Watch the Mexico City Formula E race right here, and the last race in VR

Season two of the all-electric Formula E is almost at the halfway stage and if you can’t get near a TV to watch the action live on ITV 4 this coming weekend, you can watch the Mexico City race here or on YouTube instead.

The Formula E race will be screened live from 2pm on Saturday 12 March in the video stream below.

Free practice session one begins at 2.15pm, the second free practice session at 4.30pm, qualifying at 6pm and the race itself will start at 10pm. Fans can stream every session live for the first time online.

What’s more, the Formula E broadcast team recorded some point-of-view 360-degree footage at the previous race in Buenos Aires, which is now available to view through a VR headset, such as Google Cardboard or Samsung Gear VR. It’s presented on YouTube and below.

READ: What is Formula E? Everything you need to know and why it will change the world

Even if you don’t have a VR headset, you can still watch it on a computer, using the mouse or a finger to scroll around, or a mobile device, which you can tilt to change the viewpoint.

The highlights package includes 360-degree footage of the DS Virgin garage as Sam Bird won the race.

Formula E continues to innovate in motorsport, using technology, online and social networks to enhance the experience. It’s all something that Formula One could have its eye on for future ideas too.

UK to test self-driving trucks later this year

Later this year, the UK will open up its motorways to self-driving trucks under new plans to speed up deliveries and cut traffic congestion. The Times reports that Chancellor George Osborne will confirm funding for the project, which could see convoys of up to 10 autonomous trucks — or lorries as Brits call them — driving a few meters apart, during this month’s budget announcement, helping Britain position itself as one of the leading proponents of self-driving vehicles.

According to reports, a stretch of the M6 motorway near Carlisle has been touted as a possible testing ground. On this quieter part of the UK’s major road network, a driver can lead a “platoon” of autonomous trucks without having to navigate various entry and exit points.

Although it’s not known which vehicles will be tested on British roads, Daimler’s autonomous truck is likely to be a frontrunner. The company has already driven an augmented Mercedes-Benz Actros down Germany’s Autobahn 8 and also received the green light to test them on US roads.

The UK government is already putting the finishing touches to stretches of smart roads. Jaguar Land Rover, Huawei and Vodafone have joined various UK universities to test a number of self-driving car technologies, including LTE, Wi-Fi, LTE-V and DSRC. Another project in West Yorkshire uses infrared cameras to monitor traffic levels and introduce variable speed limits to help keep vehicles moving.

The Department of Transport believes the new test “has the potential to bring major improvements to journeys and the UK” and save fuel in the process. We’ll learn more when George Osborne brings his red briefcase to the House of Commons on March 16th.

Via: BBC News

Source: The Times

Sky takes a first step into eSports tournament coverage

With millions of fans regularly tuning into services like Twitch and YouTube Gaming to watch their favourite titles being played at the highest level, traditional TV broadcasters are starting to take note. Last year, BBC Three dipped its toe into the world of eSports with live League of Legends tournament coverage, and today Sky will become the latest UK provider to tap into this growing audience. Airing at 10PM tonight on Sky 2, a two-hour show will cover highlights from the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, League of Legends and Starcraft II tournaments that’ve taken place at the ESL Intel Masters World Championship over the past five days.

It’ll be the first time a major eSports event has been covered by Sky, though the broadcaster has shown some love for competitive gaming before now. Last year, Sky produced a short featurette introducing eSports, and is currently interested in a documentary about eSports betting. ESPN is leading the charge with live eSports coverage in the US, though several competitors are waiting patiently in the wings. A Sky Sports rep told us today’s highlight show doesn’t signal a huge commitment to eSports coverage, but the broadcaster is well aware of the appetite for it. It’s still too early to tell, however, whether the huge online audiences will down their laptops for the living room TV.

Via: Kotaku

Source: Sky Sports

Google seeks carrier for Loon pilot program in India

Google’s Project Loon has blossomed from a crazy-sounding scheme into a practical program. In fact, the company can now auto-launch a balloon in 30 minutes that will stay aloft for 100 days. For the next step, the company will run a full pilot program to provide service to a large number of actual people, and is planning on doing it in India. The company’s VP in India VP, Rajan Anandan, told the Economic Times that it will need to partner with an India-based carrier to do so. “We can’t do a Loon pilot without partnering with a local telco. We’re talking to a number of them.”

Google ran tests with Australian carrier Telstra, but only in a small area with 20 or so balloons. In India, however, the company intends to run a full-scale pilot program. According to the Times’ sources, it is speaking with a telco called BSNL, though Google wouldn’t confirm that. However, it says that, “at a simplistic level, it’s just infrastructure in the sky … the actual provisioning of the service is done by a local telco.” Google has already said that unlike Facebook’s Free Basics internet service — which was banned in India — Project Loon wouldn’t restrict content. If the test program proves successful (and not risky, as some critics think), it will open up the internet to a large number of folks who would have no chance of being connected otherwise.

Via: CNET

Source: Economic Times

UK regulator starts cracking down on fake online reviews

Online reviews, like those on Amazon, are typically a good way to judge the quality of a product or service before you decide to part with your money. They can also be huge indicators of the reputation of the retailer you’re about to do business with.

With profits on the line, some businesses have taken steps to ensure they’re getting good reviews, a service which marketing companies are all too willing to provide. Last week, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) confirmed it had issued its first crackdown on the practice, after it caught UK company Total SEO & Marketing Ltd (Total SEO) posting over 800 fake reviews between 2014 and 2015.

During its investigation, the CMA found that Total SEO had posted hundreds of reviews on the behalf of 86 small businesses across 26 different websites. The businesses involved included car dealers, mechanics, landscape gardeners and other tradespeople.

The company escaped a financial penalty but has been forced to remove the fake reviews it’s already posted. It will also suffer the added humiliation of having the CMA writing to its clients about illegality of asking firms to write reviews on their behalf.

The Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 is designed to protect consumers from misleading practices, which include rules that stop companies falsely representing themselves as consumers. Companies found guilty of posting fake reviews can receive a heavy fine or, in some cases, see its directors given a prison sentence.

Via: Financial Times

Source: Gov.uk

NYPD Chief: Apple Provides Aid to Kidnappers, Robbers, Murderers

The New York Police Department’s counter-terrorism chief John Miller has accused Apple of providing aid to criminals by using encryption to secure its iPhones, according to The Daily News.

Speaking on AM radio host John Catsimatidis’s The Cats Roundtable show on Sunday, the deputy commissioner hit out at Apple for its encryption policies, arguing that recent changes to the iPhone operating system had prevented law enforcement from doing its job.

“I still don’t know what made Apple change their minds and decide to actually design a system that made them not able to aid the police,” Miller told Catsimatidis.

“You are providing aid to the kidnappers, robbers and murders who have actually been recorded on the telephones in Riker’s Island telling their compatriots on the outside, ‘You gotta get iOS 8. It’s a gift from God’ – and that’s a quote – ‘because the cops can’t crack it,’” Miller said.

The same account was quoted in last week’s U.S. congressional hearing, when New York District Attorney Cyrus Vance claimed that his agency was unable to access 175 iPhones linked to criminal activity that are currently in its possession. Vance added that hundreds of encrypted Apple devices had also been seized in Texas, Illinois and Connecticut, during investigations into serious crimes including human trafficking and sexual assaults.

In the past, Apple has extracted data from iPhones under lawful court orders, but the company stopped storing encryption keys for devices running iOS 8 or later. As a result of this stronger protection, Apple cannot assist the FBI without circumventing iOS security and putting the privacy and safety of its customers at risk.

Last month a U.S. Federal judge ordered Apple to help federal investigators access data on the iPhone 5c used by San Bernardino shooter Syed Farook. The U.S. government said at the time that investigators were only seeking access to the iPhone related to the San Bernardino case.

However, reports have since revealed that the U.S. Department of Justice is pursuing additional court orders that would force Apple to help federal investigators extract data from twelve other encrypted iPhones that may contain crime-related evidence.

The 12 cases are similar to the San Bernardino case in that prosecutors have sought to use the 18th-century All Writs Act to force Apple to comply, but none are related to terrorism charges and most involve older versions of iOS software.

Apple has officially opposed an order that would require it to help the FBI break into the iPhone used by San Bernardino shooter Syed Farook and will now face off against the government in court on March 22.

Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.

Tag: Apple-FBI
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Viral Video Claiming iPhone Passcode ‘Glitch’ is False

A video which has gone viral that claims to reveal a glitch allowing anyone to unlock a passcode-protected iPhone has been exposed as false.

The YouTube clip, called “iPhone Unlock Without Passcode Glitch”, depicts a user gaining access to a Touch ID-equipped device by first asking Siri what time it is.

When the spoken request brings up the time, the user taps on the clock face to reveal the World Clock screen and then selects the Timer icon at the bottom of the screen. He subsequently taps on the ‘When Time Ends’ option and presses the section that says ‘Buy More Tones’.

Upon doing so, the Apple Store opens and the user presses the home button, which unlocks the phone without the user having typed in the passcode.

The video has been viewed over 420,000 times, with some iPhone owners thanking the video’s creator for discovering the issue. However, repeated attempts by MacRumors have demonstrated that the method depicted does not allow “anyone” to access a passcode-protected iPhone.

Savvy users will have noted that the method only works because the user activates Siri by pressing the home button with a finger that has clearly already been registered with the Touch ID feature’s fingerprint scanner. The same process undertaken using a fingerprint that isn’t registered on your iPhone makes subsequent taps to “Buy More Tones” fail to open the iTunes Store.

So if you see anyone sharing the video, you can do them a favor by explaining that the video is misleading, and their phone’s data remains safe and secure.

Tag: Touch ID
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Samsung Galaxy S7: Benchmark claims Snapdragon 820 model could perform better than UK’s Exynos 8

There was confusion ahead, during and even after the Samsung Unpacked press event at Mobile World Congress about which Samsung Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 edge models we’d get in the UK. That’s because Samsung announced two different versions, that get different processors, but it took a while to find out which would be released here.

We were told recently, however, that the UK and Europe would get the SGS7 and SGS7 edge that sport Samsung’s own octa-core Exynos 8 Octa processor, while other regions would get phones that run on a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 chipset.

Among techheads, that then prompted the question of which would be better, the octa-core Exynos or the quad-core Snapdragon?

Evidence has since appeared that points towards an answer. And UK Samsung fans might not like it.

READ: Samsung Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 edge: Release date, specs and everything you need to know

Benchmark tests published by AnTuTu claim that both the CPU and GPU of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 outperform their equivalents in the Exynos 8 found in the UK models of the Galaxy S7 and S7 edge.

AnTuTu

We must point out that benchmark tests are one thing and don’t always give a good indication of real world performance. Different factors can also sway tests, giving different results depending on the circumstances and state of a device when the test was undertaken.

However, from this indication, Qualcomm’s new chipset looks to not only better the latest Samsung Exynos 8890, especially in graphics performance, it offers more oomph than the Apple A9 chip found in the current iPhones.

AnTuTu

We’ll be bringing you our in-depth reviews of the UK versions of both the Samsung Galaxy S7 and Samsung Galaxy S7 edge soon, so you can find out if any of the above actually matters.

Huawei P9 release date leak reveals April launch

The much anticipated Huawei P9 may at last have a release date in early April.

According to the sources of serial leakster Evan Blass the Huawei P9 will get a release date of 5 or 6 April. On that part he’s not so sure.

The date follows a Tweet where he said the P9 will be released on 6 April. He then got a response saying 5 April and replied to that with an update saying he was told a number of days and may have miscalculated. Maths aside it looks like the first week in April will see the P9 unveiled.

Also in response to this tweet, German site Huawei Blog, chimed in by claiming the event will be held in London.

The design and build quality of the P9 is unclear but from leaks, and previous manufacturer history, we’d expect a quality handset for an affordable price. So look forward to lots of metal and glass in a solid frame build.

At launch there could be up to four variants: the P9, P9 Lite, P9 Max and P9 Premium. The P9 is expected to feature a 5.2-inch QHD display, Kirin 950 CPU, at least 4GB of RAM, USB-C, dual 13-megapixel rear cameras and Android 6.0 Marshmallow.

READ: Huawei P9: What’s the story so far?

Are naked, no holds barred 3D printed action figures the next big thing?

Following on from the success of its 3D printed superhero action figures, which sport your own face, Firebox has taken the idea one step further. Now you can get a 3D printed model of yourself in the buff, letting it all hang on out for the world to see.

Nudees are models that you can order from the online retailer which come with six different naked body types – three for men, three for women. You can have your face and head 3D sculptured and placed on top of the one of the distinct body styles.

There are slim, curvy and muscular models, so you can either choose the body type that most resembles your own, or something else if you fancy seeing what you’d look like with a different torso.

Painted pants hide the downstairs departments, but nothing on top is left to the imagination.

The models stand 20cm (7.9 inches) tall and you have to supply two, well lit, quality photos of your head – one from the side and one from the front. The modellers will then craft you onto the Nudee. It takes three to four weeks to complete each model after an order has been placed.

“With Nudee’s we wanted to represent all body sizes. Everyone. No one shape is better than any other. We’re all different and that is what makes us all great. Reclaim your body and don’t follow friends, fads, or fears,” said Emily Herriott, head of personalised gifts at Firebox.

You can order your own Nudee at Firebox.com now for £149.99.