DARPA’s telescope will keep the military’s satellites safe
DARPA is officially done developing the Space Surveillance Telescope (SST) and has handed it over to the US Air Force. Pentagon’s most adventurous arm worked with the military division for over a decade to build the SST, which was designed to monitor space junk that pose a threat to satellites in orbit. It’s been observing asteroids and near-Earth objects since 2011 in New Mexico, but now that it has officially changed hands, the SST will go through some big changes. Perhaps the biggest of which is its home: the Air Force plans to uproot the whole structure and ship it off to Australia.
See, the division plans to use the telescope to keep an eye on space junk littering geosynchronous orbit. That’s the orbit 22,000 miles away from our planet where satellites mirror the Earth’s rotation, so that they appear stationary in the sky. Brian Weeden, a Technical Advisor at the Secure World Foundation, told The Washington Post in an email that having the capability to monitor that orbit is “a critical capability for the US military, as they have a lot of very important satellites in GEO, and are increasingly worried about threats to those satellites.”
Over the next two years, the Air Force and the Australian government will be rebuilding the telescope in the western part of the country. The Pentagon chose to move it down under, because that’s the perfect location to observe one of the most barely observed areas in space. Once it’s up and working again, the military can use it to observe 10,000 objects at a time, even those as small as a softball. And once it starts working with Lockheed Martin’s Space Fence, the Air Force will have the capability to monitor 10 times the space junk it can currently observe.
Similar telescopes have much narrower fields of view and can’t track faint objects the way SST can. In fact, it’s so good at catching events that occur over a short period of time that it will continue providing NASA data on supernovae and dangerous near-Earth asteroids. DARPA says it’s all thanks to the SST’s innovative design, which it explains in detail in the video below.
Source: US Department of Defense
Amazon Alexa can answer your debate and election questions
Since your racist uncle is not a reliable source, many Americans have turned to Alexa for information about the presidential election. It’s hard to say whether that’s good or bad, but Amazon has taken notice and released new commands for its AI assistant ahead of the next debate. You can now ask questions about the time and channel of the debate, where it’s happening, and afterwards, who won.
Alexa is also getting a host of new commands on election day, November 8th, “to help keep you up to date on all things Election 2016 including who is leading the election, which states the candidates have won and more,” Amazon says. Examples of questions you can pose include “Alexa, who is winning the presidential election,” “who is leading in the presidential polls,” “which percent of the popular vote does Hillary have” and “which states has Trump won.”
Amazon also pointed out some amusing Alexa stats, including the most popular questions. The top four were the ages of each candidate and the latest news around them — with double the number of queries for Trump. The fifth most asked question, weirdly, was “Alexa, who are you voting for?”, just ahead of “Alexa, who should I vote for.” Come on, AI systems don’t have the right to vote yet — you’ll have to wait until at least the next presidential election for that.
T-Mobile agrees to pay FCC $48m over misleading data plans
T-Mobile has championed itself as a provider of “unlimited” wireless data — but its plans have historically also come with a wide variety of caveats, be they throttling video data or slowing you down when you hit a data cap. The FCC has decided that T-Mobile isn’t playing straight with customers, and today the agency announced a settlement: The Wireless provider will pay $48 million to address “inadequate disclosures” of its unlimited data plans.
“The FCC’s investigation found that company policy allows it to slow down data speeds when T-Mobile or MetroPCS customers on so-called ‘unlimited’ plans exceed a monthly data threshold,” the FCC writes in its news release on the settlement. “Company advertisements and other disclosures may have led unlimited data plan customers to expect that they were buying better and faster service than what they received.”
The main bone of contention centered around T-Mobile’s “top three percent” condition, where those who were on unlimited plans and in the top three percent of data usage would get throttled at times of high congestion. That throttling would take place even if they were on a plan that said they could use as much data as they wish.
Of that $48 million fine, only $7.5m million is in actual cash. T-Mobile will additionally pay out $35.5 million in a “consumer benefit” program that consists of a 20 percent off discount for any accessory as well as 4GB of additional data if they have a “mobile internet line” — presumably that’s what you have for tablets or hotspots, although T-Mobile isn’t super clear on that point.
The FCC is also requiring T-Mobile to spend at least $5 million on technology for low-income school districts. Specifically, the carrier will provide tablets and mobile internet connections that students can take home and use for homework. The technology will come at a reduced cost to schools and at no cost to students and their families. The program should start by October of next year, and ultimately it’ll cover about 80,000 students.
This is the second such settlement the FCC has reached with a wireless provider over misleading unlimited data practices. In June of 2015, AT&T and the FCC reached a $100 million settlement in a similar investigation — the FCC said AT&T was “severely” slowing down customer’s mobile internet without informing them of the change. The message now seems clear: if you’re going to slow down your customer’s connection, you had better be clear and up front about it.
Source: FCC (PDF)
Apple Ends iOS 9 Downgrades on iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch
Apple has stopped signing iOS 9.3.5 for compatible iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch models, effectively ending iOS 9 downgrades.
iOS 10.0.1 is also no longer being signed, making iOS 10.0.2 the oldest software update users can still downgrade their devices to via iTunes.
Apple routinely stops signing older software updates several weeks after they are released.
iOS 9.3.5 was released in late August as the last update to the iOS 9 operating system, with major security fixes for three zero-day exploits. iOS 10.0.1 was released on September 13 as the first iOS 10 version for all devices beyond the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus.
The move does not affect jailbreaking, as iOS 9.3.3 is the latest software version with a publicly available exploit. Apple patched that jailbreak in iOS 9.3.4, crediting the Chinese team Pangu for its discovery, and it is unlikely that a jailbreak will ever be publicly released for iOS 9.3.5 at this point in time.
Apple has also stopped signing tvOS 9.2.2 for the fourth-generation Apple TV.
Tags: iOS 9.3.5, iOS 10.0.1
Discuss this article in our forums
Facebook App Integrates Food and Ticket Ordering Into Brand Pages
In the consistently updated Facebook app for iOS, the social media company is today introducing a slew of new features focused on event discovery and streamlined interaction with brands. Notably, now in the company’s mobile app users will be able to purchase tickets to movies and concerts, buy food, or book an appointment without leaving Facebook.
For food and ticket orders, the feature is fueled by Facebook’s partnership with services like Delivery.com, Slice, Ticketmaster, Fandango, and Eventbrite. Local businesses will need to be on board to support the appointment booking feature, but if they do users can simply request a specific time from the business’ Facebook page after looking at their list of services. A response confirmation will be sent through Facebook Messenger when the appointment is decided upon.
To generate more personalized interactions, there’s also a new Recommendations feature in the app that aims to make it easier to get advice from friends and family on places to see and things to do in a user’s hometown, or while traveling in a new city. Recommendations are represented as a new status option, so users can post about wanting to check out new restaurants, for example, and their friends can comment back with suggestions to try in the area.
People come to Facebook every day to connect and share experiences with friends and family. We share the great places we go and we ask our friends for advice when we need help getting things done. Today we’re starting to introduce a variety of new features that help you use those connections to discover new things in the world around you, decide what to do or where to go, and connect with local businesses in easier and faster ways.
Facebook will accumulate all of these recommendations into one map, so it’s easy to find the places that were mentioned in the comments of a post. To fuel personal discovery of events surrounding users, the company is also revamping the Events dashboard in the main Facebook app, with many of the same feature additions that it introduced in the standalone Events app, launched earlier in the month.
The company said that the update will be rolling out to users in the United States beginning today, and that “this is the first step” in its plan to make the app a one-stop shop for social planning. Facebook hopes that ultimately the app streamlines user and business interactions, and makes it easy for people “to get things done, make confident decisions and communicate directly with businesses on your time and terms.”
Tag: Facebook
Discuss this article in our forums
Netgear’s new Nighthawk router doubles as a Plex server
Video streaming is becoming one of the main things we do on the internet, and few things in life are more annoying than having to wait for a clip to finish buffering. To keep up with our growing appetites for speed, Netgear has unveiled the Nighthawk X10 router, which it says is the fastest in the world. It’s got a 1.7GHz quad-core processor onboard that the company says is the speediest in a home router, as well as Quad Stream Wave 2 WiFi architecture that helps the device get up to 7.2 Gbps. Plus, it supports the latest 802.11ad standard. But what’s really interesting about the Nighthawk X10 is its Plex Media support that lets you turn any USB 3.0 flash drive or hard disk into a server, without requiring a computer.
Previous devices in the popular Nighthawk line have also had USB ports onboard, but the X10 is the first to offer Plex firmware in its app to let you set up one or both of the two connected drives as a server. There’s no real limit to the storage size of the drives you can attach. Other non-speed-related goodies that come with the X10 include new mobile support for OpenVPN, so you can tap into your home network even when you’re overseas.
The Nighthawk X10 is now available for $500, which is more expensive than prior models. That’s because, as Netgear explained, the new iteration is more like a mini PC than a mere router. If you’re a Plex fan, or prize having a really fast, high-end router that can keep your videos and backed up files available wherever you are, that price may be worth it. Otherwise, you might be better off finding a cheaper option.
Facebook’s friend-based Recommendations take on Yelp
It might not feel like it sometimes, but Facebook is more than just memes or baby pictures. Many people use the social network to friends for ideas for places to eat in Paris or what to do this weekend. Since your pals know you, their suggestions are potentially more useful than Yelp or Foursquare. Manually compiling their answers can be messy, so Facebook’s adding a feature that makes organizing recommendations much easier. If you’re still stuck for something to do, the company is also giving its Event pages a revamp, to help you find out what’s happening around you. Making plans is just the start, now you can book gig tickets or make appointments — right within Facebook itself.
Unsurprisingly, the new features are part of an ongoing initiative to keep you within the social network’s walls. At an event in San Francisco, the company demonstrated how the new tools help connect people with businesses that are also on Facebook. So, for example, you could find out about a concert through either Events or Recommendations (more on this later), and then you would click through and buy tickets from that concert’s Facebook Page. “There’s discovery, deciding and then action,” said Andrew Bosworth, Facebook’s VP of Ads and Business Platform.
Thanks to AI and smart keyword detection, now when you ask for advice on Facebook, the site will automatically pop up an option where you can turn on Recommendations. Once it’s toggled, whenever a friend replies to that post and suggests, say, a restaurant, Facebook will automatically figure out where it’s located and then pin it on a map. The more suggestions you get, the more the map gets populated. So now you have a handy list of places in a single post that you and your friends can add to over time. There’ll also be a dedicated Recommendations page on Facebook that collects all of them in one feed. Your friends’ call-out for recommendations will appear on that page too.
Facebook is keen to emphasize that Recommendations isn’t just for restaurants. You can use it to get advice on beauty salons, home contractors, places to see or things to do as well. I saw a demo of someone looking to find a hair salon in San Francisco, and when her friends offered a few options, links to the salons’ Facebook Pages appear immediately under their suggestions. If there are multiple locations with the same name, you can edit the suggestion to pick out the correct one. If someone suggests a business that doesn’t have a Facebook Page the system still adds them to the map, according to their addresses. You can also go in and customize the map further, by adding and removing locations manually.
To piggyback on their Events app launch a few weeks ago, Facebook is also revamping the Events bookmark in the main site. Now you get to see a more tailored view of happenings that are more relevant to you. There’ll be an activity feed of what your buddies have been up to along with recommendations based on the kinds of events you and your social circle tends to prefer. Additionally, Facebook will curate upcoming events that are popular in your particular city or highlight the ones that it thinks you’ll be interested in.
Once you’ve made up your mind on what to do — whether it’s getting your nails done or having dinner with family — you can now seal the deal thanks to a few new Facebook Page features that let you interact directly with businesses. This all depends on the business in question. If it’s a salon, for example, you could select “Request Time,” choose from an array of different services and then it’ll kick you over to Messenger to pinpoint the date and time you want. The salon could also use a third-party appointments manager like MyTime to handle the scheduling instead, in which case you’d just use the MyTime system — which would be integrated right into the Facebook UI — instead of Messenger.
Indeed, Facebook has already partnered with a few third parties to boost their Page interactions. For example, you can order food via restaurant Pages using Delivery.com or Slice, or get event tickets through Eventbrite or Ticketmaster. The experience will be slightly different depending on the service. Ticketmaster, for example, will hand you off to email to get your passes, while Eventbrite has a more integrated system that presents to you a QR entry code right in the Facebook app. It gets the payment information from Facebook but all transactions are processed by the service in question.
“This is not a behavior that’s totally foreign,” said Bosworth. “We’ve had a long history of messaging businesses,” adding that users will likely get used to this paradigm pretty quickly. Plus, the reason why they’re working with these third parties like Ticketmaster or Delivery.com is because it’s much easier and faster than having to build up their own services. “Eventbrite’s already doing a great job with ticketing and venues,” he said. “We don’t have to do that work. We can give them access to our platform. Consumers get a better experience; Eventbrite gets access to a bigger audience. Everybody wins.”
Of course, the whole thing — from social recommendations to transactions — only happens if everyone’s in the Facebook pool. And that’s basically the long game that Bosworth and his team are playing here. “We’re building an ecosystem,” he says. “Businesses want to participate and gain access to where the people are.”
And this is really just the beginning. “In a macro context, this framework doesn’t fit just these products [Recommendations and Events],” he says. “But also products that we’re going to be working on in the course of the next few weeks, months, even years.”
‘Amnesia’ games to scare a new generation of players on PS4
Horror fans on the lookout for bone-chilling titles on the PS4 have something to look forward to in November. The whole Amnesia collection developed by Swedish studio Frictional Games and British developer The Chinese Room is finally arriving on the console on November 22nd. It consists of the same PC games that became Let’s Play favorites among streamers a few years ago, namely Amnesia: The Dark Descent (2010), its expansion Amnesia: Justine (2011), as well as their sequel Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs (2013).
The games stood out for being subtle survival horrors that don’t rely on jump scares — the kind best played in a dark room on your own. While it’s unfortunate that you can’t get them before Halloween, you can pre-order the collection right now on the PlayStation Store for $30.
Sonder’s Customizable E-Ink Keyboard Again Rumored for 2018 MacBooks as CEO Denies Meeting Tim Cook
In an ongoing story surrounding the alleged talks between Apple and Australian startup Sonder, The Wall Street Journal is today adding its own set of “people familiar with the plans” to the report. The new article reiterates a 2018 launch window for customizable e-ink keyboards on Apple’s MacBook line, which was mentioned in a now-deleted Reddit post that began the rumors last week.
In response to the increasing amount of rumors surrounding Apple and Sonder, the latter company this week has confirmed that it never met with Apple during Tim Cook’s travels in China and Japan, suggesting that any talk of Apple’s acquisition of Sonder is false.
In a press release, Sonder CEO Francisco Serra-Martin stated that the original article by The Guardian — which ignited the story on the back of the Reddit post — “contains a number of factual errors.” Serra-Martin confirmed that he “did not meet Tim Cook on Wednesday 12th October 2016,” which The Guardian story said he did, without providing specifics of the meeting and its potential relation to acquisition talks.
The Guardian’s article “Apple in talks to acquire Australian startup Sonder” contains a number of factual errors. Sonder founder Francisco Serra-Martins did not meet Tim Cook on Wednesday 12th October 2016, although we would very like the opportunity to in the future.
The team at Sonder is pleased with the incredible response from the industry as we continue to present our story. We are not able to comment further on information on any single company or customer. Sonder’s E Ink keyboard provides infinite possibilities right at your fingertips and releases later this year.
With Serra-Martin’s direct confirmation of the original story’s lack of veracity, it appears that, for now, Apple’s plans aren’t immediately related to introducing the customizable e-ink technology into MacBooks or Magic Keyboards. Sonder’s own e-ink “Sonder Keyboard” is launching later this year for $199.
Tag: Sonder
Discuss this article in our forums
HTC Bolt may debut with a QHD display, Nougat, and Snapdragon 810
The HTC Bolt will likely be the first phone from the Taiwanese manufacturer to offer Android 7.0 Nougat out of the box. The phone follows the same design language as the HTC 10, but is expected to feature a larger 5.5-inch QHD display. Leaked specs suggest an 18MP camera, 3GB of RAM, 64GB storage along with an microSD card, and a new report from reliable HTC leaker LlabTooFer indicates the phone will be powered by last year’s Snapdragon 810 and not the newer Snapdragon 820 or 821.
Based on leaked renders, it looks like the HTC Bolt will eschew the 3.5mm port for USB-C audio, much like the Moto Z and LeEco Le Max 2. The inclusion of the Snapdragon 810 is perplexing, as it’s already more than a year and a half old at this point.
The SoC not only suffered from thermal issues at launch, but there’s also a possibility that it won’t meet the technical hardware requirements for future versions of Android. The Adreno 330 GPU’s lack of support for OpenGL ES 3.1 is likely why devices powered by the Snapdragon 800 won’t be updated to Nougat, and we may see a similar situation play out with the Snapdragon 810 in a few years’ time.
Considering this is still a rumor, we’ll have to wait for the Bolt to debut to make any conclusions. The phone is slated for an unveil on Sprint in the U.S., with an eventual release planned for select markets in the EMEA region.
AIVAnet 