Tech News Today For March 10, 2017
Tech News for Friday March 10, 2017
The Verge reports that according to new documents in Google Waymo's stolen intellectual property case against Uber, Google's parent company Alphabet has filed a federal injunction to stop Uber's self-driving research. The documents filed are part of a case we reported last month that involves Google's claim that Uber stole Waymo's designs for LIDAR, a key technology of the driverless car. Uber maintains that Google's claims are baseless. Read more at theverge.com.
There’s nothing better than spending an afternoon with CAPTCHAs. Those are the sign-in page challenges that aim to make sure you are a human and not a spambot by posting pictures and words, challenging you to make determinations about what you see. Google is looking to make things a bit less annoying for humans by making CAPTCHAs invisible. Google isn’t telling exactly how, but the company is certain its systems can now recognize when you are a human, and when you might be a robot posing as a human. If you pass the test, you’ll never even see a CAPTCHA challenge anymore. Read more at arstechnica.com.
Kurt Wagner over at ReCode reports that Facebook is testing a new feature that will remind you to finish videos that you started watching. Just in case you wanted to finish watching that home movie of a puppy tearing up a couch that you stopped watching because you KNEW YOU HAD BETTER THINGS TO DO. Kurt says Facebook is testing the continue watching feature only on the web version of Facebook right now and is part of the company's lean back strategy that involves asking video creators to create longer videos and making Facebook the new TV. And, of course, longer videos also make room for more midroll ads. Read more at recode.net.
Drones are super cool but many drones are also super fragile, especially for things that whiz through the air and sometimes encounter obstacles in the sky. A group of researchers have built a prototype drone based on the physical properties of the wings of insects to become malleable and as such, resilient upon impact. The wings will avoid breaking into pieces and instead shape shift thanks to flexible joints that can absorb powerful shocks to the system. Read more at qz.com.
Business Insider says the scandal around explicit images of service women is bigger than just one Facebook group. Last weekend the website, The Reveal reported that The U.S. Department of Defense was investigating a private Facebook group called Marines United that was used to share naked photographs of female service members and veterans. Now a source tells Business Insider that a site called AnonIB features explicit photos as well as personal identifying information of the women featured in the photos. AnonIB was widely seen as a place where servicemen could request the photos of active duty personnel and veterans from all branches of the military, not just the Marines. Read more at businessinsider.com.
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