Tech

Previous Next 1 of 5 Love pets but hate pet hair and poop? Meet Sony’s sixth-generation Aibo robot dog, an adorable, A.I.-powered robo-beast that will learn who you and your friends are and come to love you – just like a real dog. Sony on Thursday unveiled the limited First Litter Edition Aibo, which goes on sale in a few weeks (just in time for the holidays) for a mere $2,900 – a price certain to have some shoppers barking. The puppy is a technology tour de force, which partly explains the price. It has 22 axes of movement, thanks to new ultra-compact actuators. Its eyes are OLED screens, which are bright and expressive. It’s got a camera in its nose – to recognize who you are — and one just before its tail, which allows it to act as a sort of security device as it roams your house at night. And it comes for the first time with a cloud-connected A.I. system to help the companion robot learn who you are and grow and adapt. A.I. … [Read more...] about Sony’s new Aibo robot dog is absolutely adorable — and crazy expensive

Sen. Ron Wyden is fed up with Big Tech companies getting slapped on the wrist for violating user privacy. Unfortunately, he doesn’t think his fellow congressmen feel the same way. Yet. “My sense is we are one major privacy scandal away from finally getting the political support to move this legislation,” the Oregon Democrat said in an exclusive interview with Digital Trends. The legislation he’s referring to is his latest bill: A cheekily-named piece of privacy legislation called the Mind Your Own Business Act. If passed, this bill would give the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) the authority to not only fine companies who mismanage user data, but also to personally punish company leaders (like Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg) for violating user privacy and lying about their actions. This, he hopes, would be enough to scare Big Tech executives straight and force them to take user privacy seriously. “I hope that this will be the baseline protection for consumer … [Read more...] about Sen. Ron Wyden wants to protect your data from Big Tech, if Congress lets him

A new update to version 2.5 of the software powering Sony’s adorable Aibo robot dog enables programmable tasks, as well as the ability to feed it with virtual food. A previous update for Aibo from earlier this year introduced version 2.0 and the Aibo Patrol feature, which Sony described as “a new service built on the concept of ‘securitainment’ (security and entertainment).” The latest update for the robot dog further delves into Aibo’s robotic half. The version 2.5 software update launches a web-based application programming interface that offers access to the Aibo Developer Program for seasoned developers and Aibo Visual Programming for novice programmers. Access to the API is free, but Sony said that it is not capable of changing Aibo’s emotion, character, or mood. The Aibo Developer Program lets you create new applications, traits, and experiences for Aibo. It’s really meant for serious programmers, while Aibo Visual Programming … [Read more...] about You can now feed Sony’s Aibo robot dog with virtual food

NASA scientists from the New Horizons mission have re-named the most distant object ever explored after political controversy about its initial name. Kuiper Belt Object 2014 MU69 was previously nicknamed Ultima Thule, a medieval term meaning a location beyond the borders of the known world. But a new name was required after criticisms were raised about the term’s political connotations. The word “Thule” was historically used by Nazi predecessors, claimed to describe the birthplace of the Aryan race. The term is still used in some neo-Nazi and alt-right circles today. To rid the astronomical object of such connotations, it has been given a new name, “Arrokoth.” The name comes from a Native American term that means “sky,” and elders from the Powhatan Tribe gave the New Horizons team permission to use it. It’s an appropriate name as two of the tools used to detect the object, the Hubble Space Telescope and the New Horizons mission, are both … [Read more...] about Most distant object ever explored is renamed following Nazi controversy

NASA researchers have managed to capture the highest resolution image yet of Ultima Thule, the oldest object ever explored by spacecraft. The New Horizons probe visited the object on New Year’s Day and gathered information on its size and shape. The new image was taken at 12:26 a.m. EST on January 1, 2019, when the spacecraft was just 4,109 miles (6,628 kilometers) from Ultima Thule and was a staggering 4.1 billion miles (6.6 billion kilometers) from Earth. It was particularly difficult to capture this image because the camera only has a narrow field of view and it had to be lined up and timed precisely with the object. New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute, was delighted that the team managed to capture the image. “Bullseye!” he said in a statement. “Getting these images required us to know precisely where both tiny Ultima and New Horizons were — moment by moment — as they passed one another at over … [Read more...] about New Horizons captures highest-resolution image yet of Ultima Thule