Geek News

Humans don't all look, talk, or walk the same, with us shifting our weight and style in order to save much energy as possible. This adaptability is a problem for researchers who want to build assistive devices for folks with mobility issues, however. It's what has prompted a team out of Harvard to craft an algorithm that can determine the wearer's individual needs after just twenty minutes of analysis. Let's imagine that you have difficulty walking, and need a soft exosuit to give your knees or hips a little push to get around. That's what Harvard Biodesign Lab is building, a fancy-pants pair of shorts that can provide the right help at the right time. But ensuring that the gear works correctly has never been an easy, or simple process. Using the new algorithm, the team looks at a variety of signals beyond just how a person steps, but also their breathing rate and psychological cues. And after the short setup period is over, the team claims that the system c...

Twitter's bot crackdown is great for improving the quality of the service , but might make it harder for businesses to use it effectively. That's why the company is tweaking its system to enable companies to better deal with bulk communications. In the future, you shouldn't be waiting as long for a response from your favorite airline / cable provider, unless of course they're just ignoring you. Right now, Twitter limits the amount of requests and messages a piece of software can make to its system at a given time. It's a way of stopping propagandists and tolls from overwhelming Twitter, and your DM inbox. But that also stops businesses which use Twitter to handle customer service from thousands of irate users at a time. The change means that, for every message you send to a company over DM, they can send you five responses within 24 hours. If you send them another message, then that figure resets, meaning that you can theoretically chat forever, should you wan...