MojoKid quotes a report from HotHardware: Researchers at Disney Research and Carnegie Mellon University have been toying around with radio frequency identification (RFID) tags. RFID tags are typically used for high-tech inventory management in a variety of industries, but researchers concocted a way to make RFID technology feasible for interactive games using physical objects. Using a framework the researchers developed called RapID, they showed how inexpensive RFID tags can sense when a physical object is moved or touched in near real-time. The research team demonstrated a handful of use case scenarios. One included a tic-tac-toe board that mirrors the physical game on a computer monitor with added sound effects, while another demonstration showed users playing a Pong clone using real wooden sliders to control the onscreen action. What the researchers have done is no small feat. RFID was never intended for interactive toys, and wasn't built for real-time or near real-time responsiveness. RapID interprets the signals by weighing possibilities instead of waiting on confirmation from RFID tags. Most importantly, it reduces typical lag times from 2 seconds all the way down to 200 milliseconds.

An anonymous reader writes: In response to the rising minimum wage, the fast-food chain Wendy's plans to start automating all of its restaurants. The company said it will have self-service ordering kiosks available to its 6,000-plus restaurants in the second half of the year. Wendy's President Todd Penegor said it will be up to franchisees to decide whether or not to adopt the kiosks in their stores, noting that many franchise locations have had to raise prices to offset wage increases. California's decision to gradually raise the minimum wage to $15 by 2022 will impact Wendy's 258 restaurants, all of which are franchise-operated. About 75% of 200-plus Wendy's restaurants are run by franchisees in New York, a state that is also on its way to $15. Penegor said, wage pressures have been manageable both because of falling commodity prices and better operating leverage due to an increase in customer counts. The company is still "working so hard to find efficiencies" so it can deliver "a new QSR experience but at traditional QSR prices." The CEO of Carl's Jr., Andy Puzder, is also looking into replacing many of its workers with machines to save money.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Apple Inc. invested $1 billion in Chinese ride-sharing service Didi, making one of its biggest bets on software and services and dealing a blow to Uber Technologies Inc.'s ambitions in the country. The iPhone maker will help Uber's largest rival build up a ride-sharing platform that handles more than 11 million rides a day and serves about 300 million users across China, Didi said in a statement on Friday. Executive Officer Tim Cook has highlighted higher-margin services as a growth area and suggested he would use some of its $200 billion-plus cash hoard for investments. The investment in one of China's largest online companies will allow Apple to forge alliances in its single largest market outside of the United States. Didi, incorporated as Xiaoju Kuaizhi Inc., is in the process of raising more than $2 billion at a valuation of about $25 billion, people familiar with the matter have said. It operates in 400 Chinese cities and works with more than 14 million Chinese car owners. The company is Uber's most potent rival and has formed an international coalition with Lyft Inc. in the U.S., India's Ola and Southeast Asia's Grab to fight the globally expanding San Francisco firm. Apple is hoping to reinvigorate lackluster iPhone sales in China with its $1 billion investment in Didi. The last big investment the company made was when it acquired Beats for $3 billion in 2014.

An anonymous reader writes: Matt Blaze, a University of Pennsylvania computer and information science professor, discovered a SUV "tucked away in the shadows of the Philadelphia Convention Center's tunnel" that was labeled as a Google Maps Street View car. It had two high-powered license plate reader cameras mounted on top, meaning it had to belong to a government agency. The Philadelphia Police Department had admitted it owns the truck after the report from Motherboard was published. "Unless the Philadelphia Fire Department of Streets Department are using automated license plate recognition (ALPR), this strongly suggests the city's police department is trawling city streets under the auspices of Google while snapping thousands of license plate images per minute," says Motherboard. ALPR can photograph thousands of license plate images per minute and track and store a person's travel habits without a warrant. Google spokesperson Susan Cadrecha commented on the report, "We can confirm this is not a Google Maps car, and that we are currently looking into the matter." The Philadelphia Police Department since responded to the report: "We have been informed that this unmarked vehicle belongs to the police department; however, the placement of any particular decal on the vehicle was not approved through any chain of command. With that being said, once this was brought to our attention, it was ordered that the decals be removed immediately."

An anonymous reader writes: Google launched a new keyboard application called "Gboard" for iOS today that features Google Search built-in to the keyboard itself. In addition, it offers swipe-based typing and access to GIFs, as well as some basic features like emojis and word predictions. The "G" icon in the upper lefthand corner opens a window for you to search Google without leaving the keyboard and launching a browser or the Google app. From there you can search for things like flight times, news articles, restaurant and business listings, weather and more, and paste that information into your chat with a single tap. The information is presented in a card-style layout. "We wanted to bring the best of Google to Gboard, so you'll see Maps, Translate, image and video search, News and others," says Rajan Patel, head of the product team that developed Gboard. "Initially, Gboard will not surface any information specific to you," he added, hinting that a personalized keyboard is in the works for the future.

An anonymous reader writes: Opera Software has added a power-saving mode to its desktop web browser that "can increase the battery life by as much as 50 percent." The company claims optimizations are what has made the battery life increase possible, including "reducing activity from background tabs, adapting page-redrawing frequency, and tuning video-playback parameters." Opera claimed that a laptop running Windows 10 64-bit with the power-saving feature enabled lasts 49 percent longer than one with Chrome put under equal stress. Ad blocking was turned on during the test as well. The feature is not enabled by default, but a blue battery icon will appear next to the browser's address bar whenever the power cable is unplugged from your computer. When the laptop's battery is running low, the browser will suggest turning on power-saving mode, too. Earlier this week, Opera launched a new VPN app for iOS that is free to use and includes unlimited data.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Business Insider: A new report from PwC finds that drones could replace $127 billion worth of human labor and services across several industries. Infrastructure and agriculture make up the largest chunks of the potential value -- some $77.6 billion between them -- including services like completing the last mile of delivery routes and spraying crops with laser-like precision. Economists seem to agree that robot automation poses real threats to human labour within the next few decades. Drones are a cheap, versatile first step toward that future. According to the new PwC report, they're also a solid cost-cutting measure. Along with infrastructure and agriculture, drones will help tech giants like Amazon deliver packages, allow security companies to better monitor their sites, help producers and advertisers to film projects, allow telecommunication firms to easily check on their towers, and give mining companies a new way to plan their digs.

An anonymous reader writes from a report via Bloomberg: FBI Director James Comey said the FBI is exploring how to make broader use of the hack, used to access a San Bernardino terrorist's encrypted iPhone, while bracing for a larger battle involving encrypted text messages, e-mails and other data. The tool could "in theory be used in any case where there's a court order" to access data on an iPhone 5c running Apple's iOS 9 OS, Comey told reporters in Washington on Wednesday. However, accessing content on a phone, known as "data at rest," is only part of the challenge that encryption poses for U.S. investigators. Software applications and other services that encrypts texts, e-mails and other information in transit over the Internet, known as "data in motion," are "hugely significant," especially for national security investigations, Comey said. He said criminals are increasingly using services that encrypt data in motion, and he didn't rule out litigation against companies such as WhatsApp. "WhatsApp has over a billion customers, overwhelmingly good people," Comey said. "But in that billion customers are terrorists and criminals, and so that now ubiquitous feature of all WhatsApp products will affect both sides of the house." As for whether or not there will be litigation against WhatsApp down the road, Comey says, "I don't know." The FBI is trying to figure out how to allow "law enforcement around the country with court orders to be able to use our tool," Comey said. It's "tricky," he said, because using the tool to help state and local criminal investigations could mean that it would have to be revealed in a court preceding if there isn't a procedure in place to prohibit testimony about how it works.

Samsung recently unveiled its EVO Plus 256GB microSD card, capable of storing more than 12 hours of 4K video footage, 33 hours of full HD recording, 55,200 photos or 23,500 MP3s. While you most likely do not need such a large microSD card in your life, you'll probably want one. The card features Samsung's newest V-NAND technology, with read/write speeds of 95MB/s and 90MB/s, respectively. It will be available in June to over 50 countries at a price of $250, which includes a 10 year warranty. Personally, I have no need for such a high-capacity card at this time, but I marvel how far technology has progressed in the last few years, let alone months. SanDisk, for example, revealed a 200GB microSD card back in March, 2015, which was the highest capacity microSD card up until now.

HughPickens.com writes: More than one million Americans live with Type 1 diabetes, an autoimmune condition in which the pancreas stops producing insulin, a hormone needed to turn sugar into energy. Now Kate Linebaugh writes at the WSJ that Jason Calabrese, a software engineer, followed instructions that had been shared online to hack an old insulin pump so it could automatically dose the hormone in response to his son's blood-sugar levels. The Calabreses aren't alone. More than 50 people have soldered, tinkered and written software to make such devices for themselves or their children. Initially, Calabrese worried about the safety of the do-it-yourself project. He built it over two months, and spent weeks testing. At first, he only tried it out on his son on weekends and at night. Once it performed well enough, he said it felt irresponsible not to use it on his 9-year-old son. "Diabetes is dangerous anyway. Insulin is dangerous. I think what we are doing is actually improving that and lowering the risk," says Calabrese. The home-built project that the Calabreses followed is known as OpenAPS. The only restriction of the project is users have to put the system together on their own. As long as the people tinkering with their insulin pumps aren't selling or distributing them, the FDA doesn't have a legal means to stop it. The system involves an outdated insulin pump that communicates with a small radio stick connected to a continuous glucose monitor, a computer motherboard and a battery pack. It is an outgrowth of another open-source project where caregivers developed software to remotely monitor blood-sugar levels. The size of the homemade system varies, and the one that Calabrese carries has come down from the size of a small shoebox to that of a headphone case. He wears his insulin pump and glucose monitor on his belt. "It is clearly for people who have some expertise in computer programming," says Bruce Buckingham. "What it shows is that people are anxious to get something going."

An anonymous reader writes: Netflix knows their customers hate ads. "We know one of the benefits of an ecosystem like Netflix is its lack of advertising," Howard Shimmel, a chief research officer at Time Warner, told Bloomberg last year. "Consumers are being trained there are places they can go to avoid ads." In response to Netflix's advertising policy, many networks have actually cut back on the amount of ads they show in an effort to lure back in the younger Netflix generation. CordCutting.com crunched some numbers and found that each Netflix subscriber saves themselves about 158.5 hours of commercials per year. Here is how they figured that out: "First, it took Netflix's recent 75 million subscriber mark. Then, it combined that with a quote from CEO Reed Hastings that said subscribers stream 125 million hours every day. That means every subscriber streams about 1 2/3 hours per day. Then it looked at Nielsen data, which showed that the typical hour of cable TV includes 15 minutes and 38 seconds of commercials. If you combine that with the Netflix subscriber data, then you get that each subscriber avoids around 158.5 hours per year of commercials -- if they were watching Netflix instead of cable TV," writes Nathan McAlone via Business Insider.

coondoggie quotes a report from Networkworld: The Federal Trade Commission today said it issued a 10-page letter to eight leading players in the mobile communications arena requiring them to tell the agency how they issue security updates to address vulnerabilities in smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices. Apple, BlackBerry, Google, HTC America, LG Electronics, Microsoft, Motorola Mobility, and Samsung must provide the following: The factors that they consider in deciding whether to patch a vulnerability on a particular mobile device, detailed data on the specific mobile devices they have offered for sale to consumers since August 2013, the vulnerabilities that have affected those devices, and whether and when the company patched such vulnerabilities.

A study from Australia reassures us that cellphones are reasonably safe, and do not cause brain cancer. Chris Mills writes from Gizmodo: "The study examines the incidence of brain cancer in the Australian population between 1982 to 2013. The study pitted the prevalence of mobile phones among the population -- starting at 0 percent -- against brain cancer rates, using data from national cancer registration data. The results showed a very slight increase in brain cancer rates among males, but a stable level among females. There were significant increases in over -70s, but began in 1982, before cellphones were even a thing." What makes the study in Australia so authentic compared to other studies conducted in other countries is the fact that all diagnosed cases of cancer have to be registered by law.

An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft has officially announced today it will end the annoying "Get Windows 10" notifications in July, when they end the free Windows 10 upgrade offer. In a statement to WinBeta, Microsoft said in a comment: "Details are still being finalized, but on July 29th the Get Windows 10 app that facilitates the easy upgrade to Windows 10 will be disabled and eventually removed from PCs worldwide. Just as it took time to ramp up and roll out the Get Windows 10 app, it will take time to ramp it down." This is great news for users who have decided to not install Windows 10 for whatever reason. Earlier this week, it was reported that the Windows 10 update has been ruining pro-graming streams. In April, the Windows 10 upgrade screen interrupted a meteorologist's live forecast.

Microsoft has made a bizarre tweak to an update for Windows 7 that can prevent some systems from booting. The Windows 7 update KB3133977 was switched from 'Optional' to 'Recommended' and Microsoft knew ahead of time the update would cause problems for some users but decided to do nothing about it. The update fixes a problem that stops BitLocker encrypting drives because of service crashes in svhost.exe. The update only causes a problem with ASUS motherboards. Microsoft says, "After you install update 3133977 on a Windows 7 x64-based system that includes an ASUS-based main board, the system does not start, and it generates a Secure Boot error on the ASUS BIOS screen. This problem occurs because ASUS allowed the main board to enable the Secure Boot process even though Windows 7 does not support this feature." The update wasn't causing many issues while it was optional. But now that it's recommended, more users have downloaded the update, and more users have experienced problems with the update. ASUS has provided a solution to the problem. Microsoft has also provided a solution, but you might not like it. Their solution in a nutshell: update to Windows 10.

MojoKid writes from a report on HotHardware: Netflix wants to put users in control of their mobile data usage when it comes to its iOS and Android apps. Up until today, Netflix held all the cards and adjusted video quality settings on its end (and how much cellular data was consumed) when users were on a cellular connection. Now, Netflix is opening up user-selectable settings that allow you to sip data (at the expense of video quality of course) or gulp it down if you're one of the few with an unlimited data plan. Making the adjustment is as simple as navigating to App Settings and then selecting Cellular Data Usage. From there, you will be able to select from Automatic (Default), Low, Medium, High, or Unlimited options. If you're on a Wi-Fi connection, these quality settings are disabled altogether.

New submitter Keys of Cars quotes a report from Gizmag: Smartwatches may be handy, but their tiny touchscreens can easily be obscured by your fingers as you're using them on the device. As a result, we've seen various attempts to move the control surface. One of the latest, Carnegie Mellon University's SkinTrack system, moves it onto your hand and lower arm. The strap of the smartwatch features multiple electrodes, which detects a ring that is worn on your "control finger" (on your non smartwatch-wearing arm) that emits a high-frequency electrical signal. When your finger, specifically the ring, approaches and/or touches the arm with the watch, the high-frequency electrical signal is propagated through the skin. It will work even if your skin is covered with clothing! The system is reportedly 99% accurate, and can locate touches with a mean error of 7.6mm. SkinTrack was used to control games, scroll through lists, zoom in and out of maps, draw pictures, and operate an onscreen number pad.

prisoninmate writes: Today is the last day of the Ubuntu Online Summit 2016, and the Ubuntu developers discussed the future of the Ubuntu Desktop for Ubuntu 16.10 (Yakkety Yak) and beyond. It looks like Snaps (Snappy) and Unity 8 with Mir are slowly conquering the Ubuntu Desktop, at least according to Canonical's Will Cooke, Ubuntu Desktop Manager. Work has already begun on pushing these new and modern technologies to the Ubuntu Desktop, as Ubuntu 16.04 LTS has just received support for installing Snaps from the Ubuntu Snappy Store. Canonical's Will Cooke has mentioned the fact that the Unity 7 desktop enters its twilight years, which means that it gets fewer features and it's being reduced to only critical and OEM work. This is because Unity 8 desktop is getting all the attention now, and it will become the default desktop session somewhere after Ubuntu 16.10 (Yakkety Yak).

An anonymous reader writes: Electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) have been all the rage lately, as many claim they are healthier than traditional tobacco cigarettes. Since they are so relatively new to the market, the government hasn't been able to effectively study them and determine whether or not they should be regulated like traditional cigarettes and smokeless tobacco -- until now. The FDA has released their final rule Thursday, broadening the definition of tobacco products to include e-cigarettes, hookahs, pipe tobacco, premium cigars, little cigars and other products. "Going forward, the FDA will be able to review new tobacco products not yet on the market, help prevent misleading claims by tobacco product manufacturers, evaluate the ingredients of tobacco products and how they are made, and communicate the potential risks of tobacco products," the agency said. The new rule will go into effect immediately. According to CDC data from 2014, e-cigarette use among adults has gone up about 12.6%. People under the age of 18 will no longer be able to buy these products with the new regulations, and the products will be required to be sold in child-resistant packaging. In addition, the government will now be able to have a say in what goes into the products. Previously, there was no law mandating that manufacturers tell you what you are inhaling when trying their products.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Softpedia: The device in question is Merge Hemo, a complex medical equipment used to supervise heart catheterization procedures, during which doctors insert a catheter inside blood veins and arteries in order to diagnose various types of heart diseases. According to one such report filed by Merge Healthcare in February, Merge Hemo suffered a mysterious crash right in the middle of a heart procedure when the screen went black and doctors had to reboot their computer. Merge investigated the issue and later reported to the FDA that the problem occurred because of the antivirus software running on the doctors' computer. The antivirus was configured to scan for viruses every hour, and the scan started right in the middle of the procedure. Merge says the antivirus froze access to crucial data acquired during the heart catheterization. Unable to access real-time data, the app crashed spectacularly.