We tried McDonald’s super-engineered shake straw

As part of this year’s St. Patrick’s Day promotions, McDonald’s is debuting a highly engineered, hyper-exclusive straw dubbed the “Suction Tube for Reverse Axial Withdrawal,” or STRAW for short. It’s only available on two days, February 24th and March 1st, with a scant 2,000 of them spread across the entire country. We managed to get our hands on one, however, and put it to a chocolate-minty test.

For this event, McDonald’s worked with a pair of aerospace engineering companies — the same guys, in fact, who helped spearhead Google’s Project Ara modular phone. The STRAW uses a novel J-shape with five inlet ports: four on the shorter leg and a fifth located at the bottom bend. When properly dipped into a Chocolate Shamrock shake, the four ports on the short leg will pull both chocolate and mint shake in equal proportion from their respective layers. The port at the bottom is designed to suck up the last dredges from the bottom of the cup like a normal straw would once you’re nearly done.

At least that’s how it is supposed to work. It turns out that these Shamrock shakes are typically blended, not layered, which utterly negates the point of having all these extra holes. If you do manage to find a franchise that will layer your shake for you, you’re going to need to position the STRAW very carefully between the two sections in order to properly line up the inlets — not a task you really want to be attempting while driving or even walking. Plus, once the level of shake gets low enough, the exposed inlet ports will begin drawing air faster than the bottom hole can suck in shake, which makes drinking the last bits quite challenging.

Between the mechanical challenges that I encountered and the STRAW’s sheer lack of availability, it strikes me as far more marketing tool than eating utensil. Granted, we weren’t able to find a location that didn’t blend their shakes — even when specifically and explicitly ordered as layered — so there may well be some consumptive value that this thing provides. But there’s no need for you to go out of your way to find one of them (unless collecting McDonald’s memorabilia is your thing) because you’re going to spend far longer looking for it than you will waiting for the shake to melt slightly, then stirring vigorously and slurping.

YouTube will do away with unskippable 30-second ads next year

If you’re not paying for YouTube Red, you’re likely used to the many different types of advertising the video service features. But next year, one of the more irritating formats will be going away. YouTube says that it’ll stop supporting “unskippable” 30-second pre-video advertisements in favor of shorter formats. A YouTube spokesperson confirmed the change with this statement: “We’re committed to providing a better ads experience for users online. As part of that, we’ve decided to stop supporting 30-second unskippable ads as of 2018 and focus instead on formats that work well for both users and advertisers.”

As to what might replace it, UK publication Campaign believes that YouTube will make more extensive use of the six-second unskippable video ad instead. While unskippable ads in any length are annoying, six seconds is a lot better than 30. Campaign also notes that any ad shorter than 30 seconds can be made unskippable, so you may still run into fairly long 20-second commercials still. But still, it seems like a pretty tacit admission that users aren’t willing to wait that long to get to videos. We’ll take it.

Via: Campaign

The best bluetooth headsets

By Marianne Schultz and Nick Guy

This post was done in partnership with The Wirecutter, a buyer’s guide to the best technology. When readers choose to buy The Wirecutter’s independently chosen editorial picks, it may earn affiliate commissions that support its work. Read the full article here.

If you’re hopping on and off the phone throughout the day, or if you’re typically talking on the phone while driving (despite the safety concerns), the Plantronics Voyager Edge is the best Bluetooth headset for most people. After putting in 50-plus hours of research and testing more than 15 models over the past three years—including 12 hours of testing and three new models for the latest update—the Voyager Edge continues to lead the pack with its combination of stellar sound quality, long battery life, excellent Bluetooth range, and comfortable fit.

Who needs this

If you don’t do much talking on your mobile phone, but you prefer to talk hands-free, you’re probably fine using the earbuds that came with it. But a good mono (one-ear) Bluetooth headset is a great accessory if you speak on the phone frequently and want the convenience of having your hands free—you don’t want to stay tethered to your handset by a wire, or to have to hold the phone with your shoulder while you talk, which is terrible for your neck and back. A headset is also appealing if you need to be sure that your voice sounds clear to the person on the other end, even when you’re talking in an environment with a lot of wind or other background noise.

If you have a new iPhone 7, which lacks a headphone jack and has only a single Lightning-connector port for headphones or charging, a Bluetooth headset lets you charge your iPhone while you take calls hands-free.

How we picked and tested

Three headsets we tested for the 2016 update to this guide, from left: Jabra Steel, Plantronics Voyager 5200, and Plantronics Voyager Edge. Photo: Marianne Schultz

For our 2016 update, we looked for any newcomers to the market since the previous iteration of this guide. Consulting reviews on sites such as PCMag and ComputerWorld, and user reviews on Amazon, we narrowed the options down to two new models from major manufacturers that seemed worthy of hands-on testing.

You shouldn’t expect exceptionally long battery life, but you at least want your headset to last through a workday. We consider five hours of actual talk time to be the minimum. Some headsets, including our top pick, come with a charging case—a battery-equipped storage case that charges the headset when you put it inside—to extend battery life significantly, but the headset itself should still be able to last a good while alone.

In terms of functional design, you want a headset that charges via Micro-USB rather than with a proprietary cord or charger. You probably already have at least one or two other gadgets that use Micro-USB cables, so it’s nice to be able to use the same cable and charger for everything.

We tested for battery life, comfort, sound quality, and Bluetooth range. We also looked for headsets with excellent controls that allow you to answer calls and adjust the volume easily and intuitively. We gave bonus points to models that allow you to perform some of these functions hands-free, using just your voice. For more on our testing procedures, see our full guide.

Our pick

The Voyager Edge sits comfortably in your ear. Photo: Marianne Schultz

The Plantronics Voyager Edge remains our pick for most people because it’s a solid all-around performer. As in the past two years, it came out on top in our latest batch of audio-quality and comfort tests. In terms of battery life, it came in second out of the three headsets we tested this year, with a talk time of 6 hours; however, its included charging case gives it a total of 16 hours of talk time, the longest of the bunch. The Plantronics Voyager 5200 bested the Edge in Bluetooth range, but the Edge’s range is more than sufficient for most people. The Edge also has simple pairing, easy-to-use controls, and a smartphone companion app that makes it easy to adjust the headset’s settings.

The Voyager Edge supports Bluetooth 4.0, plus NFC pairing with compatible smartphones. We found pairing with an Apple iPhone 7 Plus to be quick and easy, and using the headset is just as simple. In addition to voice control, the Voyager Edge has sensors to determine whether you’re wearing it. The headset has physical buttons for on-off, volume level, call answer, and voice command, each of which are easy to find and press.

Call quality is the most important aspect of any Bluetooth headset, and the Voyager Edge excels here. In our tests of call audio quality, it was edged out slightly by the more-expensive Voyager 5200 in a quiet office environment, but performed better than the 5200 in a busy coffee shop and a windy car—the Edge was a solid, all-around performer, particularly given its compact size. The Voyager Edge is usually around $30 cheaper than the Voyager 5200, so the minor differences we heard in audio quality makes the Edge a better overall value.

Runner-up

The Voyager 5200 fits over the ear for a more secure fit, but it’s more of a hassle to put on. Photo: Marianne Schultz

The Voyager 5200 is a beefier headset with more features. It has an additional microphone for noise-cancelling (for a total of four, compared with three on the Voyager Edge), and its Bluetooth range is the most impressive of the bunch. Plantronics says the 5200 can reach 98 feet without audio dropping out; in our tests we noticed dropouts in voice calls at just over 70 feet, but streamed music didn’t get choppy until around 150 feet.

A budget alternative

Photo: Marshall Troy

The Plantronics Explorer 500 is a good choice for people who don’t want to spend a ton and are willing to give up some audio quality. The Explorer 500 is smaller than the Voyager Edge, but its battery lasts about an hour longer. It also has great Bluetooth range: In our tests, audio didn’t drop out until around 54 feet for voice and 95 feet for music. In our quiet-office and coffee-shop tests, however, our listening panel didn’t love the audio the 500 transmitted. One panelist in an earlier test described voice as sounding “blobby” in the office, and in another test the Explorer picked up more background noise than other units did. In the coffee-shop test, it lost some audio whenever plates clinked in the background.

This guide may have been updated by The Wirecutter. To see the current recommendation, please go here.

Note from The Wirecutter: When readers choose to buy our independently chosen editorial picks, we may earn affiliate commissions that support our work.

Xbox One bundle offers 10 indie games for $20

Xbox One owners who don’t have many indie games can now fill that hole on the cheap. For the next few weeks, video game developer Curve Digital has partnered with Microsoft to offer the Instant Indie Hits bundle for $20.

The ten-game collection includes Thomas Was Alone, The Swapper, Stealth Inc 2, OlliOlli, Nova-111, Action Henk, Stikbold, 10 Second Ninja X, Hue and The Swindle. These games typically sell for between $9.99 and $14.99 each; taken together they’d normally cost $120. The bundle is only available on the Xbox Marketplace at the reduced rate until March 9. After that, it will return to its normal price point of $99.99.

They’re good games too: All of the included titles debuted to strong reviews. Of the bunch, Action Henk has the lowest rating on review aggregator Metacritic, with a score of 72. At the other end of the spectrum, The Swapper earned a 92 rating. That said, most of the games are at least a couple years old now. Thomas Was Alone first appeared on PC in 2012, while 10 Second Ninja X, the most recent release, came out in July 2016. Still, this frugal bundle could be a strong starting point for gamers wanting to beef up their indie collection without emptying their wallets.

Source: Microsoft Store

Humanity is on the cusp of de-extincting the Wooly Mammoth

After successfully extracting sequenceable DNA from a pair of Woolly Mammoth carcasses pulled from Siberia’s permafrost in 2014, a team of Harvard researchers announced on Thursday that they are tantalizing close to cloning the (currently) extinct pachyderms.

The team made the announcement ahead of American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting this week. They estimate that they’re just two years away from creating a viable hybrid embryo. That is, they take a modern day asian elephant embryo and splice in DNA from the Mammoth to get a fuzzy “mammophant,” as the team calls it.

“Our aim is to produce a hybrid elephant-mammoth embryo,” Harvard Professor George Church told the Guardian. “Actually, it would be more like an elephant with a number of mammoth traits. We’re not there yet, but it could happen in a couple of years.”

So far, the team hasn’t progressed passed the cellular stage in creating one of these beasts though they have managed to splice in as many as 45 mammoth genes, up from their initial 15. Within a few years, the team expects to ramp their efforts up to the embryonic stage but it’ll likely be quite a while until they can birth a living mammophant.

Since the Asian elephant is itself endangered, this hybridizing technique could help preserve the species. At the same time, the Harvard team doesn’t want to put one of these valuable animals at risk carrying a mammophant fetus to term, so they’re looking into gestating it in an artificial womb. That’s where the delay comes in.

While Church’s team has managed to grow a mouse in an artificial womb for ten days — half its normal gestation period — the technology for doing that for an elephant-scale animal likely won’t be feasible for at least a decade. And even once that technology has matured, there are still a host of hand-wringing ethical arguments that will have to be sorted before Church’s team gets the green light to proceed further.

Source: Guardian

The NBA made an original show for Google’s Daydream VR platform

As part of its 2017 All-Star Weekend festivities, the NBA is launching a virtual reality app for Google’s Daydream platform. The main piece of NBA VR is a new series called House of Legends, which the league created specifically for viewing in 360-degree video. It’s a talk show hosted by former NBA players like Bruce Bowen, Chauncey Billups and Robert Horry, where they’ll discuss stories from their careers, pop culture and things happening around the league. NBA VR will also feature other on-demand, 360-degree video content, including highlights and tours of teams’ arenas.

The application is exclusive to Daydream and available in the US, UK, Canada, Australia and Germany. If you have one of Google’s new headsets, you can check out NBA VR starting today for free. An NBA spokesperson tells Engadget that additional episodes of House of Legends, as well as more (undisclosed) 360-degree video content, will continue to hit the app over the coming months.

Visitors with e-visas will get activated SIM cards in India

In a push to make travel easier, tourists on e-visas will now be greeted with SIM cards in India. The move will allow visitors to connect with locals on arrival without having to wait for hours to get their phones activated. They will also be able to call a 24-hour helpline that will be accessible in 12 languages like Russian, German, Japanese and more. The SIM cards issued by Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited, a government-owned telecommunications company, will be pre-loaded with about 70 cents (50 rupees) worth of talk time along with 50MB data.

According to the union tourism minister Mahesh Sharma, the initiative is restricted to e-visa tourists for now because their information is available to the authorities in advance. On arrival, visitors will simply need to show up at one of the India Tourism Development Corporation counters at the airport. The service will be introduced at the Indira Gandhi International Airport in Delhi for now, but will eventually roll out across 15 other airports in the country.

Here’s the ‘Stealth’ Case Apple Uses to Conceal iPhone Prototypes During Transport

Long before Apple takes the wraps off a new iPhone, the smartphone goes through months of design work, testing, and production between Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino and its manufacturing partners in China.

It is during this time that iPhone parts usually begin to leak, despite Apple’s best efforts to double down on secrecy. Nevertheless, noted leaker Sonny Dickson has provided MacRumors with a closer look at a few known measures the company takes to hide iPhone prototypes and prevent potential leaks.

Foremost, Dickson said an iPhone prototype travels across the world in a “stealth” case designed to prevent onlookers from seeing how it looks. The case conceals most of the iPhone, while it has yellow “security” tape along the sides that would show any tampering by somebody trying to get it open.

The prototype is accompanied by a “passport” at all times for quality assurance/control testing, according to Dickson.

“Each component or product that is tested they document in the page,” said Dickson. “The person writes their initials next to it and any notes about it passing or failing or any other comments. It makes its way through each test/person. It then is finally sent with its ‘passport’ from China to Apple.”

As known, the prototype itself, such as the iPhone 6 Plus pictured below, is engraved with a QR code for Apple to keep track of the product.

As mentioned, these efforts have not entirely prevented iPhone prototypes from leaking. A mostly accurate picture of the iPhone 7 Plus with a dual-lens camera leaked in March 2016, six months before Apple unveiled the device, while an Apple engineer infamously left a disguised iPhone 4 at a bar near Cupertino in 2010.

Apple will reportedly begin production of a trio of new iPhones, including a 5.8-inch model with an edge-to-edge OLED display, as early as next quarter, so part leaks should begin to surface around that time if history repeats itself. Read our iPhone 8 roundup to keep track of the latest rumors in the meantime.

Tag: Sonny Dickson
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YouTube Will Stop Placing Unskippable 30-Second Ads in Front of Videos in 2018

YouTube will stop supporting unskippable 30-second ads on the popular streaming video platform beginning sometime in 2018, according to an official statement from Google given to Campaign. The move is said to be a way to provide a better experience and format that works well for YouTube users, as well as the company’s advertisers.

The advertising focus for YouTube will switch over to a 6-second unskippable “bumper ad” format in the coming year, which the company introduced in 2016 and is said to be a way to convince more impatient users to stick around when an ad pops up before a video.

It wasn’t confirmed whether the removal of unskippable 30-second ads would hit both the web and mobile YouTube apps, but Google’s wording appears to support the format’s removal across all platforms.

“As part of that, we’ve decided to stop supporting 30-second unskippable ads as of 2018 and focus instead on formats that work well for both users and advertisers,” said a Google spokesman.

A few industry analysts speaking with Campaign agreed that YouTube’s decision makes sense, particularly within the context of a growing rivalry with Facebook and its ramping up of video content. YouTube Red, the company’s premium subscription service, lets users avoid ads altogether for $9.99/month, which places it alongside other video streaming platforms like Netflix ($9.99/month) and Hulu ($11.99/month for commercial-free videos).

While this move will not please advertisers, Callum McCahon, strategy director for Born Social, said it is the price YouTube is willing to pay to keep people watching.

“I’m reading this as a signal that YouTube is very worried about Facebook,” he added. “We know that video is right at the very core of Facebook’s roadmap. Their video offering is becoming ever more attractive to brands by the day, and YouTube is panicking.”

For Netflix, the company has remained adamant that it will never introduce advertisements into its streaming video content. A recent report ran the numbers and discovered that Netflix forgoes about $2.3 billion in potential advertising revenue each year by keeping to its no-commercial strategy.

Tag: YouTube
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The Growth Of The Autonomous Car Market

The autonomous car market is currently growing at an existential rate and many driverless vehicles are expected to be on our roads this year, and in large numbers.

Critics have publically stated how they feel about these types of vehicles hitting our roads but many fail to realise that this development started over 80 years ago – and the experts feel these initial plans (and the public testing in 2016 along with huge investment inbetween) will be put into practice before we know it.

There have been many financial, practical and scientific challenges involved in the development of these vehicles that we decided to explore further.

In our infographic, you will discover:

• The history of autonomous cars
• The challenges involved in engineering the coveted autonomous car
• How DARPA have been involved in testing driverless cars
• The advent of Google X
• The science behind autonomous vehicles
• What the future holds for the autonomous car market
• Which car brands have driving patents for autonomous vehicles
• The projected launch date for driverless card (for test or commercial purpose)
• Projected market penetration of autonomous cars in the UK
• SAE levels explained