AOC deletes thousands of comments on Mack Horton’s Instagram account

Thousands of vitriolic comments left on Australian swimmer Mack Horton’s Instagram account have been deleted by the Australian Olympic Committee (AOC). Netizens, many of them Chinese, bombarded Horton’s social media accounts after he called Chinese swimming rival Sun Yang a “drug cheat” before they competed in Saturday’s men’s 400 meters freestyle final, demanding that he apologize.

By Wednesday, all comments – which numbered at least 200,000 on one photo post alone – had disappeared from Horton’s page. “My staff are instructed to remove any comments that are offensive and in breach of the AOC’s Social Media Guidelines. Comments must not be disrespectful, threatening or in poor taste,” AOC’s director of media & communications, Mike Tancred, told Reuters in an e-mail.

Instagram told Reuters it could not comment on specific user accounts. It has recently introduced new tools giving users more control over comments on their pages. Censorship is common in China, whose users are prohibited from visiting certain websites by the government and often see controversial remarks on social media sites being deleted. Facebook and Instagram are banned in China, meaning that mainland users have to access the sites by jumping the “Great Firewall” using a virtual private network.

That does not mean that users have stopped trying – screenshots of the message “mackhorton has turned off comments for this post” were posted on China’s social media sites. The spat between Horton and Sun is turning into a battle of national media commentators and underlines how the issue of doping has become a defining issue for these Olympics. Chinese state media reacted to Horton’s remarks by calling Australia “uncivilized” and “Britain’s offshore prison”, while the Australian delegation said they would support Horton’s right to speak freely on the issue.

Sun, who finished second to Horton in the 400 freestyle, was revealed two years ago to have secretly served a three-month suspension for using a banned stimulant. He said at the time the stimulant was in medication to treat a heart issue and did not enhance his performance.

Self-destructing batteries could change recycling, medical implants, even war

The concept of self-destructing technology takes the inherent consumption at the heart of consumer electronics and brings it to the forefront. There’s something many people find almost distasteful about tech that’s designed to destroy itself — even if the timeline for that destruction is longer than the device could realistically last. Nonetheless, the idea of self-destructing technology is immediately applicable to problems of waste disposal, and further out than that, the ability to have a device or device component literally melt away could end up changing the abilities of a number of industries and even warfare. This week, researchers at Iowa State University got a lot closer to that goal with a new transient battery that could power self-destructing electronics.

Their achievement is important for two reasons. One, it increases the usefulness of self-destructing batteries by doubling their voltage to about 2.5 volts — more than the voltage of a AA or AAA battery. Two, this new battery dramatically decreases the time it takes to actually dissolve away, validating the concept from a pure practicality standpoint. If the technology is ever to succeed, it will need to be useful to the consumer while offering an accessible improvement when it comes time for cleanup. This battery is a step toward both goals.

The battery is only about a millimeter thick, smaller than a postage stamp. Nano- and micro-particles of lithium salts and silver make up the battery’s version of electrodes, held in a water-soluble polymer. When exposed to water for just 30 minute, this breaks down and the micro-particles disburse. It’s surprising that there’s no mention of a cleanup process to precipitate this battery dust out of a sample of water; in its current form, you’d have a hard time selling the concept of washing your battery down the drain, or of dumping millions of these batteries straight into the oceans.

Imagine if the highly computerized weapons systems captured by the Islamic State, things like aircraft tracking equipment and advanced artillery, were just a button-push from obsolescence. Knowing that ability was available might change the calculus in providing military assistance around the world. No longer would it be necessary to hold back on providing technology for fear of who will end up using it. The question would instead be: Will the people we want to have this technology be able to hold onto it long enough for the investment to be worth it, or will we just have to destroy our own equipment so quickly that the gift was a big waste of resources?

Apple slowly replacing IBM as number one choice for hardware in companies

In the primordial days of computing,IBM machines were so common inside corporations that there was a running joke in the industry: Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM.

These days, the same could be said about Apple. Even IBM is promoting Apple gear.

Apple's iPhones and iPads have become the preferred mobile computing devices for corporations, as industries from insurers to airlines aim to ditch bulky PCs and give their employees the ability to do their jobs from anywhere using smartphones or tablets.

For Apple, which is struggling to reverse declining sales of its iPhones and Macs and has seen overall revenues drop for two quarters in a row, the corporate market is a surprising bright spot. Sales of high-end iPads to business customers in particular have been strong. Nearly half of all iPads are now bought by corporations and governments, according to the research firm Forrester.

Jaguar Land Rover joins others in the biggest auto recall in US history

In 2016, there was a case of a vehicle owner who was killed when the airbags of her car deflated, a device that was meant to protect her. According to the New York Times, Huma Hanif died in a matter of seconds when the airbag of her Honda Civic exploded launching shrapnel at her from a few feet away. And it was one of the many cases that Honda was being held up for (100 injuries and 8 deaths so far).

It is more than a decade now since Takata allegedly knew about the problem. The recall started in the US in 2014 after the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) called for the recall to be expanded to national level also issuing a fine of $14,000 per day for not cooperating with the agency’s investigation into the airbag problems. At areported 64,000,000 vehicles, the recall is far from over.

Today, Tata-owned Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) joins the fray with an official press release issued by the company for the US market as reported by motor1. The luxury automotive brand announced plans to recall 54,000 cars in United States and this is just the first wave of many to come.

According to the same press release, JLR will be replacing 20,000 Jaguars XFs from the 2009-2011MY and on 34,000 Range Rovers from the 2007-2011MY.

The vehicles in the above mentioned range pose a high-risk of a rupture, that is caused when the inflator housing is exposed to high humidity for long periods of time. When this happens the part goes bad and instead of inflating the airbag, the inflator breaks up into a cloud of shrapnel which apart from rupturing the airbag also harms the driver in front of it.

As you may have noticed, this is an older range of vehicles that is being recalled. The current JLR range thankfully does not offer the faulty airbags. The Japanese company Takata however is still selling airbags to a number of automakers as of today.

NASA’s TESS mission on track to start hunting exoplanets in 2017

Ever since it debuted in 2009, NASA’s Kepler spacecraft has redefined our understanding of other star systems. But Kepler is in rough shape, and it won’t last forever. Now TESS, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, is ticking along on schedule to launch in 2017. While the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is set to be a partial replacement for the Hubble telescope, the JWST will also be a sort of spiritual successor to Kepler, in that it will team up with TESS to hunt for exoplanets in the visible and IR bands.

Like Kepler, TESS will use the transit method, searching for exoplanets by watching hundreds of thousands of stars for the telltale dimming. But where Kepler must cast its eyes to a small patch of distant space, peering deeply but narrowly into the skies, TESS will make a shallower whole-sky survey of stars within a few hundred light years of Earth. Most of Kepler’s exoplanet discoveries came from one relatively small patch of the sky. But NASA officials say that TESS should be able to look at over 200,000 stars.

To make things easier for mission scientists, TESS breaks up its spherical viewfield into 26 “tiles” that overlap near its north and south poles. “The spacecraft’s powerful cameras will look continuously at each tile for just over 27 days, measuring visible light from the brightest targets every 2 minutes,” NASA officials said in a statement. Based on the characteristics of those little dips in brightness, TESS scientists will be able to tell how big the newly discovered exoplanets are, and how long they take to orbit their parent stars.That’s not all TESS has up its sleeve, though. While it will be a planet hunter first and foremost, scientists and other “guest investigators” will also have the opportunity to take time on TESS to observe black holes, supernovas, and a variety of other cosmic objects and phenomena.

One of the other major goals of TESS is to examine short-period objects and transient phenomena, like the visible light energy that accompanies a gamma ray burst. The spacecraft’s glancing gaze might pose difficulties for asteroseismologists, because while transits might take some days or weeks, starquakes can happen in seconds, so TESS’s sampling rate might bump into the Nyquist limit. But that kind of data loss is apparently a niche enough problem that project scientists were willing to make the compromise.

TESS also has unique orbital characteristics. It’s designed to survey both the northern and southern hemispheres and will use a new lunar orbit, dubbed P/2, to do so. This highly elliptical orbit will allow the spacecraft to survey its target range while simultaneously remaining balanced between the gravitational effects of the Moon and those of the Earth.NASA has published an article with more details on the spacecraft’s orbit and its characteristics

Gun emoji: Microsoft 'doesn't agree' with Apple

SAN FRANCISCO: Apple and Microsoft on Friday appeared to be aiming in opposite directions with freshly unholstered gun emojis.

A Windows operating system update rolled out this week by Microsoft came with a pistol emoji changed from a cartoonish ray gun to a revolver.

Microsoft said in a blog post that it had a team design new emojis from scratch for the major Windows 10 anniversary update.

"They needed to feel more human, more personal, more expressive," Microsoft said in the post devoted to the new array of 'glyphs' that have become a standard for mobile messaging.
"The effect is clear, and pretty striking."

A Microsoft spokesperson told AFP that the company's intent with every glyph is to "map to industry designs or our customers' expectations" regarding what emojis mean.
A Microsoft spokesperson told AFP that the company's intent with every glyph is to "map to industry designs or our customers' expectations" regarding what emojis mean.

Meanwhile, a pistol character included among glyphs for messages sent using coming iOS 10 software powering Apple mobile devices looked like a toy instead of a real firearm.

New emojis teased by Apple in a blog post included women athletes, single parents, a rainbow flag, and a green water pistol.

California-based Apple promised that more than 100 new or redesigned emoji characters will be available to iPhone and iPad users when iOS 10 software is released later this year.

Chinese Company Tests Giant Bus That Drives Over Cars

Every urban commuter laments the twice-a-day headache of traffic congestion and the often disappointing alternatives that mass transit offers.

A Chinese company has officially rolled out one potential solution: the TEB-1, or Transit Elevated Bus. The giant "flying" bus, as some have called it, straddles two lanes of traffic and stands nearly 16 feet tall so that it can pass over cars on the roadway below. While still a long way from mass production, the TEB-1 could one day alleviate major traffic woes in China and other countries with crowded metropolitan areas.
The concept of an elevated bus was first floated in 2010, and a model was debuted in May of this year, the New York Times reported. The company behind the project, TEB Technology, conducted a road test and opened its doors to prospective passengers in the Chinese city of Qinhuangdao on Tuesday, according to the Xinhua News Agency.

72 feet long by 26 feet wide, capable of holding up to 300 riders. Surprisingly, there are not very many seats. That would probably have to change should an American model ever come to fruition.

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Indeed, it's unclear whether the idea of an elevated bus could gain traction in the United States. The model piloted by TEB Technologies appears to clear midsize sedans with ease, but the large SUVs and trucks that clog U.S. roads may present a greater challenge.