Google’s Project Muze creates unwearable fashion pieces
Google shouldn’t enter the fashion business any time soon, if the partnership between Berlin-based Zalando and Google is any indication.
Project Muze, a machine learning-based endeavor that utilizes Google’s Tensor Flow system, is essentially a virtual fashion designer.
Drawing from a neural network trained on various design preferences like color, style and texture of over 600 fashion trendsetters and Google Fashion Trend Report information, Project Muze can create various fashion ensembles simply by asking users a few questions about their interests.
Tapping into users’ music interests, moods, favorite art style and gender allows Project Muze to draft some rather, shall we say, unique fashions that are generated in real-time. To be frank, they’re less-than-stellar. For a machine learning system with so many different possibilities, it ends up creating frustratingly samey designs that would probably look ridiculous even on a runway.
There are some that look as though they came from some futuristic space-disco as seen in the gallery below, but then others, especially one designated for men, combine ridiculous manta ray ponchos and wild designs in ways that just wouldn’t be flattering. But hey, maybe it’s some wild new fashion trend!
Make sure you share your most egregious fashion creations from Project Muze with us. It’s free to play around with, though you probably won’t be building an empire around these pieces or anything.
Via: TechCrunch
The Lenovo Yoga Book is too cool for a keyboard
Every once in a while, a piece of technology comes along that looks more at home on the set of a sci-fi film than on a store shelf in 2016. The Lenovo Yoga Book is one such device.
It’s more than lightweight and super-thin; it ditches the conventional keyboard for a flat black slab, with touch-sensitive keys that illuminate only when the “Halo Keyboard” is enabled. Toggle it off and you activate a Wacom digitizer with 2,048 levels of pressure sensitivity, converting the keyboard into a drawing tablet for the included stylus. And odds are you can do those doodles in your preferred artistry app, because the Yoga Book runs either Android or Windows depending on which model you get.
I’ve been waiting literally six months to show you this sucker, so tune in for my early impressions on the highs and the lows of the Lenovo Yoga Book – and stay tuned for MrMobile’s full review, coming later this year!
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Fossil Q Marshal and Wander preview: Doing Android Wear right
Ever since Fossil outlined its ambitious plan to introduce smartwatches and smart analogue watches across its family of brands, we’ve been itching to see the Q Wander and Marshal watches in full working order.
Having previously cast our eyes over Fossil’s analogue devices, and brought you our favourable first impressions, it’s now the turn of the Marshal and Wander devices. Sitting in Fossil’s Q family, they share a platform with the original device, the Founder.
As far as Android Wear goes, which is the software platform of choice, these are very much the same AW experience you’ll find elsewhere – on the new Asus ZenWatch 3, for example, or the premium Tag Heuer Connected.
Pocket-lint
We mention those devices, because they sit are opposite ends of the scale. Asus is gunning for the affordable end of the market with a price of €229; Tag Heuer sits in the real luxury end at £1100, both offer a software experience that’s very similar.
The difference between these devices in part comes down to materials, but mostly comes down to design. Not the big design elements, like the bezel or the thickness of the watch, but the subtle differences, like the back and the lugs, how the strap fits, how it sits on your wrist.
This is where Fossil really swings in. Fossil makes a huge number of fashion watches and fashion watches are something that people choose to wear. They are popular because they are nice. We’ve looked at the Michael Kors range separately, but that’s a perfect example of the power moves that Fossil is making in smartwatches. It’s about desirability.
Pocket-lint
Pick up the Fossil Q Marshal and that’s what you’re struck by: it’s a desirable watch, a watch that feels nice to wear, because it has been designed by a company that’s making and selling a lot of watches.
That potentially makes watches like the Q Wander much more important to Android Wear than might at first be apparent. For those outside of the world of technology, i.e., your average person, the appeal of the Fossil brand, and the surety of the design, could put Android Wear on the map in a way that some of the technology companies didn’t quite manage to do.
The technology of the Q Wander and Marshal is simple enough. Announcing a partnership with Qualcomm, this latest generation of devices runs on the new Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear 2100 chipset. That’s a chipset that’s been designed specifically for smartwatches, whereas many previous devices were running on hardware originally designed for smartphones.
Pocket-lint
There are some shortcomings: Fossil has a flat tyre design on its display, like Motorola’s devices, meaning that a small section at the bottom of the watch is black. That’s partly why you’ll see a lot of black watch faces, because it hides that bar at the bottom.
The bar is used to house things like light sensors, to change the brightness of the device. We didn’t have the time to really get to grips with the quality of the display in our initial hands-on session, nor with the performance of this watch overall, although the Wear 2100 chipset should mean longer battery life than some other devices.
Charging comes from a magnetic inductive charger that attaches to the rear, discarding the cradle-style charger of the previous generation.
In terms of functionality, the offering here is very much the same as other Android Wear devices. Compatible with Android and iOS devices, you’ll get notifications, voice controls and lots of compatible apps to keep you informed, entertained or just heading in the right direction.
- Android Wear review: The smartwatch platform?
Overall, it looks like a strong step in the right direction. With Fossil pushing out a number of smartwatches, in a number of designs, at an attractive price, we can’t help feeling that this is doing Android Wear the right way. It’s a desirable approach and as we said with the Michael Kors watches, it’s about fashion first and the technology second.
The Fossil G Wander and Fossil Q Marshal will be available now and cost from £279.
This is how much an exploit merchant charges to break encryption
NSO Group, the exploit seller recently linked to a potential activist hack, charges just $650,000 to hack a group of 10 iPhones or Android devices, along with a $500,000 setup fee, the New York Times reports. For that cash outlay you’ll get complete access to everything on those phones, including taking screenshots, capturing keystrokes and tracking GPS locations.
The Israeli firm can even tap into phone’s microphones to record nearby sounds. It’s not the only surveillance tech firm out there, but with tech companies making encryption more widely available to their customers, it’s the sort of thing that governments are increasingly relying on.
An NSO Group spokesman says the company only sells its wares to authorized governments, who use it for criminal investigations. And sources tell the NYT that there’s also a strong internal vetting process. Still, they also note that the company hasn’t refused to sell its technology to any countries yet.
The company’s tracking software, Pegasus, can also tap into BlackBerry and Symbian phones, on top of iPhones and Android devices. To get around encryption, the software can be installed via public WiFi hotspots, customized emails or texts, in-person or by “over the air stealth installation.” Ahmed Mansoor, the human rights activist who brought NGO back into the news last month, was initially alerted by a strange text message with a link. Researchers found that the hack was trying to take advantage of three exploits in iOS, which Apple has been quick to fix.
According to the NYT, the NSO Group charges $500,000 to hack five BlackBerry users, and $300,000 for five Symbian phones, in addition to the setup fee. 10 additional targets will cost another $150,000; 20 more targets will cost $250,000; 50 will cost $500,000; and 100 more will cost $800,000.
Source: NYT
Next ‘Call of Duty’ lets you craft guns and call down guard bots
Activision is raising the bar for its annual miniconvention celebrating its Call of Duty shooter franchise, Call of Duty XP. This year’s has panels, eSports championships and performances by Snoop Dogg and Wiz Khalifa, but the real attention is on news for the next entry in the franchise, Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, which launches on November 4th. Here’s all the new details of the modern shooter that studio executives shared this afternoon.
Most critically, PS4 players will get first crack at the multiplayer beta on October 14th, with Xbox One to get access at a later date. To refresh player-vs-player combat, developers took a hard look at the customization system of older games and saw players dumping perks to pour points into firearm attachments. To put more emphasis on abilities, Infinite Warfare gets a new system, “rigs,” which are basically classes with unique themed active “payloads” and passive “traits.” This pushes players into more defined roles, as the rig names suggest: Merc has a bull charge to ram enemies and health regen, while Phantom gets an active cloak and delays hit enemies’ damage recovery. Check out the trailer outlining all six below:
The other big addition is a crafting system: Yes, now you’ll be able to build better versions of your guns by collecting salvage from playing matches. Weapons now have four levels of rarity, with better perks available to higher-ranked ones. Ergo, your common EBR sniper rifle might have Stockpile for more ammo, the rare version awards bonus score, legendary grants a tactical nuclear strike after a 20-person killstreak and the epic edition marks wounded enemies with a red outline. Players will be be able to build secondary guns, too, but still unexplained is what appeasr to be mid-match gun crafting appearing at the end of the multiplayer trailer above.
There’s also a new slew of equipment, like a “bio spike” throwing knife that explodes on impact. New killstreaks include the Thor, a hovering drone that rains down missiles a la previous games’ Predators, and the RC8 is a heavily armored robot players can call down to watch their backs. If this sounds suspiciously like the titular giant mechs from Titanfall, Infinite Warfare has borrowed a few tropes from its competitors. A new multiplayer mode, Defenders, has teams competing to hold on longest to a Grifball-like score-generating sphere.
That extends to the single-player mode, which the presenter was careful to say had “new mechanics never seen in a Call of Duty before.” Some of these new features, like aerospace dogfighting, zero-G fights and grapple hook combat, have appeared in Halo and even the Titanfall 2 beta that dropped in the last few weekends. Infinite Warfare’s solo campaign will let players choose missions in any order they wish from their hub on the Retribution base ship — and also claim it will have zero loading screens.
Infinite Warfare brings back the franchise’s popular undead horde mode. Pre-ordering the game gets you the delightfully period-themed level Zombies in Spaceland for free, which was announced last month. It’s set in the 80s, so expect some multicolored neon windbreakers and zebra leggings to adorn the rotting hordes.
We already knew that PS4 players pre-purchasing Infinite Warfare bundles with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered would get to play it a month early. Studio officials sweetened the deal by announcing today that it would include 16 redone multiplayer maps. Ten will be available at launch, including “fan favorites” like Crash, Backlot and Crossfire, with six more free ones coming in December.
The announcement also included first looks at the fourth DLC for Call of Duty: Black Ops 3. Included are four new period-themed multiplayer maps: a western town in Outlaw, a medieval castle in Citadel, miniaturized combat amid a giant-sized picnic in Micro and the futuristic Rupture. The last part of the content expansion is Day of Reckoning, a level for that game’s Zombies mode.
Before letting the crowd at Call of Duty XP in Los Angeles zoom off to play Infinite Warfare demos or paintball in a life-size Nuketown, the studio revealed one more local experience: a custom VR space dogfighting experience called Jackal Assault. PS4 players get the game free on launch day, though they’ll obviously need PlayStation VR to enjoy it. (If you’re green with FOMO, you can go on Twitch to remotely fire a paintball turret at the fans lucky enough to be on-location.) Lastly, Activision-Blizzard shared news that its Call of Duty Endowment has gotten 25,000 US military veterans gainfully employed, and is aiming for 50,000 by 2019. Well done.
Source: Call of Duty XP
Samsung explains how the US Galaxy Note 7 recall will work
It’s been less than 24 hours since Samsung announced its worldwide recall of the Galaxy Note 7, and owners are probably wondering exactly what’s next. The major US carriers have already provided information on what they will do for customers (AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon), and now Samsung is laying out its plans for direct support. If owners want to exchange for another Galaxy Note 7, they can do that as early as next week. Their other option is to exchange the device for a Galaxy S7 or Galaxy S7 edge, plus replacement of any Note accessories and a refund of the price difference.
For their trouble, Samsung says it’s offering a $25 gift card or bill credit from “select carriers” when swapping for a new device through the replacement program. Owners should contact the retailer where they purchased the device, or call 1-800-SAMSUNG for more information. Continuing its message from earlier this morning, the company says it has identified “the affected inventory” but it’s still voluntarily replacing devices for all interested owners.
It seems like a lot of trouble and not much payback for owners who have already picked up the phone. While sales of Galaxy devices have been a bright spot for the company this year, we’ll have to wait and see how much momentum is lost because of these problems.
Update: And even with these details, the saga might not be over yet. Consumer Reports has specifically called Samsung out for failing to issue an “official” recall that would involve the US Consumer Products Safety Commission. That would require clearer information about what’s wrong and what owners will do next, but so far Samsung hasn’t done it. According to Recode, officials have “concern” about the process, but have not officially commented on the recall.
Source: Samsung
Hackers temporarily reactivate suspended Twitter accounts
When Twitter takes an offensive account offlinen it usually stays down for good, but a hacking group now claims that it’s discovered a way to reactivate and take control over inactive and suspended accounts. A group called “Spain Squad” briefly reactivated banned accounts like @Hitler, @DarkNet, @1337, @Hell and @LizardSquad — hoping to sell them to users seeking valuable screenames.
Akma, one of the users behind the exploit, told Business Insider that the group can do a lot more than just recover old accounts. Apparently the new exploit allows Spain Squad to change to suspend active accounts, change a user’s Twitter handle and even take control of active accounts. So far, the group has only demonstrated the ability to recover officially suspended accounts — though all of those have already been re-suspended by the social media company.
The details of how the group managed this aren’t clear, but if the hacker group can still perform the trick, it could be extremely lucrative for them. Unique or short Twitter names have been known to sell for thousands of dollars, and hackers have gone to absurd ends to illegally obtain these usernames in the past. It’s not clear yet if the exploit has been patched, or if the reclaimed accounts were merely re-suspended. Either way, we’ve reached out to Twitter for more details.
Source: Business Insider
Adorable robots help travellers at Tokyo’s Haneda airport
Getting lost in an international airport is never fun — but if you’re lost in Japan’s Haneda this month, you’ll at least be able get help from an adorable talking robot. From now until the 14th, Hitachi is testing its EMIEW3 humanoid robot in the airport’s passenger terminal. Over the course of two weeks, EMIEW3 will direct visitors to an information display and answer questions in both English and Japanese.
It’s a modest test, but it’s ramping up to something much more impressive: In December, the robot is scheduled to return to the airport as a guide. Visitors will be able to ask for directions to say, the currency exchange counter, and EMIEW3 will physically lead them there. Neat! Hitachi’s bot is particularly well suited to the task because of it’s mobility: it can zip along at a steady 3.7MPH and even pick itself up if it falls down. Just don’t ask it to take you directly to your gate — airport security probably isn’t used to clearing robots.
Via: TechCrunch, Japan Times
Windowmate Release Date, Price and Specs – CNET
Chris Monroe/CNET
Spring cleaning just got easier…maybe. Attach the Windowmate to each side of your window, and it’ll make its way in Zamboni-like rows until both sides of the pane are clean. It’s essentially a robot mop with sponges attached to the base that works vertically.
The Windowmate is on display here at the IFA trade show in Berlin this week. And it chugged along diligently during a demonstration. Apparently, the Windowmate can clean for 90 minutes straight on a full charge, though it takes two and a half hours to charge.
It cleans both sides of the window simultaneously because it attaches to the glass with magnets. One half of the body sits on either side of the pane, so they hold each other in place. The advantage of that is the robot won’t fall off your window if it loses power. The Windowmate representative at IFA told me the magnets are strong enough to withstand wind as well. The disadvantage: You have to be able to reach both sides of the glass simultaneously to put the Windowmate in place.
Chris Monroe/CNET
If you have a window that doesn’t open, you’re probably out of luck unless you send someone outside with the other half of the robot. Plus, the Windowmate orients itself by the frame, so you have to detach it and put it back up for each different pane of glass you want to clean.
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I can’t think of a window in any home I’ve ever lived where using the Windowmate would make more sense than grabbing some paper towel and Windex. Store owners, though, might find it more useful, and that’s the primary intended market for the bot. Still, it’s a cool concept — I’d certainly like a robot to take window cleaning off my plate.
Horizontal robot cleaners
- Neato D5
- iRobot Braava Jet
- Dyson 360 Eye
The model on display at IFA is the second edition of the Windowmate. The first launched in Japan only, but this one’s coming to Europe as well, where it’ll retail for 500 euros, which converts roughly to $560, £420 or AU$740. A Windowmate representative told me of plans to bring the bot to the US as well, perhaps in 2017.
Maybe the product will be a little more refined and make more sense as a consumer device by the time it launches in the US. Regardless, I’m happy to know window cleaning robots are out there.
- Head here for lots more from IFA
Google officially ends its Project Ara modular phone initiative
Google has shut down its modular smartphone initiative, Project Ara, a spokesperson confirmed to VentureBeat today. This follows an earlier report from Reuters that claimed Google was finished with Project Ara. We’ve reached out to Google for confirmation and will update this article as the company responds.
The spokesperson didn’t offer any details about the shut down, VentureBeat reports, though Reuters said it was “part of a broader push to streamline the company’s hardware efforts.” A modular design complicates the hardware production process, since Google would not only have to manufacture a bunch of smartphones, but all of the detachable cameras, battery packs, speakers and other accessories that would make each phone unique.
However, Project Ara may live on. Reuters says that Google may still license out Project Ara’s technology to other manufacturers.
Source: VentureBeat
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