Galaxy S8 ‘eyewitness renders’ show new edge displays and that weird fingerprint sensor location we all already hate

Is this the Samsung Galaxy S8?

The Galaxy S8 isn’t yet official, but we’re learning more and more about what it will look like, and design decisions — for better or worse — Samsung has made.

The latest comes from CNET Korea which has procured a Galaxy S8 “eyewitness” who helped them create renders of the upcoming phone. There are several key differences here that others who claim to have seen it or have seen the parts that will be used to make it tell us. One on each side, in fact.

This is a render. This is not something that came from Samsung. There is no way to know if this is anything more than a figment of someone’s imagination or an elaborate hoax. But a lot of people are going to be hoping it’s real because the edge displays that we all hate love saw on other leaks are drastically different. They’re still edgy, but not Galaxy S7 edge style edgy and don’t appear to wrap around the actual sides of the phone.

The renders and person who helped create them still say the fingerprint sensor is in that weird, almost unusable spot next to the camera, and the buttons are all virtual. Toss in a headphone jack for good measure, too.

If this is the Galaxy S8, is it what we’re looking for? Comments are open so have at it!

AT&T’s Indigo network upgrades will bring 5G to Austin and Indianapolis in coming months

Indigo is AT&T’s network for today, and tomorrow.

AT&T has announced some details of their new 3.0 network upgrades, dubbed “Indigo”, at a wireless industry event in San Francisco.

The highlight from a consumer angle is the news that they are in the process of expanding their 5G network from its current testbed in Austin, Texas to a live implementation with consumer access in Austin and Indianapolis, Indiana in the coming months. Additionally, they are building out two new 5G testbeds for AT&T labs in Austin to further test fixed wireless 5G connections and signal coverage for the 28GHz, 39GHz, and sub-6GHz frequency bands.

The initial network speeds for the new 5G locations will be a theoretical 400 Mbps, that will eventually incorporate carrier aggregation and LTE-License Assisted Access to enable theoretical peak speeds up to 1Gbps in some areas in 2017.

“We see Indigo as the third generation of modern networking,” said John Donovan, chief strategy officer, and group president, Technology and Operations. “Indigo is our term for a world where it isn’t just your connection speeds that are accelerating, but every element of the network becomes more seamless, efficient and capable. It is a living, evolving, upgradeable platform. Think of Indigo like the operating system on your phone. We’re taking that model to the network.”

But 5G isn’t the only big change for Indigo. AT&T plans to extend their Software-Defined-Networking (their brand of network virtualization) to cover 55% percent of the customer base. Today, 35% of the network has been converted to SDN and the future goals are to have 75% of it converted by 2020.

Powering it all is ECOMP. ECOMP is a computing platform specially designed to handle the needs of a stressful environment like a virtualized data network, and starting today ECOMP is now part of a larger open-source project in collaboration with the Linux Foundation. We’re to learn more from the Linux Foundation in the coming weeks.

We also learned more about AT&T’s push to build a trusted network where confidential data can be shared and doctors, hospitals, and other healthcare facilities can collaborate while keeping patient records safe and HIPPA compliant. This opens the door for remote testing and clinical trials and could speed research to fight disease. We’ve already seen a 5G network go live in Australia and chips from Qualcomm that can use it, so this is something happening now, not years from now.

There’s a lot of future thinking here. A virtualized 5G network is how AT&T envisions what’s next, and seeing important changes in the way the network is built for both better management and user privacy is encouraging. When 5G becomes common, it would be nice to see it future-proof even if only for a short time.

Can Boston Dynamics’ new wheeled robot look any creepier?

Google-owned Boston Dynamics makes several bipedal and quadrupedal robots, most of which look really creepy.

Don’t believe us? See this one and this one and this one. Oh, and look at the robot above too. The company apparently has been testing wheel technology lately, as it recently showed off a new wheeled, upright robot to investors. The robot is named Handle, because it can “handle objects”. Get it? Anyway, it basically looks like Boston Dynamics strapped its two-legged Atlas bot to a Segway

In the presentation, which was filmed and posted to YouTube by a venture capitalist, company founder Marc Raibert said wheels are more efficient than legs, though they have more trouble traversing uneven ground. He described Handle as an “experiment in combining wheels with legs, with a very dynamic system that is balancing itself all the time and has a lot of knowledge of how to throw its weight around”.

• 25 real-life robots that’ll make you think the future is now

Raibert also called Handle “a nightmare-inducing robot”. Like many of Boston Dynamics’s creations, it’s horrifying to watch. Handle can quickly glide around, lift different, heavy objects in warehouse-like situations, and frighten the heck out of people.

Here’s to hoping that robots of the future look a little more humanoid before they end up in our homes. Imagine how scary it would be to wake up and see this thing lingering in your bedroom at 2 am.

(Note: Jump to 3:45 in the video.)

March for Science set for April 22nd

That hoped-for protest against President Trump’s anti-science policies? It’s on. The newly-named March for Science is now slated to take place on April 22nd — appropriately, Earth Day — in both Washington, DC and satellite protests worldwide. The demonstrations will primarily voice opposition to gag orders, funding freezes and other White House attempts to censor climate change science, but it also represents a broader call for politicians to make decisions based on evidence, rather than ideology or corporate agendas.

If you’re interested, you can register for updates in your corner of the world. The protest’s financial sponsor, ScienceDebate.org, is also accepting donations to help fund the cause. Will people turn out in numbers large enough to compare to earlier protests? Not necessarily, but it’s clear that the March for Science is gathering momentum.

Via: March for Science (Twitter)

Source: March for Science

Nintendo will charge under $30 for Switch multiplayer in Japan

When Nintendo announced that the Switch would have a more robust online multiplayer network than previous consoles, fans were split. The new console’s online service promised voice chat and online multiplayer, but like Xbox Live Gold and PlayStation Plus, it was going to cost an annual fee. Fans worried Nintendo wouldn’t provide enough value to warrant the price of entry can breathe easy — Nintendo president Tatsumi Kimishima says the new console’s online features will cost less than a new 3DS game.

Speaking with Japanese newspaper Nikkei, Kimishima said Nintendo Online Services’ annual fee would be somewhere between 2,000 and 3,000 yen, less than $20 to $30 at current exchange rates. That’s less than half of what it costs to snag a year of Xbox Live or PlayStation Plus. That feels about right, reflecting the limits of Nintendo Online Services’ offerings compared to its competitors. Specifically, the lower price softens the blow of the time limit Nintendo has placed on the service’s free monthly games — instead of lasting for the duration of the player’s subscription, as with Xbox Live and PlayStation Plus’ monthly giveaways, Nintendo’s subscription games will expire after just one month.

Kimishima also confirmed that Nintendo is considering adding a VR headset to the Switch’s repertoire, echoing a patent the company filed last year. “If we are able to resolve the issues with playing VR comfortably for long hours, we will support it in one form or another,” he said. Still, don’t get too excited — Nintendo has been down this road before.

Source: Nikkei

New York sues Charter over slow internet speeds

There’s no question that many American internet providers fall short of expectations, but New York might just hold them accountable for making promises they don’t keep. In the wake of a probe that revealed terrible broadband speeds, the state has sued Charter over claims that the cable giant’s Spectrum badge (formerly Time Warner Cable) misled customers over the performance they’d get. Subscribers who paid for premium plans (100Mbps and beyond) from 2012 onward frequently got speeds up to 70 percent slower than advertised — so pokey that they didn’t even meet the performance of less expensive tiers. And if you believe investigators, this was very intentional.

The Attorney General’s office reports that executives were aware the cable network couldn’t reach promised speeds. They were aware of and even created bottlenecks at interconnection points, according to the complaints. Execs also “repeatedly” decided against upgrading either the network or users’ cable modems, even though Spectrum/Time Warner Cable was raking in “billions of dollars” in profits.

We’ve reached out to Charter for comment, but it already tells Reuters that it’s preparing to defend against the lawsuit and insists that it will “continue to invest” in its services. It’s not hard to see why the company would fight the case, regardless of its merits. New York reckons that the compensation for subscribers could run into the “hundreds of millions” of dollars, and it would likely demand that Charter upgrade its infrastructure to make sure customers get what they pay for. All told, it could easily spend billions — arguably an overdue investment, but an expensive one nonetheless.

Source: New York Attorney General

The latest Boston Dynamics robot will roll its way into your nightmares

Remember the movie Xanadu about a Greek muse that comes to earth and rollerskates into everyone’s heart? The leaked footage of Boston Dynamics’ two-wheeled robot Handle is sort of like that. Except replace the movie’s disco soundtrack with the screams of frightened humans.

The two-wheeled “Handle” robot was presented by Boston Dynamics’ founder Marc Raibert at a function attended by venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson who shot the video. During the event Railbert said that the rolling humanoid was built to carry items (hence the name Handle) and is an experiment in combining wheels with legs.

He also said it’s more efficient than and could be less expensive than the Atlas walking robot. Of course it would be limited to smooth surfaces.

The footage (which Boston Dynamics asked Jurvetson to blur but has since been mirrored by other accounts) shows the Handle spinning and leaping with ease on smooth surfaces. It’s incredibly impressive and it’s easy to see how helpful the rolling nightmare will be once it’s deployed in areas too dangerous for humans.

In the meantime, maybe if Boston Dynamics adds a sound system to the Handle with a funky bass line and horn section folks will be less likely to recoil in horror if the robot ever rolls up on Venice Beach.

Via: Gizmodo

Source: Steve Jurvetson

Playing Zelda in real life is a lot like doing grade-school homework

Anyone who grew up playing the Legend of Zelda series has found themselves daydreaming about adventures on the plains of Hyrule. What would it really be like to traverse the lands of Zelda’s kingdom, travel through time to solve puzzles and defeat an evil overlord with nothing but your own wit and bravery? It’s an exciting fantasy, but temper your expectations. If escape room designer SCRAP’s Defenders of the Triforce experience is any indication, the reality of a real-life Zelda adventure involves a lot of paperwork.

Defenders of the Triforce is an escape room game, but there’s no locked door and escaping isn’t the end game goal. Instead, SCRAP uses the real-life puzzle format to retell the story of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time in the space of one hour. The twist: The game’s heroes have already lost, and it’s up to your team to solve puzzles and break the seal on the Master Sword to defeat Ganondorf. It’s a solid idea and meshes well with the Legend of Zelda series’ history of puzzles — but you won’t be pushing blocks or lighting torches here. Instead, you’ll be doing math, deciphering glyphs and turning in worksheets to a cast of Zelda–themed taskmasters. It’s fun, but it’s not exactly the adventure you might have expected.

Arithmetic, word games and brain teasers are a key part of any escape room experience, but in Defenders of the Triforce, they take center stage. This is partially because SCRAP’s Zelda game breaks from the typical escape game in one major way: Instead of being a small, intimate experience hosting just half a dozen players, Defenders of the Triforce takes place in a ballroom where teams of six square off against dozens of other groups. This means most of the gameplay amounts to fetching puzzles from various places throughout the game experience and bringing them back to your group’s table to solve. One puzzle had my team decoding words from a series of brain teasers and then using a key to pull out individual letters to decipher our next instruction, which amounted to “turn in this worksheet to the Zora’s Domain station.” It works, but it feels a little sloppy. My team wound up wasting a lot of time waiting in lines to turn in homework.

Still, the game’s organizers put a lot of work into making that queuing experience fun. Each taskmaster was dressed as a Zelda character. There was a shy but polite Zora princess to guide us through the tasks of the water kingdom, a joyous dancing Goron to enthusiastically dole out puzzles and a giggling Kokiri elf to guard the Deku tree station. To get access to their areas, players had to abide by specific rules: Players can’t enter Zora’s domain unless they’re wearing the green hat of adult Link, for instance, and they can’t access the temple of time unless they have unlocked the chest containing the fabled Ocarina. Defenders of the Triforce may feel a little like grade-school homework, but the cast’s enthusiastic role-playing wraps the pen-and-paper puzzles in an air of excitement.

Defenders of the Triforce turned out to be a fun evening, but it wasn’t quite what our group expected. As we left the venue, my friend turned to me, slightly exasperated. “We had to do tedious paperwork. We were under the gun,” he said, noting the tension of the game’s 60-minute time limit. “I felt like I was at work!” If it was a day on the job, at least it was a good day. We left with smiles, joking about how if we had just figured out that one clue a little sooner, we would have triumphed over Ganondorf in the end. We didn’t. And that’s OK.

Images courtesy of Nintendo

Snap’s newest Lenses could make any surface a billboard

The next evolution of Snapchat’s Lenses could add more than just a flower crown to your selfies. According to a new report from The Information, Snap Inc. is working on a smarter version of its cartoonish filters and world lenses that could overlay images — and advertisements — onto a variety of real-world objects.

Snap introduced an early version of world lenses last year, allowing users to augment reality with falling snowflakes or floating Ghostbusters characters. But Snap Inc. has been spending millions to improve its AR features in the hopes that it will pay off big in advertising revenue later. According to The Information’s sources at Snap, the company’s upgraded system can identify objects and wrap them in an AR layer, essentially turning any surface into a billboard and adding new branding opportunities to every Snapchat story.

With Facebook and Instagram creeping in on Snapchat’s features and user base just before Snap Inc. is expected to go public, the company is looking for new products to offer advertisers, and branded filters have been a boon for the company in the past. While the new ad units have yet to roll out to advertisers, Snapchat is reportedly testing the features in an internal version of the app. Filter-obsessed users, meanwhile, should start seeing some of the advanced AR lenses pop up in unbranded versions before they arrive as full-fledged advertisements.

Source: The Information

Gel-based robot hand can grab and release fish

Most robot limbs aren’t exactly kind to the organic world given all that unforgiving metal, and even rubber-based soft robots aren’t very gentle. However, MIT has a better way. It recently built a hydrogel-based soft robot hand that’s bio-friendly while remaining tough enough to withstand heavy use. The trick was to use 3D printing and laser cutting to weave hydrogel “recipes” into robotic structures, and pump water into those structures to make them curl or stretch. The results are mostly water-based fingers that still have the strength, durability and speed of more conventional robots.

To prove that the breakthrough works, the team devised an unusual experiment: namely, catch-and-release fishing. The gel-based hand could quickly close around a fish without hurting it, and let it go just as easily. The underwater test also showed that a hydrogel robot takes on the visual and acoustic properties of its environment, helping it blend in where virtually any other bot would stand out.

Of course, the technology isn’t going to be limited to fishing expeditions. MIT envisions it being a tremendous help for surgical robots that could poke around in your body without the risk of damaging your organs and tissues. Researchers will still need to spend a lot of time refining and customizing their robotics to make that happen, but there could well be a time when robots can take over even the most delicate operations.

Via: TechCrunch

Source: MIT News