LG G6 will launch in the US a month after going on sale in South Korea

If you live in the US and want the upcoming LG G6, we now know exactly when you can get it.

After debuting at Mobile World Congress on 16 February, LG’s next flagship smartphone will go on sale in the US on 7 April, according to VentureBeat, which also said the phone will first launch in South Korea on 9 March. There’s no word yet on when it’ll arrive in the UK.

• Mobile World Congress 2017: Nokia, Sony, Huawei, and more

As for the phone itself, LG is expected to ditch the modular strategy it introduced with the LG G5 in 2016. It will also be made of metal and glass and will feature a 5.7-inch display with minimal bezels. The LG G6 is rumored to pack in Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 821 processor, rather than the 835, as Samsung is reportedly hogging all those chipsets for its upcoming Galaxy S8 flagship.

• Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8 edge: What’s the story so far?

For more LG G6 rumours, check out Pocket-lint’s round up. We will be at MWC 2017 in Barcelona later this month to bring you all the confirmed details as they’re announced. 

‘Rock Band VR’ is coming to the Oculus Rift on March 23rd

You won’t have to wait much longer to play Rock Band VR. Developer Harmonix has announced that its virtual reality title is launching for the Oculus Rift on March 23rd, with pre-orders available now through Amazon. You should keep in mind that the bundles being sold, one for PlayStation 4 and the other for Xbox One, only include a digital copy of the game and a guitar controller.

What this means is that you’ll need Oculus Touch devices to get started, which are sold separately for $199. That’s on top of having a Rift headset and VR-ready PC, of course. If you have all of that, it won’t be too long before you can start jamming out in virtual reality.

Rock Band VR is headed to the @Oculus Rift on March 23rd! Pre-Orders are available now: https://t.co/Ffw2R1xVP9 pic.twitter.com/uytARb9TTG

— Rock Band (@RockBand) February 6, 2017

Source: Rock Band (Twitter)

Lenovo’s new pro laptops include one built for VR

Lenovo knows that it’s not enough to build laptops that support virtual reality — you need laptops that can create virtual reality, too. To that end, it’s releasing a trio of pro workstations headlined by one that’s primed for VR production. The 17-inch ThinkPad P71 is certified as VR-ready by HTC, NVIDIA and Oculus, and has the power to back it up: you’ll find both a mobile Xeon E3 processor and up to Quadro P5000 workstation graphics. Support for up to 64GB of RAM and four storage devices (across both conventional and solid-state drives) helps, too. You can also expect Thunderbolt 3 ports to plug in your displays and docks, while there’s an optional 4K display for crisper non-VR visuals.

The other two rigs are designed more for portability than raw power. The 15-inch ThinkPad P51s (below) is definitely the star of the bunch — it’s Lenovo’s lightest and thinnest mobile workstation to date, coming in at a relatively modest 4.3 pounds and an Ultrabook-worthy 0.79 inches thick. It won’t be as powerful as the P71, but you’re still looking at 7th-generation Core processors, up to 32GB of RAM, an optional 4K display and Quadro M520M video. A more conventional ThinkPad P51 is on tap if you’re willing to get a bulkier 15-inch machine in return for faster processors (including the P71’s Xeon chip), faster optional graphics (the Quadro M2200M) and up to 64GB of memory.

Lenovo ships the P51s in March, and it’ll be the most affordable of the batch with a starting $1,049 price. The P51 and P71, meanwhile, are both more expensive and relative latecomers: they’ll arrive in April with respective starting prices of $1,399 and $1,849.

Source: Lenovo

Vizio tracked and sold your TV viewing habits without consent (updated)

A settlement with the Federal Trade Commission and the New Jersey Attorney General will cost Vizio $2.2 million. That sum will settle the charges with both the state and federal agencies after a complaint that Vizio installed software on 11 million smart TVs to track viewing histories with consumers’ knowledge. As part of the settlement, a federal court ordered the company to disclose its data collection and sharing practices and get express consent from customers before doing so.

What’s more, Vizio must delete any user data collected before March 1, 2016. According to the original complaint filed by the FTC and New Jersey AG, the company worked with a third party to build smart TVs that could capture “second-by-second” viewing information about what’s on the screen. That includes details on content from cable, internet, set-top boxes, DVD players, over-the-air broadcasts and other streaming devices.

In a blog post explaining the case, FTC senior attorney Lesley Fair says Vizio began making smart TVs in 2014 that automatically tracked the owners viewing habits and beamed that info back to its servers. Fair explains the company also added the tracking tech to older models via a software update. All of this was done without clearly informing customers or getting the proper consent to do so.

Fair also says that Vizio sold the collected viewing data to advertisers. Those details included IP addresses that could be matched to the owner and household. From there, third parties could use the information to gather personal details like sex, age, income, marital status, household size, education, and home ownership. Vizio didn’t allow the companies it was working with to identify users by name, but it did allow those third parties to track user habits across devices.

Vizio’s methods for tracking your viewing habits were first revealed as part of its IPO plans in 2015. The paperwork detailed how the company used Inscape software to collected data on whatever flashed on the screen, even if it came from cable, a game console or a separate streaming device. When LeEco bought Vizio last year, Inscape was spun off into a privately-owned company run by Vizio co-founnder William Wang.

Vizio will pay $1.5 million to the FTC to settle the charges in addition to a civil penalty to the state of New Jersey that brings the total to $2.2 million. The company must also implement a privacy program that evaluates its use of consumer data on a regular basis in addition to deleting most of the information it gathered. We’ve reached out to Vizio for a comment on the matter and we’ll update this post when we hear back.

Update: In a statement to Engadget on the FTC settlement, Vizio says the program never paired collected data with “personally identifiable information” like names or contact details as the commission noted in its blog post. The company also explains that before today’s announcement, it had already updated both online and on-screen disclosures, including notifications about data collection, how to disable it and how the information is used. Here’s the full statement from Vizio general counsel Jerry Huang:

“Vizio is pleased to reach this resolution with the FTC and the New Jersey Division of Consumer Affairs. Going forward, this resolution sets a new standard for best industry privacy practices for the collection and analysis of data collected from today’s internet-connected televisions and other home devices. The ACR program never paired viewing data with personally identifiable information such as name or contact information, and the Commission did not allege or contend otherwise. Instead, as the Complaint notes, the practices challenged by the government related only to the use of viewing data in the ‘aggregate’ to create summary reports measuring viewing audiences or behaviors.”

“Today, the FTC has made clear that all smart TV makers should get people’s consent before collecting and sharing television viewing information and Vizio now is leading the way.”

Source: FTC (1), (2)

Moto Z hackathons create more interesting Mods than Motorola

The modular Moto Z was the tool of choice at the latest Motorola hackathon in San Francisco this past weekend. Developers and entrepreneurs took on the task of hacking the mobile phone with a variety of other hardware to come up with innovative add-ons. While available mods are thought of as too high-priced and non-essential, competitions like these show off some intriguing potential.

Projects at the latest event include a baby monitor with real-time notifications for things like room temperature, a color sensor that can emit sounds for people with visual impairments and — from the winning team — a solar-powered battery charger.

Many of the ideas at this weekend’s competition were health-related. One team of high-school kids came up with the unfortunately named ModCoholic, a breathalyzer mod, that will ask if you want to grab a taxi when over the legal limit. The team won Honorable Mention for its submission. Another developer created Simple Syrup, a mod that allows diabetics to check their blood sugar.

The San Francisco event was just the latest location in a series of hackathons held across the globe, including New York, India and Buenos Aires. The next one happens in Shenzhen, China mid-March. The winning teams from each event will head to Motorola’s headquarters in Chicago to present their ideas to industry leaders like Lenovo Capital, who might invest and fund promising concepts. If the Moto Z takes off like Motorola hopes, it’s possible we’ll see some of these inventive ideas on store shelves in the near future.

Via: TechCrunch

Source: Motorola

Google may lean on a partner to sell Android apps in China

Google’s presence in China is limited, to put it mildly, but it might have found a way to get its foot in the door. The Information sources claim that Chinese internet veteran NetEase is talking to Google about launching the Play Store in China. There’s no guarantee that the talks will lead anywhere, but NetEase may be just the partner Google is looking for. Alphabet chairman Eric Schmidt has previously explained that Google needed a business ally that could negotiate the intricacies of both Google and the Chinese government — that’s clearly the case here.

Neither company is commenting. However, you can be sure that Google would have to make some compromises to run the Play Store in the country. Remember how Apple has had to pull certain apps in the Chinese App Store to please government censors? Google certainly wouldn’t be exempt from those restrictions, and it would have to host app data in China as well.

The company may have every reason to make those sacrifices, mind you. Google has much less control over the Android experience in China in part because the Play Store isn’t an option. Third-party stores from the likes of Alibaba and Tencent are the primary app sources — that leaves a lot of the money on the table, and has helped entrench services that would have to compete with Google anywhere else. What Google gives up could be more than offset by entering a gigantic market.

Source: The Information

Japan’s space junk collection experiment ends in failure

Well that’s disappointing. On January 27th, Japan’s space agency (JAXA) successfully launched the Kounotori 6 spacecraft to the ISS. It was supposed to test a novel method of dragging space debris out of orbit however a technical issue prevented the spacecraft from carrying out that test before its fiery death in Earth’s atmosphere on Monday morning.

The Kounotori 6 was an unmanned vessel designed to test whether attaching long, magnetized cables to dead satellites like those that now shroud the Earth, could effectively drag them out of orbit. It was outfitted with a 700 meter cable which, theoretically, would interact with the Earth’s magnetic field and generate enough drag to pull the craft out of orbit. Unfortunately, a technical issue prevented that cable from unfurling and, despite a week of repair attempts, the Kounotori 6 itself fell out of orbit early this morning without having accomplished its primary goal.

“We could not extend the cable, but we think it is not because of the cable itself, but some other reasons,” a spokesperson for JAXA told New Scientist. “A detailed analysis is underway.”

This isn’t the only space-junk removal scheme in the works, however. The UK plans to test a net and harpoon system next year while the ESA is working on a grabber-and-net setup with plans to launch in 2023.

Source: New Scientist

DARPA’s SideArm system snares drones from mid-air

Even the longest-loitering drone needs to land sometime. But rather than risk damaging these multi-million dollar aircraft on improvised battlefield landing strips or aboard US Naval vessels, DARPA is developing a novel drone recovery system that snatches them out of mid-air.

DARPA calls it the SideArm system. It’s part of the larger Tern program that seeks ways to integrate drones into Navy ships and operations without having to drastically renovate the vessels in accommodation. As such, this system is built to fit in a standard shipping container and can be set up and operated by just 2 – 4 people. DARPA tested the system with a 400-pound Lockheed Martin Fury UAS, but it’s reportedly sturdy enough to catch drones weighing up to 1,100 pounds.

The SideArm works much like existing arresting wire system that aircraft carriers employ, just upside down. As you can see in the video above, the drone is launched along a horizontal rail. Upon its return, the drone flies back under that rail, hopefully snagging its tailhook on an arresting line suspended below it. When the tailhook catches, the drone is slowed and gently swung up into a net where the aircraft’s nose barbs hold it in place. Now that testing is complete, DARPA is looking for transition partners and investigating whether the system could be employed with other drone systems.

Via: TechCrunch

Source: DARPA

Louisville turns your smart lights red when air quality suffers

Citizens of Louisville, Kentucky just got a way to make their smart homes even smarter, thanks to IFTTT and the local city government. According to an announcement from Mayor Greg Fischer, the city has launched its own IFTTT channel that can tie public air quality data directly to smart home devices and other connected gadgets. With the city’s home-baked applets, residents can get push notifications for days when the air quality reaches a certain level or, if it gets particularly bad, the air quality can actually be displayed in the colors of a Philips Hue connected lightbulb.

The IFTTT partnership is part of Louisville Metro’s Smart City efforts, which hopes to make more data and services freely available to residents. “We’re focused on bringing data and technology to citizens where they live, making it intuitive, accessible, inclusive and equitable,” the city’s chief of innovation Grace Simrall said in a statement. While the program is launching with only the air quality data for now, the city plans to roll out additional feeds of municipal data on the Smart Louisville channel soon. And, of course, residents don’t need an entire smart home setup to take advantage of the partnership — there are also options to send air quality alerts via text message or even download a log file to Google Drive.

Via: CNET

Source: City of Louisville, Smart Louisville on IFTTT

NASA expands emerging space economy with a commercial airlock

The first commercially funded airlock is coming to the International Space Station, and luckily it’s not being built by Weyland-Yutani.

Demand for deployments of CubeSats — miniaturized satellites used for research — and other small payloads from both commercial customers and NASA has increased in recent years. To meet this demand, NASA has accepted a proposal from spaceflight company NanoRacks to build the new commercial airlock. NanoRacks already has two research platforms permanently installed on the U.S. National Laboratory aboard the ISS and markets its services to space programs, biopharmaceutical firms, high schools and universities.

“We want to utilize the space station to expose the commercial sector to new and novel uses of space, ultimately creating a new economy in low-Earth orbit for scientific research, technology development and human and cargo transportation,” said Sam Scimemi, director, ISS Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “We hope this new airlock will allow a diverse community to experiment and develop opportunities in space for the commercial sector.”

NanoRacks is teaming up with Boeing (a long-time collaborator on ISS projects) to build the airlock. Once it’s completed, NASA plans to launch it on a commercial resupply mission and integrate it in 2019. It will be located on a port in the space station’s Tranquility module, which provides additional room for crew members and many of the station’s life support and environmental control systems.

Tranquility is also home to the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module. BEAM is the first expandable habitat tested in space, and early data suggests it’s performing well (after initially deflating like a leaky bicycle tire, that is). NanoRacks’ Airlock is ostensibly part of NASA’s larger efforts to commercialize the International Space Station. Or, you know, to potentially jettison Xenomorphs.

Via: The Verge

Source: NASA