Saturday, December 10, 2016

On Wednesday the online instant messaging service Telegram announced IFTTT (If This Then That) integration in its client. This feature allows the users to connect their Telegram account to other social networks and web applications. This change came as a part of the 3.15 release. The project team has announced these changes on the official Telegram blog.

IFTTT facilities allow users to connect to multiple services from one platform. The bidirectional facility of IFTTT means a user can opt-in for receiving notifications from the connected applications in Telegram and for updating them using commands from Telegram.

To get started, users needed to query a relay called “IFTTT bot”. According to Telegram, the IFTTT bot provides over 360 services and can also be invited into group chats to facilitate collaboration. Applets need to be enabled to start the IFTTT services. Some of the applets supported are Gmail, Dropbox, Spotify, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Google Drive and Pinterest.

Telegram claimed to be the first messaging application to be fully integrated with IFTTT.

In the new release, Telegram also introduced an option to “pin” the chats. The “pinning” feature allowed a user to pin chats to the top of the chat list, including up to five chats and up to five secret chats, by long press on the chat in Android and left swipe in iOS.

Other introduced features included a new photo high precision crop and rotate tool — the rotate accuracy reached a tenth of a degree — and a new video player for YouTube and Vimeo videos, allowing the users to watch these videos natively from the application. The “picture-in-picture” option in the new player allowed to watch a video and chat at the same time by dragging the playing video around the screen while chatting. The video playing in picture-in-picture mode doesn’t stop playing even when user opens other application.

These last two features — crop and rotate, picture in picture — were made available only in Android. Telegram said they plan to release new updates before the year end.

Previously, Telegram had introduced Telegraph, a publishing medium; and an “instant view” feature which loads articles from Medium and TechCrunch instantly.

Sunday, August 21, 2005

A robotic system at Stanford Medical Center was used to perform a laparoscopic gastric bypass surgery successfully with a theoretically similar rate of complications to that seen in standard operations. However, as there were only 10 people in the experimental group (and another 10 in the control group), this is not a statistically significant sample.

If this surgical procedure is as successful in large-scale studies, it may lead the way for the use of robotic surgery in even more delicate procedures, such as heart surgery. Note that this is not a fully automated system, as a human doctor controls the operation via remote control. Laparoscopic gastric bypass surgery is a treatment for obesity.

There were concerns that doctors, in the future, might only be trained in the remote control procedure. Ronald G. Latimer, M.D., of Santa Barbara, CA, warned “The fact that surgeons may have to open the patient or might actually need to revert to standard laparoscopic techniques demands that this basic training be a requirement before a robot is purchased. Robots do malfunction, so a backup system is imperative. We should not be seduced to buy this instrument to train surgeons if they are not able to do the primary operations themselves.”

There are precedents for just such a problem occurring. A previous “new technology”, the electrocardiogram (ECG), has lead to a lack of basic education on the older technology, the stethoscope. As a result, many heart conditions now go undiagnosed, especially in children and others who rarely undergo an ECG procedure.

Thursday, July 5, 2007

On Wednesday morning at 2:15 a.m., PDT (UTC-7) the son of former Vice President Al Gore, Albert Gore III, was pulled over by Orange County Sheriff’s Department in California for driving 100 mph (approximately 160 km/h) on the San Diego Freeway.

The deputy smelled marijuana in his car which, when searched, contained a small amount of marijuana along with the prescription drugs Valium, Xanax, Vicodin, and Adderall. Albert Gore III was arrested on suspicion of drug possession. He did not have prescriptions for any of the drugs found with him at the time of the arrest.

Gore was booked in Santa Ana. He was released on Wednesday at 2:00 p.m. PDT on a US$20,000 bond. Gore was previously arrested in 2003 for marijuana possession and in 2002 for suspected drunken-driving.

Sunday, August 6, 2017

Yesterday, German football club Bayern Munich announced their technical director Michael Reschke vacated his position. VfB Stuttgart, who announced parting ways with their sporting director Jan Schindelmeiser on Friday, recruited Reschke as their new sporting director.

59-year-old Reschke served as the technical director at the Bavarian club for the past three years, holding the position from July 2014. In an official statement issued by Stuttgart on Friday, the club’s Supervisory Board made a “unanimous” decision to sack their sporting director Schindelmeiser. The board’s chairman Wolfgang Dietrich said, “We regret having to take this step, but we were no longer convinced the implementation of our goals and achievement of agreed targets would be possible with the current personnel constellation. Ultimately, VfB Stuttgart takes top-priority and it is our absolute responsibility to make decisions for the good of the positive development of the club.” ^{((de)) German language: Wir bedauern diesen Schritt, waren letztlich aber nicht mehr davon überzeugt, dass die Umsetzung unserer Ziele und der getroffenen Absprachen in der bisherigen Personalkonstellation zu erreichen sind. Letztlich steht der VfB Stuttgart über allem und es ist unsere absolute Pflicht, Entscheidungen ausschließlich im Sinne des Vereins und im Sinne einer positiven Entwicklung zu treffen.}

Bayern Munich’s CEO Karl-Heinz Rummenigge thanked Reschke for his work, saying, “On behalf of FC Bayern München, I’d like to thank him for the tremendous work he’s done for FC Bayern over the last three years. He’s made an important contribution to our success with his expertise, professionalism and network. I wish him all the best for the future.” ^{((de)) German language: Ich bedanke mich im Namen des FC Bayern München für die hervorragende Arbeit, die Michael Reschke in den vergangenen drei Jahren für den FC Bayern geleistet hat. Er hat mit seinem Fachwissen, seiner Professionalität und seinem Netzwerk einen wichtigen Beitrag zum Erfolg des FC Bayern geleistet. Ich wünsche ihm alles Gute für seine Zukunft.}

On Friday, Reschke requested termination of his contract with the German giants, which was valid for another year, until June 30, 2018.

Sunday, February 21, 2010

A man has died after being involved in a robbery of his shop in West Yorkshire, England. Four youngsters, described as wearing hooded jumpers and tracksuit trousers, raided the Cowcliffe Convenience Store in the town of Huddersfield at approximately 2030 GMT on Saturday.

63-year-old Gurmail Singh sustained head injuries as a result of the robbery. Six witnesses attempted to prevent the youths from exiting the shop but failed, and the teenagers managed to escape with confectionary, cigarettes and money. One witness claimed to see a hammer in posession of one of the offenders, however it is unknown if this was used in the attack.

Singh was taken to Huddersfield Royal Infirmary but died there at approximately 0330 GMT on Sunday. West Yorkshire Police have now launched an investigation into the death of Gurmail Singh. A post-mortem examination is scheduled to take place on Monday to attempt to discover how the shop-owner was killed. West Yorkshire Police are now appealing for witnesses or anyone who has information in relation to this incident to contact them.

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

The New Zealand Commerce Commission has fined the Bank of New Zealand (BNZ). It has been forced to pay NZ$5 million in compensation to its customers, $500,000 in fines and $80,000 in costs to the Commerce Commission. The money will be placed into a bank account to be monitored by an auditor, and if there is any money left over it will be donated to a consumer organization.

BNZ has been forced to pay these fines for failing to disclose that they were charging their customers for the exchange of foreign currency during February, 2002 until May, 2004 on its credit and debit cards, which is a breach of the Fair Trading Act. They pleaded guilty to 21 counts of breaching the act. The BNZ say that they will contact their affected customers and that they should get their compensation by November this year. The bank is responsible for contacting all their customers.

The BNZ is the third bank to be charged, the two others were ANZ and the National Bank, which were charged $11.325 million combined as they had since become a single company.

There are still other ongoing prosecutions on these other financial services: Westpac, ASB, TSB, American Express, Diners Club and The Warehouse Financial Services. The Commission would not comment on these cases.

Paula Rebsotck, Commerce Commission Chairperson, said “the result was a victory for New Zealand consumers, many of whom would have unknowingly paid the currency transaction charges. While fees like these remain hidden, banks have no incentive to offer lower fees.”

Saturday, August 14, 2010

Ali Akbar Salehi, chief of Iran’s Atomic Energy Agency, announced Friday that Iran is scheduled to launch its first nuclear power plant in Bushehr. Russia said that it will start loading fuel into the reactor on August 21, 2010.

Russia has assisted Iran in the construction of this reactor since the mid-1990s. The proposal to build this reactor was put forth 35 years ago by Mohammad Rez? Sh?h Pahlavi, the former emperor of Iran.

Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev, the current president of Russia, said that Iran and Russia are in active trade partnership. Medvedev called on Iran last month to explain its nuclear program.

The official launch is scheduled for August 21, 2010. Russia has promised to run the plant by supplying fuel and taking away fuel waste.

Thursday, April 23, 2009

The United Kingdom Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling, yesterday announced the 2009 budget. The budget is an annual audit of the nation’s finances, and decides what should be done with taxpayers’ money.

The chancellor fell under scorn for his GDP growth forecasts, which are considered to be too optimistic in predicting that Britain will bounce back from its weakest economic performance since the end of the second world war. Darling forecast GDP growth of 3.5% in 2011, even after he was made to downgrade his predictions. He expects a record expansion of 1.25% next year, but chief UK economist Howard Archer disagrees, calling Darling’s predictions “mildly optimistic in the near term and much more optimistic in the long term.”

His plans for savers and pensioners, however, were commended by many, though was also criticised by a large portion of the populace. In the budget, Darling increased the amount that savers can put into an Individual Savings Account (ISA) from £7,200 to £10,200, of which £5,100 can be saved in cash. These increased limits will be available only to people aged over 50 from 6 October this year, and will not be available to everyone until 6 April next year. A number of financial experts described the move as being “too little, too late”, and Rumina Hassam, of price comparison website uSwitch.com, said: “The government’s decision to increase the cash ISA limit by £1,500 to £5,100 for the over 50’s is a just another kick in the teeth for the majority of savers as they will have to wait even longer to benefit. There is no doubt that savers have been sacrificed as a result of the plummeting base rate, bringing savings rates to an all time low.”