Chevy’s new Malibu keeps teens safe from themselves

The Chevy Malibu used to conjure up images of teen rebellion. The late ’60’s/early ’70s SS muscle car was the go-to backroads drag racer for more than a few adolescents. And while the latest incarnation is more “grocery getter” than rumbling rocket, it still has four wheels, which means kids will figure out a way to put their lives in danger while behind the wheel. GM wants to curb that.

With the 2016 edition, the Chevy Malibu has added a new setting called Teen Driver. Once enabled, the feature lives in the infotainment system in the dash and warns underage drivers when they exceed a predetermined speed limit. At that point, it kills sound from the stereo until the front seat belts are buckled, enables all the safety features like traction control and generates a report card for the whole trip. It’s basically a computer narc tucked behind a four-digit PIN.

While the cues to teenagers can be helpful, it’s the report card that’s going to do the most good here. For example, just because parents have instituted a speed limit of, say, 55 miles per hour, that doesn’t mean their child isn’t blowing through 35-mile-per-hour school zones. The real-time warning still relies on the driver to follow a rule. Most of us might remember from our own years in high school that once we got away from authority figures, a few in-car warnings wouldn’t have slowed us down.

But parents can use the report card to make decisions about future access to the car and use it as an opportunity to talk about their kids’ driving habits. And because it offers up hard evidence — such as when a safety system like stability control was activated and the top speed — a parent has the information necessary to make that conversation count.

If I had a teenage driver, I’d want this sort of system in whatever car I let them drive. I was incredibly reckless in high school. It’s a miracle I only wrecked one car. But because I was alone or with friends, my parents never found out about my behavior (well, except for that one accident). Teen Driver adds consequences to actions both in real time and afterward.

After driving the Malibu for a few days, then, it’s clear that it’s not the muscle car it used to be. Instead it’s a sensible family vehicle that’s trying to keep some members of your family from hurting themselves.

Medium’s collections makes it easier to find things to read

It’s taken a few years, but Medium has made a niche for itself as the ideal place for hot takes and navel-gazing editorials on the web. Starting today, you’ll be able to find the site’s best pieces more easily. A new “collections” feature on Medium’s iOS and Android apps will list curated groups of stories underneath major sections, which at this point includes things like news and education, as well as events like the 2016 election. And, in a big change, Medium is also using real-life humans to curate featured stories.

“We believe that in order to create a great reading experience for humans, other humans should be part of that process,” Medium’s Katie Zhu wrote in a blog post. “There’s a unique sensibility that individual curators bring, whether that’s a specific tone, voice, or simply good taste.” At this point, collections are being built by Medium’s editorial staff, as well as “a handful of trusted testers.” The plan, eventually, is to open up collections to all Medium users.

There aren’t many surprises in Medium’s curation guidelines: The site says it will highlight timely stories, compelling original writing and diverse voices, among many other criteria. Medium’s editors also say they won’t just be featuring stories from their friends, or from people who pay them. As with many news-focused sites, you can also suggest featured stories by emailing their tips line.

Ultimately, it’s features like this that will help Medium cement its role as the editorial platform of choice for the tech world, intellectuals and so-called tastemakers. It’s not as if the web needed another place for people to write stuff — but being able to cut through the noise and offer a single platform for high-quality writing could be genuinely useful.

Source: Medium

Nixon Mission Android Wear smartwatch is sport ready with 100m water resistance

Nixon Mission is the Android Wear smartwatch that takes sporting smart wrist wear to another level, a deep one. Nixon says this will be the first smartwatch capable of reaching underwater depths of 100 metres, or 10ATM, thanks to its water resistance.

The Nixon Mission comes with a pair of pre-loaded apps designed specifically for surfers and snowboarder or skiers. These apps offer live information on weather conditions around the world to help plan outings and movements using the smartwatch. Of course since it is an Android Wear operating system that will require a connection to a smartphone in order to update with live information.

The Nixon Mission features a round AMOLED display encased in Gorilla Glass. This is surrounded by a stainless steel bezel plus polycarbonate and stainless steel shell with silicone wristband. It’s powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Wear 2100 processor. As you can see from the above gallery it’s solidly built to withstand even the most rugged of sporty beatings.

Nixon will allow wearers to customise the choice of finish for bezel and band. The display can also mimic other Nixon watches like the 51-30, The Sentry, The Player, The Ranger and The Unit thanks to various watch faces.

The Nixon Mission will be on sale this autumn, expect pricing to be announced nearer that time.

READ: Android Wear 5.1 explored

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TomTom’s Golfer 2 GPS watch tracks your swing

TomTom’s original Golfer GPS watch can give your distance and score, but the latest golf devices from Piq and Game Golf also track your swing and distance stats. To keep up, TomTom has launched the Golfer 2, a watch that measures your swing using a built-in motion sensor and gyroscope. That lets you “see at a glance glance how far you’ve hit each ball, show your distance potential, and create a detailed post-round analysis” on the MySports app, according to the company. It only counts one shot in a 10-foot area, letting you take as many practice swings as you need.

It also has an “automatic scorecard” feature that works with the shot detection to automatically count your score, though you’ll have to enter the putts manually. As before, it’ll give you precise yardage to greens and hazards, “based on the player’s exact location,” as TomTom puts it. That’s a subtle jab at products like the Piq that use your phone’s GPS to measure distances, requiring you to keep it in a pocket and not your golf bag when playing.

Unlike the other devices, all you have to do is put on the slim, lightweight and relatively stylish watch, with no need to install NFC sensors on clubs. However, it’s not clear whether the Golfer 2 can record your club selection, as the Piq and Game Golf devices do. As with those gadgets, you’ll also have to remember to enter putting and other info during rounds and may have to tweak the data later to get useful info.

Other features include the ability to visualize graphics for greens and hazards before shots, round tracking for time, score and distances, wireless syncing to TomTom’s MySports app, daily course updates and 40m water resistance. The Golfer 2 arrives this May for $250, a considerable discount over the original model and less than the Piq and Game Golf devices.

Source: TomTom

Nanowires could bring ‘tunable’ privacy glass to the masses

If you don’t want to block light but still need privacy, a discovery from Harvard might let you ditch the window coverings. Researchers at the university’s engineering school have developed glass that changes from transparent to translucent at the flick of a switch. Such “tunable windows” aren’t new, but commercial models are currently expensive and slow. The new material, however, can transform from clear to cloudy in less than a second and should be cheap to produce.

A bright field microscope shows how nanowires distort an elastomer when voltage is applied.

Electrochemical smart windows are pricey because they’re painstakingly coated using vacuum deposition (Samsung’s crazy OLED windows are in another league altogether). Harvard’s tunable window, on the other hand, is made by sandwiching glass or plastic between soft elastomers that are sprayed with silver nanowires. The nanowires are too small to diffuse light, but squeeze together when you apply current, deforming the elastomer. The randomness of the coating allows light to pass but heavily distorts it, giving you similar privacy to frosted glass or sheer curtains. By varying the voltage, you can have different levels of privacy.

The voltages required are still too high, so the team is trying to make the elastomers thinner to reduce the draw. Once the materials are perfected, however, nanowires could be sprayed directly onto special windows, making the tech feasible for large projects. “Because this is a physical phenomenon rather than based on a chemical reaction, it is a simpler and potentially cheaper way to achieve commercial tunable windows,” says Harvard’s David Clarke.

Via: CNET

Source: Harvards/Seas

Sky opens ‘Q’ TV orders to everyone

Sky is back with a revamped TV platform called Sky Q, which introduces a series of new set-top boxes and a much-needed software overhaul. Until now, orders have been limited to UK customers with a Sky broadband package, however starting today the platform is available to everyone. So if you have an existing internet bundle with BT or Virgin Media, you can still order Sky Q and get an installation “in the coming weeks.”

If this particular route interests you, bear in mind that there are a few caveats. A Sky Q Hub is required, for instance, to turn your remaining Sky Q boxes into WiFi repeaters. That’s maybe not a deal-breaker, but it’s worth bearing in mind if you’re after the “complete” Sky Q experience. If you’re still sold on the idea, you can pick a package now from £42 per month.

Via: Digital Spy

Microrobots use the power of bacteria to avoid obstacles

We don’t need to scale down Google’s self-driving system to make microrobots that can swim in fluid while avoiding obstacles. Drexel University professor MinJun Kim and his team of engineers have discovered how to use bacteria to do so. See, Serratia marcescens, the flagellated microorganism commonly associated with urinary tract and respiratory infections, carries a negative charge. If you smear that on a tiny chip, you get a negatively charged microrobot that can stay afloat (thanks to the bacteria’s flagella) and swim around by riding electric fields applied to its environment.

Kim devised that method way back in 2014. For this new study, the team has created an algorithm that gives the tiny machines the power to detect and avoid any distortions in the electric field on their own. These distortions can typically be found near the corners of other objects in the fluid. By circumventing them, the robot is also avoiding anything that can block its path. The professor explains that this level of “autonomy is an important step” if we want to use micromachines for targeted drug delivery or to build microstructures.

Kim, of course, isn’t done exploring the potential of bacteria-powered microrobots. Now that this particular study is done, he’s planning on creating a system of micromachines that can manipulate live cells in the lab. Among other things, that system could be used to control the growth of stem cells for research and medical purposes.

Source: Drexel University, IEEE Xplore

The first Oculus Rift games bode well for VR’s future (update: full game list)

I hid behind a stack of wooden crates in the saloon, trying to hide from the bullets flying at my general direction. Panicked, I frantically reached for the pair of revolvers by my side, pointed them at my assailant and fired repeatedly. She went down, but so did my ammo. Soon, her partner showed up to take me out and without even thinking, I grabbed the dynamite that magically appeared in front of me and threw it at him. Boom. Unfortunately, my first victim came back to life, and before I could take aim again, she lobbed something at me and I was blown to smithereens.

Of course, I wasn’t actually a gunslinger in the old West; I was simply playing a video game. But the difference here is that instead of mashing the A button on a control pad, I had my knees on the ground with my arms held out in front of me, Oculus Touch controllers in each hand, an Oculus Rift strapped to my head and my entire body in a crouched position. I was playing Dead & Buried, a multiplayer VR title developed and produced by Oculus Studios, at an Oculus Game Day event this past Sunday. And yes, the game was that immersive. Jason Rubin, Head of Oculus Studios, said that when he played it for the first time, he actually split his jeans because he dropped to his knees too quickly to hide from enemy fire.

That wasn’t the only game I played that day. In fact, I spent nearly eight hours playing 15 out of the 40-plus titles that were at the event. With all that ducking and weaving and arms flailing, I was physically and mentally exhausted at the end of the day. I also had an absolute blast of a time and came out of the event wanting a VR rig more than ever.

Before I get too far in detailing some of my more favorite games, let me touch a little bit on the Rift. If you don’t already know, the consumer-edition of the Rift is much more compact and lightweight than its previous iterations. The front panel is nice and smooth, much of the hardware is covered in a mesh-like breathable fabric and the goggles are padded along the inside rim. It’s been redesigned to accommodate glasses, though I still found it most comfortable to wear it without. The velcro-lined adjustable head straps feel pretty snug and there’s also a little dial that’ll let you adjust for the distance between eyes. It also comes with integrated headphones — which I rather like — but you can always supply your own.

As for the optional Oculus Touch controllers, well, in my opinion, they’re almost mandatory. They add vital gesture control to certain games that make them more immersive than without. In the aforementioned Dead & Buried game, for example, shooting at my rival with an index finger poised on the trigger button is way more life-like than a thumb mashing on a button.

Now, the games. As I said, I played 15 titles at the event, but you’ve likely heard about most of them before. So for the purposes of this post, I’ll focus on just a few highlights. Aside from Dead & Buried — which is my clear favorite — I’m also in love with Ubisoft’s Eagle Flight. Here, you’re a bird of prey flying above the city of Paris 50 years after the disappearance of humans (who knows what happened there). Changing directions in the game is as easy as tilting your head to the left or to the right as you’re mimicking the movement of flight.

I had a chance to play in a multi-player setting, where a team of three eagles went up another team of three to bring a dead rabbit to their corresponding nest. Even though we were all wearing headsets pretending to be birds in a made-up world, we were soon shouting at each other to either help or hinder the other players. It was immersive, fun and surprisingly social, which goes against the notion of VR being a solitary experience.

Other favorites include High Voltage’s Damaged Core, where I acted like a virus and jumped from cyberbot to cyberbot, and Schell Games’ I Expect You To Die, where I was a spy trying to solve a get-out-of-this-room puzzle. The latter was especially a delight because it made use of the aforementioned Touch controls, and allowed me to pick up objects and manipulate them. The only downside is that I wished I had finer motor control — for example, I wish I was able to use my thumb and forefinger to pick up objects, instead of relying on a rather ham-handed fist technique of handling items. I also liked Fantastic Contraption, where you can take different objects and put them together to solve a particular objective. Why yes, I do like puzzle games, I’m sure you can tell.

That’s sort of the surprising thing about VR, at least for me; that it lends itself to so many different game genres. From the ones that require whole body movement like Dead & Buried to more puzzle-type games like Owlchemy Labs’ Job Simulator or Robot Invader’s Dead Secret, being fully immersed in the world makes a big difference as far as your level of engagement goes. Instead of just pretending to be a detective in a crime, for example, you are the detective, however momentarily. I remember trying to feel my way out of a trapped car in a game, saw that there was a seat next to me, and thought I could just rest my hand on it for support. Of course, there was actually no seat there at all and I ended up almost falling over to the side. (Pro tip to not play VR alone lest you hurt yourself while doing so!).

There were a few games here and there that I didn’t like too much — Studio HG’s Smashing the Battle was too much like an old-school button-masher, Slightly Mad Studios’ Project CARS seemed like a traditional race car game and playing Rock Band in VR felt just like playing regular Rock Band (To be fair, the latter hasn’t been optimized for VR just yet. You can read more in our post here). But even they made me feel immersed enough in their respective worlds.

“The future of VR is wide open,” said Lindsay Jorgensen, one of the artists behind Fantastic Contraption. “It’s really cool that there’s all these normal things that you can do and then make it a little weird.” Normal things that are just a little weird. Maybe that’s what I like about VR the most.

Update: Oculus today announced the full list of launch titles. All told, there will be 30 games available when the Rift comes out on March 28th.

You’ll need an Oculus Touch to play ‘Rock Band’ in VR

We already knew Rock Band VR was coming to the Oculus Rift, but now we have a bit more information about the project. In a gameplay demo at an Oculus Game Day event recently, we learned that the game will essentially require that you attach an Oculus Touch to a guitar controller via a clip adhesive (seen above), which confirms what we saw in the promo video that Oculus and Harmonix released a few months ago. That’s essentially how the game will communicate your movements and controls to the computer. We also learned that all Bluetooth controllers should work with the VR version of the game, as would Xbox, PS3 and PS4 controllers.

I tried a brief demo of Rock Band in VR, but it was still mostly restricted to normal gameplay and not the full VR treatment. There was a tiny bit of immersion though: I was told by a disembodied voice to turn on the amp, check my audio levels and wait for a cue from my drummer and then there I was, in front of an eager crowd at a concert venue — all of which adds to that stagefright feel. But then once the music started, there was that same ol’ familiar note highway at the bottom and that was what I ended up staring at most of the time.

“That’s definitely our biggest challenge” said Josh Harrison, Harmonix’s social and community lead. “We want VR to get you fully immersed. We want you to live out that rock star fantasy.”

According to Harrison, we’ll see a more immersive version of VR gameplay at E3, where he says we would no longer be slave to the note highway and be able to rock out for real. Oh, and apologies to drum lovers — it looks like, at least for now, Rock Band VR is just for lead guitars. And no bass guitars either. Only guitar god wannabes may apply.