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Senin, 05 Agustus 2019

Juul's app-connected e-cigarette keeps tabs on your vaping - Engadget

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E-cigarette manufacturer Juul has come under fire for contributing to teen smoking rates. Recently, the company has been scrambling to demonstrate its products are aimed at adults, not teens. Its latest defense is an app-connected e-cigarette which requires users to be over 18.

The product, called the Juul C1, pairs with an Android-only app via Bluetooth and has been launched in the UK after a trial in Canada, as reported by The Financial Times. It records data on when and where it is used and keeps track of how many puffs a users takes, tracking their average smoking habits. It also has connectivity features like a locator to find your vape if you lose it and a device lock to prevent anyone other than you from using your device.

A big part of the push toward tracking is to keep the product out of the hands of teenagers. E-cigarettes carry heath risks like cancer and heart disease, and the FDA is concerned that teens who vape are more likely to start smoking cigarettes. San Francisco has even banned e-cigarettes all together.

The C1 app uses facial recognition and a two-step background check to verify a user's age, preventing teenagers from using the device. Recent reports suggest Juul is considering introducing geofencing which would prevent its product from being used in certain areas such as in and around schools. While the C1 doesn't currently do these things, moving vapes towards app connectivity will allow Juul to implement these sort of features down the line.

Of course, there's nothing to stop teens from avoiding the C1 or other smart vapes and picking up a traditional dumb e-cigarette instead. And that's not to mention the privacy issues around a product which collects so much data from its users.

According to a Bloomberg report, Juul is planning to release Bluetooth-controlled vapes internationally, so the product could come to the US soon.

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https://www.engadget.com/2019/08/05/juul-connected-e-cigarette/

2019-08-05 12:57:29Z
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Juul's app-connected e-cigarette keeps tabs on your vaping - Engadget

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According to a Bloomberg report, Juul is planning to release Bluetooth-controlled vapes internationally, so the product could come to the US soon.

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https://www.engadget.com/2019/08/05/juul-connected-e-cigarette/

2019-08-05 12:31:10Z
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The Morning After: Google Assistant can read out your WhatsApp replies for you - Engadget

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Welcome to your Monday! This week, we've got Samsung's big Unpacked event (Galaxy Note incoming), as well as Disney reporting on how its expansion is faring so far. Over the weekend, you might have missed an E3 data breach that leaked thousands of registered journalists' phone numbers and addresses (including mine, yay), and StockX suffered a major data breach, too, neglecting to immediately inform its sneakerhead users exactly what was going down. Further afield, a meteor impact on Mars (in its early years) may have initiated a 'mega-tsunami'.

Attackers reportedly stole records from 6.8 million customers.
StockX confirms it was hacked

Sneaker trading site StockX's warning of "suspicious activity" appears to have stemmed from a serious data breach. TechCrunch learned through a black-market data seller that a hacker stole 6.8 million records from StockX in May, including names, email addresses and (thankfully hashed) passwords.

It's continuing a string of outages that have plagued the services.
Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp went down (again)

Facebook is still struggling with outages. Numerous reports yesterday pointed to Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp being unavailable to various degrees over the weekend. The failure doesn't appear to have been as dramatic as it was in July, when image services were out for several hours (we had at least some success visiting them ourselves). All the services are still up and running.

The message board has been a haven for white nationalists.
Cloudflare cuts off extremist site 8chan after multiple shootings

Cloudflare has announced it will no longer provide security services to the far-right site 8chan, following the deadly mass shooting by a white nationalist in El Paso, Texas. That will open 8chan up to distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, starting at midnight PDT, which could permanently disable the site unless it's able to find a replacement service.

Cloudflare has been reluctant to pull its services from extremist websites, citing free speech issues. It previously ended support for another white extremist site, the Daily Stormer. Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince said that pulling support doesn't solve the underlying problem: "While removing 8chan from our network takes heat off of us, it does nothing to address why hateful sites fester online."

Use a neural network to make a lovely knit hat.
AI knitting system designs and creates garments

If you've ever wanted a custom knit hat but your skills aren't up to par, let the robots do it. Researchers at MIT's Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) have developed a computer-aided knitting system that can automate the design and manufacture of knitted garments. Even non-expert knitters can use the system to create individual designs from customizable templates on a computer.

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https://www.engadget.com/2019/08/05/the-morning-after-google-assistant-can-read-out-your-whatsapp-r/

2019-08-05 12:08:03Z
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UK Charts: Fire Emblem: Three Houses Fends Off FIFA Threat For Second Week At Number One - Nintendo Life

Ryan can list the first 151 Pokémon all in order off by heart – a feat he calls his ‘party trick’ despite being such an introvert that he’d never be found anywhere near a party. He’d much rather just have a night in with Mario Kart and a pizza, and we can’t say we blame him.

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http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2019/08/uk_charts_fire_emblem_three_houses_fends_off_fifa_threat_for_second_week_at_number_one

2019-08-05 10:30:00Z
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MIT researchers are working on AI-based knitting design software that will let anyone, even novices, make their own clothes - TechCrunch

The growing popularity of 3D printing machines and companies like Thingiverse and Shapeways have given previously unimaginable powers to makers, enabling them to create everything from cosplay accessories to replacement parts. But even though 3D printing has created a new world of customized objects, most of us are still buying clothes off the rack. Now researchers at MIT are working on software that will allow anyone to customize or design their own knitwear, even if they have never picked up a ball of yarn.

A team of researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), led by computer scientist Alexandre Kaspar, released two new papers describing the software today. One is about a system called InverseKnit that automatically creates patterns from photos of knitted items. The other one introduces new design software, called CADKnit, that allows people with no knitting or design experience to quickly customize templates, adjusting the size, final shape and decorative details (like the gloves shown below).

The final patterns can be used with a knitting machine, which have been available to home knitters for years, but still require a fair amount of technical knowledge in order to design patterns for.

Gloves made using CADknit

Both CADKnit and InverseKnit want to make designing and making machine-knitted garments as accessible as 3D printing is now. Once the software is commercialized, Kaspar envisions “knitting as a service” for consumers who want to order customized garments. It can also enable clothing designers to spend less time learning how to write knitwear patterns for machines and reduce waste in the prototyping and manufacturing process. Another target audience for the software are hand-knitters who want to try a new way of working with yarn.

“If you think about it like 3D printing, a lot of people have been using 3D printers or hacking 3D printers, so they are great potential users for our system, because they can do that with knitting,” says Kaspar.

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One potential partner for CADKnit and InverseKnit is Kniterate, a company that makes a digital knitting machine for hobbyists, makerspaces and small businesses. Kaspar says he has been talking to Kniterate’s team about making knitwear customization more accessible.

CADKnit combines 2D images with CAD and photo-editing software to create customizable templates. It was tested with knitting newbies, who despite having little machine knitting experience were still able to create relatively complex garments, like gloves, and effects including lace motifs and color patterns.

To develop InverseKnit, researchers first created a dataset of knitting patterns with matching images that were used to train a deep neural network to generate machine knitting patterns. The team says that during InverseKnit’s testing, the system produced accurate instructions 94% of the time. There is still work to do before InverseKnit can be commercialized. For example, the machine was tested using one specific type of acrylic yarn, so it needs to be trained to work with other fibers.

“3D printing took a while before people were comfortable enough to think they could do something with it,” says Kaspar. “It will be the same thing with what we do.”

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https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/04/mit-researchers-are-working-on-ai-based-knitting-design-software-that-will-let-anyone-even-novices-make-their-own-clothes/

2019-08-05 06:10:57Z
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AI knitting system designs and creates garments - Engadget

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If you've ever wanted a custom bobble hat but your knitting skills aren't up to par, let the robots do it. Researchers at MIT's Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) have developed a computer-aided knitting system which can automate the design and manufacture of knitted garments.

Even non expert knitters can use the system to create individual designs from customizable templates on a computer. The designs are then sent to a knitting machine, which fabricates the designs out of real wool.

The advantage of templates is that common shapes such as hats or gloves are easy to recreate, and users can apply texture and patterns to the objects as well. More ambitious users can create their own patterns from scratch, and there's a neural network system which will generate more panels from an existing pattern.

In a test, even users who had never knitted before were able to use the system to create knitted hats and gloves, some with intricate patterns.

While it's certainly an impressive system, it does seem to miss out on some of the tactile creativity of knitting by hand. The researchers say they want to make it easy for new knitters to begin creating items, and that the system can also make manufacturing more efficient by eliminating waste.

"Whether it's for the everyday user who wants to mimic a friend's beanie hat, or a subset of the public who might benefit from using this tool in a manufacturing setting, we're aiming to make the process more accessible for personal customization," says Alexandre Kaspar, lead author of the paper about the new system.

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https://www.engadget.com/2019/08/05/ai-automated-knitting-system/

2019-08-05 04:47:14Z
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Minggu, 04 Agustus 2019

News discovery app SmartNews valued at $1.1B - TechCrunch

A $28 million financing has made SmartNews, an AI-powered news aggregation app, a unicorn.

Japan Post Capital has led the Series E round, which brings the company’s total investment to $116 million and pushes its valuation to $1.1 billion. Existing investors in SmartNews include Development Bank of Japan, SMBC Venture Capital and Japan Co-Invest L.P.

The company, founded in Tokyo in 2012, boasts 20 million monthly active users in the U.S. and Japan. Growing at a rate of 500% per year, its audience checks into the app for a mix of political, sports, global and entertainment news curated for each individual reader. To make money, the company sells inline advertising, video ads and deals with publishers to sell ads against “SmartViews,” its equivalent of Google’s AMP or Facebook’s Instant Articles

SmartNews has nearly 400 U.S. publishing partners including The Associated Press and Bloomberg. It competes with the likes of Apple, which unveiled Apple News + earlier this year, a subscription news product that offers access to more than 300 magazines and newspapers for $9.99 per month.

SmartNews says it will use the infusion of capital to expand its global footprint.

“We are very pleased with our strong progress in the United States,” SmartNews co-founder and chief executive officer Ken Suzuki said in a statement. “We will continue to share our vision of informed, balanced media consumption with our current and future users in the U.S. and all over the world.”

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https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/04/news-discovery-app-smartnews-valued-at-1-1b/

2019-08-04 17:50:16Z
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