Honda shelves ASIMO robot

You don’t have to be overly familiar with Honda to know ASIMO. At the very least, you’ve seen this four-foot-tall humanoid robot. Well, you’re going to have to say goodbye as ASIMO, which stands for Advanced Step in Innovative Mobility, is being shelved by the Japanese car manufacturer. The company says it will continue to develop bipedal robots but it will not carry the ASIMO name. Its tech will be adapted for other products though. The company is thinking future robots will be adapted to focus on tasks like nursing care. When ASIMO launched, it was introduced more like a showcase robot that greeted people at events. Honda last updated ASIMO back in 2011 to improve its autonomous decision-making capabilities.

Source: Fortune

iZotope launches portable, pro-quality recording device Spire Studio

A big part of a musician’s life is travelling and touring their music. That doesn’t mean they have to stop creating music on the go. A lot of them don’t but to make their lives easier, iZotope just launched the Spire Studio, a one-touch, professional quality, portable recording studio. It works together with a free, integrated iOS app and offers a suite of tools that use iZotope’s intelligent audio processing.

It has a one touch Soundcheck button that automatically sets ideal microphone and instrument levels to get rid of distortion and clipping. It has studio-quality effects like reverbs, delays, and amp models. It has two combo jacks to let its users plug in instruments or mics with +48 V phantom power. And it can mix together up to eight tracks you record with it. It has editing tools that let you do thing like quickly mute or audition tracks and since this is done wirelessly, it’s easy to share with collaborators. The Spire Studio retails for $449 and is available at Best Buy, Long & McQuade, and Amazon.

Facebook quiz app may have leaked personal data of 120 million users

While the whole Cambridge Analytica scandal isn’t that far in our past, we knew it was going to unearth a lot of skeletons in Facebook’s closet. The latest one is a Facebook quiz app that may have leaked personal data of around 120 million users who’ve answered the quizzes. Security researcher who goes by the username Inti De Ceukelaire discovered the leak by taking part in Facebook’s data abuse bounty program launched in April 10. One of the third-party apps he looked through was from NameTests.com and there he discovered that the site exposed Facebook users’ data to “any third-party that requested it.” He found that the app exposed user information through javascript, which could easily share files between sites as part of its basic functions.

The site has possibly leaked information since the end of 2016 and De Ceukelaire reported it to Facebook by April 22. Unfortunately, Facebook’s response wasn’t as speedy as the fix only came around the end of June. According to NameTests’ parent company, Social Sweethearts, they have investigated the issue but no user data has been compromised and they are working on measures to avoid these risks from happening in the future. 

Source: TechCrunch

How Canadian businesses can succeed in wake of NAFTA uncertainty

The NAFTA renegotiations are resulting in quite the tumultuous turn for many Canadian industries, particularly those that have been slapped on with unreasonable tariffs from the United States government.

Though Canada has responded with its own carefully selected list of tariffs, chosen with a politically strategic plot in mind, Canadian businesses still must weather the storm until a more permanent solution solidifies. In short, Canadian businesses must look both nationally, and internationally, to substitute its lost revenues. This means trading more closely with the EU, and, of course, by selling directly to the Canadian consumer. To accomplish this, all Canadian businesses should aim to:

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