Sensor-studded Kansas City is like a giant smartphone. Now it just needs apps

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.

In June 2016, the Department of Transportation dangled a $40 million check in front of urban planners with its Smart City Challenge. The premise: Don’t just tell us about the technology you would install with the money, tell us how it will solve your residents’ problems. Kansas City entered, alongside 78 other cities, with high hopes.

The city wanted “to close the opportunity gap” and “transform the Prospect Corridor, currently riddled with high crime, vacant and abandoned buildings, and pervasive hopelessness, into an area as vibrant as our downtown, with cutting edge public transportation, economic development opportunities, and immense pride,” according to its application.

Kansas City’s made it all the way to the finalist round, along with Denver, Portland, and a handful of other cities. Then Columbus, Ohio took home the prize.

But Kansas City isn’t waiting for another contest to implement its plan. Even without a fat check from the DoT, the city still hopes to widen its digital umbrella to cover these areas, and use technology to turn around some of its most blighted areas.

Fiber of being

For Kansas City, the road to becoming a smart city started with Google Fiber. It was the first city to get the superfast network, back in 2012. “It brought a whole lot of entrepreneurs and tech-oriented folks to Kansas City in order to take advantage of what was at the time the only deployment of gigabit fiber,” Bob Bennett, the city’s chief innovation officer, told Digital Trends.

“We turned the city into a smartphone.”

Not long after, Kansas City began construction on a new streetcar line. Cisco came knocking, wanting to install additional fiber lines along the route — that way, it wouldn’t incur additional construction costs. It could just use the holes that were already there. Cisco partnered with local startup Think Big Partners to create solutions, and the city tapped data analytics company Xaqt to build a traffic and parking platform.

Recently, Google Fiber has cancelled some of the installations it had planned for the city (and delayed starting projects in other cities it had previously announced would get the 1,000 megabits-per-second service). But KC still has plans to turn into a smart city, slowly but surely.

Bennett calls the 2.2 miles along the streetcar line the “smartest 51 blocks in America.” There’s public Wi-Fi, smart LED street lights, and 25 kiosks delivering hyper-local information, such as what events are taking place at Sprint Center. The result was a hyper-connected silo, cut off from the rest of the city. The smart strip is easy to see on the city’s interactive website: columns of gray and green along a stretch of a street, representing occupied and available parking spots.

The three-year second phase of the project is set to begin in a few months. It involves putting similar resources into Prospect Avenue, a major thoroughfare in the eastern part of city, which Bennett said has been chronically under-served. “What our gut feeling tells us is that by expanding first into that part of the city, we’re going to be able to accomplish several things simultaneously,” he said. The area is densely populated, with many in the area on the wrong side of the digital divide. The city hopes to better connect 60,000 residents with services “not in the form of a project that gentrifies it, but instead with 21st-century jobs and 21st-century opportunities, so folks who live there can keep their homes and we can grow that section of our city,” said Bennett.

From data to decisions

Aside from the kiosk and public Wi-Fi, citizens may not yet notice how else the city is becoming smart, thanks to a plethora of installed sensors. These can help alert drivers, via an app, of where to find an available parking spot downtown. Sensors can gather a variety of data, but it’s crucial to have a way to analyze data from other sources as well and turn it into something useful. “We’ve used the analogy quite a bit of, we turned the city into a smartphone,” said Blake Miller of Think Big Partners. “We have the connectivity, we have sensors that collect data, now what are the apps and solutions that can be built on top of that, à la the iTunes store?”

Kansas City Area Development Council

Kansas City Area Development Council

Kansas City Area Development Council

Kansas City Area Development Council

Wi-Fi kiosks and real-time parking maps guide residents and visitors around Kansas City as it tries to become one of the U.S.’s smartest cities. (Photos:  Kansas City Area Development Council)

Just recently, the city started using a street-condition predictor. It found that 77 days after the weather went through a freeze-thaw period, residents would call 311 — Kansas City’s service number, not the band — to report potholes. Knowing when and where a pothole is likely to form means crews can address the problem ahead of time, getting materials ready and diverting traffic if a longer-term fix is needed instead of just a patch. Based on water and electricity usage, the vacant building predictor could be a useful way of figuring out which structures are uninhabited before they start attracting crime and the problem spreads. (Abandoned buildings tend to drive property values down, which can cause nearby homeowners to leave as well.) Baltimore is using a similar model, in partnership with Johns Hopkins University.

“Making cities safer is probably one of the biggest promises that smart cities can have.”

Part of making the city smarter is making buildings and homes smarter, too. Think Big is working on creating smart apartments, and Kansas City Light and Power has a program offering residents free Nest thermostats. Participants agree to sign up for three years and let Nest access their energy usage information. In exchange, they get a free smart thermostat that hopefully saves them money.

As for public safety, data and sensors can only take Kansas City so far before “traditional policing” has to take over, said Bennett: “We’re not going to get to a place where I’ll be able to tell you, like I can with the potholes, that a crime is going to occur at X location at Y time, because quite frankly the data going into that equation are less definitive than what we’re using for the traffic bits.” Instead, the city will use correlations to increase patrols at times and locations where crimes are more likely to occur, based on the data. “There’s a lot of things that can be done around public safety and making cities safer, which I think is probably one of the biggest promises — outside of mobility — that smart cities can have,” said Miller. ShotSpotter, which uses acoustic sensors to triangulate the location of gunfire, could connect with streetlights and video cameras, to help officers get a better sense of what’s going on before they even arrive on the scene. Street lights could also strobe or brighten during an emergency situation, and the kiosks could provide instructions or alerts.

Think Big Partners is also helping other startups and companies take advantage of the data. “Now we’ve turned our focus been just about a year collecting data to creating a developer’s portal, which is the Living Lab,” said Miller. “That can help developers, entrepreneurs, corporations of all kinds not only access the connected infrastructure but also access the data coming off that and other city data, like 311.”

The city and its partners, like Cisco, all see open, accessible data as key to success. “You can start using the APIs we have, the secure but open APIs, that allow ecosystem partners to develop new businesses on top of them,” Munish Khetrapal, managing director of the Smart Cities and IOT division at Cisco, told Digital Trends. “If you now build these applications that allow to manage the city operations better, you’re creating jobs in that city.” He gave an example of a mobile application some developers built on top of Cisco’s platform. It allows citizens to report full trash cans around the city. “They’re gamifying it, so they’re telling the city to have incentives for those citizens who report all of this information, so they don’t have to invest in some of these sensors,” said Khetrapal.

With sensors, cameras, and public Wi-Fi comes privacy concerns. Sprint owns and operates Kansas City’s Wi-Fi, so it takes on the responsibility of keeping it secure. Anyone in the world can look and see what parking spots are occupied, but without getting a view of which car is parked there. “We’re trying to be transparent about what we collect, we just keep it anonymous,” said Bennett.

How smart?

Is Kansas City a smart city? Not yet. Even Bennett says that: “I’ll truly be able to say we’re a smart city when, as a citizen, you can essentially look online and have an idea how that city is performing, not based just on an annual apport but on a dynamic dataset.” To get to that point, more people need to be participating, somewhere between 100,000 to 120,000 people, said Bennett. “Right now I’m at 22,000, so I’m a little bit short.” He envisions a dashboard where residents can get a breakdown of how their tax dollars are being spent, how the city is performing. Everything the city handles — from business licenses to dog licenses to utility bills — can be done via an app. “What we see today as a crisis or an issue will instead be something where the city is proactively solving problems before it becomes something worthy of a 311 comment,” said Bennett.

“Our window for failure is probably still smaller than what an entrepreneur can withstand.”

These initiatives may be cost-saving in the long run, but Kansas City can’t afford to back programs that won’t pan out. “We are unique as a city in that we have been allowed to take risks in the smart city space,” Bennet said, “But our window for failure is probably still smaller than what an entrepreneur can withstand, simply because we don’t have the assets to say, ‘Oh well, we learned something,’ and move on.” It’s one of the reasons Bennett works with and looks closely at other cities that are moving towards becoming smart.

To reach the ambitious plans it’s laid out, the city needs to do more than just collect data. “We’re going to be freakishly cool, but we aren’t going to be smart until we actually start using the data to manage our city and be faster than we were in the past,” Bennett said.

Meizu Pro 7 with secondary display all set to launch on July 26

The Pro 7 will let you take selfies with the rear camera.

Meizu will unveil its next flagship, the Pro 7, on July 26. The highlight of the phone is a secondary at the back that will allow you to take selfies with the rear camera. The secondary screen is a full-color display, with a leak from earlier this month showing off a game running on the secondary display.

Meizu is one of the few manufacturers to license Samsung’s Exynos chipsets, but the Pro 7 will be the first device to be powered by MediaTek’s Helio X30 SoC. The X30 is MediaTek’s first SoC on the 10nm node, featuring two 2.5GHz Cortex A73 cores alongside four 2.2GHz Cortex A53 cores and four 1.90GHz Cortex A53 cores. The phone is also rumored to offer a 5.2-inch Full HD display, dual 12MP camera at the back, and a 16MP shooter up front.

Meizu is rumored to launch a Pro 7 Plus variant alongside the regular version, and it’s possible the Plus model could be powered by the Exynos 8895. The secondary display is certainly interesting, and we’ll know more about what Meizu’s plans for the device next week.

OxygenOS: Top 10 features you need to know

OxygenOS offers plenty of customization options.

OxygenOS is one of the best implementations of Android currently available — it’s on the OnePlus 2, OnePlus 3 & 3T, and OnePlus 5 — with OnePlus adding a few useful features on top of a near-stock user interface. While you may not be able to change entire elements of the UI, there are several customization options available to make the device truly yours.

Note: These features are all available on the latest version of OxygenOS 4.x and up. Older versions of OxygenOS may not support all of these features.

Night Mode

Night Mode activates a blue light filter, which reduces fatigue when viewing the screen at night. The feature debuted last year, but on the OnePlus 5 you can set it to automatically engage from sunset to sunrise, or select a custom time range.

The feature works by altering the color temperature of the display, giving the panel a yellowish tint that eliminates blue hues. While the screen no longer shows accurate colors, it does reduce the strain on your eyes, particularly if you’re interacting with your phone a lot at night.

OxygenOS also allows you to set the intensity of the effect — you can choose to eliminate blue tones completely, or select a setting that doesn’t alter the color temperature of the screen too much.

Reading Mode

Reading Mode is a new feature that was introduced with the OnePlus 5. Like Night Mode, the feature automatically calibrates the color temperature of the display, making it conducive to reading.

Instead of switching to warmer colors, Reading Mode creates a monochrome effect that’s great for reading text. You can activate the mode manually or set it to automatically launch for specific apps. For instance, if you have the Kindle app installed on your OnePlus 5, you can enable Reading Mode to launch automatically whenever you open the app, leaving the rest of the user interface unchanged.

Gestures

OxygenOS offers a range of gestures that make it easier to interact with the phone. The three-finger screenshot gesture, for instance, allows you to take a screenshot just by swiping down anywhere on the screen with three fingers.

You also have double tap to wake the screen, and the ability to control music playback — two-finger swipe down for play/pause and <,> symbols to move forward or back in a playlist.

There’s also the option to launch the camera by drawing an O, and toggle the flashlight with a V gesture. These gestures are predetermined on the OnePlus 3T, but you can customize actions for up to five gestures on the OnePlus 5, including launching an app, opening the front camera, accessing the Shelf, and more.

Launcher customization

The latest iteration of the OnePlus Launcher has a lot of similarities to the Pixel Launcher — you can slide up from anywhere from the lower half of the home screen to access the app drawer.

There are a lot of extras baked in as well. The stock launcher natively supports third-party icon packs, allowing you to choose from hundreds of icon packs on the Play Store and use them without having to switch to another launcher like Nova. You can also change the visual look of the UI with themes — there are three available by default, including a Dark Mode — and switch up the accent colors.

The latest open beta has numerous tweaks to the launcher, including dynamic icons for the calendar and weather, a search history row in the app drawer that lists your five most-recently used apps, ability to see battery information for connected Bluetooth devices, and more.

Status bar

The OnePlus 5 has a toggle that lets you see your network speeds in the status bar. You don’t get to see how much data you’ve consumed in a day, but it is a nerdy feature to have nonetheless.

Talking about the status bar, There’s also the ability to toggle icons. If you’re on a carrier that offers VoLTE but don’t want to see the persistent icon in the status bar, you can now turn it off from the settings. Same goes for NFC, VoWiFi, and other icons.

Navigation buttons

A nifty feature in OxygenOS is the ability to choose between capacitive or on-screen navigation keys. If you’re going with the hardware keys, there’s a toggle to turn off the backlight. The default layout of the buttons is back, home, and recents, but you can switch the back and recents buttons if you’re coming from a Samsung phone and want to have the back button to the left of the home key. The customizations are valid both for the hardware keys as well as the on-screen buttons.

Alongside the ability to change the order of the buttons, you can also assign long press and double tap actions to each button. You can select from a variety of actions, including opening the camera, turning off the screen, opening or closing the notification shade, accessing split-screen mode, and much more.

Tweak the audio

The OnePlus 5 takes full advantage of the Snapdragon 835 chipset, and that includes a Bluetooth 5.0 chip and the aptX HD audio codec. You’ll be able to switch between aptX HD, aptX, and the default SBC codec.

The Qualcomm-owned aptX HD codec is designed to deliver high-res audio over Bluetooth. Launched at the beginning of 2016, aptX HD supports 24-bit/48kHz audio, and while it still uses a lossy compression, you get a higher bandwidth of 576kbps. The standard aptX codec, which was first developed in the 1980s, has a maximum bandwidth of 352kbps.

To get the most out of aptX HD, you’ll need to have a compatible audio product that also features the codec. Right now, that’s a short list — only the LG Tone Platinum, Tone Active+, Audio-Technica’s high-end ATH-DSR9BT, mid-range ATH-DSR7BT, and the $1,000 Beyerdynamic Xelento offer the codec.

While the OnePlus 5 comes with the aptX HD codec, the OnePlus 3 and 3T feature aptX. However, all three phones offer an audio tuner that lets you tweak the equalizer settings according to your tastes.

LED notifications

OxygenOS allows you to customize the LED notification light for various actions. There’s the option to select from eight colors for default notifications, battery full indicator, battery charging, and battery low. You can also select which apps trigger the LED notification light.

As we’re on the subject of notifications, the OnePlus 5 has a new vibration motor that lets you choose from five custom patterns for incoming calls. If nothing else, you should take a look just to see the text labels — the default is dzzz-dzzz, but I prefer mm-mm-mm. You can also adjust the vibration intensity for calls and notifications.

Shelf

Shelf is located to the left of the home screen, and gives you a quick overview of the date, time, and weather information for your current location, along with a list of your frequent contacts and recently-used apps.

There’s the option to add widgets to the Shelf, and you can add or remove modules as needed.

Gaming DND

The OnePlus 5 doesn’t have a Do Not Disturb mode for notifications (you’ll have to manually toggle the Alert Slider every night), but it does have one for when you’re gaming.

It does what you’d expect — activating Gaming Do Not Disturb silences all incoming notifications with the exception of calls and alarms. The mode also locks the capacitive keys, preventing you from exiting a game should you accidentally hit one of the navigation keys. If you don’t want to lock the navigation keys, you can turn off the setting. You can set the mode to launch automatically when a particular app is nothing opened.

Bonus: Quick Pay for India

India is one of the largest markets for OnePlus, and the company built a feature that’s exclusive to local customers. Dubbed Quick Pay, it allows customers to launch directly into Paytm’s payment window with a long press of the home button. The feature works even when the screen is off — launching Paytm as soon as you press and hold the power button.

Paytm is the largest digital wallet service in India, and with digital transactions on the rise, giving customers the ability to quickly access Paytm’s payments page is a nifty addition.

Some of the features in OxygenOS are exclusive to the OnePlus 5 for now, like Reading Mode, ability to choose between aptX and aptX HD Bluetooth audio codec, setting schedules for the blue light filter, and so forth.

However, features that aren’t reliant on hardware should trickle down to older models shortly. The ability to toggle status bar icons, for instance, is available on the OnePlus 3T.

What do you like the most about OxygenOS? Sound off in the comments below.

OnePlus 5

• Complete OnePlus 5 review
• 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

OnePlus 3T and OnePlus 3

• OnePlus 3T review: Rekindling a love story
• OnePlus 3T vs. OnePlus 3: What’s the difference?
• OnePlus 3T specs
• Latest OnePlus 3 news
• Discuss OnePlus 3T and 3 in the forums

OnePlus
Amazon

Latest Street View guide lets you explore the locations behind Game of Thrones

Take a look at the real-world filming locations of Game of Thrones with Street View.

Can’t get enough of Game of Thrones? You can now explore Westeros with Google’s latest Street View guide. The guide details real-world filming locations for
Winterfell (shot in Scotland), the Iron Islands, King’s Landing, Dothraki Sea, Arena of Meereen, and other iconic scenes from the show.

Some of the notable locations include:

• Winterfell – Filmed at Doune Castle in the Stirling district of central Scotland and at Castle Ward in Northern Ireland
• Braavos Iron Bank – Filmed at St. Jacob Cathedral in Sibenik, Croatia
• Citadel Grand Library – Filmed at the Monastery of Sant Pere de Galligants in Girona, Spain
• King’s Landing – Filmed in Dubrovnik, a medieval walled city in Croatia
• House of the Undying—Filmed at Minčeta Tower in Dubrovnik, Croatia
• Dothraki Sea – Filmed in Bardenas Reales, a desert in Northern Spain

To explore all the locations, head to the link below.

Game of Thrones on Street View

Essential Phone reportedly coming to the UK, Europe and Japan

EE among carriers in discussion with Android founder’s company over exclusivity deal.

Andy Rubin’s Essential Phone is looking to spread its reach beyond the United States, according to The Financial Times. The paper reports that Essential wants to bring its phone to the UK, mainland Europe and Japan, and that the company is already in talks with UK carriers including EE around an exclusivvity deal.

Essential’s bezel-less, modular-equipped, stock Android handset will go on sale for $699 in the United States, though there’s no firm release date for the device just yet. In the U.S., Sprint is confirmed to be the exclusive launch partner. The device missed its launch target of June in the States, however today’s FT report quotes Essential COO Niccolo de Masi as saying the release is “iminent.”

High-profile, high-end exclusives are relatively rare in the UK market, with recent exceptions being the Google Pixel on EE, and the OnePlus 3, 3T and 5 on O2. Working with a single, excusive carrier partner has clear benefits for a newcomer like Essential — for one, allowing it to focus its marketing efforts for its inaugural handset with the help of a major player in the local market.

If the U.S. price translates over directly to the UK, Brits can expect to pay around £640-650 (including VAT) for the Essential Phone. That’s flagshup money for sure, putting it in the same price bracket as the HTC U11 and Sony Xperia XZ Premium.

Android fans in the UK will likely welcome the opportunity to buy a genuinely interesting handset — however, the Essential Phone will face strong competition from the likes of Samsung, LG, Google and Apple in the latter half of 2017

Top things you need to know about the Samsung Galaxy S8’s SD card slot

SD cards are mostly plug-and-play, but you should know a few things to make the most of yours.

After a short blip with the Galaxy S6 series, Samsung is back to making a microSD card slot one of its core tenets. The Galaxy S8 and S8+ have an SD card slot that lets users choose just how much storage they want to add, even though fewer people will need one with the new higher default storage of 64GB internally.

Whether you’ve already purchased and installed your microSD card or are trying to learn a bit more about them before getting one, we have you covered. Here’s what you need to know about the microSD card slot on the Galaxy S8 and S8+.

Adoptable storage isn’t here — and that’s OK for most people

Sticking with its legacy of devices, Samsung is continuing to use the SD card as removable storage rather than the newer “adoptable storage” system. What that means is that instead of integrating the SD card into the internal storage, it remains its own separate volume. You have to choose to put a file either on the SD card or the internal storage — it won’t be able to span the two seamlessly, which takes a bit more management.

In practice, this has the benefit of being more familiar to those who used SD cards in previous Samsung phones or have used them typically with computers or cameras. You can remove the SD card from a Galaxy S8 freely without worrying about how it will affect the system, because you only lose the data files on the card. You can pop out the card, put it in your computer and transfer files to and from it, then put it back in the phone with no worries.

Not every app can be moved to the SD card

One of the downsides of using the SD card as removable storage rather than adoptable storage is that there are limitations on what files can be moved. For the most part, you can think of the SD card as a place to store big chunks of data, not live applications that you need to access regularly.

You can have photos, music, videos, podcasts, and documents all stored on your SD card without issue, and those are great ways to free up space on the faster, more versatile internal storage. But you won’t be able to move most apps or games to the SD card, as they need to be on the internal storage in order to run. You may find that some simple apps or assets for apps that don’t need to be run on demand can be stored on the card — but as a rule, you shouldn’t count on being able to move apps to the SD card.

Pictures and video save to the card by default

Because the types of data you can put on an SD card are limited, the Galaxy S8 wants to take advantage of it automatically for types of data it knows it can move there. The best example is the camera, which automatically starts saving photos and videos to the SD card as soon as you insert one. You’ll get an alert the first time you open the camera after inserting a card that burst shots will still save to the internal storage, though.

If, for whatever reason, you don’t want photos and videos to save to the SD card, you can head into the camera’s settings, then storage location, and tap it to change back to device.

It’s worth mentioning that Samsung has worked out one of the more annoying issues with storing photos on the SD card in that you can now use other gallery apps — like Google Photos — to manage those photos stored externally. Simply give the gallery app of your choice (so long as it is designed properly for Android 7.0) permission to access your SD card, and you’ll be able to delete, edit, and move photos on the SD card with that app instead of relying on Samsung’s Gallery.

With a good card, you don’t have to worry about performance

One great thing that’s happened in the world of SD cards (well, all storage really) in the past couple years is the proliferation of amazingly fast cards at reasonable prices that anyone can manage. Earlier on in the life of Android phones, it was rather hit or miss as to whether or not the card you bought was fast enough to consistently be used inside an Android phone, and now that’s rarely the case.

Stick to big brands and look at ratings online before buying, but chances are if you find a modern card out there it’s going to do what you need it to do in a Galaxy S8.

More: Best microSD cards for the Galaxy S8

Where to find good SD cards

A rising tide of storage quality has lifted all boats, but that doesn’t mean every card is created perfectly equal. You still want to make a well-educated decision about the SD card you buy. There are so many available out there and many places to buy, but we’ve narrowed down a few for you to choose from if you want to let us do some of the hard work for you.

Removing your SD card also removes the SIM

It’s a small thing, but you should remember that your SD card lives in the same tray as your SIM card. So if you plan on using the removable storage capabilities of your SD card for transferring files back and forth with a computer, you’re going to knock out your cellular service while you do it.

In some cases, removing the SIM card and reinserting it will require a full device reboot to get your mobile data back up and running. If you can’t manage to wait a few minutes without data, pull out your SD card at a different time!

You can encrypt your SD card for your safety

One of the other small downsides of an easily removable SD card that’s formatted as removable storage is the data on there can be easily accessed by anyone with a SIM tray tool — they don’t even have to unlock your phone to get it. Of course, the best way to secure your phone is to not let anyone have it in the first place, but accidents happen — and the best way to secure the data is to encrypt the card. With encryption enabled, the data is only readable by the Galaxy S8 that encrypted it and only when the phone is unlocked.

To encrypt your SD card, head into the phone’s settings, lock screen and security, and encrypt SD card. The process will only take a few seconds if you don’t have much data on it, but it could take a while longer if you’ve already loaded it up before encrypting.

Now, there’s one big downside to this: when you encrypt the SD card, it also can’t be read by your other devices. That means that if you pop out the SD card and put it in your computer, the computer won’t be able to read the data. It also means if you break your phone beyond repair, you will lose the SD card data forever. If your intention is to use the SD card in your Galaxy S8 as a quick way to transfer large amounts of data between devices, you’ll have to use a USB cable from your phone or decrypt the card first.

Update July 2017: Updated with the latest information on using an SD card in your Galaxy S8.

Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8+

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

Verizon
AT&T
T-Mobile
Sprint
Unlocked

Meet the International Space Station’s adorable camera drone

Astronauts on board the International Space Station have a new robotic companion to play around with. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has released the first images shot by the “Int-Ball,” a spherical camera that floats around alongside the rest of the crew. With its monochrome paint job and blue, circular eyes, it looks a little like Wall-E’s Eva — or at least her head, in some kind of prototype form. Notably, the Int-Ball can move around autonomously or be controlled by operators back on Earth. The images are transferred in near real-time allowing JAXA staff to quickly evaluate problems and offer possible solutions to ISS residents.

The Int-Ball could make astronauts more efficient on the ISS. JAXA says crew members spend 10 percent of their working hours with a camera in hand, photographing work or equipment that requires further evaluation. A floating camera drone could, in theory, alleviate the crew of that responsibility, giving them more time to conduct experiments and carry out repairs. The Int-Ball was delivered to the ISS on June 4th, using a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and, for the first time, a reused Dragon cargo capsule. It now lives inside the station’s “Kibo” science module.

At the core of the Int-Ball, which measures 15cm in diameter, is a three-axis control unit. The cube-shaped brain converses with 12 fans positioned near the surface of the robot, which adjust its position in zero gravity. A navigation camera looks out for pink “3D Target Makers,” which serve as reference points on board the ship. The recording camera, meanwhile, is located between the two eyes so that astronauts can easily identify what it’s looking at. JAXA says it’s focused now on improving the Int-Ball’s capabilities so that it can be more helpful and autonomous on the station.

Source: JAXA

The Morning After: Monday, July 17th 2017

Hey, good morning! You look fabulous.

We’re starting the week with a look back at Disney’s big news from D23, plus rumors of an Amazon messaging app and a flat microscope for your brain.

Is there a cantina?Disney reveals plans for a ‘Star Wars’ hotel

One of the big announcements from D23 this weekend (beyond details on Star Wars-inspired theme parks due in 2019) is the news that Disney will open a Star Wars resort in Orlando. The hotel itself will be filled with familiar-looking aliens, while the windows will appear to look out into space. Basically, it sounds like Disney is extending the interactivity you typically find in its theme-park experiences with one of its resort hotels.

And there’s a ‘Toy Story’ tie-in‘Kingdom Hearts 3’ has a release date: 2018

Square Enix made an appearance at D23 and dropped off a new trailer for its next Kingdom Hearts game that revealed its heroes will visit the world of Toy Story. Also, the release window has been narrowed down to 2018.

Simple.IBM’s new mainframe keeps everything encrypted, all the time

According to IBM, conventional systems based on x86 processors only encrypt “limited slices” of information, while the new Z has enough power (18 times more, in fact) to lock everything down as a matter of course. That’s all thanks to an increase in hardware dedicated to cryptography and “pervasive encryption” built in throughout the system.

Yet another voice assistant.HTC launches Amazon Alexa for the U11

Starting today, US owners of the HTC U11 phone can download an Alexa app from the Google Play Store. That’s in addition to Google’s Assistant AI and HTC’s Sense Companion service, but HTC considers all three complementary. The Alexa service brings thousands of skills and tie-ins, and according to Chris Velazco, the U11 integration is the first time on a phone where it really works like it should.

Moving closer to a neural interface.Flat microscope for the brain could help restore lost eyesight

It should not only capture much more detail than existing brain probes (the team is hoping to see “a million” neurons), but reach levels deep enough that it should shed light on how the mind processes sensory input. And that, in turn, opens the door to controlling sensory input.

Too much or not enough?Ashley Madison will pay $11.2 million to data-breach victims

Two years after Ashley Madison’s data breach, parent-company Ruby Corp is ready to pay $11.2 million, though the amount still has to be approved by a federal judge in St. Louis. Those who were affected by the security breach can claim up to $3,500, depending on how well they’ve documented their losses due to the event.

But wait, there’s more…

• After Math: Are you not entertained?
• ‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi’ behind the scenes footage is here
• Amazon may unveil its own messaging app
• Tesla will open ‘2 or 3’ more Gigafactories in the US
• Porsche installs its first high-speed electric car chargers
• Recommended Reading: Spotify’s other playlist problem

The Morning After is a new daily newsletter from Engadget designed to help you fight off FOMO. Who knows what you’ll miss if you don’t subscribe.

Essential’s first smartphone is coming to the UK

The first phone from Android creator Andy Rubin’s new company, Essential, is coming to the UK. As the Financial Times reports, the startup is holding talks with a number of British carriers, including EE, about a potential exclusivity deal. It seems nothing has been decided beyond an “imminent” release date, which the FT promises will be sometime this year. In the US, the phone will cost $699, or $749 with a 360-degree camera accessory through the Essential website. Sprint will be the only US carrier to stock the phone, which, despite being last place in the “big four” race, might make business sense, as my colleague Chris Velazco explains.

Like OnePlus and Motorola, Essential is likely to focus on direct-to-consumer sales at launch. It’s a strategy that appeals to early adopters who want the handset SIM-free and without any carrier bloatware. Most people, however, still acquire new phones through their network in a bricks-and-mortar sore. If Essential wants to sell its first phone in big numbers, it will need the support of major carriers around the world. In the UK, they don’t come any bigger than EE, which is now owned by infrastructure juggernaut BT. First, however, the company needs to finish the phone — Rubin promised to ship the first units in June, but that deadline is long gone…

Source: FT

Escalators of tomorrow will have self-sterilizing handrails

You know what’s a real cesspit of sickness, disease and transmittable maladies? The moving handrails that you find on escalators and moving walkways. It’s why LG’s electronics arm, Innotek, has spent time and money building a device that can banish other people’s hand sweat and germs from the rubber strip. The LG Handrail UV LED Sterilizer, as the name implies, sits over the handrail and uses ultraviolet light to continuously disinfect the rail.

The move won’t just improve public health, it’ll also make escalators safer by giving germophobes a reason to grab the handrail. As with so many devices that do a similar job, LG claims that it’ll banish 99.9 percent of germs, and should be installed just before folks put their hands down. In addition, the device is easily retrofitted onto existing escalators, since it draws power from the mechanical energy rather than wiring.

Right now, the company is merely making an announcement that the product exists, but you can bet it’ll turn up in modern airports and subway stations in the near future. Until then, however, that portable bottle of Purell you keep on your backpack will still have some use.

Source: LG