Sorting Lego sucks, so here’s an AI that does it for you

Neural networks are currently being tasked with everything from adding animations to video games to reproducing images taken from MRI scans. Training the AI, which needs to be fed vast amounts of data, can be a slog and even then it may not produce completely accurate results. But when it comes to recognizing and classifying images and objects the AI can cut out a lot of leg work, as Jaques Mattheij found out when he built his own neural network for the novel task of sorting through his massive Lego collection.

You see, Mattheij decided he wanted in on the profitable cottage industry of online Lego reselling, and after placing a bunch of bids for the colorful little blocks on eBay, he came into possession of 2 tons (4,400 pounds) of Lego — enough to fill his entire garage.

As Mattheij explains in his blog post, resellers can make up to €40 ($45) per kilogram for Lego sets, and rare parts and Lego Technic can fetch up to €100 ($112) per kg. If you really want to rake in the cash, however, you have to go through the exhaustive process of manually sorting through your bulk Lego before selling it in smaller groupings online. Instead of spending an eternity sifting through his own, intimidatingly large collection, Mattheij set to work on building an automated Lego sorter powered by a neural network that could classify the little building blocks. In case you were wondering, Lego comes in more than 38,000 shapes and over 100 shades of color, which amounts to a lot of sorting even with the aid of AI.

Starting with a proof of concept (built using Lego, naturally), Mattheij spent the following six months improving upon his prototype with a lot of DIY handiwork. In his own words, he describes his present setup as a “hodge-podge of re-purposed industrial gear” stuck together using “copious quantities of crazy glue” and a “heavily modified” home treadmill.

The current incarnation uses conveyor belts to carry the Lego past a web camera that is set up to take images of the blocks. These are then fed to the neural network as part of its classification training, and all Mattheij has to do is spot the errors in its judgement.

“As the neural net learns, there are fewer mistakes, and the labelling workload decreases,” he states. “By the end of two weeks I had a training data set of 20,000 correctly labeled images.”

With his prototype up and running, Mattheij claims he is just waiting for the machine learning software to reliably class all of the images itself, and then he can start selling off the lucrative toy. If Matthiej manages to get the system working, he could then rechannel those profits into new expensive Lego projects.

Via: IEEE Spectrum

Source: Jacques Mattheij

Tesco has a one-hour delivery service in London now, too

Tesco has today launched a new one-hour delivery option in London, after having been caught secretly testing the speedy service last month. Via the Tesco Now apps for iOS and Android, customers can order up to 20 products out of a 1000-strong selection from 8AM to 11PM (or from 9AM on weekends). For serious BBQ emergencies, you can ensure delivery within an hour for an £8 fee, or choose the two-hour option for £6 if you’ve still got a pack of sausages in the fridge. Within the app, you can also track the progress of the moped-riding Quipup courier entrusted with your supplies.

Tesco follows Sainsbury’s in launching a one-hour delivery service in London. The latter supermarket’s offering is also only available in the capital via mobile app, and carries a £5 fee for up to 25 items. Both are trying to compete with Prime Now one-hour deliveries, which has enjoyed a relatively unchallenged head-start. Amazon covers many UK cities and towns, offers more than 20,000 products in some places, and charges £7 for a 60-minute guarantee or nothing if you can wait up to two hours (though the catch is you need a Prime subscription to start with).

Tesco is starting out small by comparison, with the service limited (for now) to these central London postcodes: E1, E2, EC1, EC2, EC3, N1, N16, NW1, NW10, NW3, NW5, NW6, NW8, SE1, SE11, SW10, SW11, SW12, SW13, SW14, SW15, SW1, SW3, SW4, SW5, SW6, SW7, SW8, W1, W10, W11, W12, W14, W2, W7, W8, W9, WC1, WC2.

Source: Tesco

MakerBot will connect Chromebooks to cloud-based 3D printers

Earlier this year, Makerbot announced in its most recent bloodletting that it would focus more on the education market. Today we’re seeing some of the fruits of that decision. First up is “My MakerBot,” what the outfit describes as a cloud-enabled browser-based printer monitoring platform that’s compatible with Chromebooks (which are incredibly popular in the classroom) and Autodesk’s Tinkercad 3D design software.

More than that, Makerbot will also release Makerbot in the Classroom, a guide for teachers containing lesson plans and nine different 3D-printing projects. Those nine projects are “a small sampling of hundreds of lesson plans” that educators can access via Thingiverse’s Education portal. Teachers apparently downloaded some 14,000 lesson plans last month alone.

If education can stop the layoffs at Makerbot, targeting the education sector — seemingly the only place that’s seeing much growth for 3D printing — seems like it could work out pretty well for the beleaguered firm.

Hip-Hop Documentary ‘Can’t Stop Won’t Stop’ Debuts Exclusively on Apple Music

Sean Combs’ exclusive Apple Music documentary Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A Bad Boy Story officially debuted on the music streaming service last night [Direct Link]. The film was announced this past April, following the documentary’s premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival.

Can’t Stop Won’t Stop follows Combs, aka “Puff Daddy,” and the rise of Bad Boy Records throughout the 1990s, all the way up until the reuniting of the Bad Boy Family in 2016 for a reunion show tour in New York City.

Apple Music’s full description follows:

In 1993, Sean “Diddy Combs, a.k.a. Puff Daddy, founded Bad Boy Records and changed popular culture forever. In 2016, the Bad Boy Family reunited in Brooklyn, New York for the biggest homecoming in hip-hop history. Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A Bad Boy Story explores the passion and personalities behind the empire, and goes inside the making of a movement and the staging of an unprecedented musical event.

This is an intern-to-CEO story — a raw behind-the-scenes look at the legacy of Bad Boy through a complex portrait of its mastermind as Combs reunites the Family over a frantic three-week rehearsal period. The film traces the label’s emergence in Harlem and Brooklyn, follows its meteoric rise, reflects on the tragic killing of Biggie Smalls, and celebrates Bad Boy’s influence — all while reveling the love and commitment that binds every member of the Family together.

The Apple Music page for the film includes the trailer, a running time indicator of one hour, and “Songs in this Movie” so viewers can easily find the music that appears in the documentary. Apple has also placed Can’t Stop Won’t Stop across the carousel on Apple Music’s “Browse” tab, as well as given more spotlight to hip hop-related radio stations, playlists, and old tracks and videos by The Notorious B.I.G.

.@diddy’s #CantStopWontStop has arrived!
Watch now on Apple Music. https://t.co/twohrAXFaV pic.twitter.com/X4VQGqo0XV

— Apple Music (@AppleMusic) June 26, 2017

Apple’s exclusive access to the one-hour documentary is said to be for as long as one year. Following the announcement in April, Combs said he felt “blessed” to be working with Apple as a partner in telling the story of Bad Boy Records.

Can’t Stop Won’t Stop is the latest music-related film content for Apple Music, and represents Apple’s ongoing push into original TV production. The company launched Planet of the Apps earlier in June, and Carpool Karaoke: The Series is set to debut on August 8.

Moving forward, Apple hopes to expand its content beyond music and tech, with former Sony executives Jamie Erlicht and Zack Van Amburg helping to lead Apple’s push into more traditional television for Apple Music.

Tag: Apple Music
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SpaceX just sent up two rockets in 48 hours — and landed them again

Why it matters to you

After experiencing some serious difficulties last year, it’s great to see SpaceX well and truly back on track.

SpaceX has been following through on its promise to ramp up its mission rate with its reusable rocket technology, over the weekend nailing two launches and landings in the space of just 48 hours.

The private space company’s busiest schedule to date began in Florida on Friday, June 23 when it successfully launched a Bulgarian communications satellite into orbit. The mission marked the second reflight of a Falcon 9 rocket after previously supporting the Iridium-1 mission at the start of this year.

Friday’s mission presented a major challenge as the Falcon 9 deployed the satellite into an orbit higher than usual for SpaceX. That meant the rocket would have to endure extra heat and other forces on its descent toward the drone ship in the Atlantic. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said beforehand that there was a “good chance” the rocket wouldn’t make it back.  In the event, it performed a heavier-than-usual landing, but appeared largely unscathed.

On Sunday SpaceX turned its attention to Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, where it launched another rocket (above), this one deploying 10 satellites for communications company Iridium. Extreme conditions, including fog, wind, and rough seas, meant this mission also faced challenges. Indeed, the team was forced to reposition the drone ship in the Pacific, but in the end the landing was perfect. A little while later, Musk posted a sped-up video (below) of the successful landing with footage captured by a camera attached to the rocket.

Sped up version of today’s rocket landing on the Droneship Just Read the Instructions (guess it did)

A post shared by Elon Musk (@elonmusk) on Jun 25, 2017 at 2:41pm PDT

Flying a used rocket just six months after its first flight — as it did on Friday — marks real progress for SpaceX, which took a year to refurbish its first relaunched rocket back in March. Fast turnaround time is important if it is to achieve its ambition of efficient space flight, with the aim to have boosters ready to fly again in just days rather than months.

Riding high

SpaceX is riding high following a number of recent high-profile successes, which besides its March reflight and landing include its first-ever reuse of a cargo ship that’s currently docked at the International Space Station.

It all looked very different just nine months ago when SpaceX suffered a major setback after one of its Falcon 9 rockets exploded on a Cape Canaveral launchpad. But after months of investigation, the team fixed the issue and has now been enjoying a string of successes as it continues its quest to perfect its reusable rocket system in preparation for more ambitious missions into deep space.

From EV fleets to LED streetlights, San Diego is America’s premier smart city

Your city is dumb. The potholed streets, coin-operated parking meters, and drafty brick buildings many of us interact with every day haven’t changed much in a century. But it’s finally happening. From Oslo to San Diego, cities across the globe are installing technology to gather data in the hopes of saving money, becoming cleaner, reducing traffic, and improving urban life. In Digital Trends’ Smart Cities series, we’ll examine how smart cities deal with everything from energy management, to disaster preparedness, to public safety, and what it all means for you.

You might think of San Diego as just a laid-back beach town. But it’s a town full of marvelous, counter-intuitive trends and odd dichotomies too. It’s the second-largest metropolitan area in California, yet its citizens and government think of it as a “city of villages.” It’s the town where surfing was born, yet the city is home to as many advanced technology startups as its counterpart in Silicon Valley. It’s largely a conservative place, yet one that is more committed to a clean environment and the advancement of science than just about anywhere else in the country. It’s a city in the crosshairs of the anti-immigration movement, yet one from which you can literally walk across a bridge to Tijuana, Mexico.

In short, San Diego is a weird, wonderful place — and it’s quickly becoming a global leader in the development and deployment of Smart City technology. In San Diego’s case, this means way more than urban development; this is re-writing the city’s DNA.

Smart Cities San Diego is a highly ambitious, multi-year collaboration that combines the resources of the City of San Diego, San Diego Gas & Electric, General Electric, the University of California San Diego, and a major nonprofit partner, Cleantech San Diego — a trade association whose mission is to advance these technologies. Led by these visionary organizations, Smart Cities San Diego brings expertise and ideas from government, business, education, and the nonprofit community in a public-private partnership that rivals the advances of just about any other community in the world.

And it’s fundamentally changing the nature of what it means to live there.

A Complex History

It all began in the 90s, in the heart of a financial crisis.

“We realized we needed to go beyond just being more efficient,” explained David Graham, the Deputy Chief Operating Officer of the City of San Diego, on whose shoulders much of the success of the Smart City initiatives rest. “We really started to look practically at ways to use data and technology to improve city services and save money.”

In addition to a burst of new technologies, the State of California was also heavily invested in the climate improvement goals supported by then-Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

“Every city in the United States is in the early stages of becoming smart cities.”

“We were able to unite the business community, academia, the government, and our utilities,” said Graham of those heady early days. “That created the people platform for our smart city efforts. We began with ideas around electric vehicles, and then you begin to layer. When you look at it from the big picture, if the city is the bloodstream of this organic being, then the utility is like the nervous system. Once we understood that concept, we could start thinking how we could better connect, coordinate and understand what is going on around our city.”

Another enormously important factor in the success of the smart city initiatives in San Diego is the presence of a full-time nonprofit advocate for the people, companies and organizations that support the development and deployment of clean technologies and renewable energy. Cleantech San Diego was founded a decade ago as a member-based trade association that helps foster partnerships and encourage investment in smart city technologies.

“We provide what I like to call a safe space for the public sector and the private sector to come together to talk about what the city needs to do,” Cleantech President and CEO Jason Alexander told Digital Trends. “We also support the deployment of pilot projects so our members can ensure that their ideas work in the real world.”

San Diego Goes Electric

San Diego started very early with electric vehicles (EV). To get ahead of the curve, the city facilitated the expansion of a public electric vehicle infrastructure that ensures safe, reliable, and efficient charging almost anywhere in the San Diego power grid. That was a major investment and a fundamental redesign to one of the city’s most important infrastructures. Today, 32 percent of San Diego’s electricity is renewable, and there is no coal in San Diego Gas & Electric’s energy portfolio.

More recently, San Diego Gas & Electric along with Pacific Gas & Electric and Southern California have raised more than $1 billion to try to electrify the entire state’s transportation sector. They can certainly point to San Diego as an example of success. The region is home to more than 14,000 EV drivers, nearly 1,000 charging stations, and car2go’s fleet of 400 electric vehicles. And San Diego plans to overclock its EV program by installing up to 90,000 charging stations at single-family homes, putting in up to 45 charging spots for ground support equipment at San Diego International Airport, and installing charging stations at locations used by taxis, shuttles and rideshare vehicles.

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San Diego’s latest triumph also involves electricity, and started as a pilot project. With involvement from Cleantech San Diego and other constituents, the city installed 3,000 LED street lights with wireless sensors and adaptive controls downtown. Not only did the lights improve energy efficiency, the extra effort to add wireless sensors has added a whole new dimension of data to the city’s arsenal — and simultaneously launched the most significant IoT civic project to date.

“With the streetlights, we realized that we didn’t know when they were on or off or how much energy was being used,” Graham remembered. “Utilizing technology to better control them and reduce our energy footprint was attractive in the first place. By moving forward with the adaptively controlled streetlight network, we figured out exactly how much energy we could save. But then our vendor, GE, told us they could communicate a lot more information than just whether a light is on or off. We could gather information regarding transport, parking, traffic and more.”

Having achieved success with the pilot program, San Diego has moved forward with a $30 million upgrade to 75,000 street lights, saving 30 million kilowatt hours annually, eliminating 13,000 tons of carbon dioxide, and generating $30 million in economic development. The city is also using federal community block grants to ensure underserved neighborhoods also have these wirelessly networked street lights, not just downtown or the Gaslight Quarter.

“We’re big on human-powered design. If you forget about the people, you’ve already failed at being a smart city.”

“A big part of being a smart city is being an inclusive city,” said Graham. He recalled talking to one family at an opening party who wondered if they could use the data to find the safest route to walk to school. In fact, the data collected by the streetlight network can be used for all manner of applications, and will be completely transparent to access. A new app designed to find parking in San Diego should be unveiled later this year.

“That’s the question: how can we provide more data not only for our decision makers but also push that information out to software developers and other organizations that can make use of it?” Graham explained. “We’re big on human-powered design. If you forget about the people, you’ve already failed at being a smart city.”

In fact, the program’s first challenge started with people. Having eyes on where people parked, Graham assumed parking violations would go up. But when he talked to the enforcement teams, he discovered that parking enforcement was based on a decades-old fixed route that didn’t even consider the new data.

“If you don’t adapt the process to the technology, the technology becomes extremely inefficient,” Graham said.

Next Stop, Solar City

Consider this: San Diego is the #1 place in the nation for rooftop solar. It’s another place where the Smart City constituents said this is good, but it could be better. Let’s make it better.

“We knew we had a ton of solar permits coming through the city’s application process, and the process was efficient,” Graham remembered. “Solar is a fairly standard technology where the installers know what they’re doing. So we blew up the process. We created a self-certification process for companies, trained them on what the process would be like, and what needed to happen.”

The result of “blowing up the process?” San Diego now processes more solar permits than any other type of permit that the city issues, with zero incidents or problems.

“The private sector’s ability to understand the city’s process for implementing solutions can be slow,” said Cleantech’s Anderson. “It’s slow because of procurement and permitting processes that private sector companies aren’t used to dealing with. People like David Graham want to solve these issues by streamlining the process so that they’re available when the technology is current and not decades later when the tech is out of date.”

America’s Smartest City?

Electricity is important, but the San Diego Smart City initiatives are looking at all manner of upgrades, from clean building techniques to renewable energy to hackathons. Graham mentions in passing that the city is already overhauling its drinking water system.

“Not to be too gross, but we’re turning sewage into pure, clean drinking water,” Graham laughs. “It will eventually be 30 percent sourced from renewable sources. Another thing we did was to invite in the many breweries in the area and let our citizens drink beer made from pure water. Demystifying these things and being very open about that is our future. It’s about citizen engagement at the human level, but also about citizen engagement at the technical level.”

Other smart city-related projects include the smart building initiatives at the Port of San Diego, the Chula Vista Bayfront Master Plan and the EcoLuxury Apartments in Scripps Ranch — the first all-solar apartment complex in San Diego and one of the first multifamily complexes in the United States to offer Net Zero living to all its residents.

“We invited in the many breweries in the area and let our citizens drink beer made from pure water.”

The City of San Diego also announced in 2017 that San Diego will become a “2030 District,” an urban area where the private sector and local building industry leaders commit to sustainability and economic growth. The goal is to achieve a 50 percent reduction in energy, water, and transportation emissions in the district by 2030.

“When it comes to smart cities, the only real rule is ‘You do you,’” Graham said. “The streetlight program might not be the same for everyone. Not everyone will be able to benefit from solar as much as San Diego, but we don’t have the same amount of wind energy as West Texas. You have to find out what works specifically for you. Look to the place where your money is being spent today, and think about how that investment can be leveraged to replace light with light years ahead.”

There are challenges here in San Diego, but they’re solvable ones. Legacy infrastructure that can support advanced wiring, fiber, and other advances is one. Obstacles to having these new data systems communicate with each other is another. There are also questions to come: How does San Diego react to autonomous (self-driving) cars? What does parking look like in an ever-evolving city? How could traffic data be combined with transactional data to identify the ideal spot for a food truck?

“We always say that San Diego is small enough to get things done but big enough to make a difference,” Anderson said. “If we can be the proving ground for the development and deployment of smart city technology here in San Diego, our hope is that these technologies make their way around the world.”

Becoming a smart city takes more than sensors and buzzwords

Your city is dumb. The potholed streets, coin-operated parking meters, and drafty brick buildings many of us interact with every day haven’t changed much in a century. But it’s finally happening. From Oslo to San Diego, cities across the globe are installing technology to gather data in the hopes of saving money, becoming cleaner, reducing traffic, and improving urban life. In Digital Trends’ Smart Cities series, we’ll examine how smart cities deal with everything from energy management, to disaster preparedness, to public safety, and what it all means for you.

What is a smart city? Not even the people building them seem to know yet.

“Get 10 people in a room and ask what a smart city is, you’ll get 11 answers,” Bob Bennett, Kansas City, Missouri’s chief innovation officer, told Digital Trends. That might be true, but most involved in smart city projects agree on one thing: No one’s really there yet. “I think it’s the Wild West at this point, and smart cities mean something different to everybody,” said Jarrett Wendt, executive vice president of strategic innovations at Panasonic.

When asked for examples of smart cities (these are our four favorite smart cities), Bennett instead gave examples of smart silos: areas where certain cities are particularly thriving, though they may not tie into a bigger picture. Washington D.C. has great water analytics. Seattle is doing a lot right when it comes to environmental initiatives. San Diego has thousands of smart streetlights. Songdo, in South Korea, had the benefit of being built from the ground up as a smart city. Many of its lessons can’t necessarily be applied to cities trying to work with existing infrastructure.

Data sharing is crucial

Better parking, efficient lighting, improved traffic flow, smarter security, improved waste management, and disaster planning are all areas where technology can make an impact. “The biggest problems with these technologies,” said Munish Khetrapal, managing director of Cisco’s smarter cities and IoT department, “there’s a lot of fragmentation … You need a way to connect all these different standards and bring them all in a common, unified platform.”

“You need a way to connect all these different standards and bring them all in a common, unified platform.”

Having access to the data from — for example — your environmental sensors and connected trash bins is the first step; making sense of it is the next. But sharing that data and analysis is just as crucial. Arvind Satyam, Cisco’s managing director of smart cities and digitization division, gives the example of waste management and traffic departments working together. If the trucks are only picking up the bins that are, say, 70 percent full and above, the traffic management agency can use its real-time information to route them in the most efficient way.

There is a reason “every city has their own challenges,” said Blake Miller of Think Big Partners, a startup partnered with Cisco that’s working on making Kansas City smarter. Every city may have crime and congestion, but think about the weather differences between San Diego and Denver or the potential natural disasters facing Seattle and Kansas City.

Looking at neighboring cities

Yet even if they have different problems, CIOs and mayors should still be looking at their neighbors and beyond – what Sara Gardner, Hitachi’s CTO calls “looking sideways” — to see what’s working and what’s not. In Europe, 56 cities “built their own bad variations of the same service” complained Sascha Haselmayer, CEO of Citymart, in Anthony Townsend’s book Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia. Some cities have tried to involve citizens, promoting contests for residents to build apps.

The problem tends to be that “geeks will build apps for getting bicycle directions, they’ll build apps for finding cocktail and coffee specials, not the kinds of things that working mothers need,” Townsend told CityLab. Ignoring these populations has dire consequences.

In Columbus, Ohio’s South Linden neighborhood, the infant mortality rate was twice that of New York City. “Without reliable transportation, it’s hard to make pre- and postnatal appointments,” said Vinn White, former deputy secretary at the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT), during a panel at Smart Cities Week (SCW) in Santa Clara. To win the 2015 Smart City Challenge proposal, the city suggested developing an on-demand ride service for pregnant women.

“A lot of people think about smart cities and they think about flying cars and futuristic skyscrapers and stuff like that.”  

In order for cities to begin on the right track to becoming smarter, many stars need to align. The biggest factor is having leaders who are on board. Satyam cites Barcelona as a prime example; five years ago, he said, the government that was in place was not only willing to embrace technology but get different departments working together. “It’s not just about being smart in individual verticals, it’s about tying all these verticals together,” he said. When a city has a strategic goal in mind — becoming carbon neutral, like Copenhagen, for example — it requires collaboration across the board.

“Cities are big, huge moving ships that don’t move very quickly,” said Miller. Trying to rig everything together could mean that by the time everything’s in place, your brand new technology is on its way to becoming obsolete. For a city with “incredibly tight budgets,” said Bennett, there’s little room for failure.

Red tape can kill innovation

Sometimes funding isn’t the issue. “Procurement is a nightmare,” said Charles Brennan, CIO of Philadelphia, during a SCW panel. “I have less trouble getting money than I have spending it.” A startup may want to work with a city but might struggle to fill out 30-to-40-page forms required for consideration. City ordinances that haven’t kept pace with technology can also pose a problem. Austin, Texas was looking at installing smart kiosks around the city. According to the ordinance, “this smart kiosk is a sign,” said Ted Lehr, an IT data architect with the city. “It’s the only thing we can label it as.”

During the same SCW panel, he mentioned there might be pushback from the public with some of these initiatives. While Singapore or Dubai might unilaterally decide to implement technology, “we are doing it in a way that has to engage our public,” he said. Meanwhile, even cities with deep tech talent pools to draw from can come up short. “It’s hard for government to compete with the private sector,” said Kevin Burns, CIO of Miami. A few panelists suggested appealing to Millennials’ civic pride and desire to make a difference to get them to accept lower-paying jobs within the government.

Building new infrastructure

In addition to outdated infrastructure, cities that aren’t starting from the ground up have inefficient buildings to incorporate into the picture. “It’s not actually the age of building, it’s the age of infrastructure,” Scott McCormick, vice president of sales and business development for BuildingIQ, told Digital Trends in 2015 at a conference about San Jose’s future. The company uses analytics to double the efficiency of HVAC systems, as long as they’re not more than 40 years old. For newer buildings, the possibilities of smart buildings go beyond energy management. “The tenant, customer, and visitor experience is all integrated with the technology, and then all the back building facilities management is integrated as well,” Eric Simone, CEO of ClearBlade, told Digital Trends.

“Every city has its own challenges.”

That means a command center could give a building manager a picture of the HVAC system, lighting, security, and more. The heating and cooling could adjust based on the position of the sun. Visitors could have their faces scanned for security purposes, instead of having to check in at a desk. They’d get a notification on their phone, directing them to the proper elevator bank to get to their meeting. Sensors on windows, appliances, and elevators could help vendors and service people provide predictive maintenance – fixing a problem almost before it starts.

In an emergency, buildings could also communicate to provide crucial information. “The problem is for a project like this, for any big building, you’re going to have 47 different vendor platforms you now have to look at,” said Simone, who added that ClearBlade is the open, neutral platform that can tie it all together. These smart buildings are closer than you may think. The company is working on a project that should have its smart buildings up and running in three or four years. It’s a lot easier to implement IoT on a building level than a city level, he said.

The problem of security

Another element for cities to keep in mind is security. In April, Dallas’s sirens started blaring in the middle of the night, the result of a cyberattack. Much more disruptive and dangerous would be if control of a hydroelectric dam fell into the wrong hands, for example. Another concern is creating or worsening a digital divide, where parts of a city are left without access to the same technology — even something as simple as internet access — as the rest of the city.

Cities such as Kansas City are trying to close those gaps, but it’s not going to happen overnight. In 10 years, though cities could operate differently — but it’s not as if they’ll be unrecognizable. “It won’t look like Minority Report and it won’t look like The Fifth Element,” said Satyam. “A lot of people think about smart cities and they think about flying cars and futuristic skyscrapers, and stuff like that. We believe that cities won’t fundamentally look different in the next 10 years, but cities will be a lot more efficiently managed.”

That definitely sounds less cool (and less Big Brother-ey) but it could look something like this: You’re driving down the road, and there’s fog ahead. If the fog is backing up traffic really badly, your car will reroute you, but if it’s just reducing visibility, your car will automatically slow down and turn on the fog lights. Khetrapal sees a good outcome for smart cities that operate like this: “How can the city adapt and respond the citizen, versus how the citizen adapt and respond to the city?”

Going forward, every week, we will feature a new smart city. This week we’re also talking about San Diego. If you’re interested in learning another aspect of this, be sure to also read up on how autonomous cars may change cities and make them smarter.

Samsung working on a way to charge a smartwatch just by touching it to your phone

Why it matters to you

Short battery life is a big wearable tech problem, and Samsung may be addressing it on the rumored Gear S4.

After not getting wearables right for a while — see the original Galaxy Gear for evidence — Samsung really improved things with the Gear S2 and Gear S3, combining great design with a simple interface and that cool rotating bezel. Inevitably, rumors are gathering about a Gear S4 smartwatch, ready to replace the 2016 Gear S3. Here’s what we think we know about it.

While we’ve yet to see any leaked images or design hints about the Gear S4 (who knows, maybe it will be a pocket watch), Samsung may have been concentrating its efforts on that big wearable pain-point: better battery life. A patent filing in the U.S. suggests Samsung will use a special case to recharge a smartwatch, or other wireless charging device, on the move, simply by putting the two together. Extending battery life without using a larger battery or fewer features.

The patent describes a case, which looks like a regular folio case, with a wireless charging system inside and a USB Type-C connector that links it to the phone. Concentrating on the applications with the watch, it appears the two must be in contact with each other to activate charging. It may not happen over a distance, therefore the watch won’t charge when on your wrist, from a phone in your pocket. That’s a shame, but a restriction of inductive wireless charging systems. For real short-range wireless charging, we’ll have to wait until systems like Energous are perfected.

Battery cases are often bulky, and it’s not clear whether the system uses the phone’s battery, or one in the new case. The latter would be best, as it could charge up your phone too. If you buy a smartwatch, you’ll want to make use of it, which you can’t do if it’s out of battery. The use of GPS is also becoming more common on smartwatches, and it’s notoriously power hungry. Topping up the battery without the need to carry around another charger, or find a power outlet, after a run or other sporting event would be a definite benefit.

However, before we get too excited, it’s worth remembering patents are filed all the time, and not all end up becoming final products. This one doesn’t specifically mention the Gear S4; but the timing may be more than coincidental either. It also doesn’t provide solid detail about how the technology will work. It does sound viable though, and isn’t too futuristic. After all, the Gear S3 uses wireless charging now, through its own dock.

What else do we know about the Gear S4? Not much, but we can speculate the Tizen operating system will make a return, and about when we’ll get to see the device. The Samsung Gear S3 launched at the end of August 2016, but never went on sale before November. If Samsung stays with tradition, it may announce the Gear S4 at the IFA technology show in Berlin this September. We’ll keep you updated with all the rumors right here.

First OnePlus 5 update brings bug fixes, camera tweaks

OxygenOS 4.5.2 is now rolling out with bug fixes and stability improvements.

The OnePlus 5 will be going up for sale starting tomorrow, June 27, but if you were able to get your hands on one during the company’s “early drop” sales event, there’s an update waiting for your handset. The OxygenOS 4.5.2 update comes in at just 36MB, and has fixes for app installation issues, camera tweaks, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and network stability fixes, along with better third-party app compatibility.

For a majority of users, the update will be available as a day-one update, but if you already have the OnePlus 5, head to the phone’s settings to manually initiate the download. Haven’t yet figured out if you should pick up the OnePlus 5? Be sure to take a look at our detailed coverage.

OnePlus 5

• Complete OnePlus 5 review
• Reviewing our first OnePlus 5 photos
• OnePlus 5 specs
• Which OnePlus 5 model should you buy?
• Camera comparison: OnePlus 5 vs. Galaxy S8
• The latest OnePlus 5 news
• Join the discussion in the forums

OnePlus

The Amazon Echo is on sale for just $130 today

The Amazon Echo is at its lowest price all year.

The Amazon Echo is on sale for $129.99, a discount of $50 from its retail price of $179.99. That’s the lowest price we’ve seen on the full-sized Echo all year, and brings it to parity — at least from a price standpoint — with the Google Home.

The deal is valid on both the black and white color options of the Echo, and is applicable until 11:59 p.m. ET. In addition to giving you access to Alexa’s considerable skill-set, the Echo is a pretty good speaker in its own right. If you’ve been eyeing the internet-connected speaker, now’s the time to bite.

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