The Unfortunate Side Effect of LED Lighting

Light pollution has increased worldwide because of the prevalence of energy saving LED lights. However, the problem isn’t with the lights themselves — but the fact that the world is getting brighter because LEDs are illuminating places we didn’t bother to light before. And that has its own environmental cost. The findings were published in the journal Science Advances, and found that artificially lit outdoor surfaces grew at a pace of 2.2 percent each year between 2012 and 2016. “With few exceptions, growth in lighting occurred throughout South America, Africa,…

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There are growing concerns that AltSchool is failing students

Business Insider recently reported that numerous families have grown frustrated with the education their children are receiving at AltSchool, an ambitious San Francisco-based edtech company that four years ago began opening physical grade schools and promising a personalized learning approach that would far surpass the standardized education most kids receive. It’s not just parents who have growing concerns about AltSchool, however. Educators also question whether AltSchool is the next best thing in education, or whether instead the for-profit company could hamper the prospects of the children with whom it works,…

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Lightform raises $5M to turn old projectors into augmented reality machines

In Blade Runner 2049, one of the more interesting stylistic choices was how the film imagined futuristic augmented reality. While the Microsofts and Googles of our real dystopian world are currently approaching AR tech with headsets and smart glasses, Blade Runner 2049 relied entirely on external projection to augment its world and the people in it. This vision of the future may still seem a tad concerning, but it’s good news for San Francisco-based AR startup Lightform. Lightform isn’t a hologram startup, but by capturing structured light, their projector-mounted computer…

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Uber Paid Hackers to Delete Stolen Data on 57 Million People

Hackers stole the personal data of 57 million customers and drivers from Uber Technologies Inc., a massive breach that the company concealed for more than a year. This week, the ride-hailing firm ousted its chief security officer and one of his deputies for their roles in keeping the hack under wraps, which included a $100,000 payment to the attackers. Compromised data from the October 2016 attack included names, email addresses and phone numbers of 50 million Uber riders around the world, the company told Bloomberg on Tuesday. The personal information…

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Alibaba Continues its Offline Retail Push by Investing in Hypermarket Operator

Alibaba is continuing its expansion into offline retail after the Chinese e-commerce giant bought up more than one-third of one of Chinese most prolific operators of hypermarket stores. The firm announced today it has spent HK$22.4 billion (around US$2.88 billion) to acquire of 36.16 percent in Sun Art Retail Group, a Hong Kong-listed business that operates 446 hypermarkets across 224 cities in mainland China. The deal makes Alibaba the second largest shareholder in the business, which has a market cap of over US$10 billion. Ruentex, the shareholder that sold to Alibaba, will retain a 4.67…

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Managing software complexity through intent-based programming

Software is losing its magic. We simply demand too much from the current approaches. As a result, software developers are losing the battle with complexity, often without realizing it. More often than not, little failures pile on top of other little failures, and life for the consumer, as well as the business, becomes more frustrating rather than easier. For example, Apple’s products have become buggy, travel is still a nightmare and call center experiences make us doubt both artificial and human intelligence. To bring the magic back into software, developers…

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DMM acquires Japanese pawn shop app Cash for $62.2M

DMM, one of Japan’s largest Internet and e-commerce conglomerates, announced today that it will pay 7 billion yen (about $62.2 million) for pawn shop app Cash. Launched this summer, Cash’s software automatically appraises an item’s value based on user photos and offers a cash advance with it as collateral. Cash was developed by Bank, a startup launched by serial entrepreneur Yusuke Mitsuomoto earlier this year. Mitsuomoto’s previous startup, an e-commerce platform called Stores.jp, sold to Zozotown, one of Japan’s largest online clothing retailers, for an undisclosed sum in 2013. Bank…

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Germany bans kids’ smartwatches that can be used to eavesdrop

A German regulator has banned domestic sales of children’s smartwatches that have a listening function — warning that parents have been using the devices to secretly eavesdrop on teachers at their kids’ school. In an announcement on Friday, the Federal Network Agency telecoms watchdog said it had already taken action against some online sellers. The target group for the smartwatches are children between the ages of 5 and 12 years. “Via an app, parents can use such children’s watches to listen unnoticed to the child’s environment and they are to be…

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Toshiba stock drops on $5 billion share sale plan

Toshiba’s stock plummeted Monday, after the company announced plans to raise $ 5 billion to avoid being booted off the Tokyo Stock Exchange. Shares in the Japanese firm fell more than 6% in Tokyo, before paring some of those losses to close down 5.8%. The drop comes a day after the troubled conglomerate announced it would sell new shares worth 600 billion yen ($5.4 billion). Toshiba (TOSBF) will issue about 2.3 billion new shares priced at 262.8 yen ($2.35) per share, it said Sunday — about 10% cheaper than Friday’s…

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Apple Watch Can Detect Hypertension and Sleep Apnea According to Study

A new study out from health startup Cardiogram and the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) suggests wearables like the Apple Watch, Fitbit and others are able to accurately detect common but serious conditions like hypertension and sleep apnea. Cardiogram and UCSF previously demonstrated the ability for the Apple Watch to detect abnormal heart rhythm with a 97 percent accuracy. This new study shows the Watch can detect sleep apnea with a 90 percent accuracy and hypertension with an 82 percent accuracy. Sleep apnea affects an estimated 22 million adults…

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