IBM Watson can customize your canned granola

Don’t worry: IBM’s Watson didn’t whip up a bunch of needlessly complicated granola recipes for a cookbook that you must make (for science!). No, we’re talking about its partnership with Kellogg’s subsidiary Bear Naked, which is the first consumer brand to sell Chef Watson-inspired food. The partnership made it possible for Bear Naked to launch a website where granola enthusiasts can make custom blends. After you select a base — cacao + cashew butter, chocolate or honey — Watson looks through thousands of possible flavors to find ingredients it can suggest. It’s a very simple process, and we wish Watson can customize each can of granola even further. But this could just be the beginning of services powered by IBM’s AI that can personalize canned goods and other foodstuffs.

Source: Bear Naked

Amazon brings one-hour Prime Now deliveries to Leeds

Amazon has further extended its Prime Now delivery service to parts of Yorkshire, offering one-hour shipping in Leeds and two-hour in windows Bradford, Wakefield and Huddersfield. It comes just a week after the online retailer launched in Surrey and ensures it now covers many of the UK’s biggest cities.

Prime Now offers up to 15,000 products, enabling customers in selected Leeds postcodes to have their order delivered within an hour for £6.99. If they choose to wait an additional hour, it’ll be delivered for free between 8am and midnight, seven days a week — useful for people who need a last-minute birthday present or absolutely need to get their hands on the latest video game release.

Source: Amazon UK

LeEco’s three new smartphones ditch the headphone jack

We’ve been hearing rumors about Apple killing the 3.5mm headphone jack on its next major iPhone release, but looks like one Chinese company was keen to beat its American rival in this “race.” LeEco, famed for bringing the world’s first USB Type-C phones and recently investing in Aston Martin’s electric car development, has just announced three new smartphones — the Le 2, Le 2 Pro and Le Max 2 — that have ditched the conventional headphone jack in favor of the upcoming USB Type-C digital headphones. Unit now, HTC and JBL’s Reflect Aware C was the only one in this new headphone category, so it’s fitting that LeEco is also adding two of its own USB-C earpieces — a pair of in-ears and a pari of over-ears. These are also the first to be certified by LeEco’s very own Continual Digital Lossless Audio standard.

LeEco’s three new metallic smartphones share almost identical looks, especially with their squircle fingerprint reader and their HTC-like injection moulded antenna bands on the back, as well as their edge-to-edge glass panel on the front to mimic a borderless screen when switched off. There aren’t exactly the most exciting designs we’ve seen of late, but they aren’t bad, either.

As you can tell by the name, the Le 2 and Le 2 Pro are the two more affordable choices out of the three, both sporting a 5.5-inch 1080p display, a generous 3,000mAh fixed battery and a 10-core tri-cluster MediaTek chipset on the inside — the X20 on the Le 2 and the faster X25 on the Le 2 Pro. Both have an 8-megapixel front-facing camera, but on the back, the Le 2 has a 16-megapixel main camera whereas the Le 2 Pro has a 21-megapixel counterpart powered by a Sony IMX230 sensor — the same chip inside the Moto X Pure Edition. As for memory, both models come with 32GB of internal storage, 3GB of RAM on the Le 2 and 4GB of RAM on the Le 2 Pro.

The more premium Le Max 2 has a larger and sharper 5.7-inch QHD screen, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 chipset, a more advanced ultrasonic fingerprint scanner, a slightly larger 3,100mAh battery and Quick Charge 3.0 support. It has the same pair of cameras as the Le 2 Pro, except its main camera has the added benefit of optical image stabilization. Memory-wise it maxes out at 64GB of onboard storage with a whopping 6GB of RAM. Thanks to the Qualcomm chipset, this model supports tri-band carrier aggregation, thus allowing download speeds of up to 375 Mbps on supported networks.

LeEco has yet to reveal any price or date for these three new phones, but it does have plans to bring at least one of these to the US later this year, so stay tuned for an update.

Moto G4 Plus shown off once again in leaked render

Alleged images of the Moto G4 Plus leaked last week, giving us a hint of what to expect from Motorola’s budget series this year. The images highlighted a fingerprint sensor at the front and an oblong camera housing at the back. An official-looking render of the Moto G4 Plus in white is making the rounds today, serving up a look at the entire device.

From Evan Blass:

The render shows off the square fingerprint sensor and the rear camera setup, which looks like it has a laser autofocus system. The device itself looks more premium than earlier generations, and while there’s no confirmation of specs, it looks like we’ll see a 5.5-inch display.

What do you guys think of the device based on the render above?

Samsung Pay will launch in Singapore this quarter

Samsung Pay will be available in Singapore by the end of Q2 2016. Samsing is tying up with MasterCard and Visa, as well as major banks in the region such as DBS/POSB, OCBC Bank, and Standard Chartered. American Express integration is listed as “coming soon” after the second quarter.

Samsung Pay is currently live in South Korea, the U.S., and China, with the city-state becoming the first market in Southeast Asia to get the payments service. From Injong Rhee, EVP and Head of R&D, Software and Services of Mobile Communications Business at Samsung:

We are extremely excited that Singapore is the first market in Southeast Asia to roll out Samsung Pay. Singapore’s connectivity and openness are ideal conditions for our new mobile service to thrive, together with the interest and readiness of consumers here in adopting this new method of payment.

Samsung Pay is an example of how Samsung is always striving to introduce new technologies that help to enhance and improve the quality of lives of consumers, especially as Singapore moves towards becoming a Smart Nation. Our goal has always been to drive and lead innovation that matters, and we are happy to extend this into the mobile commerce space.

Samsung states that Singaporeans will be able to use Samsung Pay in supermarkets, convenience and departmental stores, healthcare and beauty outlets, as well as food, lifestyle, electronics, and furnishing stores. In addition to NFC, the service works with MST, allowing customers to use traditional POS machines during checkout.

At launch, the service will be available on the Galaxy Note 5, Galaxy S6 edge+, Galaxy S7, and S7 edge. Samsung will conduct a beta trail ahead of the official launch.

The Galaxy S7 and S7 edge are now available in ‘Pink Gold’

Samsung’s Galaxy S7 and S7 edge are now available in a “Pink Gold” color variant in South Korea.

Samsung says it went with the color scheme as it incorporates a touch of gentleness:

Pink Gold was chosen as it, like the other colors available for the Galaxy S7 and S7 edge, is a natural color that provides a sense of comfort. These hues glitter and shimmer as if illuminated from inside their glass surfaces.

In particular, the refined, skin tone-inspired Pink Gold color scheme is intended to soothe and incorporate a touch of gentleness, radiance and sophistication to the smartphones’ design.

The pink color option is now available to customers in South Korea, and Samsung mentions that it will bring the variant to select markets.

Samsung’s Safety Screen app protects your kids’ eyes

Samsung has launched an app that’s designed to prevent vision damage when using phones or tablets for an extended duration of time. Called Safety Screen, the app uses facial recognition to detect the distance between a phone or tablet’s display and a user’s eyes, automatically shutting off the screen and alerting the users with a popup if it finds that the device is held too close.

Samsung says that the goal with Safety Screen is to prevent digital eye strain in children and teens, but the app can be used by anyone. The app runs in the background, allowing anyone to use their phone or tablet as they normally would. There’s also a security feature that lets parents set up a username and password, which prevents kids from disabling the app. The app is now available for download from Google Play.

Lyft nixed its surge cap and didn’t tell riders

Surge pricing is an expensive fact of life for Uber and Lyft riders, but Lyft’s policy was to cap their “Prime Time” surge prices at 3x normal. In February Lyft informed drivers it was removing the surge cap — but nobody told the riders. So much for disclosure.

In the car service deadlock between Lyft and Uber, wouldn’t raising prices turn off passengers? Sure, but not as much as waiting too long for a car. Lyft’s argument is that higher prices will encourage drivers to pick up more rides. Many drivers work for both, so Uber and Lyft are often competing for drivers as well as fares. Quartz suggests that upping the surge limit may increase the number of Lyft drivers, which will keep rider wait time low.

Such is the tightrope that both have to walk. Lyft adjusted its pay structure back in December to keep drivers from cheating their system, yet cut fare prices a month later to stay competitive with Uber. Nixing the Prime Time cap is just another market adjustment.

Source: Quartz

Google thinks Google.com is a dangerous website

Google’s Safe Browsing Site Status checker lists, well, Google.com as a partially dangerous website, a Reddit user has discovered. It warns that “some pages on this website redirect visitors to dangerous [ones] that install malware on visitors’ computers.” The malware, in turn, could steal personal and financial info. It’s certainly a strange situation, and a bit funny, but as The Washington Post explains, there might be a perfectly logical explanation.

At the bottom of the Safety checker, it says “Don’t panic. Users sometimes post bad content on websites that are normally safe. Safe Browsing will update the safety status once the webmaster has cleaned up the bad content.” As WP points out, some people might have used Google’s services to host malicious content, and the checker just can’t single it out.

The Safe Browsing checker recognizes a lot of other websites that post user content like Tumblr as partially dangerous, as well. This all just demonstrates that the tool isn’t perfect: It’s best to exercise caution even if it says that the URL you’re visiting is safe.

Source: The Washington Post, Reddit

Former astronaut auctions Zeiss lens from Apollo 15

Today in oddly specific artifacts of technology: the first telephoto lens used by an astronaut on the surface of the moon is currently on the auction block alongside a payload of other NASA memorabilia. The special 500mm Zeiss lens was an essential part of Commander David Scott’s scientific equipment during the Apollo 15 mission to the Hadley rille. Scott’s Hasselblad rig took nearly 300 photos during the 12-day mission and the camera’s body alone sold for over $900,000 in 2014.

The lens, meanwhile, is expected to fetch about half that, even though it appears to be held together with duct tape and velcro. If that price seems a little steep given the wear-and-tear, consider this: that duct tape has been signed by Commander Scott himself and the auctioneers believe it “possibly retains some lunar dust.”

This video of Commander Scott falling over, camera in hand, might have something to do with that:

If cameras aren’t your thing, there are 671 other NASA treasures up for sale, with many of the proceeds going to benefit the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation. While a prototype lunar rover that has been rescued from the scrap heap might sound like the sexiest of the bunch, the best Father’s Day gifts are actually this mechanical pencil that went into space and an ejection seat that happens to still be “in very good condition.”