Month: May 2017

https://www.ghacks.net/2017/05/28/google-search-gets-personal-option/

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Google Search gets Personal (option)

Google launched a new Google Search feature recently that makes search even more personal than it already is with a new personal option.

Google introduced the filter bubble years ago which delivers news to search users that the company believes users wants. What this means is that you are more likely to get results and information that you’d agree and interact with, than those that you don’t.

While that is good at times as it puts the focus on topics that you are likely more interested in, it is making it difficult to break out of the bubble to form an educated opinion about a particular subject.

Google Personal

google personal search

Personal is a new option of Google Search that is not integrated directly in the algorithm that determines which search results are returned to users when they run searches on Google.

It is a new option under the more link instead which you can load. Please note that personal is only an option there if you are signed in to a Google account, and that the new feature won’t work yet for Google Apps customers.

Google Personal

If you are not, you don’t get that option. The reason for that is simple: It searches Gmail data, and maybe also other account related data, and returns results based on that.

I could not get the feature to return anything though when I tried to use it. Even simple searches for Linux or known file attachments or subjects on Gmail did not return a result.

Others reported that email messages and photos were returned to them when they ran searches under Personal.

Closing Words

Google’s new Personal option on Google Search returns specific account data. It is unclear right now whether it is limited to Gmail and Google Photos, or if it pulls data from Google Drive and other Google services as well. If it is the first, it is nothing more than a basic copy of Gmail Search built right into Google Search with an added photos search component.

I don’t think that is particularly useful in this case. If you could get results from multiple Google services on the other hand, it could prove more useful to some users, especially those invested heavily in Google’s ecosystem.

Now You: What’s your first impression of Google Search Personal?

Summary
Article Name
Google Search gets Personal (option)
Description
Google launched a new Google Search feature recently that makes search even more personal than it already is with a new personal option.
Author
Martin Brinkmann
Publisher
Ghacks Technology News
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https://www.neowin.net/news/raspberry-pi-and-coderdojo-joining-forces-to-get-more-kids-programming

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Raspberry Pi and CoderDojo joining forces to get more kids programming

The Raspberry Pi Foundation and the Coderdojo Foundation are joining forces to “give many more young people all over the world new opportunities to learn how to be creative with technology.” From this merger, The Raspberry Pi Foundation hopes to see the current 1,250 CoderDojos turn into 5,000, by the end of the decade.

The merger is subject to approval by Irish regulators, but should it be approved, Raspberry Pi’s CEO says in practice it’ll work in the following manner:

The two organisations will work together to advance our shared goals, using our respective assets and capabilities to get many more adults and young people involved in the CoderDojo movement. The Raspberry Pi Foundation will also provide practical, financial, and back-office support to the CoderDojo Foundation.

Although Raspberry Pi Foundation is clearly the more well known of the two Foundations, it will not take a hegemonic role in the new relationship. The CoderDojo Foundation will still be independent and will maintain its brand and ethos. Furthermore, it won’t be subject to using solely Raspberry Pi hardware and software, but instead, be platform-neutral, and use whatever kit is necessary to teach those in attendance.

The merger does mean that the Raspberry Pi Foundation will become a corporate member of the CoderDojo Foundation, which is apparently like being a shareholder without any financial interest. Additionally, Raspberry Pi Foundation CEO, Philip Colligan, will join the board of the CoderDojo Foundation as a director.

Source: Raspberry Pi via Engadget

http://www.highsnobiety.com/2017/05/27/iphone-7-facebook-application-battery-save/

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Did You Know Deleting This App Could Almost Double Your Phone’s Battery Life?

In a personal report by mobile economist, John Koetsier, it was, rather unsurprisingly, discovered that by deleting a single app, you could almost double your phone’s battery life.

The “discovery” was made using an Apple iPhone 7, which was bought in the hope of having a strong enough battery to last the entire day. However, much to John’s dismay, it was soon discovered that Facebook, of all applications, was in fact responsible for draining the majority of his battery.

Now, to divulge details of the exact “battery use percentage” seen on John’s phone would certainly come to no avail, as everyone uses their phone differently, but what can be ascertained, is that Facebook is a surprisingly draining application, despite being one of the most used. Will Mark Zuckerberg fix this very obvious problem some time soon? Stay tuned for updates.

 

https://psychcentral.com/news/2017/05/27/study-shows-gray-matter-density-increases-in-adolescence/121150.html

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Study Shows Gray Matter Density Increases In Adolescence

By Janice Wood
~ 2 min read
Study Shows Gray Matter Density Increases In AdolescenceA new study solves a paradox that while gray matter declines in adolescence, there is also dramatic cognitive improvement from childhood to young adulthood.

In past studies of gray matter volume and cortical thickness, scientists found that gray matter — the tissue found in regions of the brain responsible for muscle control, sensory perception, such as seeing and hearing, memory, emotions, speech, decision making, and self-control — declines in adolescence. But scientists were puzzled that cognitive performance improved at the same that brain volume and cortical thickness decline.

A new study from researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania reveals that while volume decreases from childhood to young adulthood, gray matter density actually increases.

The findings also show that while females have lower brain volume, proportionate to their smaller size, they have higher gray matter density than males, which could explain why their cognitive performance is comparable despite having lower brain volume.

While adolescents lose brain volume, and females have lower brain volume than males, this is compensated for by increased density of gray matter, the researchers explain.

“It is quite rare for a single study to solve a paradox that has been lingering in a field for decades, let alone two paradoxes, as was done by Gennatas in his analysis of data from this large-scale study of a whole cohort of youths,” said Dr. Ruben Gur, a professor of psychiatry, neurology, and radiology. He referred to the work of Efstathios Gennatas, M.B.B.S., a doctoral student of neuroscience working in the Brain Behavior Laboratory at Penn.

“We now have a richer, fuller concept of what happens during brain development and now better understand the complementary unfolding processes in the brain that describe what happens,” Gur said.

The study findings may better explain the extent and intensity of changes in mental life and behavior that occur during the transition from childhood to young adulthood, Gur noted.

“If we are puzzled by the behavior of adolescents, it may help to know that they need to adjust to a brain that is changing in its size and composition at the same time that demands on performance and acceptable behavior keep scaling up,” he added.

In the study, the researchers evaluated 1,189 youth between the ages of eight and 23 who completed magnetic resonance imaging as part of the Philadelphia Neurodevelopmental Cohort. The community-based study of brain development included neuroimaging and cognitive data to look at age-related effects on multiple measures of regional gray matter, including gray matter volume, gray matter density, and cortical thickness.

Observing such measures during development allowed the researchers to study the brain at different ages to characterize how a child’s brain differs from an adult’s.

“This novel characterization of brain development may help us better understand the relationship between brain structure and cognitive performance,” Gennatas said.

“Our findings also emphasize the need to examine several measures of brain structure at the same time,” he said. “Volume and cortical thickness have received the most attention in developmental studies in the past, but gray matter density may be as important for understanding how improved performance relates to brain development.”

The study was published in the Journal of Neuroscience.

Source: Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania
Photo: MRI-derived gray matter measures, density, volume, mass, and cortical thickness, show distinct age and sex effects, as well as age-dependent intermodal correlations around adolescence. Credit: Penn Medicine.

https://psychcentral.com/news/2017/05/27/losing-sleep-over-climate-change/121156.html

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Losing Sleep Over Climate Change

By Janice Wood
~ 2 min read
Losing Sleep Over Climate ChangeClimate change may keep you awake, but not just because you are worried about the future of our planet.

Nights that are warmer than normal can harm human sleep, with the poor and elderly most affected, according to a new study.

Scientists at the University of California San Diego say that if climate change is not addressed, temperatures in 2050 could cost people in the United States millions of additional nights of insufficient sleep each year. By 2099, the figure could rise by several hundred million more nights of lost sleep annually, they warn.

The study was led by Nick Obradovich, who conducted much of the research as a doctoral student in political science at the University of California San Diego.

He was inspired to investigate the question by the heat wave that hit San Diego in October 2015. He was having trouble sleeping, while the small air conditioner in his home provided little relief from the record-breaking temperatures. At school, he noticed that fellow students were also looking grumpy and bedraggled, and it got him thinking: Had anyone looked at what climate change might do to sleep?

“Sleep has been well-established by other researchers as a critical component of human health. Too little sleep can make a person more susceptible to disease and chronic illness, and it can harm psychological well-being and cognitive functioning,” Obradovich said.

“What our study shows is not only that ambient temperature can play a role in disrupting sleep, but also that climate change might make the situation worse by driving up rates of sleep loss.”

The study started with data from 765,000 U.S. residents between 2002 and 2011 who responded to a public health survey, the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The study then links data on self-reported nights of insufficient sleep to daily temperature data from the National Centers for Environmental Information.

Finally, it combines the effects of unusually warm temperatures on sleep with climate model projections.

The main finding is that anomalous increases in nighttime temperature by one degree Celsius translate to three nights of insufficient sleep per 100 individuals per month.

To put that in perspective: If we had a single month of nightly temperatures averaging one degree Celsius higher than normal, that is equivalent to nine million more nights of insufficient sleep in a month across the population of the United States today, or 110 million extra nights of insufficient sleep annually, the researcher explains.

The negative effect of warmer nights is most acute in summer, the research shows. It is almost three times as high in summer as during any other season.

The effect is also not spread evenly across all demographic groups. Those whose income is below $50,000 and those who are aged 65 and older are affected most severely, according to the study’s findings.

For older people, the effect is twice that of younger adults. And for the lower-income group, it is three times worse than for people who are better off financially, the data shows.

Using climate projections for 2050 and 2099 by NASA Earth Exchange, the study paints a bleak picture of the future if the relationship between warmer nights and disrupted sleep persists, according to the researcher. Warmer temperatures could cause six additional nights of insufficient sleep per 100 individuals by 2050 and approximately 14 extra nights per 100 by 2099.

“The U.S. is relatively temperate and, in global terms, quite prosperous,” Obradovich said. “We don’t have sleep data from around the world, but assuming the pattern is similar, one can imagine that in places that are warmer or poorer or both, what we’d find could be even worse.”

The study was published by Science Advances.

Source: University of California San Diego

http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-climate-change-sleep-20170522-story.html

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Another consequence of climate change: A good night’s sleep

http://gulfnews.com/business/sectors/technology/apple-said-to-plan-dedicated-chip-to-power-ai-on-devices-1.2034156

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Apple said to plan dedicated chip to power AI on devices

The chip, known internally as the Apple Neural Engine, would improve the way the company’s devices handle tasks that would otherwise require human intelligence

Apple Inc got an early start in artificial intelligence software with the 2011 introduction of Siri, a tool that lets users operate their smartphones with voice commands.

Now the electronics giant is bringing artificial intelligence to chips.

Apple is working on a processor devoted specifically to AI-related tasks, according to a person familiar with the matter. The chip, known internally as the Apple Neural Engine, would improve the way the company’s devices handle tasks that would otherwise require human intelligence — such as facial recognition and speech recognition, said the person, who requested anonymity discussing a product that hasn’t been made public. Apple declined to comment.

Engineers at Apple are racing to catch their peers at Amazon.com Inc. and Alphabet Inc. in the booming field of artificial intelligence. While Siri gave Apple an early advantage in voice-recognition, competitors have since been more aggressive in deploying AI across their product lines, including Amazon’s Echo and Google’s Home digital assistants. An AI-enabled processor would help Cupertino, California-based Apple integrate more advanced capabilities into devices, particularly cars that drive themselves and gadgets that run augmented reality, the technology that superimposes graphics and other information onto a person’s view of the world.

“Two of the areas that Apple is betting its future on require AI,” said Gene Munster, former Apple analyst and co-founder of venture capital firm Loup Ventures. “At the core of augmented reality and self-driving cars is artificial intelligence.”

Improved Performance

Apple devices currently handle complex artificial intelligence processes with two different chips: the main processor and the graphics chip. The new chip would let Apple offload those tasks onto a dedicated module designed specifically for demanding artificial intelligence processing, allowing Apple to improve battery performance.

Should Apple bring the chip out of testing and development, it would follow other semiconductor makers that have already introduced dedicated AI chips. Qualcomm Inc.’s latest Snapdragon chip for smartphones has a module for handling artificial intelligence tasks, while Google announced its first chip, called the Tensor Processing Unit (TPU), in 2016. That chip worked in Google’s data centers to power search results and image-recognition. At its I/O conference this year, Google announced a new version that will be available to clients of its cloud business. Nvidia Corp. also sells a similar chip to cloud customers.

The Apple AI chip is designed to make significant improvements to Apple’s hardware over time, and the company plans to eventually integrate the chip into many of its devices, including the iPhone and iPad, according to the person with knowledge of the matter. Apple has tested prototypes of future iPhones with the chip, the person said, adding that it’s unclear if the component will be ready this year.

Apple’s operating systems and software features would integrate with devices that include the chip. For example, Apple has considered offloading facial recognition in the photos application, some parts of speech recognition, and the iPhone’s predictive keyboard to the chip, the person said. Apple also plans to offer developer access to the chip so third-party apps can also offload artificial intelligence-related tasks, the person said.

Developer Conference

Apple may choose to discuss some of its latest advancements in AI at its annual developer’s conference in June. At the same conference, Apple plans to introduce iOS 11, its new operating system for iPhones and iPads, with an updated user-interface, people with knowledge of the matter said last month. The company is also said to discuss updated laptops with faster chips from Intel Corp.

An AI chip would join a growing list of processors that Apple has created in-house. The company began designing its own main processors for the iPhone and iPad in 2010 with the A4 chip. It has since released dedicated processors to power the Apple Watch, the motion sensors across its products, the wireless components inside of its AirPods, and the fingerprint scanner in the MacBook Pro. The company has also tested a chip to run the low-power mode on Mac laptops.

In 2015, Bloomberg reported that Apple’s culture of secrecy stymied the iPhone maker’s ability to attract top AI research talent. Since then, Apple has acquired multiple companies with deep ties to artificial intelligence, has begun publishing papers related to AI research, has joined a key research group and has made hires from the field. In October 2016, Apple hired Russ Salakhutdinov from Carnegie Mellon University as its director of AI research.

http://linuxgizmos.com/raspberry-pi-enters-thin-client-mainstream/

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Raspberry Pi enters thin client mainstream

May 26, 2017 — by Eric Brown — 905 views

NComputing’s “RX-HDX” thin client joins ViewSonic’s newly revised “SC-T25” as the second major Citrix HDX ready thin client based on the Raspberry Pi 3.

Is the Raspberry Pi ready to take over the low-end thin client market? This week, NComputing unveiled the RX-HDX, its second Raspberry Pi based thin client. In addition, ViewSonic announced a software upgrade for the Pi-based SC-T25 thin client that it announced last year.

The future of thin clients — low-cost, remotely managed virtual client computers — has always been a question mark. On one hand, dropping PC prices and increasing use of multimedia in the enterprise has slowed the demand for bare-bones thin clients. Yet, improvements in Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) technology and the ongoing need to cut maintenance, support, and operating costs have kept the market alive.


NComputing’s RX-HDX (left) and Citrix HDX Ready Pi
(click images to enlarge)
Cheap PCs have may have put the brakes on thin clients in recent years, but a rebound seems likely. The arrival of more affordable and power efficient embedded computers — and the Raspberry Pi in particular — is helping to drive down prices and restore thin clients’ edge over standalone PCs.

Early last year, Citrix, one of the major virtualization software providers for thin clients, along with VMware and Microsoft, jumpstarted the Pi thin client market by partnering with the Raspberry Pi Foundation, Broadcom, ThinLinx, and others to bring its Citrix HDX remote display protocol to the Raspberry Pi.

The H264-ready Citrix HDX technology, which is available with Citrix’s XenDesktop virtual desktop and XenApp virtual application software, is an extension of Citrix’s earlier ICA protocol. It adds intelligent redirection, adaptive compression, and data de-duplication to boost performance, especially in multimedia. Citrix HDX is implemented partially via a custom version of a SoC — in this case the Broadcom BCM43437 — that enables compute-intensive HDX algorithms to execute on the CPU. Yet, HDX avoids device obsolescence by not “burning the remoting protocol into silicon,” says Citrix.

Last year, Citrix announced a Raspberry Pi 3 based Citrix HDX Ready Pi mini-PC reference design with preconfigured HDX support for XenDesktop and XenApp. The device’s Linux-based HDX SoC Receiver SDK enables hardware acceleration on the quad-core Broadcom SoC, as well as off-loading to the VideoCore IV GPU. The device offers device management for firmware updates, remote configuration, and DHCP tagging for plug and play deployment. It can automatically connect to Citrix’s StoreFront enterprise app store like higher-end Citrix clients.

The Citrix HDX Ready Pi ships with a version of ThinLinx’s TLXOS. This Raspbian spin-off, which supports VMware Horizon Blast Extreme and Microsoft RDP/RemoteFX protocols as well as Citrix HDX, also provides a virtual client and management stack that can manage both x86 and ARM devices at once. The TLXOS client runs on Intel’s NUCs and Compute Sticks in addition to the Raspberry Pi 2 and 3.
ViewSonic SC-T25 and NComputing RX-HDX

Last July, ViewSonic released a version of the Citrix HDX Ready Pi as the $89 SC-T25. This week, ViewSonic announced that the SC-T25 now offers the Linux-based NoTouch OS from Stratodesk, another Citrix HDX collaborator. NoTouch OS provides the SC-T25 with new features like Skype for Business support, as well as single sign-on and dual monitor support.


ViewSonic SC-T25, front and back
(click images to enlarge)
Also this week, NComputing unveiled its own $119, Citrix HDX compliant RX-HDX thin client. The product is also based on the Citrix HDX Ready Pi technology, but features a different design borrowed from NComputing’s $99, Raspberry Pi 3-based RX300 thin client, announced in March. The RX300 hosts images provided by its own Windows-based vSpace Pro 10 platform, and is aimed more at the educational and small business markets where NComputing is among the leaders. The new RX-HDX, meanwhile, should boost its prospects in the enterprise market.

Due to ship in July, NComputing’s RX-HDX features dual monitor support and a sleep mode button. There’s also a Pi Management Console (PMC) and web-based device management for up to 10,000 RX devices. The RX-HDX runs on less than 5W, and offers Raspberry Pi 3 features such as 1GB RAM, WiFi and Bluetooth, and 4x USB ports with full USB redirection. There’s also a Kensington lock, an optional VESA mount, and a sealed, internal 8GB microSD card.


NComputing RX300 alone (left) and with monitor, mouse and keyboard
(click images to enlarge)
Even at the $119 level, the Citrix HDX Ready Pi systems are competitive with DIY solutions. A homegrown thin client system with a $10 TXLOS build and a typical Raspberry Pi 3 starter kit and keyboard and mouse bundle can be had for about $100 without the display.

Initially, Citrix listed Micro Center as a Citrix HDX Ready Pi partner, but no longer. The computer retailer still offers a PowerSpec Raspberry Pi 3 Starter Kit that is billed as a zero thin client with “Citrix Receiver for Linux and a fully licensed ThinLinX TLXOS RPi OS on 8GB microSD.” The system sells with for only $50, discounted from $80. Although it appears to be based on the Citrix HDX Ready Pi, Micro Center does not promote the connection.

Unlike ViewSonic and Micro Center, which are newcomers to thin clients, NComputing was ranked number three in the market at 10.2 percent, according to a Mar. 2016 IDC report. The report also noted that NComputing was onee of the fastest growing thin client vendors after fourth place Centerm of China.

The 2015 thin client market slumped due to competition from low-cost computers such as Chromebooks. However, IDC projected the market would return to steady growth through 2019 when it expects sales of 6.4 million units, up from 5.1 million in 2015.

This week’s reaffirmation by NComputing and ViewSonic of their Raspberry Pi experiments suggests that thin client market leaders Dell and HP, which both saw reduced sales in 2015, might consider similar moves. There are other low-cost, VESA mountable size embedded platforms to build on, but it’s hard to beat the Pi 3 for its platform ecosystem. Its price/performance is pretty darn good, as well.


Raspberry Pi 3

“The Raspberry Pi is renowned for its innovation, portable size, versatility, and economic viability,” said NComputing CTO Richard Sah in an email Q&A. “With each iteration, the affordable computer has established itself as a robust and reliable device, one increasingly become viable within an enterprise setting. NComputing strives to be the market leader in Pi-based thin clients and will continue to innovate on top of the Pi platform.”

Aside from small, and high price/performance, the Raspberry Pi also attracted NComputing with its larger developer base. “With a vast community of developers behind Raspberry Pi, we believe the platform will become more and more popular in different vertical markets,” said Sah.

Meanwhile several open source community projects are offering alternatives to TXLOS for DIY Pi-based thin clients. The Raspberry Pi Thin Client project, which now supplies a RPiTC v3 1.12 release, supports Citrix Receiver 13.4.2, VMWare Horizon 4.3, NoMachine 5.2.11, and FreeRDP, among other platforms. There’s also WTware, which offers a client for Windows Remote Desktop Services and Windows Terminal Server.

The rise of Raspberry Pi based thin clients could boost the role of ARM thin clients in this very x86-centric market. ARM thin clients have been available for years, and like a fair share of x86 thin clients, they run Linux. Options include the i.MX6-based Atrust T66, Allwinner A20-based Share FL120, and NComputing’s own Cortex-A9 based N500.

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