Vacation

Bonus Panel:

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Volvo wants to automate your weekly garbage pickup

Volvo is working on a project that it hopes will make the job of garbage pickup safer and easier for sanitation workers. If successful, it will also reduce the number of workers required to complete each route.

By automating the truck’s bin-to-bin travel, the worker doesn’t have to continually get in and out of the cab to arrange bins or manually load them into the back of the truck. The truck essentially drives itself, freeing the driver up to handle other important tasks safely.

See also: Columbus’ smart city win may lead to smart trucks

Today in the United States, many sanitation trucks are fitted with an arm that picks up specially-designed cans and dumps them into the back before placing them back in position. A human driver is required to steer the truck into place and deploy the arm. Another human occupant is required to correct any bins that are improperly aligned for the mechanical arm.

Many departments still have manual trucks that require sanitation workers to lift trash bags/bins and empty them by hand. This means getting in and out of the cab or riding on the back with only a handle to keep them on board.

An automated, self-navigating truck means less manpower required to complete a route. It also puts less strain on the arms and knees of workers as they won’t have to continually enter and exit the cab or cling to the back of a moving truck.

How it Works

The Volvo Trucks include similar self-driving sensors and to the ones you will find in autonomous cars being developed. Using GPS and sensors, it maps out a new route the first time it is taken through a neighborhood. After the first initial introductory route, the truck is able to learn the route, including any obstacles or stops it needs to make.

The driver then can step out of the cab and, with the push of a button, direct the truck to drive to the next house. The truck will then drive itself to the destination without any need of human intervention. If a new obstacle appears, it will identify it and navigate around it.

The driver can essentially follow the truck through the neighborhood on foot, emptying bins or arranging them as needed. No more endless climbing in and out of the cab at every stop.

Unless you live in Sweden, you probably won’t see Volvo’s autonomous refuse truck driving down your street any time soon. For now, it remains a pilot program in coordination with Renova, a Swedish waste management company. This pilot is expected to run throughout 2017. Additional research and development is expected for the next several years.

After that, you might just start seeing a garbage truck without a driver in the cab stop in front of your home.

The post Volvo wants to automate your weekly garbage pickup appeared first on ReadWrite.

Read the full article here by ReadWriteWeb

Windows Switch To Git Almost Complete: 8,500 Commits and 1,760 Builds Each Day

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Back in February, Microsoft made the surprising announcement that the Windows development team was going to move to using the open source Git version control system for Windows development. A little over three months after that first revelation, and about 90 percent of the Windows engineering team has made the switch. The Windows repository now has about 4,400 active branches, with 8,500 code pushes made per day and 6,600 code reviews each day. An astonishing 1,760 different Windows builds are made every single day -- more than even the most excitable Windows Insider can handle.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Read the full article here by Slashdot

Only 90s Kids Will Appreciate This Prototype

Four short links: 24 May 2017

Travel Mode, Justice Data, Threat Dragon, and Voice Editing

1. 1Password Travel Mode -- enable Travel Mode, and all devices not marked Safe For Travel are deleted from your devices. There's no indicator to let border agents know that Travel Mode is enabled.
2. Measures for Justice -- collects data on justice systems in several states, funded by Gates and Zuckerberg foundations. As Bach says, “Justice in America happens in 3,000 counties, each with its own justice system.” (via Wired)
3. OWASP Threat Dragon -- open source threat modeling tool from OWASP. It can be used as a standalone desktop app for Windows, MacOS, and Linux or as a web application. (via Tech Beacon)
4. More Detail on Adobe's Voice Editing Software -- VoCo is based on an optimization algorithm that searches the voice recording and chooses the best possible combinations of phonemes (partial word sounds) to build new words in the user’s voice. To do this, it needs to find the individual phonemes and sequences of them that stitch together without abrupt transitions. It also needs to be fitted into the existing sentence so that the new word blends in seamlessly. Words are pronounced with different emphasis and intonation depending on where they fall in a sentence, so context is important. [...] In case the synthesized word isn’t quite right, VoCo offers users several versions of the word to choose from. The system also provides an advanced editor to modify pitch and duration, allowing expert users to further polish the track.

Continue reading Four short links: 24 May 2017.

Read the full article here by Four Short Links - O'Reilly Media

The largest Git repo on the planet

Over the past 3 months, we have largely completed the rollout of Git/GVFS to the Windows team at Microsoft. As a refresher, the Windows code base is approximately 3.5M files and, when checked in to a Git repo, results in a repo of about 300GB. Further, the Windows team is about 4,000 engineers and the engineering system produces 1,760 daily "lab builds" across 440 branches in addition to thousands of pull request validation builds. All 3 of the dimensions (file count, repo size and activity), independently, provide daunting scaling challenges and taken together they make it unbelievably challenging to create a great experience. Before the move to Git, in Source Depot, it was spread across 40+ depots and we had a tool to manage operations that spanned them. As of my writing 3 months ago, we had all the code in one Git repo, a few hundred engineers using it and a small fraction (

Read the full article here by OSNews

Windows switch to Git almost complete: 8,500 commits and 1,760 builds each day

Arcan 0.5.2 Released: That Display Server Built On A Game Engine, Now Tackling VR

Arcan 0.5.2 has been released as the newest version of the open-source display server project

built in part using a game engine

that has also been working on

X.Org and Wayland compatibility

.

Arcan currently describes itself as "

a powerful development framework for creating virtually anything from user interfaces for specialized embedded applications all the way to full-blown standalone desktop environments. At its heart lies a robust and portable multimedia engine, with a well-tested and well-documented Lua scripting interface. The development emphasizes security, debuggability and performance -- guided by a principle of least surprise in terms of API design.

"

Arcan 0.5.2 features a reworked LED subsystem, accelerated graphics improvements, initial HMD/VR supoport but it's still early on in development, a new "Waybridge" Wayland protocol service, Xarcan as an X.Org Server with a SHMLF driver back-end, improved SDL support, and a wide-range of other work.

More details on Arcan 0.5.2 via the change-log listed via

GitHub

while a whole lot more on the innovative work happening around Arcan can be found via

this blog post

.

Read the full article here by Phoronix

Clear Linux Switches From Xfce To GNOME, Benchmarks

The Intel-developed high-performance Clear Linux operating system has decided to shift their desktop focus from Xfce to GNOME.

For those using this rolling-release, performance-minded distribution, the change-over happened a few days ago with GNOME becoming the default desktop environment while Xfce is still bundled via the os-utils-gui bundle for the time being.

Originally they made use of Xfce for it being lightweight and easier to package, but in seemingly realizing its somewhat stagnate development and plans for making use of Wayland, they are now focusing on GNOME. With the switch-over to GNOME also comes many of the GNOME desktop components being packaged in Clear Linux bundles, making the distribution a bit more useful as a desktop/workstation platform rather than just for cloud/container/server applications.

The experience in using GNOME on Clear Linux has been stable and they are making use of the upstream GNOME 3.24 packages with a relatively stock package set. GNOME Shell is the default via GDM while the GNOME Flashback session is also available for those wishing to use the more classic/Metacity experience. With the new desktop stack, they are also now starting GDM by default rather than requiring users to run "startx" each time as was previously the case.

Curious about the performance impact of changing over the desktops, I ran some Intel HD Graphics tests using the latest Clear Linux release as of yesterday. Xfce 4.12 vs. GNOME Shell 3.24 was compared along with the GNOME Flashback session. Clear Linux 15430 shipped with the Linux 4.11.1 kernel, X.Org Server 1.19.3, and Mesa 17.2-dev as the most noteworthy components for this graphics comparison. Tests were done on an Intel Xeon E3-1245 v5 Skylake box featuring HD Graphics P530.

Read the full article here by Phoronix

Rick and Morty comic is coming from the guys who brought you Firewatch

Now that’s a collab

An upcoming issue of the Rick and Morty comic has an impressive list of of names behind it. Sean Vanaman and Olly Moss, whose previous collaboration was Firewatch, are among the creators who worked on issue #29, due out in August.

Vanaman announced the project on Twitter in a brief post. In addition to saying that artist Olly Moss had joined him for the issue, the Campo Santo co-founder shared one of its covers.

my boy @ollymoss and I worked on a comic that you can read in august! http://pic.twitter.com/VUiMGwRab1

— Sean Vanaman (@vanaman) May 23, 2017

The warm color palette should be a tip-off that Moss served as cover artist for this variant. We have to say that Rick, who’s both hapless teen Morty’s drunk uncle and a spacefaring mad scientist, has never looked better than in this illustration.

Moss has won acclaim for his work outside of Firewatch, for which he helped define its visual style. He’s also illustrated covers for the Harry Potter books, drawn posters for the Oscars and crafted a series of Star Wars prints based on the original trilogy.

Still, we’re partial to the look of Firewatch. The narrative-focused adventure game was one of Polygon’s Games of the Year in 2016, with its breathtaking aesthetic one of its biggest assets.

Oni Press hasn’t announced a firm release date yet for issue #29, but the Rick and Morty comics typically hit bookstores around the end of each month. Keep an eye out for late August to pick this cover up.

Read the full article here by Polygon

F1 | Teams ‘exaggerating’ data to Pirelli

Pirelli has admitted some teams have “exaggerated” downforce values as the F1 supplier sets its tyre operating guidelines before grands...

Read the full article here by FormulaPassion.it

HTC et Google développent un casque de réalité virtuelle Daydream autonome

Humans May Have Accidentally Created a Radiation Shield Around Earth

 

NASA spends a lot of time researching the Earth and its surrounding space environment. One particular feature of interest are the Van Allen belts, so much so that NASA built special probes to study them! They’ve now discovered a protective bubble they believe has been generated by human transmissions in the VLF range.

VLF transmissions cover the 3-30 kHz range, and thus bandwidth is highly limited. VLF hardware is primarily used to communicate with submarines, often to remind them that, yes, everything is still fine and there’s no need to launch the nukes yet.  It’s also used for navigation and broadcasting time signals.

It seems that this human transmission has created a barrier of sorts in the atmosphere that protects it against radiation from space. Interestingly, the outward edge of this “VLF Bubble” seems to correspond very closely with the innermost edge of the Van Allen belts caused by Earth’s magnetic field. What’s more, the inner limit of the Van Allan belts now appears to be much farther away from the Earth’s surface than it was in the 1960s, which suggests that man-made VLF transmissions could be responsible for pushing the boundary outwards.

Overall, this seems like an accidental, but potentially positive effect of human activity – the barrier protects the Earth from potentially harmful radiation. NASA’s YouTube video on the topic suggests that understanding this mechanism better could enable us to protect our satellites and space vehicles from some of the harmful effects of the space environment.

NASA does a lot of high-end research – like the EM drive that’s got a lot of people very confused right now.

[Thanks bty!]

Read the full article here by Hack a Day

Arduino Cinque – The RISC-V, ESP32, WiFi, Bluetooth Arduino

This weekend at the Bay Area Maker Faire, Arduino in conjunction with SiFive, a fabless provider of the Open Source RISC-V micros, introduced the Arduino Cinque. This is a board running one of the fastest microcontrollers available, and as an added bonus, this board includes Espressif’s ESP32, another wonderchip that features WiFi and Bluetooth alongside a very, very powerful SoC.

Details on the Arduino Cinque are slim at the moment, but from what we’ve seen so far, the Cinque is an impressively powerful board featuring the RISC-V FE310 SoC from SiFive, an ESP32, and an STM32F103. The STM32 appears to be dedicated to providing the board with USB to UART translation, something the first RISC-V compatible Arduino solved with an FTDI chip. Using an FTDI chip is, of course, a questionable design decision when building a capital ‘O’ Open microcontroller platform, and we’re glad SiFive and Arduino found a better solution. It’s unknown if this STM32 can be used alongside the FE310 and ESP32 at this point.

We’ve taken a look at SiFive’s FE310 SoC, and it is an extremely capable chip. It was released first at the HiFive1, and our hands-on testing revealed this is a chip that outperforms the current performance champ of the Arduino world, the Teensy 3.6. Of course, with any new architecture, there will be a few problems porting the vast number of libraries over to the FE310, but SiFive has included an Arduino compatible SDK. It’s promising, and we can’t wait to see SiFive’s work in more boards.

Filed under: Arduino Hacks, news, slider

Read the full article here by Hack a Day

Four short links: 19 May 2017

Algorithmic Fallibility, AI Sketches, Traffic Obfuscation, and Engineer-Manager Pendulum

1. Algorithmic Fallibility and Economic Organization -- algorithms have benefits (when they get the right answer) and costs (when they get the wrong answer). This article creates three scenarios and uses the tools of economics to analyze them.
2. Google Releases Sketches -- Sketch-RNN, a generative model for vector drawings, is now available in Magenta. Comes with 50M drawings as training data.
3. Bedlam -- Google Chrome extension to generate random web traffic/DNS requests to make your web traffic data less valuable for selling.
4. The Engineer-Manager Pendulum (Charity Majors) -- The best frontline eng managers in the world are the ones who are never more than 2-3 years removed from hands-on work, full time down in the trenches. The best individual contributors are the ones who have done time in management.

Continue reading Four short links: 19 May 2017.

Read the full article here by Four Short Links - O'Reilly Media

Many senior executives do not know GDPR is coming

More than four fifths (84 percent) of small business owners in the UK, and almost half (43 percent) of senior executives in large companies have no idea what GDPR is and that it’s coming. That's according to Shred-it’s Security Tracker research, which also found that roughly one in seven (14 percent) of small business owners, and 31 percent of senior executives know what the fines of not complying with the GDPR are. This is despite the fact that 95 percent of senior executives and 87 percent of small business owners claim to have some understanding of their industry’s legal requirements.… [Continue Reading]

Read the full article here by Betanews

Google's New Mobile OS Will Have a Distinctly Non-Linux Hue

May 17, 2017, 23:00 (0 Talkback[s])

Google has been developing a new open source operating system called "Fuchsia" for smartphones, tablets and other devices, which could be unveiled as early as this summer. Little has been revealed about the new OS since it first came to light last year.

Complete Story

Read the full article here by Linux Today

Google makes Firebase SDKs open source

Today was day one of Google I/O and there was no shortage of news. To name a few, the search giant is bringing its assistant to iPhone, Smart Reply to Gmail on mobile, and voice-calling to Google Home. These things should be very interesting to consumers and technology enthusiasts.

With I/O being a developer conference, however, not all of the new is necessarily consumer-focused. Case in point, there was some rather big developer news that didn't get as much attention. You see, Google announces that it is making five of its "Firebase" SDKs open source.

"We are pleased to announce that we are taking our first steps towards open sourcing our client libraries. By making our SDKs open, we're aiming to show our commitment to greater transparency and to building a stronger developer community. To help further that goal, we'll be using GitHub as a core part of our own toolchain to enable all of you to contribute as well. As you find issues in our code, from inconsistent style to bugs, you can file issues through the standard GitHub issue tracker. You can also find our project in the Google Open Source directory. We're really looking forward to your pull requests," says Salman Qadri, Firebase Product Manager.

ALSO READ: Download Android 'Oreo' Beta from Google now

Qadri also says, "We're starting by open sourcing several products in our iOS, JavaScript, Java, Node.js and Python SDKs. We'll be looking at open sourcing our Android SDK as well. The SDKs are being licensed under Apache 2.0, the same flexible license as existing Firebase open source projects like FirebaseUI."

Google shares the now open source SDKs and associated GitHub links below.

What do you think of this open source news? Tell me in the comments.

Photo Credit: ESB Professional / Shutterstock

Read the full article here by Betanews

Android Go is streamlined for cheap phones

It's no secret that Google has been working on improving its apps and operating system for those using less-powerful devices or unreliable connections. It's optimized its apps to use less data and memory, but now it's expanding its focus OS-wide. At its developer conference today, Google previewed a version of something the company has been calling Android Go, and it's supposed to work well even on devices with less than 1GB of onboard memory. Google says Go will ship "as an experience" in 2018, which means manufacturers will potentially start making handsets with the lighter OS after that.

According to Google, "Android Go is designed with features relevant for people who have limited data connectivity and speak multiple languages." It's basically optimized to run smoothly on entry-level devices that are running at least Android O. This works in part by designing apps like Chrome, Gboard and YouTube Go so that they use "less memory, storage space and mobile data."

Gboard, in particular, will make it easier to type in several different languages via transliteration. You can type the phonetic spelling of words in other languages, and the software will show you characters in the native alphabet. This targets regional markets where low-cost phones thrive, such as India and South America.

Android Go will also include a version of the Play Store that will show the entire app catalog, but it will highlight apps that have developers have finetuned for Go. Considering most budget smartphones today boast at least 2GB of RAM, the new software will likely bring Android to even cheaper devices than before. According to Google, there are already two billion monthly active devices running Android, and making it easier to install on lower-end handsets will help the company reach "the next billion users."

For all the latest news and updates from Google I/O 2017, follow along here

Read the full article here by Engadget

Google launched a massive open AI division

Google CEO Sundar Pichai greeted the assembled press and developers with a news that the company would be focusing heavily on AI both for its services and research. The new Google.ai site and division will focus on artificial intelligence, deep learning and building the tools to make that work possbile.

To help accelerate AI research, Pichai announced that the Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) it uses to train machine-learning models is available in the Google Cloud Platform for anyone to use via the Google Compute Engine today. "We want it to be possible for hundreds of thousands of developers to use machine learning," Pichai said.

Our new Cloud TPUs accelerate a wide range of machine learning workloads, including training and inference https://t.co/aWvTVMn54Q #io17 http://pic.twitter.com/Bm5e8Gud6s

— Google (@Google) May 17, 2017

The CEO also announced that Google will be using the neural nets it creates to build other neural nets with AutoML. Pichai actually joked that this is like the movie Inception. The system takes a set of candidate neural nets (Pichai called them baby neural nets) and iterate them using a reinforcement training approach until the best one is found. The CEO said the results are promising. So Skynet isn't happening just yet.

All of this work will be used in Google's own products but also to help medical researchers. Pichai talked about using AI to help sequence DNA and helping pathologists locate things like the spread of cancer. It's not completely perfect, "there are important caveats, we do have higher false positives. But already getting this into the hands of pathologists they can improve diagnosis," Pichai said.

Google announced that it's already partnering with health care providers to put the technology into action to help improve care and prevent medical incidents.

For all the latest news and updates from Google I/O 2017, follow along here

Source: Google

Read the full article here by Engadget