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Gatwick Airport to Trial Valet Parking Robots

Charlotte Henry ·

LONDON – Gatwick airport is to trial the use of valet parking robots for three months, starting in August. It is hoped that the French-made devices will make parking before a holiday easier and less stressful. The Evening Standard, London’s evening paper, reported that trials are also taking place in other European airports – Paris, Lyon and Düsseldorf. An earlier 5-month trial at Paris’s Charles de Gaulle was deemed successful.

Under a trial which begins in August, travellers will leave their car in a dedicated drop-off zone and summon a droid, booked by app, on a touch-screen. As the customers are shuttled to the terminal, the battery-powered robot rolls up, slides a forklift-style ramp under the chassis, and uses military-grade GPS to ferry it to a secure bay — all without needing the keys.

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When A Grab Ride Nearly Kills You

Charlotte Henry ·

In March 2018, Singapore-based Bloomberg journalist Yoolim Lee ordered a lift via ride-hailing service Grab. She was heading to her daughter’s kindergarten. She never made it. There was an accident, and her driver fled the scene, with Ms. Lee trapped in the vehicle. She was freed but severely injured.   After recovering, Ms. Lee looked into services like Grab and even confronted the driver who picked her up that day. She told the moving and eye-opening story in Bloomberg Business Week.

After I returned to work in May, I began digging into the licensing process. Before July 2017, the government had allowed drivers who applied for a new mandatory vocational license a one-year grace period during which they could take the course and pass a written test. But of the 42,900 private-hire car drivers in this category, only 22,000 had managed to get a full license within a year. The implication, to me anyway, is that roughly half of these drivers shouldn’t have been on the road in the first place.

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New Update Could Cripple Chrome Ad Blockers

Andrew Orr ·

Google engineers have proposed changes to Chromium that would break Chrome ad blockers.

In a note posted Tuesday to the Chromium bug tracker, Raymond Hill, the developer behind uBlock Origin and uMatrix, said the changes contemplated by the Manifest v3 proposal will ruin his ad and content blocking extensions, and take control of content away from users.

In totally unrelated news Firefox just gained 50 million new users.

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How to Opt Out of Data Sharing From 40+ Companies

Andrew Orr ·

This website is a hub with links for over 40 companies to opt out of data sharing practices they have.

Simple Opt Out is drawing attention to opt-out data sharing and marketing practices that many people aren’t aware of (and most people don’t want), then making it easier to opt out.

At some point I’m definitely going down the list to see which companies I can opt out from.

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Expensive Apple Hardware Isn't New. Remember the Lisa?

Andrew Orr ·

The 2018 iPhones were fairly expensive, and this isn’t a new Apple strategy. The company has been down this road before with the Lisa computer.

Named for Saint Steve’s daughter, the Lisa project kicked off in 1978, finally making an appearance on 19 January 1983. It was pitched as a graphical competitor to the tiresome text-based computers dominating the marketplace.

Aside from all the snark the author pumped into the article, it’s a nice blast from the past. As Battlestar Galactica says, «All of this has happened before and all of this will happen again.»

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iPhoneographers: New Shot on iPhone Challenge

Andrew Orr ·

Apple is holding a new Shot on iPhone challenge that will run from January 22 to February 7. A panel of judges will review worldwide submissions and select 10 winning photos.

Post your best photo taken on iPhone to Instagram or Twitter with the #ShotOniPhone hashtag to participate in the the Shot on iPhone Challenge. Weibo users can participate as well using #ShotOniPhone#. In the image caption, note which model was used. Alternatively, you can also submit the photo in its highest resolution to [email protected] with the file format ‘firstname_lastname_iphonemodel.’

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iPhone XS Max DxOMark Score Ranks it Fourth

Andrew Orr ·

The iPhone XS Max DxOMark score causes the iPhone to rank fourth in the list. With a score of 82 it barely edges out the Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus.

Achieving a DxOMark front camera score of 82, the Apple iPhone XS Max puts in a solid performance for both still and moving images during our tests, and is a nice improvement over its predecessor, the iPhone X. For still photos, the device boasts some great strengths for selfie shooters, including excellent HDR, bokeh shots, and detail at close range, which are among the best results we’ve observed for front cameras.

Raised issues include noise, white balance, and skin rendering.

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At&T Return to Advertising on YouTube After 2 Years Away

Charlotte Henry ·

At&T, one of the biggest marketers in the U.S., is back advertising on YouTube after a nearly 2-year hiatus. The company removed all its adverts from the video platform in 2017. It said Friday that it was satisfied that YouTube had worked to stop its adverts appearing next to disturbing or extremist content. At&T’s Chief Brand Officer, Fiona Carter, spoke with New York Times and emphasized that her firm demanded «a near-zero chance of our advertising appearing next to objectionable content.» That standard now appears to have been met.

The decision reflects the progress that Google-owned YouTube has made with advertisers in the 22 months since a number of them discovered that some of their ads were appearing during, or before, videos promoting hate speech, terrorism and other disturbing content. AT&T was among the first companies that stopped paying to advertise on YouTube, telling it that they wouldn’t return until it made improvements.