Bots, your days of tweeting politically divisive nonsense might be numbered. The Washington Post reported Friday that in the last few months Twitter has aggressively suspended accounts in an effort to stem the spread of disinformation running rampant on its platform.

The Washington Post reports that Twitter suspended as many as 70 million accounts between May and June of this year, with no signs of slowing down in July. According to data obtained by the Post, the platform suspended 13 million accounts during a weeklong spike of bot banning activity in mid-May.

Sources tell the Post that the uptick in suspensions is tied to the companyefforts to comply with scrutiny from the congressional investigation into Russian disinformation on social platforms. The report adds that Twitter investigates bots and other fake accounts through an internal project known as &Operation Megaphone& through which it buys suspicious accounts and then investigates their connections.

Twitter declined to provide additional information about The Washington Post report, but pointed us to a blog post from last week in which it disclosed other numbers related to its bot-hunting efforts. In May of 2018, Twitter identified more than 9.9 million suspicious accounts — triple its efforts in late 2017.

Twitterefforts to suspend fake accounts have doubled since last year

Chart via Twitter

When Twitter identifies an account that it deems suspicious, it then &challenges& that account, giving legitimate Twitter users an opportunity to prove their sentience by confirming a phone number. When an account fails this test it gets the boot, while accounts that pass are reinstated.

As Twitter noted in its recent blog post, bots can make users look good by artificially inflating follower counts.

&As a result of these improvements, some people may notice their own account metrics change more regularly,& Twitter warned. The company noted that cracking down on fake accounts means that &malicious actors& won&t be able to promote their own content and accounts as easily by inflating their own numbers. Kicking users off a platform, fake or not, is a risk for a company that regularly reports its monthly active users, though only a temporary one.

As the report notes, at least one insider expects TwitterQ2 active user numbers to dip, reflecting its shift in enforcement. Still, any temporary user number setback would prove nominal for a platform that should focus on healthy user growth. Facebook is facing a similar reckoning as a result of the Russian bot scandal, as the company anticipates user engagement stats to dip as it moves to emphasize quality user experiences over juiced-up quarterly numbers. In both cases, ita worthy trade-off.

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Virgin Galactic agrees to launch space flights from Italy

U.S. space venture Virgin Galactic announced it has partnered with two aerospace companies to help bring commercial space launches to Italy.

The agreement with Italylargest private space company SITAEL, and ALTEC,a public-private company owned by the Italian Space Agency and Thales Alenia Space, has been two years in the making.

The idea is to put Virgin Galactic space vehicle system at the futureGrottaglie Spaceport where it can be used by private individuals who want to experience space, as well as customers like the Italian Space Agency interested in conducting research.

Earlier this year, Italian aviation authority ENAC designated the Taranto-Grottaglie Airport as the future home for horizontally launched spaceflights in Italy.

While this Italian spaceport will eventually provide the infrastructure for future Virgin Galactic suborbital flights, the company will maintain its operational headquarters at Spaceport America in New Mexico.

&This partnership could see Virgin Galactic launch the first person in history into space from Italian soil — and in fact from any European territory,& Virgin Group founder Sir Richard Branson said in a statement.

Virgin Galactic is owned by the Virgin Group and Aabar Investments PJS. There are two sister companies as well, Virgin Orbit, which focuses on launching small satellites into space using its LauncherOne orbital launch, and its manufacturing arm, The Spaceship Company.

Virgin Galactic is testing the SpaceShipTwo VSS Unity, a reusable space launch system that does horizontal launches.SpaceShipTwo and its carrier aircraft, WhiteKnightTwo, are manufactured and tested in Mojave, Calif. by The Spaceship Company. Herehow it works: The WhiteKnightTwo carries the VSS Unity to a high altitude and then it is dropped. The VSS Unity then fires its engines and launches into suborbital space before re-entering the Earthatmosphere after customers have experienced a few minutes of weightlessness.

In the past several months, Virgin Galactichas had two successful test flights ofSpaceShipTwo, the rocket-powered passenger spacecraft that may someday take tourists to the edge of space.In April,Virgin Galacticconducted its first test of itsrocket-powered spacecraft since the fatal breakup of the companyprevious SpaceShipTwo-class spacecraft, Enterprise, in 2014.

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US court upholds FAA drone regulations

The FAA just scored a legal win in its ongoing back and forth with drone hobbyists. The U.S. Court of Appeals opted to uphold a ruling granting the administrationauthority over consumer UAVs, a move that is expected to lead the way for additional restrictions on flight.

The ruling is based, in part, on a 2012 law passed by Congress that puts the FAA in charge of the then-emerging drone category. At the same time, however, it left a bit of an opening, essentially grandfathering in owners of some model aircraft already governed by safety organizations. According to the act, the FAA &may not promulgate any rule or regulation regarding a model aircraft.&

That loophole of sorts is what spurred drone hobbyist John Taylorcase, which temporarily blocked the FAAdrone registry requirement. Back in December, however, Trump signed a bill reinstating the registration.

Today, the court shot down Taylorrequest yet again. &Because the rule is within the agencystatutory authority and is neither arbitrary nor capricious, the petition for review is denied,& Judge Merrick Garland wrote in the opinion.

As The L.A. Times notes, this decision will also be regarded as a win for Google and Amazon, who have both been lobbying hard for regulation on hobbyist drones as they look to the skies for projects like Prime Air and Project Wing. Along with registry, future laws may include additional flight restrictions and required self-identifying beacons.

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Daimler can now test self-driving cars on public roads in Beijing

Daimler has been granted a license to test self-driving vehicles on public roads in Beijing, making it the first international automaker to receive such permission.

The owner of the Mercedes-Benz brand was given the test permit by the Chinese government after extensive closed-course testing, the company said in a statement, adding that it marks a milestone in its research and development efforts in China.

Daimler, which also has licenses in Germany and the U.S., said it will now begin road tests in Beijing.

There are other companies testing autonomous vehicles in China, notably Baidu, which has been on public roads since at least 2016. For Daimler to qualify, the company said it had to add to its Mercedes-Benz test vehicles technical applications from Baidu Apollo platform. Daimler had to undergo testing at the National Pilot Zone (Beijing and Hebei) for Intelligent Mobility, with test drivers receiving rigorous automated driving training.

Daimler has also deepened its relationship with Baidu, specifically in R-D efforts focused on safety and autonomous driving.The goal is to understand the special requirements for automated driving in China, and to develop an early intuition regarding local technical trends, Daimler said.

Earlier this week, Baidu announced an update to itsApollo autonomous driving system, which is capable of Level 4 operations,a designation by automotive engineering associationSAE International that means the vehicles take over all driving in certain conditions.

The Apollo program is an open-source autonomous driving platform that has been under development for years.Baidu isn&t interested in making the actual car — just the software that drives it.And it wants as many companies as possible to use its Apollo platform. Some 116 partners are now on the Apollo platform, including new partners Jaguar Land Rover, Valeo, Byton, Leopard Imaging and Suning Logistics.

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Early uses of blockchain will barely be visible, says HyperledgerBrian Behlendorf

The blockchain revolution is coming, but you might not see it. Thatthe view ofBrian Behlendorf, executivedirector of the Linux FoundationHyperledger Project.

Speaking at the TC Sessions: Blockchain event in Zug, Switzerland,Behlendorf explained that much of the innovation that the introduction of blockchains are primed to happen behind this the scenes unbeknownst to most.

&For a lot of consumers, you&re not going to realize when the bank or a web form at a government website or when you go to LinkedIn and start seeing green check marks against peopleclaims that they attended this university — which are all behind-the-scenes thatwill likely involve blockchain,&Behlendorf told interviewer John Biggs.

&This is a revolution in storage and networking and consumers.&

As for where blockchain might make a big impact,Behlendorf said he believes that the area of online identity is particularly ripe for change. Rather than relying on central systems such as Facebook or Twitter to hold information, blockchain solutions can potentially store information more securely and with more utility thanks to self-sovereign ID systems.

&Thatwhat gets me up in the morning more than almost every other use case,&Behlendorf said. &Ithink we&ve got something of a solutionbutonly going to work if the end user experience of managing your identity and your personal data is made easy and made fluid. It [has to] feel something like your wallet when you pull out your driverlicense and show it.&

Hyperledger is providing the framework and tools that the foundation hopes will enable innovation in the blockchain space, andBehlendorf said that it currently has around 10 code bases, of which two are in production use with eight additional frameworks to build blockchains. He added that there are more options coming, thanks toHyperledger focus on &organic& development ideas.

It might seem like an irony that blockchain projects, which can raise enormous amounts of money via token sales, are basing the technologies that power their businesses on open source tools, but Behlendorf said therenothing new in that situation versus how the Linux Foundation traditionally operates.

&There might be a few developers who get involved to improve their skills and reputation but the vast majority work on it because their business is investigating it, wantsto use it or to do a pilot, so they have a responsibility to make sure it works,&Behlendorf explained.

&For them, knowing other companies are using it and making a profit is fine,& he added. &In fact, ita good thing.&

Community spirit is very much the focus, and Hyperledger has had to intervene in the rare cases that members have taken things too far.

&What you want to protect against is any one company benefitting from the brand or reputation that the community creates in a way that is unfair. So we do things like we protect the trademark… because that confuses the marketplace,&Behlendorf said.

&But we want to see companies building services on top of this. In fact, itessential to make this a virtuous circle.&

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Your next summer DIY project is an AI-powered doodle camera

With long summer evenings comes the perfect opportunity to dust off your old boxes of circuits and wires and start to build something. If you&re short on inspiration, you might be interested in artist and engineer Dan Macnishhow-to guide on building an AI-powered doodle camera using a thermal printer, Raspberry pi, a dash of Python and GoogleQuick Draw data set.

&Playing with neural networks for object recognition one day, I wondered if I could take the concept of a Polaroid one step further, and ask the camera to re-interpret the image, printing out a cartoon instead of a faithful photograph.& Macnish wrote on his blog about the project, called Draw This.

To make this work, Macnish drew on Googleobject recognition neural network and the data set created for the game Google Quick, Draw! Tying the two systems together with some python code, Macnish was able to have his creation recognize real images and print out the best corresponding doodle in the Quick, Draw! data set

But since output doodles are limited to the data set, there can be some discrepancy between what the camera &sees& and what it generates for the photo.

&You point and shoot & and out pops a cartoon; the camerabest interpretation of what it saw,& Macnish writes. &The result is always a surprise. A food selfie of a healthy salad might turn into an enormous hot dog.&

If you want to give this a go for yourself, Macnish has uploadedthe instructions and code needed to build this project on GitHub.

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