Sofie Thyme

Once you do that, a 3D model of the Dunks will pop up and you’ll have the chance to buy a pair for yourself. There are also posters, like the one above, outside of Momofuku restaurants in NYC which can trigger the app’s AR feature — in case you’re looking for a more adventurous experience. This seems to be yet another effort by Nike to combat bots, a powerful tool for resellers that’s become a major problem in sneaker culture . Last month, the company introduce Stash, a way for people to unlock exclusive products in the SNRKS app based on their location. The SNKRS AR functionality only works for iOS users at the moment, though Nike says Android support is coming soon.

It sounds like the university is getting by on a technicality with its “first-ever” claims, but that doesn’t make this project any less interesting. Manufacturing of the concrete parts has begun, and it’s anticipated that bridge construction will start in September. To get to the point where the 3D printed parts were considered reliable, the team at the university first built a 1:2 scale model, which was able to hold a 2,000kg (over 4,400 pounds) load. As for why this process is an improvement over standard concrete techniques, printing a bridge will use far less concrete than pouring it into molds. There’s an environmental impact here, as well — the production of concrete cement releases CO2, so cutting down on those emissions is worth noting. There’s also more freedom of design, as a 3D-printer can fabricate shapes that are much harder to produce with a mold. Another benefit is that the steel reinforcement cables can be printed at the same time as the concrete parts, leading to p...

Overall, the trend for buyers is to be quite positive about the quality and performance of their new vehicle, especially if it’s a Kia. “Autonomous Technology” was, in fact, the only category where user complaints increased between 2016 and 2017, although only by a tiny amount. The Wall Street Journal points out that of all the issues consumers raised, 34 percent of them were tied in to adaptive cruise control. If left unchecked, users may prefer to opt for cars with fewer autonomous systems, or prefer to drive with them deactivated. Issues with existing smart driving features could also sour the general public’s feeling towards our rapidly-approaching autonomous future. It’s easy for consumers to think that, if manufacturers can’t get lane assistance right, what chance do they have of building a car that can think, and drive, for itself? It’s clear that the auto industry will have to work to tackle this issue on both a technical and perception level before it becomes a problem. E...

Apple Is a Step Closer to Making Its Own TV Shows David Sims, The Atlantic While the company’s television aspirations remain largely a mystery, Apple hired two big names this week to help build its slate of original shows. Jamie Erlicht and Zack Van Amburg, presidents of Sony Pictures Television, will make the move to Cupertino this summer with experience making hits like Damages , Breaking Bad , Justified and other series. The Atlantic offers a look at what this means for Apple and what we can expect from Eddy Cue & Co. in the months to come.

According to the prosecution, Carter spent the two weeks before Roy’s suicide texting him encouragement to kill himself. On July 12th, 2014, Roy drove to a remote Target parking lot and filled the cab of his truck with carbon monoxide from an external generator. He reportedly called Carter while the truck filled with fumes. At one point, Roy changed his mind about committing suicide and exited the cab but went back in at Carter’s urging. She then listened to him slowly die without calling emergency medical services for help. What’s more, the prosecution only learned of this phone conversation only from texts sent between Carter and a friend weeks after the incident. While courts have generally treated suicide as an act of free will, Judge Lawrence Moniz decided last week that Carter’s actions (and subsequent inaction) influenced Roy’s thinking enough to warrant her liability in his death. According to Massachusetts state law , involuntary manslaughter is defined as “an unlawful killi...

“Time is precious on Mars,” said lead system engineer Raymond Francis in a statement. “AEGIS allows us to make use of time that otherwise wasn’t available because we were waiting for someone on Earth to make a decision.” The AEGIS software operates in two different ways: autonomous target selection and autonomous pointing refinement. Basically, these two systems allow the rover to select targets and refine its own laser targeting to analyze samples chosen according to the parameters scientists have selected beforehand. The software has performed at a very high level, exceeding 93 percent accuracy when choosing the correct materials to analyze. According to the paper, the AEGIS autonomous system has “substantially reduced lost time on the mission” and increased the speed of data collection. Before AEGIS was implemented last year, the rover carried out blind targeting, just in case it hit something worthwhile. “Half the time it would just hit soil — which was also useful, but rock meas...

Amazon’s Echo Show is getting another new trick, err, skill. Now the gizmo will link with the cameras on your home network and display their respective feeds when you say something like, “Alexa, show the front door.” A press release notes that this will work with cameras from Amcrest, Arlo, August , EZViz, IC Realtime, Nest and Vivint. And if you don’t have a Show, saying the command phrase will give you an audio feed on your Dot or Echo. Better yet, Amazon has released the camera control API into the wild so developers can start cracking on even more implementations for it.

The report says CIA director John Brennan, Obama and other officials had at least four “blunt” conversations with Russian officials about its cyber intrusions beginning August 4th. Obama confronted Vladimir Putin in person during a meeting of world leaders in China this past September, the report says, and his administration even sent Russia a warning through a secure channel originally designed to help the two countries avoid a nuclear strike . Moscow apparently responded one week later — after the US election — denying the accusation. Trump’s win on November 8th came as a shock to the White House, The Post reports, and the investigation into Russia’s hacking campaign stalled until December. That’s when Obama ordered a comprehensive review of Russia’s influence on US election systems, dating back to 2008. Later that month, he took a firm stance against Russia during a press conference, saying, “The Russians can’t change us or significantly weaken us. They are a smaller country. Th...

Amazon’s Echo Show is getting another new trick, err, skill. Now the gizmo will link with the cameras on your home network and display their respective feeds when you say something like, “Alexa, show the front door.” A press release notes that this will work with cameras from Amcrest, Arlo, August , EZViz, IC Realtime, Nest and Vivint. And if you don’t have a Show, saying the command phrase will give you an audio feed on your Dot or Echo. Better yet, Amazon has released the camera control API into the wild so developers can start cracking on even more implementations for it.

Which brings us to today. Just one week after E3 2017, Sony’s reign as indie king doesn’t feel stable any longer. It showed zero indie games during its E3 press conference (excluding some VR options ), and developers on the show floor whispered about the company’s increasing silence. Jim Ryan, Sony Interactive’s head of global marketing, said in an interview just days ago that indie games were “less relevant now.” When it comes to indies, the air around Sony is thick. It feels like the pendulum is about to swing back, indie-crown in tow. “A few years ago, Sony was the champion of indies and I think it made their platform much stronger, honestly,” says Johnneman Nordhagen, the co-creator of Gone Home who’s currently building Where the Water Tastes Like Wine . “It gave them a whole group of devs that were coming up on the PlayStation platform that would then go on to do bigger and better things, and I think it’s a mistake for them not to keep that farm team growing, in a way.” Sony...

Fans of the original game will smugly note that studio Respawn is returning to the three-slot setup from the first Titanfall , which they reduced to two in the transition to the sequel. But the War Games DLC has another throwback: The titular map returns from the original game, a TRON-esque simulated battlezone with plenty of elevated panels and surfaces to wallrun around. There’s also the new map Traffic for the intense small-area pilots-only Life Fire mode, a new pilot execution and an undefined new mode, Free Agent. (The only hint for the latter comes from Redditor Varixai , who plucked out this description from the game’s code: “You’re running solo. Kill enemies and collect 3 batteries for a Titanfall.”) War Games is available to download on June 27th, and the other five DLC packs Respawn has released for the game, is completely free.

Later this year, Google will stop relying on the content of consumer Gmail messages to serve up personalized ads, the company announced Friday. Consumer Gmail content will not be used or scanned for ads, the company said, bringing the consumer version of the popular email service in line with the business version, which is part of G Suite. “G Suite customers and free consumer Gmail users can remain confident that Google will keep privacy and security paramount as we continue to innovate,” Diane Greene, SVP of Google Cloud wrote in a blog post. It also creates more consistency in the way Google pesonalizes ads across its products. Other Google products creates targeted ads based on users’ settings. Users can change those settings at any time or disable ad personalization. Google previously faced legal challenges over its handling of email, and in 2014 the company updated its terms of service to explicitly state that it scanned emails in order to serve personalized ads.

According to the prosecution, Carter spent the two weeks before Roy’s suicide texting him encouragement to kill himself. On July 12th, 2014, Roy drove to a remote Target parking lot and filled the cab of his truck with carbon monoxide from an external generator. He reportedly called Carter while the truck filled with fumes. At one point, Roy changed his mind about committing suicide and exited the cab but went back in at Carter’s urging. She then listened to him slowly die without calling emergency medical services for help. What’s more, the prosecution only learned of this phone conversation only from texts sent between Carter and a friend weeks after the incident. While courts have generally treated suicide as an act of free will, Judge Lawrence Moniz decided last week that Carter’s actions (and subsequent inaction) influenced Roy’s thinking enough to warrant her liability in his death. According to Massachusetts state law , involuntary manslaughter is defined as “an unlawful killi...

“Time is precious on Mars,” said lead system engineer Raymond Francis in a statement. “AEGIS allows us to make use of time that otherwise wasn’t available because we were waiting for someone on Earth to make a decision.” The AEGIS software operates in two different ways: autonomous target selection and autonomous pointing refinement. Basically, these two systems allow the rover to select targets and refine its own laser targeting to analyze samples chosen according to the parameters scientists have selected beforehand. The software has performed at a very high level, exceeding 93 percent accuracy when choosing the correct materials to analyze. According to the paper, the AEGIS autonomous system has “substantially reduced lost time on the mission” and increased the speed of data collection. Before AEGIS was implemented last year, the rover carried out blind targeting, just in case it hit something worthwhile. “Half the time it would just hit soil — which was also useful, but rock meas...

Once you do that, a 3D model of the Dunks will pop up and you’ll have the chance to buy a pair for yourself. There are also posters, like the one above, outside of Momofuku restaurants in NYC which can trigger the app’s AR feature — in case you’re looking for a more adventurous experience. This seems to be yet another effort by Nike to combat bots, a powerful tool for resellers that’s become a major problem in sneaker culture . Last month, the company introduce Stash, a way for people to unlock exclusive products in the SNRKS app based on their location. The SNKRS AR functionality only works for iOS users at the moment, though Nike says Android support is coming soon.

The country has a history of censoring its media platforms and this latest move isn’t terribly surprising. Combing through and removing all of the content it deems inappropriate takes a fair amount of resources and livestreaming adds a layer of difficulty to those processes. Recently, Chinese authorities have shut down celebrity gossip accounts, made VPNs illegal and began requiring app stores to register with the government. They’ve also added restrictions on internet news outlets. This latest move has already hurt companies like Weibo — China’s version of Twitter — which rely on livestreaming to bring in revenue. After the announcement of the ban, Weibo’s shares fell over six percent, shaving nearly a $1 billion off of the company’s market capitalization. It’s not clear if the ban is permanent.

The first of several new languages for Google’s Assistant AI is here, as users have noticed Canadian French as a language option. I was able to switch it on for my Google Home by looking for Assistant Language under device settings in its control app, while The Android Soul reports they could turn it on simply by saying “Ok Google, speak to me in French Canadian,” however I could not get that to work. The new language is obviously there to get ready for the Google Home launch in Canada on the 26th , making it the first one Assistant supports outside of English. At Google’s I/O event in May, the company announced that German, Brazilian-Portuguese and Japanese will be added this summer, followed by Italian, Spanish and Korean later in the year.

Overall, the trend for buyers is to be quite positive about the quality and performance of their new vehicle, especially if it’s a Kia. “Autonomous Technology” was, in fact, the only category where user complaints increased between 2016 and 2017, although only by a tiny amount. The Wall Street Journal points out that of all the issues consumers raised, 34 percent of them were tied in to adaptive cruise control. If left unchecked, users may prefer to opt for cars with fewer autonomous systems, or prefer to drive with them deactivated. Issues with existing smart driving features could also sour the general public’s feeling towards our rapidly-approaching autonomous future. It’s easy for consumers to think that, if manufacturers can’t get lane assistance right, what chance do they have of building a car that can think, and drive, for itself? It’s clear that the auto industry will have to work to tackle this issue on both a technical and perception level before it becomes a problem. E...