LG might finally enable FM radios in US phones

Radio might be so last century, but it’s a cheap and effective format for broadcasting media — and it won’t cost you any data to tune into. Many foreign-built smartphones actually come with radio tuners, but they’re hard to find in devices meant for the US — if they aren’t disabled by carriers. LG is partnering with NextRadio to provide free access to FM radio for users in the Americas who buy the device maker’s future smartphones.

The process doesn’t sound complicated: LG will simply enable FM chips in its devices to come, and so long as carriers are cool with it, preinstall the NextRadio app to give users access to local stations. Sure, regressing back to radio means you’ll have to deal with commercials again, but FM uses 20 times less data and 3 times less battery than data-guzzling streaming radio services, claims NextRadio’s press release.

Whether users are willing to forgo their song-choosing autonomy and subject themselves to the Billboard Top 40 is another question. At least this is a solution for folks with simpler handsets or those who don’t have huge data plans, but most users have been effectively weaned on a sizeable data budget per month. It’s unclear whether this feature will get much use in the US.

It’s unclear which upcoming LG phones will benefit from this deal and come ready to tune into FM broadcasts, let alone which carriers would allow the NextRadio app to come installed. We’ve reached out to LG and will include their response when we hear back.

Via: 9to5Google

Source: Android Police

‘Battlefield 1’ joins EA’s on-demand gaming service

With EA Access’ all-you-can-eat video game service, you can play full versions of the publisher’s games, which include big name titles like Titanfall 2, Mass Effect: Andromeda, and FIFA 17. Today, the video game publisher tweeted that its popular shooter Battlefield 1 is now available for subscribers on Xbox One.

Battlefield 1 is in the Vault. Available now with EA Access for Xbox One. pic.twitter.com/yL8in4NwCJ

— Battlefield (@Battlefield) August 10, 2017

The fifteenth installment of the popular EA game series, Battlefield 1 takes players back to World War 1, something of a departure for the franchise. It added a playable female soldier class for the first time this past May, with four other DLC packs scheduled this year. Now that the game is in the EA Access Vault, you can pay your $5 per month fee and play it (and the more than 45 other titles) as often and as much as you want.

Source: Battlefield/Twitter

‘Hearthstone’s ‘Knights of the Frozen Throne’ expansion is live

Blizzard’s digital card game Hearthstone’s newest full expansion is now live. Knights of the Frozen Throne brings 135 new cards and free solo content to the title and a couple new mechanics, which will shake up the game’s competitive meta. Sure, it’s a lot of what we’ve come to expect from a Hearthstone expansion, but who can complain about new additions to tried-and-true gameplay?

Be careful what you say, you never know who might answer back. #FrozenThrone is now live for the Americas region! https://t.co/ud6lLAV2wC pic.twitter.com/dKZgoWH00V

— Hearthstone (@PlayHearthstone) August 10, 2017

As we previewed back in July, Knights of the Frozen Throne brings a couple new mechanics to the game. The first, Lifesteal, does what it says on the tin: Damage dealt gives life to your hero. (Certain old cards with essentially the same function, like tiny taunt king Wickerflame Burnbristle, have been retroactively re-labeled with this mechanic.) The expansion’s other new feature are Hero Cards, which change your hero’s appearance and power. In keeping with Knights’ theme, these Hero Cards will change the player into fearsome death knights with appropriate undead abilities.

The expansion’s card pool, which r/Hearthstone has helpfully collected in one place, harnesses the new mechanics (and, yes, the Frozen Throne’s big baddie The Lich King gets his own card). But there are also several clever, never-before-seen interactions that should delight deck tinkerers. The last expansion, Journey to Un’goro, raised the bar with a set full of high-quality cards and relatively few clunkers. It’s a high standard for Knights to live up to, but the collection looks intriguing. How could it not with amazing cards like Bearshark?

But the expansion also brings a highly-awaited game mode back. At the beginning of 2017, Blizzard announced that it would ditch the smaller Adventure content releases in favor of three full-size expansions per year. While that means more cards to tinker with, it also angered some players who enjoyed the solo expeditions in each Adventure. To make up for it, Knights features single-player Missions absolutely free that award cards for completion (including a random legendary Hero Card at the end of the prologue). That — along with the three free Knights packs gifted to all players today — is Blizzard’s way of trying to make up for how much more expensive it will be to get all of this year’s content.

Source: Blizzard

Gaming chat app Discord tests video calls and screen sharing

Discord, the Slack-like gaming chat app, has been steadily improving since its initial launch a couple of years ago. Last January, it added a $5 paid tier for fans to essentially thank the company — the bonuses simply include GIF avatars, custom emoji and a bigger file upload limit. It secretly raised $50 million last month, as well. That extra cash may be why the Discord team is able to start rolling out two of its most-requested features, video chat and screen sharing.

The team is testing the two new features with 5 percent of its current members to make sure its servers can handle the big bump in server traffic represented by video data. Desktop app users will get the feature first, with roll outs planned for mobile and web users soon. The test run will last a month or so, which is when Discord plans to open up the features to all users.

For now, video chat and screen sharing is only available in one-to-one Discord calls or within direct message groups of up to 10 people, so you’ll need to start one to see the video options (the team recommends five users at once for best quality). You can switch between your screen share and webcam video at will, making it easy to connect with your gamer buddies face to face and plot your strategy on paper. If you click away from the video call, you’ll get a neat little picture-in-picture screen so you can stay chatting while you check out other Discord channels.

If you’re one of the lucky few to get the new feature this week, don’t plan everything going smoothly. “Thanks for your patience as we develop this feature,” writes Discord’s Nelly on Medium. “If you’re part of the initial rollout, please submit any bumps, bugs, and bruises to us so we can get those fixed.”

Source: Discord/Medium

Puzzle Game ‘Colorcube’ Available for Free as Apple’s App of the Week

Each week, Apple chooses an “App of the Week” to highlight, which means it can be downloaded for free. This week’s pick is a puzzle game named Colorcube, which is normally priced at $0.99 and has never been free before since its July 2016 release.

Colorcube requires players to turn differently shaped pieces to blend colors and solve puzzles. The game is described as a “minimal yet visually stunning puzzler” with more than 250 levels. Apple’s editorial description for the pick is below:

Calming colors? Check. Ambient soundtrack? Check. A refreshingly simple premise? Check. Colorcube has all the right ingredients for the perfect chill-out session at the end of a long day. With hundreds of levels to complete, this deceptively challenging game is as stimulating as it is serene… and surprisingly compelling to boot.

Colorcube can be downloaded for free for the next seven days, and after that, a new App of the Week will be chosen. [Direct Link]

Tag: App of the Week
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EVGA’s latest SC17 laptop provides pure overclocking bliss for mobile PC gamers

Why it matters to you

PC gamers looking for a high-powered laptop have a new overclock-friendly option from EVGA packing GTX 1080 graphics.

There is a new gaming laptop in town from graphics card and motherboard maker EVGA. It is the latest entry in the SC17 laptop family, packing a 17.3-inch screen, Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 graphics, and Intel’s seventh-generation Core i7-7820HK unlocked processor. The new model joins EVGA’s three other configurations based on the GTX 1070 and GTX 980M graphics chips starting at $2,300.

Here are the hardware specifications:

Display Size:
17.3 inches
Display Type:
In-Plane Switching with G-Sync
Display Resolution:
3,840 x 2,160
Processor:
Intel Core i7-7820HK
Graphics:
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 (8GB GDDR5X)
Memory:
32GB DDR4 at 2,666MHz (2x 16GB)
Storage:
1x 256GB M.2 NVMe SSD (PCI Express)
1x 1TB 7,200RPM HDD (SATA 3)
Audio:
Realtek ALC 255 Stereo
Connectivity:
Dual-band Intel AC-8265 (Up to 867Mbps)
Bluetooth 4.2
Ports:
3x USB 3.1 Gen1 Type-A
1x Thunderbolt 3 Type-C
1x HDMI 2.0b
2x Mini DisplayPort 1.4
1x Gigabit Ethernet port
1x Microphone jack
1x Headphone jack
Webcam:
1,920 x 1,080 with integrated digital mic
Inputs:
Full-size backlit (white) keyboard with number pad
Synaptics Clickpad 1.5
Dimensions:
16 x 11.6 (L) x 1.3 (H) inches
Weight:
8.9 pounds
Operating System:
Windows 10 Home 64-Bit
Price:
$3,000

As the specs show, the laptop is fully loaded for $3,000. The screen is based on in-plane switching (IPS) technology, which is becoming the standard due to its brilliant colors and wide viewing angles. By contrast, the older twisted nematic (TN) technology has a higher brightness and faster response time, and it is typically associated with gaming. But TN panels are seemingly taking a back seat as IPS technology matures and slowly becomes the current standard.

The SC17 laptop’s display also supports Nvidia’s G-Sync technology. This will synchronize the frame output of a GeForce graphics chip with the refresh rate of the panel to prevent visual screen tearing and stuttering. Without G-Sync, you will see these artifacts because the number of times the display refreshes each second does not match the fluctuating rate of the frames generated each second by the graphics chip.

In staying with the display theme, G-Sync supports one external monitor along with the built-in panel. The monitor can have a 3,840 x 2,160 resolution at 60Hz, or a 2,048 x 1,080 resolution at 120Hz. Outside of the laptop’s three obvious video outputs, the Thunderbolt 3 port can also be used for an external display supporting a resolution up to 4,096 x 2,160 at 60Hz. Note that the processor can only handle three displays at one time.

As for the processor, it is a four-core chip with a base speed of 2.90GHz and a maximum turbo speed of 3.90GHz. Intel’s CPU is unlocked in the SC17 laptop, thus EVGA provides plenty of tools for overclocking the hardware. These include a graphics-rich BIOS providing full control over the hardware, and EVGA’s PrecisionX Mobile tool for Windows tuning. EVGA Express OC relies on the up/down arrow keys to easily overclock or downclock the components.

“A Clear CMOS button directly on the chassis helps you recover from an unstable overclock, and custom fan curve control keeps your laptop cool and quiet. This is the world’s first true overclocking laptop,” the company adds.

Head here to grab EVGA’s new $3,000 gaming laptop.

Startlingly lifelike Abe Lincoln robo-bust is absolutely awesome, honest!

Why it matters to you

Amazingly realistic Abe Lincoln robot bust shows just how far animatronic technology has come.

Not since Daniel Day-Lewis’ acting master class as America’s 16th president have we seen a more realistic Abe Lincoln. Created by Garner Holt Productions, one of the world leaders in animatronics, a photo-realistic rendition of “Honest Abe” combines 40 unique motions, 1,000 “animation frames” per second, and some amazingly realistic synthetic skin. The results are facial expressions so lifelike they could happily fit in among the robots of Westworld.

“As a company, we’ve been around for 40 years,” CEO and founder Garner Holt told Digital Trends. “We’re the largest company that provides animatronics to the theme park industry and others. We’ve provided more animatronics to the Disney parks than any other company, ranging from small songbirds to enormous fire-breathing dragons. We also do our own internal projects to try and push the limits of what’s been done before. A while back, we embarked on a project to try and create the most realistic human head that’s ever been made. We wanted to take this to a level that’s never been done before by anybody.”

You only have to watch the above video to realize that Holt is not kidding. While the animatronic head’s facial expressions can appear exaggerated at times, Holt says that that is because the robot is designed to show off just how much expression can be exhibited by a modern-day animatronic model. Think of it like an actor’s showreel — running the gamut from subtle performances to out-and-out slapstick. Interestingly, some of the technology it uses was actually developed for the military, which previously brought in Garner Holt to help create training exercise models for the Marines’ Infantry Immersion Trainer at Camp Pendleton in California.

The Lincoln bust was first shown off at Disney’s D23 Expo extravaganza in July, and will eventually form part of a series titled “The Living Faces of History.” The plan is that it will tour theme parks and museums, accompanied by other memorable historical players. The finished product will be like Madame Tussauds brought to life.

All of which leaves us with just one question: If animatronics are so insanely good these days, why do so many Hollywood blockbusters still insist on serving up unconvincingly weightless CGI effects? Someone get Garner Holt on the job, stat!

Nvidia says gamers’ “needs and demands” unfilled as cryptocurrency hogs hardware

The Nvidia earnings call for the second quarter of the 2018 fiscal year was optimistic, as the company beat revenue expectations and boasted growth in numerous areas. Gamers, the company’s oldest and most loyal audience, turned out in force, driving revenue up by 52 percent year-over-year in that area.

Yet that victory was dampened somewhat by strong demand from cryptocurrency miners. Ethereum, a Bitcoin alternative that began to surge in price in late March 2017, drove hordes of miners to Nvidia in hopes of using its fast hardware to crank out virtual coins.

While the price of Ethereum has dropped about 25 percent from its high, it’s back on the upswing. Nvidia’s CEO, Jensen Huang, seems to think cryptocurrency-driven demand for the company’s cards is no fad. “It’s very clear new currencies will come to market. And it’s very clear the GPU is ideal for cryptography,” he said, adding “this is a market that’s not likely to go away anytime soon.”

That’s good news from Nvidia, but may not be good news for gamers. Huang acknowledged that, saying, “There were gamers whose needs and demands weren’t filled last quarter, and the second quarter is an important part of the year for us.”

While the company plans to continue production of cards built for cryptocurrency mining — these exclude frills like video ports, which aren’t needed — Nvidia seems unsure exactly how the competition of demand between gamers and miners will play out. It can only produce so much hardware, and if that’s not enough to satisfy both miners and gamers, supply could remain a problem.

Nvidia didn’t offer any hint at an all-new gaming GPU soon, and didn’t comment on the upcoming release of AMD’s Radeon Vega, a new line of high-end video cards that aim to compete with Nvidia’s GTX 1070, 1080, and 1080 Ti.

However, Huang did deliver one nugget of hype. He responded to a question about Volta for gaming by saying, “We haven’t announced anything. All I can say is that our pipeline is filled with exciting new toys.” That sounds like a non-denial denial. You can read up on Volta here if you want to know more about the hardware, which is tooled to power AI and machine learning.

Researchers are trying to make pig organs more viable for transplant

We have a huge supply and demand problem when it comes to organ transplantation. Closing that gap with animal-grown organs is an idea that’s been on the table for some time, but it comes with a slew of issues that have prevented it from being a viable option. Pig organs are the right size for human transplants and are similar enough to our own, but pigs have viruses embedded in their DNA that could potentially infect humans and cause serious harm. However, a new study out today in Science shows that with the gene editing tool CRISPR, those viruses can be removed, bringing pig organs one step closer to human bodies.

While patients that have received treatments made from pig pancreas cells and pig skin haven’t contracted any porcine viruses and some researchers think that they don’t pose a major risk, this study showed that the viruses were able to infect human cells in vitro, which could then infect other human cells. So, while it’s unclear how threatening these viruses are to humans in practice, they do at least have the ability to jump to humans.

To get around this problem, the researchers used CRISPR-Cas9 technology to snip out the viral DNA from the pigs’ genomes. These edited cells were then used to create embryos that were implanted into sows and the birthed piglets were born virus-free.

The study reports that 37 piglets were born and 15 are still alive. The oldest piglet is four months old. It’s not yet clear whether the survival rate is impacted by the gene editing and the research team is following the animals to observe any long-term effects. The group is planning to combine this method with a similar one that would make transplanted pig organs less susceptible to human immune responses.

eGenesis founder George Church, a leader in the CRISPR technology world and an author of the study told Scientific American, “I generally hesitate to say we’ve solved a two-decade-old problem, but in this case, we have.” And he’s said that pig-to-human transplants could happen as early as two years from now. But David Sachs, a Columbia University professor, is a little more cautious about those predictions. He told the New York Times, “I am afraid that he may find these goals more difficult to achieve than he expects, but I would be happy to be mistaken.”

Source: Science, eGenesis (1), (2) (PDF)

Amazon’s US ticket sales talks stall over customer data

Are you hoping that Amazon will sell event tickets in the US and put an end to the dominance of giants who charge endless hidden fees? You might not want to hold your breath. Reuters sources back previous claims that Amazon is in talks with American venues to sell their tickets, but add that negotiations are stalled over access to customer data. Venue owners reportedly want the info to help target their artist bookings and social networking campaigns, but Amazon has “yet to budge.” Amazon has even talked to Ticketmaster as a possible partner, but that too has run aground over control of customer info.

The company is willing to take huge steps to score deals, the tipsters say. It offered to spend millions of dollars on venue sponsorships, for example, and has talked about selling tickets on the secondary market, StubHub-style.

Live Nation, Ticketmaster’s parent, has declined to comment. We’ve asked Amazon if it can comment.

As before, Amazon has plenty of incentives to offer tickets. Its sales elsewhere are built around up-front pricing, and it could become a major player if it lures fans tired of seeing one ticket price and getting another. Also, this could be yet another way to drive Prime subscriptions. If you knew you could get first dibs on concerts in addition to Prime’s other perks, you might be more likely to sign up. At the same time, it’s easy to see why Amazon wouldn’t make many concessions on data. Whether or not it’s concerned about customer privacy, its gigantic account database is one of its most valuable assets — it likely doesn’t want to do anything that undermines the value of that data.

Source: Reuters