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WASHINGTON — Apple will let you unlock the iPhone X with your face — a move likely to bring facial recognition to the masses, along with concerns over how the technology may be used for nefarious purposes.

Apple’s newest device, set to go on sale November 3, is designed to be unlocked with a facial scan with a number of privacy safeguards — as the data will only be stored on the phone and not in any databases.

Unlocking one’s phone with a face scan may offer added convenience and security for iPhone users, according to Apple, which claims its “neural engine” for FaceID cannot be tricked by a photo or hacker.

While other devices have offered facial recognition, Apple is the first to pack the technology allowing for a three-dimensional scan into a hand-held phone.

But despite Apple’s safeguards, privacy activists fear the widespread use of facial recognition would “normalise” the technology and open the door to broader use by law enforcement, marketers or others of a largely unregulated tool.

“Apple has done a number of things well for privacy but it’s not always going to be about the iPhone X,” said Jay Stanley, a policy analyst with the American Civil Liberties Union.

“There are real reasons to worry that facial recognition will work its way into our culture and become a surveillance technology that is abused.”

A study last year by Georgetown University researchers found nearly half of all Americans in a law enforcement database that includes facial recognition, without their consent. 

Civil liberties groups have sued over the FBI’s use of its “next generation” biometric database, which includes facial profiles, claiming it has a high error rate and the potential for tracking innocent people.

“We don’t want police officers having a watch list embedded in their body cameras scanning faces on the sidewalk,” said Stanley.

Clare Garvie — the Georgetown University Law School associate who led the 2016 study on facial recognition databases — agreed that Apple is taking a responsible approach but others might not.

“My concern is that the public is going to become inured or complacent about this,” Garvie said.

Advertisers, police, porn stars

Widespread use of facial recognition “could make our lives more trackable by advertisers, by law enforcement and maybe someday by private individuals”, she said.

Garvie said her research found significant errors in law enforcement facial recognition databases, opening up the possibility someone could be wrongly identified as a criminal suspect.

Another worry, she said, is that police could track individuals who have committed no crime simply for participating in demonstrations.

Shanghai and other Chinese cities have recently started deploying facial recognition to catch those who flout the rules of the road, including jaywalkers.

Facial recognition and related technologies can also be used by retail stores to identify potential shoplifters, and by casinos to pinpoint undesirable gamblers.

It can even be used to deliver personalised marketing messages — and could have some other potentially unnerving applications.

Last year, a Russian photographer figured out how to match the faces of porn stars with their social media profiles to “doxx” them, or reveal their true identities.

This type of use “can create huge problems”, said Garvie. “We have to consider the worst possible uses of the technology.”

Apple’s system uses 30,000 infrared dots to create a digital image which is stored in a “secure enclave”, according to a white paper issued by the company on its security. It said the chances of a “random” person being able to unlock the device are one in a million, compared with one in 50,000 for its TouchID.

Legal battle brewing

Apple’s FaceID is likely to touch off fresh legal battles about whether police can require someone to unlock a device.

FaceID “brings the company deeper into a legal debate” that stemmed from the introduction of fingerprint identification on smartphones, according to ACLU staff attorney Brett Max Kaufman.

Kaufman says in a blog post that courts will be grappling with the constitutional guarantees against unreasonable searches and self-incrimination if a suspect is forced to unlock a device.

US courts have generally ruled that it would violate a user’s rights to give up a passcode because it is “testimonial” — but that situation becomes murkier when biometrics are applied.

Apple appears to have anticipated this situation by allowing a user to press two buttons for two seconds to require a passcode, but Garvie said court battles over compelling the use of FaceID are likely.

Regardless of these concerns, Apple’s introduction is likely to bring about widespread use of facial recognition technology.

“What Apple is doing here will popularise and get people more comfortable with the technology,” said Patrick Moorhead, principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, who follows the sector.

“If I look at Apple’s track record of making things easy for consumers, I’m optimistic users are going to like this.”

Garvie added it is important to have conversations about facial recognition because there is little regulation governing the use of the technology.

“The technology may well be inevitable,” she said.

“It is going to become part of everyone’s lives if it isn’t already.”

Unlike any other experience in 15-years as a motoring writer, driving a fully-loaded Isuzu Giga E-Series articulated lorry — or tractor trailer in US-speak — through a 42° banked corner ranks right up there with the top-end supercars and luxury cars. 

Entering the carousel-like bank at 110km/h while seated nearly a story high with a gross combined mass of 40-tonnes for the first time gave one pause for thought by mid-corner, when glancing at the flat tarmac a couple of lanes to the left and the sky directly above from the right side window. 

Pause for thought

Captured by a brave photographer standing by the side of the road, as the second lesser bank straightened up before the giant 14-wheeler zoomed past and compressed the air in its wake, the Giga E-Series test drive was a brief but most memorable experience. The highlight of a visit that took in visits to Isuzu’s 170,000 production capacity, 1-million square-metre large and quality control-obsessed Fujisawa plant, the Isuzu Plaza Museum in Hokkaido tracing the brand’s heritage to 1916, and a practical eco-driving tutorial, the E-series test drive included three laps of the second longest 4.4km circuit at Isuzu’s proving ground towing both fully-loaded and empty trailers.

A different experience but thrill not too far removed from driving a supercar at over twice that speed on circuit, the E-Series test drive gave one opportunity to better understand the nuance need for care, and vast forces associated with trucks of this size and weight.

With both the thrill and tension undoubtedly heightened by circumstance as the test drive visit to Isuzu’s WAcom proving grounds in Hokkaido was bookended by a North Korean ballistic missile test firing above and anticipated landfall of Typhoon Talim on the northern Japanese island, one had newfound appreciation for both truck making and driving.

Heavy hauling

Thoroughly engineered and built for heavy duty use, the Giga E-Series also looks the rugged and tough machine, with an imposingly towering 3235mm high flat face cab. Measuring 2,490mm wide the Giga EXD52BD-X4NR-D 3A production code tractor version driven features two enormous 295/80R22.5 front tires and four 275/80R22.5 rear tyres on a single axle, with two to each side.

Comparatively short at 5610mm, its rear axle sits at the end of a 3180mm wheelbase, while its cabin sits atop and slightly ahead of the front axle, and offers a commanding driving position with excellent front visibility.

Weighing in at 7100kg as a tractor, the E-Series can accommodate a payload of 11,500kg and haul far more with a variety of boxed, flat and other trailer beds available. Powered by and enormous turbocharged and intercooled 15.7-litre straight six-cylinder diesel engine the E-Series’ total GCM weight rating including vehicle, payload and trailer is a vast 39,940kg.

Channelling its enormous torque to the tractor’s driven rear axle, the E-Series can be specified with either a complex 16-speed manual gearbox with eight forward ratios split into low and high range, or a much more user-friendly 12-speed automated manual gearbox, with sequential manual mode shifting, as driven.

Gathering momentum

Unlike a car engine, the E-Series gigantic 15.7-litre engine is a unit developing a maximum 454BHP at 1700rpm, by which point it is nearing its redline rev limit. With power and momentum building up slowly over 12-gear ratios to eke out every last drop of potential, the E-Series — like all heavy duty trucks — relies more on torque, which in this case is a deep and vast reservoir of 1664lb/ft delivered over a 900-1300rpm range, during which it is at its most muscular for pulling huge loads, and at which point it is most efficient to up-shift into the next gear.

Setting off eagerly from standstill, one needs to gently feed the throttle rather than slamming it down to avoid rocking its huge mass on its ultra rugged air sprung live axle and leaf spring suspension. 

Unloaded by towing a trailer, the E-Series was sprightlier — if it can be described as such — and was quicker and easier accumulating speeds of 100-120km/h. However, with a full-load, progress was expectedly more laboured and timely as it gathered momentum, but became more responsive and flexible once highway speeds were achieved, which gave one a perspective on how much further planning is required for driving trucks than smaller, quicker and lighter cars.

High and mighty

Driving on a huge, empty and dedicated circuit at WAcom, one got familiar with the Giga’s size, weight and rate of progress fairly quickly. On public roads, its huge size and mass would requires far more planning, foresight, patience and skill for even the simplest manoeure, let alone more precise and complicated maneuvers, like reversing, which with a trailer and limited rear visibility, is counter intuitive. Driving at speed at WAcom one found the E-series highly-assisted ABS drum brakes most reassuringly capable and steering no heavier than a family saloon. For smoothest results, one should brake gradually to full stop, while steering is smooth but vague in feel and obviously requires more lock input.

Climbing up some six feet to enter its cavernous cabin, one sits like at a dining table atop an air sprung seat and at the very front of the cabin for good front and driver’s side visibility. Cabin height and width is enormous for three occupants, while the driver sits up close to the pedals and large slightly tilt-adjustable but almost horizontal steering wheel. 

Well equipped inside, the E-Series can also be specified with a rear driver’s bunk for overnight journeys, while standard and optional driver assistance systems include rollover warning, sophisticated electronic vehicle attitude system, blind spot and lane departure warnings, and camera and radar based pre-collision braking system.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Engine: 15.7-litre, common-rail injection, turbo-diesel, in-line 6-cylinders

Bore x stroke: 147 x 154mm

Gearbox: 12-speed automated manual, rear-wheel-drive

Final drive: 2.866:1

Power, BHP (PS) [kW]: 454 (460) [338] @1700rpm

Specific power: 28.9BHP/litre

Power-to-weight: 63.9BHP/tonne

Torque, lb/ft (Nm): 1664 (2256) @900-1300rpm

Specific torque: 143.8Nm/litre

Torque-to-weight: 317.7Nm/tonne

Length: 5610mm

Width: 2,490mm

Height: 3235mm

Wheelbase: 3,180mm

Weight: 7100kg

Maximum payload: 11,500kg

Gross Combination Mass (GCM): 39,940kg

Suspension: Live axle, leaf spring, air suspension

Steering: Power-assisted

Brakes: Drums, ABS

Tyres, F/R: 295/80R22.5 / 275/80R22.5

Timing meals relative to your own body clock, rather than to the time of a day, may affect how lean you are, researchers suggest. 

Studies have shown that eating later in the day ups your risk of weight gain. However, the impact of a person’s body (biological) clock — independent of the time of day — has not been tested until now, according to Dr Andrew McHill of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and colleagues. 

“Our findings could be considered a reason not to eat right before going to sleep, but they’re also a reason not to eat later in the evening, even if you are planning to go to bed at a later time,” McHill told Reuters Health by e-mail. 

The team recruited 110 college students ages 18 to 22 (about 60 per cent male) for a 30-day study of sleep times and food intake. 

The students completed questionnaires about their sleep habits at the outset of the study, as well as daily electronic sleep-wake and exercise diaries. They also wore motion monitors throughout the study to help track sleep-wake timing. 

For one week during the study, participants used a mobile phone app to time-stamp, document and record their food intake during their regular routines. 

They were also evaluated for one night at the hospital to see what time their level of the hormone melatonin began to rise — which marks the beginning of a person’s biological night — and to assess their body composition (i.e., muscle mass and fat). 

Melatonin onset timing was similar for both lean participants and those with a higher percentage of body fat, according to the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition study, online September 6. 

However, those with a higher per centage of body fat — 8.7 per cent higher in women and 10.1 per cent higher in men — ate most of their calories about an hour closer to the time of melatonin onset than did lean participants. 

There was no relationship between body composition and when (clock hour) they ate, how many calories they consumed, what kind of food they had, their exercise or activity level or sleep duration. 

“While it’s not possible to know the timing of your melatonin onset without having it measured very precisely in dim lighting, we tend to think that melatonin levels rise about two hours prior to habitual sleep onset,” McHill explained. 

What about waking up and eating a snack in the middle of the night? 

“This would also be a time when melatonin is high and your body clock is promoting sleep and fasting,” he said, “so we would consider that a time that food consumption could lead to higher body fat if done repeatedly over a long period of time.”  

McHill cautioned that the findings do not show cause and effect. To do that, he said, “randomised controlled trials that include altering the timing of meals of the exact same food content in relation to melatonin timing (e.g., providing meals within four hours of melatonin onset or restricting calories to when melatonin concentrations are low) are needed”. 

It is also important to study groups other than college students, and the team has already begun to track meal timing in older and ill populations. 

Dr Eric Feigl-Ding, a nutritional epidemiologist at Harvard Chan School of Public Health in Boston who was not involved in the study, told Reuters Health he agrees that “the takeaway is that eating earlier before bed may be better” — perhaps as much as 4 to 5 hours earlier. 

However, “actual experiments to show direct long-term weight loss and health benefits from consistently eating earlier before bed are needed,” he added by e-mail. 

“Be vigilant of your food intake as time to sleep approaches,” Dr Jocelyn Cheng, a neurologist at NYU Langone Health in New York City urged in an email to Reuters Health. 

“If you notice yourself eating more during this period compared to earlier in the day, consider redistributing your meals, snacks included,” said Cheng, who was not involved in the study.

LOS ANGELES — Ryan Hudson was trying to order pizza online for his two children when he was prompted to enter a coupon code at checkout.

Hudson knew better than to bother searching for a discount. His kids were hungry and he did not have time to scan the Internet for coupons that had either expired or did not apply to the cheese pizza he wanted to order.

“And then it hit me. Why can’t I just automate the process?” said Hudson, a computer engineer turned entrepreneur.

The software Hudson cobbled together that night would form the basis for a startup he cofounded called Honey.

Headquartered in downtown Los Angeles, Honey offers a free extension for Google Chrome, Firefox and Safari that aggregates discount codes for whichever shopping site a user visits.

When it comes time to make an online purchase, the extension automatically applies any code it finds that saves the shopper the most money. Since there is no need for customers to navigate away from a checkout page in search of coupons, shoppers who use Honey’s extension are 55 per cent more likely to complete a transaction than those that do not, the company says.

“It’s better for the shopper because you don’t have that feeling you paid too much,” said George Ruan, Honey’s other cofounder. “But it’s also better for the merchant because people are completing the purchase.”

Honey’s extension, which appears at the top right corner of the browser, works with thousands of online stores. The company’s 5 million users save an average of $32 a month. Already this year, users have collectively saved $170 million through discounts, more than the $109 million saved all of last year.

Honey compiles information about the coupons that work and the ones that do not through its users (kind of like how drivers feed traffic data to Waze). The company says it does not share that data with any third parties.

In addition to its extension, Honey operates a website promoting shopping deals, which garners 10 million unique monthly visitors.

“We see a lot of opportunity to make it easier for people to shop across stores,” said Hudson, 37, who launched the company in 2012 with Ruan. “There hasn’t been anybody helping the average consumer solve this problem.”

The company makes money from commissions earned by directing users to specific merchants. Honey splits those commissions with users who sign up for a no-cost rewards program called Honey Gold.

Hudson and Ruan scraped together $100,000 to launch the company, but have since raised $40.8 million in venture backing — most of which came from a previously unreported $26 million Series C funding round in March led by Anthos Capital.

The infusion of cash has helped Honey launch a hiring spree. The company started the year with 30 employees. It now has 100 and has plans to add another 50 staffers.

Bryan Kelly, managing partner at Anthos, said Hudson and Ruan never pitched the startup to his firm. Rather, Anthos employees discovered Honey because they were hooked on the extension.

“Their approach is genius,” Kelly said. “They’re not asking the consumer to do anything other than save money. The experience is frictionless.”

Hudson and Ruan said Honey was profitable, but declined to disclose its revenue.

Honey currently offers discount deals for 21,000 online merchants. About 9,000 of those merchants pay Honey commissions for delivering sales, including Macy’s, Target and Wal-Mart.

Amazon, however, is not one of them — and that represents Honey’s biggest risk. The online retailing giant currently commands 37 per cent of all US e-commerce sales, according to Needham & Co.

By 2021, that number is expected to reach 50 per cent, leaving Honey with even fewer merchants as potential partners.

Hudson and Ruan say there’s little they can do except hope consumers shop elsewhere in recognition Amazon needs competition to keep prices down.

Still, Honey has found a way to stay relevant to Amazon shoppers by including a price-tracking feature in its coupon code extension. The tracker, called Droplist, can be programmed to notify Honey users when an item’s price on Amazon has fallen to a desired level so they can pounce on the purchase.

Honey is currently only available on desktop — which explains why Hudson and Ruan failed to interest investors when they first started. Despite the mobile revolution, Honey’s founders argued comparison shopping still lived — and lives — on desktop.

“Most Americans have 20 years’ experience of comparison shopping on their desktops,” said Ruan, 38. “So our thesis was it was very difficult to get people comfortable checking out on one site only. It’s very hard to do comparison shopping and look up coupons on your phone.”

Don’t Panic, I’m Islamic
Edited by Lynn Gaspard
London: Saqi Books, 2017
Pp. 181

With the election of an overt racist to the presidency of the most powerful country in the world, statements and policies inspired by Islamophobia have reached such ridiculous heights that one does not know whether to laugh or cry. As reflected in the title, the 34 contributors to this book opted for the former, taking humour as their “weapon” of choice to dispel stereotypes about Muslims and outsiders. Donald Trump is not often named, but it is clear that his “Muslim ban” provoked this timely publication, though the thinking of the contributors has certainly been evolving over a longer period. 

All of the essays, poems and stories in “Don’t Panic, I’m Islamic” are creative, polished and daring; many of them are hilarious. The same can be said of the graphics, which are stunningly colourful in their celebration of diversity, and occasionally shocking and bizarre — an appropriate response to real events.

 Arwa Mahdawi mixes irony with puns in “A Personal Guide to Extreme Vetting”, which she suggests does not target Muslims, but must be “designed with animals in mind”. (p. 3)

Her guideline, “What’s in their pantry?”, is priceless: “A predilection for extra virgin olive oil is a sign that someone might be thinking a little too much about the afterlife. You are what you eat. Watch out for foodamentalists”. (p. 5)

Karl Sharro’s satirical piece on getting a visa to the US shows that there was always extreme vetting. For his part, Omar Hamdi satirises pseudo-studies about Islam and disingenuous Muslim responses to their conclusions: “The most important command in Islam is to be angry. And it is such a universal way of life — you can be angry about anything you like — Israel, Syria, silly cartoons… This is what makes it superior to western culture, where people are only allowed to be angry about unimportant things, like Oscar winners or dead gorillas.” (p. 38-9)

Palestinian Sayed Kashua writes tongue-in-cheek of the advantages of Trump’s presidency. Having left the insecurity of West Jerusalem for the tranquility of the American Midwest, he began to fear that “the sense of security that seemed to swaddle me in America would affect the quality of my writing, that no longer being exposed to unbridled racism would leave me no choice but to launch a career as the author of romance novels for juveniles. Now I regard these feelings with bitter irony: at long last, here comes an American president who issues boycott orders against Muslims, refugees and migrants… holding out promise that I will not lack subject matter for writing”. (p. 147)

These writers and artists would like to go beyond false dichotomies of “us” and “them”, to get on with their lives, but events intervene, as when Hassan Abdulrazzak comes to work at a Boston science lab on 9/11, only to be confronted by an American colleague asking: “So Hassan, can you explain Hamas to me?” “I feel all eyes are on me now. The room rapidly shrinks. I’m like Joseph K in Kafka’s ‘The Trial’, not quite sure what I am being accused of. I mumble something about Palestine and the occupation. My colleague looks disinterested.” (p. 86)

Some of the pieces are meant to be thought-provoking rather than funny, like Leila Aboulela’s short story exploring differences among Muslims about how to practise their faith. Moris Farhi spins a modern-day myth about defying megalomaniac leaders, dedicated to all those persecuted in Turkey for defending human rights and freedom of expression, while a poem in which Sabrina Mahfouz speaks as a mermaid is a poignant plea for more human understanding.

The very being of the contributors defies stereotypes as many of them have hybrid identities, and/or live between different countries and cultures. They are Iraqi-Egyptian, British-Palestinian, Iranian-American and so on. Negin Farsad calls it being a “Third Thing… a designation for people who straddle worlds, who may have a foot in every door yet their butt is hovering between door frames… I’m a Third Thing — Islam doesn’t explain me, Iranian poetry doesn’t explain me, and apple pie doesn’t explain me”. (p. 25)

Some of the contributors take on other kinds of difference, such as being gay, lesbian or black or a combination, while also being Muslim. Jennifer Jajeh’s story shows that whiteness is relative and in the eyes of the beholder. These are only highlights. Every piece is worth reading, every picture worth contemplating.

Admirably, Lynn Gaspard leaves her comments to the end. Foregoing the editor’s privilege of introducing a book, she allows the contributors to have their say first, magnifying their impact, instead of first explaining what the book is about. Noting Saqi’s thirty-year history of publishing alternative views, Gaspard concludes: “Where war or repression attempt to stifle creativity, the opposite can also be achieved. A steely resolve rises to give voices to the suffocated. And the more diverse these voices are, the harder it is to silence or restrict them.” (p. 168)

Global dietary guidelines should possibly be changed to allow people to consume somewhat more fats, to cut back on carbohydrates and in some cases to slightly scale back on fruits and vegetables, a large study suggests. 

Over the course of about seven years, diets with roughly 35 per cent of calories from fats were tied to a lower mortality rate than diets with about 60 per cent of calories from carbohydrates. 

“What we are suggesting is moderation as opposed to very low and very high intakes of fats and carbohydrates,” said Mahshid Dehghan from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. 

Dehghan and colleagues write in The Lancet that cardiovascular disease is a global epidemic, with 80 per cent of the burden being found in low- and middle-income countries. 

The World Health Organisation currently advises people to get no more than 30 per cent of energy from fats and to avoid saturated fats found in things like animal products. Those recommendations are based on data from North America and Europe, however. 

The new data are drawn from the Prospective Urban Rural Epidemiology (PURE) study, which recruited people ages 35 to 70 in 18 countries between 2003 and 2013. 

The researchers had dietary and other information from 135,335 people who were followed for roughly seven years. 

During the study period, the researchers identified 5,796 deaths and 4,784 cardiovascular events like strokes and heart attacks among the study population. 

When the researchers separated people into five groups based on carbohydrate consumption, they found that people who ate the most carbohydrates were 28 per cent more likely to die from any cause during the study than those who ate the least. 

When people were divided into five groups based on how much fat they consumed, those who consumed the most fat — of any kind — were about 23 per cent less likely to die during the study than those who ate the least. The findings were consistent no matter what type of fat was consumed. 

“We are hoping that dietary guidelines are reconsidered in light of the new findings,” Dehghan told Reuters Health. 

Guidelines could relax restrictions on fat while focusing on carbohydrate intake, for example. 

A second analysis from the PURE study also suggests that the benefits of eating fruits and vegetable are not limitless. 

WHO guidelines suggest five servings of fruits, vegetables or legumes each day, according to co-author Victoria Miller, who is also with McMaster University. 

Those guidelines, again, are mostly based on evidence from North America and Europe. In other parts of the world, five servings of fruit each day may be too expensive. 

“Our findings show the lowest risk of death was among people who ate three to four servings with little additional benefit beyond that range,” said Miller. 

If dietary guidelines were adjusted to reflect a smaller recommended amount, she told Reuters Health, it would be more achievable and more people would meet that goal. 

Miller also emphasised that people who are meeting or exceeding the daily goal of fruits, vegetables and legumes should not take the findings as a licence to eat less of those foods. 

“We don’t want to tell people who are eating more than the recommendation to eat less,” she said. “That’s not the message.” 

Along with existing evidence, the new research suggests the biology of people around the world is similar when it comes to diets, said Dr Dariush Mozaffarian, dean of the Tufts Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy in Boston. 

“When viewed in the context of all the other evidence, it paints a pretty consistent picture,” said Mozaffarian, who was not involved with the new study. 

He told Reuters Health that people should increase good fats, increase the consumption of good foods that give rise to life — like fruits — and not worry too much about total or saturated fats. 

“I think we really have to revisit the continued strong focus on fat rather than thinking of carbs and food quality,” said Mozaffarian.

ULYANOVSK, Russia — Crowds are sparse these days at the world’s biggest Lenin museum in the Russian city of Ulyanovsk, which has fences round it to protect visitors after several massive panels dropped off its facade.

A giant topiary sign still spells “Lenin” near the white stone box of the Lenin Memorial Museum on the bank of the Volga River, but the former Soviet leader’s home city is in search of a new identity 100 years after the October Revolution.

The city of Simbirsk 700 kilometres southeast of Moscow, where Lenin was born and lived until he was 17, was renamed Ulyanovsk in his honour after his death in 1924.

It became a mecca for tour groups of Lenin lovers from socialist countries.

To communists, Lenin is still the best thing to happen to Ulyanovsk, and local 68-year-old communist activist Yevgeny Lytyakov says the city owes its growth and status to the fact that Lenin was born there. 

“Before the revolution, Simbirsk was a nondescript little town,” he said. 

But Lenin no longer resonates in the same way and AFP journalists saw only a handful of visitors at the city’s showpiece museums.

“We call Ulyanovsk Lenin’s motherland, but all the same, the young generation has moved on,” admits Yelena Bespalova, head of research at the Lenin Motherland Reserve, the city’s second biggest Lenin museum.

From idolised to demonised

In the red-carpeted halls of the Lenin Memorial Museum, which covers some 4,000 square metres, exhibits range from Lenin’s death mask to a giant map of the Soviet Union that lights up glowing red.

Contemporary touches include a huge photograph of President Vladimir Putin, who visited in 2002.

“Today practically the biggest [Lenin] museum that is left is ours, in his motherland,” says former director Valery Perfilov, 70, who still works there.

The museum was once lavishly funded by the Communist Party and had around 5,000 visitors a day, but after the breakup of the USSR “it all suddenly collapsed,” he recalls. 

“We were left without any funding.”

“If in the Soviet period, Lenin was idolised, deified, in the 1990s he was demonised.”

Today the museum is financed by the regional culture ministry and the current director Lidiya Larina says the complex, including a concert hall, has half a million visitors a year, but admits it is “outdated”.

It is due for a makeover ahead of Lenin’s 150th birthday in 2020 according to Larina, who wants to bring in interactive displays as well as a better shop and cafe.

The museum is also shifting its focus from Lenin as a political figure to his childhood in Ulyanovsk, Larina said, as Lenin’s role as an ideologue in the Soviet era is now generally downplayed by officials.

A plaque on Lenin’s former school calls him “Vladimir Ulyanov, the head of the government of Soviet Russia and the USSR from 1917 to 1923”.

“There’s a certain number of people in power who according to their views would happily raze the whole memory of the October Revolution and Lenin,” complains communist Lytyakov. 

“But society won’t let this happen.”

The Lenin Motherland Reserve museum, which has federal funding, has a different aim — to immerse visitors in the atmosphere of Simbirsk in Lenin’s day.

It is an open-air museum of colourful painted wooden buildings in the neighbourhood where Lenin lived in various houses — his family moved constantly — including a fire station and a corner shop.

“The mission of our organisation is to preserve this corner of old Simbirsk,” says deputy development director Oksana Solovei.

The complex has more than 200,000 visitors a year, mostly locals, she says.

“Unfortunately we don’t have as many foreign tourists as in the Soviet period.”

The museum also gives a darker picture, with an exhibition on 1917 documenting looting and robberies by freed criminals and ex-soldiers.

“It was very dangerous even to walk on the streets. In 1917 the curfew started at 6 pm,” says Bespalova.

‘Alternative view’

The city markets its Lenin links as part of a “Red Circuit” for Chinese tourists to visit Soviet sites around Russia.

Museum staff said Chinese groups visit often, however AFP journalists did not see any Chinese tourists over two days.

The city is also looking to other famous natives, including 19th-century novelist Ivan Goncharov, and to possibly end Lenin’s domination over its image.

Two 26-year-old designers from Ulyanovsk have created a range of funky postcards, magnets and mugs presenting what they call an “alternative view” of the city.

One postcard has the slogan “Ulyanovsk — motherland of talents” and cartoons of 20 figures including Goncharov — but Lenin is conspicuously absent, and the women say this is no accident.

“We have nothing against him — Vladimir Ilyich,” said designer Nataliya Chebarkova.

“But it’s nice to tell people that Ulyanovsk isn’t just Lenin and the USSR.”

By Lisa M. Krieger

The Mercury News (TNS)

MOFFETT FIELD, California — What began as a trickle of new planet discoveries from the Kepler Space Telescope a decade ago has turned into a torrent: 2,337 verified sightings, with about 50 in the “goldilocks zone” — our size, shape and orbit around the warm glow of stars like our own sun, perhaps hosting life.

At a recent news conference at NASA’s Ames Research Centre, scientists added 219 new planet candidates — 10 of them potentially habitable — to the final and most definitive tally from the prolific planet detector Kepler, which gazes into a slice of sky near the constellation Cygnus to find the subtle dimming that occurs every time a planet passes in front of — or “transits” — its sun.

“Are we alone? Maybe Kepler today has told us indirectly, although we need confirmation, that we are probably not alone,” said Mario Perez, Kepler programme scientist in the Astrophysics Division of NASA’s Science Mission.

William Borucki, the now-retired scientist who devoted two decades to getting the Kepler project launched, said “most stars have planets. Many of these planets are Earth-like. A fair fraction are in the habitable zone”.

Of particular interest in this newest batch is a planet called 7711, with a size, orbit and sunlike star similar to three planets in our solar system: Venus, Earth and Mars. “But we’d only want to live in one of them,” cautioned Susan Thompson, Kepler research scientists at the SETI Institute in Mountain View.

After years of searching, the Kepler mission has fundamentally changed our understanding of the diverse planets in our galaxy. At the conference, scientists lumped planets into five categories: “Hot Jupiters”, “Cold Gas Giants”, “Lava Worlds”, “Ice Giants” and — most promising — small “Rocky Planets”.

New findings suggest two distinct size groupings of these small rocky planets, both of them with inhospitable environments. One group is so close to its host star that its surface has been blowtorched. The other group has a crushing atmosphere “so thick that it would not be a nice place to live”, said Benjamin Fulton, doctoral candidate at the University of Hawaii in Manoa.

“Finding two distinct groups of exoplanets is like discovering mammals and lizards make up distinct branches of a family tree,” he said.

Before Kepler, no one knew if our sun was the only star to support planets.

The spacecraft was launched in March 2009 to survey the Milky Way galaxy in search of potentially habitable planets around other stars like our sun.

Calling it “the little spacecraft that could”, NASA Ames director Eugene L. Tu said Kepler “has rewritten the textbook on exoplanets”.

While Kepler has offered a pioneering look at the sky, surveying 200,000 stars, it sees only a fraction of the celestial landscape, according to the scientists.

To cover the entire sky, 400 Keplers would be needed.

Is your Microsoft Windows or Apple OS version the absolute newest, the most up to date? Do you always own and show the world the latest smartphone model?

You may be following up closely on technology trends. You may be trying to keep up with the change, upgrading and replacing software or equipment as soon as new versions or models are available. Whatever your approach to that may be, it is virtually impossible always to have the very latest. It is exhausting, time-consuming, mind-stressing and nerve-breaking; not to mention the expense it entails.

To avoid having to endure the above pains, users often choose a compromise solution. They skip one or two releases. They postpone moving up to the next thing immediately. It reduces the expense while it still spares them the shame of being kept in the Middle Ages of technology. Surely by now no one is still running their computer on Windows XP, for example!

The problem is that such solution is not workable on all software or equipment. With some, there is little choice but to upgrade or move up without any delay. Failure to do so may seriously affect operating the programme or the device. In extreme cases, it could even prevent working at all with them or it could create network security issues.

Smartphones for instance are more tolerant to postponing the change than say Microsoft Windows system. Many of us do not systematically buy the next Apple iPhone or Samsung Galaxy that these two manufacturers release, replacing their model N by model N+1. In the typical case, consumers would skip one, two or even three releases.

It is common at present to see owners of Samsung Galaxy trading their S5 model for an S8, ignoring the company’s S6 and S7 models on the way. Such buying habits do not really affect the usage of the smartphone, for the changes and improvements from S5 to S8, while being certainly interesting and worthwhile, are not life changing. Incidentally, Samsung has just announced their Galaxy S9 smartphone for next spring. Yes, no respite is allowed. 

On the other hand, you cannot seriously skip Windows upgrades without being negatively affected one way or another. From the date of this writing and until mid-2020, there are no fewer than eight major upgrades to Windows 10 that are planned by Microsoft. The most widely used computer operating system in the world will still be named Windows 10, but the upgrades will be significant — and unavoidable. Interestingly, and at the same time, the company has confirmed that if you are still holding on strong to good old Windows 7, it will keep supporting it officially and will back it up until 2020, technically only, not commercially.

Somewhere between smartphones and MS-Windows, it remains a matter of personal decision to skip releases or not, depending on how you might be affected by not moving up your device or your software.

Take Bluetooth speakers for instance. Old models run under version 3 whereas the newer ones feature version 4. The two versions provide the same transmission speed and quality of sound, but the first over a range of 10 metres maximum, whereas the second can cover up to 60 metres, theoretically at least. If you are happy with your Bluetooth version 3 speakers, have paid a lot to own them and do not need to transmit music over distances longer than 10 metres, then you do not need to buy ones featuring version 4 of the technology. Otherwise version 4 becomes a must.