Hasta La Gadget!

Robots that are made to perform certain tasks require a lot of processing power and lots of programming. If you bring in another similar robot, you have to complete that programming again. That may change in the future with a group of researchers testing out something akin to a robot brain based in the cloud called RoboEarth.

The test is the result of a project funded by the EU that has spanned four years. The researchers say RoboEarth is like the World Wide Web for robots. The idea is that robots could upload the steps needed to complete certain tasks to the RoboEarth platform and that way only one robot would need to be programmed and all others could get the steps from the cloud.

“At its core RoboEarth is a world wide web for robots: a giant network and database repository where robots can share information and learn from each other,” said Rene van de Molengraft, the RoboEarth project leader.

The RobotEarth system is being tested in a mock hospital room at Eindhoven University. One robot will roll into the mock room and make a map that will be shared with other bots via the RoboEarth system. The other robots will then navigate the room and give the fake patient drinks.

It all sounds really cool, and scary at the same time, like some sort of SkyNet precursor.

[via BBC]

Google Drive has been updated and a new feature has been added. Called activity stream, the feature let users easily track all changes that have been made to files. A lot of people use Google Drive for collectivity working on lists, files or presentations, they can work simultaneously wherever they might be and everyone has access to the documents. Being able to keep track of all changes and knowing who made said changes would definitely help users save a lot of time.

Activity stream is a single and easy to view place where every action taken on files and folders is displayed. Once Google Drive is opened, clicking on the “i” button in the top right corner will bring up the activity stream. By default, it will display all actions taken on files and folders inside My Drive. Users will see a rundown of the changes their team has made, including commenting on notes, editing, renaming, adding a new document and more. Users can also check what changes have been made to precise file or folders, simply clicking on any particular file or folder will make activity stream display information relevant to that item. Fret not if you don’t immediately see the new feature in your Google Drive, the company says activity stream is going to be rolled out to everyone over the coming week.

Google Drive Activity Stream Lets You Easily Track All Changes original content from Ubergizmo.

Ever since Google+ was baked into YouTube, the commenting system went through a radical change, ill-received change that became the subject of widespread criticism. Not only does the new system require using Google+ profiles to post a comment, but it also moved comment notices to alerts for video creators, making it harder for them to manage and keep track of comments being posted on their videos. In order to streamline the process, YouTube has now launched a new comment management page which lets users see, moderate and respond to comments from one single place.

This central page lets users easily remove comments or even flag them for spam or abuse. Users can also give a comment thumbs up and can even jump to the video watch page with one click in order to read and reply to comments there. The page lets users quickly toggle between comments that are pending channel manager approval, those marked as spam and those that have already been approved and published on the video page. In the near future, this page will be updated with more features, like ability to reply inline and expanding all replies. Content creators on YouTube can access the new comments management page at youtube.com/comments.

YouTube Launches New Tool To Manage Comments original content from Ubergizmo.

So the other day Google, in an attempt to get more people to use Google+, announced that anyone visiting your Google+ page would be allowed to send you an email (to your Gmail account) even if they don’t have you in their circles. No doubt this is annoying and does open itself up to spam and abuse from marketing companies, or maybe even malicious hackers looking to grab your attention, although the good news is that you can always opt out of it and disable the feature. However it seems that Google has decided that there is a difference between its regular users and its more high-profile users, whereby those who have more users following them have their options set differently from regular folks.

According to reports from MarketingLand and Reuters, it has been discovered that Google+ users with more than a thousand followers will only be allowed to be reached via email by those they set in their circles. This is versus everyone else, or “normal” Google+ users where anyone on Google+ will be able to send you an email directly. It does seem a little unfair that Google is prioritizing those whom they deem as more high profile. After all famous or not, no one likes receive spam and unsolicited messages, right? Either way like we said, this option is easily disabled via your Gmail settings so if you want to go back to the way things are, those options are just a couple of clicks away.

Higher Profile Google Users Have Different Default Email Settings original content from Ubergizmo.

There are countless ways to inject malware into a computer, which is why people who use the internet should be very vigilant about the sort of websites they normally visit. One may expect to find malware on shady websites, not on internationally recognized websites like Yahoo. Turns out there was malware hiding in the ads being displayed on Yahoo’s website, the attack was sophisticated enough that it didn’t require users to click on the ad, merely visiting the company’s website would have injected malware from the Java-based ads. The company plugged the vulnerability quickly once it came to light, but it seems that the attack might have affected a greater number of users.

At first it was believed that the malware attack only affected European users on January 3rd. Yahoo has officially revealed that users may have been affected between December 27th, 2013 and January 3rd, 2013 and that while most of the people affected were based in Europe, “a small fraction” of users outside Europe might have been affected as well. While some malware was thought to steal personal information, few reports claimed that malware injected through Yahoo ads turned computers into Bitcoin miners. The company reveals that this attack occurred because an account was compromised, which has now been shut down. Yahoo is currently working with law enforcement to investigate this matter.

Yahoo Malware Attack Might Have Affected A Greater Number Of Users original content from Ubergizmo.