Hasta La Gadget!

WASHINGTON — A report suggesting Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas would soon step down has been soundly rejected by Thomas’ wife. 

Ginni Thomas summarily dismissed Sunday’s lightly sourced report in the Washington Examiner, originally headlined, “End of conservative Supreme Court: Clarence Thomas may be next to leave.” She also had choice words for the writer, columnist Paul Bedard, who cited unnamed “court watchers” for the suggestion that the justice is “mulling retirement after the presidential election.”

“For all those who are contacting me about the possibility of my husband retiring, I say — unsubscribe from those false news sources and carry on with your busy lives,” Ginni Thomas wrote on Facebook hours after the article appeared. “IT. IS. BOGUS! Paul Bedard needs to find a phone in his life and unnamed sources are worth as much as their transparency is.”

In a comment under her post, Ginni Thomas added: “Distracting Click-Bait by desperate people who want clicks…..disgusting of Paul Bedard and more now.”

The Examiner article said the justice “has been considering retirement for a while and never planned to stay until he died,” citing a mysterious “they” as the source.

Following Ginni Thomas’ retort, the Examiner amended the article online — changing the headline and adding Ginni Thomas’ rejoinder, but without noting the article had been updated. The new headline: “Wife of Clarence Thomas dismisses justice’s retirement talk as ‘bogus.'”

Bedard on Monday stood by his sources, but did not say when his article had been changed to reflect Ginni Thomas’ comments. 

“I respect my sources as well as Ginni and Justice Thomas,” Bedard said in a statement to The Huffington Post, which he also provided to The Daily Mail. “Just the thought of him leaving has put the court’s direction on the political front burner and conservatives are telling me today that they hope Ginni is right.”

Lest anyone think Justice Thomas is slowing down, he’s by far one of the court’s most prolific justices in written output. So far in the current term, he’s authored the most opinions of all the justices.

And though he doesn’t speak much from the bench, Thomas on Monday announced the lead opinion in a case that appeared to grant broad powers to police officers who seek to detain citizens without reasonable suspicion.

With major decisions likely before June’s end on immigration, abortion — and especially affirmative action — we can expect much from Thomas in the coming days.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Many people are betting on bots becoming the new apps.

My co-founder and I are two of those people. Before I tell you more about why that is, let’s take a paragraph to explain what bots are.

What are bots?

The bots I’m referring to are the so-called chat-bots. They’re “smart” programs that you can have a conversation with, and get help from, via the messaging app of your choice. This could be a bot that sends out a survey to your team and then sends you a recap (check out the bot How.dy for Slack). Or it could be a bot serving you with the best news for people like yourself via Facebook Messenger (check out CNN’s bot for Facebook).

How bots can change online learning.

When we first founded our startup in 2014, our idea was to create a simple format that would help busy people like ourselves to work on our personal development. We knew that there must be curious people who felt frustrated about not having enough time to learn new things. We built a simple format where experts easily could turn their knowledge into bite-sized learning chunks. We then distributed the lessons to these people via a platform we knew they used obsessively: email.

Since day one, we have always said “never” to people asking us if we’re going to release an app.

I’m not trying to sound conservative here, in fact, I’m the opposite of conservative.

We knew that the thresholds to learning can’t be low enough. If it’s too hard to access the lessons, or if it takes too many steps, people will move on to something more enjoyable, like staring at food pictures on Instagram.

Learning via email turned out to be a huge success. More than 60,000 people have taken our microcourses. More than seven out of ten users read our lessons every day and less than 4 percent of people subscribing to a course quit it in advance.

There are however some limitations to email:

Email is mostly used for work.
Email is not very social.
Email is not very popular among people under 20.

We’re embracing the bot revolution

With these limitations in mind, we embrace the bot movement. In short, having our bite-sized courses delivered via messaging platforms will open up a lot of new benefits for our users.

1. The courses will become social.

Imagine talking about something you just learned in a Slack channel or in a group-message in Messenger. This will make our courses like an automated facilitators in a study circle.

2. It will become easier to consume a course via a channel that fits best for the course.

I really believe our work-related courses will be perfect to read and discuss using Slack. The same wouldn’t go for our courses on relationships or mental health. Thanks to bots, our learners will have more freedom to choose what they want to learn where.

3. The courses will become more interactive.

Bite-sized is still our mantra but in order to take our courses from good to great, we have to personalize them. Thanks to the APIs provided by most messaging platforms, the threshold to create interactive services has never been lower.

4. Bots will remove some of the friction

If you ask me, the main feature of any online learning should be “frictionlessness”. This is often done with a mix of smart technology and well-produced content. The bot trend will allow for people to consume learning via a familiar format which in itself reduces a lot of barriers that online learning tools often include (logins, accounts, videos etc.).

The future of online learning will happen via messaging services.

Old school services like Udemy and Coursera will still be around but mainly to host advanced courses or courses that will get you a special certificate or degree. For any other kind of learning a bot with some simple AI will do.

I think we might be on to something.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

By Alex Glenn

Driverless cars aren’t yet available to the masses, but that day isn’t far off. Sounds exciting? Maybe not yet.

A recent survey from the University of Michigan polled more than 600 drivers and found that only 15% were in favor of self-driving cars. About 46% said they prefer cars without any automated driving capability, according to the research by Brandon Schoettle and Michael Sivak.

This dismissive attitude may seem naive given the autonomous technology already available in cars, such as automatic braking and parking assistance. But it’s understandable. “Remember, few people have even seen a driverless car,” points out Donald Light, an analyst who specializes in such vehicles for technology consultant Celent. “It’s only natural for them to respond that way.”

Driverless cars may not be a rare sight for long. Industry analyst IHS Automotive expects that the first several thousand will be sold in the U.S. in 2020. And by 2035, more than 75 million driverless cars will have hit the streets globally, potentially leading to far fewer car accidents and even cheaper car insurance rates — up to 30% lower, according to a report from Deloitte University Press.

Is that enough to transform us into nondriving enthusiasts? Maybe not yet. But public unease could turn into acceptance — and ultimately dependence — faster than you might think.

Driverless car fears at a glance: How worried are we?
To gauge people’s openness to this landmark shift in transportation and to the degree of vehicle automation, the University of Michigan study asked survey respondents to rate their level of apprehension about riding in a completely driverless car. Here’s what they said.

• “Not at all concerned”: 9.7%
• “Slightly concerned”: 23.6%
• “Moderately concerned”: 29.4%
• “Very concerned”: 37.2%

Drivers have misplaced trust in themselves
In large part, the fear of driverless cars stems from an inability to trust a machine over one’s own instincts. An overwhelming 94% of respondents wanted to have the option in a self-driving car of taking control with a steering wheel plus gas and brake pedals.

The impulse to keep powerful technology in check is understandable. But the idea of overriding the self-driving functionality sounds better than it is. After all, humans don’t have a sterling track record themselves when it comes to decision-making on the road.

“A strong case can be made that driverless cars without human controls are actually safer,” Light says. Indeed, if certain projections hold true, it would appear humans can’t get out of the driver’s seat soon enough. Research and consultant group McKinsey & Co., for instance, says vehicle crashes are expected to go from being the second-most common cause of accidental death to ninth by the middle of this century, thanks mainly to driverless cars.

Even if we wanted to take over the wheel, knowing when to intervene would be difficult in real time, Light says. Say you’re watching a video on your phone while your car is humming along. If trouble occurred, you’d have only a split second to re-engage, assess the problem and try to avert danger — and in doing so, you likely would prevent your car’s computer from doing a better job.

History suggests fears will pass
What does this early apprehension mean for the ultimate success of driverless cars? Not a heck of a lot, if history is any indication. Odds are that driverless cars are the latest in a long line of innovations that take time to become popular.

“In 1994, people were terrified of the internet,” Light notes with a chuckle. Now, imagine your life without it.

Or consider the airplane. Most people initially viewed the idea of flight as dangerous and crazy. Now, we get on planes without much thought — and pay even less heed to the autopilot that does most of the flying.

If you want a reminder of how stubborn humans can be in the face of change, look no farther than your own garage. There, Light says, you’ll find a certain automotive invention that initially was even more widely rejected by consumers: the internal combustion engine. Most folks — and all horses — have since come around.

Public doubt will diminish
For now, the sheer oddity of driverless cars makes the concept tough to embrace. Once these vehicles hit the streets in large numbers, however, their expected effectiveness and safety record likely will sway all but the most passionate of gearheads.

Light, for one, is confident that self-driving cars will be safer than human-operated ones when they’re made available. “Within the 2020s, maybe the 2030s, we’ll likely look back and find it very odd we were ever afraid,” he says. “Your kids will probably be carpooling in one of these vehicles.”

» MORE: State Farm may be prepping for the ‘end of auto insurance’

Alex Glenn is a staff writer at NerdWallet, a personal finance website. Email: aglenn@nerdwallet.com.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Ridley Scott’s last Alien film, Prometheus, ended with Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and the head of cyborg David (Michael Fassbender) flying off to continue the story. So it was a surprise when the sequel, Alien: Covenant, was announced and Fassbender, but not Rapace, was in the cast. Now it turns out she is.

Read more…

This week insider sources in China have revealed that Samsung is ramping up supply of OLED panels to make way for the next iPhone. This comes as little surprise to the masses following leaks and rumors surrounding the iPhone 7, as an OLED panel for an iPhone has been expected since last year at this time. It’s according to Nikkei … Continue reading