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Fnord666 writes:

Amazon's much-heralded convenience store of the future, Amazon Go, may seem like a crazy experiment. But the company plans to open as many as six more of these storefronts this year, multiple people familiar with the company's plans have told Recode.

Some of the new high-tech stores are likely to open in Amazon's hometown of Seattle, where the first location is based, as well as Los Angeles, these people said. It's not clear if Amazon will open up Go stores in any other cities this year.

In Los Angeles, Amazon has held serious talks with billionaire developer Rick Caruso about bringing a Go store to The Grove, his 600,000-square-foot outdoor shopping Mecca, two of these people said.

And in Seattle, Amazon had identified at least three locations for additional Go stores as of last year, according to one source.

[...] News of the planned expansion of the Amazon Go concept is sure to set off fresh concerns about the great societal challenges that come with the type of automation that Amazon is inventing. Since the Amazon Go model does not involve customers checking out, there are no cashiers working in the stores.

Source: ReCode

Also Amazon reportedly plans to open more of its futuristic, cashierless stores this year

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Ecuador's foreign minister has blamed Britain over the stalemate surrounding WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange following rekindled attempts to secure his safe exit from Quito's embassy in London.

"On the issue of mediation, I have to say very honestly that it has not been successful because two parties are needed to mediate, [sic]" Maria Fernanda Espinosa, the Ecuadorian foreign minister, told reporters Friday with respect to the Assange case, Agence France-Presse translated.

"Ecuador is willing but the other party is not," she added, referring to Britain, according to Reuters.

On the other hand, from the same source, and as we have already reported:

British authorities argue that Mr. Assange, an Australian, was under house arrest when he entered the embassy and should be apprehended for having breached his bail conditions if and when he exits.

Source: https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/feb/23/ecuador-blames-britain-over-julian-assange-impasse/

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

Monique Maddy at TechCrunch has an overview of Africa's technical growing pains and related challenges. As anywhere else, the future depends on connectivity. However, the continent represents only 10 percent of the total Internet users in the world, despite representing 16 percent of the world population.

The scale and complexity of Africa's technical landscape sits at the heart of the problem, and connectivity issues are particularly prevalent. Internet users in Africa represent only 10 percent of the total users in the world, despite representing 16 percent of the world population, according to Internet World Stats. And only 31 percent of the total population has access to the internet, which represents a penetration that is well below the rest of the world at 52 percent.

[...] Africa is at a technical tipping point. To survive and thrive in this diverse and highly complex marketplace, we need businesses that are flexible and capable of adapting both their products and their business models, which can most effectively work with local companies and talent to develop and promote local content and digital solutions while leveraging the power of the smartphone and widespread connectivity.

Barriers to growth include use of zero-rating by some of the world's largest players as they try to both push into the region while setting up obstacles to entry by competitors. She also asks how large Western companies plan to see a return on investment or whether Chinese companies will beat them to the punch.

Source : The intensifying battle for Africa's burgeoning tech landscape

See also :
Madhvi Gokool - AFRINIC Update (2017)
Michele McCann - iGDP in Africa (2014)

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

UPS will work with partner Workhorse, a battery-electric transportation technology company, to develop and deploy a fleet of 50 custom-built plug-in electric delivery trucks with zero emissions.

The goal is to make trucks that cost as much to buy as do traditional fuel-based delivery vehicles — even without taking into account subsidies. The Workhorse-designed vehicles will be all-electric, and are designed to run on a single charge throughout a normal delivery day and then charge back up overnight.

Workhorse says they'll have a 100-mile range, which is a good fit for in-city routes, and the trucks will first enter testing in urban areas in various parts of the U.S., including Atlanta, Dallas and LA. The test will lead to fine-tuning, which will lead to a larger fleet deployment targeting 2019.

Source: TechCrunch

Also at The Verge, Reuters and Cincinnati.com

Original Submission

We had submissions from three Soylentils with different takes on the NRA (National Rifle Association) and the public response in the wake of an attack at a Parkland, Florida high school.

Public Outcry Convinces National Companies to Cut Ties with NRA

-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

Common Dreams reports:

In the latest sign that the aftermath of the Parkland, Florida tragedy may be playing out differently than the fallout from other mass shootings, several national companies have cut ties with the National Rifle Association (NRA).

[Car rental companies] Alamo, Enterprise, and National--all owned by Enterprise Holdings--announced late on [February 22] that they would end discounts for the NRA's five million members. Symantec, the security software giant that owns Lifelock and Norton, ended its discount program on Friday as well.

The First National Bank of Omaha also said it would stop issuing its NRA-branded Visa credit cards, emblazoned with the group's logo and called "the Official Credit Card of the NRA". The institution is the largest privately-held bank in the U.S., with locations in Nebraska, Colorado, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, and South Dakota.

Additional coverage on TheHill, MarketWatch, Independent and Politico.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

The US Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday issued new guidance on how and when public companies should disclose cybersecurity risks and breaches.

The "interpretive guidance" document (PDF) urges informing investors of risks in a timely fashion, including vulnerabilities that have not yet been targeted by hackers. The guidance also says executives should refrain from trading in the company's stock while in possession of nonpublic information about significant cybersecurity attacks.

The commission, which unanimously approved the updated guidance, believes the document will help "promote clearer and more robust disclosure by companies about cybersecurity risks and incidents, resulting in more complete information being available to investors," SEC Chairman Jon Clayton said in a statement.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

The Stuxnet worm that targeted Iran's nuclear program almost a decade ago was a watershed piece of malware for a variety of reasons. Chief among them, its use of cryptographic certificates belonging to legitimate companies to falsely vouch for the trustworthiness of the malware. Last year, we learned that fraudulently signed malware was more widespread than previously believed. On Thursday, researchers unveiled one possible reason: underground services that since 2011 have sold counterfeit signing credentials that are unique to each buyer.

"Contrary to a common belief that the security certificates circulating in the criminal underground are stolen from legitimate owners prior to being used in nefarious
campaigns, we confirmed with a high degree of certainty that the certificates are created for a specific buyer per request only and are registered using stolen corporate identities, making traditional network security appliances less effective," Andrei Barysevich, a researcher at Recorded Future, reported.

Barysevich identified four such sellers of counterfeit certificates since 2011. Two of them remain in business today. The sellers offered a variety of options. In 2014, one provider calling himself C@T advertised certificates that used a Microsoft technology known as Authenticode for signing executable files and programming scripts that can install software. C@T offered code-signing certificates for macOS apps as well. His fee: upwards of $1,000 per certificate.

[...] "Although code signing certificates can be effectively used in widespread malware campaigns such as the distribution of banking trojan or ransomware, the validity of the certificate used to sign a payload would be invalidated fairly quickly," [Barysevich] explained. "Therefore, we believe that the limited number of power-users specializing in more sophisticated and targeted campaigns, such as corporate espionage, is the main driving force behind the new service."

Original Submission

takyon writes:

AnandTech's Ian Cutress interviewed Dr. Gary Patton, CTO of GlobalFoundries. A number of topics were discussed, including the eventual use of ASML's extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) for the "7nm" node:

Q13: With EUV still in the process of being brought up, and the way it is with counting masks and pellicle support coming through, is there ever a mentality of 7nm not getting EUV, and that 7nm could end up a purely optical transition? Do you fully expect EUV to come in at 7nm?

GP: I absolutely believe that EUV is here. It's coming, I absolutely believe it so. As you've seen with the machines we are installing in the clean room, we have placed a big bet on it. As Tom (Thomas Caulfield) was saying, it's a pretty high scale investment. I think if you look at the tool itself, for example, ASML has demonstrated 250W with it. This is pretty repeatable, so I think that it looks in good shape. There are some challenges with the collector availability. They are getting close, I think around 75% availability now is pretty solid, but they have to get to 85%, and they are cranking these tools out. Even with this as a work in progress, there are going to be a lot of tools out on the field, and that is going to also help with improving the performance and control of the tools. The tools we have here are the ultimate tools, the ultimate manufacturing versions.

The lithographic resist is a little bit of a challenge, but we are still trying to optimize that. I don't see that as a show stopper, as we are managing throughout bring up. I think the real challenge is the masks, and I feel very good about the pellicle process. They have made a lot of progress, and they have shown it can handle 250W. The biggest issue has been that you lose a bit of power - so you've done all this work to get to 250W, and then you just lost 20% of that. So it has to go up another 10%, so it's closer to 90%, in terms of a loss to be viable. For contacts and vias, we can run without pellicles. We have the right inspection infrastructure to manage that, and then bring the pellicles in when they are ready.

[...] Q17: Does the first generation of 7LP target higher frequency clocks than 14LPP?

GP: Definitely. It is a big performance boost - we quoted around 40%. I don't know how that exactly will translate into frequency, but I would guess that it should be able to get up in the 5GHz range, I would expect.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Facebook removes VR shooting demo at top conservative conference out of 'respect for the victims' of Florida shooting

Facebook has removed a virtual reality shoot-em-up experience from a tech demo at a top American conservative conference after recieving criticism for being "tone deaf" following last week's deadly school shooting in Florida. The social network has a presence at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) conference in Maryland, this week, including a booth running a demo of its Oculus Rift virtual reality headset. This demo included a first-person shooting game.

People on Twitter have criticised Facebook for running this demo so soon after the deadly shooting attack at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School that left 17 people dead.

The game, Bullet Train, was just one of a number of standard Oculus games/demos that Facebook has included at public events. In fact, Bullet Train has been around since 2015, and the team that made it released a full game called Robo Recall, funded by Oculus:

The game will be an Oculus exclusive — that company is funding its development — and the five-to-ten-person team that created Bullet Train has ballooned into a full 15 person team at Epic in order to turn this into a real game with a release date in "early 2017." It will include a number of graphical jumps from Bullet Train, and this benefits Epic in other ways as well.

Yet, Facebook still tried to distance itself from the original demo:

The demo for the game, called "Bullet Train," is being developed by a third-party game-maker, not Oculus, the company said.

Why is Facebook at CPAC? Probably as part of an ongoing effort to placate conservatives angry at the platform.

This comes a few months after the Puerto Rico hurricane VR debacle.

Also at The Guardian and The Hill.

Original Submission

PastTense writes:

According to OpenSignal's latest State of LTE report, the average 4G download speed in the United States was 16.31 Mbps in Q4 2017. That's little more than a third of the speed that mobile device users in Singapore enjoy and ranks the U.S. at a disappointing 62nd place in the global ranking.
Where Smartphone Users Surf the Fastest

The Full Open Signal Report, The State of LTE (February 2018):
http://opensignal.com/reports/2018/02/state-of-lte

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

Techdirt covers a new paper published by the US National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine regarding the general access that the FBI and DOJ want to encrypted communications.

Another paper has been released, adding to the current encryption discussion. The FBI and DOJ want access to the contents of locked devices. They call encryption that can be bypassed by law enforcement "responsible encryption." It isn't. A recent paper by cryptograpghy expert Riana Pfefferkorn explained in detail how irresponsible these suggestions for broken or weakened encryption are.

This new paper [PDF] was put together by the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine. (h/t Lawfare) It covers a lot of ground others have and rehashes the history of encryption, along with many of the pro/con arguments. That said, it's still worth reading. It raises some good questions and spends a great deal of time discussing the multitude of options law enforcement has available, but which are ignored by FBI officials when discussing the backdoors/key escrow/weakened encryption they'd rather have.

The paper's suggestions have not been rigorously investigated by those with domain expertise, yet.

Source : Report On Device Encryption Suggests A Few Ways Forward For Law Enforcement

Original Submission

takyon writes:

A machine learning algorithm has created tiny (64×64 pixels) 32-frame videos based on text descriptions:

The researchers trained the algorithm on 10 types of scenes, including "playing golf on grass," and "kitesurfing on the sea," which it then roughly reproduced. Picture grainy VHS footage. Nevertheless, a simple classification algorithm correctly guessed the intended action among six choices about half the time. (Sailing and kitesurfing were often mistaken for each other.) What's more, the network could also generate videos for nonsensical actions, such as "sailing on snow," and "playing golf at swimming pool," the team reported this month at a meeting of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence in New Orleans, Louisiana.

[...] Currently, the videos are only 32 frames long—lasting about 1 second—and the size of a U.S. postage stamp, 64 by 64 pixels. Anything larger reduces accuracy, says Yitong Li, a computer scientist at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, and the paper's first author. Because people often appear as distorted figures, a next step, he says, is using human skeletal models to improve movement.

Tuytelaars also sees applications beyond Hollywood. Video generation could lead to better compression if a movie can be stored as nothing but a brief description. It could also generate training data for other machine learning algorithms. For example, realistic video clips might help autonomous cars prepare for dangerous situations they would not frequently encounter. And programs that deeply understand the visual world could spin off useful applications in everything from refereeing to surveillance. They could help a self-driving car predict where a motorbike will go, for example, or train a household robot to open a fridge, Pirsiavash says.

An AI-generated Hollywood blockbuster may still be beyond the horizon, but in the meantime, we finally know what "kitesurfing on grass" looks like.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

San Francisco: Building Community Broadband to Protect Net Neutrality and Online Privacy

Like many cities around the country, San Francisco is considering an investment in community broadband infrastructure: high-speed fiber that would make Internet access cheaper and better for city residents. Community broadband can help alleviate a number of issues with Internet access that we see all over America today. Many Americans have no choice of provider for high-speed Internet, Congress eliminated user privacy protections in 2017, and the FCC decided to roll back net neutrality protections in December.

This week, San Francisco published the recommendations of a group of experts, including EFF's Kit Walsh, regarding how to protect the privacy and speech of those using community broadband.

This week, the Blue Ribbon Panel on Municipal Fiber released its third report, which tackles competition, security, privacy, net neutrality, and more. It recommends San Francisco's community broadband require net neutrality and privacy protections. Any ISP looking to use the city's infrastructure would have to adhere to certain standards. The model of community broadband that EFF favors is sometimes called "dark fiber" or "open access." In this model, the government invests in fiber infrastructure, then opens it up for private companies to compete as your ISP. This means the big incumbent ISPs can no longer block new competitors from offering you Internet service. San Francisco is pursuing the "open access" option, and is quite far along in its process.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

More 8K (4320p) TVs will be coming soon. AU Optronics has announced plans to ship 8K panels to TV manufacturers starting in the first half of 2018:

The lineup of panels featuring a 7680×4320 resolution will be aimed at ultra-high-end TVs and sizes will range from 65 to 85 inches, said Liao Wei-Lun, president of AUO's video products business group, at a press conference. The high-ranking executive did not disclose other specifications of the panels, such as luminance and contrast ratio, but given their positioning, it is logical to expect their characteristics to be comparable to 8K UHDTVs to be offered by LG and Samsung.

Multiple TV makers demonstrated various 8K UHDTVs at various trade shows in the recent years, but so far no one has started to sell them. Given the lack of content, it is hard to expect high demand for 8K televisions in the next couple of years, aside from the halo factor - nonetheless, AUO expects 8K panels to account for 10% of its '65-inch and above' panel shipments in 2020. The presumably high-cost of the panels would indicate that in terms of unit shipments this might still be a low-ish number. However, as with 4K displays, someone has to release 8K TVs to stimulate content providers to offer appropriate material. At this year's CES, Samsung demonstrated its Q9S, its first commercial 8K TV-set, but it did not announce its pricing or availability timeframe. LG and Sony also demonstrated their 8K TVs at CES 2018, but nothing is clear about their plans regarding these products.

[...] As for 8K displays for PCs, Dell is currently the only company to offer an 8K monitor (this one is based on a panel from LG, so the latter might introduce its own 8K display at some point). Philips last year promised to start shipments 328P8K monitor in 2018, so expect the product to hit the market in the coming months too.

Need something to watch on your 8K TV? How about the 2020 Olympics?

Also at DigiTimes.

Related: LG to Demo an 8K Resolution TV at the Consumer Electronics Show
Dell Announces First "Mass-Market" 8K Display
Philips Demos an 8K Monitor
Pimax Launches Kickstarter for "8K" Virtual Reality Headset
HDMI 2.1 Released
LG's 88-inch 8K OLED TV

Original Submission

"Arthur T Knackerbracket" writes:

Original URL: World leaders abandoning human rights: Amnesty

World leaders are undermining human rights for millions of people with regressive policies and hate-filled rhetoric, but their actions have ignited global protest movements in response, a rights group said.

US President Donald Trump, Russian leader Vladimir Putin, and China's President Xi Jinping were among a number of politicians who rolled out regressive policies in 2017, according to Amnesty International's annual human rights report published on Thursday.

The human rights body also mentioned the leaders of Egypt, the Philippines and Venezuela.

"The spectres of hatred and fear now loom large in world affairs, and we have few governments standing up for human rights in these disturbing times," Salil Shetty, Amnesty's secretary-general, said.

"Instead, leaders such as el-Sisi, Duterte, Maduro, Putin, Trump and Xi are callously undermining the rights of millions."

[...] The regressive approach to human rights adopted by a number of world leaders has, however, inspired new waves of social activism and protest, Amnesty said, highlighting the example of the Women's March in January last year, which began in the US before becoming a global protest.

Original Submission