Two more automakers can test self-driving cars in California
You might not have heard of Wheego and Valeo before, but they must be doing something right when it comes to self-driving vehicles. California has given them permission to test one autonomous car each on its roads, according to The Wall Street Journal. The state recently approved a bill that allows fully autonomous car testing — in other words, test vehicles will be allowed to drive around without a human operator. Wheego and Valeo, however, will have to work their way up to that point. Their cars still need to be operated by up to four human drivers.
Wheego Electric Cars sources its automobiles’ bodies from China and installs batteries and other components in the US. Valeo, on the other hand, is the North American division of a French automotive supplier of the same name. The WSJ didn’t talk about the vehicles these companies will be unleashing in California, but if everything goes well, we’ll definitely hear about them soon enough.
Since the Golden State has become the go-to place for self-driving automakers, these two are in good company. They’re the latest addition to the short list of 17 corporations with testing permits in California, which include names we’re sure you’re familiar with, like GM, Tesla, Google, Ford, Baidu, Nissan and Honda.
Source: The Wall Street Journal
Maserati’s first electric car won’t be a Tesla rival
Italian supercar makers haven’t exactly embraced electric vehicles with gusto (the LaFerrari hybrid is about as close as you get), but that should change in the next few years. Ferrari’s sibling brand Maserati tells Car and Driver that it’s working on an electric vehicle that would be shown before 2020. And unlike other luxury car brands, Maserati doesn’t plan on eating Tesla’s lunch. It has to produce something “very different” to stand out, the company’s Roberto Fedeli says. Think of something more like the GranTurismo coupe (see above) than yet another upscale sedan.
Part of the challenge, Fedeli claims, is making a green machine that’s exciting to drive. Breakneck acceleration is the only really thrilling aspect of EVs right now, he says — the sheer weight of those lithium-ion batteries dampens the enjoyment on twisty roads. A Maserati would have to be lighter on its feet. Also, the automaker will have to find a way to give its car character without a roaring gas engine under the hood. In that sense, Maserati’s 2020 goal is realistic. It may not have much choice but to wait for battery technology to catch up to its ambitions.
Source: Car and Driver
‘Luna’ is a whimsical puzzle game that takes place in the stars
Not every VR game involves battle or fighting. Some titles, like I Expect You to Die or Fantastic Contraption, are more fun puzzles than violent shoot-em-ups. At the Oculus Connect event last week, I played around with Luna, a game that’s more reminiscent of the former. It’s a title by Funomena, a San Francisco-based independent studio, and even though it was on display at PAX a couple of months ago, this was the first time I’ve seen it in person.
The premise behind Luna is as whimsical as its quirky origami style. It all starts when an owl tricks a young bird into swallowing the last piece of a waning moon. The bird is then blown away by a storm, and is lost and confused. It is the player’s job to recollect the bird’s memories through untangling constellations of stars, unveiling bits and pieces of the bird’s home. Using the Oculus Touch controllers, I crafted shapes from stardust by dragging lines from one glowing point to another. When I was done, a victory song would play and a piece of nature would emerge from the constellation, like a tree or a leaf.
And once you’ve uncovered all the parts of the bird’s memories, you’re brought to a terrarium to build up the bird’s memories even further with those nature objects. Plant trees, leaves and grass and scatter floating water lilies around, populating the small little world with life. You can make them big or small, and as you brush through them, they’ll even play a little tune. The whole experience is beautifully charming, like a children’s book brought to life.
Luna will be available for the Oculus Rift — though not an exclusive — and will be one of the titles to launch with the Touch later this year. If you’re tired of the blood and the gore of Killing Floor:Incursion or Arktika.1, check Luna out — the peace and serenity will have you feeling like a child again.
The best of CEATEC 2016: virtual tea, printed makeup, too many robots
Panasonic showed off a TV that hides in plain sight, there were gesture controlled origami birds, and a TARDIS-shaped machine that could 3D scan your entire body in four seconds flat. That’s the kind of show CEATEC is. There were even more robots, and while some of them might have a future, many may never be seen again. And that’s okay. Here’s everything we saw, and you can find all the best bits in the video above.
Sarah Nyberg’s Twitter bot feeds the emptiness of alt-right trolls
Engaging with “alt-right” Pepe-spewing racists on Twitter is a diversion I have yet to tire of, but the fact is even I can’t tweet enough satisfy the masses. Fortunately, automating the process is a viable option, as shown by writer Sarah Nyberg’s @Arguetron Twitter bot.
It’s not the first such scripted process to hit social media (according to Nyberg, her inspiration came from a number of similar bots created by Nora Reed including @opinions_good and @good_opinions.), but it does have a remarkably deep capability to create benign but baiting responses. One egg avatar’d tweeter determined to defend the honor of a not-as-popular-as-his-follower-count-suggests alt-righter went back and forth with Arguetron for about ten hours without catching on.
this infowars egg is the record holder
it argued with the bot for… almost TEN HOURS. yes, really. pic.twitter.com/DiQdNd8azw
— Sarah Nyberg (@srhbutts) October 6, 2016
It’s not exactly a coincidence that Nyberg has been able to create a language so familiar and responsive to these elements, as she was a member of the same online communities that birthed so many of them. Like many of us with a background in 90s/00s chatrooms and forums, the nature internet arguments comes easy, however, some of us grew up to temper that with some amount of respect for humanity in general. Some have not, and in a turn, Nyberg has been targeted by Gamergate-related harassment over the last couple of years.
Tweets by arguetron
Still, Arguetron is by design not abusive or malicious in its tweets, and does not actively seek out adversaries. That’s in contrast to some bots, like Nigel Leck’s 2010 project @AI_AGW, which hunted down global warming deniers to provide automated fact-based responses explaining the science. One Hacker News commenter described it at the time as a “pro-active search engine,” able to answer questions people didn’t even know they needed correcting on — particularly interesting given the current trend of messaging bots launched by Google, Facebook and others to do just that. Other examples include the SNAP_R bot that security researchers used to phish Twitter users, and @BrandLover7 which absolutely loves your product.
Thomas Kuhlenbeck
I chatted with Sarah, and she explained that a big part of the motivation is not to engage in harassing behavior, but to “expose reactionaries and harassers.” Since the bot doesn’t automatically tweet at anyone, it only picks arguments with the folks who are searching Twitter for keywords to argue. As she puts it, “I’d like the project to help people critically look at how toxic Twitter can be, especially for people expressing these kinds of opinions. That it also makes the people engaging in this sort of behavior looks ridiculous is a nice side effect.”
No matter what ends up happening to Twitter, it would be nice if whoever controls it took a look at these behaviors and applied it to addressing abuse on the platform. Unfortunately, I think there’s little indication that will happen under its current administration. Of course, if any of those Silicon Valley companies working on bots need a side project, assigning everyone an AI might be a worthwhile 20 percent project. While it can’t address the very real issues of stalking and harassment that affects our safety, at least this way trolls get the attention they so clearly crave and the rest of us keep the time they’re hoping to steal. It’s a win-win.
Source: Sarah Nyberg (Twitter)
LeEco inadvertently spoils its US launch plans
LeEco’s hardware lineup is supposed to make its splashy US debut on October 19th, but it appears that someone at the company couldn’t wait to show what it had in store. Vizio’s new owner briefly posted listings for most (if not all) of its American devices, and it looks like the company’s cost-conscious Chinese pricing will survive the trip across the Pacific. Its 5.7-inch Le Max 2 flagship, for example, could cost just $349 before a $60 promo discount — and the mid-tier, 5.5-inch Le S3 (likely a rebranded Le 2) could start at $299 before discounts. You may not like the absence of a built-in headphone jack, but these phones could offer a lot of performance for the money.
There are four 4K TVs listed (the Super4 X43, X55 and X65, plus the uMax 85), although their prices are definitely placeholders. Sorry, folks, you won’t pay $15 for an Ultra HD set. However, their very existence is telling. It suggests that LeEco isn’t going to rely solely on Vizio for TV sales in the US, and could complement Vizio’s in-house smart TV strategy with its own Android TV models.
There’s no guarantee that these are the prices you’ll get, or that the devices you see here represent exactly what LeEco will present on the 19th. From initial appearances, though, the company might be planning a more cautious US rollout that focuses on the hardware most likely to prove a success.
Via: The Verge
Source: Android Police
The Galaxy Note brand is now damaged beyond repair
Should Samsung give up on the Note brand entirely?
There’s no question that the beleaguered Galaxy Note 7 is having a hard week, after a hard month. Things were looking up for the Korean giant after the recall was deemed a success, a huge undertaking from around the world that attempted to corral over two million handsets. But then an AT&T-branded Note 7 caught fire on a still-grounded Southwest flight after being powered off and things went to hell again very quickly.
The response
In the immediate aftermath, Samsung issued what was perhaps the most tone-deaf response possible, saying that it wasn’t obvious the phone was a Note 7, nor that the battery was the cause. Obviously, the company was and is looking into the root cause, and was merely hedging against an outcome — that this replacement, “good battery” Note 7 wasn’t suffering from the same issues as its distressed early-production counterparts.
Should we find ourselves in a situation where a number of new Note 7s are spontaneously combusting, we’ll have no choice but to retract our recommendation.
Here at Android Central, we’ve taken the cautious route: We want to believe that when Samsung says it has things under control, it really does. As a result, while we all but stopped publishing peripheral Note 7 content during the recall, we began ramping up again as the situation returned to a semblance of control. But since the most recent incident, another Note 7 reportedly exploded in Taiwan, and in the coming days AT&T is expected to pull support for the device entirely.
The AC editors have discussed this internally over the past day or so. And we’ve decided that unless the ongoing investigation can prove conclusively that there’s no danger from the new, replacement Note 7s, we’ll be forced to withdraw our recommendation in the near future. We’re not there yet, but if you’re on the fence about a Note 7 purchase, maybe wait a few days and see how this pans out.
That may be inconvenient for us — the Note 7, battery problems aside, earned our most vociferous approval — but it would be devastating for Samsung, whose trust vector with consumers has already abated and may be about to expire. That is also being compounded by an increasing willingness by carriers to (thankfully) take the sides of the customers and allow them to return their Note 7s for, well, literally any other phone they sell.
Somewhere between then and now, between the Note 7s exploding and the Note 7s exploding again, trust in not just the product itself but the company as a whole began to wane. I’ve been witness to casual conversations wherein regular phone-buying customers have expressed reticence to buy another Samsung phone again, period; many of them claim to be moving in the direction of the iPhone 7 Plus, which came out in mid-September and is roughly the same price. Apple will surely benefit from this fallout, but it of course won’t be a one-to-one lateral movement; many Note buyers, existing or potential, will find other Android devices to buy, or — best case scenario — stick with a Samsung Galaxy S7.
But it’s safe to say that the Note line is practically finished, and that the repercussions of this debacle will have far-reaching effects across the industry. You’ll likely see improved controls around battery production, and greater emphasis put on the safe transportation of those batteries from nearly every company that buys Lithium-Ion cells in bulk. Samsung will lose money, yes, but it will also likely slow the speed of hardware production, perhaps culling the twice-yearly release schedule it established in 2011 with the release of the original Note.
The bigger question for Samsung now is what happens to the Galaxy S8, which is presumably just over four months from its debut. Not only does the company need to do an extensive audit of its battery suppliers (which is surely already in progress), but it has exactly that period to reassure every potential upgrader and new customer alike that it is working to ensure the most important computer in their lives is not going to be considered a dangerous good. We don’t know exact numbers, but between them the Galaxy S7 and S7 edge sold nearly 30 million units worldwide; that number may be cut in half if Samsung can’t win back the trust of its customer base.
The damage is done, a chemical burn searing three feet of carpet in an aisle seat of a Southwest flight, with no hope of repair.
The problem is compounded by the fact that most people buy their phones from carriers. In the U.S., carriers have been quite clear in their positions of helping customers replace phones they suspect are dangerous, but it’s the salespeople who, a few months from now, will be put in the position of answering questions about battery safety, likely taking the path of least resistance. Even if the fire incident on a Southwest flight turns out to be an isolated incident in the U.S. — and I hope it is — reps at the store level and over the phone have almost certainly been instructed to avoid lingering on the Note 7 and instead push customers towards another brand.
What’s next
Circling around, without declaring it dead, the Galaxy Note brand is now damaged beyond repair, done in as much by the company’s callous response to the initial claims of explosions as its follow-up earlier this week. Samsung is a big company, with a lot of moving parts, and it’s difficult to speak as a single entity. But now is the time it needs to unify under a single conceit: We made a bunch of mistakes, and we’re learning from them. If you want your money back, you can get it. If you want another phone, you can have one. But we’re not going to rest until every Note 7 customer is happy.
After that, Samsung may need to shut down the brand and move on. The damage is done, a chemical burn searing three feet of carpet in an aisle seat of a Southwest flight, with no hope of return.
Samsung Galaxy Note 7
- Galaxy Note 7 recall: Everything you need to know
- Samsung Galaxy Note 7 review
- The latest Galaxy Note 7 news!
- Here are all four Note 7 colors
- Complete Galaxy Note 7 specs
- Join the Note 7 discussion in the forums!
Verizon
AT&T
T-Mobile
Sprint
The sweet sound of the ‘world’s most expensive’ earphones
I imagine I’m like most people in that I’m fairly content with a leaky pair of earphones that came bundled with a phone I bought 18 months ago. Some of you will have more expensive tastes, of course, dropping a few hundred on a “nice” pair of Beats, Sonys or similar cans. But there’s a whole other world out there, where money is seemingly no object in the pursuit of the perfect sound. And for roughly a week, I’ve been masquerading as an audiophile myself, wearing oBravo’s EAMT-1 in-ear headphones that cost no less than £3,082.50 (roughly $3,900). Yes, you read that right.
Made by an obscure Chinese company, these earphones are “the world’s most expensive” — a claim I haven’t been able to debunk even after a significant price drop (they originally cost £3,699). We’re only talking in-ears here, though. There are plenty of over-ear headphones around that price and more. Some are way, way more.
As far as in-ears are concerned, though, the EAMT-1s are as expensive as they come, backed up by the proprietors of exclusive UK stockist Audio Sanctuary, who were silly kind enough to lend me a pair. (The store appears to be the only place on the entire internet you can buy oBravo’s latest right now, in fact.)
I wish I could tell you exactly why these earphones are so damned expensive, but the deeper my research has gone, the more oblivious I become. The language used to describe the technical capabilities of the EAMT-1s is even more alien to me than the vocabulary audiophiles employ to explain the various qualities of sound. To illustrate what I mean, this is Audio Sanctuary’s explanation of oBravo’s Air Motion Transformer (AMT) technology:
“The AMT diaphragm is made of a Mylar ribbon bonded with conductive aluminium strips. It is equivalent in surface area to a conventional seven-inch cone-type mid-range driver, but is accordion-folded down to a compact one-and-a-half-inch grouping for point-source dispersion. The low-mass diaphragm is suspended within a dipole magnetic field concentrating an intense field around said diaphragm. When signal current passes through the aluminium strips, the ensuing bellow-like motion of the folded pleats moves air five times faster than with a conventional cone driver.”
How anyone without a degree in sound engineering is supposed to make any sense of that, I don’t know. Apparently, though, the 8mm AMT tweeter (for mid- to high-ish frequencies like vocals and hi-hats) paired with a 13mm neodymium dynamic driver is primarily what you’re paying for. I’m reliably told that crafting an extremely high-end earphone is markedly more complex than making a great-sounding pair of over-ears simply because there’s so much less space to work with.
Though I hate to be skeptical, the opinion that money is directly related to quality is common in specialist circles, particularly when audio and video are concerned. Some cables sell for $1,000, for example, even though the vast majority of people wouldn’t say there’s any difference between them and a $10 equivalent. An audiophile, however, might claim the difference is stark. It’s that kind of subjectivity, compounded by impenetrable lingo, that can blur the line between genuine innovation and snake oil.
With my skeptical hat returned to its drawer, I can say the EAMT-1s just ooze quality, from the smooth metal and rich, dark wood of the backplates to the luxuriously wrapped cables. Every connector is gold of course, and you can actually detach individual buds and swap the lead out for one with a 2.5mm jack. I didn’t even know those existed. Because of the earphones’ coaxial design, they are much deeper than “normal” in-ears. But at 35g, they aren’t noticeably heavy and are perfectly comfortable to wear all day, especially with the included Comply tips made from expanding foam.
The pair I’ve been testing have a handmade ceramic enclosure, chosen because the material is relatively inert from a resonance perspective — meaning it barely interferes with driver output (Yay! Something I actually understand!). The ceramic version is described as the best of the best, but you can also request the EAMT-1s with an aluminum enclosure that’s supposed to offer a more “neutral” sound, or an Acacia-wood enclosure for extra warmth.
Materials and build quality aside, the EAMT-1s sound absolutely incredible. I mean, you’d hope so for nearly $4,000, but it’s quite hard to communicate the clarity of these earphones. Listening to the Cure’s greatest hits in high-res FLAC format, for example, I can practically pick out the moment each string of a chord leaves the plectrum; similarly, I swear I can hear the creak of bass-drum pedal on some of my favorite Foo Fighters tracks. The clarity and depth are insane, like you’re sitting in the recording booth as these songs are being played.
And that’s with the EAMT-1s plugged directly into my MacBook, which I’m sure will anger one or two people who would probably argue I have no idea what they really sound like as I’m not running them through a dedicated DAC/headphone amp.
Because the output is so crisp and clear, the EAMT-1s feel at their best when there’s a lot going on in a track. By that I mean several guitars, drums, vocals, effects, et cetera. That said, simpler arrangements sound great too. The Wu-Tang Clan’s 1993 album Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), for example, or Kendrick Lamar’s Untitled Unmastered from earlier this year. Never have heard I bass so … beautiful as on the EAMT-1s. The low-end is real deep and silky smooth. It’s not kick or volume, just pure bass tones.
But the thing is, it’s extremely rare for me to be sitting at my computer listening to high-def audio, especially as I have a pretty slim collection. The vast majority of the time — and I’m talking pretty much all day, every day — I’m jacked into Spotify. And I’m talking free Spotify here, where the maximum bitrate is roughly 160 kbps. While that sounds, well, fine on a pair on phone-bundled buds, the EAMT-1s expose every flaw. You might as well be listening to a Galaxy S2’s loudspeaker at the other end of tin-can telephone, to massively exaggerate the point.
Where high-res tracks give a real sense of presence, the same songs piped through Spotify on my phone sound muddy, ill-defined and distant. You can literally feel the compression like a haze hanging over the track — especially if it hasn’t been expertly produced and mixed. But I’m not an audiophile, and there’s only so long I can pretend to be one, with my paltry FLAC library and nonexistent Tidal subscription. Simply put, oBravo’s EAMT-1s aren’t made for muggles like me.
This was never more obvious to me than when I took them out of the safety of my flat. I was genuinely nervous carrying around a pair of earphones I couldn’t even dream of affording, knowing that soon enough I’d be returning to them to Audio Sanctuary, a task I’m seriously looking forward to. I can’t deal with that kind of responsibility. What if one fell out of my ear and somehow I managed to shatter a ceramic enclosure? What if I left them on the bus? People who can afford $4,000 earphones probably don’t have to worry about that, though. I doubt they catch buses very often.
Source: Audio Sanctuary
Six next-gen battery technologies
By Cat DiStasio
We all love our battery-powered gadgets, but portable power cells can be devastating to the environment. Fortunately, recent developments have proven that greener batteries are coming in the not-too-distant future. Engineers are replacing toxic components with less harmful materials ranging from leaves to sugar. Other innovations on the rise look to nature to help make batteries last longer, perform better and leave less of a trace once they’ve been discarded. This gold nanowire-based battery, for instance, was created by accident and could make lithium ion batteries obsolete, while this single-use battery dissolves in water when its job is done, making it easier to reuse its components.
The leafy green battery
A team of University of Maryland researchers sought to develop an inexpensive material to serve as their batteries’ negative terminal (anode). In the end, they found the perfect material right on campus. The team found that oak leaves could be heated to 1,000 degrees Celsius to destroy the existing carbon structures, and then introduced the electrolytes to the leaf’s natural pores for absorption. The result is a plant-based anode that performs similarly to traditional battery components. Research is ongoing to test other natural materials, such as peat moss, banana peels and melon skins in search of the nature-based battery of the future.
A graphene battery that charges in an instant
Scientists are working hard to create rechargeable batteries that can withstand more use. Australia’s Swinburne University has created a new graphene-based battery that shows rapid charging abilities — and it has enough durability to last virtually forever. Super strong graphene replaces lithium in the battery’s supercapacitor, addressing all of the shortcomings of that widely used material while also reducing the environmental impact of battery production. The graphene-based supercapacitor allows the new battery to charge to 100 percent power in just a few seconds, it can withstand many more recharging cycles and it also costs less to produce than traditional lithium-ion batteries.
Sweet and cheap: a battery fueled by sugar
A Virginia Tech team developed a sugar battery that lasts longer than any previous sugar-based prototypes could. Maltodextrin, a polysaccharide made from the partial hydrolysis of starch, is isolated from natural sugar and then used as fuel. When combined with air, the battery releases electrons from the sugar solution to generate electricity. Sugar is cheap and abundant, so it makes for a battery that’s not only affordable, but biodegradable as well.
Gold-based battery that doesn’t die
An accidental discovery by researchers at University of California, Irvine led to a technological breakthrough that could leave lithium-ion batteries in the dust. The team built a nanowire battery using gold and some new-fangled materials, and it can be recharged hundreds of thousands of times without slacking in the performance department like lithium-ion batteries are known to do over time. The battery consists of protected electrode nanowires made from a thin core of gold, surrounded by layers of manganese dioxide and a Plexiglas-like electrolyte gel. Although the team had initially been searching for innovations to increase the power capacity of batteries, they stumbled upon this method of building a battery that can last basically forever without showing any signs of wear.
Self-destructing battery dissolves in water
A self-destructing battery won’t come in handy for everyone, but the development of this dissolving energy storage device is a key innovation for certain applications where single-use batteries are currently being left behind to pollute the surrounding environment. Created by a team at Iowa State University, this battery is designed to self-destruct when triggered by light, heat or liquid, so it’s well suited for military applications and other so-called “transient” devices that require a power source for a finite amount of time. Certain medical devices and environmental sensors might fall into this category, and since the battery simply dissolves in water once it has served its purpose, its lasting impact on the environment is approximately nil.
Edible saltwater battery
Although there’s probably no need to eat a battery, you could chow down on parts of this one if you really felt compelled. In an attempt to demonstrate how natural and eco-friendly his company’s new battery really is, Jay Whitacre at Aquion Energy has eaten parts of the saltwater-based battery, and lived to tell. The battery’s components are comprised largely of naturally derived materials such as dirt, cotton, carbon and saltwater acting as an electrolyte solution. While hardly a delicious meal, the battery components demonstrate an ecological sensitivity not often found in the energy storage field.
This battery is designed for large-scale jobs, such as providing backup power for a home or business equipped with a renewable energy source, such as wind or solar. It can also be charged up with off-peak grid power, to save money on energy use during peak times when prices are higher.
The VR reading library Oculus hid at its developer conference
Oculus’ annual developer conference serves as a touchstone for its community; a time to see how far virtual reality has come in the last year and to inspire, motivate and help developers build the VR experiences of tomorrow. Most of that comes in the form of announcements, panels and software showcases, but in the media demo rooms, the VR company hid dense sources for inspiration in plain sight. Stacked just above the TV in at each demo station was a small collection of books — all of them about either games, game development or the effect of virtual reality on our culture.
Executives at Oculus have been pretty open about the books that inspire them. Both Ready Player One and Snow Crash have been name-dropped by the company’s founders on multiple occasions, and the former novel is almost required reading at the company: every new employee gets a copy. It’s supposed to get employees motivated about building great virtual reality experiences — but it seems like the team at Oculus gets inspiration from more than just science fiction.
Between game demos, one could read about the perils of game addiction in Edward Castronova’s Exodus to the Virtual World, or bone up on the value of games as an artistic medium in Tom Bissell’s Extra Lives. There were books on the effect of virtual reality on the human psyche, the lives of pro-gamers, how commerce in video games is effecting our real-world economy, and more. It’s not an official reading list by any means, but it’s clear that Oculus’ set dressers chose the conference’s display books carefully. Through the course of three days, we counted sixteen different books on gaming or VR, all catalogued in the gallery above. If you’re looking for something to read now that Oculus Connect 3 has come to an end, take a look — there are plenty of options.
AIVAnet 