Jvitak

It seems as though the advent of any radically new technology is inevitably accompanied by a mad scramble to legislate its proper and improper uses. Whether it’s nuclear fission and the IAEA’s Convention on Nuclear Safety, or modern medicine and the Hippocratic Oath, these new technologies are seldom allowed to remain morally ambiguous for long.

As such it should come as no surprise that a first stab has already been made at establishing a code of ethics for the burgeoning virtual reality (VR) industry, which will see companies such as Oculus, HTC, and Sony all releasing virtual reality headsets in the coming months. Published last month in Frontiers in Robotics and AI, the goal of this pioneering paper was “to present a first list of ethical concerns that may arise from research and personal use of virtual reality and related technology, and to offer concrete recommendations for minimizing those risks.”

Written by Michael Madary and Thomas Metzinger, two philosophers from Germany’s Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, the code of ethics serves as an important counterpoint to all the hype centered on virtual reality’s clinical or educational benefits by examining the risks of inhabiting a virtual surrogate body. The duo is particularly looking at immersive virtual reality and the risks run by users when they are subjected to “illusions of embodiment,” or feelings of inhabiting a body that is not one’s own (like when playing as an avatar in virtual reality, for instance).

“Traditional paradigms in experimental psychology, watching a film, or playing a non-immersive video game cannot create the strong illusion of owning and controlling a body that is not your own,” Madary and Metzinger write. “VR technology will eventually change not only our general image of humanity but also our understanding of deeply entrenched notions, such as ‘conscious experience,’ ‘selfhood,’ ‘authenticity,’ or ‘realness.’”

As the researchers point out, there is good reason to be especially concerned about the influence of virtual reality on the human brain, as opposed to television or non-immersive video games. A host of psychology experiments have demonstrated the plasticity of the human mind and its unconscious molding by its environment (see the Stanford Prison Experiment or Milgram’s obedience experiments for particularly bleak evidence of this).

Yet as efficacious as these experiments have been in showing the susceptibility of the human mind to external cues, none have even come close to amount of environmental control that will hypothetically be possible as virtual reality systems become more ubiquitous.

“Unlike other forms of media, VR can create a situation in which the user’s entire environment is determined by the creators of the virtual world,” Madary and Metzinger write. “[This] introduces opportunities for new and especially powerful forms of both mental and behavioral manipulation, especially when commercial, political, religious, or governmental interests are behind the creation and maintenance of the virtual worlds.”

Moreover, a handful of recent experiments have shown that virtual reality experiences have lasting effects even after users have left a virtual environment. Take for instance the virtual reality users who played as a Superman-like avatar and as such were more likely to demonstrate altruistic behavior after leaving the environment, or the virtual reality users who used an avatar with lighter or darker skin who showed a decrease in racial bias after leaving the environment.

Indeed, it was in light of this potential for lasting psychological impact during and after a virtual reality experience that Madary and Metzinger drafted a list of six main recommendations for the ethical future of commercial and research virtual reality applications. Broadly summarized, their recommendations are:

1)In keeping with the American Psychological Association’s principle of non-maleficence, experiments using virtual reality should ensure that they do not cause lasting or serious harm to the subject.

2)Subjects participating in experiments using virtual reality should be informed about the lasting and serious behavioral effects resulting from virtual reality experiences, and that the extent of this behavioral influence might not be known.

3)Researchers and media outlets should avoid over-hyping the benefits of virtual reality, especially when virtual reality is being discussed as a medical treatment.

4)Awareness of the problem of dual use, or using a technology for something other than its original intention, in the context of virtual reality. The author’s particularly are wary of military applications for virtual reality (which are already being put to a lot of use), whether this means its use as a novel torture device or a means of decreasing a soldier’s empathy for the enemy.

5)Adopting procedures that ensure a commercial virtual reality user’s privacy is maintained during research at the intersection of virtual reality and the internet. Since virtual reality has the potential to record all new kinds of user information (from eye movements and emotions to the movement of a user’s entire body through space), ensuring that this data is managed in a responsible way will become paramount for virtual reality researchers and commercial entities alike.

6)Privacy is also a concern when it comes to advertising. Virtual environments provide fertile new grounds for targeted advertising, or “neuromarketing,” and previous studies have shown the various ways in which virtual reality technologies might be used to significantly influence consumer behavior (especially if the virtual reality tech is being built by a company whose business model is largely based unbelievably precise user-targeted advertising, like, say, Facebook).

Despite harping on the latent dangers in emerging virtual reality technologies, Madary and Metzinger are far from Luddites. As they mention in their paper, they “fully support research into VR,” and argue that there are ethical demands for more research in this area. Their main concern is that this research is conducted in an ethically responsible way “with the goal of mitigating harm to the general public.”

Although Madary and Metzinger’s code of ethics lacks a regulatory body to enforce its regulations, its publication marks an important first step toward ensuring that the proliferation of virtual reality technology doesn’t lead us into some Matrix-esque hell.

“Increasingly, [the human mind] is not only culturally and socially embedded but also shaped by a technological niche that over time itself quickly acquires a rapid, autonomous dynamics and ever new properties,” write Madary and Metzinger. “This creates a complex convolution… in which the biological mind and its technological niche influence each other in ways we are just beginning to understand. It is this complex convolution that makes it so important to think about the Ethics of VR in a critical, evidence-based, and rational manner.”

The important caveat here is that this is all assuming that virtual reality technology becomes as ubiquitous as Zuckerberg and the other VR-evangelists are promising. There’s still a decent contingent of skeptics dismissing virtual reality as a bunch of BS, and their skepticism is about to be put to the test as virtual reality tech prepares for the most stringent test a capitalist society can throw at it in the coming months: the test of commercial viability.

Laura Poitras, whose 2014 Edward Snowden documentary Citizenfour won the Academy Award for best doc, has a show on at NYC's Whitney Museum called "Astro Noise," which attempts to capture the sense of overwhelming surveillance she's lived under since the US government targeted her while she was shooting a documentary in Iraq. (more…)

An anonymous reader writes: Nathan Blecharcyzk, one of the co-founders at home rental platform Airbnb, has detailed the company's interest in blockchain technologies to help establish user reputation and trust. He revealed that in 2016 Airbnb would be looking into blockchain integration, or a similar distributed ledger system, to authenticate a user's reputation and establish trust on the platform. The proposal marks a potentially revolutionary step for e-commerce sites and peer opinion platforms looking to identify and filter out damaging reviews planted by competitors and trolls, or self-promoting posts which can mislead consumers. However, while protecting the integrity of some, the introduction of a blockchain-based reputation system holds a potential threat to anonymity and privacy online. A distributed and irreversible system for trust management, which stores personal data, could offer a hotbed for doxing and identity theft – and even undermine an individual's right to be forgotten.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mickeycaskill writes: Western Digital has released a had drive optimized for the Raspberry Pi. The 314GB drive, released on Pi Day (3/14), costs $31.42 for a limited time and promises to be more reliable, power efficient and easier to use with the computer than other storage. The company, which also has a 1TB drive, says the unit has been designed to coordinate with the Pi's own power systems in order to minimize energy use without affecting the maximum data transfer rate on a USB connection. The Raspberry Pi Foundation says the new drive will stimulate the development of storage-hungry projects.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Continuing with the timeless tradition of NFL teams extolling the virtues of a futuristic, unworkable stadium plan that your city does not want or need, here is the Worst Franchise On Earth unveiling their proposed new stadium, which has clearly been rastafied by at least 10 percent.

Read more...

REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

A spelling mistake in an online bank transfer instruction helped prevent a nearly $1 billion heist last month involving the Bangladesh central bank and the New York Fed, banking officials said.

Unknown hackers still managed to get away with about $80 million, one of the largest known bank thefts in history.

The hackers breached Bangladesh Bank's systems and stole its credentials for payment transfers, two senior officials at the bank said. They then bombarded the Federal Reserve Bank of New York with nearly three dozen requests to move money from the Bangladesh Bank's account there to entities in the Philippines and Sri Lanka, the officials said.

Four requests to transfer a total of about $81 million to the Philippines went through, but a fifth, for $20 million, to a Sri Lankan non-profit organisation was held up because the hackers misspelled the name of the NGO, Shalika Foundation.

Hackers misspelled "foundation" in the NGO's name as "fandation", prompting a routing bank, Deutsche Bank, to seek clarification from the Bangladesh central bank, which stopped the transaction, one of the officials said.

There is no NGO under the name of Shalika Foundation in the list of registered Sri Lankan non-profits. Reuters could not immediately find contact information for the organization.

Deutsche Bank declined to comment.

REUTERS/Brendan McDermidAt the same time, the unusually high number of payment instructions and the transfer requests to private entities - as opposed to other banks - raised suspicions at the Fed, which also alerted the Bangladeshis, the officials said.

The details of how the hacking came to light and was stopped before it did more damage have not been previously reported. Bangladesh Bank has billions of dollars in a current account with the Fed, which it uses for international settlements.

The transactions that were stopped totalled $850-$870 million, one of the officials said.

Last year, Russian computer security company Kaspersky Lab said a multinational gang of cyber criminals had stolen as much as $1 billion from as many as 100 financial institutions around the world in about two years.

Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's son Qusay took $1 billion from Iraq's central bank on the orders of his father on the day before coalition forces began bombing the country in 2003, American and Iraqi officials have said. In 2007, guards at the Dar Es Salaam bank in Baghdad made off with $282 million.

Money recovered

REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

Bangladesh Bank has said it has recovered some of the money that was stolen, and is working with anti-money laundering authorities in the Philippines to try to recover the rest.

A bank spokesman could not be reached for comment late on Thursday.

The recovered funds refer to the Sri Lanka transfer, which was stopped, one of the officials said.

Initially, the Sri Lankan transaction reached Pan Asia Banking Corp, which went back to Deutsche Bank for more verification because of the unusually large size of the payment, a Pan Asia official said. "The transaction was too large for a country like us," the official said. "Then (Deutsche) came back and said it was a suspect transaction." A Pan Asia spokesman could not immediately be reached for comment.

The dizzying, global reach of the heist underscores the growing threat of cyber crime and how hackers can find weak links in even the most secure computer networks.

More than a month after the attack, Bangladeshi officials are scrambling to trace the money, shore up security and identify weaknesses in their systems. They said there is little hope of ever catching the hackers, and it could take months before the money is recovered, if at all.

Security experts said the perpetrators had deep knowledge of the Bangladeshi institution's internal workings, likely gained by spying on bank workers.

The Bangladesh government, meanwhile, is blaming the Fed for not stopping the transactions earlier. Finance Minister Abul Maal Abdul Muhith told reporters on Tuesday that the country may resort to suing the Fed to recover the money. 

"The Fed must take responsibility," he said.

The New York Fed has said its systems were not breached, and it has been working with the Bangladesh central bank since the incident occurred.

The hacking of Bangladesh Bank happened sometime between Feb. 4-5, over the Bangladeshi weekend, which falls on a Friday, the officials said. The bank's offices were shut.

Initially, the central bank was not sure if its system had been breached, but cyber security experts brought in to investigate found hacker "footprints" that suggested the system had been compromised, the officials said.

These experts could also tell that the attack originated from outside Bangladesh, they said, adding the bank is looking into how they got into the system and an internal investigation is ongoing.

The bank suspects money sent to the Philippines was further diverted to casinos there, the officials said. 

The Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp, which oversees the gaming industry, said it has launched an investigation. The country's anti-money laundering authority is also working on the case.

(Additional reporting by Jim Finkle in BOSTON, Jonathan Spicer in NEW YORK, Farah Master in HONG KONG and Shihar Aneez in COLOMBO; Editing by Paritosh Bansal and Raju Gopalakrishnan)

NOW WATCH: IAN BREMMER: Greece is headed for a humanitarian disaster

Antonio Villas-Boas/Tech Insider

There's a harmless glitch in iOS that turns off the animation effects when you open and close your apps, which makes your iPhone feel like it's running a lot faster.

This glitch was first discovered by Reddit user vista980622, but we first saw this trick on 9to5Mac.

Without the glitch, there's still a way to limit the phone's animations through its settings (just turn on Reduce Motion in your iPhone's Accessibility settings), but that only makes a slight difference to your phone's speed. This glitch removes those animations entirely, which otherwise slow down the interactions between you and your iPhone.

Check out how to activate the glitch:

See that fade-in/fade-out effect when you open and close apps? It's slow and some of you might not like that. I don't.

RAW Embed

 

This glitch turns off those silly effects and lets you instantly open and close apps. Like this!

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To activate this glitch, first visit your iPhone's Settings.

Screenshot

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

These 12 musical "experiments" let you make and tweak pleasant sounds.

Chrome Music Lab is a collection of experiments that let anyone, at any age, explore how music works. They're collaborations between musicians and coders, all built with the freely available Web Audio API. These experiments are just a start. Check out each experiment to find open-source code you can use to build your own.

An anonymous reader writes: Mozilla has banned the popular (250,000+ installs) YouTube Unblock add-on that allowed users to view YouTube clips blocked in their country. The reason for this move is because the add-on was caught disabling a Firefox security setting (code signing) which the allowed it to silent-install another add-on, which Avast (antivirus software) was detecting as malware. Earlier in 2015, the same plugin was again caught cheating when it was using an self-contained update system that was bypassing Mozilla's add-on review process.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In late February, Google disclosed that one of its self-driving cars hit a city bus in the company's hometown of Mountain View, California.

It was the first accident that Google truly had to blame on its autonomous car software.

The car was only going 2 miles per hour, though, so it wasn't exactly a slam-bang of an accident.

Today, the Associated Press managed to get the Mountain View transit authority's footage from the bus' onboard camera. Note that the passengers barely even register the collision:

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The Google car, a modified Lexus SUV, was traveling at less than 2 mph, and the bus was moving at about 15 mph. There were no injuries reported at the scene, although the Google car did damage its front left fender, wheel, and one of its sensors, as you can see at the end of the video.

While approaching the intersection of El Camino Real and Castro Street in Mountain View, the car stopped to avoid some sandbags around a storm drain. When it tried to merge back into the left lane, it struck trouble.

"After a few cars passed, the Google AV began to proceed back into the center of the lane to pass the sand bags," reads a report by California's DMV about the incident.

It continued:

A public transit bus was approaching from behind. The Google AV test driver saw the bus approaching in the left side mirror but believed the bus would stop or slow to allow the Google AV to continue. Approximately three seconds later, as the Google AV was reentering the center of the lane it made contact with the side of the bus.

 

Google's self-driving cars are currently prototypes that the company is testing, and they are not available to the general public. A spokesperson with the Valley Transportation Authority says that there was only minor damage to the bus. 

The accident closely follows a big win for Google. US regulators decided in February that the artificial-intelligence system controlling its car counts as a "driver."

At the time the incident was disclosed, Google said in a statement to Engadget that "we clearly bear some responsibility" for the accident.

NOW WATCH: BMW just unveiled its concept car for the future

Over at MAKE, Mike Senese comments on this stock photo of a “Beautiful Woman Soldering.” It's an unintentional "how many things are wrong in this picture?" puzzle.

Rather than holding the iron by its insulated handle, this woman is grabbing onto the heated element, which if turned on, would be at a bit over 600ºF. As much as any of us have wanted to choke up on our irons for more precise control, you would be dealing with nasty burns for quite some time if you were to grip your iron like this.

...

But the biggest irker of all is the photo’s title: “Beautiful woman repair soldering a printed circuit board.” I understand how marketing works, but I still lament that we continue to point out the physical attributes of a person doing an activity.

Image: Shutterstock

 Veritas Genetics was one of the first companies to sequence the entire human genome for less than $1,000 in 2015. It’s now taken that technology a step further by delivering the results of your entire genome in an app. To put in context just how radical this is, consider the first attempt at whole human genome sequencing required $3.7 billion to produce in 2001. It wasn’t until… Read More

 Peeple, the controversial people-rating application that lets its users rate and review anyone, is not a hoax or vaporware, as many suspected following the media backlash surrounding the unveiling of the company’s intentions last fall. The Washington Post even called the app “terrifying,” given that the app didn’t plan to allow users to opt out of being reviewed… Read More

AP

On Monday, Erin Andrews won a huge $55 million lawsuit over a nude video that was taken of her in a hotel by a stalker in 2008.

A Tennessee jury found that Michael David Barrett, the man who filmed the video and pleaded guilty to stalking her in 2009, was 51% responsible for the emotional distress on Andrews, and that Nashville Marriott, the hotel, was 49% responsible.

They were ordered to pay $28 million and $27 million, respectively, totaling a $55 million settlement for Andrews. Barrett was responsible for the criminal act, and the hotel was responsible for sharing Andrews' information and allowing Barrett to get a room next to hers.

However, according to reports on Tuesday, Andrews may not see most of that $55 million.

First, Barrett is unlikely to be able to pay the $28 million for which he's responsible. After legal fees, he may have have to file for bankruptcy. CNN reports that Andrews could attach a percentage to his future earnings, but that it may not be worth it for Andrews to continue to seek money from him.

It's more complicated on the hotel end. The hotel is likely to file for an appeal. In an appeal, judges could decide to lower the payment. According to CNN, in cases like this, the two sides may negotiate a settlement before the appellate court rules.

As CNBC notes, an appeal could go two ways. They could increase the payment and make the hotel solely responsible, in which case the Nashville Marriott may not be able to pay the full $55 million and thus go to bankruptcy court. Or they could lessen the payment, arguing that the hotel couldn't have known that they would have been fooled by Barrett (to get Andrews' hotel room information) and know that he would film her.

Thus, a settlement between the two sides could be likely and could lessen what Andrews gets. Additionally, CNN says that Andrews lawyers likely took the case on "contingency," so they will receive part of the settlement. Andrews also has to pay her legal fees.

CNN says the settlement and what Andrews receives will likely still be a multi-million dollar deal, but the payout may not be close to $55 million, and could end up being far less than half of the amount awarded.

NOW WATCH: Watch Maria Sharapova explain why she failed a drug test

See sample pages from this book at Wink.

Darth Vader and Son is cute, and perfect for the little Star Wars fan in your life. It playfully posits the question “What if Darth Vader had actually raised Luke?” Author and illustrator Jeffrey Brown turns run-of-the-mill parenting activities into fun moments full of Star Wars references.

This book isn’t so much a story as it is a peek into the hypothetical everyday life of Vader and Luke. Every page of the book tells its own complete story of sorts. Some pages are miniature comics while others are full-page illustrations. Brown does an incredible job of telling his story in these single images. I imagine this book would be great for children just learning to read, similar to how the Owly books help develop a sense of story without the need for lines and lines of text. If you have a child that enjoys books but isn’t yet able to read longer children’s books with more words, Darth Vader and Son is a great compromise. At 64 pages it is long enough to be engaging for an extended period of time, but you can basically jump in and out of the book at any point.

Brown’s art style is colorful and light, reminiscent of childhood crayon drawings. Darth Vader always looks slightly goofy, which goes a long way to establish the tone of the book. The drawings include a number of visual references to the Star Wars films that will delight anyone with the eye to catch them (and there’s something on almost every page, so have fun looking for everything). Possibly the funniest parts are seeing Darth Vader engaged in totally mundane tasks like making breakfast or wrapping Luke’s birthday present. It’s a side to the character we've never had the opportunity to see, and Brown plays on the quirkiness perfectly. Overall, Darth Vader and Son is a fun read for adult Star Wars fans who like a good laugh, as well as for children just learning to love these characters. This book is actually the first in a series, so if you like it be sure to check out Vader’s Little Princess, Goodnight Darth Vader, and Darth Vader and Friends. – Alex Strine

Darth Vader and Son
by Jeffrey Brown
Chronicle Books
2012, 64 pages, 6.8 x 6.8 x 0.2 inches
$8 Buy a copy on Amazon

Apple

On Thursday, notoriously social media-shy Apple revealed a new Twitter account, @AppleSupport, which responds to technical questions from users and tweets out tips and tutorials.

24 hours later, Apple Support has over 121,000 followers, and has tweeted over 2,200 times directly to Apple users with instructions for how to fix their problems. Turns out, there was quite a bit of pent-up demand for Apple support on social media.

That works out to between 2 and 3 responses per minute, given that Apple Support only works for 15 hours per day. In addition, Apple's support representatives have to filter out joke tweets:  

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@AppleSupport I think you guys should unlock that iPhone

Apple already had a robust online support service with lots of customer service tutorials. Users could also schedule a phone call with Apple Support. Plus, Apple's network of retail stores serve as contact points for technical support as well. 

Apple retail boss Angela Ahrendts tweeted she was "thrilled to have another wonderful support option for customers."

Among tech giants, Apple is late to embrace Twitter. For example, Microsoft's Xbox Support accounts have been on Twitter since 2009 and are famous for fast response times.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey welcomed Apple Support and used the account to make a point that he believes that Twitter is well-suited for real-time customer service.

Tweet Embed:
https://twitter.com/mims/statuses/705423142970327040
And more broadly, companies using Twitter for customer service see a +19% lift in customer satisfaction.

The Apple Support Twitter account appears to be managed with the help of Sprinklr, a social media software from a high-flying New York startup. Other Apple social media accounts tweet through Sprinklr, including iBooks.

However, despite the new account, Apple continues to have a relatively light presence on social media in general. Although most of its top executives tweet, the @Apple handle on Twitter is dormant, and the company does not have an overall Facebook page.

NOW WATCH: Jobs vs. Cook — Apple CEOs by the numbers

Did you watch humans beat up on Boston Dynamic's new Atlas Robot and feel bad for the helpless thing?

Youtube user Mr. King gave his voice to the voiceless robot, creating an exhausted, frustrated voiceover that perfectly captures the worldview of a robot who's day to day involves constant bullying.

More about Robotics, Funny, Watercooler, and Viral Video Template

 As promised, Google today announced that it is making a number of changes to how it handles links it has delisted under Europe’s ‘right to be forgotten‘ regulations. Instead of simply delisting links from the various regional versions of its search engine, it will now use geolocation to remove these links from all searches that come from a given region. To be delisted… Read More

Original story here. 

NOW WATCH: The one Samsung Galaxy S7 feature that blows the iPhone out of the water

More about Diy, Game Of Thrones, and Watercooler

Today’s PGA event from Palm Beach Gardens features some of the best professional golfers in the world, and that includes a personal favorte: Shane Lowry. The Irishman’s never at a loss for words, as evidenced by his brief and profane response to finding the water on the 15th.

Read more...

Courtesy of Harold Pollack

In 2013, University of Chicago professor Harold Pollack offhandedly mentioned that the best money advice fits on a three-by-five inch index card while interviewing financial journalist and author Helaine Olen on The Reality-Based Community blog.

A commenter, Alex M, asked for the actual index card.

Although he was originally speaking in metaphor, to prove his point, Pollack grabbed a pen and four-by-six inch note card, and scribbled the basic financial rules he'd been following the past decade.

Pollack's next blog post, titled "Advice to Alex M," included a picture of the card. It quickly went viral.

Economist Sendhil Mullainathan tweeted the card out. So did top economist Justin Wolfers. Vanguard mentioned the card on its blog. "Pollack's right," wrote Ezra Klein in the Washington Post. "Follow these principles and you'll be in much, much, much better shape than most Americans — or most anyone."

Unlike the majority of money advice out there, Pollack's index card simplifies things, and is based on his personal experience of turning around his and his wife's financial situation.

"Through trial and error, conversations with friends and other academics, I slowly pieced together a new financial regimen," Pollack writes in "The Index Card," the book he and Olen co-authored. "Some was common sense. Some involved teaching myself insights that were actually well known to financial economists but under emphasized in the cacophony put out by the financial services industry. The most important advice was embarrassingly simple."

Here's the original card, which Pollack drafted up in three minutes:

Courtesy of Harold Pollack

The card reads:

1. Max your 401(k) or equivalent employee contribution.

2. Buy inexpensive, well-diversified mutual funds such as Vanguard Target 20XX funds.

3. Never buy or sell an individual security. The person on the other side of the table knows more than you do about this stuff.

4. Save 20% of your money. (In "The Index Card," Pollack and Olen altered this to "10% t0 20%").

5. Pay your credit card balance in full every month.

6. Maximize tax-advantaged savings vehicles like Roth, SEP, and 529 accounts.

7. Pay attention to fees. Avoid actively managed funds.

8. Make financial advisers commit to a fiduciary standard.

9. Promote social insurance programs to help people when things go wrong.

NOW WATCH: This couple ditched their 9 to 5 jobs to make a living traveling the world

According to a report from ESPNFC’s Jeff Carlisle, USMNT keeper Tim Howard is on his way back to MLS to mind the net for the Colorado Rapids, who had one of their keepers do this not two years ago. Per the report, Howard dropped his insane $5 million per year demand and accepted a three-year contract worth $2 million annually.

Read more...

Read 9 remaining paragraphs | Comments

YouTube/Screenshot

Voice assistant software Siri will finally be available on the Mac when Apple releases its next major version, OS X 10.12, later this year, 9to5Mac'S Mark Gurman reports.

Siri is currently a big part of the iPhone, Apple Watch, and Apple TV operating systems. Apple has been looking to integrate Siri into OS X since at least 2012.

The 9to5Mac report indicates that Siri will be accessible through the Mac's Menu Bar — the bar at the top of the screen where most Macs have date, time, and Spotlight search options.

The feature will include support for "hot words," so users will be able to access Siri simply by saying "Hey Siri," without pressing a button or activating the software, as long as their Mac is plugged into power.

Apple first integrated voice dictation, which uses Siri's speech-to-text technology, into Mac OS X in 2012. 

 

 

 

 

NOW WATCH: How the famous Instagram #FollowMeTo couple earned millions of followers

The lithium battery pack for a Nagra 6 digital recorder costs $700. Markus Fuller opened one and found out it has a small battery in it (with 6 cells worth a total of $30), and a large sponge. It must be an awesome sponge! As he opens it, he gives an interesting and entertaining lesson on the history of lithium batteries.

Caveat emptor: Nagra sells a more expensive battery pack, which contains more batteries, so you won't get as much of the magical sponge if you buy it.

Fuller has a good video about capacitors, too: https://youtu.be/ZnG1423AZzU

[via]

Matthew DeBord/Business Insider

Generally speaking, Tesla makes impressive vehicles.

The Roadster redefined what an electric car could be, the Model S redefined what an electric luxury sedan could be, and the recently arrived Model X is trying to redefine what an electric crossover SUV can be.

Tesla, however, has always dropped the ball on one essential feature of modern motoring.

Cupholders.

These days, it's almost impossible to find a vehicle that doesn't have numerous cupholders. Minivans are jammed with the things. European cars resisted cupholders for a while, but they've all given in. Even exotic supercars have 'em, though they're frequently tucked away in difficult-to-reach spaces.

The Model S barely has cupholders, and the two it does have are awkwardly located (maybe CEO Elon Musk doesn't like to chug coffee or soda on his commutes). In the Model S, a rear-seat folding console with a cupholder was added only after the fact. Other automakers had innovated on cupholders, but Tesla, an innovation-driven company, lagged far, far behind. Its cars had the cupholders of the past (even though they could be had as a heated-and-cooled option).

In a car like the Model S that was otherwise pretty sensibly designed, its terrible cupholders were a glaring problem, and I wasn't the only one to point it out. Tesla owners have frequently complained.

But boy, did Tesla listen!

This week, we spent about an hour driving a top-of-line, fully loaded Tesla Model X P90D (with Ludicrous Mode acceleration) around Manhattan, and one of the new features that representative Alexis Georgeson highlighted was the wildly improved cupholder setup.

Yes, the old Model S cupholders are still in the picture:

Matthew DeBord/Business Insider

But then there's this!

Matthew DeBord/Business Insider

It's a reconfigurable cupholder compartment. The lovely curved dividers can be slipped in and out to create a typical dual cupholder arrangement, or you can customize the dividers to accommodate a HUGE beverage.

The two rows of rear seats also have abundant cupholders, befitting Tesla's case that the Model X is a combination of a minivan, an SUV, and a sports car.

In fact, the new cupholders (which can be concealed with a softtouch panel or removed), are of a piece with the Model X itself, a car that inside and outside truly does function as a piece of rolling sculpture. Tesla pushed the envelope with the Model X, though not always in ways that made it easy to build and launch the vehicle. In execution, however, the Model X is an impressive accumulation of well-thought-out details.

Right down to the groundbreaking cupholders!

Matthew DeBord/Business Insider

NOW WATCH: We took Tesla's brand new Model X for a test drive

Xiaomi announced its latest Mi 5 flagship smartphone at MWC on Wednesday.

It has some of the best specs around and comes with a very low price tag. The top-end Mi 5 costs $400, while Samsung's latest Galaxy S7 costs more than $700 for about the same specs.

It's beautiful, but after years of being criticized for copying Apple, it looks like Xiaomi has found a new source of design inspiration: Samsung.

The new Mi5 appears to be heavily influenced by Samsung's latest designs.

Specifically, the Mi 5's home button looks a lot like the Galaxy Note 5's.

Antonio Villas-Boas/Tech Insider

And the back's curved edge design looks nearly identical to the Galaxy Note 5's back. The sloping corner is unmistakably similar to the Note 5's corner. Also, the antenna strips on the bottom edge look nearly identical on both phones.

Antonio Villas-Boas/Tech Insider

That says a lot about the state of Samsung. Last year, the company introduced the Galaxy S6, a gorgeous phone that leapfrogged Apple's iPhone design. The Note 5 and new Galaxy S7 are variations on the S6 design, and are even more impressive. 

Until now, the iPhone's design was the envy of the smartphone world. Apple's lead designer Jony Ive blasted copycats like Xiaomi in 2014 and called it "theft." Now that influence seems to be waning and Samsung has the upperhand. Imitation is the most sincere form of flattering, and now we're starting to see others flatter Samsung instead of Apple.

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Google Docs just stepped up its voice features in a big way

Nearly six months after introducing voice typing for Google Docs, the company is adding voice commands, which allow you to edit and format documents with only your voice.

The extensive list of commands includes just about everything you could possibly do to a document, including adjusting text, adding bulleted lists or tables and moving around large chunks of text. (There are a few limitations, like the ability to add special characters.)

Functionally, it works a lot like Nuance's Dragon NaturallySpekaing and other dictation software. You can say things like "delete last paragraph" or "insert table 10 rows by 3 columns." Behind the scenes, the feature is powered by the same natural language processing engine used by Google Now, so you can also say things like "make bigger" to increase the font size. Read more...

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Why does United States President Barack Obama have a soft spot for homosexuals? Because he was a gay hooker in the '80s, reports Mary Lou Bruner, a Republican candidate for the Texas State Board of Education.

"That’s how he paid for his drugs. He has admitted he was addicted to drugs when he was young and he is sympathetic with homosexuals; but he hasn’t come out of the closet about his own homosexual/bisexual background."

This is only one tread among many in the bright tapestry of Bruner's moral rug.

Meanwhile, “Climate change has nothing to do with weather or climate, it’s all about system change from capitalism (free enterprise) to Socialism-Communism. The Climate Change HOAX was Karl Marx’s idea. It took time to ‘condition’ the people so they would believe such a HOAX!”

Salon's article offers a smorgasbord of similarly spectacular Republicans from the Lone Star State.