Samsung Claims Its New QLED TVs Are Better Than OLED TVs Slashdotby BeauHD on displays at January 1, 1970, 1:00 am (cached at January 4, 2017, 11:34 pm)

Samsung recently unveiled its latest flagship televisions at CES 2017, the QLED series. The company is challenging the notion that OLED TVs represent the pinnacle of picture quality in the living room. According to Samsung, the QLED TV represents its best achievement in image quality and viewing experience yet. The Verge reports: Of course Samsung would say that at an event meant to showcase said product. But the company insists it's made very real improvements compared to the flagship TVs it unveiled only a year ago. One of those upgrades pertains to brightness. The QLED TVs reach a peak brightness between 1,500 and 2,000 nits -- up from the 1,000 peak from 2016's lineup. Color reproduction has also been improved. The QLED sets handle DCI-P3 "accurately" and are capable of reproducing "100 percent color volume" -- something Samsung claims to be a world first. "This means they can express all colors at any level of brightness -- with even the subtlest differences visible at the QLED's peak luminance -- between 1,500 and 2,000 nits." Samsung says all of this is possible because it's using a new metal material along with the quantum dot nanocrystals. On the software end, Samsung's 2017 TVs are still powered by Tizen and feature basically the same user interface as last year. But there are some new additions like a sports mode that aggregates scores and other content from your favorite teams and an expanded Music section that lets you Shazam music as it's playing in a TV show and immediately launch that track in Spotify another streaming services. Samsung is also looking to clean up how its TVs look in your living room. New this year is a clear-colored "Invisible Connection cable" that runs from the TV to an external breakout box where you'll find all the HDMI ports and other critical connections (besides power, which is a separate input).

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Turkey accuses Syrian government of violating truce AL JAZEERA ENGLISH (AJE)(cached at January 4, 2017, 11:00 pm)

Turkish Foreign Minister warns planned peace talks in Kazakhstan could fail if violations do not end.
Turkey accuses Syrian government of violating truce AL JAZEERA ENGLISH (AJE)(cached at January 4, 2017, 11:00 pm)

Turkish Foreign Minister warns planned peace talks in Kazakhstan could fail if violations do not end.
Google's AlphaGo AI Secretively Won More Than 50 Straight Games Against World's Top Slashdotby BeauHD on ai at January 1, 1970, 1:00 am (cached at January 4, 2017, 10:34 pm)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Quartz: When Google's artificial intelligence program AlphaGo made history by taking down Korea's Lee Sedol -- one of the world's best Go players -- in a landslide 4-1 victory in March, Chinese player Ke Jie was skeptical. He famously wrote on Weibo the next day, "Even if AlphaGo can defeat Lee Sedol, it can't beat me," and has since agreed to take on the AI at an undecided time. But now even Ke, the reigning top-ranked Go player, has acknowledged that human beings are no match for robots in the complex board game, after he lost three games to an AI that mysteriously popped up online in recent days. The AI turned out to be AlphaGo in disguise. On Jan. 4, after winning more than 50 games against several of the world's best Go players, Ke included, a user registered with an ID of "Master" on two Chinese board game platforms came forward to identify itself as AlphaGo. "I'm AlphaGo's Doctor Huang," the user "Master" wrote on foxwq.com, according to screenshots from Chinese media reports. Taiwanese developer Aja Huang is a member of Google's DeepMind team behind the AI. Since Dec. 29, Master has defeated a long list of top Go players including Korea's Park Jung-hwan (world No. 3), Japan's Iyama Yuta (No. 5) and Ke in fast-paced games. He won 51 games straight before his 52nd rival, Chen Yaoye, went offline, forcing the game to be recorded as a tie. By Jan. 4 when the test was completed, Master had racked up 60 wins, plus the one tie, and zero loss, according to numerous reports (link in Chinese).

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Myanmar commission's report on Rohingya 'flawed': HRW AL JAZEERA ENGLISH (AJE)(cached at January 4, 2017, 10:30 pm)

The rights group called the report investigating alleged abuses towards Rohingya Muslims "methodologically flawed".
Myanmar commission's report on Rohingya 'flawed': HRW AL JAZEERA ENGLISH (AJE)(cached at January 4, 2017, 10:30 pm)

The rights group called the report investigating alleged abuses towards Rohingya Muslims "methodologically flawed".
Amazon's Robot Workforce Grows By 50 Percent In Just One Year Slashdotby msmash on business at January 1, 1970, 1:00 am (cached at January 4, 2017, 10:04 pm)

Amazon hires a lot of people. But the expansion of its army of orange-wheeled robots is more than keeping pace. An anonymous reader writes: E-commerce and cloud giant Amazon has revealed that it now has 45,000 robots across 20 fulfilment centres around the world. This is a 50 percent increase on the same time last year, when the company said that it employed 30,000 robots alongside its 306,000 people. Amazon uses the robots to automate the picking and packing process at large warehouses. The robots are 16in tall and weigh 145kg. They can travel at 5mph and can carry packages that weigh 317kg. The robots became part of the company's workforce when Amazon acquired Kiva Systems in 2012 for $775m.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple is Investing $1 Billion In SoftBank Slashdotby msmash on business at January 1, 1970, 1:00 am (cached at January 4, 2017, 10:04 pm)

Apple said Wednesday it plans to invest $1 billion in SoftBank's new technology fund to help finance technologies it could use in the future. From a report: SoftBank has said it is investing at least $25 billion in the fund and has been in talks with Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund for an investment that could go up to $45 billion. "We believe their new fund will speed the development of technologies which may be strategically important to Apple," company spokesman Josh Rosenstock told Reuters. SoftBank has also said that it plans to make future large-scale investments via the tech fund, rather than on its own.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

SVNPlus-TagProtect-3.18.0 search.cpan.orgby Joseph C. Pietras at January 1, 1970, 1:00 am (cached at January 4, 2017, 10:03 pm)

Perl extension for Subversion tag protection
Perl-Critic-Policy-HTTPCookies-0.53 search.cpan.orgby Tom Hukins at January 1, 1970, 1:00 am (cached at January 4, 2017, 10:03 pm)

Avoid using HTTP::Cookies
Perl-Critic-Policy-HTTPCookies-0.53 search.cpan.orgby Tom Hukins at January 1, 1970, 1:00 am (cached at January 4, 2017, 10:03 pm)

Avoid using HTTP::Cookies
Color-Spectrum-1.14 search.cpan.orgby Jeffrey Hayes Anderson at January 1, 1970, 1:00 am (cached at January 4, 2017, 10:03 pm)

Just another HTML color generator.
Color-Spectrum-1.14 search.cpan.orgby Jeffrey Hayes Anderson at January 1, 1970, 1:00 am (cached at January 4, 2017, 10:03 pm)

Just another HTML color generator.
SVNPlus-TagProtect-3.18.0 search.cpan.orgby Joseph C. Pietras at January 1, 1970, 1:00 am (cached at January 4, 2017, 10:03 pm)

Perl extension for Subversion tag protection
Encode-Wechsler-0.03 search.cpan.orgby Jeffrey Hayes Anderson at January 1, 1970, 1:00 am (cached at January 4, 2017, 10:03 pm)

Just another Wechsler encoder/decoder