Facebook's new Slideshow feature turns your photos into videos

Facebook really wants people to share more videos, so much so that it will even create them for you. A new feature coming to its iOS app this week, called Slideshow, takes your mobile photos and videos and turns them into a short clip you can customize with different themes and music. Facebook will do this automatically with a pre-made slideshow so long as you've taken at least five photos or videos in the last 24 hours. If you happen upon a slideshow in the News Feed, you can tap a "try it" prompt to make one yourself.
Slideshow was first introduced in the company's standalone photos app Moments. It builds on the social network's "Year in Review" feature to create short films out of what you share, with the hope that you'll then share those videos and keep the cycle going at an ever-accelerated pace. By taking the Slideshow feature from Moments and placing it prominently in the main Facebook app, the company is taking another step in its campaign to turn its social network into a video-first destination.

Microsoft pays woman $10,000 for forcing Windows 10 installation

A lot of people have complained about Microsoft's aggressive Windows 10 installation strategy. One person has actually gotten some resolution: according to The Seattle Times , Microsoft is paying $10,000 to Teri Goldstein, who runs a travel agency in California, over an automatic Windows 10 installation.
Goldstein claims that Windows 10 installed itself on her work computer without her permission. Her PC apparently couldn't function after that, so she sued Microsoft for lost wages and compensation to replace her computer. She won the case, according to the Times , and Microsoft decided to drop its appeal last month, deciding instead to just pay the judgement.
In a brief statement, a Microsoft spokesperson says that it "dropped its appeal to avoid the expense of further litigation." It's unclear what Microsoft might do if others decide to bring similar suits over Windows 10's upgrade system. There have been quite a few complaints since last summer, when Microsoft first started bugging people to update. Those prompts will finally be going away next month.

This camera is so tiny it can be injected with a syringe

Researchers at the University of Stuttgart in Germany have designed a micro-camera so small it can fit inside a syringe. The scientists believe that the new device can be used to explore areas of the body that cameras previously couldn't access, as well as surveillance devices and machines with "autonomous vision."
SLIGHTLY SMALLER THAN A GRAIN OF SALT
The researchers, who published their findings in
Nature Photonics, managed to 3D-print a three-lens camera that, with its casing, is just 0.12 millimeters wide — slightly smaller than a grain of salt. The team believes that 3D printing could represent the future of manufacturing, since current techniques can't produce lenses small enough to be used in important medical contexts like non-invasive endoscopic imaging. Since the camera can fit inside a syringe and can focus from a distance of 3mm, it could potentially be used to capture images from inside human organs or even the brain.
The camera can also be used for surveillance, as it can be integrated into tiny security monitors, drones, illumination systems, or even robots. More research needs to be done, but the device presents some exciting possibilities.

Dell Launches 70-Inch Interactive Display for Classrooms and Boardrooms

With the aim of providing a more immersive classroom environment, Dell launched a 70-inch touchscreen interactive display on Monday that can find its application in both classrooms and office board rooms. The $4,995 (roughly Rs. 3,40,000) full-HD display was launched by the company at International Society for Technology in Education 2016 Conference and Expo in Denver, Colorado.
The Dell C7017T interactive conference room monitor supports 10-point multi-touch for the hand, and comes with two included styluses. The 70-inch touchscreen display also comes with anti-glare and anti-smudge coating on the cover glass, and monitor components for clear text and images, Dell said in a statement. Apart from regular plug and play options, the monitor comes with a VGA port, Ethernet port, and optional Wi-Fi connectivity. It is now available on Dell.com.
Dell launched slightly more affordable alternatives in the form of two ultra short throw projectors - the Dell S560T and Dell S550P - that project images and videos onto walls or screens up to 100 inches with a full-HD resolution. Both projectors offer interactivity, with the former providing 10-point touch interactivity and support for a stylus, while the latter uses active styluses (IR Pens). Both projectors will be available from July 12, but pricing has not been detailed.
Companies such as Samsung, Sharp, and Elo already have interactive displays of sizes 70-inches or more in their portfolios. With the increasing demand of large interactive displays, it will be interesting to see which company conquers the space and whether schools and enterprises will go for expensive displays or stick to comparatively cheaper projectors.
The company also unveiled its Chrome-based software solution Dell Classroom, which is aimed at improving the collaboration between teachers and the students. It enables students to raise their hands virtually and answer via personal texts to the teacher, therefore encouraging participation from hesitant students and those with special needs.
"Educational environments are more interesting when students get to speak up, share ideas, work together and learn the way they want to learn," Bert Park, Vice President of Software and Peripherals at Dell, was quoted as saying in the statement.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai’s Quora account hacked by OurMine

Google CEO Sundar Pichai ’s Quora account is the latest victim, when it comes to hacking of social media accounts belonging to top Silicon Valley executives. Pichai and the Quora hacking take place a month after Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s Twitter and Pinterest accounts were hacked by OurMine Team, which is also responsible for the latest hack.
OurMine Team posted a series of tweets late Sunday night linking to Pichai’s Quara posts and referencing itself. This is when the breach came to light. The group didn’t really hack Pichai’s Twitter account and used Quora’s auto-re-tweeting feature to post tweets.
The hacker group initially wrote, ‘hacked’ using the Google CEO’s account. “Hey it’s OurMine, we are just testing your security, please visit OurMine to upgrade it,” it said in later posts. Pichai or perhaps his team, however regained control of the Quora account soon, and the tweets were deleted within few hours.
OurMine team claims it is focused on security. It brings out the security flaws in user’s account by hacking in to them. “We are just trying to let them know that nobody is safe,” OurMine told Mic . OurMine also has a security check-up plan for social media accounts that people can sign up for $5,000 per scan. The team, in turn tells them whether their accounts are hackable.
Zuckerberg became a target of OurMine Team last month, when his Twitter and Pinterest passwords were hacked. The group had hacked the Twitter account of Spotify’s CEO, Daniel Ek.

British tech start-up develops multi-function antenna for laptops

In a first, a British technology start-up has invented a multi-function antenna for laptops that combines Wi-Fi, GPS, bluetooth and 3G/ 4G LTE and WiGig — multi-gigabit per second wireless speed — in one unit.
Developed by scientists from University of Birmingham, the new SAT antenna fits into the extremely limited space of the hinge cavity and replaces as many as five separate antennas found in a standard laptop.
Sampson Hu, who founded SAT in 2013, said that conventional antennas cannot be located immediately next to each other because of signal interference which leads to reduced performance.

Gravitational waves to discover when and how black holes were born

Gravitational waves or ripples inspace-time captured by space detectors could soon be used to discover when and how some of the universe’s largest black holes were born, scientists say.
Scientists led by researchers at the Durham University in the UK ran the huge cosmological simulations that can be used to predict the rate at which gravitational waves caused by collisions between the monster black holes might be detected.
The amplitude and frequency of these waves could unveil the initial mass of the seeds from which the first black holes grew since they were formed 13 billion years ago and provide further clues about what caused them and where they formed, the researchers said.
The study combined simulations from the EAGLE project – which aims to create a realistic simulation of the known universe inside a computer – with a model to calculate gravitational wave signals.
Two detections of gravitational waves caused by collisions between supermassive black holes should be possible each year using space-based instruments such as the Evolved Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (eLISA) detector that is due to launch in 2034, the researchers said.
In February the international LIGO and Virgo collaborations announced that they had detected gravitational waves for the first time using ground-based instruments and this month reported a second detection.
As eLISA will be in space – and will be at least 250,000 times larger than detectors on Earth – it should be able to detect the much lower frequency gravitational waves caused by collisions between supermassive black holes that are up to a million times the mass of our Sun.
Current theories suggest that the seeds of these black holes were the result of either the growth and collapse of the first generation of stars in the universe; collisions between stars in dense stellar clusters; or the direct collapse of extremely massive stars in the early universe.
As each of these theories predicts different initial masses for the seeds of supermassive black hole seeds, the collisions would produce different gravitational wave signals.
This means that the potential detections by eLISA could help pinpoint the mechanism that helped create supermassive black holes and when in the history of the universe they formed.
“Understanding more about gravitational waves means that we can study the universe in an entirely different way,” said lead author Jaime Salcido, PhD student in Durham University’s Institute for Computational Cosmology.
“By combining the detection of gravitational waves with simulations we could ultimately work out when and how the first seeds of supermassive black holes formed,” he said.
Gravitational waves were first predicted 100 years ago by Albert Einstein as part of his Theory of General Relativity.
The waves are concentric ripples caused by violent events in the universe that squeeze and stretch the fabric of space time but most are so weak they cannot be detected.