Surface Laptop: Microsoft finally made a traditional notebook

When it comes to PC hardware, Microsoft has always tried to do something different. The Surface and Surface Pro helped popularize the idea of hybrid laptops that could also be used as tablets. The Surface Book took that idea a step further with a bigger screen, a unique hinge and more powerful hardware. But with the Surface Laptop, which was leaked last night and officially announced this morning, it’s almost as if Microsoft is going back to basics. It’s basically a straightforward notebook, albeit one with the Microsoft’s slick Surface aesthetic.

Most importantly, it’s the flagship device for Windows 10 S, Microsoft’s new streamlined OS targeted at the education market. Similar to ChromeOS, it’s meant mainly for web apps and software from the Microsoft Store, with an emphasis on security and battery life. The Surface Laptop includes a 13.5-inch PixelSense display (Microsoft’s branding for its unique screen technology) and a keyboard draped in Alcantara, a smooth cloth-like material. You’ll also be able to pick it up in four colors.

Developing…

Check out all the news from the MicrosoftEDU event here.

In Ethiopia, pirate movie kiosks hide in plain sight

With the rise of cheap, easy and legal streaming services, actually pirating a movie or song seems like way too much effort. But in those places where high-speed internet may not be as prevalent, and those services are too pricey, other methods are required. In one Ethiopian shopping mall, for instance, there’s apparently an ATM-style kiosk that enables locals to purchase illegally-obtained movies for cents.

The device was spotted by a TorrentFreak reader who explained that the bright yellow kiosk is just sitting there in public. According to the description, the unit is packing a touchscreen and a customer-facing USB port for users to plug in their own flash drives. They’re then able to browse through brand new movies, TV shows and music to buy for around 20 cents a pop.

Apparently, the device is maintained by a local operator, who spends their time torrenting movies and then uploading them to the box. The fact that the box stands, proud as anything, on the plaza at a shopping mall, is a testament to how different things are in other places. As the report explains, Ethiopia’s government has “bigger issues” to deal with than movie piracy, which enables the practice to exist.

Via: Ars Technica

Source: TorrentFreak

Valve has no more ‘Half-Life’ writers left

Marc Laidlaw’s departure from Valve last year was a shock. The author was responsible for single-handedly writing both Half-Life and Half-Life 2, and worked as the story lead on the latter’s two episodic sequels. Chet Faliszek and Erik Wolpaw, co-writers on Half-Life 2: Episode One and Episode Two, stuck around however, meaning some of the series’ writing talent still remained at Valve.

Not any more. In February of this year, Wolpaw departed Valve to work on Psychonauts 2, and today GamesIndustry.biz reports that Faliszek has also left the company. The pair have a long history together: they ran the highly influential gaming site Old Man Murray through the late ’90s and early ’00s, before both joining Valve.

As well as essentially defining what video game criticism would look like online, Faliszek and Wolpaw worked on basically every Valve game with a story during their tenure. They wrote Portal together, penned its sequel along with humorist Jay Pinkerton and also put together the narrative for the Left 4 Dead series.

Beyond writing, Faliszek was a key part of Valve’s push into virtual reality, from the early days of secret testing at the company’s Bellevue headquarters through to the public launch of the HTC Vive. He talked with Engadget at length about those formative VR years for our piece on how the Vive was created. Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, Faliszek was keen to point out that his leaving Valve was “nothing exciting or drama filled,” adding that he just “wanted to change things up.”

With Faliszek’s decision to move on, the entirety of Half-Life’s writing team is gone. The natural thing to do is point to the death of the series that built the company. But beyond hopeless dreams of a sequel, the fact remains that Valve, ostensibly a game developer, has lost its three most notable writers in less than 18 months. Another author formerly at the company, Ted Kosmatka, left Valve after finishing work on Dota 2 lore.

During this time, Valve might have hired new writers capable of taking its beloved franchises forward. Pinkerton is still there, but because of Valve’s flat hierarchy (no one has a job title), it’s impossible to say how many writers are left at the company. No other writers are listed on its “people” page, and there are no relevant openings on its jobs page.

Valve has over 300 employees, though, and less than 100 of those are listed on its site. Maybe there’s a crack team working hard on multiple scripts, then, but the fact remains that Valve hasn’t released a narrative-driven game in a long time. Since 2011’s Portal 2, we’ve seen Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (2012) and Dota 2 (2013), and the VR demo The Lab last year.

Of course, there’s every possibility that Laidlaw, Wolpaw and Faliszek wrote Half-Life 2: Episode 3 or Half-Life 3 or whatever you want to believe it’s called, and that a fully fledged script lives somewhere inside a vault in Bellevue. Perhaps they’ve finished up Left 4 Dead 3 and Portal 3 as well. There’s no harm in dreaming.

Valve’s shifting priorities aren’t a huge surprise: It runs the most successful PC gaming store in Steam, and maintaining its wildly popular multiplayer games Dota, Team Fortress and Counter-Strike is a full-time job itself. That’s not to mention Steam OS, Steam VR and Steam Direct. That said, Valve president Gabe Newell confirmed the company is working on three new “full” VR games earlier this year, so it’s not leaving development aside entirely, and companies frequently contract outside talent to write their games.

As for Faliszek, he tells GamesIndustry.Biz that “there’s no news on what’s next, [but] I will let you know when that happens.”

Source: GamesIndustry.Biz

Watch Microsoft’s education event right here

Want to know what Microsoft’s much-ballyhooed education event has in store? You’ll have an easy way to find out: Microsoft is offering a livestream of the event when it kicks off at 9:30AM Eastern Time. And you might have a good reason to tune in, whether or not you’re in the education field. Last-minute leaks have suggested that Microsoft might unveil the Surface Laptop, its first (relatively) conventional portable PC. There’s also talk of Windows 10 S (aka Windows 10 Cloud), a stripped-back version that only runs Windows Store apps. We’ll be there to cover happenings on the ground, but you can tune in below — the video is muted by default, so click the volume button to start listening.

Source: Microsoft

Strava Expands Social Features With ‘Athlete Posts’ to Enable Sharing Beyond Workout Updates

Running and cycling app Strava today announced a new update focused on expanding the social aspect of the app’s toolset, launching first for 36 professional athletes and expanding to all users later this summer. Called “Athlete Posts,” the new feature will let the group of athletes post personal stories, ask their fans questions, share gear tips and recommendations, detail their workout plans, and more.

The update is an expansion to Strava’s current social feed and activity uploads, which let all users post pictures of their workout, details of where the run or bike ride was located, and enables comments and likes on posts. According to Strava, Athlete Posts will be a more nuanced addition to its social features that will include basic text and link posts without requiring a workout-related activity upload.

Strava said that this will lead to posts related to recipes, article sharing, stories about recent vacations, and will allow users to avoid other social networks in their hunt for sports-related subject matter.

No more digging through forum websites built in the ’90s to find your niche gear question. And you can leave all the political rants and cat GIFs behind on other social networks. Strava’s where you can be a sport nerd, hanging out with other sport nerds, and delightfully little else.

Strava mentioned that early access for the 36 included athletes will allow any user following them to become familiar with the feature ahead of its wide public debut. Some of the athletes who will begin using Athlete Posts today include Lauren Fleshman, Rich Roll, Susie Chan, Adrian Ballinger, and more. The full list can be found on Strava’s website.

“Strava is a place where athletes come to connect with each other, share their experiences and learn from one another,” says Aaron Forth, Chief Product Officer at Strava. “And until now, those connections have been based entirely on athletic activities. Our opportunity is to help athletes have conversations beyond their daily activities, sharing everything from favorite gear, to injury recovery tips, to travel recommendations.

To open up those conversations, we are introducing the ability for members to post new types of content. Ultimately, when you want to engage with friends who share your passion for all things running, cycling, swimming, hiking, or any other sport, Strava is the place to do it.”

Athlete Posts will be available for all users when the feature launches wide later this summer, and it won’t be part of the Strava Premium membership plan. Strava is available to download for free from the iOS App Store [Direct Link], and the update should begin appearing throughout the day. As the company pointed out in its blog post, users will only notice Athlete Posts if they follow one of the 36 participating athletes.

Tag: Strava
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Strava launches Athlete Posts, a blogging platform for fitness fanatics

Why it matters to you

Strava’s Athlete Posts provides a forum for athletes to share ideas, fitness goals, motivational stories, and more.

There’s a social network for just about every niche, these days. Fishing enthusiasts link up on Fishbrain. Farming fanatics in Australia exchange ideas on Farmz. But one global community — athletes — has long lacked something comparable. Sure, budding Olympians have been able to post jogging times on Facebook or Twitter, but that’s not quite the same as a network of like-minded internet folks. Fitness platform Strava, luckily, has the remedy.

On Monday, Strava launched Athlete Posts, a “new way to create and share content” for the one million new users who, on average, join Strava every 45 days. More than 36 Strava users from around the world — including marathoner Kelly Roberts, former American track and field athlete Lauren Fleshman, and triathlete James Lawrence — will be able share stories, photos, questions, gear tips, race reports, recommendations, and workouts with other Strava users.

Strava’s curated list of bloggers will publish posts, tips, articles, and discussion topics that “inspire” and “motivate” other users. It’s a way for athletes to share more about their active lives, said Strava product officer Aaron Forth.

“Strava is a place where athletes come to connect with each other, share their experiences and learn from one another,” Forth said in a statement. “And until now, those connections have been based entirely on athletic activities. Our opportunity is to help athletes have conversations beyond their daily activities, sharing everything from favorite gear, to injury recovery tips, to travel recommendations.”

But Athlete Posts is about more than just bragging. According to a recent MIT study published in the journal Natural Communications, social sharing is a major exercise motivator — if you see that one of your friends ran a certain distance at a certain speed, you’re likely to run farther and faster than you otherwise would yourself.

To that end, Athlete Posts is a prong in Strava’s broader social effort. The recently introduced Club Events feature, which aims to make coordinating meetups easier, lets like-minded Strava users join clubs from Strava’s smartphone app. Once they do, they can see recent rides and runs logged by other members, a comment section, and a widget that shows your recent rides and runs. Beacon, meanwhile, lets users share distance, caloric expenditure, and speed in real time.

“Strava is the ideal place for athletic storytelling and resource sharing among like-minded people,” Fleshman said in a statement. “My sporty friends are hard to keep up with socially, and I’m looking forward to Strava being the place I binge on the sporting life. I’m especially excited to share a mixture of snippets into my post-retirement, evolving athletic life, and revive some of my most honest and relevant written pieces from the past that can serve the goal-oriented athletic community.”

Athlete Posts launches this summer, when it will roll out to Strava’s broader community.

Samsung may pass Intel to become world’s number one chip maker

Why it matters to you

A shift in power could break more than two decades of Intel dominance, and see Samsung control two key positions in the tech industry.

Samsung may be poised to take Intel’s position as the top chip manufacturer in the world. If it happens, it’s likely to sting too, because Intel has held the prized top spot for the last 24 years. The shift in power hasn’t happened yet, but research company IC Insights predicts it will happen before we’re halfway through 2017; but only if the recent high prices of memory chips continues.

Its data suggests Intel will log $14.4 billion in semiconductor sales at the end of the second quarter this year, while Samsung will edge past it with $14.9 billion in sales. This would be up from the $13.5 billion Samsung made at the end of March, and a 4.1 percent increase over the same period last year. Intel was still ahead at the end of March, with $14.2 billion in sales.

Samsung has its memory chips to thank for its prosperity, and the considerable global interest in premium, high performance smartphones; but particularly in China. Samsung’s chip manufacturing division is its highest earner, and the combination of demand and price increases in the memory market are likely to keep it that way.

At the beginning of 2017, data showed Intel had a 15.9 percent market share, with Samsung in second position with 11.8 percent, a place it has held for 15 years. Should the switch take place, it will see Samsung occupy two important positions in the industry, based on market share. Recent data from IDC shows Samsung is still the top smartphone manufacturer, despite the Note 7’s recall last year, with an almost 23 percent share of the market.

Samsung is investing in its semiconductor business to increase its chances of toppling Intel. Following on from a $1 billion pledge on a new chip production plant in Austin, Texas, IC Insights sees Samsung spending up to $12.5 billion on similar facilities around the world over the coming year. Intel has invested $7 billion in its own Arizona factory this year, while IC Insights sees a slightly lower total investment in the industry than Samsung, at $12 billion.

Samsung may pass Intel to become world’s number one chip maker

Why it matters to you

A shift in power could break more than two decades of Intel dominance, and see Samsung control two key positions in the tech industry.

Samsung may be poised to take Intel’s position as the top chip manufacturer in the world. If it happens, it’s likely to sting too, because Intel has held the prized top spot for the last 24 years. The shift in power hasn’t happened yet, but research company IC Insights predicts it will happen before we’re halfway through 2017; but only if the recent high prices of memory chips continues.

Its data suggests Intel will log $14.4 billion in semiconductor sales at the end of the second quarter this year, while Samsung will edge past it with $14.9 billion in sales. This would be up from the $13.5 billion Samsung made at the end of March, and a 4.1 percent increase over the same period last year. Intel was still ahead at the end of March, with $14.2 billion in sales.

Samsung has its memory chips to thank for its prosperity, and the considerable global interest in premium, high performance smartphones; but particularly in China. Samsung’s chip manufacturing division is its highest earner, and the combination of demand and price increases in the memory market are likely to keep it that way.

At the beginning of 2017, data showed Intel had a 15.9 percent market share, with Samsung in second position with 11.8 percent, a place it has held for 15 years. Should the switch take place, it will see Samsung occupy two important positions in the industry, based on market share. Recent data from IDC shows Samsung is still the top smartphone manufacturer, despite the Note 7’s recall last year, with an almost 23 percent share of the market.

Samsung is investing in its semiconductor business to increase its chances of toppling Intel. Following on from a $1 billion pledge on a new chip production plant in Austin, Texas, IC Insights sees Samsung spending up to $12.5 billion on similar facilities around the world over the coming year. Intel has invested $7 billion in its own Arizona factory this year, while IC Insights sees a slightly lower total investment in the industry than Samsung, at $12 billion.

Samsung’s Bixby can’t speak English yet, but can rap insults to Siri in Korean

Why it matters to you

Samsung has launched voice functionality for its virtual assistant Bixby in Korea, ahead of its English debut in the next few months.

Bixby is the name given to Samsung’s virtual assistant installed on the new Galaxy S8 smartphones, and although it can’t speak English yet, there is evidence it’s quite adept at rapping its native Korean. Videos showing Bixby’s skills have been posted on YouTube, and have overshadowed other, more standard examples of the assistant’s brand-new voice feature. Plus, in true rap style, in some of the rhymes Bixby allegedly takes a shot at arch rival Siri.

One of the lengthier videos gives us more than three minutes of Bixby rapping in a female voice, while a shorter clip from another YouTuber sees Bixby’s male voice take over the rapping duties. According to one Reddit post, this rap includes the phrase, “I am better than Siri.” While such a phrase is sure to have Samsung fans whoop and shout with glee, one could argue that in reality Siri’s grasp of multiple languages, and wider availability, does give Apple’s assistant the edge at the moment.

If you’re grabbing your own Galaxy S8 ready to ask Bixby to belt out a rap, it’s not going to work unless you’re in Korea. Samsung started releasing Bixby voice features through an update to its Korean phones this week, and promises English voice support will come during the first half of this year.

Bixby’s voice features are relatively basic at the moment, including bookmarking webpages, sharing photos on social media, taking screenshots, and opening the Bixby Vision feature. A further video shows Bixby performing some actions, such as displaying recently taken pictures and creating an album of the results, plus taking a screenshot and sending it to a contact.

It’s inevitable English-speaking Bixby will do all this for us, but the more pressing question is, will Bixby also rap for us? Most virtual assistants have quirky features like this just waiting to be discovered, as it helps give them a slightly more “human” personality, and encourages exploration. We’ll find out what Bixby can do in the coming months.

Pillsy, the world’s first smart pill bottle, conditions you to take your meds

Why it matters to you

Pillsy, a pill bottle that syncs with your phone, uses principles from behavioral psychology to ensure you get your daily dose.

Managing medication is hard enough when you’ve got one pill to remember, but juggling multiple supplements, vitamins, and prescriptions is a recipe for disaster. Medication nonadherence — not taking medications as prescribed — is responsible for 125,000 deaths in the United States each year, and costs the health care system about $300 annually.

It’s a problem that Pillsy, a smart pill bottle that keeps track of daily doses, aims to solve.

Company co-founder Jeff LeBrun conceived of the idea when he and his wife struggled to follow a pill-taking routine.

“I tried reminders on my phone, but they would often go off when I was nowhere near my pills,” he said. “And [though] my wife is a very capable person who is good at almost everything she does, [even] she found that it was difficult to remember to take these new vitamins on a regular basis.”

Pillsy isn’t very complicated, and that’s the point — the team set out to build “[something] accessible to as many people as possible.” Every Pillsy packs a Bluetooth 4.0 radio, an open/closed sensor (the second-generation model has a load sensor), and a battery than lasts for more than 12 months on a charge.

A smartphone app does most of the heavy lifting. Pillsy automatically senses when the pill bottle is opened and closed, and sends an alert via SMS, lock screen notification, and/or phone call when you forget a dose. It monitors for double doses, and keeps track of how many pills are remaining.

A family sharing feature lets you choose you monitor a loved one’s doses and get weekly reports. And if you use Pillsy to keep track of vitamins, the app syncs a nutrient report to Apple Health, Apple’s wellness platform on iOS.

Trouble keeping track of medication is the leading cause of placement in nursing homes, LeBrun said. But the problem cuts across generational lines — young people are statistically worse at taking their pills than the elderly, LeBrun said.

“It’s really not that surprising,” said LeBrun. “Today, most people are simply handed new pills and told to take them once or twice a day, but with none of the tools needed to build a new habit. There are no visual cues, no rewards, and no regular support. A short discussion with a doctor or a pharmacist is simply not enough.”

LeBrun’s solution is the “habit loop,” a concept in behavioral psychology that posits developing a new habit requires (1) a cue, (2) the desired action, and (3) a reward.

To that end, the Pillsy app ships with a motivational chat bot that provides helpful advice. If a user skips doses, Pillsy’s bot asks them why, so they can drill down to the core reasons and get back on track.

“Most pills that have longer-term benefits don’t come with a trigger or a reward,” LeBrun said. That’s bad news for prescriptions. “Research has shown that most people forget the prescription instructions that are given to them verbally only 10 minutes after leaving the doctor’s office.”

The team has already had success. They’ve recruited dozens of beta testers who are using it to help with prenatal vitamins, antidepressants, ADHD medications, and drugs to treat cancer and HIV. And LeBrun’s wife — one of Pillsy’s first beta testers — went from taking vitamins 40 percent of the time to taking them over 98 percent of the time.

“I wanted Pillsy to be friendly, fun, and easy-to-use,” said LeBrun. “Pillsy is intentionally simple to use, but we believe it can help many people take control over an important part of their help. We’re starting with a smart pill cap, but our ambitions are actually much greater.”

Pillsy is available for prepurchase starting today.