Amazon plans Prime Video shows with ‘Walking Dead’ creator

It looks like we’re not finished with deals between comic book creators and online movie studios. Hot on the heels of Netflix announcing its acquisition of Mark Millar’s comic book empire Millarworld comes news from Amazon. The company now has a first-look deal with Robert Kirkman and David Albert’s Skybound Entertainment, the media organization behind The Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead. Additionally, Skybound (and Kirkman specifically) will develop original TV projects for Prime Video.

Skybound has quite a few comics on its roster, and Kirkman is a great get for Amazon. Not only is the company behind The Walking Dead, but it also publishes popular comics such as Outcast (which has already been developed into a TV show by Kirkman; its second season recently finished airing), Birthright and Invincible. It’s just the latest example of studios — especially streaming companies — that are eager to acquire valuable intellectual property and sign on renowned content creators to develop TV shows and films.

Source: Amazon

Toyota allies with Intel to develop self-driving car ecosystem

Toyota is teaming up with Intel, and an assortment of tech and automotive firms, to develop an ecosystem for connected cars. By sharing self-driving vehicle data, the companies aim to develop maps and improved driver assistance systems based on cloud computing. Rounding out the alliance (dubbed the “Automotive Edge Computing Consortium”) will be Ericsson, Japanese auto parts-maker Denso Corp, and telecoms firm NTT DoCoMo.

Practically everyone is wading into the autonomous car space. And, collaboration between firms is just as common. Alphabet’s Waymo, and GM, are buddying up with Lyft. Renault is cozying up to Nissan. And China’s search giant Baidu is targeting, well, everyone. And that’s just a smattering of the team-ups currently taking place. Toyota itself also recently hooked up with Nissan to build a US assembly plant for EVs and self-driving cars.

All those connected car tests are already racking up big data, which will ramp up exponentially over time. In fact, it’s estimated the data volume between vehicles and the cloud will reach 10 exabytes per month by 2025, said Toyota. That’s approximately 10,000 times larger than the present amount, according to the company. Pooling some of that data in the form of an alliance therefore makes a lot of sense. Especially, if Toyota and Intel intend to keep up with the competition.

Source: Toyota

An AI ‘nose’ can remember different scents

Russian researchers are using deep learning neural networks to sniff out potential scent-based threats. The technique is a bit dense (as anything with neural nets tends to be), but the gist is that the electronic “nose” can remember new smells and recognize them after the fact.

When the sensor detects a smell, an AI takes over and checks it against a database of known scents for “the closest similar smell determined by the smallest Hamming distance to any know code,” HSE writes. If it can’t find a match, the sensor will identify the scent as being new.

The difference between this and other scent prediction/identification tech — like the crowdfunded one from this February — is that it can sense more than one scent at a time. Useful for, say, gas mixtures.

“Essentially, we want to teach the device to discriminate between hazardous and non-hazardous gas mixtures and memorize them fast,” MIEM HSE professor Vladimir Kulagin says.

At the least, it could greatly benefit folks working in mines or enclosed spaces as sort of a digital canary, alerting folks when an unsafe gas has entered the area.

Source: HSE

Apple Pay Could Launch in Germany as Early as Next Month

Hints about when Apple Pay is coming to Germany have been few and far between over the last year, with negotiations between Apple and German banks allegedly stalling due to conflicting views over fees and controls.

The last rumor came back in May and suggested that Apple Pay would launch in the country in the fall or winter, but today one MacRumors reader provided us with another potential hint that Apple is gearing up to introduce its mobile payment system in Germany imminently.

While setting up a new Apple Watch on the fifth regional betas of iOS 11 and watchOS 4, developer Philipp Ebener was presented with the option to add German bank cards to Apple Pay for the first time.

Philipp reports that he wasn’t able to register any of his German credit cards with the system, but the fact that the feature has been partially enabled suggests full activation could come with the official public launch of both operating systems.

Apple will release the final version of iOS 11 and watchOS 4 at its next major event in September, where it is expected to debut new iPhone models and a new Apple Watch with LTE for a standalone cellular connection.

Related Roundups: Apple Watch Series 2, watchOS 3, watchOS 4, iOS 11, Apple Pay
Tag: Germany
Buyer’s Guide: Apple Watch (Neutral)
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A Ten-Minute Silent Song Is Soaring Up the iTunes Charts

For some vehicles, when an iPhone is plugged into the car’s USB port music playback begins automatically, and it always starts in alphabetical order at the top of the user’s iTunes library. Because of this, many users will hear the same song, usually beginning with an “A,” over and over again each time they plug their iPhone into their car. This week, a potential solution to that problem has been soaring up the iTunes charts in the form of a ten-minute silent song called “A a a a a Very Good Song” [Direct Link].

Created by Samir Mezrahi, the song allows users a full nine minutes and fifty-eight seconds to find the song they actually want to hear after connecting their iPhone to their car through USB. Mezrahi is charging $0.99 for each download of the music-less track, although Apple Music subscribers can simply add the song into their library for free.

A a a a a Very Good Song launched on iTunes on Wednesday, August 9, and as of the writing of this article it sits at #46 on iTunes’ Top Songs chart. The song has climbed 21 spots in under a day, when Engadget reported that it was at #67 early on August 10. If it continues to climb, the song will surpass artists like Ed Sheeran, Kendrick Lamar, and Miley Cyrus.

For any CarPlay users, or for those who connect to their vehicle through Bluetooth, the automatic iTunes playback phenomenon is not an issue. For those who do face the problem, it’s been discovered within a wide array of different brands and car systems. As one Redditor pointed out, for users who don’t have an Apple Music subscription and who would prefer not to pay $0.99 for a ten-minute silent track, they can also make a silent recording of their own and add it to iTunes.

Tag: iTunes
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Deathmatches are coming to ‘Overwatch’

It’s been a pretty big week for Overwatch. First came the introduction of the second annual Summer Games event, then the announcement that two new professional teams are joining the Overwatch League. Now, in an attempt to keep those good times rolling, Jeff Kaplan from the Overwatch Team has shared news of something that we thought we’d never see: a new Deathmatch mode.

In a new Developer Update video, Kaplan explained that Overwatch will soon be updated with Free-For-All and Team Deathmatch modes. The objective, like in many other popular FPS franchises, is to notch more kills than your opponents. The core experience sees you go up against seven other players and requires you to reach 20 kills to win. If you don’t quite make it but you’re in the top four, you’ll still receive one win credit against your loot box tally.

Team Deathmatch is a similar affair, but it’s 6v6 and requires the winner to get 30 kills. Mercy mains will also be pleased to hear that their “Heroes never die!” resurrections will remove kills from enemy tallies, allowing teams with the Swiss medic in their roster to put some distance between them and their rivals.

It’s all thanks to the popularity of Overwatch’s Arcade section, which debuted last year. The developers felt more comfortable introducing new game modes that don’t affect team-based Quick Play or Competitive matches. Before this week, Blizzard had said that deathmatch modes did not contribute to the cooperative ethos of the game.

Deathmatches will use a number of existing objective and assault maps that have been modified to facilitate killing frenzies. There’s also a new map, Chateau Guillard, which used to be Widowmaker’s family ancestral home.

The new game modes are already live on Overwatch’s PTR servers, meaning that if you’re on PC, you can already see what’s new. Console players, you’ll likely have to wait a few weeks for Blizzard to iron out all of the bugs and make everything available publicly.

Source: Blizzard

Verizon can’t find partners for its Sling-style TV service

Verizon has been trying to get its own Sling TV-like live TV streaming service off the ground, but that effort has apparently hit some snags. The operator plans to offer dozens of channels, including CBS and ESPN, to compete with rivals, including Dish’s Sling TV and AT&T’s DirecTV Now. However, it hasn’t been able to sign enough broadcasters to kick off the effort, according to a report from Bloomberg. That means the launch, originally scheduled for the summer, may be put off until after the fall.

Media companies are reluctant to sign on with Verizon, according to Bloomberg’s unnamed sources, because it still doesn’t have a solid plan for its streaming service, including the pricing, programming mix and technology. Verizon has also lost several key executives doing content strategy and acquisition for the service, including former NBCUniversal exec Chip Canter. Negotiations are reportedly being led by Erin McPherson, formerly of Yahoo and Walt Disney.

Verizon offers a cable TV service but has a relatively small number of cable TV subscribers (under 5 million). However, it has 7 million broadband subscribers, so likely figured it could cash in by offering a cheaper streaming service to cord-cutters. As with AT&T, it would likely offer the service as a bundle it with its mobile plans, too. Verizon already has the Go90 service, but it’s more for YouTube-style short-form clips, and is reportedly doing poorly.

The service will reportedly have pricing around the same as DirecTV, around $35 per month. Verizon is bound to get it together at some point, having made big bets on media of all kinds — including AOL (Engadget’s parent) and Yahoo — in an effort to gain more media content and ad revenue. Comcast is reportedly also looking to launch a streaming service called Xfinity Instant TV by year end. It looked like Verizon would easily enter the market first, but now that’s not so sure. (We’ve reached out to Verizon for comment, but don’t hold your breath.)

Source: Bloomberg

‘No Man’s Sky’ gets basic multiplayer a year after debut

Such was the lack of concrete information as to how the final consumer release of No Man’s Sky was going to play, many gamers felt cheated by the distinct absence of multiplayer features. Developer Hello Games has gone some way to giving the people what they’ve wanted today with the third major update since the title’s launch. “Atlas Rises” (aka update 1.3) adds the beginnings of real-time multiplayer to the space exploration game, though admittedly, “interaction with others is currently very limited.”

Thanks to the update, up to 16 players can now exist together in the same space. Fellow pilots will appear as floating blue orbs moving about the terrain, and proximity-based voice chat will allow players to plan their next jump together. That’s pretty much it, but Hello Games calls it “an important first step into the world of synchronous co-op in No Man’s Sky.”

Meeting up with other explorers should be a bit easier with the new portal system, which allows players to travel between planets instantly, including to random worlds. Taking a leaf out of Stargate lore, activating a sequence of glyphs on portals can designate specific exit points. Hello Games hopes the community will band together to create something of a database of glyph sequences.

There’s a whole, whole lot more to the Atlas Rises update than the aforementioned features, too. There’s 30 hours of new storyline gameplay and a new mission system that lets you pick up all kinds of different odd jobs from a forever-updating list. Star systems now are now graded with “wealth, economy and conflict levels,” giving you more information on desirable destinations (depending on what you’re after). There’s a new class of ships, new exotic planet types and a new “interdimensional race” to contend with.

Terrain editing is now possible provided you have the appropriate Multi-Tool enhancement, and crashed freighters on the surface of planets serve as new scavenging hotspots. Atlas Rises brings an added level of complexity to the game’s trading/crafting mechanics, and improved ship maneuverability, plus a new rocket weapon class, raises the skill cap on space battles. You also have more control of your ship as you cruise a planet’s surface now, but beware of crashing into terrain and having to repair your wreck before being able to move on.

Various parts of the user interface have been improved, such as a better inventory management system and more useful Analysis Visor. Several behind-the-scenes tweaks, such as enhanced high-resolution textures and additional audio assets, are also in tow.

Following a huge, sustained wave of hype for No Man’s Sky, it ended up being one of the most controversial games in recent history. For many, the title didn’t live up to expectations and wasn’t the end product that was originally promised. The din of complaint grew so loud, the game was even the subject of an official false advertising investigation.

But to its credit, Hello Games continues to push massive, free updates for the title, such that the game is now very different to what it was initially. Hoping to win back the hearts of disgruntled gamers, Atlas Rises is another olive branch and reaffirmation Hello Games is in it for the long haul.

Source: Hello Games

Nest Will Automatically Pre-Cool Homes Participating in New ‘Solar Eclipse Rush Hour’ Program

Smart thermostat company Nest this week announced a new energy saving initiative coming on the day of the total solar eclipse, August 21, 2017. During the eclipse, clean solar energy will be reduced and in some areas of the United States traditional power plants will have to fire up in order to cover the energy shortfall for a brief period of time.

Nest’s solution is a “Solar Eclipse Rush Hour” setting that will be sent to thermostats across the U.S. days ahead of the eclipse. The program will help offset the drop in energy production during the eclipse by automatically pre-cooling homes ahead of time. Once users notice the message, and agree to participate, the Nest Thermostat will lower the temperature of their home before the eclipse.

So, we’re encouraging people across the US to help offset this drop in energy production by pre-cooling their homes before the eclipse. If you don’t own a Nest thermostat, you can manually adjust the temperature by one or two degrees during the eclipse. If you join, a few hours before the eclipse hits your area, your Nest Thermostat may automatically pre-cool your home so that you can save energy during the eclipse. After the eclipse, your thermostat will go back to its regular schedule.

The company said that with enough Nest devices participating, users will be able to “meaningfully reduce” energy demand during the eclipse. Of course, if the temperature becomes too warm during the time of the eclipse, users can still manually change the temperature at any time. Once the eclipse has ended, Nest will go back to its regular schedule of warming and cooling.

Nest’s new Solar Eclipse Rush Hour is part of the Rush Hour program that began back in 2013, which has a similar energy-saving goal. In that program, Nest Thermostats warn users of when a high-demand energy period is coming, particularly during warm days when many people will activate their air conditioners. If participating, Nest will automatically pre-cool the home and keep its energy output low during the Rush Hour — enough to keep users comfortable — and then return to regular programming afterward.

Over the summer, a rumor came out that Nest was potentially considering adding HomeKit support into its smart thermostat products. However, a subsequent report that cited a Nest employee said that the company has “no immediate plans” to support Apple’s smart home platform and “no roadmap” for such an update. Apple has a few smart thermostats it highlights and sells in the HomeKit section of its online store, including those made by ecobee, iDevices, and Honeywell.

In regards to the eclipse, the partial phase will hit Oregon at around 9 a.m. PT on August 21, with totality occurring about one hour later. For more local times on when the eclipse will be near your area, and the safety precautions you should take when trying to view the event, check out NASA’s web page.

Tag: Nest
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+Pool will be a swimmable sanctuary in a sea of sewage, if NYC ever allows it

For the past six years, a group of enterprising New Yorkers has been chasing a simple dream: to transform the city’s dirty rivers into clean, swimmer-friendly waterways. To make this happen, the team has designed a giant floating filter — one that just so happens to double as a swimming pool. They have run thousands of tests, launched a Kickstarter campaign (then a second Kickstarter campaign) to fund it, and even secured a few high-profile sponsorships. But despite all these successes, the team has yet to get the so-called +Pool in the water for one big reason: the law will not allow it, because there is no law for it.

Before we get into all that legal stuff, here’s a quick refresher: +Pool is meant to be a 9,000 square foot water-filtering pool that’s shaped like a plus sign and designed to clean the river it floats in. The pool’s multi-layered filtration system is designed to remove wildlife, debris, trash, bacteria, and viruses from the river before the water becomes swimmable. If/when it’s completed, the +Pool will reportedly be able to hold 5,000 visitors and filter more than 600,000 gallons of river water per day.

If this sounds familiar, it’s probably because you’ve heard about the project before. The idea first gained widespread media coverage back in 2011, and has been slowly gaining steam ever since. Now, six years down the road, Heineken is throwing its hat in the pool by pledging to donate $100,000 to the project, as part of the beverage company’s Cities Project — but only if +Pool can get 100,000 signatures from New Yorkers who pledge to swim in the pool once it’s finished. The plan is to show those signatures to the city of New York in order to get permission to put the +Pool in the East River.

Digital Trends spoke with +Pool co-founders Archie Lee Coates IV and Dong-Ping Wong, as well as numerous New Yorkers, at a recent +Pool event in New York City to find out how long New Yorkers will have to wait before they can swim in the pool, what the city of New York has been doing to prepare, and how Brita helped the team build a one-of-a-kind water filtration system.

Murky legal waters

Wong says the idea for a plus-sign-shaped pool came about in 2010 because “it seemed funny.” Once the four founders realized their goofy idea was actually doable, the laughing stopped, and the challenges began. “It’s one of those things that since it’s never actually been done, ever, anywhere. There’s literally no regulations for it; no code that’s written for it,” Wong says. “So, we have to work a long time with the city to rewrite laws basically for a floating, filtering pool.”

“We have to work a long time with the city to rewrite laws basically for a floating, filtering pool.”

The people behind +Pool have been in talks with the city of New York since 2011, and have closely tailored +Pool and its filtration system according to as many pool and beach standard regulations as it can — but it’s been a long and difficult journey. “We’re working with the city now to find the right location, which is hard,” Coates said. “The river changes currents, depths, the amount of sewage that comes out of the pipes at different rates,” Coates said.

Columbia researchers and engineers at design firm Arup have helped the inexperienced group with understanding water filtration, but doing something that’s never done before usually requires a lot of trial and error. “We thought, ‘well, Brita works like this. Could you make that way bigger? Let’s try that. It doesn’t work. Let’s try something else,’” Wong said.

Coates and Wong say the tech-savy mayor Bill DeBlasio’s administration has been cooperative after years of no talks with the city of New York during Michael Bloomberg’s administration. But, getting the city of New York on board will not automatically get New Yorkers in the pool.

When can we swim?

Let’s say the +Pool group comes to the city of New York with 100,000 signatures from New Yorkers saying they’ll take a dip in the East River with +Pool, and the city approves it. Even in a best case scenario, Coates expects +Pool will not be open to the public for at least three to four years.

“If all goes well, we’ve got two years to finish all the construction documents, get this thing built, get this thing in the water,” Wong says. “But, we also know, in between the actual finishing design and building, we have to get it approved, get it permitted, talk to all sorts of community organizations, legal organizations. That process takes a long time.”

Most of the New Yorkers I spoke with at the +Pool event have spent so long with dirty NYC rivers they would wait a few years if necessary. “I would wait 10 years,” said 31-year New York native Will Guy from Greenwich Village. 26-year New York native Ashton Resto said +Pool would probably fall to the back of his mind if he had to wait, but the same excitement and interest would return once the pool opening is announced.

Other New Yorkers are a bit more cynical and expect +Pool to be in NYC waters in a New York minute. “You can’t take three to four years in New York City, baby,” 49-year-old New York native McCrae Young said. “New Yorkers have a fast paced mentality, and when you have the momentum going in a certain direction, if you stop it, it’s going to take 15 times more energy and effort to get that movement started again.”

What’s next?

Raul Esquer, brand manager for Heineken USA, is already anticipating a difficult road ahead, saying that bringing +Pool to NYC rivers will be “attainable yet challenging.” At the time of press, the +Pool’s campaign has garnered just under 7,500 signatures.

To bolster awareness, Heineken produced a mini-doc about +Pool’s story, narrated by Neil-Patrick Harris, and let people walk through Wong’s +Pool designs in a virtual reality experience.

The group behind +Pool have a working prototype of the pool’s filtration system, with the $100,000 from Heineken slated to help finalize it. “Right now it works, but it works in this kind of, like, prototype,” Wong said. “We tested it and we know it works, but to get it to this beautiful level, that $100K will go huge into making that happen.”

There may not be laws in place right now to regulate a floating, water filtering pool, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be soon. Don’t forget that just a few years ago, there also weren’t many laws for drones. When you consider that autonomous flying robots — and the laws that regulate them — are fairly commonplace in the present day, the notion of swimming in clean NYC river water doesn’t seem so out of reach.