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How to watch the second US presidential debate
The second US presidential debate promises to draw even more attention than the first. On top of giving Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump a chance to adjust their strategies, there's a switch to a town hall format based on public questions. And then there's both Trump's video apology and Clinton's leaked comments to banks -- how will the candidates deal with these curveballs? Thankfully, there are plenty of ways to follow the drama online. We've aggregated many of the internet viewing options so that you won't have to miss a moment when the debate kicks off at 9PM Eastern.
ICYMI: Harnessing mother nature's fury for energy
try{document.getElementById("aol-cms-player-1").style.display="none";}catch(e){}Today on In Case You Missed It: A Japanese engineer created a wind turbine that can harness energy from both typhoons and hurricanes, watch the video of it here. Meanwhile, researchers at Northwestern University developed a 3D printed bone made of ceramic and polymer materials that can encourage bone to regrow itself once it's implanted. Scripps Institution for Oceanography had bad news for humanity this week after the group said the world's carbon levels went over 400 parts per million. There are three RIP items in the news this week, so get acquainted with the Rosetta Probe's storied history, Blackberry's decision to stop making its own handsets, and camera wearable company Narrative deciding to call it a day. As always, please share any interesting tech or science videos you find by using the #ICYMI hashtag on Twitter for @mskerryd.
Wanted: One 400-lb hacker (or maybe five tiny ones)
This week the topic of cybersecurity made its first-ever appearance at a presidential debate. This was thanks to moderator Lester Holt, who asked candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump how to fight cyberattacks. Both were heavy on emphasizing the importance of "the cyber," were scant on policy details and, worryingly, omitted critical cybersecurity issues (like ransomware and breaches).
Facebook co-founder donates $20 million to elect Hillary Clinton
Mark Zuckerberg's other half, Dustin Moskovitz, has pledged to donate $20 million to Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton's campaign and other Democratic efforts this election year. Moskovitz, a co-creator of Facebook and founder of Asana, outlines his intentions in a Medium post that criticizes Republican candidate Donald Trump and praises Clinton.
Should we be worried about election hacking?
When you know you're gonna lose, one surefire way to cast doubt on your loss is to say the whole thing was a setup. That's exactly what Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump did when he found out that he was trailing Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton by nine points in Pennsylvania last month. While campaigning in the state, he said that the only way he could lose Pennsylvania is through fraud -- as in, electronic voting machines that could be hacked.
Democrats want FBI to investigate any Trump link to cyberattacks
You may have been laughing when Donald Trump responded to word of possible Russian involvement in DNC hacks by joking that the country should hack Hillary Clinton's email server, but some House Democrats are taking it very seriously. Representatives John Conyers, Elijah Cummings, Eliot Engel and Bennie Thompson have sent a letter asking the FBI to investigate the possibility of a link between Trump officials and the attacks. They claim it's vital to know whether or not Trump and his staff "directly caused or indirectly motivated" the hacks -- they could be helping Russia interfere with the election, if you believe the letter.
Washington Post open-sources its 'Trump Revealed' biography
Last week, after the Washington Post published its new Trump Revealed biography, the Republican Nominee was quick to give the book a harsh, "Don't buy, boring!" review. While Trump may believe the reporting in the book is inaccurate, the Post decided to respond to the allegations with a blast of sunshine. On Tuesday, the paper published a huge chunk of the notes, documents and transcripts that went into the book, effectively open-sourcing the work so other journalists could build on it.
Internet meme tries shaming Trump into releasing tax returns
Way back in the years and months leading up to the 2012 presidential election, a loudmouth businessman and reality TV star named Donald Trump continued to push a disproved and fallacious controversy asking Obama to reveal his birth certificate. The paranoid believed it would prove he was born in Kenya and thus ineligible for the office, but the White House released it in 2011 anyway, shutting them down. Still Trump clamored on, shoddily ventriloquizing that not he but others still believed Obama was a fake. Now it's 2016 and the outsider has somehow become the Republican presidential candidate — and a smattering of internet trolls have turned the tables, claiming that someone else told them he'd donated to the pedophilic North American Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA).
Google searches omitted key US presidential candidates (update: bug)
Google has been a rich, impartial resource for US election info so far, but it's apparently not perfect. NBC notes that certain searches for would-be Presidents (such as "presidential candidates" or "US president candidates") weren't turning up major candidates in the list of active campaigns, including Republican nominee Donald Trump and Libertarian pick Gary Johnson. Moreover, they still included Bernie Sanders -- odd when his party has nominated Hillary Clinton.
Donald Trump hosting Reddit AMA during DNC on Wednesday
If you've ever seen Donald Trump on Twitter, you probably have questions for him. Questions like, "how do you plan to force Apple to make iPhones in the US," or "do you really think Edward Snowden deserves the death penalty?" Later this week, you'll be able to ask him yourself: the Republican presidential nominee is slated to host a Reddit AMA at 7PM ET on Wednesday.
Peter Thiel to speak at the Republican National Convention (updated)
Peter Thiel, the Silicon Valley investor and PayPal co-founder, is set to speak an the upcoming Republican National Convention. According to a list of speakers and guests obtained by The New York Times, Thiel is scheduled to appear on the fourth night of the GOP's event -- the same evening as Donald Trump is expected to accept the party's formal nomination. The two will be joined on stage that night, Thursday, July 21st, by Republican Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, Florida Governor Rick Scott, former NFL quarterback Tim Tebow and others. As always, the list is subject to change before the event.
Apple won't assist the Republican convention due to Trump
Apple has made a number of firm political stands ever since Tim Cook took the helm, and it's not about to back down any time soon. Politico sources (backed by in-the-know journalist John Paczkowski) say that Apple won't provide funding or other support for the Republican Party's July presidential convention due to Donald Trump's policies. Reportedly, his attitudes toward immigrants, minorities and women are beyond the pale -- although Apple has been willing to court Republicans in the past (Cook met with House GOP bigwigs in 2015), Trump is just too extreme for the company's tastes. Apple has declined to comment to Politico so far.
DeepDrumpf: The Donald Trump AI spoof bot America needs
"I'm what ISIS doesn't need." That may sound like a quote from Republican presidential candidate/real estate tycoon Donald Trump, but it's actually from an AI-powered Twitterbot named @DeepDrumpf. Developed by Bradley Hayes, a postdoc student at MIT's Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science Lab (CSAIL), the bot pores through Trump's speeches and debate transcripts, using deep learning techniques to recreate his language one letter at a time. (Engadget's Aaron Souppouris used similar methods to build a neural network that recreated this site's writing style.) The results are sometimes incoherent, but that only makes DeepDrumpf seem more like the real thing.
Egyptian student faces deportation over Trump threat
An Egyptian student studying in California faces deportation after posting a threatening message about Donald Trump on Facebook. 23-year-old Emad Elsayed posted a picture of Trump on FB back in February with a caption to the effect of, according to his attorney, "If I killed this guy I wouldn't mind serving a life sentence and the world would thank me." While this statement seems fairly innocuous compared to the abuse President Obama endures on social media (and most women for that matter), federal agents have since detained Elsayed and are now threatening to deport him.
Donald Trump gets his own blustery programming language
Have you ever wondered what code would look like if it were dictated by a presidential candidate's grandiose statements rather than such radical concepts as accuracy and logic? No? Well, you're going to find out regardless. Rice University students Chris Brown and Sam Shadwell have created TrumpScript, a Python-based programming language that takes Donald Trump's philosophy a little too literally. For a start, it won't deal with either floating point numbers or any number smaller than 1 million -- America doesn't do anything halfway or deal with the small stuff, you see. It also won't allow users from China or Mexico (you can't even use import statements), insists on ending programs with "America is great" and refuses to admit to most of its failures.
Trump claims he'd make Apple build devices in the US
Donald Trump isn't known for having a firm grasp of technology-related issues, and he just reinforced those beliefs on Monday. The hopeful Republican presidential nominee told an audience at Liberty University that he'd make Apple "build their damn computers in this country," rather than sending the work to China and elsewhere. It sure sounds like a great idea, especially in light of increasing efforts to bring tech manufacturing stateside. However, there doesn't appear to be much evidence that this will happen -- or even that it can happen.
Fantastic come-from-behind Hearthstone win
Trump is probably one of the best-known Hearthstone players active today, and as such many of you are probably well-acquainted with his Twitch stream. If you haven't been watching recently, you may have missed the nail-biting finish of the match embedded above, in which Trump comes from behind what seemed like a guaranteed win for his opponent to claim victory by the skin of his teeth. What makes this so fun to watch, in my opinion, is that Trump's victory actually depended upon his opponent making a number of mistakes--which he did. However, in addition to this, Trump had to perfectly capitalize on those errors, which he also did. While you can reasonably expect people to choose certain moves and styles over others, you can never truly predict what any player will do in a given match. In many cases, such as the one above, the ability to seize an opportunity is what marks the difference between victory and defeat. Congratulations to Trump for his skill in doing just that. Take note, avid Hearthstone players, there's a lot to be learned from the above video--in both Trump's actions and his opponent's.
Hearthstone's Trump talks Twitch with Mashable
For a long time, if you wanted to watch someone else play Blizzard games live, Starcraft II was your only real option, with some WoW arena gaming popping up here and there. With the addition of Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, and now the technical alpha of Heroes of the Storm, though, Blizzard has quickly grown their number of streamer-friendly titles. Many of you are probably familiar with Jeffrey Shih, aka Trump, a Hearthstone streamer who currently makes his living doing just that--playing Hearthstone on Twitch.tv. He's one of a several streamers featured in a recent article on Mashable that discusses the state of gameplay streaming as both entertainment and work. Twitch currently partners with about 5100 streamers who make income from their gaming, and some, such as Trump, make enough to do it as a full-time job. If you're interested in gaming as a profession this is a neat article that discusses some of the realities of the work itself, as well as the factors that have made such work possible in the last few years.
Hearthstone Innkeeper's Invitational first rounds online
The Hearthstone Innkeeper's Invitational was a rousing success at BlizzCon 2013, and now you can view the first-round videos online. Hearthstone's official Youtube channel has just posted videos of all four of the first rounds of the Innkeeper's Invitational -- the semi-finals and finals are of course still available on BlizzCon's official website, or over at Twitch, for those interested in seeing the tournament from beginning to end. The first four matches feature Day[9] vs. Reckful, Hafu vs. Kripparrian, Trump vs. Husky, and Noxious vs. Artosis. Hearthstone may not be out just yet, but even in beta, the game has managed to capture the attention and devotion of those in the beta. With open beta not too far away, hopefully the enthusiasm for this entertaining little card game will continue -- and hopefully we'll see a second Innkeeper's Invitational at the next BlizzCon. For coverage of all of the first-round games, visit Hearthstone's official Youtube channel -- and if you'd like more information on the players involved, you can check out the cards each player was packing for the tournament on Hearthstone's official blog.
Verizon's FiOS TV expansions: November 15, 2008
It's been a slow week for FiOS TV expansions, but we suppose the hard-working individuals responsible for 233,000 new net customers in Q3 deserve a little rest and relaxation before getting back to the grind. Up first we have the Tampa Bay, Florida area getting gifted with a new wave of interactive features on their DVRs. Next, we see three more Trump (yes, that Trump) Properties receiving FiOS TV and high-speed internet services, and if you're curious as to which ones we're referring to, they are: Trump Parc, Trump Parc East and 610 Park Avenue. Lastly, we're notified that Verizon and the City of Brotherly Love (or Philadelphia, if you prefer) are working together to grant the carrier a cable franchise; if passed, Verizon would work to deploy its fiber-based network throughout the region over seven years. That's it for this week, so we'll see you back again in seven days for (hopefully) even more.Read - Tampa BayRead - Trump PropertiesRead - Philadelphia
