Category: Uncategorised

Boston Dynamics—part of Google's robotics division—has shown off the newest version of its "Atlas" bipedal robot. In a video posted to the company's YouTube page, the next-generation Atlas takes a stroll through the snow, recovers from a few slips, and even squats down to pick up a 10 pound-box.

This "next-generation" Atlas is a refinement of the old Atlas model, which was unveiled to the world in 2013. The old Atlas was a bit of a giant—it was 6 feet tall and weighed 330 pounds. The new Atlas is a lot closer to an average human, at just 5 feet 9 inches tall and weighing 180 pounds. This is also the first Atlas model to be equipped with a LIDAR system—a spinning metal can embedded in the robot's head.

The new Atlas goes through quite a gauntlet of tests in the video. After taking a walk over some rough, snowy terrain, a Boston Dynamics employee pushes it backwards with a hockey stick and smacks its toy box out of its hands. After being pushed so hard and taking a header into the floor, the robot shows it is still capable of picking itself up and going back to work.

Details remain scarce regarding the second arrest of corrupt Silk Road investigator Shaun Bridges, but in a new court filing, prosecutors insist that the details remain under seal—in part, because they believe he has one or more co-conspirators.

Following the trial and conviction of Silk Road mastermind Ross Ulbricht, two federal agents, Carl Force and Shaun Bridges, were charged with stealing from the Silk Road even while they were investigating it.

Bridges used admin privileges, taken from an arrested Silk Road admin, to steal $800,000 worth of bitcoins from Silk Road drug dealers. He pled guilty last year, and in December was sentenced to nearly six years in prison.

©2009 Thomas van Ardenne (credit: Thomas van Ardenne)

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, along with state health departments, is investigating 14 new reports of possible sexual transmission of Zika in the US, the agency announced Tuesday.

All of the cases involve the possible transmission of the virus to a female who hadn’t traveled from a male sexual partner who had recently traveled to an area where Zika was spreading through mosquitoes. While sexual transmission of the virus has been previously reported, the number of newly suspected cases suggests that sexual transmission may be more common than health experts previously expected.

“We were surprised that there was this number,” Dr. Anne Schuchat, the deputy director at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in an interview with the New York Times. “If a number of them pan out, that’s much more than I was expecting.”

(credit: Ian Stannard via Flickr)

For the approximately 37 million people worldwide who are infected with HIV (human immunodeficiency virus), the newest cocktails of anti-retroviral drugs have come a long way in beating back the retrovirus and keeping an infection in check. Still, those drugs are no cure. While the treatments snarl the viral assembly line and thwart new infectious particles from invading the body’s cells, HIV itself is still there, hunkered in the DNA of a patient’s genome until there’s an opportunity for a comeback—say, when a patient goes off their medication.

As long as there’s lingering HIV, patients must keep taking the drugs, which cause side-effects, make for high prescription bills, and raise the threat of drug resistance. At least, that's the case for now. In a new study, scientists reveal a possible way to literally hack those lurking viruses out of a person's DNA strands.

With a custom enzyme made through coerced evolution, researchers selectively and reliably sliced HIV sequences from a number of cell types: bacteria, human cell lines used in research, in cells collected from patients with HIV infections, and in “humanized” mice with HIV. Though the strategy is early in development—far from clinical use—the data so far points to an effective and safe way to help drug treatments completely finish off HIV infections. This is a “promising strategy for future clinical applications,” the authors report.

This is what the "Adoptable Storage" setup looks like in Android 6.0. Just replace "USB Drive" with "SD card."

With both the Galaxy S7 and LG G5 sporting expandable storage, and Google adding great SD support to Android 6.0, this year it seemed like storage enthusiasts would get everything they could ever want. Apparently that's not the case though, as both OEMs have shunned Google's new "Adoptable Storage" feature.

Android 6.0 Marshmallow added an adoptable storage feature, which allows you to format a microSD card as internal storage. Android will then merge the microSD card and internal storage into a single storage pool, allowing you to seamlessly install as many apps as you want, or load it with media. Samsung and LG don't appear to be a fans of the feature, though. Android Central tried the feature on G5 at MWC, and it didn't support adoptable storage, and when we asked Samsung about the feature, the company laid out its thoughts about the feature:

Samsung decided not to use the Android Marshmallow “adoptable storage” model. We believe that our users want a microSD card to transfer files between their phone and other devices (laptop, tablet, etc), especially the photos and videos they shoot with the camera.

With adoptable storage, first of all the card may be erased the first time it is inserted into the device. This behavior may be unexpected by many users and we don’t want our users to lose their files. Second, once Marshmallow starts using a card for adoptable storage, it cannot be read by other devices, so it loses this ability to be used for file transfer. Adoptable Storage is also primarily targeted towards emerging markets where devices with only 4-8GB of onboard storage are common. We think that our model of using microSD for mass storage is more in-line with our owner’s desires and expectations for how microSD should behave.

Before OEMs changed the feature, users could pick which mode they wanted the storage to be in and format it appropriately. There was both "Portable" mode, which treated an SD card like normal removable storage, and the new "Internal storage" mode. With "Internal" mode disabled for both devices, the SD cards will only be able to be used for media—no apps allowed.

Enlarge (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

Since iOS 8 was released in September 2014, Apple has encrypted the local storage of all iPhones. That’s not news, but it’s become newly relevant since the company and the FBI started a very loud, very public fight about the data stored on a particular iPhone.

Privacy advocates have praised Apple’s commitment to full-device encryption by default, and after a false start last year, all new Android phones shipping with version 6.0 or higher should be encrypted by default as well. It’s an effective tool for keeping thieves from grabbing your data even if they can take your phone.

If you're looking for comprehensive privacy, including protection from law enforcement entities, there’s still a loophole here: iCloud. Apple encourages the use of this service on every iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch that it sells, and when you do use the service, it backs up your device every time you plug it into its power adapter within range of a known Wi-Fi network. iCloud backups are comprehensive in a way that Android backups still aren’t, and if you’ve been following the San Bernardino case closely, you know that Apple’s own legal process guidelines (PDF) say that the company can hand iMessages, SMS/MMS messages, photos, app data, and voicemail over to law enforcement in the form of an iOS device backup (though some reports claim that Apple wants to strengthen the encryption on iCloud backups, removing the company's ability to hand the data over to law enforcement).

If Indiana's bill passes, Tesla's store may become a showroom.

Tesla recently sent a letter to “Tesla Owners and Enthusiasts” living in the Indiana area asking for their help to defeat a piece of legislation introduced by state lawmakers that would prevent auto manufacturers from selling cars directly to their customers. Tesla has almost exclusively sold vehicles to customers through direct vehicle sales, and it says if the bill is signed into law it would revoke Tesla’s permission to sell vehicles from its existing storefront in Indianapolis.

The bill seeks to prohibit manufacturers from holding a dealer license after December 31, 2017. Tesla currently holds such a license, although it does not contract with a third-party dealer.

In its letter to its customers, Tesla urged them to contact their representatives and the senators on the Commerce and Technology Committee, which will hold a hearing on the bill on Thursday, February 25, to express their displeasure at the new bill. "Despite having a lawfully granted license to sell Tesla vehicles directly since 2014 at the Fashion Mall at Keystone; despite contributing over $42 million to the state through the purchase of parts and components from Indiana suppliers; and despite plans underway to construct a 26,000 square foot Tesla Service facility that will employ approximately a dozen Indiana residents and serve our customers, GM is pushing the Senate Committee to shut out Tesla,” Tesla wrote.