Napster co-founder’s new institute aims to beat cancer

Sean Parker is known for many things: co-founding Napster, joining Facebook in its early days, starting charities and creating his share of technology startups. If all goes well, though, he’ll also add “helped cure cancer” to that list. He just founded the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, a $250 million effort to fight cancer by relying on the body’s immune system. The organization will unite six universities (covering 40 labs and over 300 scientists), encouraging them to share research rather than compete. As Parker puts it, humanity is on the “bleeding edge” of what you can do with synthetic biology… it might just need a nudge to turn those findings into real-world treatments.

The tech luminary is a bit late to the party given that the White House already has its cancer cure moonshot underway. His effort is certainly going to be welcome, though. Moreover, it reflects the broader sense that medical science has reached a turning point — that it’s now possible to beat diseases that were once seen as virtually unassailable.

Source: TechCrunch

Which Amazon Kindle is best for you? Kindle, Kindle Paperwhite, Kindle Voyage or Kindle Oasis?

The Kindle reader is one of the most popular choices for ebook reading, letting you read your favourite books on a digital device, without the drawbacks that come with using a tablet or smartphone.

Not only is the Kindle power efficient, meaning it will last weeks and in some cases months on a charge, but it’s connected, meaning you can easily download new books plus it’s incredibly easy to use, with seamless integration with your Amazon account.

Amazon’s Kindle selection has evolved since the first inception, making these readers better in many areas, bringing the display closer to the experience of reading on paper, and adding plenty of new features.

The real decision is which model you should buy. There are currently four models of Kindle offered by Amazon: the Kindle, the Kindle Paperwhite, the Kindle Voyage and the Kindle Oasis.

Amazon

Amazon Kindle

The basic Kindle comes with the huge advantage of being the cheapest of the lot. Starting at £59.99, it’s £50 cheaper than the next model up, so it’s a veritable bargain. It’s worth noting, however, that the £59.99 version comes with “special offers”. These are basically adverts that show on the Kindle when the screen is in sleep mode. Opt to go without these adverts and it’s £69.99.

The Kindle has a 6-inch E Ink Pearl display with no illumination. It has a 169ppi which is plenty sharp enough for reading, although the contrast isn’t quite as high as the Paperwhite, Voyage or the Oasis, and the fonts are a little softer.

It is a touchscreen and comes with built-in Wi-Fi meaning you can connect to the internet to update your books. The internal storage will hold thousands of books and the battery will see you through weeks of use.

WHY BUY?

This is the most affordable Kindle reader and the lack of illumination makes it a great choice for kids, as they won’t be reading after lights out.

It’s not as technically proficient as the other models, but importantly, the reading experience and connectivity at home is good. We’d stump for the version with no special offers.

PRICE: £59.99 (with special offers), £69.99 (no special offers).

READ MORE Amazon Kindle review

Amazon

Amazon Kindle Paperwhite

The big difference between the Paperwhite and the regular Kindle is the illuminated display. This isn’t rear illumination like you’ll find on a tablet or phone, instead it’s lighting that shines across the display so you can see the words. That means you can read in low light or the dark, ideal for reading in a tent, on a plane at night and so on.

The 6-inch E Ink Carta display offers 300dpi and has better contrast than the regular Kindle, meaning whites are brighter and blacks are deeper. Again, this is a touchscreen device, integrated with Amazon to deliver your books, and a battery that lasts for weeks.

Unlike the normal Kindle however, the Paperwhite comes in Wi-Fi or 3G options. The latter has the advantage that you’re always connected, meaning that if you finish your book lying on the beach in Spain, you can browse and buy the next bestseller and get reading.

It’s more expensive, however, starting at £109.99 for the Wi-Fi only, with “special offers”. Again, it’s £10 more if you don’t want those adverts. However, if you’re after that option to be always connected through 3G, it’s £169.99 (with special offers) or £179.99 (no special offers). If you do opt for 3G the connection data is included in the price.

WHY BUY?

The illumination is the big seller here along with the higher resolution for a sharper reading experience. It makes reading a pleasure, day or night.

The £109.99 option is a winner if you’re happy to accept those special offers and think you can live with Wi-Fi only.

PRICE: From £109.99 

READ MORE Amazon Kindle Paperwhite review

Amazon

Amazon Kindle Voyage

In the middle of the Kindle pile is the Voyage. This is an evolution of the Paperwhite and offers many of the same experiences. It has the same 6-inch Carta E Ink display with 300dpi and illumination, but with a difference.

In this case the illumination is adaptive, changing automatically to suit the environment you’re in. That will give a lovely soft illumination when it’s really dark, so it doesn’t dazzle and strain your eyes, changing as the environment does for optimal reading conditions. 

Not only that, but the build is a step above the Kindle Paperwhite too. On the Voyage there’s a flat front, ditching the plastic bezel for a slicker, cleaner design. This design integrates page turning sensors that react to pressure, meaning there’s no need to tap on the edge of the display, you just press a little harder and the page turns.

Again, there are Wi-Fi or 3G options, offering the same benefits as the regular Paperwhite, allowing you to be connected wherever you might be. Perhaps surprisingly, the Voyage is the lighter than the Kindle and Paperwhite models, ideal for those travelling and again offers storage for thousands of books and a battery that last weeks.

It’s one of the more costly Kindle too. Starting at £169.99 for the Wi-Fi only model, or £229.99 for the 3G model. Again, if you opt for 3G, all your access data is included in the purchase price.

WHY BUY?

Choose the Kindle Voyage because you want one of the lightest and slickest Kindles of the bunch.

The adaptive illumination makes for a premium experience, with no need to dive into the settings, combined with an effortlessly natural page turning sensor. It’s one of the best, but that’s reflected in the price.

PRICE: From £169.99 

READ MORE Amazon Kindle Voyage review

Amazon

Amazon Kindle Oasis

Top of the Kindle offering is the Oasis. It is the lightest and slimmest Kindle, as well as the most expensive. Like the Paperwhite and the Voyager, the Oasis has a 6-inch display with 300ppi but the front-lighting is now cast from the side through a new diffusion layer said to offer more illumination.

The Oasis also offers an entirely new design. All the components are housed within one edge of the device, while physical buttons have been introduced for page turns, although you can also use the touchscreen too.

Amazon has designed this Kindle to be used effortlessly with one-hand and there is an accelerometer on board to allow you to use it left- or right-handed, as well as in landscape mode. As the Oasis is smaller, it offers a two-week battery life on its own but it comes with a battery cover in the box that will provide an extra seven weeks use.

The battery cover comes in black, merlot or walnut colour options and it fixes in place using magnets, waking up the display when opened. Like the Paperwhite and Voyager, the Kindle Oasis comes in a Wi-Fi model and 3G model, with a starting price of £269.99. The 3G model will set you back £329.99 and again, offers the same benefits of always being connected like the Paperwhite and Voyager.

WHY BUY?

The Kindle Oasis is for those that want the latest and greatest Kindle. 

It is the lightest, slimmest and funkiest Kindle of the pack, while also offering months of battery life and a lovely leather cover to boot.

PRICE: From £269.99

READ MORE Kindle Oasis preview

Bye bye BB10, BlackBerry kills operating system after admitting defeat

BlackBerry has admitted defeat in the packed consumer phone market and will no longer make phones featuring its own operating system. There will be no more BB10 handsets produced.

Instead, it will concentrate on establishing itself as a major Android device manufacturer, with an eye on Enterprise rather than consumer handsets.

CEO John Chen said in an interview with The National that BlackBerry will continue to support BB10 for owners of existing devices “for a minimum of two years” but the company will not be utilising the operating system on future devices.

Instead, its next round of hardware releases could well be mid-range Android phones.

Chen revealed that the BlackBerry Priv, the company’s first Android-only smartphone, was too high-end and pricey for its customers.

“The fact that we came out with a high-end phone [as our first Android device] was probably not as wise as it should have been,” he said.

“A lot of enterprise customers have said to us, ‘I want to buy your phone but $700 is a little too steep for me. I’m more interested in a $400 device’.”

He also explained why BlackBerry will concentrate on Android phones for business rather than play.

“We’re the only people who really secure Android, taking the security features of BlackBerry that everyone knows us for and make it more reachable for the market,” he said.

BlackBerry 10 has been on the ropes for a while, with WhatsApp and Facebook recently withdrawing support for the platform. And even though Chen has constantly denied rumours of its demise, official confirmation does not come as a surprise.

An otherworldly visitor nests in rural China

Guizhou province in the southwest of China is famous for its scenic landscape, unspoilt nature and ancient villages. But that’s changing. Right now, engineers are constructing the Five hundred meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) in the province’s Pingtang county. Guizhou was chosen to host the radio telescope precisely because of its landscape. The valley FAST is being built in is exceptionally well shielded from magnetic disruptions, while the ground underneath is both stable enough to hold the structure, and porous enough to drain away water and protect the telescope.

When completed later this year, FAST will be the largest single-aperture radio telescope in the world, with a diameter of over 1600 feet. For comparison, the current largest — the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico — measures 1000 feet across. FAST’s dish will be comprised of 4,500 triangular panels, which when combined with an active adjustable reflector, will enable scientists to observe a larger area of space in greater fidelity than any telescope before it.

The Big Picture is a recurring feature highlighting beautiful images that tell big stories. We explore topics as large as our planet, or as small as a single life, as affected by or seen through the lens of technology.

Sling TV tests a multi-stream service with catches

As helpful as Sling TV might be for cutting the cord, its one-stream-at-a-time model has its limits. It rules out your family watching across multiple TVs, for instance, or (gasp) sharing with friends. Thankfully, the Dish-owned service isn’t deaf to your requests: it’s beta testing a $20 per month multi-stream option that lets up to three people watch at once. Besides giving you more freedom, the move also brings Fox channels that aren’t available with a single stream, such as Fox Locals, Fox Sports and FX. You’ll also get a few other channels that were either previously unavailable or limited to add-on packages, like Univision (normally an extra).

However, this isn’t quite paradise. Going multi-stream currently excludes some channels you may well miss, including tons of content from Disney and ESPN, and prevents you from watching live Fox shows when you’re outside of 17 key cities. While you can still add premium channels like Cinemax and HBO, you’ll have to think carefully before making the switch. You can sign up for the beta today, though, so give it a shot if single-stream just isn’t working for you.

Source: Sling, BusinessWire

Robot finds Nessie film prop at the bottom of Loch Ness

An underwater robot has discovered a long-forgotten film prop at the bottom of Loch Ness. Back in 1969, director Billy Wilder was shooting The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, with Robert Stephens playing the iconic detective and Colin Blackely as his loyal sidekick Watson. Part of the film takes place in Scotland, with Watson sighting the mythical Loch Ness Monster. A model was built with a neck and two humps, but Wilder later requested that the humps be removed. The reduced buoyancy meant it sank to the bottom of the lake, where it’s been resting ever since.

Fast-forward to 2016 and Kongsberg Maritime, a specialist in underwater positioning technology, has rediscovered the prop. The company was scanning with MUNIN, one of its many autonomous underwater robots, when it recorded an image of the 10 meter long replica. MUNIN uses a variety of sonar and camera equipment to produce high-resolution datasets at a depth of up to 1,500 meters. “Nessie” came up in one of its scans and Adrian Shine, who leads The Loch Ness Project, was able to confirm that it’s the prop from The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes.

“We can confidently say this is the model because of where it was found, the shape — there is the neck and no humps — and from the measurements,” he told BBC News.

For Kongsberg Maritime, the discovery is “an unexpected bonus” as it works on a larger survey with VisitScotland and The Loch Ness Project. On its autonomous travels, MUNIN has also detected the wreck of an unidentified sunken boat — so who knows what it’ll find next. Maybe the real Nessie, lurking somewhere in the depths? We can but dream.

Via: The Guardian, BBC News

Source: Kongsberg

Snapchat stickers can now move around in your videos

One of Snapchat’s defining features is the ability to add text, emoji and colorful scribbles to your photos and videos. Before, these would sit statically on the screen, but now stickers can move in tandem with any object or person in the frame. Once you’ve shot your video, you’ll be able to add some colorful emoji and pair them with specific parts of the recording. Snapchat will handle the rest, making the stickers move, rotate and change size. As way of example, this could mean having a bicycle shoot down the street alongside a car, or putting a guitar in your best friend’s hands.

The feature will be rolling out to Android first, followed by iOS “very shortly.” It might sound trivial, but these sorts of options are what give Snapchat personality and allow users to express themselves in a ways that are simply not possible on other social media. Animated stickers are an extension of the app’s feature set, giving Snapchatters a creative way to spice up their videos. Whether it’s a private Snap or an incremental Story update, it’s all about giving users the ability to delight other people.

Source: Snapchat (Android)

Dear Veronica: Social media petiquette

Your pets do amazing and noteworthy things everyday, right? (Right). So it makes sense that we want them to have their own presence on social media, so everyone knows what a good dog they really are. But how much is too much?

Robert Heron also joins us once more to talk about the latest picture-in-picture technology. It’s come a long way! Now, you’ll never have to decide between watching Call of Duty replays vs. Game of Thrones! We do, however, need to talk about how much violence you’re consuming. It’s not good for your brain (probably, I’m not a brain doctor).

Follow @Bodegathedog on Twitter and @DailyBodega on Instagram!

Logitech buys Jaybird for $50 million

If you already make killer audio products, do you think spending $50 million on a headphone firm is a good idea? It is you’re Logitech’s management, which just cut a check for that amount to buy sports audio outfit Jaybird. Much like Ultimate Ears, Jaybird will remain an independent subsidiary of its new parent company, selling wireless sport buds. Logitech’s interest may rest more on Jaybird’s sport-focused wearable, Reign, which measures your heart rate variability during training. In a release, Jaybird founder Judd Armstrong says that his firm will “benefit from Logitech’s global distribution network and engineering prowess.”

It’s another step in Logitech’s slow but steady plan to take over the world by stealth and shed its image as maker of keyboards and mice. The firm spent 2015 giving itself a glossy rebrand, strengthening its gaming products and moving into smart home products. Ultimate Ears, meanwhile, dropped consumer-level earbuds from its product range a while back in favor of earning plaudits from its Megaboom speakers. Perhaps mixing UE’s audio know-how with Jaybird’s will produce some exciting headphones for us to drool over next summer.

Source: Logitech

We’re one step closer to a cure for paralysis

You wouldn’t think that picking up a spoon was a staggering achievement, but that’s because you’re not Ian Burkhart. He’s a quadriplegic and the subject of a lengthy experiment looking for an electronic cure for paralysis. The initial breakthrough took place in 2014 when Burkhart was able to pick up a spoon, and two years later he’s now able to swipe a credit card, make a drink and even play Guitar Hero. The breakthrough is the result of ten years worth of research and a partnership between science non-profit Batelle and Ohio State University.

Let’s imagine that your body’s central nervous system is a network of vacuum tubes, each one connected to a different limb. In a functional brain, an instruction like “pick up that phone” is written in your mind, shoved into a little capsule and then sent into the hand. Burkhart injured his spine in a diving accent six years ago, effectively blocking the tubes and ensuring the instructions can’t reach their destination.

Batelle, however, had spent the better part of a decade developing a technology called Neurobridge. The system effectively builds a new vacuum tube out of the body, conveying the information from the brain to the limb and cutting out the middle man. It does this thanks to a chip that’s been implanted directly into Burkhart’s motor cortex, running to a wire out of his skull and into a sleeve that surrounds his wrist.

In just two years, the team behind the project has gone from the most basic of motor functions to something much more advanced. Batelle’s Nick Annetta is pleased with the results, saying that it’s “amazing to see what he’s accomplished.” In addition, surgeons had to use electrode-filled sleeves to help Burkhart restore the strength in his muscles that had atrophied through underuse. The fact that he can now play something as intensive as Guitar Hero bodes well for the future of the technology.

The next stage in the project is to implant Neurobridge chips into four other people in order to refine the technology further. The first one is due to go under the knife this summer, and it’s hoped that a wire-free version can be developed in the near future. Dr. Jerry Mysiw is a 30-year veteran of neuroscience but even he is staggered at the level of improvement. He believes that “this is the first time we’ve been able to offer realistic hope to people who have very challenging lives.”

Source: Nature