TechCrunch
Rovio's Latest Bad Piggies Update Is Nothing To Snort At
Rovio has just released an update to Bad Piggies, the game that turned the tables, this time making the Bad Piggies the protagonists.
Players are asked to build vehicles using various tools, boosts, and materials and then traverse the course carrying the bad piggies to their goal.
Today, the company released an update that brings 30 new levels, as well as new tools and power-ups.
Most notable in the update is the new Super Mechanic power-up, which builds the perfect vehicle for you to complete the course with a three-star score.
The update also offers a grappling hook, which lets you fire at surfaces and swing your vehicle to achievement.
Along with the new Rise & Swine levels, Rovio has also included super glue, magnets, and “turbo charges” in the arsenal of potential tools.
As per usual, these power-ups can be earned or purchased.
Bad Piggies is available here.
Drool Britannia: Why The UK Anti-Porn Laws Are Ridiculous And It Matters That They're Overturned
Think of the children! Like clockwork, anti-porn sentiment has broken out again, this time in the UK. PM David Cameron has announced something he is calling “Default On” access to ISP-wide porn filters that will ensure children, adults, and the aged cannot see the unclothed human form in various states of arousal. This Quixotic effort is in fact worse than Quixotic. After all, the only thing Don Quixote hurt was a bunch of windmills. This legislation, on the other hand, could pave the way for vile Internet censorship laws that could change the way the world works.
First, let us understand what is going on here. To the general public these laws are mere suggestions unless you’re into simulated rape. ISPs have been asked to implement filters that are “default on” which, in Cameron doublespeak, means that they’re available only if the customer enables them when creating an account. They’re calling this “Active-Choice +.” The UK Department of Education had this to say:
In short, they’re making ISPs offer something they’re probably already offering. Four of the main ISPs are already on board although many ISPs offer filtering packages already. This would only codify the process in law. As a parent I’m all for voluntary web filtering simply because I don’t want the kids to see violence but it is a cop-out As a talking point, then, filtering the Internet makes plenty of sense to the technical and non-technical alike. In a real sense it is an effort fraught with difficulty and problems. The instant your kid can’t search for “breast cancer” is the instant the filter goes off… for good.
After this basic bit of filtering, the laws are jacked up to 11. You can also be arrested for possession of “extreme pornography,” whatever that means, and the UK The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre will create a blacklist of “abhorrent” internet search terms that will be used to trigger investigations. Finally, the police will create a large database of child pornography for their own use while searching for pedophiles.
First, no one can be for the spread of child pornography. That is a given. There are laws on the books in most countries ensuring that you can’t view and trade images of children pressed into pornography. This would have little effect on that population except, I suspect, ensuring that some twisted policeman can now browse the constabulary’s kiddie porn database with impunity. I also suspect no one in any legal system has any idea what “extreme pornography” really means and this will lead to a rash of “know it when I see it” type prosecutions and will only tangentially put true sickos behind bars while making life hard for honest, legal fetishists.
Second, this is pure grandstanding masquerading as a response to outrage and will do little to affect the daily lives of children or adults. ISPs may offer free (or paid) filtering services and the same filters will remain on public Internet access points in libraries and schools (unless the kid is smart enough to bypass those and/or stupid enough to look at porn on a library computer). The call for anti-porn in Iceland, for example petered out even as this one is gaining steam. The astute would also note that this sort of juicy, summertime fist-thumping is great for a slow news month and is excellent fodder for redirecting attention away from Cameron’s links to Big Tobacco. It also gives the Daily Mail the opportunity to look relevant as it is the primary media mover in this effort. In short, this makes the UK look stupid.
If this is passed, however, I fear that the disease will spread elsewhere. If the UK, that bastion of right living and solid middle class values, lifts walls against the pornographic aggressor, what is to stop the U.S. from doing the same thing? “Stopped Internet Porn” is an excellent title card for any politician’s election-year advertising and, even if the laws did nothing to stop anything, the Mr. or Mrs. Public will probably have little understanding of the effects that it will seem, for a time, that Internet porn was stopped. Then they’ll check the browser history on the family computer.
We have already given governments broad powers to snoop, steal, and ascertain. When you are not using encrypted chat and email sessions you are essentially shouting your private information into the proverbial crowded room. Do our governments need more access to our data? No. Are there far better ways to catch online predators than trusting an ISP to keep your kids safe? Absolutely. The moment I entrust the governing of my children’s access to the Internet to the government is the moment I no longer deserve to be a parent.
As one reader on that haven of illicit boobshots, Reddit, notes:
Like the theatre of security, the theatre of anti-pornography lulls the uninformed into a false sense of safety. To filter the Internet is to underestimate its power. After all, it routes around damage.
Chill: Gmail's New Email Ads Aren't Actually New, And Aren't Even Real Emails
Only weeks after Google rolled out the revamped tabbed interface for Gmail, users began spotting a new ad format, which placed advertisements directly into the “Promotions” section of the inbox. News of this feature has begun making the rounds again, as more users are now noticing the ads for the first time.
One TechCrunch writer spotted and took a screenshot of the new Gmail ads on May 31, for example. Others, like the unofficial Google-watching blog, Google Operating System, wrote about the new ads in June. And others still had spotted the ads while in much earlier phases of beta testing.
As you may recall, Gmail’s user interface overhaul recently broke up users’ emails into four sections – Primary for important messages, Social for updates from social networks, Promotions for promotional messages, and Updates for auto-generated messages, such as order confirmations, bills or statements. The ads are now appearing at the top of the Promotions section.
The placement of these ads makes sense. Someone digging into this inbox section, which features the messages from retailers and other sites a user has opted in to hear from, is likely already in a shopping mindset. It’s an ideal time to market to Gmail’s extensive user base, estimated at more than 425 million users.
These ads, which can also be starred and shared with friends, much like emails, are clearly marked with an “ad” label and have a different background color from the rest of the inbox. However, the overall look-and-feel could still easily confuse less sophisticated users who may assume the ads are actually their own emails. But to be clear, the ads are not email messages in the sense that Google has shared a user’s email address with an advertiser, who is now contacting them by sending them a message, as some have reported.
But due to the confusion the ads may cause — plus the fact that the format makes an overloaded inbox feel even more cluttered — the initial reception to the new ads has been rather unfavorable. VentureBeat, for example, even went so far as to call the ads “spammy.”
Google, of course, has run ads in Gmail for many years now, so the introduction of advertising is nothing new. For example, advertisements were added in 2010 via Gmail’s “web clips,“ which delivered ticker-like news headlines to inboxes. The Promotional ads, though, will now replace “web clips” when enabled. When the Promotions tab is visible in the inbox, the web clips disappear. But if you hide the Promotions tab, or choose to remain in Gmail’s “Priority Inbox” configuration, the web clips remain.
Google explains that, in addition to replacing web clips, the Promotions ads only pop up when relevant, which means you won’t always see these ads in your inbox. So despite their perhaps deceptive appearance, there’s a chance for users to see fewer ads than usual at present — or at least until the program is expanded enough so that a lack of relevant ads is no longer an issue.
While users may dislike the new ads for the reasons stated above, they will likely remain. Google’s customers aren’t you or me or other Gmail users, but advertisers. And these ads, or “Sponsored Promotions” as they’re officially called, are very advertiser-friendly. Advertisers pay for just the initial click on the ad’s teaser message, MarketingLand has previously explained, but the user can then star the message for later, forward it to a friend, or interact with other advertiser content, like clicking through to a landing page, filling out a form, or watching a video, for example.
No word yet on how well the ads perform, but given their prime placement and a design which most importantly works well on mobile devices, they will probably succeed far better than web clips ever did.
(Image credits: Frederic Lardinois, MarketingLand)
SynapDx Raises $15.4M In Quest To Create A Blood Test For Autism
Autism, the disorder that affects social skills and communication and that is seeing a rising number of diagnoses, has a myriad number of causes from genetic to environmental factors. Because it’s largely behavioral, it may not be formally diagnosed until a child is a few years old, preventing much-needed early intervention and care.
But a Massachusetts-based startup SynapDx is hoping to change that by combining advanced bioinformatics, genome sequencing and blood tests in a way that may help parents diagnose their children at a much earlier age.
The company just closed a $15.4 million round led by Google Ventures to develop a blood test for the disorder, by studying the genetic make-up of children who are clinically diagnosed with the condition. The more the company can understand about different genetic mutations that are associated with autism, the more accurate a blood test they can create to signal for the disorder.
“We don’t know what the root causes of autism are, but we can correlate what we see in the blood with clinical diagnoses,” said Theresa Tribble, the vice president of commercial strategy for the company. “We hope to collaborate with researchers to give us additional insight to what those causes are.”
The end goal isn’t to create a bulletproof blood test for autism, but to create an early-stage test that can help parents refer their children for a full medical diagnosis earlier on.
“This is more of a risk assessment,” she said. “The goal is to help pediatricians identify children who should be referred for a full clinical evaluation earlier than they do today.”
She added that the average age of diagnosis is around four-and-a-half years, but parents often become worried at around 18 months.
“That’s a really long lag,” she said.
Foundation Medical Partners also joins as a new investor along with earlier investors North Bridge Venture Partners and General Catalyst Partners.
With the round, Google’s Andrew Conrad, who is the former chief scientific officer of LabCorp and co-founder of the National Genetics Institute, will join the board. Google Ventures’ Krishna Yeshwant, who leads many of the firm’s health and medical investments, did this deal.
While SynapDx is solely focused on autism today, one could imagine that they could apply their techniques to other disorders later on.
“There continue to be broad unmet needs in objective genomics tests for neurodevelopment disorders, so that would be a natural expansion point,” Tribble said. “But autism is our primary focus today.”
SynapDx uses the same genome sequencers from companies like Illumina that many other genomic data startups are using. But then they layer on other proprietary techniques afterward to correlate disease risks with genetic mutations.
“The secret sauce comes from our informatics capabilities,” Tribble said. The company’s test measures the amounts of RNA which are copied from each of many different genes. For every gene, the amount of RNA copied determines how much protein is made. Those proteins in turn affect how the human brain develops and how speech and behavioral patterns evolve.
The company doesn’t have a formal timeline for when it will be able to launch the test commercially. They recently launched a 660-child, 20-site clinical study earlier this year.
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