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• How to avoid baggage fees
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What we’re using: Qapital, Mighty and the Switch Pro controller

This month’s In Real Life focuses on self-improvement: taking your Spotify playlists to the gym minus your phone, getting some app-powered help on your savings and, er, being a better gamer on the Nintendo Switch.

Nicole Lee
Senior Editor

I like spending money, but I’m not so great at saving it. I’ve used Mint and other budgeting software before, but they still require me to do the heavy-lifting of actually watching what I spend. So after doing a bit of research, I decided to try out Qapital, an app that promises to do the saving for me. I’ve been using it for about a month now, and I’ve already saved up around $500 — without really trying.

The trick with Qapital is that it lets you set up a series of rules that’ll automatically transfer money out of your bank account and into your Qapital account. And the great thing is, you can create whatever rule you want. So for example, you can have a “Round-Up” rule that’ll automatically round up each expense to the nearest dollar and transfer the difference. Or you can create a rule that’ll chip in $10 every time you spend something on Amazon (which Qapital calls the “Guilty Pleasure” rule).

For the extra nerdy, you can even hook Qapital up with If This Then That (IFTTT), a service that connects different internet accounts together. This way, you can save a buck every time you post a photo on Instagram, or save $5 every time you tweet. You can also set it so that it saves money every time you reach your 10,000-step goal if you’re so inclined.

When the money arrives in your Qapital account, it gets siloed into one or more of different goals that you’ve set up for yourself. This can be something like a “Rainy Day” fund with a goal of $10,000 or a “Vacation” fund with a goal of $2,000. Qapital encourages you to have smaller, multiple goals to work toward (so you can get the satisfaction of achieving something), but it works just as well with the one big goal.

I opted to choose rules that saved money every time I spent — the Round-Up rule as well as the Guilty Pleasure rule. I also had three separate goals set up, with the same rules applied to each one. Before I knew it, I was putting away almost a hundred dollars a week — every time I went to the grocery store, or bought a gadget on Amazon, extra money was shuffled from my bank account to Qapital. I was pleasantly surprised by just how much money I could save and still be able to live my life the way I always have.

I’ll warn here that you do need to give Qapital your bank login credentials for the whole thing to work. If you use credit cards for your spending, you’ll want to add those account logins to the Qapital app too, so that your spending can trigger the rules. That might scare off some of you, but this is how Mint and most other budgeting apps work. Besides, the Qapital account is FDIC-insured, so you won’t have to worry about your money disappearing in the middle of the night. Also, you can transfer the money out of Qapital any time you want. You can even use Qapital to pay your bills directly.

There’s one caveat though, and it’s an important one: You don’t earn any interest from the money you put away in your Qapital account. After all, the service is free — the interest from your savings goes directly to Qapital instead of you. It would be far more prudent and money-wise for you to simply transfer all that money into your very own interest-earning account yourself.

But if you need help saving and you want it to be done automatically, then Qapital does provide a simple and elegant solution. An interest-earning savings account will get you more money over time, sure, but this is better than not saving anything at all.

Mat Smith
Bureau Chief, UK

Billy has already given the Mighty a thorough testing here, but for the uninitiated, it’s an iPod Shuffle-esque Spotify player with both a headphone socket and the ability to play music wirelessly. As I’m a foolish iPhone 7 owner, my headphone choices have gravitated towards wireless options. But I still own some wired sets, which generally offer better sound quality. (Oh yeah, and Apple stopped selling the iPod Shuffle.) Finally, I could listen again to my Spotify tracks with higher-quality ‘phones on my commute, at the gym and the rest. I was an early backer on Kickstarter — yeah, I can’t believe it happened either, and my device even landed ahead of review samples. I’ve had it for a few months now.

I made the wrong choice on color, however. Unlike our review sample in moody black, mine was a slightly dull white, if you remember desktop PCs from the mid-90s, you’ve got the right shade. It gave the feeling that this was some sub-$20 MP3 player, not something closer to 90 bucks. The clip was reassuringly sturdy, with a rubber edge to keep it all snugly attached to wherever I put it. (Like you can see in the image in this article, I did wear it on my shirt collar, because I could.) One personal caveat is that I’ve realized that I’m pretty much tethered to my phone when I go the gym: I log my exercises, timings and the rest. I might even Google stretches and rehab movements because my body doesn’t like it when I make it move. This means that Mighty doesn’t liberate me as much as say, someone that goes running, or follows along a class. But, hey, that’s me.

Unlike my colleague, I had a few early troubles getting my music tracks to sync, but once you’ve got your best playlists synced, you rarely have to meddle with the app and sync from your phone again. This is great. Less great is the choice of charging port: The headphone socket. Yes, I understand that this helps simplify design, and there’s likely technical design reasons for it, but it also means another obscure cable I need to keep around. Just add a micro-USB port — those cables are cheap and plentiful. The Mighty might not be essential for me, but it is smart way to take your Spotify collection away from your phone and PC and there aren’t many options for that.

Timothy J. Seppala
Associate Editor

Nintendo is forcing my hand to buy a Pro Controller for my Switch. After sending my left Joy-con in for service (yup, mine loses sync too), my buddy Victor offered to lend me his Pro so I could keep chipping away at the legendary beasts in Zelda. Until then, I’d sworn the gamepad off because the Wii U’s version never felt quite right to me. That and the updated model is $70. C’mon, Nintendo.

Engadget

Getting it to sync to my console was a bit of an ordeal, but a few minutes later I was up and running. I haven’t owned a non-default controller for a Nintendo system since the GameCube, and once I fired up Breath of the Wild, I realized how much of a mistake that’s been.

Scrolling through my arrow and weapon inventory with a real D-pad and having normal-sized face buttons was a revelation. The Joy-cons and adapter are serviceable stand-ins for a controller, but now that I’ve used the real deal, I don’t think I’ll be able to go back. The ergonomics are better, as is the fit and finish. Best of all? When I’m staring at my TV screen, I don’t have a nagging feeling that I’m using an input device designed around compromises.

“IRL” is a recurring column in which the Engadget staff run down what they’re buying, using, playing and streaming.

Twitter’s live NFL news and analysis show premieres tonight

Twitter’s new NFL live show #NFLBlitz premieres tonight on the league’s @NFL account. Last year, Twitter held the rights for the NFL’s Thursday night games, but Amazon snagged those streaming rights this season in a deal believed to have rung in around $50 million. Instead, the platform is getting a 30-minute long news and analysis show that will air Monday to Thursday every week through to the Super Bowl.

The show, hosted by NFL Network’s Marc Istook and Erin Coscarelli will feature everything from breaking news to fantasy projections to pregame analyses. And for prime time games and particularly important match-ups, #NFLBlitz will also air pregame dispatches via Periscope.

For those who enjoyed watching NFL games on Twitter last year, fret not because the platform still has something to offer when it comes to live games. Stadium’s 24/7 sports livestream launched on Twitter last week and the site is also working in a weekly WNBA stream, an MLB analysis show, PGA Tour coverage as well as a pro athlete-fan interaction show called #Verified.

You can catch the first episode of #NFLBlitz at 7PM Eastern.

Source: Variety

‘Until Dawn’ studio has two PSVR games for this year

Thank goodness Sony has finally started to bundle required cameras and controllers with its PlayStation VR hardware, but the system still needs more games to compete with the likes the Oculus Rift or HTC Vive. Games like Sparc and Arizona Sunshine are out already, of course, and Skyrim is apparently on its way, but the PlayStation’s library still has fewer games than its competitors. Luckily, Supermassive Games is bringing two new titles to the PSVR experience soon, with psychological horror game The Inpatient launching November 21st and team military shooter Bravo Team releasing December 5th.

In addition, Supermassive Games (the developer behind horror game Until Dawn) dropped a new trailer for The Inpatient, a VR title that sets you smack dab in the middle of 1950s-era Blackwood Sanatorium as a patient with no memory. You’ll need to explore the hospital to trigger flashbacks and get information from staff and other inhabitants. Needless to say there’s a lot of scary stuff going on in there.

Bravo Team is a first-person, cover-based shooter with both single and two-player online cooperative play. It’s set in a fictional modern Eastern European city where you’ll have to strategize and fight your way through intense battles. The developers claim that Bravo Team works well with the gun-like PSVR Aim peripheral as well as with DualShock 4 and Move controllers, letting you simulate things like blind fire by raising the gun over your head.

Source: PlayStation Blog

‘Overwatch’ deathmatch modes are live

For over a year since it launched in May 2016, Blizzard’s Overwatch only let teams of players compete against each other in completing objectives — none of that kill-more-than-the-other-team hogwash. Then the studio about-faced early this month when it announced that those Deathmatch modes would really be coming to the hero shooter. Today, both team-based and free-for-all modes go live — along with a few balance tweaks to some heroes.

Survival means victory.
Deathmatch has arrived.

Play it now in the Arcade! 👉 https://t.co/FY88PqhqGX pic.twitter.com/5VEj2H0qz3

— Overwatch (@PlayOverwatch) August 29, 2017

The two deathmatch modes will show up in the Arcade area for alternative modes. Free-For-All pits one player against seven others and the first to 20 kills wins (placing in the top four will count as a win for weekly loot box rewards). Team Deathmatch is 6v6 with the first to 30 kills winning, though Mercy resurrections will take a score away from the enemy team.

Maps have been modified to accommodate deathmatch play — namely, objectives like capture points and payloads have been removed. But there’s even a brand-new map dedicated to the mode: Château Guillard. In the game’s lore, this is where the character Amelie LaCroix (née Guillard) resided before she was brainwashed and transformed into the Talon operative Widowmaker.

Overwatch team lead Jeff Kaplan explained their reasoning for bringing the classic first-person-shooter mode to the game in a developer update (below).

In short — don’t claim that Blizzard never listens, as it’s clearly bowed to fan demand. Obviously, it’s way too early to see if deathmatch starts entering professional competition, but the mode is slotted in the Arcade area for a reason. Another long-requested mode, Capture The Flag, was added to the game back in February and that hasn’t filtered into competitive rotation. It’s unlikely that Blizzard will consider deathmatch for their Overwatch League they’re still getting off the ground, but with the studio’s change of heart adding the traditional FPS mode to the game at all, anything’s possible.

Source: Overwatch (Twitter), Overwatch (Patch Notes)

Robot caregivers are saving the elderly from lives of loneliness

Relying on 300-pound bear-faced robots to help nursing home residents get out of bed in the morning is much more effective if those folks actually have a reason to get out of bed in the morning. Elderly people dealing with social isolation and loneliness are at increased risk of a variety of ailments, from cardiovascular disease and elevated blood pressure to cognitive deterioration and infection. In short, being old and alone can kill you. But robots aren’t just good for improving the elderly’s movement, they’re surprisingly adept at keeping retirees socially, emotionally and mentally engaged as well.

These support robots are already springing up around Japan, where in 2016 the annual birth rate dropped below a million for the first time since 1899 and a quarter of the population is already greying. Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry expects the robotic service industry to boom to nearly $4 billion annually by 2035 — 25 times its current level. Though Europe and the US aren’t facing quite the apocalyptic shortfall of qualified human caretakers that Japan is, these two regions are also accelerating the development and adoption of support robots.

Though the current generation of these robots are far from what The Jetsons’ Rosie could provide, they can still offer geriatric patients a variety of services that fall, generally, within three categories: serving and fetching, communications and emotional support.

Serving robots do exactly that. Take the Care-o-bot from Fraunhofer IPA, for example. This robot has been deployed in a number of German assisted living facilities. It is able to ferry food and drinks to residents from the kitchen as well as keep them entertained by playing memory games to help keep their minds sharp. And to put those people at ease who may not be 100 percent onboard with having a 4-foot tall robot butler zipping around the halls, the Care-o-bot is programmed to behave like a gentleman, Dr Ulrich Reiser, Project and Group Leader at Fraunhofer IPA, wrote in a 2015 release.

Rather than over-promise what it’s capable of by presenting an overtly human form, the Care-o-bot instead focuses on what’s inside. “It always maintains a respectful distance, shows what it has understood and what it intends to do, while also being able to make simple gestures and reflect emotions,” Reiser wrote.

Honda’s Asimo robot, the one which famously fell down that flight of stairs, has come a long way since its humiliating faceplant. Not only can the current iteration climb stairs, it can jump and even use sign language. Honda’s research team eventually hopes that Asimo will serve as a go-fer for people with limited mobility — say, bringing a glass of water or turning off a light switch.

“ASIMO was designed to help those in society who need assistance, and Honda believes that these improvements in ASIMO bring us another step closer to our ultimate goal of being able to help all kinds of people in need,” Satoshi Shigemi, senior chief engineer at Honda R&D Co., Ltd. Japan, told Business Insider. “We need to understand what people expect from ASIMO and what people want ASIMO to do.”

These robots don’t even need to be people-sized. The Dinsow elder care robot from CT Asia Robotics acts as a personal assistant of sorts. It helps its human remember to take their pills, tracks their health and automatically answers incoming calls from family and doctors. There’s even a Dinsow Mini, released in 2015, which is small enough to live on the night stand of bedridden patients. The Dinsow does not come cheap, however. It retails for $2500, but yeah, you go tell Grandpa Joe he’s got to keep staring at his in-laws until he keels over (or you find that Golden Ticket) because you didn’t want to shell out for a little robobuddy for the man.

Of course, growing old in a nursing home is a vastly different experience than doing so in your own home. Care facilities are, by their very nature, communal — there’s nearly always someone around. But for elderly folks who live alone, the services that robots provide must go beyond turning off lights and fetching small items.

The ElliQ is a system similar to the Dinsow, available December here in the States. It’s basically an interactive robot holding a tablet. Like the Dinsow, ElliQ tracks its users pill regimen and connects them to family, friends, and medical professionals through video calls and social media. It also acts as a companion, inquiring how their user is feeling both physically and emotionally. It can check the weather and suggest outdoor activities so its user doesn’t stay all cooped up for extended periods and go stir crazy. More importantly, the ElliQ learns. The system utilizes machine learning to figure out its user’s preferences and quirks. It can then make proactive activity recommendations based on what it knows its user enjoys.

Sometimes, elderly folks who lie alone don’t just need a little buddy, they need a guardian as well. And that’s where the likes of the MiRo robotic dog comes in. The MiRo is a mechanized canine companion, like the AIBO but more capable. Like the other robots discussed today, it runs the typical gamut of pill regimen management, general companionship and appointment reminders. But it also keeps an eye on your health.

“It tries talking to you,” MiRo’s designer, Sebastian Conran, told The Guardian, “and then it will send a signal to the hub saying there seems to be a problem. The hub will then broadcast on the home speaker, asking again if you’re all right, and telling you to slap your wrist.” That refers to a biometric sensing wristband that the user wears which tracks their vitals.

“If you slap your wrist the process will stop but will be logged,” he continued. “If you don’t slap your wrist it will… go to a carer, who can see your heart rate and body temperature, and rewind your life using the cameras in the home to see what happened. So when the ambulance gets there, they’ll know what they’re working with.” Of course, this scenario also assumes that the person is comfortable living in a digital fishbowl, surrounded by a suite of monitoring cameras and IoT sensors. Whether your grandma, who still refers to the microwave as “the science box,” will be ok living in 1984-like conditions — even if it’s for her own good — remains to be seen.

Sometimes all you need in a robotic pet is something soft to snuggle with and boy is the Paro perfect for that. Designed to resemble a Canadian Harp seal pup, the Paro has been employed in Japanese nursing homes since 2003. It’s essentially a pettable ball of fur that can’t be hurt even if someone goes full “Lenny” on it. But the Paro doesn’t just respond with lifelike movements to tactile stimuli, it also recognizes temperature, posture, and light. Say its name or shower it with praise, and the Paro will respond.

The therapeutic results so far have been impressive. “We’re already finding that, for some difficult cases of depression, this could be a catalyst that helps people move on and get back to their healthy state,” said Dr. Simon Davies, a staff psychiatrist and clinical scientist at Canada’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. “It’s very therapeutic — another approach to use alongside all the regular treatments proving effective in depression treatment.”

However, not all medical care professionals are thrilled about the coming support robot revolution. “Social isolation of seniors is a significant concern amongst gerontologists and caregivers alike. Robot care, in my mind, would only compound that issue,” Susan Madlung, gerontologist and Clinical Educator for Regional Programs and Home Health Re-Design at Vancouver Coastal Health, told AgingCare.

She expects that it may be a generation or three before people are inherently comfortable with being cared for by a robot. “Although robots might seem like a good response to the growing need for caregivers, I could see this as being quite detrimental to the emotional and psychosocial well being of anyone, not just seniors,” she continued. “Humans need humans.”

Burger King is using cryptocurrency as a loyalty program in Russia

Rather than give you another punch card or plastic loyalty card for your wallet, Burger King has a different idea for rewarding its customers: cryptocurrency. In Russia, The BK Lounge has started issuing Whoppercoins when people buy food. Save enough and you can redeem them for nuggets, burgers and King Bouqets Buckets in the country. A billion Whoppercoin have been issued thus far via the Waves paltform, and more will follow if demand does.

“Eating Whoppers now is a strategy for financial prosperity tomorrow,” the chain’s Ivan Shestov said in one of the best press release quotes ever written. Now I’m wondering if that’s just the pen name J. Wellington Wimpy is using, though.

No matter. The press release says that for every rouble spent (59 roubles roughly converts to $1) earns a single Whoppercoin, and free Whoppers are 1,7000 Whoppercoins. More than that, if you’re of the vegetarian or vegan persuasion, like other cryptocurrencies, you can sell and trade these online. Burger King is expected to release Android and iOS apps to track your collection next month.

Not in Russia? You can monitor the way Whoppercoins are trading online. As of publishing time, there have been 36 transfers. Given that rival McDonald’s has Hamburglar on its payroll, maybe Burger King would be wise to up the security here.

Via: The Verge

Source: Waves

Aston Martin will go EV and hybrid only in the mid-2020s

The car James Bond drives in the next 007 film might be a hybrid. Aston Martin, famous for supplying the spy’s chosen vehicle, announced that its entire automotive lineup would be hybrids by the mid-2020s. By 2030, the automaker intends for a quarter of its sales to come from electric vehicles, the company’s CEO told Financial Times.

The promise comes soon after Volvo pledged to stop selling gas or diesel-only cars within the next two years in favor of hybrids and EVs. Not that Aston Martin is jumping on a trend: The automaker has been making concepts and working on commercial versions of hybrid and plug-in electric cars since 2015. While the company’s plans to make EVs with LeEco-connected Faraday Future stalled out, it’s going ahead with production of its all-electric concept car, the RapidE. Though that sportscar is nowhere near consumer-affordable with a $255,000 price tag, it will be the automaker’s first EV when it rolls off the line in 2019.

Aston Martin will be building its own electric driving systems instead of getting them from its partner Daimler, which supplies the British carmaker with setups for its V8s. Building tech in-house is a sure sign for how important the company thinks electric vehicles will be:

“You need to keep core technology inside the company,” Aston Martin CEO Andy Palmer told Financial Times. “That’s why we make our own V12 engine. We believe that EVs [electric vehicles] are a core technology, and therefore we want to do them ourselves.”

Via: Ars Technica

Source: Financial Times

Fight zombies on your street with ‘Walking Dead’ AR mobile game

How long would you last during a zombie apocalypse? Because let’s be honest, the chances are you’d be shuffling among the living dead in next to no time, no matter how good your baseball swing. But instead of waiting for the end of all humanity to prove us wrong, you can soon test your mettle against the zombie swarm in almost real life, with augmented reality mobile game The Walking Dead: Our World.

Like a far more horrifying and adrenaline-pumping version of Pokemon Go, AMC and Next Games’ The Walking Dead: Our World uses the latest in mobile phone augmented reality tech to put gamers squarely in the middle of a zombie apocalypse. Here, you can battle walkers on the street, in the park, or even on the sofa, if you’re up for a bit of apocalyptic disaster without any of the effort. You’ll even have The Walking Dead’s Rick, Daryl and Michonne by your side as you go. The game will be available from iTunes’ App Store and Google Play, but there’s no word yet on exactly when the game will launch, so you’d better start thinking about your survival strategies now.

Misfit delays its Android Wear smartwatch to October

Misfit said that its Vapor smartwatch would arrive this summer, but the season’s nearly over and it has yet to put the device on your wrist. What gives? Well, there’s been a delay… although you won’t have to wait too much longer. The company tells us that the Android Wear device is now slated to ship in October, 9 months after its CES debut. Misfit tells us that it moved the release because it has “high expectations” for the Vapor and wants to “refine every detail” until the device is “truly outstanding.” In other words, the Vapor still had some rough spots as the end-of-summer deadline approached.

For Misfit, getting this watch on to store shelves is important. It’s the company’s first touchscreen smartwatch, and proof that it can stand out among Fossil’s many watch brands. Also, simply speaking, it’s one of the more interesting Android Wear designs in the pipeline — it checks off a number of valuable features (water resistance, GPS and heart rate tracking) while offering a posh-looking stainless steel case that you might enjoy showing off. There’s no guarantee that it’ll be the Android smartwatch of choice, but it stands a decent chance when other watches (such as the Huawei Watch 2 and LG Watch Sport) all make significant sacrifices.