Helsinki, on the southern shore of Finland, has a regional population of 1.2 million. Its transportation options include buses, trams, and a metro, not to mention bike rentals in the summertime—yet plenty of people still use cars.
To encourage more of those drivers to use public transportation, the local government is working with a local tech company’s smartphone app. Called Whim, the app lets people combine public transit with car rentals, ride sharing, taxis, and other private sector services. The ultimate goal is to help the environment and ease congestion by giving residents a way to get around without having to own a car.
The app was made available for test users in October. Before you set out somewhere using Whim, you enter in a destination, and software designs the best route to get you there, whether it’s by bus, train, or car. If you’re happy with the plan, you can approve the trip and it’s automatically paid for. The app currently requires a monthly subscription, but single-trip payment could become an option in the future.
Of Helsinki’s 1.2 million people, 900,000 have used public transportation in the past six months.
Whim will soon become available in additional markets, first in Birmingham, England, possibly later in Toronto or Montreal, and a number of U.S. markets after that, says Sampo Hietanen, CEO of MaaS Global, the company that created the Whim app. (MaaS stands for “mobility as a service,†a term being used for this type of approach.)
In transportation, “we’re very focused on large, capital-intensive, fixed-rate services, and most people don’t live in places where that makes sense,†says David King, a professor of transportation and urban planning at Arizona State University. “We have to come up with flexible transit, multiple strategies of transportation.â€Â Â
Helsinki seems a good place to test the idea. It has a high rate of mobile phone use and good digital infrastructure. Public transit use is high, too: of its 1.2 million people, 900,000 have used public transportation at least once in the past six months. Strong government support for the idea has been pivotal, because transportation systems are generally fragmented among different state and city authorities and departments.Â
One concern is that apps like these might leave public transit systems without a connection to their customers. Mari Flink, who runs communication and marketing for the Helsinki Transport Authority, notes that Whim—which has financial backing from car manufacturers and dealers—could promote more car sharing and thus decrease the use of public transit. To monitor that, the Helsinki Transport Authority is watching to see how many new users the app brings to public transit.
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There’s a lot going on in the world to be stressed about, but everything would be a lot easier to deal with if you could spend every waking minute of your life lounging in a relaxing hammock. It’s kind of a preposterous idea, until you remember that drone technology is pretty decent now.
Qualcomm has unveiled its next-gen Snapdragon 835 flagship CPU and confirmed rumors that it will be built by Samsung using its 10-nanometer FinFET process. Compared to the current 14-nanometer Snapdragon 821 (also built by Samsung), the new CPU packs 30 percent more parts into the same space, yielding 27 percent better performance while drawing up to 40 percent less power, the company says. It also improved the design, which will yield "significant" improvements to battery life
Other companies, including Intel and TMSC, are working on 10-nanometer chips, but Samsung said it’s the first to start building them. Samsung VP Jong Shik Yoon says "this collaboration is an important milestone for our foundry business," and no doubt a shot of good news to distract from Samsung’s smartphone problems. Qualcomm expects devices with the first Snapdragon 835 processors, possibly including Samsung’s Galaxy S8, to arrive in the first half of 2017. It reportedly has a Snapdragon 830 coming too, but is still mum about that CPU.
The new chip comes with Quick Charge 4, which supports 20 percent faster charging than Qualcomm’s last-gen tech. That, the company says, will give you up to five hours of extra battery life with just a five minute charge. In just 15 minutes, it’ll give Snapdragon 835 phones a half-full battery.
The system uses its "INOV" (Intelligent Negotiation for Optimum Voltge) tech, and says the tech is compatible with Google’s new guidelines for USB Type-C charging. Google previously said that Qualcomm’s Quickcharge 3.0 was not, in effect, compatible with its Nougat specs (above). Mountain View was trying to avoid multiple charge standards that could make it easy to plug the wrong charger into a phone and possibly fry it, or worse, cause a fire or explosion. For instance, OnePlus released a cable that works fine on the OnePlus 2 but can damage other phones or chargers.
However, Qualcomm says its system has "advanced safety features for both the adapter and mobile device." It can gauge current, voltage and temperature to safeguard the battery, cables and connectors. "An additional layer of protection is also being added to help prevent battery overcharging and regulate current throughout every charge cycle," its press release notes.
The addition of "compatibility with USB Power Delivery" means that it should meet Google’s compatibility specs. That’s a good thing, as Google said it may take a harder line on future releases. "While this is called out as ‘STRONGLY RECOMMENDED.’ in future Android versions we might REQUIRE all type-C devices to support full interoperability with standard type-C chargers," its spec says (emphasis theirs).
Apparently drivers in some parts of China have been flocking to buy these reflective ghost/scary face decals (~$3 – $18) that are only visible when the driver behind them is using their high-beams. The idea is to discourage high-beam use/scare the driver behind you into crashing. No, seriously, I think people are actually crashing.
But traffic police in some states have warned against using the scary stickers, because they could cause traffic accidents. Police in Shandong say they’ll issue 100 yuan ($15) fines to drivers using ghoulish decals.
In Beijing, police say [Chinese] it’s not illegal to have the decals on, but the driver may have to bear responsibility of any accidents that result from scaring another driver with them.
You know what I do if somebody driving behind me has their high-beams on? Immediately pull over and get out and run because I do NOT have a license. What the hell was I thinking? I’m not going back to jail. Whose car was that anyways?
Keep going for several more shots of the possibilities. Also, no word if anybody’s seen the face in their own rearview and had a heart attack.
Thanks to Jenn, who agrees when you drive a monster truck, nobody’s high-beams are high enough to be a problem.
Until now, Halo Neuroscience’s signature brain-bending headphones were only available to very specific groups: college-level athletes, pro athletes and the military. They helped build up hype for the eventual public release. That all changes today, however: you can buy your own set of Halo Sport headphones for $699. As before, that high price stems from the Sports’ "neuropriming." The over-ears send electrical currents to your brain that, at least in theory, make it extra-receptive to training. You won’t be inherently faster or stronger, but you might hit your goals sooner than you would otherwise.
How well do they work, though? It’s hard to quantify, since there are other factors that go into an athlete’s success beyond their receptiveness to training: the quality of that training, the athlete’s other traits and, of course, the competition. Oakland Raiders cornerback TJ Carrie is having a good year so far after wearing the Halo Sport, but the Olympians who used them? Their results are… mixed. Natasha Hastings helped win gold in the Rio Olympics’ 400m women’s relay. Mike Rodgers’ sprint relay team was disqualified in its final race, though, and Michael Tinsley was knocked out in the first round of the 400m hurdles.
This doesn’t mean that the brain-altering technology is ineffective. However, it does suggest that you should temper your expectations. No matter how well the Halo Sport works, you aren’t guaranteed fame and glory — you may perform better than you would otherwise, but you probably won’t win championships or smash records unless you’re already talented.
Google announced a big update to its Translate service today that involves Neural Machine Translation. That sounds like some future AI, machine learning science, secretive robotic madness, and it may very well be, but it also means Google Translate is going to get a whole lot better everywhere you use it.Â
Google explains Neural Machine Translation as a system that “translates whole sentences at a time, rather than just piece by piece.†In other words, Google Translate will use this technology to “help it figure out the most relevant translation, which it then rearranges and adjusts to be more like a human speaking with proper grammar.†Instead of getting a translation that is almost as impossible to read as the language you didn’t needed to translate, the translation should return in a much more natural format for you.
That make sense? Take a look at the image above and I’m guessing it will.
Google is calling this improvement the single biggest leap that Translate has “seen in the last ten years combined.†Yep, it’s a big one.
To start, Google Translate will Neural Machine Translation to work to and from English and French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Turkish. Those languages make up for more than 35% of Translate queries, so we’re off to a good start. Google did mention that the goal, as you probably guessed, is to make this magic happen for all 103 supported languages.
Neural Machine Translation will be available in in the Translate app and website.
The perils of leaving computers unattended just got worse, thanks to a newly released exploit tool that takes only 30 seconds to install a privacy-invading backdoor, even when the machine is locked with a strong password.
PoisonTap, as the tool has been dubbed, runs freely available software on a $5 Raspberry Pi Zero device. Once the payment card-sized computer is plugged into a computer’s USB slot, it intercepts all unencrypted Web traffic, including any authentication cookies used to log in to private accounts. PoisonTap then sends that data to a server under the attacker’s control. The hack also installs a backdoor that makes the owner’s Web browser and local network remotely controllable by the attacker.
The primary motivation is to demonstrate that even on a password-protected computer running off of a WPA2 Wi-Fi, your system and network can still be attacked quickly and easily. Existing non-HTTPS website credentials can be stolen, and, in fact, cookies from HTTPS sites that did not properly set the ‘secure’ flag on the cookie can also be siphoned.
Unsecured home or office routers are similarly at risk. Kamkar has published the PoisonTap source code and additional technical details here and has also released the following video demonstration:
PoisonTap – exploiting locked machines w/Raspberry Pi Zero
Once the device is inserted in a locked Mac or PC (Kamkar said he hasn’t tested PoisonTap on a Linux machine), it surreptitiously poisons the browser cache with malicious code that lives on well after the tool is removed. That makes the hack ideal for infecting computers while they are only briefly unattended. Here’s how it works.
Once the PoisonTap software is installed, the Raspberry Pi device becomes a miniature Linux computer that presents itself as an Ethernet network. Like a router, it’s responsible for allocating IP addresses for the local network through the dynamic host configuration protocol. In the process, the device becomes the gateway for sending and receiving traffic flowing over the local network. In this sense, PoisonTap is similar to a USB exploit tool demonstrated in September that stole login credentials from locked PCs and Macs.
Through a clever hack, however, PoisonTap is able to become the gateway for all Internet traffic as well. It does this by defining the local network to include the entire IPv4 address space. With that, the device has the ability to monitor and control all unencrypted traffic the locked computer sends or receives over its network connection.
PoisonTap then searches the locked computer for a Web browser running in the background with an open page. When it finds one, the device injects HTML iframe tags into the page that connect to the top 1 million sites ranked by Alexa. Because PoisonTap masquerades as the HTTP server for each site, the hack is able to receive, store, and upload any non-encrypted authentication cookies the computer uses to log in to any of those sites.
Given its highly privileged man-in-the-middle position, PoisonTap can also install backdoors that make both the Web browser and connected router remotely accessible to the attacker. To expose the browser, the hack leaves a combination of HTML and JavaScript in the browser cache that produces a persistent WebSocket. PoisonTap uses what’s known as a DNS rebinding attack to give remote access to a router.
That means attackers can use PoisonTap to remotely access a browser as it connects to a website or to gain administrative control over the connected router. Attackers still must overcome any password protections safeguarding an exposed router. But given the large number of unpatched authentication bypass vulnerabilities or default credentials that are never changed, such protections often don’t pose much of an obstacle.
PoisonTap challenges a tradition that can be found in almost any home or office—the age-old practice of briefly leaving a locked computer unattended. And for that reason, the ease and thoroughness of the hack may be understandably unsettling for some people. Still, several safeguards can significantly lower the threat posed by the hack. The first is to, whenever possible, use sites that are protected by HTTPS encryption and the transmission of secure cookies to prevent log-in credentials from being intercepted. A measure known as HTTP Strict Transport Security is better still, because it prevents attack techniques that attempt to downgrade HTTPS connections to unsecured HTTP.
As a result, neither Google nor Facebook pages can be triggered by computers infected by PoisonTap. Sadly, multi-factor authentication isn’t likely to provide much protection because it generally isn’t triggered by credentials provided in authentication cookies.
End users, meanwhile, should at a minimum close their browsers before locking their computer or, if they’re on a Mac, be sure to enable FileVault2 and put their machine to sleep before walking away, since browsers are unable to make requests in such cases. Regularly flushing browser caches is also a sound, albeit imperfect, measure. For the truly paranoid, it may make more sense to simply bring laptops along or to turn off machines altogether.
