Patton Oswalt, Chelsea Handler and Kevin Smith among those who will help shape the Marvel shows.
Source: CNET
Google is giving Gmail a new right-click menu. And it’s about time. While you’ve long been able to right-click on any email in your inbox, your options were always limited. You could archive an email, mark it as read/unread and delete it, but that was about it. Now, as the company announced today, that’s changing and you’re about to get a fully featured right-click menu that lets you do most of the things that Gmail’s top bar menu lets you do, plus a few extra features.
Soon, when you right-click on a message in your inbox view, you’ll see a long list of features with options to reply to messages and forward them, search for all emails from a sender or with the same subject and open multiple emails in multiple windows at the same time. You’ll also be able to add labels to emails, mute conversations and use Gmail’s snooze feature, all from the same menu.
All of this is pretty straightforward stuff and none of it is especially groundbreaking, which makes you wonder why it took Google so long to implement it.
As usual, Google only tells us that it is rolling out this feature to G Suite users now (starting today for those on the rapid release schedule and on February 22 for those that follow the slower scheduled release cycle). But free users typically see these new features pop up somewhere around that same time frame, too.
Source: TechCrunch
A grand mission to Mars that was always light on details has come to a decidedly terrestrial end. Mars One, a controversial space exploration project that made it as far as the “highly produced videos” stage of space colonization, has quietly filed for bankruptcy, according to a liquidation listing spotted by a Redditor on r/space.
As the post explains, the private company that spearheaded the Mars One spectacle is actually made up of two parts, a not-for-profit called the Mars One Foundation and a for-profit company known as Mars One Ventures. In 2016, Swiss financial services company InFin Innovative Finance AG picked up Mars One Ventures in a takeover bid.
In a statement on the takeover, Mars One’s leadership explained how the plan was still on track, in spite of appearances.
“The takeover provides a solid path to funding the next steps of Mars One’s mission to establish a permanent human settlement on Mars. Those steps include reducing the remaining 100 astronaut candidates to just 24, as well as continuing the mission design phase with Mars One’s technology suppliers.”
When contacted about the bankruptcy, Mars One co-founder and CEO Bas Lansdorp told Engadget that the Mars One Foundation continues to operate but is stalled unless it receives an infusion of funds as Lansdorp works “to find a solution.”
Mars One was ill-fated from its inception, more grounded in CGI videos and marketing hype for a Mars mission reality TV show than any kind of scientific reality. And they couldn’t even get the show off the ground.
There were plenty of red flags for anyone willing to look, but the nature of its outlandish proposal allowed Mars One to prey on the intrinsic optimism and curiosity of would-be space explorers. As one finalist candidate revealed in an excellent exposé series on the company titled “All Dressed Up for Mars and Nowhere to Go,” Mars One’s financial reality looked like a multilevel marketing scheme — not a scientific expedition.
“When you join the ‘Mars One Community,’ which happens automatically if you applied as a candidate, they start giving you points. You get points for getting through each round of the selection process… and then the only way to get more points is to buy merchandise from Mars One or to donate money to them.”
An MIT report in 2014 issued other telling warning’s about the project’s feasibility.
“… If all food is obtained from locally grown crops, as Mars One envisions, the vegetation would produce unsafe levels of oxygen, which would set off a series of events that would eventually cause human inhabitants to suffocate.”
Taken together, those two telling details tell you pretty much everything you need to know about a sadly small-minded company that sold the public a lucrative tale about its big red dreams.
Source: TechCrunch
For years, the popular accelerator program Y Combinator has interviewed applicants to its program in the Bay Area, reimbursing teams for their travel expenses. It will continue to do so, but the outfit tells us they are for the first time also hosting interviews in New York, on February 23rd, and that plans to interview applicants in both Tel Aviv and Bangalore are in the works.
We were in touch yesterday with YC partner Dalton Caldwell, who heads up admissions for the organization, to get a few more details that might be good for potential applicants to know.
TC: Remind us of what the in-person interview process involves. What are the steps to land time with one of the partners for an interview?
DC: Founders fill out an online application. The application is reviewed by YC partners. We invite select founders to meet us in-person for a 10-minute interview. We tell founders that day if they’re funded.
TC: And that application involves . . .
DC: The application asks for a one-minute video where founders can introduce themselves and their startups. There is no change from our standard application and interview process.
TC: How many people were accepted into the winter class and how many were rejected?
DC: We’re not yet announcing the stats from the Winter W19 batch. We’ll keep you posted on when those go live.
TC: When might YC revisit a team to whom it has said no?
DD: In a typical YC batch, about the half companies have applied multiple times before being accepted. If you’ve applied before and not gotten in, we strongly encourage you to apply again. Having made progress since your last application is a strong signal to us.
TC: How many times do people typically apply to YC before they are accepted?
DC: I don’t have this data handy. But roughly half the companies in a typical YC batch had a founder that applied more than once. Some teams apply once and get in, but we’ve also had teams that applied six times before they were accepted.
TC: Why is it necessary to host these interviews elsewhere?
It isn’t necessary for YC to do this, but it seems like a good thing to do. We often plan events for founders around the world and realized we could use those opportunities to interview local startups.
TC: What are you and the rest of YC looking for in these very short in-person interviews?
DC: YC interviews let us meet the founders and have a conversation about what they’re building. We ask questions and look at what they’ve built so far. The conversation helps us understand how founders think about the problem they’re solving.
TC: Will the interview process be any different in Tel Aviv or Bangalore versus here in the U.S.?
DC: Founders will experience the same process as the interviews we host in the Bay Area.
TC: YC says a “small number” of interviews will be taking place in a couple of weeks. What does that mean?
DC: We don’t have an exact number of interviews in mind. We’ll see what comes in and plan accordingly.
TC: Any ideas from now regarding how many startups YC can accommodate for its summer batch?
DC: We don’t set a specific number in advance.
TC: Is this a first step toward anything else, like Y Combinator New York?
DC: We’re staying in the Bay Area for now — but we’re always looking for ways to better support founders who are based in other cities and internationally.
Source: TechCrunch
If you’re looking for some savings, you’re in luck. Dell launched its biggest Presidents Day sale ever, running from February 11 to February 19, promising big savings on its Alienware, XPS products, and more.
The post Get up to $400 off Alienware, XPS laptops, and more in Dell Presidents Day sale appeared first on Digital Trends.
Source: Digital trends
Though not revealing much, a roughly 42-second long teaser video was sent out by HoloLens inventor Alex Kipman on Twitter ahead of a planned press event at Mobile World Congress on February 24.
The post Cryptic video teases Microsoft’s next-generation HoloLens 2 headset appeared first on Digital Trends.
Source: Digital trends
Apple announced this morning it has partnered with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to make the Health Records feature on iPhones available to veterans. The deal will allow the veterans to view their medical information across participating institutions, including the VA, organized in the Apple Health app.
These health records include allergies, conditions, immunizations, lab results, medications, procedures and vitals, and will be displayed alongside other information, like Apple Watch data. This gives VA patients a more comprehensive view of their medical history and health data, Apple says.
The medical information is also secured through encryption and protected by the iPhone user’s passcode, Touch ID or Face ID.
Apple was reported to be in discussions with the Department of Veterans Affairs about this deal back in November of last year. At the time, it was said that in addition to the health record integration on iPhones, Apple would provide engineering support to the agency.
The partnership is a big win Apple, as it provides the iPhone maker a means of reaching the over 9 million veterans currently enrolled in the VA’s system across 1,243 facilities. It also represents another success by the company in terms of getting health care institutions to support its health records feature on iPhone. Today, that list includes a growing number of hospitals and clinics, across the U.S.
The Health Records feature on the iPhone will be the first record-sharing platform like this available the VA, Apple also noted,
“We have great admiration for veterans, and we’re proud to bring a solution like Health Records on iPhone to the veteran community,” said Tim Cook, Apple CEO, in an announcement about the new partnership. “It’s truly an honor to contribute to the improved healthcare of America’s heroes.”
“When patients have better access to their health information, they have more productive conversations with their physicians,” added Jeff Williams, Apple’s COO. “By bringing Health Records on iPhone to VA patients, we hope veterans will experience improved healthcare that will enhance their lives.”
A number of tech companies over the years have tried to offer platforms for centralizing health records, but have faced challenges because of the fragmentation across the industry as well as other technical challenges. Google Health, for example, closed down in 2011 after failing to gain traction. To combat these issues, Apple has been putting together individual deals with various institutions to get them to support the Health app. However, the partnership with the VA is one of Apple’s most significant to date.
Source: TechCrunch
Facebook has been called upon to provide good faith researchers with an API to enable them to study how political ads are spreading and being amplified on its platform.
A coalition of European academics, technologists and human and digital rights groups, led by Mozilla, has signed an open letter to the company demanding far greater transparency about how Facebook’s platform distributes and amplifies political ads ahead of elections to the European parliament which will take place in May.
We’ve reached out to Facebook for a reaction to the open letter.
The company had already announced it will launch some of its self-styled ‘election security’ measures in the EU before then — specifically an authorization and transparency system for political ads.
Last month its new global comms guy — former European politician and one time UK deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg — also announced that, from next month, it will have human-staffed operations centers up and running to monitor how localised political news gets distributed on its platform, with one of the centers located within the EU, in Dublin, Ireland.
But signatories to the letter argue the company’s heavily PR’ed political ad transparency measures don’t go far enough.
They also point out that some of the steps Facebook has taken have blocked independent efforts to monitor its political ad transparency claims.
Last month the Guardian reported on changes Facebook had made to its platform that restricted the ability of an external political transparency campaign group, called WhoTargetsMe, to monitor and track the flow of political ads on its platform.
The UK-based campaign group is one of more than 30 groups that have signed the open letter — calling for Facebook to stop what they couch as “harassment of good faith researchers who are building tools to provide greater transparency into the advertising on your platform”.
Other signatories include the Center for Democracy and Technology, the Open Data Institute and Reporters Without Borders.
“By restricting access to advertising transparency tools available to Facebook users, you are undermining transparency, eliminating the choice of your users to install tools that help them analyse political ads, and wielding control over good faith researchers who try to review data on the platform,” they write.
“Your alternative to these third party tools provides simple keyword search functionality and does not provide the level of data access necessary for meaningful transparency.”
The letter calls on Facebook to roll out “a functional, open Ad Archive API that enables advanced research and development of tools that analyse political ads served to Facebook users in the EU” — and do so by April 1, to enable external developers to have enough time to build transparency tools before the EU elections.
Signatories also urge the company to ensure that all political ads are “clearly distinguished from other content”, as well as being accompanied by “key targeting criteria such as sponsor identity and amount spent on the platform in all EU countries”.
Last year UK policymakers investigating the democratic impacts of online disinformation pressed Facebook on the issue of what the information it provides users about the targeting criteria for political ads. They also asked the company why it doesn’t offer users a complete opt-out from receiving political ads. Facebook’s CTO Mike Schroepfer was unable — or unwilling — to provide clear answers, instead choosing to deflect questions by reiterating the tidbits of data that Facebook has decided it will provide.
Close to a year later and Facebook users in the majority of European markets are still waiting for even a basic layer of political transparency, as the company has been allowed to continue self regulating at its own pace and — crucially — by getting to define what ‘transparency’ means (and therefore how much of the stuff users get).
Facebook launched some of these self-styled political ad transparency measures in the UK last fall — adding ‘paid for by’ disclaimers, and saying ads would be retained in an archive for seven years. (Though its verification checks had to be revised after they were quickly shown to be trivially easy to circumvent.)
Earlier in the year it also briefly suspended accepting ads paid for by foreign entities during a referendum on abortion in Ireland.
However other European elections — such as regional elections — have taken place without Facebook users getting access to any information about the political ads they’re seeing or who’s paying for them.
The EU’s executive body has its eye on the issue. Late last month the European Commission published the first batch of monthly ‘progress reports’ from platforms and ad companies that signed up to a voluntary code of conduct on political disinformation that was announced last December — saying all signatories need to do a lot more and fast.
On Facebook specifically, the Commission said it needs to provide “greater clarity” on how it will deploy consumer empowerment tools, and also boost its cooperation with fact-checkers and the research community across the whole EU — with commissioner Julian King singling the company out for failing to provide independent researchers with access to its data.
Today’s open letter from academics and researchers backs up the Commission’s assessment of feeble first efforts from Facebook and offers further fuel to feed its next monthly assessment.
The Commission has continued to warn it could legislate on the issue if platforms fail to step up their efforts to tackle political disinformation voluntarily.
Pressuring platforms to self-regulate has its own critics too, of course — who point out that it does nothing to tackle the core underlying problem of platforms having too much power in the first place…
Source: TechCrunch
Samsung’s not telling us anything we don’t already know with its latest teaser. But before I hop on yet another flight to San Francisco, it’s good to know I’m getting a little more bang for my (well, Verizon’s) buck.
In addition to the Galaxy S10, Samsung will also be offering a much better glimpse of its long-promised foldable phone at its SF event on February 20. A new animated teaser promises that “The Future Unfolds” at the event that’s currently a little over a week away.
If you’ll recall, the company offered a very fleeting glimpse of the product at its developers conference, but the product was shrouded in mystery — not to mention pretty unwieldy prototype hardware.
The most likely scenario for next week’s event is a more detailed glimpse at the future product, including a name— and perhaps even something approaching a release date. Most likely, however, the company and event will be largely focused on the details around its next flagship.
Source: TechCrunch
Also, ‘The Walking Dead’ is losing a fan-favorite character and ‘The Lego Movie 2’ underperforms.
Source: Wired