Day: October 1, 2018

— Chance Richie is wearing a dark suit contrasted by a pink shirt and brown shoes with flashy socks. He has pale blue eyes and a firm jaw, looking exactly like the former Navy submariner he once was. These days, he’s leading a car subscription service,

Mobiliti

, a startup company that’s rethinking, well, mobility. The company has 25 employees and more than 1,000 registered users. It’s in four markets with ambitious plans to double that in the near future. We caught up with him in the wood-paneled dining room of the Detroit Athletic Club, where previous generations of auto barons pondered mobility in other eras.

Autoblog:

Give me an overview of how Mobiliti works and what your game plan is.

Chance Richie:

I saw an opportunity to provide customers flexible vehicle access and to provide

dealers

with an incremental profit source. And we do that through the Mobiliti app where we connect dealers and drivers and we make it very simple for someone to go on, select a vehicle, pay for it through our app and then they have their vehicle,

insurance

, maintenance and roadside assistance all bundled into one payment.

AB:

How would you argue this is better than traditional

leasing

? Or car rentals?

CR:

In my mind it’s definitely a lot better than car rental. For one thing, it’s going to be significantly less expensive. If you look at a 30-day or long-term rental from one of the major rental car companies, that’s a very expensive proposition. The Mobiliti program is designed to be cost-neutral and cost-competitive with traditional purchase and lease options. But, with that added element of flexibility and one payment for everything that you need except the gas, we like to say.

AB:

What’s your strategy for going forward and what’s next for you guys?

CR:

We’re in four markets right now. We plan on being in eight markets by the end 2018 and then we want to add eight to 10 markets every year after. We have a nice natural footprint now but we want to fill out and be more ubiquitous across the United States. And the good thing about the Mobiliti subscriptions is one app gives you access to vehicles all across the country.

AB:

Last question, where do you see this space going?

CR:

I think subscription will have an adoption rate probably similar to leasing. If you look at the lease penetration rate nationwide, it’s somewhere around 30 percent and growing. So I see subscription probably following that same trajectory, but within the next few years really being in the consciousness of all Americans that are looking to acquire a vehicle.

Related Video:

The Nobel Prize, though often questionable in its selections, captivates the world each year. While there are now scientific awards with larger monetary prizes, there is no prize so universally and immediately recognized as a sign of prestige.

The 2018 season kicked off on Monday with the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, which this year honors two researchers for their work on cancer therapy. James P. Allison, 70, born in Alice, Texas, and now affiliated with the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy in San Francisco, splits the prize with Tasuku Honjo, 76, a professor at Kyoto University in Japan. Their joint prize includes 9,000,000 Swedish Krona, which is a bit more than $1,000,000 USD.

In the 1990s, Allison and Honjo did separate but parallel research on the use of the human immune system to fight cancer. Because cancer is a disease caused by the mutation of a body’s own cells, our immune systems rarely offer much assistance. Allison and Honjo showed how two different proteins can, in slightly different ways, pump the brakes on an immune system’s attempts to attack multiplying cancer cells. If someone disabled such brakes, their work suggested, the immune system might have a fighting chance against cancer. The work they and others did at that time led to the development of immunotherapy as a cancer treatment, which is now a quickly growing field. This was the first step toward cancer therapies more precise and less brutal than surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy.

Drugs based on these and similar proteins now help treat several types of cancer, and are known as immune checkpoint inhibitors.

“I’m so thrilled that a Nobel has been awarded for this game-changing cancer therapy,” Dan Davis of the University of Manchester told The Guardian. “It doesn’t work for everyone but lives have been saved, and it has sparked a revolution in thinking about the many other ways in which the immune system can be harnessed or unleashed to fight cancer and other illnesses. I think this is just the tip of the iceberg—many more medicines like this are on the horizon.”

By showing that the immune system can be tweaked to ward off cancer cells, Allison and Honjo also helped inspire the latest generation of gene-edited cancer therapies. Our 2017 Best of What’s New Awards honored Kymriah, the first FDA-approved treatment to utilize gene-edited white blood cells to fight the disease. Its results are astounding, but Kymriah still isn’t a magic bullet for all patients—or even for all types of cancers. Researchers are working on getting Novartis’ Kymriah and Kite Pharma’s Yescarta (two brands of the same therapy, generically known as CAR T-cell immunotherapy) approved for more varieties of the disease, but as PopSci reported back in December, the treatments have a long way to go. When they work, they often work miraculously. When they don’t, they can cause life-threatening side effects. And even patients who seem to do well aren’t always given the life-long bill of health they hope for.

But despite all the typical bumps in the road of a new form of medicine, immunotherapy is undoubtedly our best shot at making cancer—at least as we know it—a thing of the past.

And for what it’s worth, Allison may well be among the best harmonica players in Nobel history:

Google’s long-rumored Yeti streaming service is now official, as the company today announced Project Stream, a service that will allow users to stream games to the Google Chrome internet browser. The first game supported will be Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, which launches on Friday.

“We’ve been working on Project Stream, a technical test to solve some of the biggest challenges of streaming,” Google said in a blog post today. “For this test, we’re going to push the limits with one of the most demanding applications for streaming—a blockbuster video game.”

Anyone who’s accepted into the beta test will be able to play Odyssey in their browsers on a laptop or desktop starting Friday, Google said. They’re looking for people with internet speeds of 25 megabits per second or higher.

As we reported earlier this year, this is the first part of a broader Google initiative to enter gaming in a big way. As I wrote in June:

So what is this streaming platform, exactly? Like Nvidia’s GeForce Now, the Google service would offload the work of rendering graphics to beefy computers elsewhere, allowing even the cheapest PCs to play high-end games. The biggest advantage of streaming, as opposed to physical discs or downloads, is that it removes hardware barriers for games. Games like Call of Duty can reach a significantly bigger audience if players don’t need an expensive graphics card or console to play them. As one person familiar with Yeti described it: Imagine playing The Witcher 3 within a tab on Google Chrome.

Question is, what about input lag? Latency? Will this work as delivered or will it be destined to go the way of OnLive? We’ll be able to see for ourselves starting Friday.

In what may be a world first, the FBI has forced a suspect to unlock his iPhone X using Apple’s Face ID feature. Agents in Columbus, Ohio entered the home of 28-year-old Grant Michalski, who was suspected of child abuse, according to court documents spotted by Forbes. With a search warrant in hand, they forced him to put his face on front of the device to unlock it. They were then able to freely search for his photos, chats and any other potential evidence.

The FBI started investigating Michalski after discovering his ad on Craigslist titled “taboo.” Later, they discovered emails in which he discussed incest and sex with minors with another defendant, William Weekly. Reportedly, they also discussed sexual acts with an individual that Weekly identified in the emails as his daughter.

The FBI have used suspects’ fingerprints to unlock their phones, and even tried to crack an iPhone by 3D-printing a dead person’s finger. Without a fingerprint or face, authorities have thus far been unable to obtain passwords, because even Apple can’t access them. Apple has also refused to create backdoors for law enforcement, with CEO Tim Cook saying it would compromise the security of all users. That argument has some merit, as hacking tools developed by the NSA were stolen by hackers.

That hasn’t stopped third-party companies, however. Israeli firm Cellebrite created an unlocking device that may have been used by the FBI to unlock the San Bernardino killer’s iPhone. Another device called GrayKey can reportedly unlock two iPhones at once in just a couple of minutes.

Surprisingly, using Face ID or similar face recognition systems from Huawei and other device makers to unlock a suspect’s phone has possibly never been tried. As such, it’s not clear if it’s lawful to do so, even though law enforcement can obviously use someone’s face as evidence for witness identification and other purposes.

Reportedly, agents were able to obtain some, but not all data by using the suspect’s Face ID because they were unable to keep the phone open long enough. In any event, Michalski’s lawyer told Forbes that the data may not even be necessary. “That’s a Pyrrhic victory as there was contraband found on other devices but there would be no need to challenge the warrant’s facial recognition feature as my client was not harmed by its use.”

via Engadget http://www.engadget.com

October 1, 2018 at 08:24AM

In March, Apple unveiled its Everyone Can Create curriculum, a program aimed at helping educators integrate drawing, music, video and photo skills into their lessons and assignments. Now, the company has made that curriculum available for free through Apple Books. The program includes four guides, with projects that help students progressively build skills in a creative medium, as well as a teacher guide that comes with 300 lesson ideas.

“We believe Apple technology can help unleash every child’s creative genius,” Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide marketing, said in a statement. “Working closely with teachers, we have built the Everyone Can Create curriculum to help bring creative expression and the arts into the classroom, and to help students stay engaged through creativity and ultimately be more successful.”

Apple said that since releasing a preview of the curriculum in March, more than 350 schools have started using it. Certainly, making this type of curriculum available for free is good for the teachers who want to use it, but it’s also a way for Apple to woo educators over to the iPad when they’ve typically gravitated towards more affordable tablet options from other companies. When Apple announced its discounted iPad option for teachers in March, a number of educators said it was still too expensive to be feasible for most classrooms.

Everyone Can Create is a follow to Apple’s Everyone Can Code initiative, which provides educators with tools for teaching coding. The Everyone Can Create project and teacher guides are currently available in English and Apple says they’ll be available in more languages by the end of the year. Educators can also get a look at the curriculum during the company’s Today at Apple workshops on Teacher Tuesdays.

via Engadget http://www.engadget.com

October 1, 2018 at 11:12AM

When it’s not debunking flat-earthers, Google Maps is busy pushing out updates. In the past few months alone, we’ve seen new groups, discovery and Yelp-style recommendation features (along with its arrival on Apple CarPlay thanks to iOS 12). Now, it’s ready to give you even more granular data about your daily commute, all within a new tab. The new additions will allow for one-tap access to live traffic and transit information, plus Android notifications about delays and disruptions.

There’s also support for mixed-mode commutes. Those who drive and take public transport will now see more information for each leg of their trip, including traffic delays, train departure times, and walking duration. All of this will be factored into your ETA. You’ll also be able to see where your train or bus is in real-time — so you can spend more time eating breakfast in the morning if it’s running late. This feature is rolling out to 80 cities worldwide, with an extra perk for Syndey’s denizens (in conjunction with Transport New South Wales) that shows how full your bus or train is.

Finally, Google Maps will help you keep your eyes on the road when streaming tunes by making Spotify, Apple Music, and Google Play Music available within the app. (Amazon Music‘s exclusion shouldn’t come as a surprise considering the beef between the two titans.) Waze users will recall that the GPS app also added Spotify support on iOS earlier this year. Google’s new commute features are rolling out worldwide on iOS and Android this week.

via Engadget http://www.engadget.com

October 1, 2018 at 05:06AM