Carriers compete: Sprint launches unlimited deal after Verizon, AT&T do

Why it matters to you

Sprint is giving you another option by slashing the prices of its own unlimited deals to keep pace with T-Mobile and Verizon.

When carriers compete, you win. Verizon’s recent reintroduction of its unlimited data plan has set off a feeding frenzy of sorts among the big four cell phone service providers, all to your benefit. The latest company to unveil a brand new unlimited deal is Sprint, who on Thursday announced a plan that promises to be 50 percent of the cost of Verizon and AT&T unlimited rates. At $22.50 a line, the company is calling the offer its best ever and it includes HD-quality video, 10GB mobile hotspot per line, and an iPhone 7 lease.

That’s right — if you switch to take advantage of this new deal, Sprint will let you lease the new iPhone 7 for $0 monthly payments for 18 months. “Only Sprint can offer the best price for unlimited — 50 percent off Verizon and AT&T unlimited plans — and a network that can handle the data demands to meet customers’ needs,” said Marcelo Claure, Sprint president and CEO. He continued, “Our unmatched spectrum position gives us a clear competitive advantage in a high-capacity unlimited world.”

More: T-Mobile undercuts Verizon’s unlimited plan, throws in HD video for good measure

We should point out that in order to secure the price of $22.50 per line, you will need to activate a total of four lines. When you sign up for Unlimited Talk, Text and Data with Sprint AutoPay, you will receive your first line for $50 a month. Two lines will set you back $90 a month, and the addition of your third and fourth lines come at no extra cost. That means that ultimately, a family of four would pay $22.50 for each line a month.

Even if Sprint gets an influx of customers from its new offer, the network isn’t worried about handling the uptick in data consumption. “With more than 160MHz of 2.5GHz spectrum in the top 100 U.S. markets, Sprint has more spectrum than any other carrier across the nation,” the company noted in a release. “This is a tremendous advantage, allowing Sprint to keep adding the capacity and speed needed to serve its customers’ increasing demand for unlimited data.”

‘Injustice 2’ is coming to mobile, and it’s bringing a new combat system with it

Why it matters to you

If you don’t have an Xbox One or PS4, you’ll still be able to punch superheroes in the face when Injustice 2 launches in May.

Superhero brawling is making its way back to mobile with Injustice 2, the sequel to the hit beat ’em up, Injustice: Gods Among Us. Alongside the main game’s release on the PS4 and Xbox One, the mobile release is bringing with it a full roster of characters, new features and game modes, and — most importantly — a fully revamped combat system.

Announced by Mortal Kombat co-creator and NetherRealm creative director Ed Boon, it looks like much of what will appear on the PS4 and Xbox One when Injustice debuts in May will also show up on the mobile version.

Yes #Injustice2 is coming to mobile! Brand new app with tons of new features, modes & all new combat system! More info soon! pic.twitter.com/C1GLWXhOgK

— Ed Boon (@noobde) February 15, 2017

Unfortunately, official details about how the game may differ from the console version and the original Injustice on mobile remain nearly nonexistent.

Character-wise however, we can make some claims about inclusions. In the screengrabs Boon showed in the Tweet, we see a number of characters, including multiple versions of Superman and Batman, Green Lantern, Catwoman and Deadshot, as well as roster listings for Wonder Woman, Harley Quinn, Gorilla Grodd, and a character portrait of The Flash.

We’re told that the main game will have the biggest roster of characters of any DC beat ’em up ever, so it seems likely that the mobile version will also have more characters than before.

More: ‘Injustice 2’: News, rumors, and everything we know

Other details we can infer from the screengrabs include energy and currency mechanics that are similar to the original game, and battle sequences that have the ability to pause or fast forward.

Boon has promised more details soon, and with the main Injustice 2 game coming as soon as May 16, we won’t have long to wait until both iterations are available to play.

Trends with Benefits: Elon Musk is boring a hole under LA, would you take a pilot-less flying taxi?

Pilot-less Flying Taxis: If you head to Dubai this summer, you could be one of the few people to actually try out a flying pilot-less taxi. The 184 has one passenger, eight propellers, four arms and NO pilot. Would you be willing to go for a ride?

Boring Company: Elon Musk posted on Twitter in December that he was tired of sitting in traffic and said he wanted to bore a hole under the freeways to alleviate it. It looks like he was serious, because he is now drilling test holes in the SpaceX parking lot!

Each week, we gather a round table of tech experts from the Digital Trends staff, along with the occasional celebrity guest, to discuss all things tech. Topics range from the big tech stories of the week to predicting the future, all while maintaining a somewhat civil decorum.

At 2:45 pm Pacific we answer your questions live.

Please subscribe and share Trends with Benefits and send in your questions to podcast@digitaltrends.com. We also broadcast the show live on YouTube every Thursday at 2:30 p.m. Pacific.

Maximize your workouts with the Wahoo Tickr X Heart Rate Monitor ($20 off)

Sometimes the best workout trackers are not the ones you wear on your wrist. Others that attach to other places in your body can get better readings, especially when it comes to measuring heart rate, which gives you more accurate data and better insights into your workouts. The best of these non-wrist wearables that are smartly designed, will be compatible with your favorite fitness apps, such as the Wahoo Tickr X Heart Rate Monitor and Workout Tracker, currently discounted by 20 percent and available for $80 on Amazon.

More: The Best Fitness Trackers You Can Buy

The Wahoo Tickr X captures both motion and intensity to ensure you get the most effective workouts. With the companion Wahoo Run/Fit App, the workout wearable measures heart rate, training zones, calorie burn, running form metrics, and indoor run and spin cadence. Especially useful for runners, it tracks various other indicators of running form like vertical oscillation, cadence, and ground contact time. Additionally, the treadmill mode tracks distance and speed when you’re running indoors. To save you time, you can pair the TICKR X with the Wahoo Seven Minute Workout App and get a high-intensity circuit workout, with automatic rep counting, and personal record tracking.

Complete with built-in memory, the wearable allows you the freedom to train without a phone. The device will still capture valuable performance metrics and then syncs them to your phone later. The most advanced model in the line of Wahoo Tickr devices, the activity tracker can deliver vibrational alerts and is both sweat and waterproof.

Best of all, the fitness tracker is compatible with third-party apps and other devices. The Wahoo Tickr Xis both iOS and Android compatible and works flawlessly with more than 50 Smartphone Apps including Nike+ Running, MapMyFitness, Runkeeper, Strava, Apple Health, and Cyclemeter/Runmeter. With both ANT+ and Bluetooth 4.0 capabilities the tracker easily connects to GPS watches (including Apple Watches), iPhone 4S and later models, and Android devices with Android 4.3 or newer operating systems.

The Wahoo Tickr X Heart Rate Monitor and Workout Tracker normally retails for $100 but is currently marked down to $80 on Amazon, giving you a $20 or 20 percent discount.

$80 on Amazon

Valley that shows signs of flooding may be key to identifying past life on Mars

Why it matters to you

Sites like a small valley on Mars that shows signs of past flooding may hold the key to discovering that we are not alone in this universe.

Mars has a new hot spot for exploration, according to a team of researchers who’ve identified a region that shows signs it was once flooded with water. The region may offer a prime spot to explore  for signs of past life on the red planet.

“The site on Mars that we have examined is located on the floor of a small valley that was eroded by flowing water,” Mary Bourke, a Trinity College, Dublin researcher who co-led the team that made the discovery, told Digital Trends. Along with her colleague, Heather Viles, from the University of Oxford, Bourke published a paper detailing her findings in the journal Geophysical Research Letters this week.

More: Spiders on Mars? Citizen scientists help NASA spot the strange formations

“For the topic of our paper, there is an additional geomorphological signature, and that is the layers of sediments on that valley floor that are visible between the aeolian (windblown) dunes that now occupy the valley,” Bourke said. “Those sediments are arranged in such a way that they suggest they are traces of dunes that have migrated down the valley. There are only a limited number of ways in which those sediments could be present, and they all involve the presence of water.”

To make these observations, the researchers used high -esolution satellite data, which allowed them to identify small-scale landforms that resembled features seen in satellite images of Namibia here on Earth. “We were able to visit the site in Namibia to help us test our theory about the Martian features,” Bourke said.

“We are interested in this in terms of the aeolian geomorphology,” Bourke said, “but perhaps also as a potential new site for those planning Mars missions, where habitable conditions were met on Mars.”

Moving forward, Bourke and Viles will continue to research how water helped construct Martian landforms while studying analogous sites in Namibia, Antarctica, and Australia.

Cory Doctorow still believes technology can save us from ourselves

Cory Doctorow’s first novel for adults in over eight years is a noodle-bender of the first order. Walkaway, publishing from Tor on April 25th, envisions a future just around the corner where humans have screwed up the environment and the ultra-rich (called “Zottas” by the plebian majority) continue to screw over everyone else—sound familiar?

But then something new happens. In a world populated by drones, makers, 3d-printed food and other mundane miracles, society enters a new phase, which the author coins “post-scarcity.” If you didn’t have to work, what would you do? For the characters caught up in Doctorow’s fascinating sci-fi epic, they choose to walk away, creating their own societies in the ashes of the old world. In an early review, Kirkus Reviews calls it, “A truly visionary techno-thriller that not only depicts how we might live tomorrow, but asks why we don’t already.”

Doctorow, of course, is no stranger to the advantages and perils of technology. In addition to his primary career as the author of bestsellers like Little Brother, Pirate Cinema and Rapture of the Nerds (with Charles Stross), the author continues to co-edit the website Boing Boing (a Digital Trends partner), promote the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and generally startle his legions of fans with his ever-spiraling thoughts on futurism. This latest novel had very contemporary inspirations; Doctorow’s latest brainstorm was inspired by Rebecca Solnit’s A Paradise Built in Hell, which focuses on the emergence of altruism in the face of disaster.

More: Boing Boing beats FBI subpoena for Tor exit mode

We caught up with Doctorow at his home base in Los Angeles to see why he thinks the future isn’t dystopia, but utopia.

“Well, I enjoy a disaster story where everyone turns into a cannibalistic extra from Mad Max as soon as the electricity falls as the next guy, but those stories have also kind of been a guilty pleasure,” Doctorow told Digital Trends. “The attraction of those stories—from The Road to Escape From New York—is always that there’s a core of good people who are facing down the selfish, the mean, the violent—and they’re also usually very class and race-based in their good guy/bad guy splits. As Mr. Rogers told us, when thinks go wrong, you ‘look for the helpers.’ Rebecca Solnit made it all click for me: pretty much everyone is a ‘helper,’ but we’re so worried that the other people lack our virtue that we have this huge trust deficit.”

Technology in times of disaster

The book is also unique in that it uses real technology, ranging from drone applications to advances in bio-hacking, to imagine a world in which refugees from traditional societies employ advanced tech to make a better world—not just for themselves, but for everyone.

Today, you only ‘rent beer,’ but in the future, beer might be ‘free as in beer.’

“I wanted to write a story about how technology can be used in times of disaster to let us work together,” Doctorow explains. “The Internet has given us a lot of high-profile flame wars and trolling and such, but the Internet is primarily used by most of us to be kind to other people, strangers and loved ones alike. Writing a story about how we might consciously craft technology to give society a graceful failure mode where we use it as connective tissue to tie together our collective rebuilding seems to me to be a way to counter the kind of weaponized narrative about humanity’s fundamental evilness that carried the last presidential election.”

Changing pee into beer?

Sure, the drones and mechs and bio-identification tools in the book might seem like something out of Blade Runner or Minority Report but the book’s technological flourishes are often subtle, like the beer the walkaways make daily from ditch water. It might not be water into wine but it’s awfully close, not to mention absolutely possible. Doctorow explains his thinking.

Jonathan Worth

“I’ve been interested in the CRISPR / synth bio revolution,” he says. “Hacking single-celled organisms has been job one since we invented beer and started saving the best starter cultures, and then up through the antibiotic revolution. Since life self-reproduces, synth bio has had to contend with two nightmare scenarios: out-of-control, pathogenic reproduction of a transgenic organism that is hostile to life, and out-of-control, useful production of a proprietary organism that threatens the profits of the firm that makes it. These twin risks make synthetic life into something deeply subversive and full of rich story potential. So I posited that in the future, some fun-loving CRISPR commie could Napsterize beer by including a transgenic yeast that survived the mash, passing out of your body alive and ready to reproduce if you gave it a ‘Jesus microbe’ precursor that brought it back to life. Today, you only ‘rent beer,’ but in the future, beer might be ‘free as in beer.’ Just save your pee, add the precursor, and drink up. This also has a nice spin on the traditional apocalyptic fear-scenario of a world where we’re so desperate we might drink our own urine.”

Rethinking refugee technology

In the wake of the recent Executive Orders impacting refugees, Doctorow’s sci-fi novel is also disturbingly prescient in its portrayal of refugees caught up in an unprovoked war with society’s so-called elite.

“I’m very interested in ‘refugee tech,’ because it’s a strange market with tens of millions of ‘customers,’ often with a lot of time on their hands, who are continuously refining and tweaking designs,” says Doctorow. “It helps that refugees come from every background from medical professionals to teachers to hoteliers, etc., creating these ghastly interdisciplinary labs that combine the traditional ingenuity of prisoners with a kind of idiosyncratic, open-ended access to materials that is partly governed by capricious multi-stakeholder agencies and police forces.”

In a world populated by drones, makers, 3d-printed food and other mundane miracles, society enters a new phase, which the author coins “post-scarcity.”

Essentially, the author is arguing that the kinds of sub-cultures portrayed in Walkaway exist today; they just don’t have access to the kind of organizational aptitude or technologies to help make their lives better. Doctorow has just extended the argument.

“Integrating refugee tech into a utopian society of economic refuseniks who become a kind of voluntary refugee population let me think about how the RVs in Wal-Mart parking lots, the semi-permanent homeless camps, makerspaces, co-working spaces, and refugee camps are all coming at the same problem from different angles,” he explains. “It let me consider the peacetime uses of these technologies, to create beautiful, luxurious, cooperative spaces that serve as home, restaurant and political hubs.”

How to see the future

Like contemporaries such as Warren Ellis and Neal Stephenson, Doctorow is often portrayed as a visionary who is one step ahead of the rest of us, but the author says it often has more to do with timing than precognition.

“I’ve always written science fiction where some of the technology is stuff that is just finding its way up the Gartner hype cycle—if you’re watching that nascent stuff, you can write about it as though you made it up, and posit a thought-experiment in which it’s a big deal,” he says. “Since the hype cycle includes the peak of inflated expectations where a technology is suddenly everywhere, you often get praised for your ‘prophecy’ when the tech peaks later.”

The world of Walkaway is a fascinating  scenario, and one that has a lot of interesting things to say about a post-scarcity world.

“Post-scarcity is a funny thing,” Doctorow admits. “ Keynes thought we’d all be working three-hour days by now, and yet we work longer hours than ever. The Internet gave us a way to have all the creations of the human intellect at our fingertips, and we sued the hell out of it. First it was the record companies and then the pornographers and then the legit movie studios, and these days, it’s the scientific publishers. So the problems of ‘post-scarcity’ are all around us and they’re real and terrifying and wonderful. Writing about it is a great way to get to grips with the contemporary reality that is unfolding around us.”

A Columbia University startup wants to take wireless charging mainstream

Why it matters to you

The MotherBox allows you to rid yourself of charging your phone from an outlet.

Wireless electricity of the sort envisioned by Nikola Tesla seems to be the charging ideal which the world is striving toward. Who wouldn’t, after all, love to be able to plop down their smartphone without having to plug it into a wall socket, set it on a charging pad, or dig for the appropriate cable? Given the acute lack of such chargers on the market, you would be forgiven for dismissing true wireless charging as a pipe dream. But thanks to bright minds at Columbia University, the dream is closer to reality than you think.

Yank Technologies, a startup headquartered in Columbia University’s startup lab, developed a router-like wireless charger, the MotherBox, capable of delivering power at a distance to multiple devices simultaneously. It works without wires, a charging pad, or a dock, and doesn’t require a physical connection between the charger and smartphone. Charging takes place entirely over the air.

More: Ossia Cota can wirelessly charge electronic devices throughout your home

The MotherBox is simple to use. Once a receiver is attached to an Android device, iPhone, or another compatible smartphone, charging begins. The closer the devices are to the charging pad, the faster they charge. And from there, users can move around the MotherBox at will — the transmitter automatically compensates for obstructions. A companion smartphone app lets users customize the rate of charging and serves push notifications when connected devices begin to run low on battery.

The MotherBox and smaller MotherBox, the MotherBox mini, have ranges of up to 20 feet and 10 feet. The MotherBox mini must be connected to an outlet, while the MotherBox Mini packs a rechargeable battery that can be used on the go. Both ship with a USB cable and receiver.

The MotherBox team, helmed by Yanka and chief engineer Jin Li, has successfully completed a MotherBox hardware prototype with proprietary software, firmware, and algorithms. They are launching on Indiegogo with a $25,000 funding goal and offering early backers a discounted purchase price of $79.

More: Remote wireless charging for your smartphone could be closer than you think

Yank Technologies is not the only wireless startup attempting to make a splash. Energous’ WattUp technology enables wireless charging in various forms, including small, short-throw charging dock, a medium-distance desktop option and a long-throw base station that can beam energy from up to 15 feet in any direction. Ossia’s Cota technology can transmit power to dozens of devices simultaneously. And TechNovator’s XE base station can power a smartphone as far as 17 feet away.

But despite the competition, the MotherBox team is forging bravely ahead. “Technology today is like a sexy Ferrari that’s really low on gas. It’s beautiful and amazing, but limited in reaching its true potential. It doesn’t have to be this way,” Josh Yank, CEO of Yank Technologies, said in a press release. “We’re excited to finally showcase The MotherBox and help build the foundation for wire-free charging solutions in the years to come.”

Reinstall Windows 10 (and fix your problems) with these quick steps

Whether you’re trying to fix a serious update problem, get rid of a virus, or prepare to give away your PC, you may eventually need to reinstall some iteration of Windows 10. This can be a little confusing for newcomers since there are several ways to reinstall Windows, each of which comes with its own set of benefits. So let’s take a look at the best reinstallation options, and how to get there!

More: Windows Update just not updating? Here’s how to give it a swift kick

Backing up your data

Please, please do this. Windows 10 even makes it easy, so you don’t need to search for an additional backup tool. Just follow the basic File History steps below!

Step 1: Type “Update & Security” into the search box, or head to Settings and look for Update & Security. Once there, select the Backup option in the side bar, which will take you to your File History.

Step 2: You will see an on-off indicator in this window. If it’s on, that means File History has been automatically backing up your files — including contacts, desktop files, and files housed in your OneDrive folder — and you probably don’t have to worry. The feature will back up your libraries as well, but it may not back up all general folders, so put valuable folders into a library to save them as necessary.

Step 3: If your File History tool is not on, then create any libraries that you need to, and switch the tool on with the slider. This will immediately prompt the feature to begin creating backups. Depending on how much data you have, this can take some time, so get busy with something else and wait for the backup process to finish.

Of course, if you prefer to transfer everything to an external drive or utilize a cloud service for your backups, please do so! Whichever approach you choose, make sure nothing valuable can be lost.

Want to be a music video star? Maroon 5 lets you add yourself to its latest clip

Why it matters to you

Maroon 5 is giving its fans a shot at their very own 15 seconds of fame by letting them use their cell phones to put themselves in the group’s music video for the new single Cold.

If you’ve ever wanted to see yourself in a music video, you now have the chance. Thanks to a partnership with shared media platform Vivoom, fans of pop group Maroon 5 can to use their cell phones to put themselves in the group’s music video for the new single Cold. 

Using your phone’s camera, you can record a 15-second video of yourself by visiting the group’s website and tapping on the create button. You can then choose to film yourself on the spot or upload a video from your phone that will be cut down to 15 seconds. You can preview the video before you upload it.

More: MTV made music videos cool. Technology will make them epic

Your 15-second video is shown in three parts throughout a 25 -econd portion of Maroon 5’s Cold music video. You can be seen floating in the background of a trippy dance floor scene. At one point, a mirror image of the video you shot is beneath it as the camera twists and turns.

Once you are done watching your addition to the music video, you have an option to share a link to the video on Facebook and Twitter. You can also email and text the link to your friends. Unfortunately, you can not save your momentary experience as a music video extra directly onto your phone.

Cold is the second single from Maroon 5’s upcoming sixth studio album. The video debuted online following the band’s performance on Ellen on Wednesday. After the performance, fans were able to play around with Maroon 5 and Vivoom’s collaboration and insert themselves into the newly released music video.

Artists have been experimenting with new ways to share their latest music videos with fans. Earlier this month, Grammy Award-winner Chance the Rapper debuted his music video for his song Same Drugs on Facebook Live. More than 30,000 people watched the live-stream of his prerecorded music video.

Smart software starts your wipers when it predicts you’ll get splashed

Why it matters to you

Virtually every driver has had the scary experience of having their windshield obscured by a sudden splash of water. This smart wiper tech wants to solve that problem.

Car rain sensors are smart things. The most common ones work using an infrared beam that is directed onto the windshield from inside the car. When the glass is wet, less light is bounced back to the sensor, which triggers the wipers turning on.

However, they don’t work in every scenario.

“Most of us have experienced that scary moment when you’re trying to overtake a heavy truck on the highway under wet conditions,” Magnus Carlsson, head of autonomous driving at Swedish tech product development company Semcon, told Digital Trends. “When that happens, you sometimes get a splash on your windscreen, and it obscures your vision for a period of time. That’s something today’s car rain sensors can’t do anything about. They only act when they detect there’s water already on the windshield.”

More: Amazon’s latest patent reveals its own take on autonomous car technology

What Semcon has developed is a new piece of software for windshield wipers called ProActive Wipers (PAW). Using the camera, radar and rain sensors built into most modern cars, it figures out when large vehicles present a risk for sudden water splashes and gets your wipers ready. The camera detects possible threats and the radar figures out proximity, with the combined information then switching your wipers to maximum speed in advance.

The result? No more terrifying moment of blindness when your windshield is obscured by water.

“If it’s raining hard already, it’s not such a problem because you have the wipers activated,” Carlsson, who invented the technology, continued. “The best use-case for this would be if it’s been raining and isn’t anymore, or it’s raining slightly, but the road is still very wet. That’s when you can run into problems.”

The feature has already been evaluated under real conditions and the software could easily be implemented in today’s cars — provided a company is interested in adopting the smart tech. You’re unlikely to see this technology arrive for at least the next year, but it’s a feature we eagerly anticipate.

In the meantime, we’ll make sure to drive extra vigilantly on wet days.