AT&T’s chief is heading up a robocall ‘strike force’
AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson will lead a “strike force” that aims to combat robocalls. Apparently, FCC chairman Tom Wheeler didn’t only remind him last week that carriers like Ma Bell can and should offer free call blockers to their subscribers, he also asked the exec to head the new organization. As Consumerist noted, Stephenson once incorrectly said that the carrier can’t deploy call blockers without the FCC’s permission. The company’s latest blog post makes it clear, though, that the CEO has changed his tune.
While neither organization has revealed the strike force’s tasks in detail, AT&T’s post says it will lead the new group as it develops anti-robocall tools and solutions. The team will also tell the FCC what role the government can play in its operations.
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said in a statement:
“Since giving consumers meaningful control over the calls and texts they receive will require collective action by the industry; I am gratified that AT&T will lead an industry strike force to develop an action plan for providing consumers with robust robocall-blocking solutions. Last week, I asked all the major phone companies to develop just such a plan; I strongly urge industry participants to join the effort and to produce conclusions within 60 days.”
AT&T also promises to adopt the newest caller ID verification standards as soon as they become available and to help in the strike force’s formation of a “Do Not Originate List.” That list will contain numbers of companies that tend to be impersonated by spammers and scammers overseas, so fake calls can be blocked before they even reach subscribers.
Via: The Consumerist
Source: AT&T
Nintendo’s ‘Miitomo’ app update reminds you it still exists
Nintendo’s debut smartphone game is making efforts to get you back into its weird and wonderful social world by offering more opportunities for wardrobe items and accessories without excessive in-app payments. According to an update teaser inside the Miitomo app itself, a new Candy Drop game will let you use all that accumulated candy (earned through in-game interactions and when you missed the good stuff in the original crane mini-games) for in-game upgrades. The greatly despised consolation prize finally has a use.
You could only use the candy currency to unlock extra answers from your buddies, while Game tickets, usually sparingly given out by the app as a bonus (and available as in-app purchases), are what’s needed to play for Nintendo-themed goods (or cat sweaters) for your avatar — until now. If you’ve built up quite the stockpile of candy, it’ll soon be time to go shopping.
Nintendo continues to add to the social game — its first for smartphones — but it didn’t sustain the boom in popularity after its launch. To be honest, it’s not really a typical game. The games maker’s association with smartphone hit Pokémon Go, meanwhile, is a little thinner, tied to its part ownership of both the Pokémon Company and Niantic. Truer Nintendo games (in the sense of what we’re used to playing) are expected later this year.
Source: Polygon
How to use the iPhone’s new, confusing lock screen – CNET
After you update to iOS 10, excitement is expected if not anticipated. But there’s one more thing you’ll need to do before you can start tapping your way around iOS 10: learn how to use the new lock screen.
In iOS 10, gone is the staple iOS feature of slide-to-unlock, replaced with the requirement to press the home button to unlock your device. There’s no doubt it’s going to take some time to get used to. I’ve been using iOS 10 for over a month now, and I still find myself resting my finger on the home button and waiting for Touch ID to unlock my iPhone and show my home screen.
Raise to wake, then unlock
When picking up an iPhone running iOS 10, the screen will automatically turn on. You can then view your notifications, swipe to open the camera (more on that in a minute), or swipe to view your widgets. Sorry iPad users, as of the current beta you still need to wake your tablet via the usual means.
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Left: Screenshot of a locked iPhone 6S. Right: After resting a finger on the home button, the phone is now unlocked but the lock screen is still shown. Notice the text at the bottom instructing you to press the home button to open your home screen.
Screenshot by Jason Cipriani/CNET
A small lock icon will show up at the top of the screen when a device is locked. You can place your finger on the home button to unlock — replacing the lock icon with a quick flash of “Unlocked” — which will allow you to interact with notifications and select widgets. As you can see from Apple’s friendly reminder along the bottom of the screen, you need to actually press the home button to open the home screen.
Slide to view widgets
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Screenshot by Jason Cipriani/CNET
Swiping to the right on the lock screen will reveal the Today view. This is where you can interact with widgets, ranging from what’s next on your calendar, Activity app stats or sports scores. The real magic of widgets on iOS 10 won’t happen until developers can release apps built for the new features, but it looks promising!
You can add or remove widgets just as you did on previous versions of iOS (pictured left).
Where’s the camera shortcut?
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See, the camera shortcut does exist on iOS 10!
Screenshot by Jason Cipriani/CNET
The camera icon that used to sit in the bottom-right corner of the lock screen is no longer present on iOS 10. However, you can still access the camera with a swipe to the left.
Going back to how things used to be
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Screenshot by Jason Cipriani/CNET
Thankfully, Apple has provided a way for users to revert the home button’s old behavior. Meaning once you wake your device — either by lifting it, pressing the wake button, or pressing the home button — you can complete the unlock press by resting your finger on the home button (instead of having to push it again).
Open Settings > General > Accessibility > Home Button and enable Rest Finger to Open.
Find out how to register to vote with Google Now – CNET
With the Republican National Convention behind us and the Democratic National Convention this week, each party’s nominees will be officially official and campaigning will soon ramp up.
No matter your personal views or opinions on this election’s selection of candidates, US citizens have a civic duty to head to the polls on election day, November 8, and place your vote for America’s next president.
In most states, in order to do that, you must first register to vote roughly 30 days prior to election day. However, voting laws vary by state, which can make things a bit confusing, especially if you’ve recently changed residency or have never registered to vote before.
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Taylor Martin/CNET
As Lifehacker points out, Google helps make the registration process easier by providing an information card that clearly explains and breaks down the voter registration laws and processes by state.
To find out how you can register to vote, click here or open Google Now or Google Search on your phone and say, “How to register to vote.”
In the drop-down menu, select your state and follow the instructions. In most cases, you will need to download or request a form by mail, and fill it out and return the form by email, fax, mail or in person by your state’s deadline. Some states also allow online voter registration with a valid ID.
At the very bottom of the How To tab, you will find a link to your state’s voter registration database, if applicable. There, you can search to check the status of your registration and see if it’s current, as well as find your polling location.
If you’re positive you’re already registered, you can also check your polling location using this f*&%ing tool.
The Requirements tab will show the criteria you first need to meet before you are eligible to vote in each state. And finally, the Deadline tab shows you, by state, when you need to have the proper forms turned in.
iBaby Air Release Date, Price and Specs – CNET
I love raising my baby in a city, if only because I’m able to maintain a life without too much trouble. But with cities often comes pollution, and air-quality problems have been linked to major long-term health concerns — especially for young children. It’s not just an outdoor problem, either. Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) are commonly found indoors, including carbon monoxide, methane, ammonia, and plenty of others.
But now iBaby, a company that’s built a name as a popular developer of baby monitors, has a solution: a smart air-quality monitor and purifier called the iBaby Air. The device just reached full funding on Indiegogo, but I got my hands on one before it launches later this year. Here are four things you need to know about iBaby Air.
iBaby’s tiny new air purifier packs a punch
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It does something few other devices do
Sure, plenty of gadgets monitor your home for carbon monoxide or smoke. Some even track dust, pollen, and CO2 levels. But few devices offer the sort of all inclusive air-quality monitoring that iBaby says it does. Of course, how well it tracks VOCs still has to be tested. But it’s at least trying something few consumer devices in the past have done.
The iBaby Air has some legit smarts
Aside from tracking air quality in the moment, the iBaby Air maps your home’s air quality over time, letting you see improvements as you make them. While another recent crowdfunding project called Wynd is doing something similar, iBaby Air sweetens the deal with a speaker for music and two-way audio, a full RGB color nightlight and other features in the app.
Chris Monroe/CNET
The iBaby Air is small, portable and sleek
The white finish looks fine, and the additional optional wood finishes will fit nicely with different home aesthetics. Plus, unlike those conventional air purifiers that take up a whole corner of your house, the 6-inch-tall iBaby Air can just perch on a mantle, out of the way.
The iBaby Air costs $150
That’s not expensive, but it’s not cheap either. Standard air ionizers cost around $60 to $80. The iBaby Air adds a lot of smarts to the package, but whether that merits the extra 70 or 80 bucks will depend on what users are looking for.
Nikon D500 review – CNET
The Good The Nikon D500 is fast with excellent continuous-shooting and autofocus performance, its 4K video support is a welcome novelty for its dSLR price class and, of course, there’s the great photo quality.
The Bad Terrible wireless file-transfer and remote-control app, and its Live View (contrast) autofocus could use a boost.
The Bottom Line There’s tons to like about the Nikon D500, from its fast shooting and excellent image quality to its broad feature set and streamlined design. But it still falls short with its Live View autofocus and seriously subpar wireless file transfer and shooting operation.
After 6 years neglecting the power APS-C action photographer, Nikon released the mostly impressive D500 dSLR, the little sister to the pro full-frame D5. With the same autofocus and metering systems as that model, a high-sensitivity 20.9-megapixel CMOS sensor, a large tilting touchscreen and 4K video, it hits most of the essential targets for a camera in its class. Only a couple of flaws knock it slightly off course.
The D500’s body runs $2,000 (£1,730, AU$3,500); the camera also comes in a kit with the DX 16-80mm f2.8-4mm lens for $2,600 (£2,480, AU$4,500). Unlike a lot of kit lenses I’ve seen, this one’s pretty good, and has a useful general-purpose focal-length range equivalent to 24-120mm. The lens is sharp, with a reasonable maximum-aperture range that should match the needs of people who’d be buying the body and want something for routine situations.
Joining the 1-million ISO club
It takes more than just raw speed to optimize a camera for continuous shooting. You need the ability to take decent photos at high sensitivities. That’s the only way you can use action-stopping fast shutter speeds and sharpness-maximizing narrower apertures under a lot of conditions; most activities don’t take place in bright, direct sunlight. The D500 delivers a maximum sensitivity of ISO 1,640,000 — highest in its price range — though the camera’s native range stops at ISO 51200, leaving five stops in the expanded range.
Nikon D500 full-resolution photo samples
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JPEGs look clean through ISO 6400. At ISO 6400 you can still process the raws to obtain more detail, though the trade-off is a lot of “grain” and hot pixels in dark areas. Between ISO 12800 and ISO 102400 (Hi 1) in JPEGs you can see some smearing and processed color noise, but it still retains modest amount of detail. Beyond that, you can still get recognizable photos at small sizes. Processing the raw files doesn’t help much; I suspect Nikon’s performing some in-camera wizardry to produce what it does. Overall, though, the similarly priced Nikon D750, with its full-frame sensor, still produces better photos
The color rendering and white balance are excellent. Its default Standard Picture Control increases contrast and you lose some highlight and shadow detail, and midtones are compressed, but the occasional hue shift is minor.
The D500 is the first camera to bring 4K video to a consumer-priced dSLR, and the quality is quite good for an APS-C sensor; sharp, with a solid dynamic range and the same excellent color. You can see a lot of noise in shadows above ISO 6400, but overall it’s peachy.
Analysis samples
Low iso tk
Lori Grunin/CNET
Despite the stratospheric ISO sensitivity claims, JPEGs are only clean through about ISO 6400, though depending upon the scene and lighting you may get pretty good results through ISO 25600.
Lori Grunin/CNET
You don’t want to venture into the expanded sensitivity ranges often, but they’ll serve if you’re desperate in low lighting. There’s an odd white-balance shift in both raw and JPEG files at ISO 102400.
Lori Grunin/CNET
In dim light the highest ISO sensitivity images look much better than our test shots, but you still don’t want to use them at 100 percent.
Lori Grunin/CNET
I’m impressed that Nikon can produce a recognizable image from this noisy mess at its Hi 5 sensitivity, equivalent to ISO 1638400. (JPEG on left, unprocessed raw on right.) In the expanded ranges, the JPEG processing delivers better results than you can probably get with raw processing, so if you enter that territory then change the in-camera settings to help keep from blowing up the highlights.
Lori Grunin/CNET
The D500 delivers excellent color reproduction and white balance under most conditions.
Lori Grunin/CNET
You can buy the Samsung Gear 360 camera at the Lollapalooza music festival
Lollapalooza will celebrate the 25th anniversary of the popular music festival this weekend by joining in the virtual reality trend, with some help from Samsung. That includes offering festival goers a chance to buy the Samsung Gear 360 camera.
Samsung will sell a limited number of its Gear 360 cameras at Lollapalooza for the price of $349.99. There’s no word on exactly how many camera units will be available but we would guess that “limited” means exactly that. Samsung is still not offering any information on when the camera will be available to the general public.
Here’s what else the company has in mind for their sponsorship of the festival, which will be held in Chicago from July 28-31:
- VR-Palooza – This year, Samsung is introducing VR-Palooza, an interactive and entertaining VR experience where festival-goers can livestream musical performances from the Samsung Stage using Samsung Gear VR powered by Oculus, and participate in all-new 360-degree VR experiences, including 4D VR surfing, skateboarding and hot air balloon attractions.
- The Galaxy Lounge – The Galaxy Lounge near the Samsung Stage will be the ultimate VIP experience for Galaxy owners, featuring a series of surprise appearances, pop-up performances and meet & greets with the latest Samsung technology at the core of the experience.
- Samsung Pay Vending Machines – The Samsung Pay vending machine, located in VR-Palooza, will reward Samsung Pay users with a chance to win upgrades and perks to their festival experience – including festival gear, Samsung products, and more. Samsung Pay is the most widely accepted mobile payment system helping customers slim down their wallets.
- Lollapalooza in New York City – For fans not in Chicago, Samsung 837 will host an immersive experience in New York City featuring a special performance on Thursday, July 28 with Years & Years, a band also performing at the festival. The evening will feature Chicago-inspired eats, exclusive VR content focusing on the 25-year history of Lollapalooza and streams of performances from the Samsung Stage at Lollapalooza in VR.
Check out our Samsung Gear 360 review
NVIDIA’s latest pro video cards help you livestream VR video
Did you think NVIDIA’s newest Titan X was a monster of a video card? You haven’t seen anything yet. The GPU maker has unveiled its latest Quadro workstation cards, the Pascal-based P5000 and P6000, and they both pack power that makes your gaming-grade card seem modest. The P6000 (above) is billed as the fastest graphics card to date, and for good reason. It has even more processing cores than the Titan X (3,840 versus 3,584) and twice as much memory — a whopping 24GB of RAM. The P5000 is closer to the GTX 1080 in performance with “just” 2,560 cores, but its 16GB of RAM handily bests the gaming card’s 8GB. If you’re working with massive amounts of 3D data, these are likely the boards you want.
However, their real party trick is more a matter of software. Both the P5000 and P6000 can take advantage of a new VRWorks 360 Video developer kit which, as the name suggests, helps produce virtual reality footage. They can capture, stitch and livestream VR video from up to 32 cameras in real time, which could make them ideal for that VR concert feed.
There’s only one catch: pricing. NVIDIA is shipping both Quadro cards in October, but it hasn’t said how much either of them will cost. Given that the Titan X costs $1,200 and doesn’t pack as much video memory as either of these GPUs, it’s safe to presume that this hardware will considerably more. These designs are meant for pros who can easily justify the price through the hours they’ll save while finishing big projects.
Source: NVIDIA (1), (2)
Solar Impulse completes its round-the-world journey
In March 2015 Solar Impulse 2 took off from Abu Dhabi and tonight it has successfully returned, completing a 40,000km+ round the world trip. It managed the feat “without using a drop of fuel,” becoming the first to manage the feat thanks to sunlight, piloted by Bertrand Piccard and Andre Borschberg. Its arrival is a bit delayed, partially due to some problems with heat-related battery damage, but just making the trip helps the project’s goal to show off the potential of transportation powered by green energy sources.
BREAKING: it’s a first in the history of #energy, @solarimpulse is only the beginning, #futureisclean pic.twitter.com/sRjD59Gi2x
— Bertrand PICCARD (@bertrandpiccard) July 26, 2016
Source: Solar Impulse
Authorities Charge 6 in Chicago Apple Store Traveling Fraud Scheme
Six people from New York have been charged with allegedly attempting fraudulent transactions at the Deer Park Apple Store near Chicago, according to the Chicago Tribune. Lake County authorities tell the paper that the scheme is an “organized criminal enterprise.”
Last week, authorities learned that the scheme was being attempted at various Apple Stores in the Chicago area. The suspects were using stolen identities and credit card numbers throughout the country to make purchases, according to police.
Christopher Covelli, a spokesman for the sheriff’s office, told the Chicago Tribune that the suspects would fly into O’Hare International Airport, rent a car, and immediately head to local Apple Stores to attempt the enterprise. Authorities began increasing patrols and surveillance around the Deer Park store after another store in Schaumburg was targeted. Between Wednesday and Sunday, six people attempted the scheme at the store. Police recovered $10,000 worth of stolen Apple products from the alleged suspects.
Covelli said the traveling scheme is not common with out-of-state individuals.
Tags: Apple retail, Apple Stores
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