Weekly Rewind: RIP Mary Tyler Moore, a Parkinson’s cure, and DNA-based fitness

In the tech world, a lot happens in a week. So much news goes on that it’s almost impossible for mere mortals with real lives to keep track of everything. That’s why we’ve compiled a quick and dirty list of this week’s top 10 tech stories, from a potential cure for Parkinson’s and Alzheimers to a solution to insomnia — it’s all here.

Emmy-winning actress, feminist icon Mary Tyler Moore has died at age 80

Just days after the largest single-day protest in American history was held to advocate for women’s rights, one of the earliest actresses to challenge female characters’ roles in pop culture has died. Oscar-nominated actress Mary Tyler Moore, who starred for seven seasons in her self-titled, Emmy-winning series The Mary Tyler Moore Show, died Wednesday due to complications from pneumonia at the age of 80.

Read the full story here.

The SolPad Mobile solar panel can recharge your phone up to 60 times

A new device called the SolPad Mobile looks to demystify the use of solar energy both at home and on the go. The large, yet still portable, solar panels come equipped with everything you need to set up and install a solar charging solution within a matter of minutes. Despite its simplicity, however, the system is still efficient enough to provide power to a wide variety of gadgets, including mobile devices, laptops, and small appliances.

Read the full story here.

Trouble sleeping? You can treat your insomnia online

A new online treatment may help people who suffer from insomnia. SHUTi, or Sleep Health Using the Internet, is a cognitive behavioral therapy-insomnia (CBT-I) internet course that aims to retrain your mind and body for better sleep. CBT-I focuses on a variety of factors to retrain your sleep cycle, according to the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Read the full story here.

HP announces a major expansion to its ongoing battery recall

HP has announced an expanded recall of batteries used in its notebook computers. The company has apparently learned of an incident where a battery overheated to the point of melting and charring the surrounding area, causing around $1,000 worth of property damage. The voluntary recall pertains to lithium-ion batteries containing cells manufactured by Panasonic. They’re compatible with HP, Compaq, HP ProBook, HP Envy, Compaq Presario, and HP Pavilion laptops.

Read the full story here.

Harvard’s robotic exosuit uses science-fiction smarts to put a spring in your step

Thanks to science fiction, we can’t think about artificial intelligence without summoning the ghost of 2001: A Space Odyssey’s killer AI HAL 9000; we have to make the obligatory Terminator reference in any story about cutting-edge robots, and the picture that immediately springs to mind when we mention robotic exoskeletons are bulky pieces of kit straight out of Iron Man or the underrated Tom Cruise flick Edge of Tomorrow.

Read the full story here.

Newly developed input technique controls smartwatch using breath and skin taps

Why it matters to you

These newly developed techniques offer innovative and creative ways to interact with smartwatches.

Picture this: You’re leaving the supermarket with your hands full of grocery bags when you suddenly get a call. Tilt your wrist to read your smartwatch. It’s Mom. You’re sure she’s calling to remind you to pick up milk. And you’re already lugging a gallon back to your car so you deny the call. But instead of dropping all your bags to do so, you simply lift your arm and shush the watch by blowing on it.

This is just one interactive feature developed by researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology intended to give smartwatch wearers more control over their device. These apps are designed to enhance LG and Sony smartwatches, allowing users to answer phone calls using their breath, dial numbers by tapping their hand, and scroll through apps by running their fingers against the watch band.

More: Swedish hybrid smartwatch says no to charging, yes to gorgeous classic designs

“We are all aware that the input on smartwatches can be improved,” Cheng Zhang, a Ph.D. student and lead researcher behind Georgia Tech’s WatchOut application, told Digital Trends. WatchOut lets wearers interact with their smartwatch through contact with the bevel and watchband.

“The touchscreen-based interactions are limited due to the small size of the screen,” Zhang said. “For instance, to open an app, the user usually has to slide through a long list on the tiny screen. WatchOut provides an additional set of inputs, which are more efficient. With WatchOut, the user can start an app by simply tapping on the watch case. Combining with the touchscreen-based input, WatchOut would provide a better interaction experience for smartwatch users.”

Two other Georgia Tech apps — Whoosh and TapSkin — are less intuitive than WatchOut but offer wonderfully creative ways to engage with smartwatches.

Whoosh lets users reject or answer calls by shushing or blowing at the device. The app even allows wearers to edit text messages or transfer information from their watch to their phone using various breathing patterns.

Breath-activated interfaces have previously been explored at Georgia Tech, but it took an aha moment for project lead Gabriel Reyes to explore the feature further.

“One day I watched my wife blow some fuzz off her phone while holding the device in one hand and our son in the other,” Reyes told Digital Trends. “I then thought we should revisit the idea of blowable interfaces for the mobile phone and primarily for smartwatches to enable one-handed input.”

TapSkin uses the smartwatches microphone and inertial sensors so users can input numbers into their smartwatch by tapping on the back of their hand.

Although Reyes is not currently pursuing commercialization of Whoosh but encourages manufacturers to use his work and inspiration. Zhang, on the other hand, said his team is working to commercialize the WatchOut technique and hopes it will be available as early as fall.

The latest Windows 10 Insider Build will get you into game mode

Why it matters to you

Microsoft uses the Windows Insider Fast Ring as a testing ground for new features that could improve your Windows 10 experience.

Microsoft rolled out a new Windows Insider build to users on the Fast Ring on Friday, and this one brings a long-awaited feature to Windows 10 — a “Game Mode” designed to optimize your PC’s gaming performance.

Additionally, the update includes a number of bug fixes and usability enhancements based on user feedback from the Microsoft Feedback Hub. Let’s have a look at what you Fast Ring users can look forward to in this update.

What’s new in the latest Fast Ring build

Build 15019 is focused almost entirely on PC gaming. That said, you will likely encounter some serious bugs in some games, as Microsoft works to iron out the kinks in its newly unveiled Game Mode.

First up, the new Windows Insider build features built-in streaming using the Beam streaming service. Starting today, with the new build, you’ll be able to stream using the Beam service by pulling up the game bar with Windows Key + G. It’s always nice to have built in streaming, but the feature might have seen more use if it supported a more popular platform like Twitch.

Additionally, you’ll find a new section under your Windows Settings, one exclusively for games and game integration. The new Gaming section features settings for the Game bar, DVR, broadcasting and, you guessed it, Game Mode.

Okay, so what is Game Mode? It’s a new feature that Microsoft hopes will improve your gaming experience, by changing the way Windows 10 handles resources while you’re playing games. Whether or not it will actually improve the performance you can get out of your games will remain to be seen, but Microsoft’s increased attention on PC gaming in Windows 10 is definitely good news.

Also included in the update are a handful of smaller features, like revamped emojis, improved privacy settings, and a new night light setting that should reduce the amount of blue light your PC produces (similar to Night Shift, just announced for MacOS). For details on all the new features, right down to the tiniest bug fixes, check out the Windows 10 blog here.

Seagate plans to produce a 16TB hard drive within the next 18 months

Why it matters to you

Despite falling numbers in the mainstream hard drive market, Seagate continues to push the envelope to reach its 20TB goal by 2020.

During a conference call after Seagate released its earnings report for the second fiscal quarter of 2017, Chairman and CEO Steve Luczo provided a roadmap of the company’s hard drive rollout over the next 18 months. During this period, the company plans to expand the capacity limit up to 16 terabytes (16TB), surpassing Seagate’s current hard drive products on the market that are maxed out at 10TB.

“Our eight terabyte product leads the market in cost and performance and we are pleased with the ramp of our 10-terabyte product in terms of quality, performance, and customer qualifications,” he said.

More: Seagate’s portable storage device automatically syncs files to Amazon Drive

Luczo also said that Seagate customers are currently testing its 12TB helium-based hard drive and providing positive feedback. It will follow the 10TB version released a year ago for the enterprise sector, relying on helium to create a turbulence-free environment inside the hard drive shell for packing in more spinning platters. These platters are what store data, which are read like a record player by stationary read/write heads.

Seagate’s current 10TB helium-based drive includes seven spinning platters and 14 heads crammed into a 3.5-inch form factor. Helium reduces the amount of friction and resistance caused when spinning platters are close together. That reduction in turn lowers the amount of power the drive will pull, reduces the level of cooling the drive needs, and enables Seagate to increase its capacity by cramming in more platters.

Drives pushing 10TB or more are typically used by the enterprise sector or in network-attached storage devices. Right now, the biggest mainstream-focused desktop hard drive appears to be Seagate’s 8TB STBD8000400 model for $330 while the biggest enterprise-grade hard drive is Seagate’s helium-filled ST10000NM0086 model costing $466.

In the mainstream market, mechanical hard drives are being replaced by NAND-based solid state drives (SSDs) as the primary storage device. SSDs have no moving parts and store data in cells rather than magnetically in tracks on a spinning platter. That means SSDs are faster, and ideal for housing the operating system and installed programs, enabling extremely fast system boot and program load times.

In the initial days, SSDs were rather expensive. But as prices have come down and capacities have gone up, hard drives are becoming the secondary solution in systems for storing files, music, video, and so on. However, the enterprise sector is a different story, given that data centers mostly rely on mechanical drives, and moving from HDDs to SDDs would be costly.

Despite the declining hard drive sales in the mainstream market, Seagate said in 2013 that it plans to produce a 20TB hard drive by 2020 using shingled magnetic recording. Seagate compared this method to shingles on a roof, stating that the data tracks overlap each other, thus increasing the density of each track and the platter’s overall aerial density.

Luczo said in the conference call that delivering hard drives up to 20TB in capacity “takes a lot of investment, a lot of technology.”