Apple, Facebook and Google ban Rifle emoji from Olympics Update

Technology Giants Ban Rifle Emoji from List of Images

Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft have all come together to stop a rifle emoji from being added to the list of images made available to the users on their smartphones. In the latest update this month, the emoji is likely to join the keyboard listing, though members of the Unicode Consortium, responsible in regulating emoji have voted unanimously to eliminate it in an attempt which the body has described as `bizarre and unusual’.

According to BuzzFeed, Apple had led the decision and had been supported by all the 12 technology giants who are voting members of Unicode, inclusive of Facebook, Google and Microsoft. The pistol emoji would still be available though Apple has mentioned that it would not add the rifle to its services. The resolution of blocking the rifle from being included in the update is not an inconsequential problem.

A man in France, earlier this year, had been sentenced to three months in prison for sending his ex-girlfriend a `death threat in the form of an image’ which was known as the pistol emoji. Though the pistol emoji tends to have no sporting link, the rifle emoji was projected to `represent shooting as a sport’ including hunting and marksmanship as per a submission to Unicode, which is the cause new icons are added.

Rifle – Part of Olympic Themed Group of Icons

This is not the first occasion that Silicon Valley companies have obstructed new emoji from their keyboards. On its macOS keyboard, Apple does not contain the knife and gun emoji while Microsoft had earlier included a middle finger while other companies did not include the same. The rifle had been set to be added to the list of emojis as a part of an Olympic themed group of icons that had included fencing, gymnastics, karate and swimming.

 In the Unicode 9.0 featuring 72 new emoji which will be added along with new animals and foods are fingers crossed, face palm, shrug and hand shake emoji. Unicode has added a cheese emoji, unicorn and burrito in its last round of add-ons. If one wishes to use emoji to actual words, you can now read classic works such as Moby Dick, the Bible as well as plays of Shakespeare, adaptations comprising of YOLO Juliet in pictograms which is due to the enterprising translators and an increasing palette of the little cartoons.

Unicode Approved Emoji – Universal

One will be unable to transcribe accurately The Patriot or American Sniper into emoji since the rifle emoji does not seem to exist. In the firearms collection of emoji, it is handguns all the way down. One of the few weapons in an emoji vocabulary that comprise of some 1800 characters is the revolver and an update is scheduled to be released soon. Unicode 9.0 would be bringing in 72 new emoji with it. A rifle emoji had been decided though it did not come up.

According to unnamed source who had spoken with Buzzfeed News, in a move led by Apple and supported by Microsoft, members of the Unicode Consortium had planned to nullity the rifle at the last moment. The Unicode Consortium silently decides which emoji tends to make it to the big tech platforms. Unlike personalized emoji which tend to need third party applications to view such as Kim Kardashian’s Kimoji, once they are introduced, the emoji approved by the Unicode group tend to become, basically, universal.

OnePlus 3 Review

OnePlus 3 Termed – Apple Killer

OnePlus has gradually grown to become a most wanted in spite of it being considered a loser to Samsung and Apple. The introduction of its OnePlus 3 would bestrengthening this reputation. OnePlus has been termed as an Apple killer and though it is doubtful of toppling the Californian behemoth, its new handset could take away a huge fraction of its loyal supporters. The OnePlus 3not only looks to be a good device but feels much more expensive than the price tag of £309. Similar like the HTC One Series together with several other modern smartphones, the OnePlus 3 is designed from a single piece of aluminium with attractive anodised finish having its back somewhat curved.

The metal edges are slightly rounded with slim diamond-cut chamfers which tend to catch the light just suitable giving our a reflective glimmer now and then. Due to its heavy aluminium alloy body, it tends to feel sturdy from the plastic casing of similar valued Android phones like the LG G4. The OnePlus 3 will be delivered with a pre-installed screen protector for additional shield. With a thickness of 7.3mm it is significantly thinner than the 9.9mm OnePlus 2 and its 5.5-inch 1080p Optic Amoled display tends to have `one of the thinnest bezels in the world’.

Bezel – Fine/Slim

This exceptionally thin bezel means that the phone does not feel big than the iPhone 6S and does not tend to feel as large as the 6S Plus, in spite of the nearly similar measurements. However, on the shortcoming, the thin bezel means that holding the phone could be problematic. The user would frequently select menus as well as app on the edges of the screen by mistake and having to hold it as it is delicate weakens away from the sturdy first impression.

While indoors, with the brightness set at around 50%, the screen tends to look quite bright. Its bezel seems fine and slim and hence the content on the screen seems to control the front panel. The screen is covered by Corning Gorilla Glass 4 which is so thoroughly laminated that the contents seem to practically float on the surface of the glass. The OnePlus 3 tends to run OxygenOS which is this years’ version 3, built above Android Marshmallow.

Dash Charge Technology

A noticeable thing regarding OnePlus’ software is that it tends to look and feel just like the regular stock Android though with some few twists. Within the OnePlus 3 is a top-of-the-line Snapdragon 820 process and it is quad-core. It has been paired with a huge 6GB RAM to make sure that one may never feel that the phone is lethargic. As the 6GB RAM tends to be yet new in the Android section, OnePlus has merely improved some of its built-in module to make use of it, in order that most of the time the complete memory will not be utilised.

Like several other Marshmallow phones, Google’s Doze mode means one could leave the OnePlus 3, overnight in standby mode and would only lose around a few percent from the battery level. Moreover, if the OnePlus 3 tends to run out of juice, it has the Dash Charge technology which seems to work the way VOOC flash charging does, which is used by the OPPO F1 Plus.

You could get around 60% charge from a 30 minute of charging on plugged in the wall while using the phone simultaneously. Charging from zero to full, in some cases, takes about 75 minutes and can be done without the phone heating too much, which is due to the thick USB cable that dispels heat as it tends to pump 20W of power to the phone.

Motorola’s Newest Phone Moto Z Force Is Rugged and Super Thin

Motorola’s Flagship Handset –Moto Z/Moto Z Force

Struggling smartphone maker Motorola will be releasing two flagship handsets, the Moto Z together with the luxurious Moto Z Force. The two designs portrays the parent company of Moto, Lenovo embracing the modular smartphone trend.Ashton Kutcher, Lenovo product engineer, while pacing the stage at a press event in San Francisco, had called the Moto Z` a redesign of the phone from the ground up’ associating it to ground-breaking Motorola handsets such as the StarTac and Razr.

The handsets did not look as innovative as those market-upending devices. The latest Moto Z is made from military aircraft-grade aluminium and stainless less and is durable yet razor thin. It provides high-end specs, 5.5-inch Quad HD display, and Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor with 4GB of RAM and 32 GB or 64 GB of storage inside together with lightning fast charging. It also has a 13-megapixel camera towards the back as well as a 5-migapixel sensor in front and is simple 5.2mm thick. One can also get more space for pictures, videos and apps by adding a microSD card up to 2 TB. After the first Droid Razr, this is the next phone in that line.

Has ShatterShield Technology

The front facing 5MP camera comprises of a wide-angle lens which seems great in accommodating friends in an image and with an additional flash on the front, the image looks it’s best even in insufficient light. The Z Force is said to have the ShatterShield technology of Motorola which means that even if the phone is dropped on a marble floor or thrown across, it does not seem to break.

The Z Force tends to represent all the best Droid ideas, unbreakable screen, super-thin body as well as the customization of the Moto X. The Moto Moda seems to be the real selling point and on attaching an accessory the 16-pin port towards the back of the phone, the Z tends to become something novel.

A projector known as InstaShare tends to make the phone large though adds a big battery and kickstand, turning the phone into a wall-sized screen. A speaker has mentioned that it is another built with JBL. It is essential to note that Google’s modular smartphone initiative, Project Ara, had begun as a Motorola project. The spirit has not left even if Ara did.


However, the Moto Z phones does not seem to be quite modular the way Project Ara tends to be where Ara phones enables you to swap screens, cameras as well as batteries. The approach of Motorola is somewhat like what LG did with its latest G5, wherein one tends to plug extra modules in an already complete phone.

Moreover, Motorola tends to have an easier switching mechanism and Moto Mods seems to be a better name for the modules than the LG’s `Friends’.The Moto Z will be arriving this summer for Verizon customers, while the others would be getting it later in the year. Motorola has been working with the developers in building mods and envisages everything from huge battery to a laptop dock to a virtual keyboard. The arena is the same as the other modular phone.

Metamaterial Lens is Thinner than the Light It Bends and Focuses

Light-Warping Metamaterials Lens

A lens has been developed which seems to be thinner than the waves of light it tends to focus which has been made from light-warping metamaterials. It is expected that these lenses may one day replace the heavier glass lensed being utilised in everything from microscopes to phone cameras. A curved glass surface in normal lenses of a few millimetres or even centimetres thick tends to redirect the light rays to a common focal point.

To enhance the image, for instance to remove distortion or ensure different wavelengths of light, all seem to get focused appropriately and one will have to keep adding glass layers.This results in the cameras, telescopes and microscopes being limited in part by the size and weight of the lenses they may need. Reza Khorasaninejad, who has designed the new lens with team led by Federico Capasso of Harvard University, had commented that `virtual reality has the same problem and that they want to have high purpose imaging system but what they will end up having is heavy helmets’.

Metamaterials Bend Light – Common Point

In comparison, metamaterials tends to bend light towards a common point utilising structures which seems to be small or smaller than the wavelengths of the light waves itself. Khorasaninejad states that `the lens is flat though it is called virtual curvature. Utilising a beam of electrons, `nanofins’ had been carved by the team, 600 nanometre-tall blocks which together tend to resemble the worlds’ smallest Stonehenge, from a block of titanium dioxide.

They fixed that lens on a thin piece of glass which tends to provide a stiff backing depriving the focus of any light. Through the titanium oxide lens, the nanofins tend to rotate at various angles in order to capture the polarised light that enables them to pull light rays together. The three lenses were examined, tuned to red, green and violet light and each could focus light more harshly than a 55-millimetre thick Nikon microscope lens having same optical properties although the 600-nanometre-thick metamaterial lens has been 100,000 times thinner than the Nikon.

This design, unlike the earlier metamaterial lenses which seemed to handle visible wavelengths, did not lose much light in the procedure.

Entirely Novel Way of Constructing Lens

John Pendry of Imperial College, London had commented that `this is an entirely novel way of constructing a lens and still cannot compete with a glass lens in handling various colours at once, but several application could work with monochromatic light.

The team has plans in expansion of lens’s colour range. Khorasaninejad has mentioned that `the first step was to make a lens which at least could do a good job in the visible and the next step is to do colour correction’.

According to him the most exciting potential applications is in wearable optics like virtual reality and augmented reality. He further added that `any good imaging system present is heavy since the thick lenses need to be stacked on top of each other and no one desires to wear a heavy helmet for a couple of hours.

This technique could reduce weight and volume and shrink lenses thinner than a sheet of paper and imagine the possibilities of wearable optics, flexible contact lenses or telescopes in space’.

Prisoners’ Code Word Caught by Software That Eavesdrops on Calls

Reuters

Machine Learning System – Listen Hours of Recording

Recently a jail in the Midwest had utilised a machine learning system created by a London firm, Intelligent Voice, to listen on the thousands of hours of recording that had been generated each month. Search engines have been moving beyond the web and in the disordered real world and are finding odd things going on. Every call in or out of US prison tends to get recorded since it is important to know what has been said because some of the inmates tend to use phones for the purpose of illegal business with the outside world.

However the recordings tend to generate large amount of audio which seems to be prohibitively expensive to monitor with the human ears.None at the prison were aware of the code word till the software began stirring through the calls. The software saw phrase three-way coming up again and again in the calls and was one of the most common non-trivial words or phrases which had been used. The prison officials, at first were astonished by the devastating popularity of what they presumed seemed to be a sexual reference.

None Aware of Code

They then worked out that it was a code. The prisoners are only permitted to call a few earlier agreed contacts. Hence if a convict needed to speak to a person on a number that was not on their list, they would call their contacts or close relative asking for a `three-way’ with the person they intend to talk to, code for dialling a third party into the call. No one running the surveillance of the phone at the prison had been aware of the code till the software gave indication through the recordings.

 This explains the speed and scale of analysis which machine-learning processes tend to bring to the world. Initially, Intelligent Voice had developed the software to be used by UK banks which could record their call in complying with industry regulations. In the case of prisons, this seemed to generate a large amount of audio data which is hard to search through.

Nigel Cannings, the CEO of the company has stated that the breakthrough came when he decided to see what could have happened if he pointed a machine-learning system at the waveform of the voice data, its pattern of spikes as well as troughs instead of the direct audio recording.

Harness Powerful Prevailing Techniques

This system seemed to work amazingly. Preparing his system on this visual demonstration enabled him to harness powerful prevailing techniques created for image classification. He commented that he built this dialect classification system centred on pictures of the human voice. The trick enabled his system to develop its own models in recognizing speech patterns as well as accents which seemed as good as the best hand-coded one prevailing, models that were built by dialect and computer experts.

 Neil Glackin, developer of Intelligent Voice had stated that `in their first run they were getting something like 88% accuracy. The software thereafter trains itself to transcribe speech utilising recordings of US congressional hearings, corresponding to the audio with the transcripts.

The power of machine which tends to listen and watch is not what they can perform better than human eyes or ears but tend to perform still worse when challenged with data from the real world. Similar to all applications of computation, their power tends to lie in scale, speed and relative cheapness of processing.