Try hands-free mode on the Amazon Tap with a certified refurb for $70 today

With Prime Day rapidly approaching, the team at Thrifter is back again with a great deal on an Amazon Tap!

The Amazon Tap sits in the middle of Amazon’s Echo lineup, and if you’ve been looking to grab one for your home or the office, today is the day. Amazon is running a bunch of one-day sales leading up to Prime Day, and this one scores you a certified refurbished Amazon Tap for just $69.99, a savings of $40 from its normal price. What makes the timing of this deal even more important is that Amazon plans to offer voice exclusive discounts on Prime Day, meaning you’ll need an Alexa-enabled product to take advantage of them.

Amazon states the certified refurbished Amazon Taps have been tested and will look and work like new. If these sell anything like the Echo Dots did, this deal won’t last all day. If you aren’t already a member of Amazon’s Prime service, now is also a great time to sign up for the free 30-day trial. This will not only allow you to grab a discounted Amazon Tap today, but also take part in all the Prime Day fun that is right around the corner.

See at Amazon

For more great deals be sure to check out our friends at Thrifter now!

How to buy things with Google Home

Google makes it easy to shop using your voice.

It seems as though every year our lives get even busier than they were the year before. Between your commute, working, hitting doctor’s appointments, making it to the gym, and ensuring everything gets done on time, it can be hard to figure out the best time to run out to the store. That’s where Google Home wants to make things a bit easier for you.

You can set up voice purchasing and even reorder items that you’ve ordered previously. It only takes a few minutes to set up voice purchasing, and we have the details on how to do it right here!

• How to set up Google Home to make purchases
• How to make a purchase using your voice

How to set up purchasing on Google Home.

Open the Google Home app.
Tap the menu button(it looks like three horizontal lines in the upper left corner of the screen).

Tap More Settings.

Tap Payments.
Tap Get Started.

Tap accept after reading the Terms and Conditions.

Tap to choose your default payment method.
Tap Next.

Tap to choose your delivery address.

Tap Next.
Tap the toggle to choose the Google Home that can make payments.

Tap Done.

How to make a purchase using your voice.

Say “Buy [product]”, “Order [product]”, or “Purchase [product]” to make a single order.
Say “Buy [product] from [store]”, “Purchase [product] from [store]”, or “Order [product] from [store]” to order a specific product from a specific store.
Say “Reorder [product]” to reorder a single item that you have purchased previously.

Questions?

Have you set up purchasing through Google Home? Do you have a question we didn’t answer? Be sure to leave us a comment and let us know about it below!

Google Home

• Google Home review
• These services work with Google Home
• Google Home vs. Amazon Echo
• Join our Google Home forums!

Google Store Best Buy Target

The Morning After: Thursday, July 6th 2017

Hey, good morning!

Welcome back! After a quick holiday break, we have a social-media scandal involving a Kardashian (no, the other-other-other one) and big EV news from Volvo.

Back at it.
Virgin Galactic will conduct its first powered spaceship tests in three years

A 2014 crash undid Virgin Galactic’s private space-travel plans, but now the company says it’ll resume powered test flights. This comes after a series of glide-only trials since December, and it hopes to reach the edge of space by the end of this year. Richard Branson is targeting the middle of next year for his first trip to space, with commercial passenger flights starting soon after.

The first manufacturer to step away from gasoline.
All Volvo’s new models will be electric or hybrid within two years

Volvo isn’t quite going full-Tesla, but the company has announced that from 2019 on, it won’t launch another car without an electric motor inside. All new models will be full electric, plug-in hybrid or ‘mild-hybrid’ cars that run mostly on gas or diesel. Of the five new models Volvo plans to introduce between 2019 and 2021, two are high-performance Polestar vehicles.

What’s next?
Disney’s first 4K Blu-ray will be ‘Guardians of the Galaxy 2’

Ending months of speculation, Guardians 2 director James Gunn confirmed his movie will be available in Ultra HD this fall. The flick is especially colorful since it was filmed on a new Red Weapon 8K camera, and home viewers will enjoy more detail thanks to 4K and HDR. We’re still waiting for an official announcement from Disney, but it could go on sale August 22nd, leaving just one more question — when will we see Star Wars in 4K?

“It’s crazy but it might work.”
NASA will crash a satellite into an asteroid

NASA is one step closer to testing its proposed line of defence against the threat of a potential asteroid impact on Earth. The “kinetic impactor technique” essentially involves smashing a spacecraft into an asteroid to bounce it away from Earth. It sounds a lot saner than the plan hatched in Armageddon: send oil drillers and a nuclear bomb. Don’t cry, Liv Tyler.

Sure, that’s reasonable.
Volvo’s parent company just bought a flying-car outfit

According to reports, Chinese company Geely (which owns Volvo) has agreed to buy up Terrafugia. For years, Terrafugia has been working on designs for its Transition flying car, and a boost of capital could be enough to make that a real product.

A fold-up 3D person scanner.
The Big Picture: Digitize yourself with the 3D Copypod

Copying yourself digitally is not easy. Ideally, you want multiple all-around, soft-illumination photos taken from every angle at the same moment. A company called People’s Industrial Design Office in Beijing, China, has created something called the 3D Copypod, which can do all that for you in one neat package. It’s based on the Hoberman sphere, a type of geodesic dome that can fold down to a much smaller size thanks to its scissor-like joints.

Robocop and a monster truck are missing their love child.
The T-pod looks like a giant self-driving freezer on wheels

Einride has just revealed the prototype of the T-pod, its autonomous electric truck. The Swedish company’s driverless vehicle can transport 15 standard pallets and travel 124 miles on one charge. And because there’s no need for a person, the T-pod has no cab space and no windows.

Further proof that streaming-only albums work.
Jay-Z’s Tidal-exclusive ‘4:44’ went platinum in less than a week

Jay-Z’s latest album, 4:44, had a very exclusive release. To hear the new album, fans had to be Sprint customers and, if they hadn’t already, join the floods signing up to the Tidal streaming service before the album dropped. But despite those limitations, the album is the latest streaming-only release to go platinum.

But wait, there’s more…

• Twitter left Rob Kardashian’s revenge porn live for 30 minutes
• You don’t need a headset to see these ‘no-lograms’
• Christopher Nolan’s ‘Dunkirk’ will get the biggest 70mm release in years

Russian exoskeleton suit turns soldiers into Stormtroopers

In a bid to make its armed forces look even more intimidating, Russia has taken inspiration from science-fiction to create some futuristic-looking new combat suits. Developed by the state-owned Central Research Institute for Precision Machine Building, this very Star Wars-esque combat armor features a powered exoskeleton, ballistic protection from bullets and shrapnel and a heads-up display. While just a concept at the moment, the suit’s designers hope it will enter full production in the next few years.

While they haven’t detailed what the heads-up display would be used for, the combat armor’s powered exoskeleton helps the wearer carry heavy loads, bearing some of the brunt to lower the soldiers’ fatigue. While its designers have clearly spent a lot of time playing video games, we’ve already seen that Russia’s not alone in its bid to create an army of Master Chiefs. Now, taking that idea one step further, a U.S program called Tactical Light Operator Suit (or TALOS) is underway, which is creating an Iron Man-esque suit for American special forces.

With exoskeleton-powered soldiers and flying Volvos on the horizon, at this point we’re just patiently waiting for the first real-world superheroes to reveal themselves.

Source: Reuters

Steve Jackson’s ‘Sorcery!’ Fantasy Role-Player is a Free Download on the App Store

Chapter one of Steve Jackson’s Sorcery! fantasy role-playing game is currently available for free for a limited time on the App Store.

Usually $4.99, the critically acclaimed interactive adventure by Inkle is the first in a four-part series loosely based on the mechanic so successfully employed in the popular Fighting Fantasy role-playing gamebooks of the 1980s.

The fully interactive story allows players to make thousands of possible choices as they plot their journey across a hand-drawn 3D world map, with the narrative being rewritten in real-time based on what decisions gamers make.

Sorcery! also includes touch-based sword dueling battles and 48 magic spells to master. MacRumors’ sister site TouchArcade had this to say in their original review of the game:

The journey through those hills is still a gamebook trip, no doubt about it. There are stats, interactive combat scenes and plenty of big decisions to be made. It’s just that nothing feels restrained; nothing feels all that formulaic. Sorcery! goes big where needed, and the app shines for it.

The game features original illustrations by John Blanche, character art by Eddie Sharam (DC Comics), an interactive map by Mike Schley (Wizards of the Coast) and music by David Wise (Donkey Kong Country).

“The Shamutanti Hills” is Part 1 of 4. Part 2, “Kharé: Cityport of Traps” loads all of players’ completed Part 1 games to continue their adventure. Sorcery! is available for iPhone and iPad. [Direct Link] Part 2, 3 and 4 are also available on the App Store.
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Samsung Will Supply NAND Flash Chips for 2017 iPhones to Ease Shortage

Apple’s upcoming range of new iPhones could be hit by a 30 percent shortage in the supply of storage capacity chips, according to a new report by DigiTimes on Thursday.

The article claims that both SK Hynix and Toshiba have suffered from lower-than-expected yield rates for their 3D NAND flash chips, resulting in fewer supplies available for Apple’s 2017 series of iPhones. Apple is said to have called on Samsung in an effort to secure more.

Apple has turned to Samsung for more NAND chip supplies for its upcoming phones, since Samsung has relatively stable yield rates for 3D NAND technology and has scaled up its output of 3D NAND chips, the sources indicated.

Apple began using non-volatile 3D NAND chips in its mobile devices last year because of the technology’s ability to pack more storage space into equivalent dimensions compared to previous flash memory. However production of the chips is a more delicate process, and it looks as if Apple’s priority suppliers haven’t been able to increase their yield sufficiently to provide for the devices the company is planning to launch in 2017.

Apple’s reliance on Samsung to shore up the supply isn’t exactly out of the blue. Back in April of last year it was reported that Samsung would again become an Apple supplier of NAND flash chips, ending a five-year hiatus dating back to the iPhone 5 in 2012.

Apple is expected to announce a “tenth anniversary” OLED iPhone in September alongside more typical “S” cycle updates to its iPhone 7 and 7 Plus. One rumor has suggested the so-called “iPhone 8” will include increased storage space, while two additional rumors say it will be available in 64 and 256GB capacities.

Related Roundup: iPhone 8
Tags: Samsung, 3D NAND
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Spotify Premium Users Can Now Adjust Track Playback Position From the iOS Lock Screen

Spotify has quietly added the ability for users to adjust the playback position of the currently playing track directly from the iOS lock screen.

The option to adjust the progress of a playing track – also known as audio scrubbing – from the lock screen has been a feature of Apple’s native Music app for some time, but the ability has been missing from Spotify until very recently, as noted by Reddit user kermitch.

The API that enabled third-party app developers to add audio scrubbing to the lock screen was introduced in iOS 9.1+, but it looks as if Spotify only got around to including it with the most recent update to the app on July 4.

It’s worth noting that only Spotify Premium subscribers can scrub tracks, so users on the Free ad-supported tier won’t see any change to their lock screen when playing tracks via the app.

Tag: Spotify
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John McAfee settles Intel lawsuit over the rights to his name

John McAfee made headlines last year for a bunch of reasons, including a short-lived attempt to run for President of the United States. He also sued Intel for the right to use his name, six years after he sold his eponymous anti-virus company to the tech titan for billions. As they say, though, all’s well that ends well now that the two have decided to settle things amicably. According to Reuters, the two parties already signed an agreement and US District Judge Paul Oetken in Manhattan dismissed his lawsuit and Intel’s countersuit as a result. Under the agreement, McAfee can continue using his name — so long as it’s not for or related to cybersecurity and security products and services.

The tech mogul also agreed not to trademark “John McAfee Privacy Phone” or use “John McAfee Global Technologies.” If you’ll recall, the latter is the reason why he sued Intel in the first place. He wanted to rename MGT Capital Investments Inc. where he currently serves as CEO to “John McAfee Global Technologies.” Intel warned him that doing so would infringe its trademarks, since MGT is in the process of “acquiring and developing a diverse portfolio of cybersecurity technologies.”

Despite the limitations, McAfee has retained the right to use his name for promotions, advertisements and presentations. He might not be able to rename MGT after him, but the ability to use the McAfee name for promotion can still benefit his new company.

Source: Reuters

Zeiss will help restore ‘Nokia’ phones to their former glory

Nokia’s strong reputation in phone photography stemmed in no small part from its use of Carl Zeiss optics. Whether you had an N95 or a Lumia 1020, you knew the glass wouldn’t let you down. But what’s happening now that HMD Global is the one making Nokia-branded phones? Are they doomed to photographic mediocrity? Apparently, you can relax. HMD has struck a deal that will see Zeiss’ imaging tech used in Nokia handsets. It won’t just be limited to lens design, either. The two plan to work together on “standard-defining imaging capabilities” ranging from software to screen quality.

The two companies aren’t revealing specifics or launch dates for the first Zeiss-equipped phones in the HMD era.

However, it seems likely that HMD will bet on camera quality as a selling point as it moves to higher-end phones and expands sales to countries like the US. A rumored upcoming model, possibly called the Nokia 9, is believed to pack the dual rear cameras you see on many recent smartphones — a Nokia brand photographer even posted a video that corroborated the leaks. While that specific device might not use Zeiss tech, HMD could clearly use the help as it steps up competition with camera-centric mobile rivals like Apple and Huawei.

This will surely get pulled at some point, so I’ll mirror it here [source: https://t.co/37yp63CAeC%5D pic.twitter.com/GktpXnt4pS

— Evan Blass (@evleaks) May 16, 2017

Source: HMD Global

Prototype ‘3D’ chip from MIT could eliminate memory bottlenecks

Future CPUs will have to deal with growing amounts of data, but all too often they are slowed down by bandwidth issues between the processor and RAM. A prototype chip built by researchers at Stanford and MIT can solve the problem by sandwiching the memory, processor and even sensors all into one unit. While current chips are made of silicon, the prototype processor is made of graphene carbon nanotubes, with resistive RAM (RRAM) layered over it.

The team claims this makes for “the most complex nanoelectronic system ever made with emerging nanotechnologies,” creating a 3D computer architecture. Using carbon makes the whole thing possible, since higher temperatures required to make a silicon CPU would damage the sensitive RRAM cells.

This technology could do more than just speed up the framerate on your next Xbox too, as the current prototype used a top layer of one million carbon nanotube sensors to detect gases, with the information processed and measured directly on the chip. So far, the development has been funded by organizations including DARPA and the NSF. The next step in the process is to work with Analog Devices on new versions of the technology — unfortunately like so many graphene-related breakthroughs we have no idea when this one will be commercially available.

Source: MIT, Nature