That laptop ban could be about to get a whole lot worse for plane passengers

Why it matters to you

If you fly into or out of the U.S. and usually use a laptop during your journey, any extension of the ban is going to affect you.

The U.S.-imposed ban preventing plane passengers on certain U.S.-bound flights from taking electronic devices larger than a mobile phone into the cabin could be about to get a whole lot more troublesome for travelers.

In an interview on Sunday, Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly confirmed the government is now considering a ban on laptops and other devices in the cabins of all international flights to and from the U.S.

Speaking on Fox News Sunday about the security issue, Kelly was asked directly if he intended to extend the ban to flights into and out of the country.

The government official shot straight back with, “I might,” before elaborating. “There’s a real threat. Numerous threats against aviation, that’s really the thing that they are obsessed with, the terrorists, the idea of knocking down an airplane in flight, particularly if it’s a U.S. carrier, particularly if it’s full of mostly U.S. folks.”

Kelly added that Homeland Security planned to “raise the bar for … aviation security much higher than it is now,” and spoke of “new technologies down the road,” though declined to offer any details.

Any expansion of the ban will force millions of plane passengers to either pack their laptop and other devices into their hold luggage, or, if they’d prefer not to risk damage or theft by placing it in their suitcase, leave them at home.

There’s been much debate as to how putting laptops in the hold would diminish a bomb threat, and how, with so many lithium batteries packed together and out of sight, the security policy could even be a fire hazard.

Dubai-based Emirates, one of the airlines affected by the current ban, has sought to reassure passengers flying with electronics by introducing a kind of VIP service to take special care of laptops, tablets, cameras, and portable DVD players that have to be checked in. It’s also handing out Microsoft Surface tablets to select passengers so they can continue to get work done during a flight.

If Homeland Security goes ahead with the expansion of the ban, we can expect other airlines to follow Emirates’ example, though such VIP services will likely do little to alleviate the annoyance felt by passengers forced to fall into line.

That laptop ban could be about to get a whole lot worse for plane passengers

Why it matters to you

If you fly into or out of the U.S. and usually use a laptop during your journey, any extension of the ban is going to affect you.

The U.S.-imposed ban preventing plane passengers on certain U.S.-bound flights from taking electronic devices larger than a mobile phone into the cabin could be about to get a whole lot more troublesome for travelers.

In an interview on Sunday, Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly confirmed the government is now considering a ban on laptops and other devices in the cabins of all international flights to and from the U.S.

Speaking on Fox News Sunday about the security issue, Kelly was asked directly if he intended to extend the ban to flights into and out of the country.

The government official shot straight back with, “I might,” before elaborating. “There’s a real threat. Numerous threats against aviation, that’s really the thing that they are obsessed with, the terrorists, the idea of knocking down an airplane in flight, particularly if it’s a U.S. carrier, particularly if it’s full of mostly U.S. folks.”

Kelly added that Homeland Security planned to “raise the bar for … aviation security much higher than it is now,” and spoke of “new technologies down the road,” though declined to offer any details.

Any expansion of the ban will force millions of plane passengers to either pack their laptop and other devices into their hold luggage, or, if they’d prefer not to risk damage or theft by placing it in their suitcase, leave them at home.

There’s been much debate as to how putting laptops in the hold would diminish a bomb threat, and how, with so many lithium batteries packed together and out of sight, the security policy could even be a fire hazard.

Dubai-based Emirates, one of the airlines affected by the current ban, has sought to reassure passengers flying with electronics by introducing a kind of VIP service to take special care of laptops, tablets, cameras, and portable DVD players that have to be checked in. It’s also handing out Microsoft Surface tablets to select passengers so they can continue to get work done during a flight.

If Homeland Security goes ahead with the expansion of the ban, we can expect other airlines to follow Emirates’ example, though such VIP services will likely do little to alleviate the annoyance felt by passengers forced to fall into line.

ARM’s new mobile processors are built for AI on the go

When ARM showed up at Computex last year, it brought a bundle of smartphone processors that pushed for better mobile VR. As you might’ve noticed, though, AI is one of the big new trends in mobile this year — is it any surprise that the ARM’s pushing that angle with its latest batch of silicon?

First up is the Cortex-A75 CPU core, which the company says can deliver laptop-level performance without burning through any more power than existing mobile processors. ARM is promising a 50 percent boost in performance compared to the older A73 core, which should lend itself well to machine learning processes that run right on your devices. Remember: we’re starting to see more smartphones optimize their performance on the fly based on behaviors sussed out by these kinds of algorithms. As these chipsets get more efficient at machine learning, we’ll benefit more from the deep insights that get unearthed.

Meanwhile, ARM’s A55 CPU is a little less interesting. It certainly seems like a capable update, though — it’s said to be 2.5 times as power efficient as the existing A53, a notable gain for a mid-range CPU. The thing to remember is that both of these processors use ARM’s relatively new “DynamIQ” foundation, an updated design that allows for them to be used more flexibly.

See, ARM’s older big.LITTLE architecture typically paired an equal number of high-powered CPU cores with less powerful ones use for tasks that aren’t all that intense. DynamIQ, meanwhile, allows for up to eight completely different cores to be used — you could team up one very powerful core with mixed bag of mid-range and low-power cores, depending on what the cluster is meant for.

And then there’s the new Mali-G72 graphics core, an updated take on ARM’s work with last year’s G71. (You might remember it from devices like Huawei’s pretty-damned-good Mate 9.) If you thought the A75 was big news for on-device AI, the G72 may be even more important.

Not only is it more power efficient than the G71; ARM says the GPU is 17 percent more efficient at machine learning processes than the processor it replaces. This is obviously great news for device makers looking to embed more intelligence into their work, but don’t forget about the other benefits: the G72 should also handle new, more taxing games and VR experiences very well, too. The only real downside to all of these announcements? We’ll have to wait until 2018 before these processor cores start seeing use in devices we can actually buy.

Click here to catch up on the latest news from Computex 2017!

That animated GIF you’re sharing could be an ad in disguise

Animated GIFs (Graphics Interface Format) are now 30 years old, and they are everywhere — we constantly use them to express feelings or joke around with friends, family, or even coworkers. They’re so ubiquitous on the internet that you can now easily find and share GIFs in all the popular messaging apps, like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, iMessage, keyboards like Google’s Gboard, and even on social networks like Facebook and Twitter. They’re so popular, in fact, that a new trend is brewing. More and more of the GIFs you see are actually ads in disguise.

Before you get your pitchfork out in protest that advertising is invading your blessed animated memes, you should know this: you’ve probably already sent a GIF ad. We’re not talking about a banner ad-like GIFs of a flashing Starbucks logo, but something a little more subtle, fun, and relatable. Like the GIF below:

See the faded Domino’s logo at the bottom? It’s not going to stop most pizza-lovers from sharing the GIF in a conversation, and GIF search engines are getting paid by companies like Domino’s for pushing their brands. It’s a revenue model the makers behind GIF Keyboard are pursuing.

The secret search engine where GIFs are born

Have you ever wondered where GIFs come from? Most of us access them by way of GIF search engines — one of which is a company called Tenor (formerly Riffsy). You may have heard of Tenor’s first app, GIF Keyboard, and you have more than likely used its search engine, which powers GIF searches in apps like Google’s Gboard, Duck Duck Go, Kika, and TouchPal. They’re also a main contributor to GIF searches in services like iMessage, Slack, Twitter, Facebook Messenger, and Facebook (soon).

“Tenor … has become a search engine for people’s thoughts, feelings, and emotions.”

People use Tenor’s GIF search engine about 200 million times per day, and Tenor is looking to monetize its business by tapping into search terms, which perhaps unsurprisingly, are completely different from the types of terms you would throw into a search engine like Google.

“Ninety percent of our volume is people typing in emotions — things like “happy,” “sad,” “smile,” “smirk,” — versus Google, where it’s very intent driven; where I want to understand ‘how tall is this glass,’ or ‘how big is this iPad,’” David McIntosh, Tenor’s founder and CEO, told Digital Trends. “People are typing in things like “ugh,” or “smiling” — people don’t go to Google and type in “smiling.” Tenor, more than 200 million times per day, has become a search engine for people’s thoughts, feelings, and emotions.”

The fact that Google, the world’s biggest search company, decided to use Tenor’s API (Application Program Interface) over Google’s own Image Search to power GIFs in its keyboard app Gboard makes it clear there’s value in looking at these search terms. About 60 percent of Tenor’s volume is raw emotion, McIntosh said. Another 30 percent are emotions plus a term, like Minions (from Despicable Me). The final 10 percent comes from people searching for a specific GIF. The goal is to map these terms — these emotions — with advertisers.

For example, if you type in “good morning” into a Tenor-supported GIF search, you may or may not see Starbucks-branded content. Starbucks-related GIFs can come from terms such as happy holidays, coffee, good morning, cheers, and more. But if the coffee company wants to make sure Starbucks-branded GIFs are your first results, it can pay Tenor to map its content to “good morning,” putting those results at the beginning. The model is cost per share, so advertisers like Starbucks will only have to pay Tenor when someone shares one of these branded GIFs.

Will this ruin GIFs?

Will people get skittish about sharing ads? Probably not, Gfycat CEO Richard Rabbat told Digital Trends, because we’ve been doing it for quite some time.

“Advertisers are putting budgets behind [GIFs] now, because they see not only the fact that people are excited they can share it on messaging or social, but they’re using it to be a part of the conversation,” Rabbat said.

Tenor has been mapping branded content with GIFs since it launched GIF Keyboard. Last year, for example, the company worked with Domino’s to map branded pizza GIFs to terms like “party,” “celebrate,” and “love,” and it ended up driving more than 40 million views in less than six weeks. The same applies for new movies and TV series, as Tenor has partnerships with a variety of studios. The GIF company is starting to officially monetize the feature with select advertisers in its own app first, and it will then later expand it to wherever its API is used.

“People love showing this content as long as it maps to a particular emotion,” McIntosh said.

But for this model to work, the branded GIFs have to be high quality. Rabbat, who spent some time at Google long before launching GIF search engine Gfycat, said employees at Google never thought people would click on ads ahead of search results.

“When we looked at Search, for example, people were like, ‘how are you going to put an ad ahead of what people are really looking for?’ But then over time, the ad relevance became so good that people actually found a lot of value out of the ad itself,” he said. “I think that’s the bar we have to cross so we don’t deliver random advertised content. It has to be relevant, it has to be engaging.”

The folks at Giphy, Tenor’s main competitor, think people will share these types of GIFs no matter what because it’s usually representative of what they do in real life.

“GIFs are cultural soundbites,” Jason Stein, director of Business Development at Giphy, told Digital Trends. “All the GIFs on Giphy make up an entire language of culture that we use to express ourselves digitally in the same way that the places we frequent and the brands we wear help express ourselves in real life. Sharing a Starbucks GIF is the same choice as when someone walks into a [Starbucks] to grab a coffee on their way to work.”

Stein hit home the importance of creating high quality GIFs. Giphy, for example, launched Giphy Studios — a production studio made up of people who know how to “make GIFs look great.”

“It’s all great content, and that’s all anyone wants,” he said. “So if a partner is creative, understands the space, and makes GIFs that users want, there’s no “weirdness” at all.”

Zepp phone apps use AI to study your basketball shots

You may know Zepp for sports tracking sensors you can slap on your baseball bat or soccer ball, but its latest tracking involves little more than your phone and a good view of the action. Its game recording and training apps (Android, iOS) are adding a dash of AI technology (namely, computer vision) to analyze your baseball swings, golf swings and basketball shots. If your three-pointer throwing needs work, you just need to point your phone’s camera at the court and start capturing. You can share the videos and performance data with others, too, in case you need to prove your skills to recruiters.

It may seem odd for Zepp to do this when its business is built around sensors. Wouldn’t it want to keep you hooked on hardware? However, this is more of a complementary feature than a replacement. There’s only so much info you can collect without measuring a bat or golf club, and the imaging won’t help much whenever you’re off-camera. This is more about completing the picture, producing stats that you might not get otherwise.

Source: App Store, Google Play

‘Rime’ creators will remove anti-tampering code if it’s cracked

Game studios that use digital rights management (DRM) tools tend to defend it to the death, even after it’s been cracked. It prevents ‘casual’ piracy and cheating, they sometimes argue. However, Rime developer Tequila Works is taking a decidedly different approach. It claims that it’ll remove Denuvo, the anti-tampering/DRM system on the Windows version of Rime, if someone cracks its island puzzle title. This is an odd promise to make, especially since it amounts to an inadvertent dare — find a way to break in and the developers will eliminate the need for that crack.

This wouldn’t be so unusual a statement if there weren’t a history of Denuvo cracks. While it’s harder to defeat this code than earlier schemes, it’s definitely not impossible. Recent games like Resident Evil 7 and Prey had their Denuvo implementations broken within days of release, while developers have patched it out on titles like Doom and Inside. Tequila Works is aware that cracking is likely more a question of “when” than “if,” but it appears to be optimistic about the challenge involved.

We’ve asked Tequila to elaborate on its statement and will let you know if it has more to say. Whatever the response, it won’t be surprising if someone cracks Rime relatively quickly in response. This isn’t to excuse the actions of would-be pirates, but the statement is a reminder why developers don’t usually say much about their DRM unless it’s causing problems. In some cases, it can invite a lot of unwelcome attention.

Via: Polygon

Source: Steam Community

The pricey OnePlus 5 and the accidental OnePlus X [#acpodcast]

This week, Daniel, Andrew and Flo close the door on Google I/O and open it to the OnePlus 5. And while they’re at it, they talk about Motorola’s newfound confidence, and whether the HTC U11 can make up some ground.

Oh, and there’s some OnePlus X reminiscing ❤️

Show notes:

• The end of Google I/O
• Developers, execs and Kotlin at Google I/O
• HTC U11 review
• Everything we know about the OnePlus 5
• Motorola’s big comeback plans

This episode of the Android Central Podcast is brought to you by Thrifter, the best place to get great deals in your inbox every day!

Podcast MP3 URL: http://traffic.libsyn.com/androidcentral/androidcentral337.mp3

Nintendo might not be done boosting Switch production

It’s no secret that Nintendo is facing a ton of demand for the Switch, to the point where it reportedly doubled production to keep up. Even that figure might be a tad conservative, however. The Financial Times’ supply chain sources claim that Nintendo has hiked its Switch production to 18 million for its current fiscal year (which ends in March 2018), up 2 million from the Wall Street Journal’s figures. Why? Allegedly, it’s to prevent “customer tantrums” during the holidays — Nintendo doesn’t want to ship Super Mario Odyssey in November with no systems available to play it.

The console giant is officially sticking to a shipment target of 10 million over the same period. However, numerous analysts believe the company is intentionally lowballing its goals. It might not want to promise the Moon and leave investors disappointed if there’s either a production problem (say, not enough LCDs) or a surprise slump in demand.

If the figure is authentic, though, it suggests that Nintendo has had to keep raising its internal production figures as it realizes that the Switch is a bona fide hit. That’s good news for gamers, as it both increases the chances of finding a Switch and encourages game developers to throw their weight behind the system. With that said, Nintendo also risks a problem it hasn’t had to deal with for years: long-lasting shortages for its main console. We can think of far worse problems to have, but Nintendo probably doesn’t want to risk leaving money on the table (and disappointing fans) if at all possible.

Via: The Verge

Source: Financial Times

Stars can turn into black holes without a supernova

As a rule, astronomers believe that stars have to explode in a supernova before they collapse into black holes. That violent death is always the cue, right? Not necessarily. Researchers have spotted a massive star 22 million light years away, N6946-BH1, that appears to have skipped the supernova step entirely — it brightened slightly and just disappeared. Checks have ruled out a dimmed star or dust. And this probably isn’t a one-off incident, either. Ohio State University’s Christopher Kochanek tells NASA that 10 to 30 percent of massive stars might die in failed supernovae.

The discovery could improve our understanding of how supermassive black holes form. It didn’t entirely make sense that stars would eject so much mass and then become a gigantic anomaly. It would be more logical for the star to use its existing mass for a head start, so to speak. This also helps explain why scientists haven’t seen as many supernovae as they would if every gigantic star went out with a bang. While it’s a little disconcerting to realize that some stars might vanish without any drama, this finding might just solve a number of cosmic mysteries.

Source: NASA, Oxford Academic

Expand your PC’s storage the easy way with these external hard drives

This article was updated 5-24-2017 by Jayce Wagner to reflect recent changes to the WD My Passport lineup.

Whether it’s for backing up your entire computer or giving yourself some extra file space to work with, everyone needs an external hard drive. But with so many models on the market to choose from, which ones are worth getting? There are many factors to consider here, but the primary ones are storage space, speed, portability, and reliability. With that many factors, it’s impossible to definitively call one external drive the “best,” but it is possible to find five drives that, collectively, will fit the needs of anyone. Below are the favorite USB 3.0-compatible drives you can buy right now.

The fastest, lightest external that money can buy — Samsung T3 ($750)

It’s hard to believe this little drive, which easily fits in the palm of your hand, fits 2TB of data. But it does, and also offers the fastest transfer speeds we’ve seen in an external drive. The Samsung T3 is tiny, fast, and extremely expensive — the 2TB version costs $750. Still, this is the best external hard drive money can buy, and if price is no object, you should get it. This is particularly true if you work with a a good deal of video (or other large files) and want to edit directly on the external drive. Read our full review here.

Buy one now from:

Amazon Newegg

Light, but not on storage — Seagate Backup Plus Ultra Slim Portable ($60+)

If you’re looking for something portable that’s also reasonably priced, this mechanical Seagate drive will fit the bill. Not only does the drive weigh a paltry 4.8 ounces and measure a mere 9.65 millimeters thick, but it touts an affordable price tag ($100 for 2TB, or $70 for 1TB). The speeds aren’t going to rival that of a solid state drive, but our benchmarks show it can compete with any mechanical external on the market despite its extremely portable footprint. The case is currently available in either silver or gold and is primarily made of plastic, with an aluminum top.

Buy one now from:

Amazon Newegg

Affordable and portable — Western Digital My Passport ($60+)

This Western Digital Drive isn’t the lightest on the market, but it does come with a three-year warranty and WD’s reputation for reliability. It’s also available at a low price point — the 3TB model costs $110, and the 1TB model costs a mere $60. Best of all, the drive doesn’t require external power and showcases a sleek, stylish build, which is likely why it’s the first choice for many. It even comes in six different colors, if the yellow is a bit much. 

Buy one now from:

Amazon

Lots of space at a low price point — Seagate Expansion 5TB ($120)

If total storage space is more important to you than portability or speed, desktop external drives are an extremely affordable option. Sure, they require an external power supply, but they also give you a lot of storage for very little money. This Seagate drive, for example, provides you with 5TB of storage and a three-year warranty for only $120. Moreover, all that storage comes in a textured black case that will look great on your desk.

Buy one now from:

Amazon Jet

All the storage in the world — Western Digital 16TB My Book Duo ($499+)

If 5TB isn’t enough for you, Western Digital has you covered. This massive enclosure comes with up to 16TB of storage for $500, or 4TB of storage for $249. You can configure the two drives inside this enclosure as a RAID, for file redundancy, or take advantage of every byte of storage for unique files. Either way, you get a lot of storage space, and a two-year warranty from a reliable brand. The case is also user-serviceable, meaning you can replace broken drives yourself and use the enclosure long after the drives break down.

Buy one now from:

Amazon Newegg