Clothes you can vend

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Uniqlo shirts at push of a button in airport vending

Japanese clothing brand has installed its first vending machine that will dispense clothing at a Californian airport.

There are plans to launch 9 others at airports including Los Angeles, Houston and New York in the coming months.

The stock will include men and women’s lightweight shirts and jackets.

These vending machines are ideal for the millennial who has to take a last minute business trip or if you’ve under-packed and only realise when you get to the airport. In short, it’s the ultimate convenience stop and as the brand is so popular travellers might even vend even if they don’t need a new shirt or jacket.

Facebook Shut Down Their Own AI After It Creates Own Language

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Facebook shut down their AI programs after it appeared to create it’s own language that only they could understand. The chatbots created their own changes to English which made it easier for them to understand but was absolute rubbish to humans.

The task they set their chat bots were to trade items with one another, each item being given a numerical value, however it soon became apparent that only the bots understood what they each meant, after being told not to use comprehensive English, they (the chatbots) created a form of shorthand, after being instructed to work out how to negotiate and improve bartering.

The negotiations look weird:

Bob: i can i i everything else . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Alice: balls have zero to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to

Bob: you i everything else . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Alice: balls have a ball to me to me to me to me to me to me to me

Bob: i i can i i i everything else . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Alice: balls have a ball to me to me to me to me to me to me to me

Bob: i . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Alice: balls have zero to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to

Bob: you i i i i i everything else . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Alice: balls have 0 to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to

Bob: you i i i everything else . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Alice: balls have zero to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to

As you can see there seems to be some rules, the chatbots stress their own name as a way of negotiating and it’s not a glitch, with some items being traded successfully. With Facebook’s Artificial Intelligence Research divisions visiting researcher Dhruv Vatra saying that “If I said ‘the’ five times, you’d interpret that to mean I want five copies of this item. This isn’t so different to the way communities of humans create shorthands”

Researcher Mike Lewis told FastCo that they shut down the ChatBots because they wanted to have bots that could talk to humans, not because they were afraid of SkyNet coming to life in front of them.

To listen to the guys chatting about this please click here!

 

Tile

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  • One of the world’s best-selling Bluetooth tracker just got 25% smaller; Tile Mate easily loops onto keychains or attaches to anything you don’t want to lose so you can find it fast
  • Ring your things, use your smartphone to make your Tile Mate ring when it’s nearby but out of sight; find your phone, can’t find your phone? Simply double press the button on your Tile Mate to make your phone ring even on silent
  • See where you had it last, the easy-to-use, free Tile app remembers the last time and place it saw your Tile, so if you left it somewhere, you’ll always know where to look
  • Ask others to help, your Tile isn’t where you left it? You can anonymously enlist help in the Tile community; with over 5 million Tile devices sold, it is one of the world’s largest lost and found network
  • Tiles last one year with zero charging required; after a year, you can replace your old Tiles with new ones for a special community member price 

(Amazon)

To buy your own Tile please click here!

Nakefit

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Nakefit is a sticky pad that attachest to your feet and adds a protective layer to help you walk around town, on the beach or at the pool barefooted but have protection at the same time! No more sandy feet after going to the beach, or getting sore feet when you go to the swimming pool!

Nakefit is designed to:

‘Keep your feet effectively protected and at the same time support all of the amazing things it can already do. Nakefit is designed in Italy and is produced without harming people, animals or the environment (vegan and barefoot friendly)’

Free WiFi Cleaning?!

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Maybe you should read the T’s & C’s of Free WiFi, as recently 22,000 people are now legally bound to 1000hrs of community service. Which includes, but not limited to cleaning toilets at festivals, scraping gum off the street and “manually relieving sewer blockages” – Sounds horrifying!

Whether or not these people actually completed their smelly tasks is anyones guess but, Manchester based WiFi company ‘Purple’ slotted the cheeky terms into their T’s & C’s for 2 weeks to highlight the importance of T’s & C’s and raise the awareness that people should have when signing up to free wifi. They also offered a prize if you raised it to them and only 1 person highlighted the cleaning contract to them.

Not the first time this has happened, in 2014 Cybersecurity firm F-Secure done the same, but this time, free WiFi was in exchange of their first born.

While Terms and Conditions are legally considered contracts and binding, it is argued that the inability to negotiate such terms violates common law practices, thus leaving them void.

To listen to the guys chatting about this please click here!

WannaCry Hacker Arrested

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Marcus Hutchins a British Cyber-Security researcher will appear in court in Vegas, whilst attending the Black Hat and Def Con cyber security conferences, charged with his involvement with Kronos – malware which steals banking logins from infected computers.

Hutchins stopped the WannaCry Cyber-Attack which hit the NHS in May and the FBI arrested him on Wednesday, with the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre were surprised at his arrest.

The US Department of Justice released a statement on his arrest stating that:

“Marcus Hutchins… a citizen and resident of the United Kingdom, was arrested in the United States on 2 August, 2017, in Las Vegas, Nevada, after a grand jury in the Eastern District of Wisconsin returned a six-count indictment against Hutchins for his role in creating and distributing the Kronos banking Trojan….The charges against Hutchins, and for which he was arrested, relate to alleged conduct that occurred between in or around July 2014 and July 2015.”

It is alleged that Hitchins created and sold Kronos on the dark web, Jane Hutchins, Marcus’ mother said that it was ‘highly unlikely’ that her son was involved saying that he spent his time preventing attacks from occurring. With those who work with Hutchins coming to the defence feeling that the US justice system have made a “huge mistake” Digital rights groups have said they are “deeply concerned” by his arrest.

Cyber-attorney Tor Ekeland has said that Mr Hutchins could face “40 years in jail” if found guilty, even though the case states no victims. But is worried about the outcome of this case for legitimate programmes, speaking on Radio 4’s Today:

“I can think of a number of examples of legitimate software that would potentially be a felony under this theory of prosecution.”

Hutchins has been granted £23,000 bail and at the time of writing it is unknown if he was able to pay this. He left court unshackled but ordered to leave his hands behind his back.

His defence lawyer Ms Lobo told the BBC that he has pled not guilty and the federal indictment against him is “pretty flimsy, pretty slim compared to what we normally see in a US indictment”

It is claimed that he software was sold for $2,000 in digital currency in June 2015 and Dan Cowhig, prosecuting, told court room that Hutchins confessed during a police interview that he was the “author of Kronos malware and indicated that he sold it”

To listen to the guys chatting about this please click here!

Fake but looks totally REAL Barack!

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The University of Washington have created technique that allows them to make a fake Barack Obama that makes him say whatever they want and it look really real!

 

They have used a neural network AI to model the shape of Obama’s mouth and to get the visual/audio they mapped the model to 14 hours footage of President Obama. Now they are able to match any audio to fake Obama by this method or by using an impersonator.

SCARY STUFF! (But also kinda cool)

To listen to the guys chatting about this please click here!

 

UK Government Plans To Ban Petrol/Diesel Cars By 2040

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Reports by the Guardian and Financial Times have suggested that by 2040 the Government are setting up to ban the sale of Petrol and Diesel cars, as part of an air quality plan – this includes hybrids, electric only vehicles from 2040 would then only be possible. This is apparently a reaction to a recent government report which stated that smog kills at least 40,000 people each year in the UK.

However this would hinge on the ability to actually manufacture these electric cars and make them affordable to every car user in the country, the worldwide electric vehicle us currently facing potential shortages of battery materials such as lithium and cobalt.

Other countries are undergoing a similar plan with France having the same timescale and India hoping to introduce this ban by 2030.

 

Husband Storage Pods

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According to ‘The Paper’ a mall in Shanghai has set up storage pods to leave their husbands whilst they go shopping. But, it sounds like FUN! Inside each pod, there is a chair, a monitor, computer and a gamepad where guys can play retro 1990’s games. It’s currently free but it is said to be charging users via a QR code scanned on their phone in the coming months.

Mr Yang told ‘The Paper’ that it was a great idea and he enjoyed playing Tekken 3, whilst Mr Wu, while he thought they were a great idea, he wanted ventilation and air con as he complained that after 5 minutes he was drenched in sweat!

To listen to the guys chatting about this please click here!

Drone’s Soon May Require TESTS!

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The UK are pushing forward with more regulations on Drones. British Government have ruled that any RC aircraft that weighs over 350g (0.55lbs) will have to take a safety awareness test. Hoping that this will reduce the numbers of those flying drones near airports, as well as introducing geofencing to physically prevent the drones from flying into airspace.

Compact drones are just as bad as the larger drones too due to their exposed rota’s, a drone weighing 400lbs can crack the windscreen of a helicopter, it may not cause an airplane windscreen to crack, but you can still cause a lot of damage and a disaster if you aren’t careful. So stay away from airports!

Registration is nothing new, but it begs the question, will you be willing to buy a drone knowing you’d have to take a test to legally be able to fly it?

To listen to the guys chatting about this please click here!