The Roomba lawnmower is finally happening

17 years after the Roomba, iRobot tackles the great outdoors.

A Roomba lawnmower has been rumored for years. The company has robomower patents going all the way back to 2008, and as recently as 2015 the company was petitioning the FCC to allow it to make its outdoor beacon navigation system legal. The original Roomba was introduced in 2002, when iRobot mostly had the home-robotics market to itself. Waiting 17 years to tackle the great outdoors means iRobot is now jumping into a crowded field of competitors, and it will have to do battle with Robomow, Husqvarna's Automower line, Honda's Miimo, and a line of mowers from Worx, among others.

Google+ shuts down April 2, all data will be deleted

Google's failed Facebook clone will be scrubbed from the Internet.

Google's support page details exactly how the G+ shutdown will go down, and it's not just freezing posts on the site. The whole site will be taken down, and everything will be deleted. "On April 2nd, your Google+ account and any Google+ pages you created will be shut down and we will begin deleting content from consumer Google+ accounts," the page reads.

Hanging out with the kids. It's been a family day today.

Apple revokes Google’s enterprise iOS certificate, shuts down internal apps

Google and Facebook were both caught violating Apple's TOS, and now both are banned.

Apple's Developer Enterprise Program allows developers to distribute iOS apps outside of the walled garden of the App Store but only under the condition that they limit this distribution to employees only. Yesterday, news broke that both Google and Facebook had built data-sucking "research" apps on Apple's enterprise app program and that both companies were caught distributing these apps to research participants outside the company. Facebook's app program was public first and was banned by Apple, with the company reiterating that "Any developer using their enterprise certificates to distribute apps to consumers will have their certificates revoked."

Happiness report: Norway is the happiest place on Earth
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-39325206

Bless the overclockers: In the data center world, liquid cooling is becoming king

"For high performance computing, you just can’t do it with air.”

In Iron Man 2, there is a moment when Tony Stark is watching a decades-old film of his deceased father, who tells him “I'm limited by the technology of my time, but one day you'll figure this out. And when you do, you will change the world.” It’s a work of fiction but the notion expressed is legitimate. The visions and ideas of technologists are frequently well ahead of the technology of their times. Star Trek may have always had it, but it took the rest of us decades to get tablets and e-readers right.

@momurda said in Gaming - What's everyone playing / hosting / looking to play:

Mass Effect Andromeda, preloaded, unlocks in 9.5 hours.

Time to take a nap to get ready.

Messy office owners, rejoice: Skype now blurs the background to your video

No need to frantically tidy things up before making a call.

The background-blurring feature has already been rolled out to Microsoft's corporate communication client, Teams, and now it's in the consumer-oriented app. While bulletproof detection of the background requires a depth-sensing camera, the approach used in Skype (and Teams) uses machine learning-derived algorithms in order to work with any camera. The algorithms have been trained to detect human outlines, including the voluminous hair that some lucky people are blessed with as well as arms and hands. Presumably this means that it will properly detect even those arms and hands that appear dismembered, appearing from off the edge of the screen. Using blur is optional, and it can be enabled on a call-by-call basis.

HP Elitebook x360 1040 G5 review: A little bit bigger, a little bit better

It's similar to HP's 13-inch convertible, but extra screen space makes a difference.

The battle of the business notebooks is in full swing as HP tries to one-up Lenovo—and itself—all in one go. HP scored a winner with an updated 13-inch Elitebook x360 it released last year. Now it's full-speed ahead with the new Elitebook x360 1040 G5, the newest version of HP's 14-inch business notebook. The 13-inch model is smaller and lighter overall, but HP offers upgraded features in this larger convertible and promises a 14-inch display in a 13-inch chassis.

Electronics banned on some US flights from Middle East
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-39333424

Users alarmed by undisclosed microphone in Nest Security System

"The on-device microphone was never intended to be a secret," Google says.

Google's Nest smart home brand is in hot water this week after news surfaced (via Daring Fireball) that its home security system, Nest Secure, shipped with an undisclosed microphone. Google activated the microphone earlier this month for Google Assistant functionality, but that meant the device sat in users' homes for up to a year as an unknown potential listening device.

Facebook VPN that snoops on users is pulled from Android store

Facebook also stops recruiting new users for controversial "Research" program.

Facebook's Onavo website still exists, but links to the Android and iOS apps are both broken. Facebook pulled the app from the iPhone and iPad App Store in August 2018 after Apple determined that Onavo violated its data-collection rules. Facebook purchased Onavo, an Israeli company, in 2013.

@Texkonc said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

Sleep is for the weak

I've been up too long. Now sleep is for the week.

Chromium-based Edge screenshots might as well be Chrome

It's early days yet, but so far Microsoft has done little to distinguish its browser.

In many ways the browser is what one would expect of a Microsoft Chromium browser: in those places where Chrome would use a Google account for syncing or a Google store for extensions, Edge-on-Chromium uses a Microsoft account and a Microsoft store. Similarly, the homepage is similar to that of Edge, using Bing pictures and Microsoft News links. Perhaps the biggest change is the settings page, which adopts a similar look-and-feel to the Windows 10 settings app—section headings down the left, the actual settings on the right.

Gorilla Glass-maker plans to produce glass suitable for folding iPhones

Glass would be more durable than the plastic polymers used in early foldables.

According to Wired, glass-maker Corning is "working on ultrathin, bendable glass that's 0.1 millimeters thick and can bend to a 5 millimeter radius" that may be usable for smartphone displays within two years. Corning produces Gorilla Glass used in Apple's iPhones, as well as in phones made by other manufacturers like LG, Asus, OnePlus, Nokia, Samsung, and more.