schwit1 shares a report from VentureBeat: As physical retail struggles amid the global pandemic, storeowners are rapidly trying to adapt to new realities that also include growing competition from Amazon. But a French startup called Storelift believes it can create a new convenience store concept that leans on many of the same AI and computer vision tools used in Amazon Go stores to reinvent the shopping and checkout experience. This week, Storelift announced that it has launched its first two stores under the name "Boxy." The Boxy stores are repurposed shipping containers that can be plopped down in various urban neighborhoods that lack good shopping options. The founders believe their approach demonstrates how businesses can exploit new shopping niches with the help of sensors, data, and AI that allows them to optimize their inventory and reduce costs. To shop at Boxy, a customer downloads the Boxy app on their smartphone and then scans the QR code to enter the store. When customers take a product, it is identified through the computer vision algorithms and the weight sensors on the shelves. When the customer leaves, they scan their QR code again and checkout happens automatically. The key to improving efficiency is the data the company is collecting as people shop. The shelves that detect weight, along with computer vision cameras, know when a product is picked up, looked at, and then either put in the basket or back on the shelf. In some cases, because the company knows a customer is possibly interested in a product, they can offer a discount on the spot to nudge them along. Internally, the company's machine learning system is analyzing gestures and decisions made by the customer to suggest improvements in product selection, pricing, and placement.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Every day, millions of people download or stream pirated content including movies, TV-shows, games, MP3s, and books. Many of these files originate from a small and tightly organized 'community' commonly known as The Scene, which is made up of dozens of smaller 'release groups.' These groups tend to operate in the shadows with little or no public profile. At least, that's what the unwritten rules dictate. That's for good reason as the people involved risk high prison sentences when caught. It's very rare for Scene group members to get busted but last week the US Government claimed a major victory. With help from international law enforcement partners, several raids and arrests were carried out, with the SPARKS group at the center of it all. As soon as the first rumors about the raids started spreading on Tuesday, the number of Scene releases started to drop. A day later, when confirmation came in, it became even quieter. With data provided by Predb.org we take a closer look at these dropoffs, showing that some categories are affected more than others. Before delving into detailed groups, it's worth pointing out the overall impact, which can be summarized in two numbers. On Wednesday, August 19, there were 1944 new releases. A week later, a day after the first raids, this number was down to 168 releases. The drop in new releases happened across all categories.

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Amazon has deleted approximately 20,000 product reviews, written by seven of its top 10 UK reviewers, following a Financial Times investigation (Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source) into suspicious activity. From a report: The FT found evidence the users were profiting from posting thousands of five-star ratings. Those who had their reviews deleted included Justin Fryer, the number one-ranked reviewer on Amazon.co.uk, who in August alone reviewed $19,000 worth of products, from smartphones to electric scooters to gym equipment, giving his five-star approval on average once every four hours. Overwhelmingly, those products were from little-known Chinese brands, who often offer to send reviewers products for free in return for positive posts. Mr Fryer then appears to have sold many of the goods on eBay, making nearly $26,500 since June. When contacted by the FT, Mr Fryer denied posting paid-for reviews -- before deleting his review history from his Amazon profile page. Mr Fryer said the eBay listings, which described products as "unused" and "unopened", were for duplicates. At least two other top 10-ranked Amazon UK reviewers removed their history after Mr Fryer. Another prominent reviewer, outside the top 10, removed his name and reviews, and changed his profile picture to display the words "please go away". The FT's analysis suggested that nine of Amazon's current UK top 10 providers of ratings were engaged in suspicious behaviour, with huge numbers of five-star reviews of exclusively Chinese products from unknown brands and manufacturers. Many of the same items were seen by the FT in groups and forums offering free products or money in exchange for reviews.

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People forget when they say that DJ Trump will declare victory on election night that he doesn't get to say that, it's the network statisticians who call elections. They know when enough votes have been counted, and I don't think too many people will believe Trump if none of them agree.

BTW, when I was a kid growing up in NYC I had a lot of close calls with NYPD. I never worried about them killing me. It never occurred to me. They were mostly pranks. That's the kind of kid I was and who I hung out with. But we did have a couple of student strikes. We also had a run-in with the teachers union. They totally beat the crap out of us, politically. We were stupid. When they said they wanted to help, we believed them.

I'm almost done with the FX series Devs. Really slow start, but it picks up toward the end. Now that I'm in the second to last episode I can't wait to find out what happens next.

This week's Trippi podcast is fascinating. Guest is Republican strategist and Lincoln Project founder Stuart Stevens. Great to hear the A-B comparison now when they're both on the same side, with Biden. Trippi is a fantastic interviewer, I always wonder why he doesn't run for office himself.

As schools start around the US, many face a problem with getting all their students connected for virtual classes. To help with that crisis, T-Mobile has launched its grant program that aims to eliminate the so-called homework gap. From a report: Unveiled a year ago, Project 10Million will provide hotspots and free connectivity for millions of students around the country. Now that T-Mobile and Sprint have merged, the combined company has hammered out the project's specifics and is opening it up to schools on Thursday. It has allocated $10.7 billion over the life of the 10-year program, up from the initial $10 billion pledge in late 2019. "Our mission is to not stop until we've provided the connectivity and devices for students to be connected who can't afford to be connected, so that they can do their homework," T-Mobile Chief Marketing Officer Matt Staneff said in an interview ahead of the news. "We believe we can make a difference, and we're taking this on at scale." Students who are part of the national free- and reduced-price lunch program for low-income families will qualify for Project 10Million. A school district applies for the grant and is able to specify the needs of its students. It doesn't share personal, identifying data with T-Mobile, aside from a ZIP code at times to be sure students have steady T-Mobile service where they live. The schools handle the distribution of the hotspots and can tap into dedicated T-Mobile support for setting up the device or other troubleshooting.

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The Federal Communications Commission on Friday said it could cost an estimated $1.8 billion to remove and replace Huawei and ZTE equipment that's in US telecommunications networks receiving federal funds. From a report: In June, the FCC officially classified Huawei and ZTE as national security threats, though since 2019, the agency has barred carriers from using its $8.3 billion a year Universal Service Fund to purchase equipment from the two Chinese tech giants. US President Donald Trump also signed legislation in March that stops carriers from using government funds to buy network equipment from Huawei and ZTE. "By identifying the presence of insecure equipment and services in our networks, we can now work to ensure that these networks -- especially those of small and rural carriers -- rely on infrastructure from trusted vendors," said FCC Chairman Ajit Pa in a release, adding that he would "once again strongly urge" Congress to appropriate funding to reimburse carriers.

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Mark Zuckerberg tells "Axios on HBO" that Facebook is imposing new election rules to deter use of the platform to spread of misinformation and even violence, and to help voters see the results as "legitimate and fair." From a report: The new measures, announced Thursday, include throwing a flag on posts by candidates who claim premature victory, and forbidding new ads within a week of Election Day. "There is, unfortunately, I think, a heightened risk of civil unrest in the period between voting and a result being called," Zuckerberg told Axios' Mike Allen. "I think we need to be doing everything that we can to reduce the chances of violence or civil unrest in the wake of this election."

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The terrorist group is defeated and routed. But its backup plan survives. From a report: It all began on October 27, 2019. Rumour was, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, the leader of Isis, was dead. Nothing was confirmed, but already the jihadist world online was thrumming with excitement and trepidation. "I was walking through an airport," Moustafa Ayad tells me. "Jet-lagged out of my mind." A deputy director of the counter-extremism think tank Institute of Strategic Dialogue (ISD), Ayad tries to stay on top of the constant struggles and skirmishes, retreats and resurgences between Isis and their many enemies online. That day, as he scrolled through his phone, a blitz of Isis propaganda stared back at him. The digital Jihad was raising a dirge to Baghdadi on Twitter. Flitting from account to pro-Isis account, Ayad noticed something strange. Some accounts carried short, discreet links, not within their tweets, but nestled in their biographies. He clicked. The link, he realised, was not quite like any other he'd ever followed before. On his phone, Ayad saw folder after folder of meticulously catalogued terrorist content. "I thought it was a joke," Ayad says. "Some kind of scam." In the echoing marbled expanse of Dubai International Airport, on public Wi-Fi, in a Starbucks queue, he had stumbled upon a gigantic, sprawling cache of Isis material. He clicked on a PowerPoint presentation, one of countless now in front of him. "Al Qaeda Airlines", it said: a case study of the mechanics of hijacking planes, making your own chloroform, and the cell structure needed to organise a coordinated terrorist attack. Just then, a dim tannoy announced his flight. Over the weeks that followed, Ayad and his colleagues at the ISD began their journey through the cache. At first glance, the cache looks like a bunch of files on DropBox -- its colour palette an on-brand Isis black-and-white, with a roster of ordinary folders. But the first thing you notice is the size. Its 4,000 folders hold over a terabyte and a half of multimedia multilingual content, spanning Arabic, English, German, French, Spanish, Russian, Bangla, Turkish, and Pashto. "It's a blueprint for terrorism, complete with footnotes" Ayad tells me. "It's everything anyone with an inclination for violence would need to carry out an attack." The cache's content is a blend of the official products of Isis itself with those of often more obscure precursors, such as the Tawhid wal-Jihad Group, who fought coalition forces in Iraq, and the umbrella organisation of other insurgent groups, Majlis Shura al-Mujahidin. A small amount of it -- just a few per cent by size -- captures in screeds and sermons the ideas of key ideologues of Isis itself. The key personality in the "Fatwas over the Airwaves" folder, for instance, is Turki al Banali, a Bahraini cleric-turned-recruiter who in each episode desperately gives the core concepts of Salafi Jihadism an Isis-friendly spin. Much of the stash, however, simply portrays daily life within Isis, back when the terrorist group still controlled a chunk of territory sitting astride Syria and Iraq. There are school curricula covering the six core subjects that, some estimates believe, were once taught to 130,000 children: English, PE, Arabic, Koranic Studies, Geography & History and a subject called "'ideology", a course of indoctrination in Isis's party lines expounding on the death and destruction awaiting all those who strayed outside of them. It is a mix of the banal and the horrifying -- conjugating verbs and killing the infidels, where early readers learn that "S is for sniper" and "G is for grenade".

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Hmm according to this Verge article the feature is not disabled in GMail by default. I checked my settings in GMail, and I have it enabled, so the puzzle gets more weird.

A longtime friend uses Mailchimp to send a periodic newsletter. They have a feature that allows the author to re-send the mail to people who haven't opened it. Here's the writeup. They don't say how they know it wasn't opened. I was under the impression that mail apps prevent this kind of invasive behavior. People used to use one-pixel images with search params, but I think the email apps now copy the image and replace it in the HTML, to prevent the sender from knowing. So I told my friend I don't think it's possible. Pretty sure that's right, but I guess it depends on the app you use for email. I use GMail. I think these days enough people use GMail to make the Mailchimp feature useless. BTW, I did open the first email, and it treated me as if I hadn't. More evidence that the feature doesn't really work. If you have insight, please comment.

Antibodies that people make to fight the new coronavirus last for at least four months after diagnosis and do not fade quickly as some earlier reports suggested, scientists have found. From a report: Tuesday's report, from tests on more than 30,000 people in Iceland, is the most extensive work yet on the immune system's response to the virus over time, and is good news for efforts to develop vaccines. If a vaccine can spur production of long-lasting antibodies as natural infection seems to do, it gives hope that "immunity to this unpredictable and highly contagious virus may not be fleeting," scientists from Harvard University and the U.S. National Institutes of Health wrote in a commentary published with the study in the New England Journal of Medicine. One of the big mysteries of the pandemic is whether having had the coronavirus helps protect against future infection, and for how long. Some smaller studies previously suggested that antibodies may disappear quickly and that some people with few or no symptoms may not make many at all. The new study was done by Reykjavik-based deCODE Genetics, a subsidiary of the U.S. biotech company Amgen, with several hospitals, universities and health officials in Iceland. The country tested 15% of its population since late February, when its first COVID-19 cases were detected, giving a solid base for comparisons.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: "Mulan" producer Jason Reed was in Mexico City last March promoting his soon-to-be-released film when he got the call that Walt Disney was postponing its debut due to the coronavirus. What followed was a summer of discussions between Disney, Reed and director Niki Caro as the company wrestled with when and how to release the $200 million live-action remake of its 1998 animated hit. This weekend they'll all get to see if they made the right call. Disney is making "Mulan" available on its Disney+ streaming service for an extra $30 starting Friday. The film now joins others, including Universal's "Trolls World Tour" and Warner Bros.' "Scoob!," in bypassing theaters and going directly to consumers. It's a trend that has many in Hollywood concerned about the future of films in theaters. They might be worrying too much. Without theaters, Disney and other studios would struggle to replace the revenue they have historically gotten from releasing big-budget films first in cinemas, then home video and later TV. "They understand how important the theater is as a channel for distribution," said Steve Nason, research director at the consulting firm Parks Associates. "They just couldn't wait any longer." Prior to the pandemic, "Mulan" had been scheduled to hit theaters March 27. The company had already held the red-carpet premiere and spent heavily on advertising. But the film was postponed three times before its Disney+ debut was set. Reviews so far are fairly strong. "Disney's spectacular do-over deserves the biggest screen possible," read the headline in Variety. Rotten Tomatoes gives the movie a 79% fresh rating, showing most critics agree. Disney is trying a hybrid approach. It's releasing the film in theaters in Asia, where cinemas have been back open longer and the Asian cast and story are likely to have strong appeal. In the U.S. and Europe, "Mulan" will be online, where Disney+ has already built a sizable subscriber base.

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