Apple submitted a mysterious Bluetooth and NFC device for FCC approval

Why it matters to you

Could this filing be of a new smart home device? Or a Siri-enabled smart speaker?

Apple filed an unnamed wireless device with the Federal Communications Commission, marking the third time in recent memory that the company has done so. In fact, the model number for the mysterious device sits in at A1845, right in between the A1844 and A1846 model numbers spotted in an earlier filing.

So what is the unnamed device? Well, good question. The Cupertino, California-based company requested confidentiality for most of the documents in the filing, meaning that pretty much all we know is that a device exists. We do also know that the device has Bluetooth LE and NFC — but that is it. The model numbers included don’t allude to any other Apple devices already on offer.

More: The recipe for Apple Pie: How and why Apple is taking charge of its own cloud services

When the first filing was found, some speculated that it could relate to a new Apple TV — but the wiring guide included with the filing suggests that may not be the case. As MacRumors notes, it is perhaps more likely that the device is for internal use only, like iBeacon, which is used by Apple to communicate with OS devices. That, however, does not explain why it would want to keep the new product secretive.

It’s likely it will remain a mystery what the new device is until it is released and if it is for internal use we may never actually discover what Apple is putting together here. Still, we can dream — perhaps it is a Siri-enabled smart speaker. Or, could it be a new Wi-Fi router? Who knows, it could also represent a new attempt at entering the smart home world.

To see the mysterious listing for yourself, head over to the FCC website — although don’t expect to find out much about what could be an interesting new product.

Apple submitted a mysterious Bluetooth and NFC device for FCC approval

Why it matters to you

Could this filing be of a new smart home device? Or a Siri-enabled smart speaker?

Apple filed an unnamed wireless device with the Federal Communications Commission, marking the third time in recent memory that the company has done so. In fact, the model number for the mysterious device sits in at A1845, right in between the A1844 and A1846 model numbers spotted in an earlier filing.

So what is the unnamed device? Well, good question. The Cupertino, California-based company requested confidentiality for most of the documents in the filing, meaning that pretty much all we know is that a device exists. We do also know that the device has Bluetooth LE and NFC — but that is it. The model numbers included don’t allude to any other Apple devices already on offer.

More: The recipe for Apple Pie: How and why Apple is taking charge of its own cloud services

When the first filing was found, some speculated that it could relate to a new Apple TV — but the wiring guide included with the filing suggests that may not be the case. As MacRumors notes, it is perhaps more likely that the device is for internal use only, like iBeacon, which is used by Apple to communicate with OS devices. That, however, does not explain why it would want to keep the new product secretive.

It’s likely it will remain a mystery what the new device is until it is released and if it is for internal use we may never actually discover what Apple is putting together here. Still, we can dream — perhaps it is a Siri-enabled smart speaker. Or, could it be a new Wi-Fi router? Who knows, it could also represent a new attempt at entering the smart home world.

To see the mysterious listing for yourself, head over to the FCC website — although don’t expect to find out much about what could be an interesting new product.

Yahoo Mail gets a couple updates, including caller ID and photo syncing

Why it matters to you

Despite concerns over privacy and issues with outages, Yahoo Mail is still trying to win your business with a pair of new features.

Well, you can’t say Yahoo Mail isn’t trying. Despite data breaches, outages, and a whole slew of other problems facing Yahoo and its email service, the company is still looking to innovate and make nice with its users. The latest attempt comes in the form of an update to Yahoo Mail that will hopefully please the 225 million people who actively use the service every month. As of Monday, the Yahoo Mail app will behave as a file sharing service between your mobile device and desktop, and also ID your incoming calls.

First off, Yahoo comes with a new photo-upload feature that promises to bridge the gap between your phone and desktop, making for a more seamless photo sharing experience. Once users have enabled the feature, all recent camera roll photos will be made available on the desktop version of Yahoo Mail as well. And with Yahoo’s image recognition technology, you’ll also be able to search your photos in the sidebar with keywords — just type in “beach” and see all the pictures from your last trip to the Caribbean. You can enable this feature on your iPhone by heading over to Settings > Photo Upload, and tapping the “Upload photos” toggle.

More: The SEC opens an investigation into Yahoo regarding its data breaches

As for the Caller ID feature, Yahoo will extract information from your email contacts, supplementing data already found in your address book. “If you’re like most of our users, you have at least 200 phone numbers sitting in your email,” Yahoo notes, “Now, your contact’s name will surface with the call; and Yahoo Mail will update names in your call history or when you dial.”

In order to enable this feature on any iPhone running iOS 10 and above, just head over to Settings > Phone > Call Blocking & Identification, then toggle the switch for Yahoo Mail to the “on” position.

“With smarter contacts and better photo-sharing, we’re helping users take full advantage of their inbox,” company vice president for product management Michael Albers said in a blog post announcement. “They’ll never have to guess who’s calling or email themselves a photo again.”

Yet another chatbot may be on its way to Google’s Allo

Why it matters to you

Allo wasn’t just the debut of a new messaging app — it also introduced Google Assistant. It’s clear Google has big plans for the messaging service, and adding a growing roster of chatbots seems to be one of them.

Google Allo, the messaging app that doesn’t seem to have taken off the way the company hoped, is about to get its third chatbot — and this one’s geared towards group conversations.

Thanks to a teardown by Android Police that examined the upcoming version 6.0 update, Allo is getting a voting chatbot that lets groups vote on just about anything — such as a place to grab a bite. It’s unclear what the bot will be called, but it’s fairly straightforward in that it simply tallies the number of votes per option.

More: Google Allo’s second bot, Lucky, tosses GIFs into your conversations

Google recently added “Lucky,” a GIF-search chatbot that lets users search for a random GIF related to a specified subject. The new voting chatbot will be its third after Google Assistant — the first chatbot on the messaging service and the debut of the artificially intelligent bot.

If you “shout” an emoji — that is, use the send slider to make words, emojis, and stickers bigger — the emoji will animate it. It’s unclear whether this works with all emojis or just a certain subset. In addition to the standard pen, there are also two new drawing types — calligraphy and highlighter, in case you wanted to broaden your scribbling skills.

The version 6.0 update will also allow people to use Allo on Android Auto, making it the final Google messaging service to get support for the platform. It also fixes a bug with Android Wear notifications, though it doesn’t look like there’s an Allo app for the platform yet.

More: Google Fiber, AT&T Fiber turn Kentucky city into gigabit battleground

The update should be rolling out in the coming days for Android and iOS.

Oncologists will be able to walk through 3D tumors with new VR system

Why it matters to you

Developing 3D modelling tools for viewing cancerous tumors in virtual reality could help researchers, physicians, and patients alike.

Cutting-edge technology is always going to be exciting, but the point at which it becomes truly amazing is when it can be used to save people’s lives.

That is the goal of a new multi-million-dollar project set to kick off at Cancer Research U.K. Cambridge Institute this May. The project’s aim is to develop virtual reality and 3D visualization tools to help oncologists and other cancer researchers create and analyze 3D maps of (initially breast cancer) tumors.

More: A new study has fluorescent probes light up when they spot pancreatic cancer

“Pathologists take a very thin slice of a tumor, look at this flat object under a microscope, and then make judgments that affect the lives of patients,” researcher Greg Hannon, who will head up one part of the project, told Digital Trends. “We think that we can give them much more complete information by presenting these objects in much greater and with much richer information.”

The VR tools the team is developing will give researchers the ability to “walk into” virtual 3D tumors and analyze them in extreme detail — even down to the level of a cell’s particular genetic makeup. It will be useful as an educational tool, a way for surgeons to better get to grips with tumors, for doctors to visualize information for patients so that they feel more involved with the treatment process — just to name a few possible use-cases.

“I wasn’t very educated in [virtual reality when I started the project],” Hannon said. “Originally I was thinking about 3D projectors. I hadn’t paid too much attention to virtual reality and had no idea how far consumer model VR devices had come. Then I had a conversation with an app developer who sits on a grants committee that I’m a part of. I was telling him about the project and he told me how far VR had come in just the past two to three years. He suggested I get in touch with Owen Harris, a teacher, VR developer and game designer in Dublin, who we’ve ended up working with. That’s how the project really started.”

Despite the fact that the project’s not officially due to commence for another few months, Hannon said the team has already developed a “pretty highly functioning prototype” of the VR visualization system. There is still a lot more to do, though.

“The harder bit is generating the data that will go into this,” he said. “We’re measuring things that have never been measured before, on a scale that’s never been measured. We’re hoping to have a couple of data sets of 100,000 cells sometime in the coming year. But to make something like this useful you have to do thousands of tumor samples. I think that about three years from now we’ll really be able to start extracting interesting and meaningful information.”

Where to find used Android Wear watches

You can save a bunch of cash if you know where to look.

Android Wear 2.0 is here, and that means a lot of early adopters will be selling their perfectly fine watches to help fund a new one. Plenty of them will also be updated to Android Wear 2.0, so this is a good chance to score a new-to-you piece of Android for your wrist!

The trick is knowing where to look. I was poking around and saw random listings from pawn shops and local online classifieds from LA and New York and was definitely not impressed. Prices almost as high as brand new watches of the same model (a couple even higher!) and a few that look like they have been through a war.

Skip the pawn shops and check this out.

Swappa

Swappa is the Mecca of all things used and mobile, and that includes watches.

You’ll have a higher chance of finding exactly what you want because Swappa is the first place enthusiasts go when selling their gear as well as buying it. And the company individually screens every listing and offers buyer and seller protection programs. You can even get accident protection insurance through Swappa.

Swappa should be the first place you look if you’re wanting to buy a used Android Wear watch.

Download Swappa (free)

eBay

There are about a gazillion things for sale on eBay at any given moment. Including plenty of Android Wear watches!

Because eBay is an auction site, there’s a chance you’ll be able to find a really good deal. They have a full-featured Android app so you can keep track of your bids or try to snipe a watch right at the last minute, and eBay has a dedicated team to handle any disputes should you not get what you paid for or it’s not in the condition advertised.

Things can be a little tough to find on eBay when you’re looking for a specific product, but that can be an advantage, too. If it’s hard for you to find it’s hard for everyone else to find. That can keep bids low.

Download eBay (free)

Android Central’s forums

We have a dedicated forum for buying and selling, and there’s a good chance a member or two will be buying a new LG watch Sport because it ticks all their boxes and they’re also one of those early adopters we mentioned earlier.

Please note that we have pretty strict rules about what can be sold and how things can be listed, but we’re not a broker or anything of the sort. Use the search functions to check out other sales a person may have been involved in and use a payment method that has your back.

Visit the Android Central forums

Craigslist (and Kijiji)

Craigslist and Kijiji reach millions of people, including people in your area.

There are a lot of great deals to be found in these two classified giants. No matter where you live in the US or Canada, you have a local section in one or the other (and if you’re from any big city in Canada, both). It’s easy to sell almost anything through these companies, so a lot of people do it. But there’s a reason they are at the bottom of our list — they don’t have any type of buyer protections in place. You’re on your own, basically.

When buying from a local online seller, make sure you never send any money in advance and meet in person, in the daytime, in public. Bring a friend.

Very few people are on Craigslist or Kijiji to rip you off and you’ll hear lots of people happy with the phones or other electronics they got through them. But be smart.

Pro-tip: Be sure to check all the sections a smartwatch may end up in — jewelry, phones, miscellaneous and anything else you can think of. Something in the “wrong” section may have been sitting there a while and you can grab it even cheaper.

Visit Craigslist
Visit Kiijii

T-Mobile responds to Verizon’s unlimited plan by rolling back its dumbest changes

T-Mobile has seen Verizon’s unlimited, and raised it unlimited and one.

When T-Mobile introduced its T-Mobile One plan last year, the internet was divided between people who thought the ostensibly unlimited data was a courageous move for a cash-strapped carrier with a patchy LTE network and those who saw it for a violation of the tenets of net neutrality.

6/ Starting Fri, #TMobileONE price includes HD video & 10GB high-speed 📱hotspot data –all at no extra charge. AND taxes & fees are included!

— John Legere (@JohnLegere) February 13, 2017

Now, after Verizon’s surprisingly transparent (but slightly more pricey) foray back into the realm of unlimited, T-Mobile’s CEO John Legere took to Twitter (seemingly the platform of choice for putdown broadcasts) to denounce Big Red’s move as too little, too late. Legere said that as of Friday, February 17, T-Mobile One would expand its default functionality to include HD video streaming — previously $3 a day or $15 a month — as well as 10GB of tethering per month.

Also on the agenda was to undercut Verizon’s plan even more by offering a $100 all-in cost for two lines, well below Big Red’s $140 for the same number, though it’s unclear whether the discount is a permanent change to T-Mobile One. Prior to the announcement, lines cost $120, or $60 each.

This latest move comes after, at CES this past January, T-Mobile announced that it was lowering the costs of all of its plans by around 15% by including taxes and other fees in customers’ final bills, so the $70 seen in the advertised price is what the customer pays.

8/ And, how about a little promo to make it EVEN MORE compelling?! $100 for two lines on #TMobileONE ALL IN.

— John Legere (@JohnLegere) February 13, 2017

While T-Mobile’s move will certainly further spur competition in the U.S. telecom market, the reality is that the company took something very important away from its customers in the form of uncompressed video streaming, and is now returning it to them as a promotional feature. With the appointment of a FCC Chairman intent on dismantling net neutrality, it’s likely we’ll see more of these kinds of promotions in the future. In the meantime, T-Mobile One is now a little more customer-friendly and a little less expensive, which is always appreciated, especially when Open Signal just co-crowned it, along with Verizon, the best network in the U.S.

‘Final Fantasy XV’ is actually a cookbook

Food is pretty important in Final Fantasy XV — and it’s not just obvious Cup Noodle product placement either. Meals add to your vitality and strength, increase magical resistances and even offer the chance of more experience points to grow your team. They’re integral to your near-daily camp-outs, when you recover from battles and thumb through all the photos your bros took. Each dish has different benefits, and there are a lot of ways to learn new meals, from eating your way around the restaurants of the world of Eos, to buying cookbooks and even just being “inspired” by poetry and random ingredients (often monster body parts) you pick up along the way.

FFXV also attempts to offer some sort of regional differentiation in cuisine as you road-trip across states and towns. Some dishes are simply more elaborate twists on meals you’ve already eaten, but they’re nonetheless different, with different local fish or delicacies. But is it actually possible to cook such varied cuisine, from rice balls to delicate sweet pastries, on (Coleman-sponsored!) cooking equipment? I took my high-school home economics skills to my kitchen, to see how I stacked up against Ignis, the game’s designated cook. He’s a glasses-wearing, English-accented, car-driving butler type. And now my eternal rival.

I set a few simple guidelines: No microwaves or ovens. I would endeavor to cook with the same skills afforded to a camper. I would avoid anything instant (with one notable exception) and I would have to make it all from scratch (within reason, anyway). Naturally, I would be substituting my own ingredients for things that don’t exist. Behemoth tenderloin turns into beef. Because reality. While the (shocking) lack of an official FFXV cookbook persists, I took to the internet in search real-world recipes, and tried to make them.

I picked recipes that required some skill (I skipped toast and rice balls, for example), yet there are plenty of in-game meals that were impossible to cook on camping stoves and grills. Puff pastry is not camp friendly (I googled a lot), nor are any of the in-game sweet treats. Yes, it’s a game, and perhaps by investing far too much time in the recipes and their real-life iterations made me slightly humorless to the ridiculousness of it all. That said: I learned a new recipe I might cook outside the confines of editorial demands, and realized that nothing can truly upgrade the guilty pleasure of a Cup Noodle, at least not without feel like you wasted whatever you added. Here’s the tale of my culinary adventure.

Chapter One: Croque madame

Suggested ingredients: Gighee ham, Birdbeast egg
Real ingredients: Thick-cut ham, egg, bread, cheese, oil

The importance of food in FFXV is clearly communicated through the sheer amount of effort the team took to render each dish: It’s usually glistening and looks downright delicious, something I’ve never been able to say about in-game food. Look at that egg!

My first challenge is a successful one: The joy of a cheese and ham toastie with an egg on it is beautifully rendered in Final Fantasy XV — and my version looks pretty good too. The croque madame is a strong candidate for a kind-of-fancy camping meal. Although it does depend on carrying around fresh eggs and cheese, the sandwich is easy to cook on a stove. You might notice that the in-game shopping list (made of things you can either buy or find in FFXV) fell short of the experience of cooking the same dish in real life. Ignis’ recipes consist of a few ingredients and an idea. And a lot of filling in the gaps.

Chapter Two: Green curry soup

Suggested ingredients: Chickatrice leg, Allural shallot, sweet pepper
Real ingredients: Chicken thighs, onions, coconut milk, sweet red pepper, mushrooms, green curry paste, seasoning, chicken stock, oil, cilantro

There are around 103 dishes inside the game (ignoring the DLC extras that continue to roll out), but this recipe is something I’ve made for myself in the past, so I was confident. Again, the recipes of FFXV follow very, very loose guidelines. (How can you make a Thai curry without an aromatic paste and coconut milk?!) That said: The game’s iteration was arguably a better-looking one. While not even slightly green, mine tasted pretty great; it was a one-pan dish that was both tasty and easy to cobble together. I’m not sure if chickatrice would taste differently than chicken.

In-game dishes were made through combining existing food photography of the game’s recipes (or a dish that approximated them), with actually cooking them. As Eater details in their own deep-dive: The art department would plan out the dish’s ingredients and appearance, after which a different team took it outside, and tried to cook it on a camp stove — just like in the game. Realism! Dishes were photographed from multiple angles and even scanned to help ensure the digital dishes better approximated the real thing.

Chapter Three: “Mother and Child” rice bowl

Suggested ingredients: Chickatrice leg, Birdbeast egg, Saxham rice
Real ingredients: Chicken thighs, onions, egg, short-grain rice, soy sauce, mirin, cooking sake, chicken stock, brown sugar, oil

Ignis picks up how to make this one when he sees some woman chowing down on it mid-game. This inspires his own version. The creep. His chef skills “level up” the more dishes he makes, opening up more potent stat-boosting cuisine in the process and adding another reason to expand your tastes during the whole “battle with the empire, save your betrothed and avenge your father” thing. The food in FFXV might seem like it’s a distraction, but as you play further, the stat improvements and benefits often became necessary for big fights. This meant I was actively looking for more recipes and eating at every restaurant I could find in order to unearth stronger more potent dinners.

This is a classic Japanese home-cooked dish that I’ve always wanted to nail. And I did! The ingredients I listed above were all I needed to achieve a real depth of flavor with the chicken, eggs and rice. The rice wasn’t perfect, but then again, I rarely cook rice in a pan. I’m not a chef — yet. All told, this, too, was another realistic campside meal… if you were to carry around all the required Japanese seasonings.

Chapter Four: The perfect ‘Cup’

Suggested ingredients: Behemoth tenderloin, Cup Noodle
Real ingredients: Beef steak, Cup Noodle

Now we’re cooking. Later in the game, gratuitous product placements give way to a quest dedicated at crafting the ultimate Cup Noodle. Medium-rare Behemoth meat atop a mix of MSG, freeze-dried vegetable bits, noodles and other stuff.

I did this for my job. I also feared that this would be the worst-tasting menu item: a waste of steak and even of said legendary noodle snack.

However, while I wouldn’t call it a glorious taste fusion, it kind of worked. The black pepper I added to the steak kept the two disparate foodstuffs together, and the steak managed to leach some juicy flavors into the latter half of my cup. It’s not perfect, but it was edible. Maybe even better than a standard Cup Noodle. Perhaps.

But there was no way I could photograph my attempt to appear even close to appetizing. The game’s version didn’t exactly look like fine dining either. I can assure you that it tasted better than it looked. And I’m sorry you had to see that.

Trump didn’t restrict public phone use near classified info

Hillary Clinton caught plenty of flak for the security risks involved with her private email server, but President Trump is raising a lot of eyebrows as well. When the Commander-in-Chief received word of North Korea firing a test missile, he started discussing classified info with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe right at his Mar-a-Lago Club dinner table — and did nothing to curtail phone use by guests. Club member Richard DeAgazio took photos of not only the discussion, but the man holding the “nuclear football” briefcase used to remotely authorize nuclear attacks. And did we mention that aides used their phone flashes to illuminate the sensitive documents? DeAgazio has since deleted the Facebook posts containing the shots, but the damage was already done by that point.

While the primary issue is that Trump discussed classified data in front of guests and staff, the unfettered phone use only exacerbates the situation. Even though it wasn’t likely that someone would snap a high-quality photo of the documents in question, it was entirely possible that people nearby could have recorded audio or video that picked up on vital details. What if a guest got a little too curious and caught word of something important? And hostile governments wouldn’t have to necessarily send a spy. As we’ve recently seen, they could just infect a guest’s phone with spyware to record footage without anyone being the wiser. After all, a private Mar-a-Lago member doesn’t have to go through a strict background check or otherwise adhere to government security standards.

This isn’t completely shocking when Trump still insists on using his old Galaxy S III despite concerns about the handset’s vulnerabilities. However, the laissez-faire approach at the dinner goes against both common security practices and what previous Presidents have done. When President Obama got word of an airstrike in Libya at a White House Correspondents Dinner, for example, he left the room to keep the discussion secret. If less-than-sympathetic nations know that the President will discuss classified info within earshot of unsecured smartphones, they may target those phone owners as part of an eavesdropping campaign — or just hope that someone posts national secrets on their own.

For the low-low price of $200,000 and no background check you too can live-stream a military crisis meeting. pic.twitter.com/vNd8Jo7Bq5

— Rogue Rogue One Acct (@ZeddRebel) February 13, 2017

Mar-a-Lago member who pays Trump hundreds of thousands of dollars posts pics of – and identifies – US official carrying nuclear football. pic.twitter.com/oyAfY0E9Fj

— Samuel Oakford (@samueloakford) February 13, 2017

Source: Washington Post, ZeddRebel (Twitter), Samuel Oakford (Twitter)

A ‘Costume Quest’ animated series is coming to Amazon Video

One of Amazon’s upcoming original kids series should be very familiar to fans of a certain Double Fine title. The online retailer announced today that a Costume Quest animated children’s series based on the popular video games will debut in 2018. Will McRobb of The Adventures of Pete and Pete fame will serve as executive producer while Frederator Studios (Adventure Time, The Fairly Odd Parents) will produce the show.

Amazon says the show will be targeted at the 6-11 age range, but we’re sure grown-ups will enjoy watching, too. The animated series follows four kids as they battle dark forces in the town of Auburn Pines. To do so, they’ll need to beat obstacles and master the powers of supernormal costumes. When the time comes to stream Costume Quest, you’ll need a Prime Video subscription to do so. Thanks to Amazon’s standalone option, you won’t have to commit to a year-long membership to get access to the streaming library.

Via: Polygon

Source: Amazon