Honeywell’s £229 voice-activated smart thermostat comes to the UK
For a while, Honeywell’s range of smart thermostats was pretty limited in the UK. While the evoHome Controller certainly held its own against rival devices like Google’s Nest and Tado, the company decided to bring its Single Zone Connected Thermostat to UK shores last week, and is now ready to let Brits control their heating using only their voice. The aptly-named Voice Controlled Thermostat basically acts like Google Now for your boiler; you get its attention by saying “Hello, thermostat,” and then issue commands to make it warmer/cooler or change the temperature by a set number of degrees. Like Honeywell’s other controllers, the Voice Controller Thermostat also comes with a companion app, allowing you to program the heating remotely and save energy while you’re out the house. If you fancy some hands-free heating, Honeywell’s new thermostat is now available for £229 from its wide network of official UK suppliers.
Filed under: Household
Source: Honeywell
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Apple enables unique passwords for apps that tap into iCloud
This is a reminder that starting tomorrow, app-specific passwords will be required to access your iCloud data using third party apps such as Microsoft Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird, or other mail, contacts, and calendar apps.
If you are currently signed in to a third party app using your primary Apple ID password, you will be signed out automatically when this change takes effect. You will need to generate an app-specific password and sign in again. To generate an app-specific password:
- Sign in to My Apple ID (https://appleid.apple.com)
- Go to Password & Security
- Click Generate App-Specific Password
Filed under: Internet, Software, Apple
Source: Apple
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Astronomers accidentally discovered the brightest pulsar on record
Remember NuSTAR, the specialized space telescope NASA designed specifically to study black holes? It just found something much, much brighter. Astronomers at NASA have stumbled upon what appears to be the most luminous pulsar ever discovered, but they almost mistook it for a black hole. After measuring the dead star’s output, they found it was outputting as much energy as 10 million suns — shockingly powerful, considering how much smaller it is than our own star. Astronomers aren’t sure why the pulsar is so bright, but will continue to study in hopes of learning how common or uncommon this kind of pulsar is. The discovery kind of shakes up what theorist knew about black holes and ultraluminous x-rays, underlining how little we really know about the universe out there. Check out NASA’s gallery of images at the source link below.
Filed under: Science
Source: NASA
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UK’s new space weather center will help people prepare for solar storms
Met Office, the UK’s weather forecast agency, has just launched a new division that monitors out-of-this-world weather conditions — literally. Thanks to a £4.6 ($7.5) million funding from the government, the agency built a Space Weather Center right out of its Exeter headquarters to keep a close eye on solar flares, coronal mass ejections (CME) and geomagnetic storms. Seeing as the UK’s National Risk Register lists space weather as the fourth most dangerous threat to the region’s infrastructures, it’s not so odd that the government will fund the center’s operations. After all, it’ll be in charge of issuing early warning signals, so the world can prepare for the the usual effects of solar storms, like GPS or radio signal interruption, satellite damage or even power grid outages and heightened radiation in worst case scenarios.
While the center’s a UK project, it’s business manager, Mark Gibbs, says it’s really the “culmination of more than three years’ work drawing on the collective resources and expertise of the UK and USA [from the time PM Cameron and President Obama announced their collaboration in 2011].” In fact, one of the center’s partners in monitoring space weather 24/7 is NOAA’s National Weather Service. We just hope that they won’t have anything bad to report, and that every solar storm just leads to pretty auroras.
[Image credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center/Flickr]
Filed under: Science
Via: BBC
Source: Met Office
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New Photo Claims to Show 2GB Elpida RAM Chips for iPad Air 2
Third-party Apple service provider GeekBar has shared a picture (via Weibo, Google Translate) of what is said to be a 2 GB Elpida RAM module for the iPad Air 2. The units shown appear to be similar to the 1 GB of Elpida DDR3 SDRAM found in the first-generation iPad Air, and the photo follows a report from last month which stated that the next-generation iPad Air would receive a memory upgrade to 2 GB of RAM.
Apple first offered 1 GB of RAM with the iPad 3, keeping the same amount of memory in the iPad 4 and the iPad Air. It is likely that previous iPads have not seen a memory increase to keep costs low and preserve battery life, but Apple may offer 2 GB of RAM with the iPad Air 2 in order to offer optimal performance on iOS 8.
Apple is also said to be working on split-screen multitasking for the iPad Air, which would require more memory than running just a single app. That report also noted that feature would allow two apps to run side-by-side in multiple sizes, and offer users the ability to drag content like text or images from one app to another.
Geekbar does not have an established track record with Apple rumors, however the company’s Weibo account did reveal the barometric pressure sensor that was eventually included in the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus.
Apple is expected to unveil the iPad Air 2 and next-generation Retina iPad mini at a media event next Thursday, October 16. Some reports have also claimed that the company will announce updated Mac Minis and updated iMacs with at least the 27-inch model carrying a high-resolution Retina display.
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Sprint is shutting down its WiMAX data network on November 6th, 2015
Still clinging on to that beloved EVO 4G for dear life? You’re going to have to upgrade in the near future. Sprint has confirmed a recent Android Central leak revealing that it will shut down its WiMAX network on November 6th, 2015. If you haven’t made the switch to LTE-based devices on your personal account, you’ll get an official warning 180 days (i.e. about six months) before the older network goes offline for good. The date isn’t completely surprising — Sprint had previously hinted it would shutter the service next year — but it now gives you something to mark on your calendar.
Source: Fierce Wireless
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Facebook, Box and Pinterest want to mentor young women in tech
You won’t see as many women as there are men when you walk down the halls of tech company HQs — not even eBay’s, which has one of the most diverse workplaces in the industry. In an effort to change that and promote gender diversity, Facebook, Box and Pinterest have launched a mentorship program called Women Entering and Staying in Tech or WEST, for short. It puts interns and up-and-coming professionals in several one-on-one and group meetings with women holding technical roles in the three companies over the course of a year. These meet-ups will happen both in person and online, but for now, the program will focus on engineering, operations, product, design and web development roles, in particular.
Sadly, though, the pilot run slated to begin in early 2015 will only be available to folks in the Bay Area, so everyone else will just have to cross their fingers and hope WEST opens its doors to the rest of the country in the future. If you do know Bay Area women just starting out or are making their way up in tech, send them over to WEST’s website where they can sign up to be notified when applications begin
[Image credit: World Economic Forum/Flickr]
Source: Facebook
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Motorola Droid Turbo user manual leaks offers first looks at the device
Rumor have been flying around for some time about an upcoming Motorola device that was headed for Verizon. It carried the rumored name of the Droid Turbo. It did and does exist and will be headed to Verizon. Kind of hard to argue a user manual.
The PDF file goes through all the usual things like where to put your 4G LTE SIM card, how to charge it and where the power key is. It also gives us our first legitimate look at it. According to the manual we can expect the device to come with a 5.2-inch QHD display and a 21 MP camera with dual LED flashes. The camera will take 4k video. The only camera setting that I haven’t seen before is one for Widescreen photos. I don’t have a Moto X 2nd Gen to see if that setting is present on there or not. There are dual mics on the bottom for noise canceling. You will also notice the three capacitive buttons at the bottom.
Sadly the manual leaves out battery size or even estimated use time. It mentions high-capacity long-lasting though. As well as Qi wireless charging.
Past benchmark specs and rumors talked about 3GB of RAM, 32GB of internal storage, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 805 processor clocked at 2.65GHz and the display pushing a resolution of 2560 x 1440.
The internal software looks mostly stock and should be Android 4.4.4. It will also carry along many of the software wonders that are available on the Moto X line, like Moto Display, Motorola Connect, Moto Assist and the snazzy wrist flick to activate the camera.
When things get announced the dedicated website for the Droid Turbo will be located at www.motorola.com/mydroidturbo. I don’t know about you guys, but this thing scream TAKE MY MONEY!! Feel free to check out the PDF for yourself and see what you can find.
Source: Droid Turbo Manual courtesy of Motofirmware
Via Droid-Life
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Elon Musk hints at tomorrow’s Tesla D reveal (video)
Need a few more breadcrumbs to follow until Elon Musk “unveils the D” (and something else) tomorrow? During an interview tonight at Vanity Fair’s New Establishment Summit, Tesla’s CEO told Walter Isaacson a few juicy tidbits about his news, without really revealing anything — other than what we’ve already seen. According to Musk “One of the things is already there, and people just don’t realize it.” Also, some of the internet’s guesses (dual engine? autonomous driving? AWD?) are apparently on track, as he said people are “directionally correct,” but that they don’t appreciate the magnitude. You can watch a clip of of the interview embedded after the break and leave your own theories in the comments, we’ll be reporting live from the unveiling in LA tomorrow night to find out the truth.
[Image credit: Getty Images for Vanity Fair]
http://player.cnevids.com/embed/5431851261646d65c3000000/51cc9fb8bb8f55bdfb000005
About time to unveil the D and something else pic.twitter.com/qp23yi59i6
– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 2, 2014
Filed under: Transportation
Source: Vanity Fair
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Google’s Android emulator is ready to help developers make 64-bit apps
There’s a lot to look forward to in Android’s next major update, but hardware nerds are focusing in one one key feature: official support for 64-bit mobile chips. It’s the mobile OS’ inevitable future, and chip-makers have been preparing for it for quite awhile. Now app developers can jump in, too: Google announced today that a x86 64-bit Android L developer preview emulator image is available for developers that want to take their apps to the next generation. Not every dev will need to rebuild, however — apps built in Java will automatically benefit from the 64-bit release’s increased accessibility to memory and registers. Choose another language? Well, you’ll need to recompile: head over to the source to start testing your apps in 64-bit.
Filed under: Google
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AIVAnet 