The Morning After: Tuesday, March 21st 2017

Hey, good morning! You look fabulous.

Welcome to the Morning After, and the start of Adult Week here at Engadget. (We mean it in the grown-up sense, not the sexy one.) We also break down Samsung’s new, weirdly-named Siri competitor, and introduce the app the world deserves: a selfie rating service. Smile!

Grown-ups are talking.

Welcome to Engadget’s Adult Week

It’s time to become an independent and constructive member of society, and Engadget can give you some tips on how to do it. All week we’ll be bringing you stories about how to use technology to become a better grownup and navigate our tech-saturated world in a manner befitting a real deal adult. First up, is advice on how to do some good online.

A “biomarker” protein hangs out on cells where the virus hides from treatment.
HIV breakthrough may help scientists kill sleeping virus cells

AIDS patients must endure a lifetime of drugs because the virus conceals itself in the immune system and reactivates with a vengeance once the treatment stops. However, French scientists have discovered a marker that makes it possible to identify dormant, HIV-infected T-cells from healthy ones. That could lead to drugs that target those “reservoir cells,” eradicating the virus completely and curing the patient.

Bixby?
Samsung unveils its Siri competitor ahead of the Galaxy S8

It was only a matter of time until Samsung launched a full-fledged virtual assistant of its very own — “S Voice” just never quite cut it. Today the company unveiled Bixby, a new assistant that’ll debut with the Galaxy S8 on March 29th. Naturally, it’s meant to help Samsung differentiate itself from Apple’s Siri and Google’s Assistant. Bixby seems different on a conceptual level: It’s meant to serve as a new voice-based interface for controlling your apps, rather than just something that you can ask a few questions.

Rate our editors.
What the world needs now: an app that lets people rate your selfies.

59.8. That is Dan Cooper’s average score, as calculated by the swaths of people using a selfie-judging app called Spontana. He spent the past few days sharing pictures of himself on the service and receiving the unvarnished truth in response. Thankfully, he also got to deal judgements out.

The 4-day ban also covers some African carriers.
US temporarily bans most electronics on Middle Eastern airlines

The US just made traveling to certain parts of the world considerably more complicated, at least if you’re a technology fan. Middle Eastern and African airlines (including Royal Jordanian and Saudia) say the US has asked them to institute a 96-hour ban on carrying most electronics on flights to or from the US, starting on March 21st. You can sit down with your phone or any necessary medical devices, but cameras, laptops and other gadgets will have to go into your checked baggage. A US official speaking anonymously to the BBC says the device ban would affect nine airlines in 10 airports. It’s believed to be in response to intelligence reports hinting at threats.

Work smart, not hard.ARM ‘DynamIQ’ chips are ready for an all-AI future

Processor heads are familiar with the ARM tech that powers everything from mobile devices to game consoles, and the company just announced what’s next for its multicore processor designs. Called DynamIQ, it improves on existing designs by allowing for multiple CPU cores that are designed for specific purposes. It’s all done to work better with AI and machine learning, perfect for not only tomorrow’s smart phones, but also self-driving cars and servers.

Trying to avert the #YouTubeIsOverParty
YouTube apologizes for ‘Restricted Mode’ blocking LGBTQ+ content

Over the last few days, YouTubers caught on to the fact that a screen to block mature content from school computers and the like was going too far. Restricted Mode made a habit of blocking anything with a hint of LGBTQ+ content, even if it was completely innocent. Now, the company has unblocked some content, and VP Johanna Wright says that “We’re sorry and we’re going to fix it.”

But wait, there’s more…

• What’s on TV: ‘Mass Effect: Andromeda,’ Dave Chappelle and Formula 1
• Comcast’s latest all-you-can-watch event includes free Netflix
• Trump’s quiet war on data begins
• Tiny liquid battery cools chips while powering them
• Guess’ Android Wear smartwatch is classically styled

New Apple Product Expectations See AAPL and Supplier Shares Surge to Record Highs

Shares in Apple supplier Taiwan Semiconductor (TSMC) hit an all-time high on Tuesday, coming on the back of record spikes in Apple’s share price over the last few trading days.

TSMC share price rose to 195 New Taiwan Dollars, up NT$3.5 or 1.83 percent on the Taiwan Stock Exchange, breaking a previous record set in October 2016.

Shares in other Apple parts suppliers in Asia also rallied on Tuesday, reported Nikkei Asian Review. Shares in optical lens manufacturer Largan Precision hit an all-time high and contract electronics maker Pegatron reached the highest level since last year. At one point, Foxconn reached NT$91.80, its highest level since 2016.

The rallies came as Apple’s own share price hit another all-time high on Monday, reaching $141.46 at the end of trading, following indications that the company could make new product announcements on Tuesday. Rumors suggest Apple is planning updated 9.7-inch and 12.9-inch iPad Pro models, a 128GB iPhone SE, a red color option for iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus, and new Apple Watch bands.

The gains have also been fed by speculation surrounding Apple’s “iPhone 8”, which is expected to launch in the fall, but could conceivably appear earlier. Several financial analysts have raised their price targets for Apple’s stock to between $150 and $185, according to research notes obtained by MacRumors.

TSMC is also thought to be considering moving some of its chip manufacturing into the United States, according to sources, with a decision said to be coming specifically in the “first half of 2018”, with upwards of $16 billion potentially being invested in getting the American plant up and running.

Tags: TSMC, AAPL
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Facial recognition tech takes on Beijing’s toilet-paper thieves

Why it matters to you

It may seem like an extreme solution for such a problem, but if you ever happen to be in Beijing in need of a handful of toilet paper when it really matters, you’ll be thankful for it.

Beijing has a toilet-paper problem and it’s turning to facial recognition to tackle it.

Anyone visiting a restroom at the capital city’s Temple of Heaven Park will now have their face scanned by a machine in a bid to prevent locals stealing the paper for use at home, the NY Times reported.

Toilet-paper theft has apparently become a serious issue in the city, with some tourists alarmed to discover dispensers empty of paper just when they need it most.

The high-tech machine, one of several set up around the popular tourist site this week, works by first grabbing a scan of your face via a built-in camera. Once it’s satisfied you’re not the same person who requested paper a moment earlier, it’ll dispense a strip of paper two feet long (about 60 cm). If you require more, you’ll need to wait a full nine minutes before you can use the machine again. Whether the new system leads to the more determined thieves donning masks or trying other forms of disguise in a bid to trick the technology into dispensing extra paper remains to be seen.

China Review Studio

The marketing director of the company that created the machine told the Times that his engineers had “brainstormed many options” for the design, including “fingerprints, infrared and facial recognition.” He said they settled with facial recognition because “it’s the most hygienic way.’’

More: New York City to fight terrorism with a facial recognition system

Many public restrooms in China’s cities have a single paper dispenser in a common area for everyone to use, but constant thieving has led some restroom operators to stop offering paper altogether.

The Temple of Heaven Park operator suggested the perpetrators are locals rather than tourists, with some slipping into the restroom on their way home from an early-morning tai chi session.

The new machines are part of a trial to see if facial recognition technology can help to prevent thieves from nabbing the paper. If successful, they’ll be set up inside other public facilities in the city, a move that should prove a huge relief — in every possible way — to restroom visitors desperate to answer the call of nature.

Galaxy S8 pre-orders may ship as early as Apr 18

Expect a big pre-order push in Samsung’s home market.

As it looks to draw a line under last year’s Note 7 unpleasantness, Samsung is reportedly betting big on Galaxy S8 pre-orders. South Korean outlet The Investor reports that subsidized deals for the new flagship will be unveiled from April 7, with pre-orders shipping out to customers as soon as April 18. It’s worth noting that this likely refers to Korea, not necessarily other parts of the world, where an April 28 ship date has been rumored.

A “nationwide hands-on event” will also launch immediately after the March 29 launch event, the outlet reports. Again, this probably refers to Korea, though don’t be surprised to see local Samsung offices adopting similar strategies in the run up to retail availability.

The Investor’s sources predict that Korean Galaxy S8 pre-orders will exceed the 400,000 unit figure hit by the Note 7 in its 13-day pre-order period. That’s a safe bet considering the Galaxy S series’ more mainstream appeal, and the fact that it’s been over a year since the (successful) Samsung flagship launch.

As we approach the March 29 launch event, we’re getting a clear look at the GS8’s hardware thanks to leaked renders, as Samsung officially unveils its “Bixby” assistant feature.

Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus

• Latest Galaxy S8 rumors!
• Galaxy S8 announcement coming March 29 in NYC
• Galaxy S8 release date set for April 28
• Join our Galaxy S8 forums

New Samsung Galaxy S8 press pic leak shows phone from all angles

The Samsung Galaxy S8 and its larger sibling, the SGS8 Plus, will both be unveiled next Wednesday, 29 March. But that still gives us just over a week for a swarm of new leaks about the phones.

This time it’s another range of press images, showing what we presume to be the Galaxy S8 rather than the Plus (although they’ll look identical no doubt). Twitter leakmeister @evleaks has posted a couple of the colour schemes in multiple angles.

He says that the two colours on show are Orchid Gray and Black Sky. Samsung loves its flowery colour naming convention and it seems the SGS8 will not be impervious to that trend.

• Samsung Galaxy S8 image leaks show multiple colours

There’s not much else to glean from the pics that we haven’t heard about already. You can even catch up on all the rumours, pics and gossip in our in-depth round-up: Samsung Galaxy S8: Release date, rumours and everything you need to know

We will say though that the placement of the fingerprint sensor – switched to the rear so the phone can have that almost bezel-less screen – is a little too close to the camera lens for our liking. What’s the betting the lens will need constant wiping because of fingerprints?

We’ll know for sure next Wednesday anyway, when Pocket-lint will be getting its hands-on one of the devices at the Unpacked launch event.

HERA telescope upgrades could reveal the earliest stars

When it first went online in February 2016, the Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array (HERA) radio telescope in South Africa boasted 19, 42-foot-diameter antennas aimed at the “Cosmic Dawn” of the universe. The antennas are designed to detect a specific wavelength of light emitted by hydrogen atoms during what’s called the “Epoch of Reionization,” which scientists believe started about 400 million years after the Big Bang. By picking up these wavelengths of light, HERA will be able to form a clearer picture of the universe at a time when the first stars and galaxies were being formed, more than 13.7 billion years ago.

Scientists believe that the formation of these early celestial bodies gave off X-ray and UV radiation that ionized some of the hydrogen gas in the universe. (It’s “reionization” because the hydrogen atoms were previously in an ionized state in the expansion that immediately followed the Big Bang.) So, it’s the moment that these hydrogen atoms are having their electrons ripped away by newborn stars that HERA is looking for.

Now, thanks to a $9.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation in late 2016 and a new $5.8 million grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the project will expand from those initial 19 antennas to a total of 350 spread over 610,000 square feet of the South African Karoo Astronomy Reserve. As Space.com reports, when the additional dishes are complete in September 2019, the larger array should increase HERA’s bandwidth and resolution enough to actually spot where and when those moments of reionization occurred in the history of the universe. According to MIT physics professor Jacqueline Hewitt, who is also in charge of the latest grant, HERA’s data will look like bubbles of ionized hydrogen around quasars or galaxies. By looking for heat signatures left in the hydrogen bubbles, the HERA team should be able to tell the size, intensity and chemical composition of those early stars.

When the James Webb Space Telescope launches in 2018, it should also be able to check HERA’s conclusions by looking for bright sources of infrared light where HERA sees an ionized hydrogen bubble. Looking even further into the future, learnings from the Murchison Widefield Array and the HERA project will help guide development of the Square Kilometer Array, which is set to be the largest radio telescope ever built.

Source: Space.com

Meet the first fighters of Nintendo’s newest franchise, ‘Arms’

The Switch blew us away when it launched earlier this month, but our enthusiasm for the console’s possibilities has been tempered by its seriously limited game library. Lucky for you fighting game fans, brand-new 3D brawler Arms is coming to the console this spring. Nintendo dropped a pair of videos teasing a few characters and mechanics from the upcoming title, which looks about as gleefully competitive and bizarre as you’d expect a first-party Switch game to be.

Brand-new IP Arms is a one-versus-one 3D fighting game that softens the genre’s violence with spring-limbed punches and eccentric, colorful designs. The first five characters in its lineup fit its elastic theme: Spring Man, Ribbon Girl, Ninjara, Master Mummy and Mechanica. Each has their perks and drawbacks.

The second video teases a few equippable power-ups that augment your fighter’s punches with various effects. Boomerang gives a wide arc to your swings to circumvent obstacles, Sparky adds a zap to your punch and Revolver lets you throw three in a row. Clearly, Arms aims to be a lighter take on the fighting genre than the spine-shattering Mortal Kombat or the super serious Tekken. But what else would you expect from a company that lets you duel your friends in udder-milking?

Via: Polygon

Source: YouTube

Apple’s Online Store Down for Scheduled ‘Maintenance’ Break, Possibly Ahead of Product Updates

Apple’s online store has been taken offline for a scheduled “maintenance” break between midnight and 5:30 a.m. Pacific Time. The extended downtime is fueling hopes that fresh hardware will be available when the store is brought back online, as has been the case many times in the past.

Apple traditionally invites the media to Special Events to unveil new products, but it does not have one planned for today. Accordingly, any additions or changes to Apple’s online store today are likely to be minor, and a press release would be an appropriate medium for sharing the announcements.

Lending credence to this theory is that 5:30 a.m. Pacific Time happens to be exactly when Apple typically distributes press releases.

Rumors suggest Apple is planning updated 9.7-inch and 12.9-inch iPad Pro models, a 128GB iPhone SE, a red color option for iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus, and new Apple Watch bands, all of which could be minor enough to simply be added to Apple’s online store and announced with press releases.

Less likely to be announced today is a rumored 10.5-inch iPad Pro sporting slimmer bezels that allow for an edge-to-edge display, which seems too significant to be unveiled without an Apple event. If so, the 10.5-inch iPad Pro could be introduced at an upcoming Spring event, WWDC 2017, or possibly even later.

One rumor said Apple would host an event in March, but that appears increasingly unlikely at this point. Apple has yet to invite the media to said event, and there are only ten days remaining in the month. A subsequent report said Apple will host an event in April, coinciding with the opening of its new Apple Park campus.

Apple’s online store has gone down roughly six hours before many of its recent Special Events, while today’s maintenance break is scheduled to last five and a half hours. Apple said its online store will be “updated” during this time, suggesting that at least something new might be coming today.

So-called “maintenance” really could just be maintenance, but the classic “We’ve got something special in store for you” placeholder notice on the site suggests something more. We’ll know for sure in just a matter of hours, so keep checking back.

Tag: Apple retail
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Tim Cook Visits Beijing-Based Bike Sharing Startup, Ofo

Tim Cook visited Beijing-based bike-sharing company ofo on Tuesday, according to Reuters. The Apple CEO has been in China since at least Saturday, when he gave a wide-ranging talk at the China Development Forum.

During his ofo stop, Cook met with founding members including CEO Dai Wei, and posed for pictures of him riding a yellow ofo bike.

“Thanks for welcoming me today, ofo team! Great energy behind your mission to make commuting greener, more efficient and fun!” Cook said in his official Sina Weibo post, along with pictures of him riding an ofo bike.

The rivalry between China’s bike sharing startups has been compared to the battle between Uber and local competitor Didi Chuxing. Last year, Apple poured a $1 billion investment into Didi Chuxing, earning it a seat on the company’s board. At the time, Cook described the investment as “a chance to learn more about certain segments of the China market”.

Ofo, which counts Didi Chuxing as an investor, confirmed that Cook made the company visit on Tuesday but said no discussions regarding collaboration or investment took place. The company has already raised $450 million this month, which saw its valuation pass the $1 billion mark for the first time.

Founded in 2014, ofo developed the world’s first “non-docking” bike sharing platform operated by a mobile application, according to its site. Ofo and main rival Mobike are among a number of rapidly emerging bike-sharing services that allow users to find, unlock, and pay to rent trackable bicycles through smartphone apps, allowing younger consumers to get around congested roads and public transport.

Ofo operates 2.2 million bikes in 43 cities in China, with pilot schemes in Singapore, London, and California.

Tag: China
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ARM’s DynamIQ is a next-gen chip platform for phones, cars, and connected devices

Why it matters to you

DynamIQ, ARM’s new chip design, aims to deliver better performance without sacrificing efficiency.

ARM, the holding company that designs chips powering billions of smartphones, cars, and mobile devices, announced a platform on Monday that promises drastic improvements in performance and efficiency. It’s called DynamIQ, and it’ll launch in new devices beginning later this year.

DynamIQ, which ARM calls the “biggest [architectural] shift since [the] 64-bit ARMv8-A in 2011,” targets automotive, networking, server, and personal computing devices. It’s aimed at the roughly 100-plus billion devices expected to ship with ARM-based chips by 2021.

More: Qualcomm ARM-based servers to make way into Microsoft’s cloud data centers

ARM is projected to ship 100 billion chips between 2017 and 2021 to its more than 450 silicon partners and 1,000 community partners, which doubles the 50 billion it shipped between 2013 and 2017. More than 3.5 billion people use ARM-based devices today, the company said in a press release.

“We see it as our responsibility to address the industry’s demand of ubiquitous AI, autonomous systems, and accelerating the integration of virtual worlds toward a mixed-reality experience,” an ARM spokesperson said. “DynamIQ technology is a monumental shift in multicore microarchitecture for the industry, and the foundation for future ARM Cortex-A processors.”

ARM’s DynamIQ chips boast features that improve performance without compromising efficiency. A redesigned memory interface enables faster data access and enhanced power management. A compact “single-cluster” design consolidates multiple components in a single chip, and enhanced big.LITTLE, an ARM technology that intelligently switches between processor cores, shares memory between cores more efficiently.

More: Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processors now fully support Windows 10

DynamIQ isn’t just about big-picture improvements — individual CPU cores are now a lot more capable as well. They feature fine-grained speed control that ramps them up and down as needed, and redesigned scaling that responds to changes in power and thermal conditions. And thanks to DynamIQ’s anticipatory systems, they can switch between on and off quicker than ARM’s current chip generation.

Those performance improvements translate to meaningful gains in the areas of artificial intelligence and automation. DynamIQ’s dedicated set of AI instructions will offer a boost of up to 50 times in machine-learning routines within 3-5 years, ARM said, and optimized connections between CPU cores and specialized “accelerator hardware” will deliver up to 10 times better performance.

Autonomous and connected cars also stand to gain. DynamIQ’s built-in technologies will bring “increased safety capabilities” and “enable partners to build systems for safe operation under failure conditions.”

More: Supply channels hint that ARM-based Windows 10 machines are due in 2017

“DynamIQ is just the latest in ARM’s growing list of technology leadership milestones to get the industry one step closer to our ultimate vision,” an ARM spokesperson said. “[We want to] transform technology experiences through a total computing approach that creates a vast network of securely connected smart devices that enhance every aspect of peoples’ lives,”