de aumentar nosso crescimento nos mercados existentes e novos. Nossa meta é ser a plataforma de comunicação número 1 no mundo e esta negociação é um passo fundamental para tal.

Que o Rakuten Group não está para brincadeira isso não é novidade, e o Viber vai aproveitar essa situação para não só crescer ainda mais para bater de frente com Skype e seu atual maior rival, o WhatsApp: ainda que o app não tenha recurso de chamadas de voz ele ainda é largamente utilizado, já que mensagens de texto são algo muito mais simples e driblam os famigerados SMS. A meta do Viber é tornar seu app mais atraente do que o do seu adversário, e para isto nada melhor que este senhor aporte do grupo Rakuten, que não medirá esforços para devorar o mercado de internet e não dar espaço para a Amazon.

Fonte: TC.

The post BOMBA! Rakuten Group adquire Viber por US$ 900 milhões appeared first on Meio Bit.

You don’t have to be just male or female on Facebook anymore. The social media giant is adding a customizable option with about 50 different terms people can use to identify their gender, as well as three preferred pronoun choices: him, her or them.

I’m all for this development, and I’ll note one extra thing: people who write on “the paradox of choice” are unlikely to ever use this as an example.