Friday, June 29, 2018

Hackers took over the Gentoo Linux GitHub repository

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Popular Linux distribution Gentoo has been “totally pwned” according to researchers at Sophos, and none of the current code can be trusted. The team immediately posted an update and noted that none of the real code has been compromised. However, they have pulled the GitHub repository until they can upload a fresh copy of the unadulterated code.

“Today 28 June at approximately 20:20 UTC unknown individuals have gained control of the GitHub Gentoo organization, and modified the content of repositories as well as pages there. We are still working to determine the exact extent and to regain control of the organization and its repositories. All Gentoo code hosted on github should for the moment be considered compromised,” wrote Gentoo administrators. “This does NOT affect any code hosted on the Gentoo infrastructure. Since the master Gentoo ebuild repository is hosted on our own infrastructure and since Github is only a mirror for it, you are fine as long as you are using rsync or webrsync from gentoo.org.”

None of the code is permanently damaged because the Gentoo admins kept their own copy of the code. Gentoo stated that the compromised code could contain malware and bugs and that users should avoid the GitHub version until it is reinstated.

“The Gentoo Infrastructure team have identified the ingress point, and locked out the compromised account,” wrote the admins. “Three Github repositories containing the Gentoo code, Musl, and systemd. All of these repositories are being “reset back to a known good state.”

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Thousands of cryptocurrency projects are already dead

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Two sites that are actively cataloging failed crypto projects, Coinopsy and DeadCoins, have found that over a 1,000 projects have failed so far in 2018. The projects range from true abandonware to outright scams, and include BRIG, a scam by two “brothers,” Jack and Jay Brig, and Titanium, a project that ended in an SEC investigation.

Obviously any new set of institutions must create their own sets of rules and that is exactly what is happening in the blockchain world. But when faced with the potential for massive token fundraising, bigger problems arise. While everyone expects startups to fail, the sheer amount of cash flooding these projects is a big problem. When a startup has too much fuel too quickly the resulting conflagration ends up consuming both the company and the founders, and there is little help for the investors.

These conflagrations happen everywhere and are a global phenomenon. Scam and dead ICOs raised $1 billion in 2017 with 297 questionable startups in the mix.

There are dubious organizations dedicated to “repairing” broken ICOs, including CoinJanitor from Cape Town, but the fly-by-night nature of many of these organizations does not bode well for the industry.

ICO-funded startups currently use multi-level marketing tactics to build their business. Instead they should take a page from the the Kickstarter and Indiegogo framework. These crowd-funding platforms have made trust an art. By creating collateral that defines the team, the project, the risks and the future of the idea, you can easily build businesses even without much funding. Unfortunately, the lock-ups and pricing scams the current ICO market uses to incite greed rather than rational thinking are hurting the industry more than helping.

The bottom line? Invest only what you can afford to lose and expect any token you invest in to fail. Ultimately, the best you can hope for is to be pleasantly surprised when it doesn’t. Otherwise, you’re in for a world of disappointment.

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TMGcore is running high-efficiency crypto mines in Texas

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Out on the plains of East Texas, not far from Dallas, a company called TMGcore is mining crypto. The company, funded to the tune of $70 million, will be mining multiple cryptocurrencies and is using some unique technology to ensure that it doesn’t eat up an entire city’s worth of energy.

“TMGcore will be one of the first companies to utilize 3M’s Novec fluorochemical coolant at the heart of an enterprise scale cryptocurrency mining apparatus,” said CEO JD Enright. “The company’s intelligent mining system uses a two-phase liquid cooling immersion technology to dramatically decrease cooling costs by up to 90 percent and lets the company conduct mining operations from anywhere, including the middle of hot and muggy Texas. TMGcore also employs dynamically intelligent mining software that automatically mines the most profitable coin based on real-time market value and difficulty of access for the most profitable deployment of resources in real time. Our technology is first-to-market and delivers a transformative approach to crypto mining that stands to fundamentally disrupt the market.”

The goal is to create mining infrastructure in the U.S. and to prevent overseas control of the various currencies.

“Giving America a seat at the table is our No. 1 goal here at TMGcore. Our cooling technology and efficient mining rigs open up more regions of this country to house this type of operation,” said Enright.

The mine is housed in Plano, Texas inside a 150,000 square foot facility and is capable of a “100 megawatt live power load.” Further, the company is running custom ASIC chips to increase board density and reduce mining costs significantly. In short, it will be one of the highest tech mining facilities in the world.

From the release:

The company has developed a unique use case with a fluorochemical coolant that delivers smart, safe and sustainable cooling for industrial technology operations. TMGcore will be one of the first companies to utilize this compound at the heart of an enterprise scale cryptocurrency mining apparatus. The company’s intelligent mining technology uses a Two-Phase Liquid Cooling Immersion technology to dramatically decrease cooling costs by up to 90%. The system also dynamically adapts its mining efforts toward the most profitable token at any given time, factoring in real-time market price, the difficulty of access and hash rate. TMGcore has also developed custom-made ASIC mining boards that result in a 20% increase in token output.

“Leveraging the magic of this coolant and groundbreaking mining circuitry, we saw a massive opportunity to capitalize on the nascent and highly lucrative mining industry in a physical, tangible and industrial fashion,” said Enright. “TMGcore seeks to deconstruct the mining monopoly in other countries with an American-made, U.S. driven approach that not only pushes the blockchain ecosystem forward but also creates job opportunities for Texas’ fast-growing technology community. We understand the importance of the research and development that creates not only innovations but the efficiencies that support the blockchain industry on a global scale.”

“Texas, more so than many other states in this country, has an abundant supply of energy available on their grid with available real estate to house such a project,” said Enright. “Cryptocurrency mining has not really been able to take advantage of Texas’ energy supply to date because the state is too hot. By utilizing Novec in this two-phase liquid cooling immersion technology, we have unlocked Texas’ potential to mine for the first time.”

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TrendKite expands its PR analytics platform by acquiring Insightpool and Union Metrics

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TrendKite is making its first two acquisitions — according to CEO Erik Huddleston, they give the company “the last two components” needed for a complete PR analytics platform.

Until now, TrendKite’s main selling point was the ability to look at the articles written about a company and measure things like the audience reached and the impact on brand awareness.

But while that kind of journalistic coverage remains important, Huddleston said, “The world now is more complicated in terms of who has influence on the public.” That’s where Insightpool and its database of social media influencers comes in, allowing PR teams to find and pitch influencers who can help spread the company’s story.

Union Metrics, meanwhile, provides social media analytics. As Huddleston put it, “they do the same analytics about the conversation around the story as we do around the media coverage.”

With these acquisitions, he said TrendKite can build deeper integrations with products that were already being used together. In fact, he noted that the company had an existing partnership with Union Metrics, and he started thinking about Insightpool in the same context when a customer showed him how they were using TrendKite and Insightpool side-by-side, literally open in adjacent tabs.

The details of how Insightpool and Union Metrics will be packaged and priced as part of the TrendKite platform have yet to been determined. In the meantime, Huddleston said TrendKite will continue to support them as standalone products.

In addition, he said the entire teams of both companies (including Insightpool CEO Devon Wijesinghe and Union Metrics CEO Hayes Davis) will be joining TrendKite, with Insightpool giving Austin-based TrendKite a footprint in Atlanta.

The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. According to Crunchbase, Insightpool had raised $7.5 million from investors, including TDF Ventures and Silicon Valley bank.

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UK designed quick-fit system adds smart monitoring to grid sub-stations

UK design house 42 Technology has developed a quickly-installed smart current monitor for the UK power grid. Branded FuseOhm, is self-powered data-logger that offers real-time measurement and recording of current (1A – 1,000A), voltage, phase angle and local temperature. Power dissipation is <6W. Sensing is resistive, and based on the firm’s existing ‘Triple Ohm’ intellectual ...

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UK scientists work on advanced accelerator at EU-based CERN

Engineers from the UK-based Cockcroft Institute claim to have made discoveries that could improve the design of next generation particle accelerators. Working closely with colleagues from around the world at CERN, the North West England based team has demonstrated that it is possible to create head-on collisions of proton beams using a crab-like motion.  Work ...

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Fan-less quad-core computer dedicated to Linux Mint

MintBox Mini 2 (MBM2) is the 4th generation of miniature fan-less PCs from Compulab and the folk behind Linux Mint – of each MBM2 sold, 5% is donated to Linux Mint. Processing comes from a quad-core ‘Apollo Lake’ Celeron J3455, and the machine ships with the Mint 19 ‘Tara’ Cinnamon installed. Other Mint variants, or other ...

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Comment: New business models on IoT hardware, by software

Software’s role in creating new business models around IoT hardware, with the use of snaps

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Wi-SUN sensor nodes can be powered by harvested energy

Eta Compute and Rohm Semiconductor are to create sensor nodes compatible with Wireless Smart Ubiquitous Network (Wi-SUN) – combining Rohm’s sensors and Eta’s microcontrollers to make nodes that can be powered by harvested energy. Wi-SUN is based on IEEE 802.15.4g and backed by the Wi-SUN Alliance. “Our partnership with Rohm gives our customers access to ...

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Green Hills supports Automotive Grade Linux with secure RTOS

Green Hills Software has announced that its Integrity Multivisor secure virtualization and advanced development tools now support implementation of Automotive Grade Linux (AGL) on different 64-bit automotive grade SoCs.  This means that AGL applications can be added to automotive systems meeting the ISO 26262 safety levels. So that AGL-based connected car applications will run in secure partitions ...

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Intel FlexRAN reference designs deployed in 5G infrastructure

California-based design firm Aricent is developing 5G networks software frameworks running on the Intel FlexRAN reference architecture. Aricent’s 5G framework will be integrated with the Intel FlexRAN reference architecture, supporting features compliant to 3GPP specifications for non-standalone modes. The firm’s 4G LTE framework based on Cloud-RAN (C-RAN) architecture also supports Intel’s FlexRAN. Harmeet Chauhan, president, ...

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GloFo to fab Socionext IC

 Socionext will fab the third and latest generation of its graphics display controllers, the SC1701, on GLoFo’s 55nm Low Power Extended (55LPx) process technology with embedded non-volatile memory (SuperFlash). The 55LPx platform enables several new features in Socionext’s SC1701 series including enhanced diagnostic and security protection capabilities, cyclic redundancy code (CRC) checks, picture freeze detection, ...

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Siemens to buy Austemper

Siemens is to buy Austemper Design Systems of Austin, Texas which specialises in IC design analysis, auto-correction and simulation technology which tests and hardens IC designs for functional safety in applications such as automotive, industrial and aerospace systems. ICs in these applications require three types of functional safety verification: for systemic faults, malicious faults and ...

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ADI integrates AFE, LEDs and a photodiode.

The ADPD188BI is an integrated optical module featuring two LEDs, photodiode, and analog front-end (AFE) integrated together in a single package. The AFE offers high ambient light rejection and reduces power consumption to support longer battery life. The two LEDs help reduce false alarms often caused by steam and dust. False alarms are a leading ...

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Thursday, June 28, 2018

SEMI forms materials group

SEMI has formed the SEMI Electronic Materials Group (EMG), a new collaborative technology community

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Unblockable raises $5M to create crypto collectibles around pro athletes

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Unblockable is tackling a new area for blockchain technology — sports fandom, specifically collectibles and fantasy sports.

CEO Jeb Terry (a former Fox Sports executive, and before that a former offensive lineman for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers) said the goal is to connect pro sports and pro athletes with the technology, and to “create new means of access and really empower the fans to celebrate their fandom, to show off who they’re fans of and create new relationships.”

Terry founded Unblockable with Eben Smith, a former derivatives trader, as well as Greg Dean and Kedric Van de Carr, entrepreneurs who have founded multiple crypto projects in the past.

The startup is announcing that it has raised $5 million from Shasta Ventures and Lightspeed Venture Partners, with Shasta’s Jacob Mullins joining the board of directors. (Mullins and I have been friends since we worked together at VentureBeat a decade ago.)

“Taking advantage of the unique characteristics of the emerging blockchain platform, UNBLOCKABLE is defining a new category of fun, engaging and approachable experiences and games for consumers as well as new ways for stars, athletes and leagues to build new relationships with fans,” Mullins said in the announcement.

Unblockable isn’t launching its consumer product yet – Terry told me that will probably happen later this year. But the basic idea is to release collectible crypto tokens tied to pro athletes. The goal is to have tokens representing every player (including their likeness), not just the big stars, and to create “true, authentic scarcity.”

Terry argued that the tokens will function as a kind of virtual collectible, with “a limited volume ever minted.” The value of each token should also fluctuate depending on the player’s performance on the field, especially since there will be a fantasy sports component of the platform — you’ll need to own a player’s token in order to include them on your team.

“There will be market dynamics in play,” Terry said. “With the value of the performance of the athletes in the field, it will be basic supply-demand behavior.”

When asked about reaching the (presumably) huge swath of sports fans that have no real familiarity with cryptocurrencies, Terry said, “It’s the core crypto enthusiasts that are going to get this right away.” At the same time, he’s hoping to “bridge that gap” to all those other fans, partly by making sure the buying and selling process is as “frictionless” as possible.

Unblockable hasn’t announced any partnerships with specific leagues or athletes, aside from naming NFL Hall of Famer Ronnie Lott as the head of its advisory panel. But it sounds like Terry’s working on that.

“There are a lot of opportunities for playeres to get involved,” he said. “As a former player, as a guy that’s worked with players in the past, it’s something that we really know and live. We want to make sure [they] trust us to take care of their brands. That’s important here. You can’t just take that lightly in this space.”

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‘Beaver thinking’ gets robot over obstacles

Some complex structure-building behaviour in animals is governed by simple responses to environmental cues rather than grand plans – known as ‘stigmergy’. Researchers at the University of Buffalo have turned to beavers to solve some robot problems. “When a beaver builds a dam, it’s not following a blueprint. Instead, it’s reacting to moving water. It’s ...

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Biggest ‘tiny’ AVR from Microchip

Microchip has created the most capable ‘ATtiny’ AVR microcontroller yet, with 32kword of internal flash and a host of analogue peripherals including two 10bit 115ksample/s ADCs (one of which can be used as a touch controller) and three 8bit DACs. Called ATtiny3217, the 24pin 4 x 4mm QFN chip runs up to 20MHz. There is ...

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Deliberate on-line game tricks risk gambling-like addition

Addiction experts are pointing to in-game purchasing schemes as a trigger for potentially ruinous addiction. The University of Adelaide team particularly points at ‘loot boxes’ – mechanisms with which players can repeatedly buy a random selection of virtual items – something that the Belgian Gambling Commission declared an illegal form of gambling in April. “Players ...

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Mini radar and AI instead of finger-pricking for diabetics?

Instead of finger pricking, a miniature radar might one day tell diabetics what their blood-sugar level is, according to the University of Waterloo in Canada. “We want to sense blood inside the body without actually having to sample any fluid,” said engineer Professor George Shaker. “Our hope is this can be realised as a smart ...

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Farnell shipping TI robotics kit

Farnell element 14 is now shipping the TI Robotics System Learning Kit (TI-RSLK)

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UK distributor in search for engineers and sales staff

Anglia Components is recruiting staff as it continues a five year plan to grow UK electronic component distribution market share to 10%, with a turnover of £100 million.   The distributor is looking for field application engineers, field sales and head office personnel.   Steve Rawlins, CEO, Anglia, writes:  “Our biggest challenge is getting the additional ...

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European semi companies ask EU for $11.7bn

 The European semiconductor industry has asked the EU for $11.7 billion for R&D over the next seven years. 11 organisations, including Soitec, ST, X-FAB, Bosch, GlobalFoundries, United Monolithic Semiconductors, Infineon, ASML  Fraunhofer,  CEA-Leti and Imec, have submitted a proposal to EU digital affairs commissioner Mariya Gabriel called ‘Rebooting Electronics Value Chains in Europe’. It argues ...

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Wednesday, June 27, 2018

Cordial raises $15M for smarter emails and messaging

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Cordial, a San Diego startup building what CEO Jeremy Swift described as a “truly next generation platform” for email marketing, has raised $15 million in Series B funding.

Swift and his co-founders come from email marketing company BlueHornet/Mapp Digital, which he said gave them the background to see “the market was really screaming: There needs to be a better way.

We’ve written about plenty of other email marketing products. For example, last week I covered Stensul, which focuses on the email creation process. But Swift argued that most startups are building “point solutions” that sit on top of existing email platforms, whereas Cordial is “unequivocally” taking on the big marketing clouds offered by Oracle, Adobe, IBM and Salesforce.

Cordial has gone to market to say you don’t need a legacy solution, plus a whole host of other point solutions, to try and do real-time messaging in a better way,” he said.

When Swift and Sales Engineering Manager Justin Soni pointed to when they gave me a quick demo of the Cordial platform, one of the big distinctions they pointed to was the way it uses customer data. Rather than targeting and customizing emails based on broad customer segments, they showed me how a Cordial email can incorporate dynamic elements that are updated with real-time, personal data — as Soni clicked around on different products on the merchant website, the email he was creating changed based on that behavior.

Cordial Machine Learning

In addition, Cordial applies machine learning technology to optimize the emails – not just testing out variations on a one element, but every part of the email, from the subject line to the call-to-action button.

And while Cordial started out with email, Swift said it’s expanded to include other messaging channels like push notifications and SMS. All of that can be coordinated from within a tool called Podium, where a marketer uses a visual interface to build different communication flows based on customer actions.

Cordial previously raised $6 million in Series A funding. Companies using the platform include Freshly, La Quinta and 1-800-Contacts.

The new funding was led by PeakSpan, with participation from Upfront Ventures and High Alpha. Swift said this will allow Cordial to continue adding new marketing channels (the goal is one per quarter) and to continue investing in the technology.

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The Sonos Beam is the soundbar evolved

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Sonos has always gone its own way. The speaker manufacturer dedicated itself to network-connected speakers before there were home networks and they sold a tablet-like remote control before there were tablets. Their surround sound systems install quickly and run seamlessly. You can buy a few speakers, tap a few buttons, and have 5.1 sound in less time than it takes to pull a traditional home audio system out of its shipping box.

This latest model is an addition to the Sonos line and is sold alongside the Playbase – a lumpen soundbar designed to sit directly underneath TVs not attached to the wall – and the Playbar, a traditionally-styled soundbar that preceded the Beam. Both products had all of the Sonos highlights – great sound, amazing interfaces, and easy setup – but the Base had too much surface area for more elegant installations and the Bar was too long while still sporting an aesthetic that harkened back to 2008 Crutchfield catalogs.

The $399 Beam is Sonos’ answer to that and it is more than just a pretty box. The speaker includes Alexa – and promised Google Assistant support – and it improves your TV sound immensely. Designed as an add-on to your current TV, it can stand alone or connect with the Sonos subwoofer and a few satellite surround speakers for a true surround sound experience. It truly shines alone, however, thanks to its small size and more than acceptable audio range.

To use the Beam you bring up an iOS or Android app to display your Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon, and Pandora accounts (this is a small sampling. Sonos supports more.) You select a song or playlist and start listening. Then, when you want to watch TV, the speaker automatically flips to TV mode – including speech enhancement features that actually work – when the TV is turned on. An included tuning system turns your phone into a scanner that improves the room audio automatically.

The range is limited by the Beam’s size and shape and there is very little natural bass coming out of this thing. However, in terms of range the Beam is just fine. It can play an action movie with a bit of thump and then go on to play some light jazz or pop. I’ve had some surprisingly revelatory sessions with the Beam when listening to classic rock and more modern fare and it’s very usable as a home audio center.

The Beam is two feet long and 3 inches tall. It comes in black or white and is very unobtrusive in aly home theatre setup. Interestingly, the product supports HDMI-ARC aka HDMI Audio Return Channel. This standard, introduced in TVs made in the past five years, allows the TV to automatically output audio and manage volume controls via a single HDMI cable. What this means, however, is you’re going to have a bad time if you don’t have HDMI-ARC.

Sonos includes an adapter that can also accept optical audio output but setup requires you to turn off your TV speakers and route all the sound to the optical out. This is a bit of a mess and if you don’t have either of those outputs – HDMI-ARC or optical – then you’re probably in need of a new TV. That said, HDMI-ARC is a bit jarring for first timers but Sonos is sure that enough TVs support it that they can use it instead of optical-only.

The Beam doesn’t compete directly with other “smart” speakers like the HomePod. It is very specifically a consumer electronics device, even though it supports AirPlay 2 and Alexa. Sonos makes speakers and good ones at that and that goal has always been front and center. While other speakers may offer a more fully-featured sound in a much smaller package, the Beam offers both great TV audio and great music playback for less than any other higher end soundbar. Whole room audio does get expensive – about $1,200 for a Sub and two satellites – but you can simply add on pieces as you go. One thing, however, is clear: Sonos has always been the best wireless speaker for the money and the Beam is another win for the scrappy and innovative speaker company.

[gallery ids="1663460,1663461,1663462,1663463"] [gallery ids="1663385,1663386,1663388"]

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DAC: Cadence builds its cloud-based design world

Cadence Design Systems a cloud-based chip and system design tool portfolio which has both Cadence-managed and customer-managed environments. It brings the scalability of the cloud into play for developers allowing them to securely manage high complexity designs, with  scalable compute resources available in minutes or hours instead of months or weeks. The announcement was made ...

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Google rebrands its ad lineup, with AdWords becoming Google Ads

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Google’s complex lineup of ad products is getting rebranded.

Sridhar Ramaswamy, the senior vice president who leads Google’s ad efforts, explained the rebrand at a press event this morning, where he said the company has been getting “consistent feedback” over the past few years that the plethora of ad products and brands — assembled largely through acquisitions — could make it be confusing for advertisers.

“This is a primarily a name change, but it is indicative of where we have been directing the product” for the past few years, Ramaswamy said. He also said the rebrand points to “where we want the product to go.”

Moving forward, Google’s ad products will be divided up into three major brands. First, what’s now known as AdWords will become Google Ads, which Ramaswamy said will serve as “the front door for advertisers to buy on all Google surfaces,” whether that’s search, display ads, YouTube videos, app ads in Google Play, location listings in Google Maps or elsewhere.

In this case, it’s not just a name change. Google is also launching something it calls Smart Campaigns, which will become the default mode for advertisers. It allows those advertisers to identify the actions (whether it’s phone calls, store visits or purchases) that they’re prioritizing, then Google Ads will use machine learning to optimize the images, text and targeting to drive more of those actions.

The second brand is the Google Marketing Platform, which combines DoubleClick Digital Marketing and Google Analytics 360, the company’s analytics tools for marketers. Under that umbrella, Google is also announcing a new product called Display & Video 360, which combines features from DoubleClick Bid Manager, Campaign Manager, Studio and Audience Center.

Managing Director for Platforms Dan Taylor said the Google Marketing Platform is responding to a growing need for collaboration — for example, he said Adidas used the platform to bring its brand and performance marketing teams together with the measurement team.

Google Marketing Platform

The Marketing Platform includes a new Integrations Center where marketers can view all the ways they can different ways they can connect their Google tools. (And while the focus here is on integration within Google’s platform, Taylor said the company remains committed to interoperability with outside ad exchanges and measurement providers.)

The third brand is Google Ad Manager, a platform that combines Google’s monetization tools for publishers, namely DoubleClick Ad Exchange and DoubleClick for Publishers. In this case, Jonathan Bellack, director of product management for publisher platforms, said there’s already been a “three-year journey” of merging the two products as the programmatic ad-buying becomes used across more types of advertising.

“These categories have just been breaking down for a while — all of our publishers already log into one user interface,” Bellack said. So the only thing that’s really changing is “the logo.”

One result of all this consolidation, and one that Ramaswamy described as “bittersweet,” is that the DoubleClick brand is going away. On the other hand, while they weren’t the focus of today’s announcement, the AdSense and Admob brands will continue.

The rebrand is expected to start rolling out in July. Ramaswamy and Taylor both emphasized that no product migration or training will be required.

“The look and feel is going to change a little bit, but the core functionality is not changing,” Taylor said.

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Sponsored Content: LAYLA Opens Up The Asian Semiconductor Market To The West

EVERYBODY LOVES TO FEEL SPECIAL, whether it is getting a present from a secret admirer, or being told how great you are by your partner, it is always great to receive positive attention and care. After all, we humans yearn to be noticed. Now, imagine someone provided you with that special attention unconditionally at your ...

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Facebook abandons internet drone project

Facebook is abandoning its plan to provide internet access via drones which will result in the closure of its drone building plant in Bridgwater in Somerset. The plant belonged to Ascenta, a UK drone building company bought by Facebook. The four year-old drone initiative, called Project Aquila, was seen as a way to bring internet ...

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Tuesday, June 26, 2018

DAC: Planning tools are based around unified hierarchical database

A relatively new company, Avatar, focuses on physical design implantation. It presented the Aprisa full functional block level place and route system, and Apogee, a top-down hierarchical prototyping floor planning and chip assembly tool. The tools are built on ATopTech technologies which were the subject of a lawsuit brought by Synopsys. Following that, the tools ...

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DAC: eFPGA core is optimised for AI

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning were popular themes at the 55 th DAC, held at the Moscone Center West in San Francisco (24 to 28 June 2018). Flex Logix Technologies was one of the companies that announced a product suitable for AI, machine learning and deep learning applications. by Caroline Hayes at DAC The ...

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Ac-dc charger idles at 10mW for CoC Tier 2

Ac-dc PSU stand-by power can be as low as 10mW with STMicroelectronics’ STCH03 off-line power controller, aimed at mobile chargers, power adapters and auxiliary supplies. Energy-saving features include ‘zero-power’ high-voltage start-up circuitry, as well as burst-mode switching when the load is very low or disconnected (see below), are intended to help chargers meet legislation such ...

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Daimler chooses Xilinx for automotive neural network processing

Daimler has tied up with Xilinx to create automotive artificial intelligence hardware. “When Daimler started working on this programme, it had issues finding solutions that were technically capable of implementing artificial intelligence or a neural network on a device that combined price, power and availability, and was automotive qualified,” Xilinx marketing manager Stephan Janouch told ...

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Neural net helps robot grasp objects in busy moving environments

Roboticists at Queensland University of Technology are using neural networks to help robots quickly and accurately grasp objects in cluttered and changing environments. “We have been able to program robots, in very controlled environments, to pick up very specific items. However, one of the key shortcomings of current robotic grasping systems is the inability to ...

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Spider silk microphone also senses slightest waft of air

Seeking to create the most waft-able air movement sensor ever, that can detect sound as well as air movement, a US researcher has turned to spider silk and a 400V field. “The goal was to create a sensor that only resists gravity,” said Professor Ron Miles of Binghamton University. “The sensor needed to stay connected ...

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Fujitsu in mass production of an 8Mbit FRAM

Fujitsu in mass production of  an 8Mbit FRAM. The chip has  an SRAM compatible parallel interface, offering a much more efficient alternative to battery backup SRAM. Based on the unique features of FRAM as a non-volatile memory, such as fast overwrite at 150 ns and read/write endurance of 1013, MB85R8M2T can replace anSRAM and remove ...

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Monday, June 25, 2018

New York’s RRE Ventures raises $265M for its new fund

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RRE Ventures has raised $265 million for its latest fund.

The firm was founded back in 1994, and this is its seventh fund (eighth if you include a separate “opportunity” fund for making follow-on investments). Exits in the last few years include Bitly (acquired by Spectrum Equity), Business Insider (acquired by Axel Springer) and TapCommerce (acquired by Twitter).

General Partner Raju Rishi said that RRE will continue to follow its current investment strategy. That means putting about 60 percent of its money into Series A investments, 5 to 10 percent into seed deals and the rest in B or C rounds.

It also means investing making about half its investments on the East Coast — mostly New York City, where RRE is based. Rishi suggested that with the growth of “a very virtualized tech community of developer from around the world,” New York makes more sense for startups, thanks to the density of industries like media and fashion: “The ecosystem question has become, ‘Where can I be closest to my customer?'”

RRE invests beyond New York too. In those cases, Rishi said it’s usually based on specific sectors that the investment team has researched deeply. Currently, those sectors include healthcare IT, space technology, blockchain, robotics, virtual reality and augmented reality. In contrast, there are some other sectors that RRE sees as “a little bit waning.”

“A great example is, we made the initial investment in 3D printing — we were the original investors in MakerBot,” Rishi said. “Now, we don’t see a striking amount of innovation that space. That doesn’t mean we cut it off at the knees and not invest in it, but it’s not something we’re actively looking at.”

Raju Rishi

Vice President of Business Development Maria Palma added that the firm has also been growing its platform strategy to support portfolio companies in the last couple years.

“You can’t pick a platform strategy that’s unique, but you can pick a platform strategy that your firm can uniquely execute,” she said.

For RRE, that means helping startups connect with larger companies for potential partnerships, and also working with founders to better understand things like leadership and hiring. In some cases, she said the firm doesn’t have “the capabilities to deliver that type of training at scale,” so instead it it focuses on “what we call community learning — really kind of peer groups … across our companies so they can more easily get answers to their questions.”

Rishi said RRE has had fairly consistent fund sizes (it raised a $280 million sixth fund about four years ago), because its “sweet spot is Series As,” and raising a larger fund would mean investing in more late-stage deals.

“We usually target $250 million, and frankly they always sort of creep up because of existing LPs who want to continue to bet on us,” he said.

And while the fundraising announcement is only happening today, RRE has already backed several startups with the new fund — Bend Financial (health savings accounts), Gem (cryptocurrency), Hypr (decentralized authentication), Ladder (life insurance), Latch (smart locks) and TheWaveVR (VR experiences for music).

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CEVA improves cellular IoT core

CEVA has announced its CEVA-Dragonfly NB2 core for  the cellular IoT standardCat-NB2 (3GPP Release 14 eNB-IoT). The licensable Rel14 compliant eNB-IoT core  is based on the CEVA-X1 DSP/control processor featuring an enhanced Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) and provides a unified processor environment for both physical layer and protocol stack workloads. The core also includes a worldwide enabled RF Transceiver, a PA and ...

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SiFive extends MCU core range

SiFive today announced the availability of its E2 Core IP Series, configurable low-area, low-power microcontroller MCU cores designed for use in embedded devices. The E2 Series extends SiFive’s product line with two new standard cores, the E21, which provides mainstream performance for MCUs, sensor fusion, minion cores and smart IoT markets; and the E20, the ...

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Microchip adds chip-level security to Arm microcontrollers

Microchip’s latest Arm Cortex-M23 core based 32-bit microcontrollers feature Arm TrustZone for Armv8-M. This is a programmable security environment that provides hardware isolation between certified libraries, IP and application code.  SAM L11 MCUs also have chip-level tamper resistance, secure boot and secure key storage. The aim is to protect IoT designs from both remote and ...

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dsPIC gets two fast 16bit cores to speed development of high-performance power and motor control

Microchip has announced a dual-core 16bit dsPIC for high-end embedded control applications. Intended to speed code development by removing dependence between user-interface and real-time code, the cores are largely independent, each with its own set of peripherals, and communicating with each other only via FIFOs and mail-boxes – data and address busses are not shared. ...

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Friday, June 22, 2018

Security, privacy experts weigh in on the ICE doxxing

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In what appears to be the latest salvo in a new, wired form of protest, developer Sam Lavigne posted code that scrapes LinkedIn to find Immigration and Customs Enforcement employee accounts. His code, which basically a Python-based tool that scans LinkedIn for keywords, is gone from Github and Gitlab and Medium took down his original post. The CSV of the data is still available here and here and WikiLeaks has posted a mirror.

“I find it helpful to remember that as much as internet companies use data to spy on and exploit their users, we can at times reverse the story, and leverage those very same online platforms as a means to investigate or even undermine entrenched power structures. It’s a strange side effect of our reliance on private companies and semi-public platforms to mediate nearly all aspects of our lives. We don’t necessarily need to wait for the next Snowden-style revelation to scrutinize the powerful — so much is already hiding in plain sight,” said Lavigne.

Doxxing is the process of using publicly available information to target someone online for abuse. Because we can now find out anything on anyone for a few dollars – a search for “background check” brings up dozens of paid services that can get you names and addresses in a second – scraping public data on LinkedIn seems far easier and innocuous. That doesn’t make it legal.

“Recent efforts to outlaw doxxing at the national level (like the Online Safety Modernization Act of 2017) have stalled in committee, so it’s not strictly illegal,” said James Slaby, Security Expert at Acronis. “But LinkedIn and other social networks usually consider it a violation of their terms of service to scrape their data for personal use. The question of fairness is trickier: doxxing is often justified as a rare tool that the powerless can use against the powerful to call attention to perceived injustices.”

“The problem is that doxxing is a crude tool. The torrent of online ridicule, abuse and threats that can be heaped on doxxed targets by their political or ideological opponents can also rain down on unintended and undeserving targets: family members, friends, people with similar names or appearances,” he said.

The tool itself isn’t to blame. No one would fault a job seeker or salesperson who scraped LinkedIn for targeted employees of a specific company. That said, scraping and publicly shaming employees walks a thin line.

“In my opinion, the professor who developed this scraper tool isn’t breaking the law, as it’s perfectly legal to search the web for publicly available information,” said David Kennedy, CEO of TrustedSec. “This is known in the security space as ‘open source intelligence’ collection, and scrapers are just one way to do it. That said, it is concerning to see ICE agents doxxed in this way. I understand emotions are running high on both sides of this debate, but we don’t want to increase the physical security risks to our law enforcement officers.”

“The decision by Twitter, Github and Medium to block the dissemination of this information and tracking tool makes sense – in fact, law enforcement agents’ personal information is often protected. This isn’t going to go away anytime soon, it’s only going to become more aggressive, particularly as more people grow comfortable with using the darknet and the many available hacking tools for sale in these underground forums. Law enforcement agents need to take note of this, and be much more careful about what (and how often) they post online.”

Ultimately, doxxing is problematic. Because we place our information on public forums there should be nothing to stop anyone from finding and posting it. However, the expectation that people will use our information for good and not evil is swiftly eroding. Today, wrote one security researcher, David Kavanaugh, doxxing is becoming dangerous.

“Going after the people on the ground is like shooting the messenger. Decisions are made by leadership and those are the people we should be going after. Doxxing is akin to a personal attack. Change policy, don’t ruin more lives,” he said.

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Transfer.sh is an instant sharing tool for programmers

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File sharing tools are a dime a dozen these days. There’s Dropbox, Google Drive, and iCloud. But what if you want to share something quickly and easily from the command line? That’s why programmer Remco Verhoef created Transfer.sh.

The service has basically a file dump. You send a file to transfer.sh via curl and it stays there for fourteen days until its automatically deleted. For example, I uploaded this picture by adding a bit of code to my .bashrc.

The system is one of those small, clever tools that just works. Verhoef created it because he needed to be able to upload files on the fly.

“I created this application when I needed to share log data from within a ssh shell with someone else,” he said. “So I created a web application where I can easily upload files using curl (which is available on almost every platform) just using the command line and modify the file on the fly, like encrypting the contents, applying grep etc. The application has been made open source because it could be usable for many other people and I’d encourage them to run their own server.”

“We don’t have a business model, and we are keeping the site running as courtesy. It is getting a bit difficult to keep it running, because of the popularity and usage,” he said. He also runs a dev shop and is releasing a number of other products including ICO security.

Verhoef doesn’t promise security on his platform, only convenience. He recommends piping files through gpg before uploading them.

Not everyone is using the product for good, however, which frustrates his team.

“It is being used by a lot of people,” he said. “Some are using it for uploading log files, others are exporting complete video surveillance to us. Sometimes it is being abused, by distributing malware, botnets and other malicious tools, but we try to stop it as soon as possible. One time a porn website was serving porn photos through us, and when we found out we had all photos replaced by dogs and kittens.”

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This is what 350kW charging looks like

A fast charging station for electric cars, capable of delivering 350kW to each of several vehicles

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UltraSoc links with Imperas

UltraSoC will incorporate key elements of Imperas’ development environment into its tools offering, giving designers a unified system-level pre- and post-silicon development flow, dramatically reducing time-to-revenue and overall development costs. UltraSoC delivers the industry’s leading independent on-chip monitoring, analytics and debug technology, via a combination of semiconductor IP and associated software. Imperas’ virtual platforms approach ...

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Thursday, June 21, 2018

Bag Week 2018: The Nomadic NF-02 keeps everything in its right place

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Nomadic, a Japanese brand sold by JetPens in the US, makes some of my favorite bags and backpacks. The Wise Walker Toto was an amazing little bag and I’ve always enjoyed the size, materials, and design. The $89 Nomadic NF-02 is no different.

The best thing about this 15×7 inch backpack is the compact size and internal pouches. The Nomadic can hold multiple pens, notebooks, and accessories, all stuck in their own little cubbies, and you can fit a laptop and a few books in the main compartment. This is, to be clear, not a “school” backpack. It’s quite compact and I doubt it would be very comfortable with a much more than a pair of textbooks and a heavier laptop. It’s definitely a great travel sack, however, and excellent for the trip from home to the office.

The bag comes in a few colors including turquoise and navy and there is a small hidden pouch for important papers and passports. There is a reflective strip on the body and it is water-repellent so it will keep your gear dry.

Again, my favorite part of this bag are the multiple little pockets and spaces. It’s an organizer’s dream and features so many little spots to hide pens and other gear that it could also make an excellent tourist pack. It is small enough for easy transport but holds almost anything you can throw at it.

Nomadic is a solid backpack. It’s small, light, and still holds up to abuse. I’m a big fan of the entire Nomadic line and it’s great to see this piece available in the US. It’s well worth a look if you’re looking for a compact carrier for your laptop, accessories, and notebooks.

bag week 2018

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Bag Week 2018: WP Standard’s Rucksack goes the distance

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WP Standard – formerly called Whipping Post Leather – makes rugged leather bags, totes, and briefcases and their Rucksack is one of my favorites. Designed to look like something a Pony Express rider would slip on for a visit to town, this $275 satchel is sturdy, handsome, and ages surprisingly well.

There are some trade-offs, however. Except for two small front pouches there are no hidden nooks and crannies in this spare 15×15 inch sack. The main compartment can fit a laptop and a few notebooks and the front pouches can hold accessories like mice or a little collection of plugs. There is no fancy nylon mesh or gear organizers here, just a brown expanse of full grain leather.

I wore this backpack for a few months before writing this and found it surprisingly comfortable and great for travel. Because it is so simple I forced myself to pare down my gear slightly and I was able to consolidate my cables and other accessories into separate pouches. I could fit a laptop, iPad Pro, and a paperback along side multiple notebooks and planners and I could even overstuff the thing on long flights. As long as I was able to buckle the front strap nothing fell out or was lost.

This bag assumes that you’re OK with thick, heavy leather and that you’re willing to forgo a lot of the bells and whistles you get with more modern styles. That said, it has a great classic look and it’s very usable. I suspect this bag would last decades longer than anything you could buy at Office Depot and it would look good doing it. At $275 it’s a bit steep but you’re paying for years – if not decades – of regular use and abuse. It’s worth the investment.

bag week 2018

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Urban Airship raises another $25M

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Urban Airship has raised $25 million in Series F funding.

The company started out as a platform supporting push notifications, but has since expanded to include other marketing channels like email, SMS, mobile wallets and voice assistants. The goal is to be the platform managing messaging and unifying customer data across all these channels.

Altogether, Urban Airship said it’s now delivered more than two trillion messages, doubling the number from a year ago.

Recent product additions include voice notifications on Amazon Alexa (which is still in beta testing) and automated in-app messaging. The company has signed up new enterprise customers like AMC, Magazine Luiza and Royal Automobile Club.

This funding was led by Foundry Group (which previously led the company’s Series B), with participation from True Ventures, August Capital, Intel Capital, Verizon Ventures, QuestMark Partners and Franklin Park Associates.

Brett Caine, who joined as CEO in 2014, said Urban Airship is currently breaking even, and he described this as “the first time in the eight nine years of the company where we’re raising money when we didn’t need it.”

So then why raise again? Caine said he sees “a lot of opportunity to grow and continue to expand globally and certainly look at the broad set of channels emerging in the market.”

“Instead of saying, ‘Oh gosh, we’ve gotta go out and raise money,’ and it was, ‘Let’s raise money to go faster,'” he added.

In addition to the growth of new marketing channels, Caine said growing discussion and regulation around online privacy serve as “wind shifts” in the company’s favor — because Urban Airship is focused on helping marketers use their own data to communicate directly with customers who have opted in to hearing from them.

“We’ve been opt-in, first-party from day one,” Caine said. “All of digital channels that we want to power, they only use first-party data. We don’t do anything with third-party, we don’t do any advertising.”

Urban Airship has now raised more than $100 million in total funding, according to Crunchbase.

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Multi-sensor Bluetooth 5 node for IoT app development

Roki is a wireless multi-sensor node, designed for the evaluation of Bluetooth 5 communication in IoT applications. On-board are: 3-axis accelerometer Combination 3-axis accelerometer + 3-axis magnetometer Combination 3-axis accelerometer + 3-axis gyroscope 3-axis magnetometer Barometer And the following can be added: Optical heart rate sensor Ambient light sensor RGB colour sensor Magnetic hall effect ...

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Intel CEO resigns

Intel CEO Brian Krzanich has resigned following a relationship with an employee. Here is Intel’s statement: “Intel Corporation today announced the resignation of Brian Krzanich as CEO and a member of the Board of Directors. The Board has named Chief Financial Officer Robert Swan Interim Chief Executive Officer, effective immediately. “Intel was recently informed that ...

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Industrial monitors have 4K resolution at Amplicon

Amplicon of Brighton has introduced a range of industrial monitors, including high performance Full-HD and 4K displays.  Called Senses Industrial Monitors, that range comprises of SD displays for low-cost, less demanding applications, as well as, both Full-HD and 4K high-end displays. The Full-HD and 4K monitors are available with either resistive touch or 10-point projected ...

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UK adults becoming happier about robots

Robots and their potential to make an impact on society may be beginning to enter the psyche of the UK population. As UK Robotics Week begins, a new survey has found that nearly a quarter of respondents believed that there is potential for more robots to be included in everyday society. But robot-friendliness is taking ...

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Chalmers researchers develop graphene film

A Chalmers University spin-off is about commercialise a graphene assembled  film technology. Researchers at the Swedish university have developed a graphene assembled film that has over 60% higher thermal conductivity than graphite film – despite the fact that graphite simply consists of many layers of graphene. The graphene film shows potential as a novel heat ...

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Nottingham prints molecular 3D memory

The University of Nottingham has 3D printed materials that contain molecules that reversibly change state in response to stimuli – demonstrating the concept by developing a photo-active molecule that changes from colourless to blue when irradiated with light, then back by exposure to oxygen from the air, and a tailor-made polymer to support it. “We ...

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Laser tunes like chameleon skin

A team from the US Northwestern University has developed a laser that changes colours using the same mechanism as chameleons. “Chameleons can easily change their colours by controlling the spacing among the nano-crystals on their skin, which determines the colour we observe,” said Professor Teri Odom. “This colouring based on surface structure is chemically stable ...

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Wednesday, June 20, 2018

New system connects your mind to a machine to help stop mistakes

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How do you tell your robot not do something that could be catastrophic? You could give it a verbal or programmatic command or you could have it watch your brain for signs of distress and have it stop itself. That’s what researchers at MIT’s robotics research lab have done with a system that is wired to your brain and tells robots how to do their job.

The initial system is fairly simple. A scalp EEG and EMG system is connected to a Baxter work robot and lets a human wave or gesture when the robot is doing something that it shouldn’t be doing. For example, the robot could regularly do a task – drilling holes, for example – but when it approaches an unfamiliar scenario the human can gesture at the task that should be done.

“By looking at both muscle and brain signals, we can start to pick up on a person’s natural gestures along with their snap decisions about whether something is going wrong,” said PhD candidate Joseph DelPreto. “This helps make communicating with a robot more like communicating with another person.”

Because the system uses nuances like gestures and emotional reactions you can train robots to interact with humans with disabilities and even prevent accidents by catching concern or alarm before it is communicated verbally. This lets workers stop a robot before it damages something and even help the robot understand slight changes to its tasks before it begins.

In their tests the team trained Baxter to drill holes in an airplane fuselage. The task changed occasionally and a human standing nearby was able to gesture to the robot to change position before it drilled, essentially training it to do new tasks in the midst of its current task. Further, there was no actual programming involved on the human’s part, just a suggestion that the robot move the drill left or right on the fuselage. The most important thing? Humans don’t have to think in a special way or train themselves to interact with the machine.

“What’s great about this approach is that there’s no need to train users to think in a prescribed way,” said DelPreto. “The machine adapts to you, and not the other way around.”

The team will present their findings at the Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS) conference.

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This is what a crypto currency mining machine looks like

Coolisys Technologies has announced a line of crypto-mining units, called ‘SuperMiner’. The first of the line, built around a 10nm mining chipset jointly developed by Samsung and Innosilicon, is called ‘AntEater’ and can operate at 17.2T hash/s. “We wanted to push the envelope by developing the AntEater based on a 10nm chip because it was the ...

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Toshiba changes SSD game

Toshiba  has unveiled what it describes as a ‘game-changing’ category of SAS SSDs expected to replace SATA SSDs in server applications. The RM5 12Gbit/s value SAS (vSAS) series features capacity, performance, reliability, and manageability and data security advantages – at a price that obsoletes SATA SSDs, claims Toshiba. A homogeneous SAS environment has long been ...

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SEMI billings up 19.2% y-o-y

SEMI’s May billings were 0.6% higher than April’s at $2.70 billion and 19.2% higher than the May 2017 billings level of $2.27 billion. “May 2018 monthly global billings of North American equipment manufacturers exceeded last month’s level to set yet another record,” said Ajit Manocha, president and CEO of SEMI. “Demand for semiconductor equipment remains strong on ...

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Tuesday, June 19, 2018

RF signal generators stretch to 6GHz

Describing them as mid-range and compact, Rohde & Schwarz has introduced the SMB100B analogue RF signal generator and the SMBV100B vector signal generator, aiming them at RF semiconductor development, telecommunications, aerospace and defence. They are available in various configurations, with frequency ranges from 8kHz to 1GHz, 3GHz or 6GHz, customers can choose among three different ...

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Bag Week 2018: The Bitcoin Genesis Block backpack will centralize your belongings

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Welcome to Bag Week 2018. Every year your faithful friends at TechCrunch spend an entire week looking at bags. Why? Because bags — often ignored but full of our important electronics — are the outward representations of our techie styles, and we put far too little thought into where we keep our most prized possessions.

It’s difficult to show people that you love blockchain. There are no cool hats, no rad t-shirts, and no outward signs – except a libertarian bent and a poster of a scantily-clad Vitalik Buterin on your bedroom wall – to tell the world you are into decentralized monetary systems. Until, of course, the Bitcoin Genesis Block Backpack.

Unlike the blockchain, this backpack will centralize your stuff in a fairly large, fairly standard backpack. There is little unique about the backpack itself – it’s a solid piece made of 100% polyester and includes ergonomically designed straps and a secret pocket – but it is printed with the Bitcoin Genesis Block including a headline about UK bank bailouts. In short, it’s Merkle tree-riffic.

The green and orange text looks a little Matrix-y but the entire thing is very fun and definitely a conversation starter. Again, I doubt this will last more than a few trips to Malta or the Luxembourg but it’s a great way to let Bitcoin whales know your ICO means business.

The bag comes to us from BitcoinShirt, a company that makes and sells bitcoin-related products and accepts multiple cryptocurrencies. While this backpack won’t stand up to 51% attacks on its structural integrity, it is a fun and cheap way to show the world you’re pro-Nakamoto.

So as we barrel headlong into a crypto future fear not, fashion-conscious smart contract lover: the Bitcoin Genesis Block backpack is here to show the world you’re well and truly HODLing. To the moon!

Read other Bag Week reviews here.

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Functional safety position sensor has two devices in one package

Magnetic angle sensing with 12-bit resolution, and a maximum non-linearity error of ±1° is available from either or two completely separate sensors in a common package for use in functional safety systems, such as in the gear shifters and pedals in automotive electrified power-train applications such as shift-by-wire, as well as potentiometer replacement in knobs and ...

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TI aims at automotive and industry with high-performance ~30V op-amps

TI has revealed early fruits from the latest in its long-running series of BiCom advanced bipolar processes: the 27V 200MHz low-noise OPA2810 and the 36V zero-drift 14MHz OPA189, which are aimed at signal conditioning in automotive and industrial environments. “These are the first few of many other amplifiers focussed in this area, the beginning of ...

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Monday, June 18, 2018

Laser scan mooted as alternative to x-ray mammography

Novel laser scans could scan breast for cancer without x-rays, if research at Caltech proves fruitful. Photoacoustic computed tomography, or PACT, works by shining a near-infrared laser pulse into the breast tissue, which is absorbed by oxygen-carrying hemoglobin molecules in red blood cells, causing the molecules to vibrate ultrasonically. Those vibrations travel through the tissue and ...

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Flexible micro-LED array could open door to TV screens

Korean research lab KAIST has created a flexible array of thin-film blue micro-LEDs, following-on form a similar red array. The team transferred thousands of <2μm-thick blue vertical micro LEDs onto plastic in one go. Electrical connections are via silver wires. Optical power density around 30mW/mm2 was demonstrated. claimed by KAIST to be three times higher that ...

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This simple robot offers more cowbell

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Fellas, you’re gonna want that cowbell. And what better way to get that cowbell than with an automatic cowbell-playing robot that uses simple components to create a musical experience like no other. The system, built over at Adafruit, includes a simple Arduino controller, a potentiometer to control the speed of the cowbell hammer, and a few audio systems to play back some BÖC and the immortal words of The Bruce Dickinson: “More cowbell.”

It even includes a controller to activate a fog machine for a little extra rock and roll.

You can download the code for the system here and there is a full build guide here. Ultimately this is one of the silliest DIY projects I’ve seen in a while but, as you may recall, the only prescription for certain fevers is obviously more cowbell.

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Sunday, June 17, 2018

Original Content podcast: ‘Queer Eye’ season two is even more of a tearjerker

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It’s only been a couple months since we reviewed the first season of Netflix’s revival of Queer Eye, but the show’s Fab Five are already back with another eight episodes where they remake the homes, wardrobes and lives.

For season two, however, they mix things up a little — not only does the format feel more varied, but the folks being helped now include a woman and a transgendered man.

On the latest episode of the Original Content podcast, we’re joined by Henry Pickavet (editorial director at TechCrunch and co-host of the CTRL+T podcast) to discuss the show. We’re all fans: Queer Eye has its shortcomings, but it really works for us, with multiple episodes ending with tears, on- and off-screen.

We also recap some of the latest streaming and entertainment news, including AT&T’s acquisition of Time Warner, Comcast’s new bid for Fox and Netflix’s addition of Minecraft: Story Mode.

You can listen in the player below, subscribe using Apple Podcasts or find us in your podcast player of choice. If you like the show, please let us know by leaving a review on Apple. You also can send us feedback directly.

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