Karen Jackson, Author at Argyll Free Press

Going Live: Google’s Undersea Cable Between US and Japan

June 30, 2016 By Karen Jackson Leave a Comment

Telecom company officials pour champagne on one end of the transpacific FASTER cable

It was back in 2008 when Google started investing in undersea cables in several locations on the planet. Maybe its biggest bet was on the $300 million FASTER cable that was supposed to connect Japan and the U.S. West Coast.

Google was not on its own, however. In 2014, the tech giant joined other six companies in a powerful consortium. China Telecom, China Mobile, NEC, KDDI, and Global Transit also pledged to create a better connection between the two countries.

Now it’s time to reap what the sow. Google announced the cable is going live tonight, June 30, 2016. Up to 60 Terabits per second (Tbps) of bandwidth will be delivered through the impressive 9,000km six-fiber pair cable.

According to Urs Holzle, SVP of Technical Infrastructure at Google, that’s “about 10 million times faster than your cable modem.”

The pair of cables connecting Shiman and Chikura in Japan to Bandon, Oregon, is slated to offer Google dedicated access to 10 Tbps per second traveling thousands of miles under the immense pressure of the sea.

In other news, Google has also announced it plans to release its Google Cloud Platform East Asia region in Tokyo sometime this year.

With the help of this dedicated bandwidth for its intercontinental operations, the result will be “faster data transfers and reduced latency as GCP customers deliver their applications and information to customers around the globe.”

There’s no way to steal the thunder from Google’s announcement about the connection between the U.S. and Japan. However, it’s noteworthy that the FASTER network provides a second connection from Japan to Taiwan, with two other fiber pairs offering a bandwidth of 20 Tbps.

Unlike the Japan-U.S. extension, the one between Taiwan and the two sites in Japan is Google-owned 100 percent, thanks to its Google Cable Bermuda subsidiary.

This is not the end-all for Google as the company plans to make other investments in undersea connection cables. A recent announcement revealed a new partnership with Facebook to better connect the U.S. East Coast and Europe.

The result will offer the fastest trans-Atlantic undersea cable that has been developed so far, with a bandwidth capacity of 160 Tbps.

Image Source: IT World

Google CEO Sundar Pichai Was Hacked by OurMine

June 28, 2016 By Karen Jackson Leave a Comment

It’s not a good week start for Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google. No-one wants to wake up to a hacking of their online accounts, but the trouble is even bigger when you’re one of the leaders of the tech world.

It appears that Pichai’s Quora account was hacked by OurMine, the group responsible for previously breaking into Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s Twitter account earlier in June,

Formed of three hackers, the outfit has made their presence known on Pichai’s account by posting several messages. Because the Quora page was also connected to Google’s CEO Twitter account, OurMine publicized their hack to no less than 508,000 followers.

Pichai regained access to his account and the tweets were subsequently deleted; however, there are screenshots to prove that the leader of Google has been hacked.

Several major tech executives have been targeted by OurMine of late, and not even Spotify’s CEO Daniel Ek was overlooked. It’s unclear still how the group is able to gain access to these accounts, but it probably has nothing to do with potential system breaches of the social networks they have hacked into.

OurMine has claimed that was not the case, and that they were able to get into these celebrities’ accounts by pulling passwords from their browsers (this claim has yet to be confirmed by any of the affected leaders). This was allegedly possible by using various exploits of the browsers their targets use.

At the same time, OurMine justified the hacks as a rebranding method to become a reliable security firm, claiming that they’re offering their services to all of the targets that have been affected by their malicious activities.

Even though it’s definitely an unorthodox way to gain the trust of potential customers, it also seems to be OurMine’s way of doing business. The group also explained the choice of hacking top users of social networks and leaders of the tech industry as a way of conducting a test.

“We are just testing people security (sic), we never change their passwords, we did it because there is other hackers can hack them and change everything,” OurMine said.

If you’re a Quora user, the company recommends that you change your password right away; make sure you don’t use the same code across multiple services.
Image Source: Wikimedia

Parental Pressure Could Lead to Anxiety Feelings in Children

June 27, 2016 By Karen Jackson Leave a Comment

No-one has a right to judge other people’s parenting style, but scientists have a good advice for helicopter parents, nevertheless.

Overbearing and intrusive parents who have unrealistic expectations of their children can cause them symptoms of anxiety and even depression, according to a five-year study.

All parents want their children to succeed in life, but it doesn’t mean they should push them academically beyond their limits; such a behavior can result in the child being overly self-critical.

While previous studies focused on high school and college students, this is the first to look at the effects of parental pressure on primary school students. The researchers were focused on determining if this type of parenting leads to self-criticalness on seven-year-olds and subsequent ages.

According to the findings of researchers at the National University of Singapore, parents who keep nagging their children about their grades and studies instill in them a feeling that what the child does is never good enough.

This psychological phenomenon – called maladaptive perfectionism – can become a real problem with time as it is known to increase the child’s risk of developing mental disorders, such as anxiety and depression. In severe cases, maladaptive perfectionism can lead to suicidal thoughts.

For the study, the team conducted experiments at 10 primary schools in Singapore, focusing on seven years old children and performing annual follow-up tests for five years.

The experiment involved the child and the parent who was more involved in the child’s life; the researchers asked the children to solve a series of puzzles, allowing the parents to interfere if they thought the child was stuck.

The researchers’ goal was to observe the level of parental interference in the child’s problem-solving methods, but only when it was irrespective of the fact that child needed the parent’s help or not.

It was observed that when a parent has a tendency of taking control of the situation, the child was more afraid of making mistakes. In addition, the child would have higher stress levels and anxiety.

The study’s findings featured in the Journal of Personality revealed that positive reinforcement from the parent helped children be happier, have higher grades, earn higher incomes later in life, and display stronger morality than those who were constantly pressurized to perform better.
Image Source: She Knows

Who Should Self-Driving Cars Save in Case of Imminent Collisions?

June 25, 2016 By Karen Jackson Leave a Comment

There’s a moral dilemma regarding self-driving cars that people want to know the answer to before this new technology goes into mass production.

What does the autonomous vehicle choose when it has to decide whether to save the life of the passengers inside or the lives of the pedestrians it is about to crash into? It’s a scary thought, but according to a new survey, people want to know the answer.

Surprisingly, the majority of respondents said they do want the car to be equipped with a mechanism to reduce the number of casualties that result from a collision. If this technology is implemented, it would mean that the car will have to decide whether its passengers live or die.

The mechanism would be able to choose between crashing into a group of pedestrians – potentially killing at least some of them – and swerving off the road and crashing into a tree – potentially killing at least some of the passengers inside.

Evidently, people are scared at the thought of riding in such cars. According to study co-author Iyad Rahwan, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab, self-driving technology could avoid almost 90 percent of car collisions.

The remaining 10 percent are caused by things we have little or no control over, such as bad weather conditions, random freak accidents that cannot be computed, or mechanical failures.

And this minority of accidents is where the tradeoffs get involved. Part of a serious moral debate, these scenarios have got developers thinking of possible solutions and rules for their autonomous technology.

What is the self-driving car supposed to do when a collision is unavoidable? Whether it’s the pedestrians’ or the passengers’ lives that will be saved, respondents of the survey agreed that riding in cars with a moral compass sounds dangerous.

A vast majority of them want to live in a world where cars can minimize the number of casualties, but at the same time, everyone wants their car to protect their lives, if it comes to that.

This dilemma just goes to show how paradoxical people are in nature; humans don’t really know what they want until they put themselves in the situation they’re considering.
Image Source: Today

Texas Woman Wakes Up with British Accent

June 24, 2016 By Karen Jackson Leave a Comment

After a routine jaw surgery, a Texas woman gained the ability to speak with a British accent. The doctors have explained that Lisa Alamia is suffering from something called “Foreign Accent Syndrome,” a rare neurological disorder.

Lisa Alamia, a mother of three and 100 percent Texan, underwent a jaw surgery six months ago. The procedure was a routine one, doctors trying to fix her overbite. However, after waking up from surgery, Alamia started speaking with a perfect British accent.

At first, her children thought that she is joking with them, but after they had realized that she is not trying to mimic the accent, they were shocked by the sudden development.

“People who don’t know me, they’re like, ‘Hey, where you from?” Alamia declared. “I’m from Rosenberg. They’re like, ‘Where is that?’ I’m like, ‘Right here in Rosenberg.’ ‘Oh, you’re from here? How do you talk like that?’ So that’s where the whole story comes up.”

The doctor that was in charge of her case, Dr. Toby Yaltho, a neurologist at the Sugar Land Methodist Hospital in Houston stated that the syndrome is very rare, only affecting roughly 100 individuals in the last 100 years.

The first few months after Alamia developed her condition, she was ashamed to talk to strangers because she didn’t know how they would react to her accent. It even took her children a few weeks to get accustomed to her new voice.

Now, after receiving the full support of her family, the woman is more opened about her rare neurological disorder that gives her a perfect British accent.

Alamia even has fun stories about her newly acquired British accent. She says that she used to pronounce the word “tamales” exactly like a Hispanic person. Now, she just manages to slightly correct her pronunciation when uttering the word.

Moreover, she says that people get disoriented when she says “kitten.” Her Texan compatriots hear “kitten” when she’s actually saying that she is “kidding.”

“Foreign accent syndrome” is believed to be caused by a stroke, a head trauma, developmental problems, or migraines. The first case was recorded in 1907.

According to the researchers, the individuals affected by this neurological syndrome do not acquire fluency in the foreign language that they are mimicking, just the accent.

There was a single case registered in 2010 when a Croatian man woke from a profound coma and started speaking German fluently. However, that was an isolated case which still puzzles doctors worldwide.

Image source: Flickr

Facebook’s Suicide Prevention Tools Become Available Worldwide

June 15, 2016 By Karen Jackson Leave a Comment

With yet another update to its platform, Facebook has now made its suicide prevention available worldwide. Previously, the tools that allow users to report posts from friends who could be at risk for self-harm or suicide were available only for a limited number of English-language users.

Other users could also flag suicide-related posts by only through a form; thanks to the update, the new resources that make the process less complicated and much quicker is available to all.

Facebook announced that its suicide prevention tools will be available to all users, in all languages supported by the social network.

According to Antigone Davis, Facebook’s global head of safety, and researcher Jennifer Guadagno, the tools were “developed in collaboration with mental health organizations and with input from people who have personal experience with self-injury and suicide.”

Last year, Facebook made the tools available to a limited number of users in the United States with the help of Lifeline, Forefront, and Save.org. The tech giant said it plans to partner with more mental health organizations and suicide prevention in various countries.

As the update rolls out, users everywhere will be able to express their concern for a friend who might deal with self-harm or suicidal thoughts by flagging their posts from a drop-down menu.

Facebook offers several options, starting with a list of resources featuring numbers for suicide prevention organizations that can be shared anonymously. You can also choose to send a message of support (Facebook suggests wording).

According to the Help Center, you can also ask for Facebook’s global community operations team to review the post in question. If they find reason for concern, they may then “reach out to this person with information that might be helpful to them.”

However, if users believe their friends are at immediate risk of hurting themselves, Facebooks urges them to contact the police. While this can be a useful method of raising awareness of an important issue, Facebook’s suicide prevention tools could help users who want to take their own lives.

Several reports show the rates of suicide around the world are increasing, which means it has become a public health crisis in many countries. In the U.S. alone, suicide rates have reached a three-decade record, particularly among women aged 45 to 64.
Image Source: Paste Magazine

California Now Allows Life-Ending Drugs for Terminally Ill Patients

June 10, 2016 By Karen Jackson 1 Comment

Today, June 9, 2016, California has become the fifth state in the U.S. to support legal euthanasia for its terminally ill patients. They can now end their own lives with doctor-prescribed medication without any legal consequences.

Despite vocal opposition from different groups, Gov. Jerry Brown signed today the “End of Life Option Act” into law. However, voters and patients with terminal diseases insisted this kind of law offers a sense of peace to those in impossible and painful situations.

Some cancer patients need to take hundreds of pills daily just to stay alive and keep a sense of control over the almost constant pain. Those over 18 years old and with a diagnosis that won’t allow them to live more than 6 months will be able to get a life-ending drug prescription from their physician.

According to Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez, this law will kill “those whose suffering we can no longer tolerate,” adding that “killing is not caring.”

The law will start taking effect on June 9, and it also requires the patients to be evaluated by two different doctors before they are deemed eligible and able to self-administer the drug.

One of the obstacles, however, remains the price of the drug – around $4,000 – which is not covered by insurance plans. Euthanasia laws have already been approved in Washington, Oregon, and Vermont.

California’s decision to support the end-of-life law was partly due to the case of 29-year-old Brittany Maynard. Back in 2009, Maynard was a California resident who would not allow her terminal brain tumor to degrade her body, so she decided to move to Oregon so she can benefit from the state’s right-to-die legislation.

However, many Californian doctors are concerned about where to draw the line as the new law goes into effect.

“Suddenly, that bright line is not so bright,” said Dr. Neil Wenger, an expert on internal medicine who thinks that making doctor-assisted dying legal induces confusion into what used to be a clear distinction for health care providers.

Wegner, who is in charge of implementing the new law at UCLA, said he doesn’t believe he will ever practice it, since it’s against the Hippocratic Oath of the medical staff.

The bill will remain in effect for 10 years starting 2016.
Image Source: Kusi

Old Burger King Toy Becomes Game Boy Color Nano

June 7, 2016 By Karen Jackson Leave a Comment

Whenever someone at Emulators and Raspberry Pi is feeling creative, a new hot commodity is produced, and with their latest product, you can’t blame them for making sure people still enjoy the classics.

When McDonald’s launched its Happy Meal boxes that could easily be turned into Google Cardboard compatible VR headsets, people thought they were quite innovative. However, rival Burger King could be ahead of the competition when it comes to mixing tech with food.

It was the year 2000 when the fast food chain had started to give away gaming handhelds that looked like smaller versions of the Nintendo GameBoy Color. Evidently, it couldn’t hold a light to the original Nintendo device, but it was capable of playing analog games inside.

But with today’s technological advancements, it was really only a matter of time before a toy got an accurate GameBoy makeover. Such was the case of ChaseLambeth, a Reddit user who thought of the brilliant idea of placing a Raspberry Pi Zero inside a plastic Game Boy Color toy.

The toy is, of course, not an actual Game Boy Color, because a tilting ball maze had been built on the inside. However, the simple concept lowered the cost normally needed to enjoy a Game Boy.

But there was a problem: Despite working on his little project for months, ChaseLambeth couldn’t figure out the volume issue. Basically, the many parts wouldn’t fit inside the toy.

He thought of giving up until he stumbled across an Instagram user who’d had the same idea, only he had succeeded. His copy of the game – which ChaseLambeth calls the Game Boy Color Nano – was ready for order.

The other designer had installed the same components, and the RetroPie emulator OS for Raspberry Pi was used to emulate the Game Boy Color.

In theory, the OS is capable of supporting even more emulators, but considering the number of buttons and the specific layout, the result might not be the same when other emulators are used.

The Nano costs $250 but it might be worth it; at that price, you get a toy mod that wired the buttons to actually control the RPi Zero, featuring a 2-inch LCD display for graphics, in addition to speakers. The result is nothing short of a masterpiece.
Image Source: YouTube

Massive Interest in Amazon’s Alexa: Voice Assistant Has Over 1,000 Skills

June 5, 2016 By Karen Jackson Leave a Comment

We live in an all-connected world in which Amazon’s Echo speaker, and its descendants, Tap and Dot, are the royal family. Amazon’s products are growing in popularity as more consumers prefer ‘smart’ speakers for their homes.

But the interest for internet-connected homes has also spurred interest in the developer world in the form of add-ons dubbed “skills.” These allow devs all around the world to teach Amazon’s voice assistant Alexa new tricks, like ordering you a pizza or calling you an Uber.

Today, Amazon announced that the app store for Alexa’s skills – so to speak – has surpassed 1,000. Given that the Echo has only become universally available last June (it was invitation only before that), the new milestone is definitely notable.

At the same time, Alexa’s voice and functionalities have also been integrated into other connected devices, such as the Fire TV; thanks to Amazon’s open platform, third-party hardware makers could also implement the assistant into their products.

What’s even more impressive is the quick acceleration of this third-party “app” ecosystem; only in January of this year, Alexa’s skills section only contained some 130 apps.

In the announcement, Amazon highlighted the more notable additions to Alexa’s selection of skills, such as those from Domino’s, Capital One, Fitbit, SmartThings, Uber, and more.

According to Rob Pulciani, director of Amazon’s Alexa, the community size of the third-party developer around its personal assistant has reached into the “tens of thousands.” That means developers are at least interested in toying around with Alexa, even if not all of them are actually creating new apps.

While Alexa’s capabilities have steadily improved over time, Amazon now needs to solve the problem of discovery. Alexa’s skill section – its personal “app store” that pairs with the connected speaker or other Alexa-powered devices – is at this point merely bare bones.

Search is rocky, and there are no top charts or categories to browse through, as with other app stores. Seeing that there are more than 1,000 apps already, Amazon needs to figure out how to highlight the best of them, so users can actually find them.
Image Source: Wall Street Journal

Manhattanhenge Will Bathe New York City in Light On Memorial Day

May 28, 2016 By Karen Jackson Leave a Comment

Manhattanhenge – also known as the Manhattan Solstice – is a biannual event that marks the fact that the setting sun is perfectly aligned with the streets of the main street grid of Manhattan, in New York City.

This year, the Manhattanhenge will light up the days of New York City on Memorial Day, which falls on the last Monday of May (on the 30th). The event is possible because roadways in this portion of the NYC are aligned in a grid, where avenues are arranged on a north-south line, while streets are laid out west to east.

The Manhattanhenge occurs near the summer solstice, adorning skyscrapers with rich red light. This year, residents will want to be on the lookout on two occasions: on May 29 and 30, and on July 11 and 12.

During the event on Memorial Day, the sun will be visible as a half-circle; in July, the whole disk of the sun will bathe the Big Apple in red light. Named after the Stonehenge in England, the Manhattanhenge was also designed to create a magnificent display on certain dates.

The effect has originated during the 19th century, “when they made these 90-degree angles they created a bull’s-eye for the sun to hit. Manhattanhenge are the days of the year when the sun hits the bull’s-eye,” explained Jackie Faherty of the American Museum of Natural History.

Surprisingly, New York City is not alone in capturing the sun’s rays in creative ways; various cityhenges have been designed in urban areas around the world. Among the better-known are Chicagohenge, Bostonhenge, Montrealhenge, and Phillyhenge.

However, the events take place at different times in different places. People wishing to view these popular cityhenges – and others – should consult a local planetarium to see the best time to go outdoors.

For the techies, there are also several apps that allow users to track the position of the sun at different times throughout the day. That can also help to highlight the best times to take a walk on these avenues bathed in sunlight.

These occurrences can actually take place in any city where streets run west to east, so look for that in your city and let us know if you spot a new undiscovered cityhenge.
Image Source: RSVLTS

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