Hasta La Gadget!

The thing about taking your dogs out to public areas is that you’ve got to be responsible when it comes to picking up their poop. After all if you don’t like it if another person were to poop in the park in the open, how is leaving behind your dog’s poop any different, right? Unfortunately not all dog owners feel this way, or maybe sometimes it goes unnoticed.

This means that there is a chance that your park could be littered with scatterings of dog poop. However Dutch entrepreneur Gerben Lievers has decided to do something about it, and he has done it using the power of drones where these drones will actually fly around looking for dog poop to scoop up and dispose of.

Lievers’ team has created a drone prototype called the Watchdog 1 which uses thermal image to locate fresh dog poop. After identifying the droppings, it will then send the GPS coordinates to a ground-based robot called the Patroldog 1 which will then roll itself over and pick it up. As for poop that has gone cold after a few days, the team uses image recognition that trains the drone to keep an eye out for stale poop.

According to Lievers, “The form and shape may be different with each one, but when you have a database with enough training images it’s possible…It may be that people will need to send us pictures of the poo of their dog in order to train our machines to be better.” It does feel like a waste to using so much resources just to pick up poop, but we guess it’s still a pretty valid application of the technology all the same.

Drones Used To Help Pick Up Dog Poop , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

If you’re looking forward to additional features for your Apple TV, then tvOS 11 could be an update worth looking forward to. In a report from The Verifier (via 9to5Mac), they claim that the update will bring about several major new features, such as multi-user login as well as a picture-in-picture mode.

This will come in handy for users who have more than one person at home, or who have more than one person who watches Apple TV. Presumably this means that users can have their own set of preferences, TV shows and movies that they have saved, and so on. It has been speculated that because of this, it is possible that maybe iOS 11 could include a similar multi-user feature as well.

However given that smartphones aren’t really shared, we’re not sure if such a feature would be so useful. As for picture-in-picture mode, it should function similarly to how the feature works on other TVs, where users could have a video open, and have another video open and playing in a smaller window docked to the side, or maybe have an app running while a video is playing.

Apple’s iPad already offers up something similar so it makes sense that the feature would arrive on tvOS as well. In any case take it with a grain of salt for now, but with WWDC 2017 kicking off in the next couple of months, we should have the official details soon.

Apple TV Could Get Multi-User Login, Picture-In-Picture With tvOS 11 , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

Ad blockers aren’t new and have been used by web users for years now, although in more recent times it seems that websites and services have found ways around them, where pages might not load if it detects there’s an ad blocker, or it now displays different kinds of ads that have found a way around the blocker.

It almost feels like ad blockers are doomed to die out and fade into obscurity, but thanks to work by researchers at Princeton and Stanford, they might have created a new kind of ad blocker that in theory, seems to be undefeatable. Developed by computer scientist Arvind Narayanan and his colleagues, this ad blocker does not look at the code on a website to determine what to block, but rather it looks at the content.

Dubbed the Perceptual Ad Blocker, what it does is that it looks out for words like “Sponsored” to determine if it is an ad. However perhaps to avoid an ethics debate, the ad blocker will only cover ads with words like “This is an ad” instead of blocking/removing them from the page entirely, which is how ad blockers typically work.

While it does sound like this could be an undefeatable ad blocker, Narayanan doesn’t really see it that way. He writes, “We don’t claim to have created an undefeatable ad blocker, but we identify an evolving combination of technical and legal factors that will determine the “end game” of the arms race.” For those interested, the Perceptual Ad Blocker is actually available as a Chrome extension if you’d like to check it out.

Researchers Might Have Created An ‘Undefeatable’ Ad Blocker , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

United Airlines now has a new policy preventing last-minute employee boarding. The change comes after fallout over a video that showed security violently dragging a passenger who refused to give up his seat for a crew member. 

“We issued an updated policy to make sure crews traveling on our aircraft are booked at least 60 minutes prior to departure,” United spokeswoman Maggie Schmerin told The Huffington Post on Sunday, noting that previously “crews could be booked up until the time of departure.”

The change is is effective immediately and is a response to outrage over a viral video that showed security personnel dragging passenger David Dao off a flight from Chicago, Illinois to Louisville, Kentucky, last week.

“This ensures situations like Flight 3411 never happen again,” she said. “This is one of our initial steps in a review of our policies in order to deliver the best customer experience.”

Videos from witnesses that filmed Dao showed him bloodied and in distress after security forcibly pulled him from his seat and dragged him by his arms down the aisle. Media coverage created a PR nightmare for the airline. 

A lawyer for Dao says his client suffered a concussion, a broken nose and missing teeth as a result of the incident. 

TMZ first reported on the policy change Friday after it obtained internal emails.

“This is so the denied boarding process in an oversell situation may be implemented in a gate or lobby area and not on board the aircraft,” read an email dated last Friday, according to TMZ. 

Schmerin said the airline is continuing a review process and will share “additional concrete actions we will take by April 30.”

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In a White House marked by infighting, top economic aide Gary Cohn, a Democrat and former Goldman Sachs banker, is muscling aside some of President Donald Trump’s hard-right advisers to push more moderate, business-friendly economic policies.

Cohn, 56, did not work on Republican Trump’s campaign and only got to know him after the November election, but he has emerged as one of the administration’s most powerful players in an ascent that rankles conservatives.

Trump refers to his director of the National Economic Council (NEC), as “one of my geniuses,” according to one source close to Cohn.

More than half a dozen sources on Wall Street and in the White House said Cohn has gained the upper hand over Trump’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon, the former head of the right-wing website Breitbart News and a champion of protectionist trade opposed by moderate Republicans and many big companies.

Cohn is a key administration link to business executives and White House sources say he will lead the charge for Trump on top domestic priorities such as tax reform, infrastructure and deregulation.

“Gary’s singular focus is tax reform and he’s working to try and get that done in 2017,” said Orin Snyder, a partner at law firm Gibson Dunn and a long-time friend of Cohn.

“He is working to implement the president’s twin goals of economic growth and job creation. The tax plan will also include a reduction in the corporate rate, but also tax relief for middle- and low-income Americans.”

Some conservatives fear Cohn may push through a tax plan that is unnecessarily complicated and argue that including tax relief for middle- and low-income Americans would not spur economic growth as much as cuts focused entirely or mostly on businesses and entrepreneurs.

Adam Brandon, president of the conservative group FreedomWorks, is disappointed Trump is not charging ahead with a plan unveiled last year during his campaign that would slash taxes on businesses and wealthy individuals.

That plan was shaped heavily by Stephen Moore, an economic policy expert at the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank, who advised Trump’s campaign. But it has since been shelved.

“I don’t like the idea of scrapping it and starting over again,” Brandon said.

A senior administration official said the White House has started from scratch on the tax plan and, while setting business tax cuts as the highest priority, is consulting with lawmakers, economists and business leaders before taking it to the Republican-led Congress.

Two administration officials said reports that the White House was considering a carbon tax and a value-added tax were incorrect, but that other ideas were on the table. “We are considering a multitude of options for tax reform,” a White House official said on Sunday.

RAPPORT

Associates of both Trump and Cohn say the two have developed a bond. People who have worked with Cohn say he is loyal, direct and assertive, traits that Trump likes.

Crucially, Cohn also has the trust of Jared Kushner, Trump’s adviser and son-in-law, and his wife Ivanka, Trump’s daughter.

Cohn hired his staff more quickly than other top officials, building a reputation for competence in an administration hurt by early missteps over healthcare reform and a travel ban, the sources said.

“Gary is a huge asset to the Trump administration. He’ll be of great help in eliminating unnecessary regulation, stimulating growth and reforming the tax code,” said billionaire hedge fund manager John Paulson, an early backer of Trump who knows Cohn through Wall Street circles.

The son of middle-class parents in Cleveland, Ohio, Cohn overcame dyslexia and worked in sales before elbowing his way into a position as a Wall Street trader and rising to become president and chief operating officer at Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N).

Kushner was a Goldman Sachs intern when he first crossed paths with Cohn. After Trump’s election victory, Kushner paved the way for Cohn to meet the president-elect, who had spent much of the campaign blasting investment banks as modern-day robber barons. Trump soon named Cohn his NEC director.

Apparently paying more heed to Cohn and other moderates on his team, Trump last week said he was open to reappointing Janet Yellen as Federal Reserve chairman when her term is up and he also held back from naming China a currency manipulator.

Both stances marked a reversal from his campaign when Trump criticized Yellen and vowed to label China a currency manipulator on “day one” of his administration, a move that could lead to punitive duties on Chinese goods.

Sources close to Cohn and inside the White House said there are sharp policy differences between Cohn and both Bannon and Reince Priebus, White House chief of staff.

A White House spokesperson denied there was a power struggle inside the West Wing.

Cohn has already put his stamp on regulatory policy by working with Kushner to successfully push Wall Street lawyer Jay Clayton for head of the Securities and Exchange Commission after billionaire investor Carl Icahn, an early Trump supporter, had vetted other candidates. Clayton’s nomination has been advanced to the Senate for a vote.

The vacant Federal Reserve vice chairman’s seat is a key regulatory role Cohn and his colleagues on the economic team want to fill soon. Cohn has interviewed nearly two dozen candidates and has whittled the list down. Randal Quarles, a veteran of the George W. Bush administration is one of several candidates left, a source familiar with the process said.

Cohn will also take a leading role in developing Trump’s infrastructure plan to rebuild airports, roads and bridges. The biggest challenge may be figuring out how to pay for the initiative, which Trump has estimated at $1 trillion.

While conservatives are concerned by Cohn, they note that Bannon is still part of Trump’s mercurial administration and that Cohn could fall out of favor as quickly as he has risen.

“Whoever is up today,” Brandon said, “could be gone tomorrow.”

(Reporting by James Oliphant, Svea Herbst-Bayliss, Olivia Oran, Sarah Lynch, Ayesha Rascoe and Caren Bohan; Editing by Kieran Murray and Bill Rigby)

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