You can save $75 on select refurbished Sonos speakers at Amazon right now
Right now, you can save $75 on select refurbished Sonos speakers at Amazon. The retailer is offering the PLAYBAR and both colors of the PLAY:3 at the discounted price, making it quite enticing for those looking to add to their set up or start one. Sonos puts these speakers through a series of testing before selling, and still backs them with the same 1 year warranty like a new one would have.
If you want to expand your current speaker system into more rooms, or add that great Sonos quality to your TV experience, you won’t want to wait too long. This deal is only good for today, July 5. You will need to be a member of Amazon’s Prime service, and if you aren’t you can sign up now for a 30-day free trial to get the benefits now.
See at Amazon
Xbox avatars to get a wheelchair option
Accessibility doesn’t just apply to the real world — Microsoft’s Phil Spencer has revealed that Microsoft will soon launch wheelchair avatars for Xbox Live. Following a user tweet suggesting that “wheelchairs might be relatively simple” to do, and another suggesting a petition, Xbox head Phil Spencer jumped in. “No petition needed, we hear you. This is something that we’ve already looked at, [and it’s] not far off.” Soon after that, Xbox Director of Program Management Mike Ybarra tweeted a “sneak peek” of two possible avatars.
@XboxP3 @goldennike11 @SeamusBlackley Sneak peek… 😀 pic.twitter.com/szoTUGR6ef
— ♏️ike Ybarra (@XboxQwik) July 5, 2016
Some sites, including Yahoo and Second Life, have offered wheelchair avatars since early in their histories. Sociologists argue that they’re a powerful form of inclusion and a way for wheelchair-bound users to express their individuality. Despite being a popular part of Xbox 360, avatars were only recently brought back with the Xbox One Experience UI update. The renders above show more detailed avatars than the existing ones, so it could be a sign that an overall refresh is arriving soon.
Via: Videogamer
Source: Mike Ybarra (Twitter)
OnePlus 3 gets a £20 price bump after Brexit madness
As the UK government crumbles before our very eyes, the fallout from the vote to leave the European Union is even starting to impact our beloved gadgetry. OnePlus was eager to warn us last week that the falling value of the British Pound might cause the company to revisit handset pricing — much in the same way a Euro exchange rate slump was reflected in a jump in the cost of the OnePlus One early last year. That warning has become a reality today, with the announcement that as of July 11th, the price of the much-praised OnePlus 3 will increase from £309 to £329.
Before next Monday, though, you can still take advantage of the lower £309 price, and OnePlus has committed to keeping the cost of accessories at their current levels. So, that is what’s happening, but is this knee-jerk reaction really that necessary?
Without getting too economical about the whole thing — and yes, I know that’s incorrect word usage — every international company that sells anything within the UK is feeling exactly the same financial pressures as a result of the devalued pound. And yet, none of them are scrambling to put up prices less than two weeks after the Brexit result. I’m even happy to accept OnePlus survives on “extremely thin [profit] margins,” but not so keen to believe “the simple fact is that there won’t be a OnePlus in the future” if the company doesn’t react to the market like a veteran gunslinger.
OnePlus isn’t a startup. In fact, it’s effectively a subsidiary of Oppo, the fourth largest smartphone manufacturer in the world and itself, a subsidiary of a bigger consumer tech corporation. In short, OnePlus will not thrive or collapse on account of an extra £20 per device. Curiously, OnePlus is also supporting its decision on the basis of the pound to US dollar exchange rate, though it does claim “our expenses are mainly in USD” — curious because OnePlus is a Chinese company headquartered in Shenzhen. Shouldn’t the more important numbers be the pound to Chinese yuan exchange rate, then? For clarity, this has also taken a significant hit following the Brexit vote.
Finally, nothing is forcing OnePlus to move its hard-earned pounds into other currencies before some sort of favourable recovery. That’s unlikely to happen any time soon, however, so OnePlus is actually making a sensible business decision to pass the losses onto the consumer as soon as possible. Just don’t express sympathy for the company for doing so.
Rant over. The OnePlus 3 will cost £329 from next Monday.
Source: OnePlus
Amazon robot challenge winner counts on deep learning AI
Amazon’s robot Picking Challenge is back for a second year, and it’s clear that the competition has learned a lot in that time… in more ways than one. The Netherlands’ TU Delft won both parts of the challenge (stowing and picking warehouse items) with a robot that relied on the combination of deep learning artificial intelligence and depth-sensing cameras to get the job done. The machine studied 3D scans of the stockroom items to help it decide how to manipulate items with its gripper and suction cup. That adaptive AI made a big difference, to put it mildly. The arm got a near-flawless score in the stowing half of the event, and was over three times faster at picking objects than last year’s champion (100 per hour versus 30).
Even the also-rans fared better, TechRepublic notes. Despite tougher demands, only four competitors failed to score (versus half in the 2015 challenge). Nearly half of the entries managed over 40 points, which would have been good enough to get third place a year ago.
TU Delft and other entrants aren’t about to replace people any time soon. Human workers typically pick 400 items per hour, and they won’t suffer the 16.7 percent failure rate of the Picking Challenge leader. As it stands, Amazon is quick to stress that it doesn’t want robots to replace humans (at least, for now). They’d be supplements to the flesh-and-blood workforce, helping them fulfill orders more effectively. With that said, the rate of progress is brisk enough that you might just see robots like these in real Amazon warehouses within a few years.
Via: TechRepublic, The Verge, BBC
Source: TU Delft, Amazon Picking Challenge
Xbox summer sale 2016: What are the best Xbox One and Xbox 360 bargains?
Microsoft has launched its annual Xbox summer sale, the Ultimate Game Sale, for 2016 and there are more than 170 digital items and games on offer with up to 75 per cent off.
Xbox Live Gold members get better bargains, but even if you don’t subscribe to the monthly service you can build a healthy Xbox One or Xbox 360 games library for a lot less than normal. Many major triple-A games are included too, so if you haven’t got one or two or them already, now’s the time.
With so many games discounted, we’ve decided to pick a few that stand out for us. If you spot any massive bargains that we’ve not included, let us and the rest of the readers know in the comments below.
Please also note that all the prices listed below are with the additional Gold member discount. The non-subscriber discount is about 10 per cent less than each game’s RRP.
Xbox Ultimate Game Sale 2016 bargains to look out for…
Ubisoft
Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate
Xbox One – £20.99 with Gold
Ubisoft set its latest tale in London and with horse drawn carriage chases and “cor, blimey guv’ners” abounding it turned out to be a jolly good jaunt. Definitely worth just over a “score”.
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2K Games
Borderlands: The Handsome Collection
Xbox One – £18.00 with Gold
Collecting remastered versions of Borderlands 2 and Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, this set was always great value for money. Now even more so.
Electronic Arts
Dragon Age: Inquisition – Game of the Year Edition
Xbox One – £12.00 with Gold
Bioware’s two-year old RPG more than holds its own in recent company and the Game of the Year Edition comes with the three major DLC add-ons included. Not bad for £12.
Sega
Dungeon of the Endless
Xbox One – £5.99 with Gold
We’re big fans of this indie hit, which puts you on a dungeon crawl like few others.
2K Games
Evolve
Xbox One – £11.55 with Gold
Although the multiplayer-only game was overshadowed by others on its release, it is still a blast playing as the monster against a bunch of hapless heroes in five-player action.
Bethesda
Fallout 4
Xbox One – £25.00 with Gold
One of the greatest games of last year is now very affordable indeed.
Ubisoft
Far Cry 4
Xbox One – £9.60 with Gold
A simply brilliant first-person shooter that is made all the more brilliant by being available for less than a tenner. You can even get the Gold Edition, with all the DLC, for just £10 more.
343 Industries
Halo 5: Guardians
Xbox One – £22.50 with Gold
It’s the latest Halo, innit!
Square Enix
Just Cause 3
Xbox One – £18.00 with Gold
The massive, open-world blast was one of our unsung heroes of last year, so well worth a stab at less than half price.
Warner Bros
Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga
Xbox 360 – £5.99 – also works with Xbox One Backward Compatibility
With Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens now available, here’s a cheap and chearful set of all the previous games in the series (expect for Clone Wars, but we don’t talk about that).
Square Enix
Life is Strange: Complete Season (Episodes 1-5)
Xbox One – £6.40 with Gold
This is one of the best adventure games on the Xbox One and it’s now available for almost the same price as one episode when it was released as a series.
Deep Silver
Metro Redux Bundle
Xbox One – £6.00 with Gold
Two full first-person shooters for six squids? You absolutely cannot go wrong. The remastered versions of Metro 2033 and Metro Last light are both decent on their own.
Ubisoft
South Park: The Stick of Truth
Xbox 360 – £5.99 – also works with Xbox One Backward Compatibility
A follow-up is coming this December, so now’s the time to play the first South Park role-playing game. Clever and hilarious.
Microsoft
State of Decay: Year-One Survival Edition
Xbox One – £10.00 with Gold
Another of our unsung heroes, we’re big fans of the open-world zombie survival game and this is a great opportunity to get it ahead of the sequel coming next year.
Electronic Arts
Star Wars Battlefront Deluxe Edition
Xbox One – £25.99 with Gold
It’s Star Wars Battlefront along with five exclusive in-game items for less than half its price on release.
Electronic Arts
Unravel
Xbox One – £7.50 with Gold
This cute and emotional puzzle-platformer is worthy for anyone’s Xbox One collection.
Ubisoft
Watch Dogs Complete Edition
Xbox One – £16.00 with Gold
Watch Dogs 2 is coming soon and you can get a taster of what to expect with the slightly flawed but still highly playable original. All the DLC is included in the Complete Edition.
CD Projekt RED / The Witcher III: Wild Hunt
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
Xbox One – £17.50 with Gold
Still possibly the best game on this current generation of consoles – definitely in the top three. Just prepare to lose all your spare time after you get sucked into Geralt of Rivia’s world.
Bethesda
Wolfenstein: The New Order
Xbox One – £12.50 with Gold
Bonkers FPS set in an alternate universe where the Nazis won. Great fun, chaotic stuff.
Google DeepMind will detect eye diseases with AI
Google’s DeepMind division is teaming up with another part of the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) to see if it can improve patient care. The artificial intelligence company, acquired by Google in 2014, will use machine learning to analyze one million anonymised eye scans supplied by the Moorfields Eye Hospital. In addition, it’ll be crunching anonymous information related to patient diagnosis, age and treatment. The hope is that such an approach can be used to examine scans with greater efficiency, or with a higher degree of accuracy, than traditional methods, thereby leading to earlier detection and intervention of eye diseases.
Moorfields Eye Hospital is one of the oldest and largest health centres for ophthalmic treatment, handling more than 600,000 patient visits each year. Staff conduct “many thousands” of optical coherence tomography (OCT) scans each week — these are complex and can take time for healthcare professionals to analyze. If DeepMind’s research is successful, this workflow could be accelerated and, as a result, ensure that many people retain their sight. Some conditions, such as diabetic retinopathy, can be prevented or severely limited provided they are detected early enough. “But that doesn’t always happen,” DeepMind explains.
The Google-owned team in London has collaborated with the NHS before. It’s currently working with the Royal Free Hospital to develop an app that’s capable of detecting acute kidney injury (AKI). The system, it’s hoped, will immediately review blood test results, looking for signs of deterioration, and then send an alert should there be any problems to an appropriate member of staff. The project has been criticised, however, for the sheer volume of data — 1.6 million patient records, to be exact — that DeepMind now has access to. The company has since defended its cybersecurity capabilities and offered patients the chance to opt-out of the research.
In a blog post, DeepMind has stressed that the eye scans it’ll be using have been collected by Moorfields over a long period of time. “This means it’s not possible to identify any individual patients from the scans,” the company claims. “They’re also historic scans, meaning that while the results of our research may be used to improve future care, they won’t affect the care any patient receives today.” In addition, the company has submitted its research methodology for open peer review. “We’ll also submit any results from this research to peer-reviewed journals, as is normal, so others in the medical community can analyze them.”
DeepMind, if you need a reminder, developed the AlphaGo computer program that beat Go world champion Lee Sedol in March. (Another match is also on the cards.) If its algorithm is half as effective at analysing eye scans, medical professionals will be very happy indeed.
Via: The Guardian
Source: Moorfields, DeepMind
Huawei confirms that smartphone cameras still aren’t DSLRs
It’s not the camera, it’s the photographer, right? Actually, sometimes it’s both, as Huawei just proved. It recently posted a lovely image, complete with a lens flare, implying that it was taken with its photo-centric P9 smartphone. “The #HuaweiP9’s dual Leica cameras makes taking photos in low light conditions like this a pleasure,” says the Google+ post caption. The only problem? It was actually taken with a Canon EOS 5D Mark III equipped with a very pricey 70-200mm F/2.8 lens worth $4,500 total, as the EXIF data clearly proves.
In retrospect, it’s pretty obvious that this is not a smartphone photo. The 5D Mark III’s shallow depth-of-field has blurred out the background, and the lens flare has a polygonal shape, another DSLR signature. As some Redditors have pointed out, the detail in the hair is also a bit too fine for a smartphone camera.
Huawei technically never said directly that its smartphone took the shot, but it’s strongly implied. It has since taken down the photo and given a statement to Android Police, saying, “the photo, which was professionally taken while filming a Huawei P9 advert, was shared to inspire our community. We recognize though that we should have been clearer with the captions for this image. It was never our intention to mislead. We apologize for this and we have removed the image.”
This isn’t the first time that a marketing team has had this bright idea — Nokia used “simulated” images to show off its PureView cameras back in the day. As one commenter pointed out, however, the least Huawei could’ve done was use a professional camera from its branding partner, Leica — we hear they’re pretty good.
Apple Demanding Price Cuts From Suppliers Ahead of iPhone 7
Apple is demanding price cuts on components for the new iPhone from its overseas suppliers to maintain its high profit margins, despite a global slowdown in smartphone sales, according to Taiwanese website DigiTimes.
The report claims several large Taiwan-based component suppliers such as Foxconn, Largan Precision, and Pegatron have already been affected, while strong competition in Greater China forcing the companies to “compete aggressively” over Apple’s orders by cutting prices.
Currently, Largan is facing strong competition from Japan-based Kantatsu over camera module orders, while Foxconn and Pegatron are seeing Apple adding new ODM partners such as Wistron for the production of its new iPhone.
Apple is expected to announce the iPhone 7 series in September. The smartphones are expected to retain iPhone 6s-like designs with faster Apple A10 processors, dustproofing and waterproofing, repositioned antenna bands, and faster LTE and Wi-Fi. A dual-lens camera and 3GB of RAM may be exclusive to the 5.5-inch model.
Other rumored features include a Smart Connector, stereo speakers, and a flush, touch-sensitive home button, but it is not entirely clear if each of those features are destined for the iPhone 7 or iPhone 7 Plus/Pro, no longer planned, or reserved for the alleged OLED-based iPhone with glass casing expected in 2017.
Tags: Foxconn, digitimes.com, Wistron, pegatron
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Australian carrier Optus is giving away Google Cardboard viewers for a limited time
Australian carrier Optus has partnered with local singer and songwriter Troye Sivan to give away stylized variants of the Google Cardboard for a limited time. The carrier is running a contest through which fans can view a 360-degree video of a private soundcheck performance of Sivan’s latest single “Talk Me Down.”
You can head to your local Optus store to grab a free Cardboard viewer, and enter here (via Ausdroid) for a chance to meet Sivan in real life. The contest is open until July 21.
See at Optus Music
LG’s mid-range X5 and X skin are now official in South Korea
LG has added two new models to its mid-range X series in South Korea, the X5 and the X skin. The phones join the X power and the X cam as well as the X screen, which made their debut earlier this year.
That’s not to mention the X mach, X style, and the X max, which according to LG are designed to excel in one specific area. As for LG’s latest offerings, the X5 comes with a 5.5-inch 720p screen, 1.3GHz quad-core CPU, 2GB of RAM, 16GB storage, microSD slot, 13MP camera, 5MP front shooter, LTE, Bluetooth 4.2, NFC, and a 2800mAh battery.
The X skin is designed to be sleek, with the phone coming in at a thickness of 6.9mm. It offers a 5-inch 720p display, the same 1.3GHz quad-core CPU, 1.5GB of RAM, 16GB internal memory with microSD slot, LTE, 8MP camera, 5MP front camera, Bluetooth 4.1, NFC, and a 2100mAh battery. Both phones run Android 6.0 Marshmallow out of the box.
The X5 will retail for ₩200,000 ($175), and the X skin will debut for ₩231,000 ($200) in South Korea.
AIVAnet 