How to fix a wobbly image in your PlayStation VR

How do I stop wobble in PlayStation VR?

It’s not an easy problem to explain, and it can be a frustrating problem to properly diagnose and solve. Occasionally, some PlayStation VR users find a small amount of rotation on the video or game they’re in. It’s as though the headset is rocking on an axis, even though you’re standing or sitting perfectly still. The core of this wobble effect lies in the tracking method Sony uses for PlayStation VR. As cool as those futuristic lights look when you’re in the middle of a game, using a single camera system to track that light in a room can lead to problems.

Here are some of the best ways to address the wobble effect on your PlayStation VR.

Read more at VR Heads!

Fitbit cuts 110 jobs as wearable sales slow

While Fitbit currently holds top spot in the wearables market, not everything is going to plan. In its fourth quarter financials, the company said today that it didn’t grow nearly as much as it had anticipated, which means it will introduce a range of cost-cutting measures to help get things back on track. At the top of the list is confirmation that Fitbit will lay off 110 employees, which equates to around 6 percent of its global workforce.

In the previous three months, Fitbit sold 6.5 million devices, which include trackers and smartwatches, earning the company around $580 million. However, the wearable maker expected revenues of between $725 million and $750 million, ensuring that its annual growth totalled 17 percent instead of the 25 percent target it had set last year.

“We are confident this performance is not reflective of the value of our brand, market-leading platform, and company’s long-term potential,” said Fitbit CEO James Park. “While we have experienced softer-than-expected holiday demand for trackers in our most mature markets, especially during Black Friday, we have continued to grow rapidly in select markets like EMEA, where revenue grew 58 percent during the fourth quarter.”

Today’s results show that the market for wearables may be reaching saturation point. Fitbit also counts competition from bigger companies, like Apple and Samsung, as a reason for slower growth. Along with the job cuts and greater focus on aligning its sales and marketing spends, the company says it hopes to reduce costs by $200 million by optimizing its research and development investments.

In the last eight months alone, Fitbit has bought payment startup Coin, snapped up the technology assets of Pebble and acquired the hardware and software know-how of smartwatch maker Vector. There was even talk of it snapping up rival wearable maker Jawbone, but it apparently wasn’t prepared to meet the desired asking price. With three companies now under its umbrella, Fitbit may be ready to de-duplicate roles, which may cost it up to $4 million during this operating quarter.

Moving forward, Fitbit says it will use its market-leading position to “deliver a more personalized experience” for customers, while updating its existing products to offer more functionality. There’s also talk of it launching new products in new categories — something we’ve been expecting for some time now.

Source: Fitbit

Is the UK’s new piracy email alert program dead on arrival?

All of the UK’s major internet service providers have just embarked on a new project aimed at curbing digital piracy. As part of a bigger campaign to promote legal sources of media, spearheaded by copyright holders and the UK government, ISPs have signed up to the Voluntary Copyright Alert Programme. Under this, providers have agreed to send warning emails to subscribers when their IP address has been implicated in illegal file-sharing. Rather than being threatening, these emails are intended to be educational, informing people of what’s happening on their connection and pointing them towards all the legal ways they can watch the latest DVD releases. There’s just one problem: It doesn’t work.

UK ISPs are just now putting this into action, and the timing couldn’t be worse. You see, ISPs in the US have been doing exactly the same thing for years now, but have just announced they are abandoning their nigh-identical Copyright Alert System. After several years of remaining silent on the project’s progress, the Center for Copyright Information — the cross-industry organization that created the alert system — issued a short press release on Friday announcing its demise. “After four years of extensive consumer education and engagement, the Copyright Alert System will conclude its work,” it reads.

While there’s no explicit reference to the program being a failure — in fact, the release calls it a success — shutting the thing down implies as much. The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), a member of the Center for Copyright Information, has added weight to this theory. As Variety reports, the MPAA’s Steven Fabrizio said the alerts did little to deter serial pirates. The system “was simply not set up to deal with the hard-core repeat infringer problem. Ultimately, these persistent infringers must be addressed by ISPs under their ‘repeat infringer’ policies as provided in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act,” he commented.

It’s far from surprising to hear the alerts were ineffective in putting off the keenest pirates. After all, they were “educational” in nature and contained no threat of legal action, even if the ‘we’re watching you’ message could’ve been enough to spook some. It’s likely some of these repeat offenders would also be aware that in most cases, an IP address isn’t sufficient evidence to finger a specific individual for copyright infringement. In short, it kind of doesn’t matter how many times you try the educational route if the kid at the back of the class isn’t listening, and there’s no such thing as detention.

There are several other, unavoidable issues with these notices. For one, they are more or less targeted specifically at torrent users, since the peer-to-peer nature of the file-sharing system exposes users’ IP addresses (provided they aren’t obscuring them with a VPN). That means anyone using direct download sites, pirate streaming services and other means aren’t receiving these alerts, limiting their impact. And if torrent users suddenly drop off the radar, who’s to say they haven’t just converted to a more anonymous illegal content source?

All things considered, the Copyright Alert System was almost doomed to fail from the outset, just like the UK’s brand new Voluntary Copyright Alert Programme. The British version is even weaker too, since there are zero repercussions, unlike the US system whereby ISPs could throttle internet connections after issuing repeated warnings. That said, the US alert program undoubtedly did turn some pirates onto legal paths — though obviously not enough to justify keeping the project alive.

It’s obvious educational email alerts are never going to be a silver bullet, and we doubt copyright holders are too bothered about the success of such campaigns at the moment. Thanks primarily to streaming services, music revenues in the US and UK grew last year. The draw of convenient online services was echoed in video, too, with revenues in the UK eclipsing those of physical discs for the first time in 2016.

[Inline image credit: Getty/iStockphoto]

Researchers give driverless cars better cooperation skills

Are you really ready to ride with just a robot at the wheel? To make self-driving cars safer, researchers from the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland want them to communicate both with each other and non-robotic vehicles to avoid any nasty surprises. As such, they rigged up three vehicles, including a robotic truck and non-autonomous vehicle, to function as one unit on a real road. By working in a team and using each others’ sensors, the vehicles were able to anticipate each others’ moves, making lane change maneuvers safer.

In the EPFL’s scheme, vehicles can travel together as a convoy that doesn’t have any particular “leader.” Rather, they work as a group with other vehicles in the near vicinity, sharing GPS, laser, video camera and other sensor data via WiFi. That way, each vehicle can take advantage of its neighbor’s “eyes” to sense hazardous situations and better coordinate their movements.

The system is managed by special algorithms that allow cars “to work together and achieve complex group behavior,” says researcher Alcherio Martinoli. That allows the convoy to reorganize and adapt when vehicles join the group, change lanes or exit. To prove that it works, they did a demo on Swedish roads with three vehicles, including a robotic and non-robotic car, along with a robotic big-rig truck (video, above). When a vehicle wants to merge, “it sends a specific message and the others reorganize to leave enough space,” says EPFL’s Guillaume Jornod.

While three cars isn’t a lot, “for the first time we were able to validate what we had achieved in a simulation,” says Martinoli, adding that it should be relatively easy to scale up. The point, he adds, is to put the coordination algorithms on top of the robotic driving tech, but make it robust enough to handle regular, unconnected cars, too. “We are hoping that, with a rise in demand, carmakers will come up with ever cheaper solutions for converting legacy vehicles … and that we will be able to deploy and improve this multi-lane convoy system.”

Source: EPFL

Starbucks Begins iOS Beta Test of Assistant That Can Take Coffee Orders Via Voice or Message

Starbucks today launched a limited iOS beta test for a new artificial intelligence assistant called “My Starbucks barista,” which will let customers order their favorite menu items by speaking with a virtual barista within a new messaging interface in the company’s mobile app (via TechCrunch).

If they choose to, users can also opt to simply type their order to Starbucks, similar to chatbots that have become popular in apps like Facebook Messenger. My Starbucks barista will ask to confirm the pick-up location for the order and can help customers through the payment process as well, leaving them only needing to pass by their local Starbucks and pick up their order when it’s ready.

“The Starbucks experience is built on the personal connection between our barista and customer, so everything we do in our digital ecosystem must reflect that sensibility,” said Gerri Martin-Flickinger, chief technology officer for Starbucks, in a statement. “Our team is focused on making sure that Starbucks voice ordering within our app is truly personal and equally important was finding the right partner in Amazon to test and learn from this new capability.”

Additionally, a new “Starbucks Reorder Skill” is being implemented for Amazon’s Alexa devices, giving users the chance to simply say, “Alexa, order my Starbucks” to reorder their usual items. The process requires the Starbucks app to be installed, with an account already in place that includes a designated favorite order.

The Starbucks app has increased in popularity over the years thanks to its ability to let customers place orders online and arrive in the store to receive their drinks and food at the pick-up counter. The practice has become so popular in some locations, however, that customers have been known to leave when faced with long wait times. To fix the problem, Starbucks has begun hiring online order-only baristas, as well as testing out text notifications that alert customers when to arrive at the store.

The beta test is currently beginning, but is limited to a small set of 1,000 iOS users in the U.S., with “a phased rollout” estimated to begin on a larger scale this summer. An update to the Android app is said to come later in 2017.

The Starbucks iOS app is available to download for free. [Direct Link]

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How to activate Three Wi-Fi Calling on iPhone

After what seems like an age of promising, Three has finally enabled baked-in Wi-Fi calling in to the iPhone. If you have an Apple iPhone and are on the Three network, you’ll be able to make and receive calls and texts from anywhere you have a Wi-Fi connection, without the need for the company’s separate InTouch app. 

The service is compatible with any iPhone launched since 2014, so that means the iPhone 5c, iPhone 5s, iPhone 6, iPhone 6s, iPhone SE and iPhone 7, that obviously includes any “Plus” models of those listed devices. 

Before switching on you need to ensure you have the latest software. That means making sure you’re running iOS 10.2. To do that follow the following instructions: 

Go to Settings > General > Software Update
Download and install any software update that shows up, if none, proceed to the next step.

If you’ve downloaded the latest software, you should also make sure you have the latest carrier software package installed. This isn’t always included in the software update by default, so you’ll need to go through the following steps: 

Head to Settings > General > About
Wait a few seconds and you should see a “Carrier update available” message pop up
Install it, then head back to Settings > Phone

Once you have the latest software and carrier updates, follow the simple steps below: 

Go to Settings > Phone
Select “Wi-Fi Calling” 
Toggle the “Wi-Fi Calling on This iPhone” switch to the on position
Confirm that you want to activate the feature
Pocket-lint

As soon as it’s been activated, if you’re connected to a Wi-Fi network your “Three UK” network name in the status bar should now say “Three WiFi Call”. 

Any time you see that message in your status bar, your calls and text messages will be made over Wi-Fi, which usually means you’ll get better call quality. 

Explosions may be the answer to mass-producing graphene

Graphene is difficult and expensive to mass produce, but while trying to make something else altogether, Kansas State University (KSU) scientists may have lucked into a promising technique. The team was attempting to make carbon soot aerosol gels by detonating acetylene gas and oxygen with a spark plug. That yielded soot resembling “black angel food cake,” according to lead researcher Chris Sorensen. It proved to be graphene, a discovery that could pave the way for cheaper manufacturing of lightweight but incredibly strong materials, superconductors, and more.

Graphene consists of bonded carbon that’s just one atom thick, making it one of the lightest, strongest materials out there. It also has interesting electrical properties and has shown tons of experimental promise for rapid-charging “supercapacitor” batteries, solar cells and superconductors. However, more widespread use is limited by its cost — methods like chemical “cooking” and high temperature heating have proven to be low-yield, expensive and even dangerous.

The KSU team’s technique simply requires an oxidizing agent like oxygen or air, acetylene or other hydrocarbons and a spark, according to a patent it filed. The resulting detonation creates a 3,000 degree K temperature inside the vessel, enough to create pure graphene stacked in single, double or triple sheets. “What might be the best property of all is that the energy required to make a gram of graphene through our process is much less than other processes because all it takes is a single spark,” Sorenson said.

The researchers are now working to improve the quality of the graphene and scale it up to industrial levels. The aim is to get the material out of the chamber several seconds after the detonation, so it doesn’t form into an aerogel. However, the technique seems far along along already compared to other types of promising research, which often never leaves the lab. “The real charm of our experiment is that we can produce graphene in the quantity of grams rather than milligrams,” says post-doc researcher Arjun Nepal.

Source: Kansas State University

Electronic glasses auto-focus on what you’re looking at

They’re not very pretty, but prototype eyeglasses from University of Utah scientists could make progressive lenses obsolete for older people. Using electronically activated lenses and infrared distance meters, they can focus automatically on whatever you’re looking at, whether it’s far or close up. Once perfected, the device could eliminate the need for multiple pairs of reading or driving glasses for folks with presbyopia or farsightedness.

Age-related far- or near-sightedness happens when the lenses in your eyes can no longer change focus between objects. As a result, many people between their 40s and 50s have to wear progressive-lens eyeglasses divided into small focal zones depending on object distance. One company called Deep Optics has pursued an auto-focusing solution using see-through liquid-crystal lenses, but is still working on a practical prototype. Google is also working on an auto-focus contact lens with Novartis, but recently said that it wouldn’t be testing one anytime soon.

To make the lenses adjustable, the University of Utah team placed glycerine — a thick, clear liquid — within membranes on the front and back. The chunky frame, meanwhile, holds electronics, a battery and an infrared distance meter. When you look at something, the meter gauges the distance and sends a signal to a mechanical actuator on the rear membrane. Within 14 milliseconds, it switches focus from one object to another, giving you clear vision without the need to look up or down.

Users can enter their prescriptions into a smartphone, which sends it them to the glasses via Bluetooth. That means that, in theory, you could keep the same pair of glasses forever, even if your eyesight changes. You’d need to recharge them like a smartphone, but that could be less of a hassle than packing multiple pairs around. “Most people who get reading glasses have to put them on and take them off all the time,” says research lead Carlos Mastrangelo. “You put these on, and it’s always clear.”

The current prototype, which first debuted at CES, is obviously something nobody would want to wear in public. The goal now, then, is to make the whole package smaller and lighter via some serious miniaturization. The team has created a startup company to commercialize the smart glasses and, hopefully, get them on the market in as little as three years.

Via: Presse Citron (translated)

Source: University of Utah

Brain mapping could lead to better Parkinson’s treatments

When you repair electronics, you frequently test individual parts to see how they affect the whole. Why not try that with the brain? Stanford is doing just that. It developed a technique that fires specific kinds of neurons to map the brain and identify problems caused by Parkinson’s and other diseases. The approach first uses optogenetics to make neurons activate in response to light, and follows up with a functional MRI scan to look for the increased blood flow that indicates activity in other brain regions. A computational analysis maps that particular neural circuit and helps determine its role.

In experiments on rats, it turned out that neurons involved with Parkinson’s switched on paths responsible for increasing or decreasing motion. It’s the first time science has shown that a given neuron type can form distinctive brain circuits with different results, according to researcher Jin Hyung Lee.

The discoveries made here could lead to better treatments for Parkinson’s. For example, doctors already use deep brain stimulation to reduce tremors — this could lead to more effective stimulation by targeting the neurons most likely to produce results. And in the long run, this could shed light on many neurological conditions where the involved brain processes aren’t always clear.

Source: Stanford

T-Mobile to Cover Sales Tax on Smartphones With Prepaid MasterCard Promotion

T-Mobile USA today introduced a limited time promotion offering customers a prepaid MasterCard with a new smartphone purchase starting February 1. The card is worth 11.2% of the smartphone’s retail price, which T-Mobile advertises as covering more than the sales taxes that a customer would pay.

The deal is valid on every new smartphone that T-Mobile sells, including iPhones. Each smartphone must be activated with a T-Mobile ONE or Simple Choice Unlimited 4G LTE plan—up to 12 lines qualify for the deal. The prepaid MasterCard must be redeemed within 30 days and it will take 6-8 weeks to arrive.

Earlier this month, T-Mobile announced that the price of its T-Mobile ONE plan now includes sales taxes and all other additional charges. In other words, the price you see is the price you pay—that’s $70 for the first line, $50 for the second line, and $20 for each additional line. AutoPay is required.

The carrier also launched a “Tax Rebate” promotion earlier this month. Every customer who switches to T-Mobile from another carrier will receive a $150 prepaid MasterCard, with no device trade-in required—up to 12 lines qualify for the deal. The promotion cannot be combined with Carrier Freedom.

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