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Submission + - What Kamala Harris, Joe Biden's VP Pick, Means For Tech (cnet.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: After months of speculation, Joe Biden has picked California Sen. Kamala Harris to be his vice-presidential running mate in the race for the White House. The choice fulfills a pledge from Biden, the Democrats' presumptive nominee for president, to name a woman to his ticket as he seeks to unseat Donald Trump in the November election. [...] Here's what we know about Harris' stance on tech issues:

A California senator and former candidate in the 2020 presidential race, Harris made her name in Washington by grilling Trump nominees and officials from her seat on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Harris, 55, is known for being a tough-on-crime prosecutor earlier in her career. That toughness, however, didn't carry over to Big Tech companies when she was California attorney general, critics charge. During her time as the state's top law enforcement officer, Facebook and other companies gobbled up smaller competitors. Harris, like regulators under Obama, did little from an antitrust perspective to slow consolidation, which many members of Congress now question.

During her 2020 presidential bid, Harris' stance on consumer protections and antitrust issues weren't as tough as those of some of her rivals, especially Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who called for the breakup of large tech companies, like Facebook and Google. Still, Harris was vocal last year in urging Twitter to ban Trump from the platform for "tweets [that] incite violence, threaten witnesses, and obstruct justice." This was a demand Twitter rejected. She has also been critical of Facebook for not doing more to rid its platform of misinformation.

Submission + - SPAM: A human F-16 pilot will fight against AI in an upcoming contest 2

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: "An artificial intelligence algorithm will face off against a human F-16 fighter pilot in an aerial combat simulation in late August, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency announced Aug. 7.

The simulation — the third and final competition in DARPA’s AlphaDogfight Trials — will take place Aug. 20. The event will be virtual due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

The AlphaDogfight Trials was created to demonstrate advanced AI systems’ ability in air warfare. Eight teams were selected last year to participate in the final competition that runs from Aug. 18-20. The competition is also part of DARPA’s Air Combat Evolution, or ACE, program, which was started in 2019, and seeks to automate air-to-air combat as well as improve human trust in AI systems to bolster human-machine teaming."
Link to Original Source

Submission + - SPAM: Mars Map With Water: Incredible Terraforming Image Shows Elon Musk's Dream

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: WHAT WOULD MARS LOOK LIKE if most of its surface was covered with water? Thanks to a new project released this week, we may have a better idea.

A new map shows what the red planet would look like if 71 percent of its surface area was covered with water — around the same proportion as Earth.

The results are spectacular: it shows two distinct landmasses forming, each of which would seem to form continents. While the left side shows a dramatic, mountainous terrain that includes Olympus Mons, the right side seems to offer more flatlands that include planes like Terra Sabaea.
Link to Original Source

Submission + - Toshiba shuts the lid on laptops after 35 years (bbc.com) 1

Submitted by wooferhound
wooferhound writes: The Japanese giant Toshiba has sold its final stake in the personal computer maker Dynabook.
It means the firm no longer has a connection with making PCs or laptops.
Sharp bought 80% of Toshiba's personal computing arm in 2018 for $36m (£27m), and has now bought the remaining shares, Toshiba said in a statement.

Submission + - 5G Just Got Weird. 3GPP takes 5G in new directions in latest set of standards (ieee.org)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: 4G and other earlier generations of cellular focused on just that: cellular. But when 3GPP members started gathering to hammer out what 5G could be, there was interest in developing a wireless system that could do more than connect phones. “The 5G vision has always been this unifying platform,” says Tseng. When developing 5G standards, researchers and engineers saw no reason that wireless cellular couldn’t also be used to connect anything wireless.

With that in mind, here’s an overview of what’s new and weird in Release 16. If you’d rather pour through the standards yourself, here you go. But if you’d rather not drown in page after page of technical details, don’t worry—keep reading for the cheat sheet.

Vehicle-to-Everything
Sidelinking
Location Services
Private Networks
Unlicensed Spectrum

Release 17 Will “Extend Reality”

Submission + - Japan is Running Diagnostic Tests on its first real Gundam

Submitted by nightflameauto
nightflameauto writes: Japan has a working prototype of a real Gundam that is currently undergoing testing at the Gundam Factory.

No, that's not the plot of some silly sci-fi movie, it's actually happening. There's a somewhat sensationally titled video available of the 8 meter/60 foot robot assembly running some small movement tests where it twists its torso and lifts a leg, then places it back down. Small steps, but the initial plan is to have this beast debut this October in free-standing/walking form.

Welcome to 2020. We may have calamity upon calamity, but at least we've got a Gundam.

Submission + - SPAM: Trump Signs 2 EOs and Fires TVA Leadership

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: President Trump announced the removal of Tennessee Valley Authority’s chair James Thompson and board member Richard Howoth and called for the removal of their CEO Bill Johnson. This was in response to the company laying off employees and hiring H-1B visa holders. During the round table discussion, it was announced the company is willing to reverse course and rehire previously laid off employees. The president also said he would not ban the Ticktock app if Microsoft or another company bought it before September 15th.

Trump signed executive order barring federal agencies from replacing Americans with foreign workers

Trump to sign order aimed at boosting rural health care, telehealth

Submission + - LinkedIn Quietly Removes Tool To Export Contacts

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: LinkedIn has removed the option to export your contacts. Instead, the company is asking users to request an archive of their data, but that process can take up to 72 hours to complete. Before it disappeared today, LinkedIn’s export contacts feature allowed you to easily export your own contacts as a downloadable CSV or VCF file. That included contacts you made while using the service, as well as any you manually imported into LinkedIn. Now that feature is gone, without even a simple warning.

Submission + - Four-legged snake fossil stuns scientists—and ignites controversy (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Scientists have described what they say is the first known fossil of a four-legged snake. The limbs of the 120-or-so-million-year-old, 20-centimeter-long creature are remarkably well preserved and end with five slender digits that appear to have been functional. Thought to have come from Brazil, the fossil would be one of the earliest snakes found, suggesting that the group evolved from terrestrial precursors in Gondwana, the southern remnant of the supercontinent Pangaea. But although the creature’s overall body plan—and indeed, many of its individual anatomical features—is snakelike, some researchers aren’t so sure that it is a part of the snake family tree.

Submission + - How Pluto's most spectacular image was made—and nearly lost (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Science Magazine has a nice behind-the-scenes account of all of the computer work that went into last week's spectacular Pluto image. Among the revelations: scientists could not email data files (they had to use thumb drives because of a fear of a leak), several researchers pulled an all-nighter just to get the image ready for the public, and the image file itself was nearly lost.

Submission + - Stop Spocking Laurier!

Submitted by bellwould
bellwould writes: The Toronto Sun is reporting that Bank of Canada executives are urging Star Trek fans to stop altering Wilfred Laurier's face on the Canadian $5 bill to look like Spock. Although not illegal to draw on the bills, a Bank of Canada spokesperson points out that the markings may reduce effectiveness of the security features or worse, the money may not be accepted. C'mon now, would ever reject a $pock?

Submission + - hitchBot's Pilgrimage Continues in Germany (thestar.com)

Submitted by bellwould
bellwould writes: After traversing Canada with 19 rides in 26 days, the beer-cooler-based, swim-noodle and wellingtons-wearing Canadian robot, hitchBot, landed in Munich on Feb 14 and is being accompanied by (goolge-translated) Galileo.tv as it continues it's adventure in Germany. The social/robotic experiment created by roboticists from Ryerson and McMaster Universities has gained quite a following as it posts on Twitter and Instagram during its travels. Known to politely ask drivers to plug it in to the cigaratte lighter to recharge it's batteries, hitchBot can also carry on semi-intellegent conversations. As one of the creators put it, "We wanted to see whether we can trust technology that’s surrounding us, especially robots and especially as they come into our daily lives, into our houses. And can robots trust human beings?

Comment Design failure (Score 2) 130

by bellwould (#48830335) Attached to: Lost Beagle2 Probe Found 'Intact' On Mars
Designing the antenna to be "hidden" by the 5 "leaves" is absurd. This provides more evidence supporting ground-based probes shoud be using nuclear power sources. Spirit, Opportunity, Philae... when will we drop the nonsensical arguments about sending nuclear power sources to space?

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