Samsung and Amazon counter Dolby Vision HDR with HDR10+

Samsung and Amazon have unveiled HDR10+, an improvement of its current HDR10 open standard that brings it more up to par with rival Dolby Vision. The partnership makes sense as Amazon will create and stream HDR content, while Samsung will include HDR10+ in all its 2017 4K TVs, and offer updates for last year’s models. The tech will help them counter some, but not all, of Dolby Vision’s advantages, while still letting Samsung and other manufacturers avoid paying Dolby licensing royalties.

Like Dolby Vision, HDR10+ uses “dynamic metadata” that’s encoded into scenes ahead of time, as opposed to the fixed metadata in HDR10. That’ll allow an HDR10+ TV to adjust brightness on a “scene-by-scene or even frame-by-frame basis,” Samsung says. For instance, with HDR10, dark scenes in a generally bright movie may look “significantly darker than was originally envisioned by the director,” it adds. The new tech will adjust for that on the fly, making films look more as their creators intended.

That sounds very similar to how Dolby describes its tech, and as with Dolby Vision, HDR10+ metadata will have to be baked into content before TVs can decode it. As such, Samsung has teamed with Colorfront to incorporate HDR10+ mastering into its “Transkoder” systems used by post-production houses. It also worked with MulticoreWare to integrate HDR10+ into the newish x265 high efficiency video coding (HEVC) codec used by UltraHD Blu-ray, Netflix and satellite and terrestrial broadcasters.

While Dolby charges royalties for its tech, HDR10+ is an open standard, so it can be adopted by other TV manufacturers for free. However, HDR10+ still lacks some of Dolby Vision’s features, in particular its wider 12-bit color range and maximum 10,000 nit brightness — both features aimed at future TVs. Dolby Vision also works with the older HDMI 1.4a standard, while HDR10 requires HDMI 2.0. Dolby Vision is backwardly compatible to HDR10, but it’s not clear if it will work with the new standard.

Samsung has avoided Dolby Vision, but most other manufacturers including Sony and TCL have opted in. Dolby also has deals with Warner Bros., MGM, Universal and other studios to use its encoding tech. At the same time, Amazon, one of the main consumer streaming companies, has committed to start broadcasting HDR10+ globally “later this year,” it said. In other words, this format rivalry probably isn’t going away anytime soon.

Source: Samsung

Facebook Working on Tech That Will Let You Type Texts, Emails, and Status Updates Using Your Brain

During its F8 Developers Conference in San Jose, California this week, social media company Facebook revealed an ongoing project in which it aims to launch a product that will allow users to send emails, texts, and post status updates using only their thoughts (via Reuters).

Conducted in a new wing it calls “Building 8,” Facebook said that any final hardware launch is a few years away, but it’s believed that the company is looking at the new product as a way to diversify its income so it might not have to rely so heavily on advertising revenue.

Former Google executive and DARPA director Regina Dugan is leading Facebook’s new initiative, which ultimately aims to allow users to type at 100 words per minute by monitoring their brain waves. Current technology allows researchers to type at eight words per minute, but it requires a brain implant. Facebook’s solution, on the other hand, will be non-invasive.

Additionally, Facebook is working on a way for users to “hear through their skin.” Beyond launching as an easier way to access Facebook and other content on smartphones, both technologies could see a huge surge in users who are deaf and disabled, or act as a way to break down the language barrier. “One day, not so far away, it may be possible for me to think in Mandarin and for you to feel it instantly in Spanish,” Dugan said.

On Facebook, Dugan shared a few details about the “silent speech interface” projects:

Over the next 2 years, we will be building systems that demonstrate the capability to type at 100 wpm by decoding neural activity devoted to speech. Just as you take many photos and decide to share some of them, so too, you have many thoughts and decide to share some of them in the form of the spoken word. It is these words, words that you have already decided to send to the speech center of your brain, that we seek to turn into text. And unlike other approaches, ours will be focused on developing a non-invasive system that could one day become a speech prosthetic for people with communication disorders or a new means for input to AR. Even something as simple as a ‘yes/no’ brain click, or a ‘brain mouse’ would be transformative.

We also described a system that may one day allow you to hear through your skin. You have 2 square meters of skin on your body, packed with sensors, and wired to your brain. In the 19th century, Braille taught us that we could interpret small bumps on a surface as language. Since then many techniques have emerged that illustrate our brain’s ability to reconstruct language from components. Today we demonstrated an artificial cochlea of sorts and the beginnings of a new a ‘haptic vocabulary’.
And we’re just getting started…

Other products and initiatives mentioned during the F8 conference included “clear, fashionable AR glasses that don’t obscure eyes,” internet connectivity in disaster zones, and a pair of new three-dimensional cameras. These last few projects are said to be more near term, while the thought-to-text and skin-listening technology are both “years away” from an end-user launch.

When asked if Facebook has any plans to build a voice assistant of its own for its iOS and Android apps, David Marcus, Facebook’s VP of messaging products, told Variety this week, “We are not working on that actively right now.” The company is instead focusing on bolstering its chat bot, “M” for Facebook Messenger, because it believes that users are more inclined to use text inputs to control their smartphones over their voice, particularly in crowded public situations.

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From lab-grown steaks to plant-based blood, science is taking the animal out of meat

Agriculture has come a long way in the past century. We produce more food than ever before — but our current model is unsustainable, and as the world’s population rapidly approaches the 8 billion mark, modern food production methods will need a radical transformation if they’re going to keep up. But luckily, there’s a range of new technologies that might make it possible. In this series, we’ll explore some of the innovative new solutions that farmers, scientists, and entrepreneurs are working on to make sure that nobody goes hungry in our increasingly crowded world.

Animal agriculture has quietly become a huge contributor to climate change.

According to the United States Department of Agriculture, global agriculture — dominated by livestock production and grains grown as animal feed — accounts for roughly 30 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. Another study, conducted by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, found that 18 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions are “directly attributable” to livestock production. That’s more than the emissions generated by the entire transportation sector. The problem is cows, not cars.

Despite growing evidence that animal agriculture is damaging the planet, the Western diet isn’t likely to change anytime soon. In fact, studies suggest rising incomes and urbanization are actually fueling a global dietary shift toward consuming even more meat and dairy in the future.

How do we reconcile our insatiable appetite for meat with our duty to protect the environment?

It’s quite the predicament: On one hand, it’s increasingly obvious that addressing animal agriculture should be a big part of our efforts to mitigate climate change. On the other hand, meat is absolutely delicious and demand for it is steadily increasing.

So how do we fix this issue? How do we reconcile our insatiable appetite for meat with our duty to protect the environment?

The answer: highly convincing fakes. Over the past few years, a handful of enterprising startups have sprung up with the goal of creating animal-free meat. There are several big players in this space, with some growing meat in petri dishes and others developing new and innovative ways to use plants in meat-substitute products. In this article, we’ll take you on a tour of some of the biggest players in the space, and explore the innovative ways they’re hoping to solve the carnivore’s conundrum.

Exo Protein

Despite what your mother may have taught you when you were young, eating insects isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Most people tend to find the idea a bit unsettling, and therefore don’t look at insects as a viable source of nutrients. That’s where Exo Protein comes in. The idea was born of an attempt by several college students at Rhode Island’s Brown University to make a food product out of insects that actually tastes good.

Co-founder Gabi Lewis already had a concept for a protein bar that dealt with the nutrition versus taste trade-off that many protein bars suffer from. With 2,000 crickets – yes, crickets – a recipe for cricket flour, an oven, and a blender, Lewis and co-founder Greg Sewitz created a protein bar that makes insects palatable.

Why cricket flour? Well, even with just 40 crickets per pound, you get flour that consists of 65 percent protein. That’s more than twice the protein content of other commonly lauded healthy protein sources like beef jerky, chicken, and salmon. It also contains all essential amino acids, and twice the iron content of a comparable serving of spinach.

But perhaps the best reason to start eating crickets is its environmental benefit. Crickets produce one hundred times less greenhouse gas than cows, and require 0.05 percent (that’s five one hundredths of a percent) of the water cows do. Plus for every hundred pounds of feed, you get 60 pounds of cricket protein — 12 times the average yield from cattle.

Lewis and Sewitz admit that getting people to consider insects as a food source is a challenge. While 80 percent of the world’s population is said to eat insects regularly, in the Western world it’s seen more as a strange delicacy. If the Exo team can get Americans past that, the idea of the protein bar may be about to change in a big way.

Impossible Foods

When most of us think of a veggie burger, we think of a burger that tastes nothing like that juicy quarter pounder meat lovers can’t do without.

Impossible Foods wants to change that. In 2011, the Silicon Valley, California, startup embarked on a mission to create a completely plant-based burger that actually tastes — and bleeds — like real meat.

It took nearly five years to perfect the recipe, but in July of last year, the company’s burger debuted at Italian-Asian fusion restaurant Momofuku Nishi in New York. Since then, the company has expanded its reach into three other New York City restaurants – Bareburger, Public, and Saxon & Parole – as well as Cockscomb in San Francisco and Crossroads Kitchen in Los Angeles.

Impossible Foods has created a completely plant-based burger that actually tastes — and bleeds — like real meat. (Credit: Impossible Foods)

What’s the secret? While the true process is a trade secret, Impossible Foods says that what makes its burgers taste like meat is something called “heme.” Heme is found in large quantities in animal muscle; it’s what gives meat its signature red color and satisfying taste. The company says it discovered a way to extract heme from plants and ferment it using a process similar to how the Belgians have been making beer for nearly a thousand years.

And the burger is only the beginning. Impossible’s scientists already have concept products for chicken, pork, fish, and even a kind of yogurt that is entirely plant based. But in the near term, you’ll need to make a trip to one of the company’s partner restaurants to try it out.

Beyond Meat

Beyond Meat doesn’t grow fake meat in a lab. Instead, it uses a specific combination of plant proteins to create an astonishingly meat-like burger patty.

Of all of the futuristic foods we’ve discussed here, only Beyond Meat has been successful in a wide-scale rollout, offering products in stores ranging from Walmart to Whole Foods. Frozen food producer Tyson also took a 5-percent stake in the company, which is further cementing the startup’s position as the current market leader in plant-based meat substitutes.

Beyond Meat’s success can also be attributed to the fact that the company has urged its retail partners to place its products in the meat case versus the vegetarian aisle. It’s still a veggie burger, but founder and CEO Ethan Brown says you shouldn’t judge it that way.

“The flavors in meat are the result of a reaction of about 600 different molecules,” Brown told Digital Trends in an interview. “We’ve studied those molecules to identify similar molecules in the plant kingdom and combine them in the same way, so they give you that aroma and flavor.”

Memphis Meats

Even if you’ve made the perfect veggie burger that you claim tastes just like meat, it’s still a veggie burger. That’s where Memphis Meats comes in. The company’s product could be described as a burger grown in a petri dish. But what makes Memphis Meats’ process special is that no animals are slaughtered in the process.

Instead, cells are extracted from a living animal and fed a mixture of vitamins, minerals, and plants. After about two weeks, the meat is then harvested when it reaches the desired tenderness. Compare this with raising and slaughtering traditional livestock, a process that takes nearly six months to complete.

An actual product is about five years off, CEO Uma Valeti admitted in an interview with Digital Trends. However, Valeti’s team has made great strides in reducing production costs, which in turn will make it a viable traditional burger alternative – albeit one that sells at a slight premium compared to normal hamburger meat.

“As we scale up, we are confident we will be able to produce meat at a price that is cost-competitive with, and ultimately more affordable than, conventionally produced meat,” Valeti says. The company has also recently announced a chicken and duck substitute, grown in the same way the meat is, that’s set to be widely available later this year.

Soylent

Arguably the most recognizable future food on our list, Soylent was developed by co-founders Rob Rhinehart, Matt Cauble, John Coogan, and David Renteln as a healthy alternative to traditional food. Rhinehart and his team initially planned for Soylent to be a nutrition drink like any other. But response to the product’s release in 2013 — including suggestions it could feed the malnourished cheaply — changed the direction of the company so drastically that it now actively promotes the “development of a world where access to affordable, complete nutrition is no longer a challenge.”

At the heart of Soylent is its composition. Each 400-calorie bottle is formulated to provide 20 percent of daily recommended nutrition, and can be consumed as a meal replacement. The cost per bottle is $2.69, which is far less than the modern meal and comparable to other meal-replacement drinks on the market.

One major drawback to Soylent has always been taste. It’s unappetizing and bland, and has been compared to drinking chalk. The company recently released two new flavors – cacao and nectar – to address that issue. Reviews are generally positive, but it’s still unlikely to be something you’d want to live off of for an extended period of time – though some have tried.

But with the manufacturing process improving and prices of the drink falling, we might not be too far off from seeing Soylent in areas where food is either scarce or at a premium.

Clara Foods

Factory farms have gotten increasing attention over the past few years for the inhumane treatment of animals in captivity. The demand, especially among egg production in its current form, is just not sustainable over the long term according to government and private studies. Due to the fact that egg whites are found in lots of foods (mayonnaise, meringue, pasta, protein supplements, and most baked goods), a solution is needed quickly.

Clara Foods is seeking to develop an animal-free egg white substitute.

To that end, Clara Foods is working toward a completely animal-free egg white substitute. While quite a few options already exist, those substitutes are often insufficient for sensitive applications like angel food cakes, meringues, and macaroons. So the company is taking things a step further by actually building the egg whites “from the ground up,” as CEO Arturo Elizondo puts it.

For example, the substitute could be engineered to foam more to make better meringues and angel food cakes. Or it could have better binding characteristics so that it works better to keep vegetarian meat substitutes together. And yet another version could be tailored to provide certain nutritional benefits, like higher protein content.

While no immediate release date for a market-ready product is available, the company is hiring for several positions and recently completed a $1.75 million seed funding round.

Future of Food, or Just a Passing Fad?

There are those that might argue that all this lab-grown, plant-based meat business is just a flash in the pan – a fringe food trend that won’t stick around. But the fact of the matter is that meat substitutes and dairy alternatives have been around for decades, and what we’re seeing today is really just the evolution and maturation of a longstanding idea. Impossible Foods is the Boca Burger of the 21st century. It’s the same core concept, but executed with better technology – and that trend isn’t going away anytime soon.

We will be able to produce meat at a price that is cost competitive with conventionally-produced meat

It’s also important to remember that the startups discussed in this article are just the tip of the iceberg. They’re just the most recent and successful of the bunch, and there are dozens more behind them vying for a spot on your plate. One startup alone might not make a significant impact on the world, but together, these startups are expanding the range of choices you have at the grocery store.

In the future, making the choice between real and fake meat probably won’t be as much of a compromise. Ten years from now, we wouldn’t be surprised if choosing between cow and plant patties was like choosing between paper and plastic: making the environmentally friendly choice isn’t an inconvenience — it’s just a choice.

Your next MasterCard may have a fingerprint sensor built into it

Why it matters to you

Companies are taking security very seriously these days, and biometric authentication is rapidly becoming the standard way to protect our identity.

Most of us are used to using a fingerprint for an assortment of verification processes, from unlocking our smartphones, to authenticating entry into buildings, or at passport control at the airport. Soon, you may use your fingerprint to confirm purchases made in stores using a special MasterCard with a biometric reader built in to it. The company has revealed the first card to use the technology — something it has worked on for several years — which has been undergoing tests in South Africa.

The way it works is simple, and will be familiar to anyone that has used Apple Pay or another mobile payment system. Put the biometric card into the payment terminal as usual, and keep your finger on the card’s reader. Provided everything matches up, the payment will be approved. This means you no longer have to enter a PIN, and never having to hand the card over to a cashier. Of course, the biometric authentication aspect won’t work for online purchases, and it’s not compatible with contactless payments.

Don’t worry about fingerprints being stored in a cloud-based server. Remember, the card doesn’t have a data connection, so it compares a captured digital image of the print taken when the card is inserted into the terminal, with an encrypted digital template stored on the card itself that’s set up when you first get it. The transaction still has to be approved by the bank, even when the prints match. Think of it as a direct replacement for your PIN number, and because there’s no need for special equipment on the retailer’s part, the new cards are compatible with most existing chip-and-PIN readers.

While fingerprints are considered more secure and more convenient than PINs and passwords, they’re not the ultimate in security. For example, research into so-called “master prints” that could trick sensors has been carried out recently, and there are concerns that even high-resolution images could be used to make fake fingerprints for criminal use.

MasterCard has been running trials of its biometric card in South Africa, seeing success at a supermarket and Absa Bank, which is a subsidiary of Barclays Africa. Over the next few months, further trials will take place in Europe and Asia, with a full launch before the end of the year.

How to switch the position of the navigation buttons on the Galaxy S8

I put my Galaxy S8 down, flip it and reverse it.

The Galaxy S8 is the first Samsung phone with on-screen navigation buttons, which is a big change for the company, and its users! By default, though, the Galaxy S8 puts those virtual buttons in the same position as Samsung’s older phones, with the “back” button to the right of the “home” button, and the “multitasking” button to the left.

Thankfully, these can be reversed, making it easier for people coming from other phones to adjust to the new Galaxy S8! Want to switch around the position of those buttons? Easy!

Put the back button where it should be on the Galaxy S8!

From the home screen, swipe down to reveal the notification shade.
Tap on the Settings button (cog icon).

Tap on the Display menu.

Scroll down and tap on Navigation bar menu.
Tap on Button layout.
Switch orientation to Back-Home-Recents (if applicable).

That’s it! Now you can let your brain calm down and your mind open up to navigating Android just as Google intended.

Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8+

• Galaxy S8 and S8+ review!
• Galaxy S8 and S8+ specs
• Everything you need to know about the Galaxy S8’s cameras
• Get to know Samsung Bixby
• Join our Galaxy S8 forums

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Honor 8 Pro with Kirin 960 and dual cameras is now on sale in the UK

Honor’s 2017 flagship is now on sale in the UK for £475.

The Honor 8 Pro is now available on vMall for £475. The phone features a 5.7-inch QHD display, Huawei’s latest HiSilicon Kirin 960 SoC with four 2.4GHz Cortex A73 cores and four 1.8GHz Cortex A53 cores along with a Mali-G71 MP8 GPU, 6GB of RAM, 64GB storage, microSD slot, and a 4000mAh battery.

The phone has a dual 12MP camera setup at the back, along with an 8MP shooter up front. On the software front, the Honor 8 Pro is running EMUI 5.1 based on Android 7.0 Nougat. Oh, and the packaging morphs into a Google Cardboard-style VR headset.

Honor 8 Pro review: Killer flagship

The Honor 8 Pro is now available on vMall for £475, and will go up for sale on Amazon UK shortly. Deliveries kick off from April 27, and those ordering the phone will receive a tripod selfie stick for free. Honor is also running a trade-in promotion through which you can send in your old device and receive vMall vouchers equivalent to its current value or cash back. If you’re interested, you can find all the details here.

See at vMall

Audi e-tron Sportback is an all-electric A7 on stilts

Audi has unveiled its new e-tron Sportback concept at the Shanghai Motor Show, which will be the German car manufacturer’s second all-electric vehicle, following the release of the e-tron Quattro SUV due in 2018.

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Due to be released in 2019, the e-tron Sportback has its sights firmly set on the Jaguar I-Pace SUV and will use the same powertrain as the Q6 e-Tron. The body of the e-tron Sportback looks a bit like the Audi A7 saloon, and Audi itself acknowledges that itself by saying it is aimed at buyers who like the look of the A7, but “want a more commanding view of the road”. You certainly will get a commanding view, as the e-tron Sportback sits on 23-inch alloys.

Audi has fitted the e-tron Sportback with three motors, one to power the front wheels and two for the rear. The maximum power output from all three combined is 496bhp and 590lb ft of torque, which is enough to propel the Sportback from 0-60mph in 4.5 seconds and onto a top speed of 131mph.

The help save energy, only the front motor is used in normal driving conditions, with the rear two only being employed in low-grip and high-load conditions. However this can be overridden by the driver, where all permanent all-wheel drive can be enabled.

As with some other electric vehicles, all three motors on the e-tron Sportback can recover energy under braking, and the amount of energy they can recover can be set with four different levels.

Audi

The e-tron Sportback uses 95kwh batteries that can be wirelessly charged at home using an AC charger or a DC fast charger, which by the time the Sportback is released, will be capable of reaching 150kWh charging speeds. This will means the Sportback can be charged to 80 per cent in 30 minutes. Audi says a full charge will give a driving range of 311 miles.

• Jaguar I-Pace preview: More titillating than a Tesla?
• Audi MM explored: A deep dive into Audi’s in-car infotainment systems

Audi’s Virtual Cockpit dashboard will feature in the e-tron Sportback but will add touch sensitive surfaces and a larger wraparound design. There are two touchscreens in the centre console with haptic feedback, and the passenger even gets their own slim digital display.

Audi says several different versions of the e-Tron Sportback will be produced, but has yet to disclose any rough ideas of price, but Autocar predicts the Sportback will start at around £60,000.

This is the future of F1: Renault R.S. 2027 Vision concept looks stunning

This season’s Formula One cars are the most advanced yet and already look futuristic and tech-laden, but Renault predicts that, in 10 years time, things will take more of a turn towards the sorts of vehicles only found in games.

The Renault R.S. 2027 Vision F1 concept was unveiled at Auto Shanghai 2017, the massive Chinese car show and it gives a glimpse at some of the technologies we could see in the sport in the not-so-distant future.

The company claims it would place drivers more firmly at the “heart of the sport”, with a transparent cockpit and, even, transparent helmet design. That way the driver him or herself could be seen more clearly.

Renault

Active LED lighting would be incorporated into the wheels and moving aerodynamic parts to give the car a better visual appeal. It’d look especially cool during night races, that’s for sure.

It would be more ecologically respectful, with a fuel tank half the size of current F1 cars. There would also be a battery on board to switch to a full-electric mode when travelling through the pit lane.

Drivers would benefit from four-wheel drive and even four-wheel steering. And fans could get real-time telemetry data transmitted to their portable devices. At present, this is restricted to the teams themselves.

Races would also be safer, with autonomous driving modes activating in all cars in the case of an accident ahead. Plus, ultra-resistant polycarbonate cockpits could protect further against impact.

This is all just in the design phase at present, but innovation in F1 is always welcome. And who knows, if we head down this path maybe WipEout-style races aren’t as far fetched as previously thought.

The Morning After: Thursday, April 20th 2017

Hey, good morning!

Google getting into the ad-blocking business? A SNES Mini console? A Sony camera built for pros? It’s as if all the good news has come at once. Come join us for the last 24 hours in tech.

Whoa.
Is Google about to get into the ad blocking business?

A Wall Street Journal rumor indicates that Google Chrome will soon come with ad-blocking capabilities built-in. While that may seem like a strange move from what is essentially an advertising company, the blocker would likely target annoying ads that aren’t like the ones Google itself runs. By shutting down ads that autoplay with audio, pop-ups, or full-screen countdown timers, Google could keep users from using add-ons or other browsers to block all ads (including its own.) If it happens, however, the outcry from competitors and regulators could be loud.

An N64 Classic would be interesting.Nintendo rumor points to SNES mini later this year

Nintendo just announced that its throwback NES Classic Edition machines will abruptly fade out, so what comes next? According to a rumor from Eurogamer, a miniature SNES. It certainly could make sense for nostalgia’s sake, as the console was home to many iconic games. Here’s hoping that this one comes true and that this time around Nintendo remembers to include wireless controllers and downloadable games.

Facebook’s Spaces is fine as a VR tech demo, but….
I don’t want to live inside Facebook’s vision for social VR

Facebook Spaces was announced at the social network’s F8 conference as a way of blending social media and virtual reality. If you own an Oculus Rift (and Touch controllers), you and four friends can enter a virtual world and hang out together. Unfortunately, hanging out mostly constitutes of chatting, taking “selfies*” and enjoying the virtual world around you. Oh, and it’s not you, per se, but a cartoon caricature that you control. For Senior Editor Dan Cooper, that’s not the social VR experience he’s looking for.

Wait, that’s possible?
Remembering the first ‘photo’ of a black hole

Black holes are so outlandish that the scientists who first thought them up figured they couldn’t possibly exist in reality. They form from massive, collapsed stars and are so dense that nothing can escape their gravitational pull, including light. Black holes mess with spacetime so badly that scientists have long wondered: How do these things look, exactly? We may be on the cusp of seeing one thanks to the Event Horizon Telescope, but back in 1979, Jean-Pierre Luminet created the first “image” using nothing but an early computer, lots of math and India ink.

“The age of the DSLR being the kingpin is over.”
Sony hopes its full-frame A9 makes pros forget about DSLRs

Sony’s new flagship full-frame camera, the A9, is geared toward professional photographers — especially those who shoot sports and other fast-paced environments. The A9 features a 24.2-megapixel 35mm sensor, an insane AF system with 639 phase detection points (93 percent frame coverage) and built-in 5 axis image stabilization. Given its target audience, the A9 is naturally all about speed, so you’ll find a blackout-free, 20fps continuous shooting mode and 1/32,000 shutter speed. Sony says it is its fastest digital camera to date. It’s also “half the size and weight” of the DSLRs it wants to dethrone, like Canon’s 5D Mark IV or Nikon’s D5.

They’re designed to produce more immersive content.
Facebook’s new 360 cameras bring exploration to live videos

404d4b1e2fea”>Last year, Facebook announced the Surround 360, a 360-degree camera that can capture footage in 3D and then render it online via specially designed software. But it wasn’t for sale. Instead, the company used it as a reference design for others to create 3D 360 content, even going so far as to open source it on Github later that summer. As good as the camera was, though, it still didn’t deliver the full VR experience. That’s why Facebook is introducing two more 360-degree cameras at this year’s F8: the x24 and x6. The difference: These cameras can shoot in six degrees of freedom, offering a degree of freedom we’ve not really had in immersive video.

Samsung says it has an easy fix.
Early Galaxy S8 owners complain of red-tinted screens

Samsung started shipping the Galaxy S8 to customers in South Korea who pre-ordered the flagship phone almost a full week ago. They were probably thinking of how lucky they were to get the phone early, until some of them noticed something off about their screen. According to multiple reports posted on Korean forums like PPOMPPU and social networks like Instagram, some S8 units’ displays have a very noticeable reddish tint.

But wait, there’s more…

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• Xiaomi Mi 6 mimics the iPhone’s camera tricks without the bump
• The Renault R.S. 2027 Vision could be the F1 car of the future
• Capcom’s collection of Disney NES games does retro gaming right

Apple Maps now lists UK EV chargers and public bikes

As Apple turns to laser-mounted minivans and even drones to improve the accuracy of its Maps app, the company also regularly introduces useful points of interest for iOS users. As Bloomberg reports, the iPhone maker has added new data points that will help UK electric vehicle owners find nearby charging stations and hook Londoners up with a bike.

With help from Moovility, an EV mapping service owned by German company Cirrantic, Apple has been integrating electric charging stations from across Europe and Canada since early February. US users have enjoyed similar functionality thanks to a partnership with ChargePoint.

Users can tap the EV Charger badge inside the app to view local power points and learn more about what they offer, including power, usage and available parking. It lists public charging spots, but also locations operated by major car makers like Nissan and Tesla.

The locations of public bicycle pick-up and drop-off points are now live in the app for Londoners, as well as in New York and Paris, helping locals navigate around the capital via a greener means of transport.

With the new update, Apple appears to have covered the major modes of transport. In December, transit directions by bus, train and tram were added across major UK cities, including Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Sheffield, Glasgow, Edinburgh and many other regions in England, Scotland and Wales.

Source: Bloomberg