Facebook Claims Future As It Builds On Chinese Rivals

Facebook doesn’t seem to sit back even after becoming the de facto social media giant in terms of daily active users and incredible reach round the globe. Facebook once again takes the world by storm by announcing its new feature for the Messenger users where they can order an Uber car from the Messenger app itself. Facebook has turned its simple messaging client into a wholesome platform and it is pushing it hard to be seen as a leader in the West.

How Messenger became a platform? 

The platform and its definitions have been heard since the inception of internet. First we have had CPU where operating system platform was heard, then Linux development brought the platform of kernerl and later on we were enveloped by the web as platform for the enterprise and finally even the web browser became a dominant platform in itself with the development of Chromebook. Facebook and some other websites are even proclaiming them to be a platform with various benefits and features.

Facebook has gradually worked and developed the Messenger to such a point where it is being pushed forward as a platform. The move of Facebook and Uber coming together on a single platform i.e. Messenger is interesting and it showcases the Messenger capabilities and might even help in making a dominant platform. But Facebook IM client-Messenger is not alone there are a lot of competition in Silicon Valley with players like WhatsApp, Apple Messages and Skype which offers more features, services and benefits as a platform.

Facebook takes the Chinese rivals head on

It will come as surprise for the consumers in west that Facebook and Silicon Valley is rather behind the curve on the idea of ‘’messaging as a platform”. China has been a remarkable force in the hardware production they have taken a huge leap in the ‘messaging as a platform’ by working on developer outreach, user education along with the commercial implementation and mass-market adoption. It was the China’s TenCent’s WeChat which came first as successful platform in messaging by offering voice and text messaging along with ability to purchase good and pay for various services. WeChat also allows a number of services to run on the top of the messaging app which makes it easier for the customers, clients and other businesses to interact with each other.

Messenger as a platform is soon to rise to the challenge

Facebook’s decision of allowing people to order an Uber cab via its Messenger opens up the idea of utilizing it as a platform on larger level. But competition will reach out to Facebook soon as other Silicon Valley companies are gearing up to allow running of more services on top of the messaging app. There is one distinct advantage which Facebook has over Chinese rivals that is Chinese platforms are mostly resting to China only which gives Facebook a whole world to try push its Messenger as a platform.

Samsung’s Patent Loss to Apple Is Appealed to Supreme Court

Samsung has been battling the patent infringement charges brought by Apple for years. Just few weeks ago it lost the patent battle in Federal District Court and it agreed to pay whopping $548 million in damages to Apple. But this wasn’t end for the road for Samsung as it has filed an appeal in the Supreme Court where it seeks rekindle the clash with an aim of getting better of Apple. The South Korean electronics giant Samsung is arguing that the legal framework which are utilized in the design patents are outdated for the current modern digital world. The legal framework for design patents is sitting right at the center of the suits provided in the software by both the companies.

How detrimental is the patent battle for both the companies? 

Though Samsung is just appealing to get its case heard in Supreme Court but if heard this can have far reaching implication for design patents, product looks and the financial penalties which are allowed under law. Design patents play a vital role in the software designed by the companies and apart from providing utility it also covers how a product functions and looks.

As per Samsung the legal framework for design patents is shaped as per the 19th century laws which were introduced to protect the designs of carpers, ornamental spoons and fireplace grates. In short it isn’t applicable or can justify or bring justice to the modern electronic device sin the same manner when patent battle is being heard.

Age old laws to judge modern complex electronic device

In the old times the design was seen as the heart of those products and seizing those designs to bring copycat products brought gains which were known as total profit rule and it was justified. But in the modern times complex products like Smartphone comes loaded with a dense bundle of intellectual property comprising of more than 100,000 patents which lays claim to every small aspect of the phone. A law professor at Stanford University named Mark A. Lemley stated that the law was written in the primitive age before the invention of smartphone which means it won’t be able to be fair with both the companies.

Apple has an upper hand in patent battle

Apple had simply publicly declined to comment on the Samsung appeal in Supreme Court. But over all these years Apple has maintained that the three major design patents infringed by Samsung represents the sense of its iPhone. Apple argues that Samsung is simply taken over its user interface, rectangular display and the rounded shape and the flat front which has become synonym for iPhone design. Even the jury at the Federal District Court agreed with the Apple view and defense.

Samsung gets huge support from the fellow technology companies which include Google, eBay and Facebook. They believe that if the ruling against Samsung in this patent case is left to stand then it will lead to absurd results and can have devastating impact on the companies.

Algorithm helps analyze neuron images

Mechanized Process to Analyze Images Precisely

Scientists who have been seeking ways to stimulate growth of neurons and spending time in carefully analysing microscopic images of cells growing in petri dishes can now get help from a new procedure which has been developed by Brown University researchers.

They have mechanized the process to analyse images much more precisely than earlier automated methods.The initial round of testing and the method have been described in Nature’s Scientific Reports. As the neurons tend to grow, they seem to extend tough appendages known as neuritis which form grave connection with the nearby cells.

The networks of neurons and neurites are needed for healthy function of the nervous system. Scientists are concerned in discovering new ways of encouraging neuron growth through drugs, electrical stimulation or any other means. In order to test the effect of these attempts, they have grown neurons in the lab, with the application of various treatments to see if they could stimulate growth.

It generally involves taking pictures of hundreds of microscope of neurons as they tend to grow over a passage of hours or days.

Neurites –Tiny Structures – Difficult to View Under Microscope

Tayhas Palmore, professor of engineering at Brown as well as the senior author of the new paper, comments that `one is left with this massive stack of photos and the needs to analyse the changes from one image to the next could be really laborious’.

Details in those images seem to be dangerous. Neurites seems to be tiny structures which are difficult to be viewed under a microscope at the time of live-cell imaging. However, measuring their length and thickness precisely is essential in assessing stimulated cell growth.

 A few methods are available which automate the image analysis, though they do not perform well. They tend to work by looking at individual pixels in an image, applying a uniform filter which tends to pick out pixels with the highest intensity and those high intensity pixels are presumed to be neuron and neurite structures.

The issue is that microscope images generally are not of high quality, thus making it difficult to discern cells structures from random artifacts which may be present in the image. This result in the filters often tends to include pixels which are not relevant to neuron structures, editing pixels which are important.

New Method – Neuron Image Analyzer – NIA

This seems to be a problem especially in measuring the tiny neurite appendages and the filters regularly fail to measure the complete extent of the neurite growth. A better solution was sought by a former graduate student in Patmore’s lab, Kwang-Min Kim who is now a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford.

Inspired by the earlier work of Kilho Son, a graduate student in computer vision as well as a co-first author on the paper, he created a new method which dispenses with the uniform filters utilised in other approaches. The new approach known as Neuron Image Analyzer – NIA takes into consideration how pixels tend to be related to the nearby pixels.

He had commented that they don’t just look for high intensity pixels but look at the relational information between pixels. This way they can trace pixels which are connected to each other that help in tracing the complete neuron structure. Another procedure adopted by the method is a particular statistical test which is good in picking out circular or elliptical structures which is utilised to locate precisely and measure the soma, the blob shaped main body of a neuron.

Google Says It Has Proved Its Controversial Quantum Computer Really Works

Google’s Controversial Quantum Machine- Quicker than Conventional Computer

Google has informed that it has proof of a controversial machine bought in 2013, can use quantum physics to work through a kind of math which is critical to artificial intelligence and much quicker than a conventional computer. Governments together with leading computing companies like Microsoft, Google and IBM are putting in efforts in the creation of quantum computers due to which the improbability of quantum mechanics in representing data could unlock huge data crunching powers.

Computing giants are of the opinion that quantum computers can make their artificial intelligence software more commanding, unlocking scientific leaps in the field of materials science.

 NASA is expecting that quantum computers could be helpful in scheduling rocket launches and feign future missions as well as spacecraft. Rupak Biswas, director of exploration technology at NASA’s Ames Research Centre in Mountain View, California has commented that `it seems a disruptive technology which could change how we do everything. At media briefing at the research centre, Biswas had commented, regarding the agency’s work with Google on a machine which the company had bought in 2013 from Canadian start-up D-wave systems that it is the world’s first commercial quantum computer.

Superconducting Chip –Quantum Annealer

The computer has been installed at NASA’s Ames Research Centre in Mountain View, California, operating on data utilising superconducting chip known as a quantum annealer. Quantum computer is hard coded with system fitted to what is known as optimization problems that are common on machine learning and artificial intelligence software.

But in the case of D-Wave’s chips it seems to be controversial among quantum physicists and researchers in and out of the company have not been capable of proving that the devices could tap into quantum physics in competing with conventional computers. The leader of Google’s Quantum AI Lab in Los Angeles, Hartmut Neven, had stated recently that his researchers had delivered some firm proof of that.

 They had set up a series of races between the D-Wave computers that was installed at NASA against a conventional computer with a single process. He commented that `for a specific carefully crafted proof-of-concept problem, they had achieved a 100 million-fold speed-up.

Bug in D-Wave Design

A research paper describing the results online had been recently posted by Google though it has not been formally peer-reviewed. Neven had stated that the journal publication would be coming up soon. The results of Google were striking though if they were verified, would only represent fractional evidence for D-Wave. 

The computer which had lost in the contest with the quantum machine had been running a code that solved the problem at hand utilising a system to the one that was in the D-Wave chip. A substitute system is known which could have enabled the conventional compute to be more competitive or win by exploiting what Neven has called a `bug’ in D-Wave design.

Neven had stated that the test which his group had staged tends to be still important since that shortcut would not be available to the regular computers when they tend to compete with the future quantum annealers with the potential of working on larger amounts of data.

A physics professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, Matthias Trover had said that making that to come true could be crucial if chips like D-Wave are to be useful. It would be essential to explore if there are issues where quantum annealing has advantage over the best classical systems and to identify if there are classes of application problems, where these advantages could be realized.

Moonfruit takes Websites Offline after Cyber-Attack Threat

Cyber attacks have been increased rapidly throughout the globe. Sony was hacked just a few months which caused leakage of emails, movies details and other. Snapchat has also been hit in the past and now every website is playing cautious when it comes to imminent cyber attacks. Recently Moonfruit took thousands of its hosted business and personal websites offline after being threatened by a cyber-attack.

What is Moonfruit and why it took websites offline? 

Moonfruit is a UK company which helps its consumers and small business to create websites and online stores. Moonfruit is highly popular among the users in UK for its affordable pricing and efficient website builder which makes it simpler and easier to create demanding websites with less coding. Moonfruit has taken thousand of its customer’s website offline after receiving threats about a cyber attack.

Moonfruit had stated that it has kept thousands of its customer websites offline for up to 12 hours in order to make necessary changes in its infrastructure and to safeguard its consumers. Moonfruit has also perceived problems last Thursday when it suffered from a 45 minute of distributed denial-of-service attack. In this attack Moonfruit computer were overwhelmed by unwanted traffic and it made the use of its legitimate services non-functional.

Moonfruit consumers suffers from being offline

Moonfruit has informed its consumers about the decision of taking down the websites for up to 12 hours from Monday and it has generated some angst among the consumers. One such consumer Reece de Ville, a filmmaker, has complained that Moonfruit has been slow in communicating this decision which has the potential to disrupt the website performance and reach.

Moonfruits users had complained that this is bad time for taking down the websites as the holiday season is in full swings which brings higher web traffic and increases the sales volume. Apart from losing money through sales another problem faced by the users is the loss of potential clients or new clients within a day. Online stores will sells items especially for the holiday season like gifts and greeting cards store will take a severe hit in this Christmas week.

Armanda Collective behind the cyber attack threat

Moonfruit has sent emails to its customers where it explained that a notorious cyber hack group called Armanda Collective is attempting to extort money out of the company. Armanda Collective had previously successfully attacked the websites of web mail companies which included Hushmail, ProtonMail, RunBox and quite a number of Greek banking institutions.

The customers have been furious and quite unhappy with the loss of sales and potential clients. But it should also be understood that Moonfruit is a victim too of unpleasant criminal act where cyber criminals are threatening its business for extorting money. Moonfruit is working with the law enforcement authorities regarding this matter and hopes to dissolve this threat at the earliest. In the mean time customers have to bear with the Moonfruit decision of keeping the hosted websites offline.