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Most people probably don’t realize just how much our devices are time driven, whether it’s your phone, your laptop or a network server. For the most part, time keeping has been an esoteric chore, taken care of by a limited number of hardware manufacturers. While these devices served their purpose, a couple of Facebook engineers decided there had to be a better way. So they built a new more accurate time keeping device that fits on a PCI Express (PCIe) card, and contributed it to the Open Compute Project as an open source project. At a basic level, says Olag Obleukhov, a production engineer at Facebook, it’s simply pinging this time-keeping server to make sure each device is reporting the same time. “Almost every single electronic device today uses NTP — Network Time Synchronization Protocol — which you have on your phone, on your watch, on your laptop, everywhere, and they all connect to these NTP servers where they just go and say, ‘what time is it’ and the NTP server provides the time,” he explained.  » Read More

A teenager has been arrested in connection with more than a dozen Facebook Marketplace robberies, according to the Cincinnati Police Department.The 16-year-old boy was arrested Monday. The gun used during the robberies was found on him during his arrest, according to a Tweet from the police.The teen was charged with aggravated robbery and possessing a weapon under disability.CPD is reminding anyone buying off of Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist or the like to:Meet in a public place, preferably somewhere extremely populated, and never meet at someone’s home.Bring someone with you for the meetup.Don’t divulge too much personal information.Trust your gut.Contact Briana Rice at 513-568-3496 or brice@enquirer.com. Follow her on Twitter at @BriRiceWrites.  » Read More

Amid the ongoing controversy around Apple's plans to implement new child safety features that would involve scanning messages and users' photos libraries, Facebook's former security chief, Alex Stamos, has weighed into the debate with criticisms of multiple parties involved and suggestions for the future. In an extensive Twitter thread, Stamos said that there are "no easy answers" in the debate around child protection versus personal privacy. Stamos expressed his frustration with the way in which Apple handled the announcement of the new features and criticized the company for not engaging in wider industry discussions around the safety and privacy aspects of end-to-end encryption in recent years. Apple was invited but declined to participate in these discussions, and with this announcement they just busted into the balancing debate and pushed everybody into the furthest corners with no public consultation or debate. Likewise, Stamos said that he was disappointed with various NGOs, such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC),  » Read More

Last week, the CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg announced to investors that he plans to take Facebook in a new direction in the future. The social network, he said, during the earnings call for Q1 2021, would become more than just that; It will, in the coming years, become a metaverse. The concept of metaverse is not all that new. It has been around since at least 2014 but it hasn’t really attracted the attention of Big Tech until recently, and especially after Zuckerberg made his recent comments. So, what is it he was talking about? The Metaverse Landscape The Metaverse he was referring to is a collective virtual shared space including the sum of all virtual worlds and the internet. It may contain derivatives or copies of the real world, but it is distinct from augmented reality, according to the IEEE — specifically the IEEE Virtual World Standard Working Group — which describes itself as an association dedicated to advancing innovation and technological excellence for the benefit of humanity.  » Read More

CLEVELAND, Ohio (WOIO) - The Cleveland Heights woman who was convicted for her involvement in a nationwide Facebook scam faced a judge for sentencing on Monday.Following the hearing, Kimberly St. John-Stevenson was allowed to walk free after the judge sentenced to time served.St. John-Stevenson previously spent approximately 400 days in jail.The Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office said St. John-Stevenson, 56, and Zienup Sbeih-Maddox operated “Zee’s Place” through Facebook to scam hundreds of victims out of more than $300,000.The two women offered “too good to be true deals on items such as diapers, toys, car seats, and trips to Disney World” through the Facebook scam, investigators said.St. John-Stevenson, who was initially indicted on a dozen felony charges, pleaded guilty to one count of telecommunications fraud.“I am terribly sorry,” St. John-Stevenson said before the judge delivered her sentencing.Sbeih-Maddox was sentenced to six years in prison for the scam.Zienup Sbeih-Maddox (Source: Cuyahoga County Jail)Victims were reported out of at least 30 states and two Canadian provinces.  » Read More

Liz Engel reports Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine has made another plea for the unvaccinated to receive Covid-19 shots, as the more contagious and ...  » Read More

Michigan Hastings (WILX)-A Michigan sheriff has posted a controversial Facebook post about setting up a civilian police force to look for criminal activity. In a post, Barry County Sheriff Darrief claims he has the power to hire men over the age of 15 to “control riots.” The term “posse comitatus” he uses means “county power” in Latin. The idea is that sheriffs can call on citizens to help maintain peace. News 10 contacted Sheriff Reef by phone, email, or Facebook Messenger, but he couldn’t speak. Michael McDaniel, director of the Homeland Security Program at Cooley Law School, said: He says the property is legal, but with decades of experience in the field of defense, McDaniel believes it’s too dangerous. “If the sheriff has appointed an untrained, ununiformed, inexperienced, incapable of engaging in law enforcement processes, you are opening yourself up. The risk is immeasurable to me, “he said. .. “I personally think it will cause more conflict, but it also causes problems, so I don’t think it’s necessary to riot,” said Dana Holmes,  » Read More

A selection of comments from our Facebook page last week:On a story about sounds of a purported Bigfoot howling near Bluewell Reservoir being investigated by the host of “Finding Bigfoot:”• It could be my dog or a coyote. We have a small farm by the reservoir and our Pyrenees stays up there with our goats — Brittany H. • Since there is no such thing as Bigfoot, how would anyone know what Bigfoot sounds like? — Chuck A.• Turns out, it was just someone stepping on a lego — Daniel R.• It’s just the local drunks. LOL — Nick R.• I don’t think Big Foot howls — Sandy M.• Good drugs — Deborah B.• He’s just sad cause he doesn’t have a chance to get one of those souped-up pick-up trucks from the governor — David S.On a story about President Joe Biden directing the military to make the COVID-19 vaccine mandatory for military personnel:• They already did.  » Read More

Facebook has introduced Droidlet, an open-source, modular, heterogeneous embodied agent architecture. The Droidlet platform can be used to build embodied agents using natural language processing, computer vision, and robotics. Now with Facebook Droidlet platform, researchers can build more intelligent real-world robots. In addition, it simplifies the integration of a wide range of state-of-the-art machine learning algorithms and robotics to facilitate rapid prototyping. Droidlet A droid agent is considered to be made up of a collection of components, which are both heuristic and learned. Droidlet allows for component swapping and customisable designs. This software platform gives researchers a debug dashboard as well as a markup interface for correcting errors and annotation. Robotic-focused features such as robot-specific wrappers and environments and models built specifically for robots are also included.Register for our Workshop Not only does the Droidlet platform have different tools and advancements in artificial intelligence, like PyRobot, AllenNLP, and Detectron, but it also connects these iterations of tools to provide a better and unified experience.  » Read More

A new book by two New York Times journalists about recent events at Facebook reveals a lot about how the social-media giant operates and its bid for market dominance In their new book An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook’s Battle for Domination, two New York Times journalists pull off the difficult feat of telling a story many of us feel we already know, in such a way that we quickly discover just how much we don’t know. The award-winning writers both cover technology for the paper, but bring different areas of expertise to the book. Cecilia Kang, based in Washington DC, covers the business end of technology, with a focus on regulatory policy, while Sheera Frenkel, out in San Francisco, covers the technical side of technology, with an expertise in cybersecurity. The book arose out of an investigative story that ran in the New York Times in November 2018, “Delay, Deny, and Deflect: How Facebook’s Leaders Fought Through Crisis”. The explosive, detailed piece focused on the company’s clumsy leadership stumbles and questionable handling of a succession of crises,  » Read More