The Verge - Tech Posts |
- Home Depot says its smart home app is for people who find the smart home space ‘intimidating’
- Facebook says its AI mislabeling a video of Black men as “primates” was “unacceptable”
- GoDaddy cut off Texas Right to Life’s abortion ‘whistleblowing’ website, but it’s staying online
- Watch PlayerUnknown describe Prologue, a post-PUBG project all his own
- Lyft and Uber to cover legal fees of drivers sued under Texas anti-abortion law
- Nintendo is reportedly set to bring Game Boy and Game Boy Color games to Switch Online
- AI computers can’t patent their own inventions — yet — a US judge rules
- New study will show misinformation on Facebook gets way more engagement than news
- BMW’s new CE 02 mini-bike concept is electric
| Home Depot says its smart home app is for people who find the smart home space ‘intimidating’ Posted: 04 Sep 2021 07:47 AM PDT  Home Depot has launched a smart home app meant to be an all-in-one for smart appliances and accessories the big box store sells, but it's debatable why anyone would need it when Google Home and Amazon's Alexa already exist. Called Hubspace, the free app is available in Android and iOS app stores, and "enables light bulbs, smart plugs and ceiling fans to be controlled from anywhere," according to a press release from Home Depot. It's compatible with Google Home and Amazon Alexa devices, and works with a short list of products that Home Depot sells, from its proprietary brands such as Hampton Bay and EcoSmart. "There's no need for a hub or extra equipment, and the platform already works with more than 20 products," the press release...  |
| Facebook says its AI mislabeling a video of Black men as “primates” was “unacceptable” Posted: 04 Sep 2021 06:31 AM PDT  Facebook is apologizing for an incident where its AI mislabeled a video of Black men with a "primates" label, calling it an "unacceptable error" that it was examining to prevent it from happening again. As reported by the New York Times, users who watched a June 27th video posted by the UK tabloid Daily Mail received an auto-prompt asking whether they wanted to "keep seeing videos about Primates." Facebook disabled the entire topic recommendation feature as soon as it realized what was happening, a spokesperson said in an email to The Verge on Saturday. "This was clearly an unacceptable error," the spokesperson said. The company is investigating the cause to prevent the behavior from happening again, the spokesperson added. "As we have...  |
| GoDaddy cut off Texas Right to Life’s abortion ‘whistleblowing’ website, but it’s staying online Posted: 04 Sep 2021 01:00 AM PDT  In case you haven't heard, Texas now has a law that makes it illegal for anyone to help women get an abortion after six weeks of pregnancy with no exceptions for rape or incest — and to take advantage of that, the anti-abortion group Texas Right to Life is encouraging citizens to report those people at a dedicated "whistleblower" website, promising to "ensure that these lawbreakers are held accountable for their actions." On Friday, Texas Right to Life had to find a new home on the web, because hosting provider GoDaddy gave the group 24 hours to find a different place to park its website. "We have informed prolifewhistleblower.com they have 24 hours to move to another provider for violating our terms of service," a spokesperson told The...  |
| Watch PlayerUnknown describe Prologue, a post-PUBG project all his own Posted: 03 Sep 2021 04:11 PM PDT  PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, more commonly known as PUBG (or Game for Peace in China) is already one of the most successful and influential games ever made just four years after release. Its director Brendan Greene, a former DJ and web designer from Ireland, is credited with launching the entire battle royale genre, directly inspiring what you now know as Fortnite, CoD: Warzone, Apex Legends and more. But this past week, he announced that he'd left the Korean company whose work on his battle royale vision propelled him to fame to build a studio all his own — and late Thursday, he revealed what to expect from his next project. — PLAYERUNKNOWN (@PLAYERUNKNOWN) September 3, 2021 It's called Prologue, and...  |
| Lyft and Uber to cover legal fees of drivers sued under Texas anti-abortion law Posted: 03 Sep 2021 02:49 PM PDT  Lyft and Uber are committing to pay legal fees for any driver on their respective platforms who get sued under Texas' controversial anti-abortion law. The new law, which was signed this week by Texas governor Greg Abbott, bans abortions of fetuses after six weeks (which is before many women even know they are pregnant) and offers no exceptions for rape or incest. The law also empowers private citizens across the country to sue anyone for "aiding and abetting" abortions past the six-week mark, including clinics, anyone who pays for the abortion, or even people who drive someone to the procedure. "This is an attack on women's access to healthcare and on...  |
| Nintendo is reportedly set to bring Game Boy and Game Boy Color games to Switch Online Posted: 03 Sep 2021 02:04 PM PDT  Nintendo may be finally ready to bring its storied handheld gaming library to the Nintendo Switch — Game Boy and Game Boy Color titles will soon join the 100-plus NES and SNES games that it offers via its Switch Online subscription service, according to rumors from the "Nate the Hate" podcast, corroborated by Nintendo Life on Tuesday and now again on Friday by Eurogamer. It's not every day we see a Nintendo rumor that strong. There's no word on which titles might arrive, and I wouldn't necessarily expect your favorites to be among them, particularly to start. Nintendo has curated its NES and SNES libraries for Switch very slowly, some of them are pretty deep cuts, and many titles like Earthbound, Chrono Trigger and Super Mario RPG are...  |
| AI computers can’t patent their own inventions — yet — a US judge rules Posted: 03 Sep 2021 11:10 AM PDT  Should an artificially intelligent machine be able to patent its own inventions? For a US federal judge, the larger implications of that question were irrelevant. In April 2020, the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) ruled that only "natural persons" could be credited as the inventor of a patent, and a US court decided Thursday that yes, that's what the law technically says (via Bloomberg). Not every country agrees with that direction. South Africa and Australia decided to go the other direction, granting one patent and reinstating a second patent application filed by AI researcher Steven Thaler, whose AI system DABUS reportedly came up with a flashing light and a new type of food container. Thaler is the one who sued the US in this...  |
| New study will show misinformation on Facebook gets way more engagement than news Posted: 03 Sep 2021 11:09 AM PDT  A new peer-reviewed study from researchers at New York University and the Université Grenoble Alpes in France will show that misinformation got six times as much engagement on Facebook as real news, The Washington Post reports. The study looked at posts from the Facebook pages of more than 2,500 news publishers between August 2020 and January 2021. Researchers found that the pages that post more misinformation regularly got more likes, shares, and comments. This increased engagement was seen across the political spectrum, but the study found that "publishers on the right have a much higher propensity to share misleading information than publishers in other political categories," according to The Washington Post. The researchers will...  |
| BMW’s new CE 02 mini-bike concept is electric Posted: 03 Sep 2021 10:30 AM PDT  BMW's Motorrad division has been pumping out some wild concepts over the last few years as the larger company turns its attention towards electric vehicles. It's latest is also the to date, but still looks extremely cool: the CE 02 mini-bike. Debuted this week ahead of the IAA Mobility conference in Germany, the CE 02 is a tiny two-wheeler that borrows some of the futuristic vibes BMW has been honing for its larger concept bikes — including the CE 04, which is actually going into production. Clad in silver and black and "technoid typography," the minimalist design looks like it came right off the set of a sci-fi movie. The CE 02 has an 11kW belt-drive motor, which can help the bike reach a top speed of around 90 kilometers per hour...  |
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