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Fitness tracking and notifications are the most used features on Apple's first wearable, says a poll from ad technology company Fluent. For many Apple Watch owners, the gadget wrapped around their wrist is much more than just a watch. Around 80 percent of Apple Watch owners said they use the device for fitness tracking and notifications, according to survey results released Friday by advertising technology company Fluent. Listening to music is popular among 77 percent. Exchanging emails and instant messages is on the list of 66 percent. Using the watch to purchase items via Apple Pay is also a favorite...

A new study has found that almost half the people who pick up a USB stick they happen across in a parking lot plug said drives into their PCs.Researchers from Google, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and the University of Michigan, spread 297 USB drives around the Urbana-Champaign campus. They found that 48 percent of the drives were picked up and plugged into a computer, some within minutes of being dropped. "The security community has long held the belief that users can be socially engineered into picking up and plugging in seemingly lost USB flash drives they find," the researchers...

Do you put the words ":large" on the end or there is some other trick?

Google’s parent company Alphabet Inc. isn’t happy with Boston Dynamics, its robotics subsidiary. According to a report from Bloomberg, Alphabet executives think that Boston Dynamics is unlikely to generate substantial revenue in the next few years and is hard to work with. Toyota or Amazon could be interested in acquiring Boston Dynamics for their manufacturing or warehouse operations. But even more interesting, internal messages at Google shows that the company itself is a bit scared by Boston Dynamics. We’ve all watched Boston Dynamics’ video last month with mixed feelings — there was a bit of excitement, sure, but also a...

'I hereby denounce the effects social media have on my children': Hilarious moment Southern mom SHOOTS her 'disobedient' children's iPhones to smithereens...then pounds them with a sledgehammer to finish the job The mother perches the phone on a tree trunk, and nails it on her first shot It explodes to bits and sends pieces flying into the grass The camera then shows her three children, one of whom flips a double bird Mother gives speech about how she is stopping them from 'contacting people they don't know' and getting into 'drama' and trouble at school Hell hath no fury like...

China recently made global headlines when many of its restaurants sacked robot waiters. Apparently, the machines did not ‘handle’ customers well. The owners had to wake up to the reality that the robots lacked human touch and cannot replace human staff. Despite this setback, China continues to dream big in the robotics space. For the past two days, Chinese social media sites Weibo and WeChat were filled with images of Xian’er, a chubby monk who lives in Longquan Temple in Beijing. What’s interesting is that Xian’er is a robot. Like any other monk, he adorns a yellow robe. Interestingly, he...

China’s uptake of industrial robots is set to rise rapidly in the coming years as higher labour costs and the heightened aspirations of workers push manufacturers to embrace automation. The development may add to fears that workers in poorer countries are most in danger of being displaced by automation, with analysis by Citi and the Oxford Martin School, a research and policy unit of the UK university, published earlier this year suggesting that more than 75 per cent of jobs in China are at a “high risk” of computerisation. Mirae Asset Management, an Asia-focused house with $75bn of assets, predicts...

"The robots weren't able to carry soup," one of their former colleagues said.After piloting early AI server programs, three Guangzhou restaurants have engaged in mass robot firings, Shanghaiist reports. Two of the formerly robot-employing restaurants have closed down entirely, and the remaining one has fired all but one of their nonhuman staff members. "The boss has decided never to use them again," a human waiter said of his former colleagues. Said boss and his compatriots originally hired the droids to save money—after an up-front investment, robot workers are much less expensive than humans, because you don't actually have to pay...

I received a FB post with this photo and I cannot find it in a search ....Does anyone know where and when this photo was taken ?thanx

A recent global survey commissioned by the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) showed that seven in ten (71%) global citizens say the “dark net” – “an area of the internet only accessible via special web browsers that allow you to surf the web anonymously” – should be shut down. The Centre doesn’t say whether the polled individuals were made aware of what the “dark net” is and is used for (illegal things, but also to keep journalists, human rights activists, dissidents and whistleblowers safe while they are trying to carry out their job/mission) before answering the question. If not,...

Lighter Cheaper More Powerful Battery Changes Renewable EconomicsGuest essay by Roger E. Sowell, Esq. Marina del Rey, CaliforniaIt is not often on SLB that I use the phrase “game-changer.”  Most things progress, if they progress at all, in small increments.  This time, though, is one of those that deserves the phrase game-changer.The innovation is the low-cost, light-weight but powerful battery developed by Nobel prize-winner Alan Heeger, PhD of the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB).  The company is Biosolar .  see link to http://www.biosolar.comThe battery is suitable for mobile and stationary applications such as cars, trucks, grid stabilization, home...

Adobe-FlashAdobe has issued Flash Player security updates for OS X, Windows, Linux, and Chrome OS to address "critical vulnerabilities that could potentially allow an attacker to take control of the affected system" by way of ransomware. Ransomware is a type of malware that encrypts a user's hard drive and demands payment in order to decrypt it. These type of threats often display images or use voice-over techniques containing instructions on how to pay the ransom. In this particular "CERBER" attack (via Reuters), affecting Flash-based advertisements, attackers have reportedly demanded between around $500 and $1,000, to retrieve the encrypted files. Adobe...

Planned Parenthood is demonstrating that it has no interest in dialogue with individuals who don’t agree with its extreme abortion agenda, or with those who expose its abuses. The abortion giant has blocked both Live Action and its president, Lila Rose, from viewing select Twitter accounts. Planned Parenthood Action Fund, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and president Cecile Richards, have blocked Rose from following and viewing content; Live Action has been banned from viewing content from Richards, too, along with other Planned Parenthood accounts. **images on link*** In addition, multiple Planned Parenthood accounts have blocked Live Action from viewing their...

Asked to recommend a Linux desktop, users respond in a number of ways. Many recommend their own preferences. Others suggest the desktop environment that they believe is closest in appearance and function to Windows or OS X.A while ago, though, I realized that the seven major Linux desktops can be ranked on a spectrum from the highly customizable to those that are little more than launchers for their applications.Starting with the customizers, my rankings along this spectrum are:7. KDE Ever see a Windows users' reactions to all the options on a Linux desktop? Well, KDE produces the same look of...

Linux is all grown up. It has nothing left to prove. There's never been a year of the Linux desktop and there probably never will be, but it runs on the majority of the world's servers. It never took over the desktop, it did an end-run around it: there are more Linux-based client devices accessing those servers than there are Windows boxes.Linux Foundation boss Jim Zemlin puts it this way: "It's in literally billions of devices. Linux is the native development platform for every SOC. Freescale, Qualcomm, Intel, MIPS: Linux is the immediate choice. It's the de facto platform. It's...

Ever thought how much your iPhone (or Android smartphone) is costing you in power a year to charge? What about your tablet or laptop? Or your ebook reader? And do wall warts consume power when there's nothing connected to them? If you're anything like me, you have a number of gadgets within arms reach that are either on charge right now, or will need charging at some point during the day. Maybe it's a smartphone or tablet, or a laptop, or a wearable. They all have one thing in common - they need power. And that power costs you money....

Apple may be celebrating the release of the iPhone SE and the 9.7-inch iPad Pro, but the company likely isn’t nearly as thrilled with recent allegations made by France’s competition, consumer, and fraud agency, la Direction Générale de la Concurrence, de la Consommation, et de la Répression des Fraudes (DGCCRF), reports BFM TV. The DGCCRF filed a lawsuit against Apple through the Commercial Court of Paris. According to the suit, Apple’s contracts with carriers were set up to benefit the Cupertino-based company in ways that violated France’s competition laws. More specifically, there were 10 clauses in the contracts that the agency objected...

The FBI, DOJ, and numerous other U.S. government agencies have acquired mobile forensics and smart phone hacking tools from Cellebrite — an Israeli based cybersecurity firm — for the past decade. Cellebrite manufactures the UFED Touch, a mobile forensic extraction device which the FBI used to hack into the San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone 5c. CNN Money reported last week the FBI alone signed 187 contracts with Cellebrite over the past seven years — averaging $10,883 per contract — according to U.S. government records. That’s more than $2 million the FBI dropped on mobile forensics products and services. The Federal Procurement...

'I began with small steps, I didn't actually change the way I ate until fairly far into my fitness journey.'I guess you could say I hit a plateau - so I started to change the way I ate.'I watched my portions and ate more fruits and veggies, less packaged food more whole food.'She reached 115lb then hired a coach to help to weight train to sculpt her figure and entered her first fitness competition in 2014.She admitted being nervous the first time she stepped on stage but praised her coaches who helped prepare her.'I truly enjoyed the process. I was...

Firefighters rescue cat. Not news. Firefighters rescues cat with thermal technology. Different story. That’s the angle that grabbed headlines Tuesday for Alameda County firefighters in San Leandro who used a thermal imaging camera to locate a trapped cat inside of a wall before strategically cutting around the heat reading and freeing the kitten. The cat was in the attic before it fell, wedging itself between wall studs. Down on their hands and knees, three firefighters helped pull the small feline from the wall and then wrapped it in a white blanket. The firefighters decided to document their high-tech rescue on...