Cayde-6 from ‘Destiny 2’ got his very own Ace of Spades prop gun from Bungie

Why it matters to you

Bungie has rewarded several of the voice actors from their blockbuster franchise with cool replicas from the game.

Being a voice actor on a video game is not an easy gig. The hours are long, often the pay is low, and you can spend an entire day just making strange noises over and over again.

On the other hand, you sometimes get some really cool swag out of the deal.

Bungie recently rewarded Nathan Fillion, the voice of Cayde-6 from the blockbuster franchise with his very own Destiny Ace of Spades Exotic Hand Cannon. Created by Impact Props, it’s a replica of the iconic weapon from Destiny introduced in The Taken King expansion.

The company also created prop replicas for some of the other voice actors in the game, including a helmet mask for Bill Nighy (The Speaker) and a Titan mark for Lance Reddick (Zavalva). You can see more of their work at their official site and on their Twitter feed.

Bungie has a history of commissioning expensive props for their games that would be the envy of any ComiCon cosplayer. However, sometimes it turns out that carrying a realistic-looking rifle through the streets is not a good idea.

Destiny 2 is a massive multiplayer online futuristic first-person shooter that improves on the original game in almost every way. Although it has the feel of a work in progress, it’s got an ardent fanbase that’s euphoric over the new content. It’s even got a smartphone companion app. If you’re new to the series and a little hesitant to dive in and start blasting aliens, check out our explainer that will catch you up on all the story elements from the first game.

Fillion is probably best known for his role in Firefly as Captain “Mal” Reynolds and, more recently, the TV series Castle. An accomplished gaming voice actor, he has a history with Bungie, with roles in Halo 5: Reach, Halo 3, and Halo 3: ODST.

The Beastie Boys rarely allow their music to be used in advertisements, but if you’re not already sick of Sabotage, you can see Nathan in action in the insane live-action trailer for the game. “Puppies!”

Destiny 2 was released on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on September 6. A PC release (a first for the series) is slated for October 24.

A robot named Heliograf got hundreds of stories published last year

Why it matters to you

The rise of artificial intelligence in journalism brings up many questions about the future of reporting.

Robots are taking our jobs, no doubt about it. Just in the past year we’ve seen barista robots, fast-food robots, pizza delivery robots, and even a robot conducting a symphony orchestra. But robots can’t replace journalists, right? The dogged reporters, members of the vaunted Fourth Estate, the men and women who bring us the news stories we read every day?

Think again. It’s happening, and odds are that you’ve been reading stories created by artificial intelligence in local and world news already.

A year ago, the Washington Post introduced Heliograf, an in-house program that automatically generates short reports for their live blog. It was first used during the Rio Olympics to provide information such as the results of medal events for services like Alexa. At that time Sam Han, engineering director of data science, said, “The next challenge is to broaden the subjects covered, deepen the kind of analysis possible and identify potential stories for our newsroom.”

It looks like that day has arrived. Over the past year, the Post has published 850 stories from Heliograf, expanding its reach to include reporting on subject like congressional races and high-school football games.

Other outlets like USA Today and the Associated Press have also begun to rely on automated software to create content for readers. Executives are quick to point out that the AI is not meant to replace reporters, but instead allow them extra time to develop and relate more important and relevant stories. “Heliograf will free up Post reporters and editors to add analysis, color from the scene and real insight to stories in ways only they can,” said Jeremy Gilbert, director of strategic initiatives at the Post.

Not to mention the fact that machines don’t make typos and provide more accurate reporting. As Francesco Marconi, AP’s strategy manager put it, “In the case of automated financial news coverage by AP, the error rate in the copy decreased even as the volume of the output increased more than tenfold.”

A few years ago, the site Deadspin speculated that a robot had written a story about a college baseball game, citing the fact that they had “buried the lede” by not mentioning the pitcher had thrown a perfect game until the end of the story. A company called Natural Science rose to the challenge and, using only the box score, produced a better recap of the game than the human reporter had.

What this means for the future of reporting is an open question. Many of today’s biggest names in journalism got their start covering local news or high school sports. In the end, it all comes down to ad revenue. Although the Post can appraise the clicks and pageviews Heliograf generates, evaluating how much it impacts the bottom line is a more difficult task. In any event, it seems like reporters and robots will be working side-by-side for the foreseeable future.

A robot named Heliograf got hundreds of stories published last year

Why it matters to you

The rise of artificial intelligence in journalism brings up many questions about the future of reporting.

Robots are taking our jobs, no doubt about it. Just in the past year we’ve seen barista robots, fast-food robots, pizza delivery robots, and even a robot conducting a symphony orchestra. But robots can’t replace journalists, right? The dogged reporters, members of the vaunted Fourth Estate, the men and women who bring us the news stories we read every day?

Think again. It’s happening, and odds are that you’ve been reading stories created by artificial intelligence in local and world news already.

A year ago, the Washington Post introduced Heliograf, an in-house program that automatically generates short reports for their live blog. It was first used during the Rio Olympics to provide information such as the results of medal events for services like Alexa. At that time Sam Han, engineering director of data science, said, “The next challenge is to broaden the subjects covered, deepen the kind of analysis possible and identify potential stories for our newsroom.”

It looks like that day has arrived. Over the past year, the Post has published 850 stories from Heliograf, expanding its reach to include reporting on subject like congressional races and high-school football games.

Other outlets like USA Today and the Associated Press have also begun to rely on automated software to create content for readers. Executives are quick to point out that the AI is not meant to replace reporters, but instead allow them extra time to develop and relate more important and relevant stories. “Heliograf will free up Post reporters and editors to add analysis, color from the scene and real insight to stories in ways only they can,” said Jeremy Gilbert, director of strategic initiatives at the Post.

Not to mention the fact that machines don’t make typos and provide more accurate reporting. As Francesco Marconi, AP’s strategy manager put it, “In the case of automated financial news coverage by AP, the error rate in the copy decreased even as the volume of the output increased more than tenfold.”

A few years ago, the site Deadspin speculated that a robot had written a story about a college baseball game, citing the fact that they had “buried the lede” by not mentioning the pitcher had thrown a perfect game until the end of the story. A company called Natural Science rose to the challenge and, using only the box score, produced a better recap of the game than the human reporter had.

What this means for the future of reporting is an open question. Many of today’s biggest names in journalism got their start covering local news or high school sports. In the end, it all comes down to ad revenue. Although the Post can appraise the clicks and pageviews Heliograf generates, evaluating how much it impacts the bottom line is a more difficult task. In any event, it seems like reporters and robots will be working side-by-side for the foreseeable future.

Every voice command you can use while within Gear VR

You can control your Gear VR vocally by using these commands!

Gear VR lets you explore great new worlds and games that can bring you across the universe. While there are certain things that will require a controller, you can control several simple commands using only your voice. There aren’t many voice commands, but the ones that are available make a big difference!

We’ve got every voice command available from within Gear VR for you here!

Read more at VRHeads!

Let’s talk about Blueborne, the latest Bluetooth vulnerability

Because you need to know what’s up and what to do about it.

We got to see something cool and terrible (yes, it’s possible to be both at the same time) earlier this week when Armis Security published the details of a new Bluetooth exploit. Called “Blueborne,” the exploit allows a person with the right tools and who is within Bluetooth range of your smart thing — laptop, phone, car, or anything else that runs Android (as well as most every other operating systems, including iOS and Windows) — to gain control over the device without any action from the user.

That’s because the exploit cleverly attacks portions of the software needed to establish a connection to hijack the Bluetooth stack itself, which is pretty much done in a universal way because of how complicated Bluetooth is and how the stack itself handles so many things the OS could be doing instead.

Interested yet? If not, you should be.

Before we go any further, here is the good(ish) news: Apple, Google, and Microsoft have all patched the exploit. On the Android side, we saw the fix in this month’s security patch released the same day the vulnerability was made public. This surely isn’t a coincidence and kudos to Armis for working with the companies who write the software we all use every day to get this fixed. Of course, almost every Android-powered device doesn’t yet have this patch and won’t for a while.

I’ll resist the temptation to make this all about Android’s update woes and the million-and-one different reasons that it happens. I’ll just say that if you value being protected against most vulnerabilities like this you currently have three options: an Android-powered device from BlackBerry, an Android-powered device direct from Google, or an iPhone. You decide what to do here.

Instead let’s talk about what Blueborne is and how it does it, as well as what you can do about it.

What is Blueborne?

It’s a series of simple attacks on various parts of the Bluetooth stack running on almost every smart device in the world. Including 2 billion Android phones. It’s not a MiTM (Man in The Middle) attack, where someone intercepts Bluetooth traffic between you and a thing you’re connected to. Instead, it’s posed as a device that wants to discover and connect over Bluetooth but the exploit happens before the connection attempt gets to a stage where a user needs to act.

For people into this sort of thing, the short version of how the exploit works on Android is that the attacker sends out a discovery query, then manipulates both the timestamp and size of a second discovery query for a separate service to the same machine. This causes a buffer underflow and bypasses the standard Bluetooth Security Management Protocols to hit the failsafe “just works” connection. While it sounds crazy that this works, it’s better than the default BlueZ stack version of the exploit which is a straight-up buffer overflow that bypasses every connection check. I’m not familiar enough with Windows or iOS to parse the exploit code for those operating systems, but if you are hit the link in the opening paragraph and check it out. Then hit the comments and help us all understand better.

If you’re not into looking through code (it’s a special sort of illness, I do admit) the short short version is that a person with a computer that has a Bluetooth connection can type a few lines in a terminal and connect to your phone. How easy it is for him or her to connect is ridiculous (we’ll talk about why that is later) and anyone with even just a passing knowledge of this sort of thing can do it. That’s why it was important that Armis hold the release until Apple, Google, and Microsoft were able to act.

The scary part is what happens after the connection is made. There is no secret magic app that roots your phone and hacks all your data. It’s too easy to prevent any process from getting that level of control, and permissions prevent it from happening unless a process does have that level of access. Instead, an attacker can act as the logged in user. That’s you.

With 8 billion devices that need to connect, Bluetooth is a big target for people who want to steal data.

In the example video above we see the attacker establishing a Bluetooth mouse connection to a sleeping Pixel, then doing the same things you could do if you were holding it in your hands. Apps can be started, pictures, video, and audio can be recorded, and your files can be downloaded directly to the attacker’s computer. there is nothing on your phone to say “Stop, this is not cool” because it is cool — it’s acting as you. And none of your data is safe. If the attacker is unable to access a sandboxed directory, he or she can simply open the associated app and pull images of what’s on the screen while it is running.

The frustrating part of all this is why it works. I’m not talking about how the stack is exploited and someone crashes their way in, I mean why in the broader sense. Why something this preventable was able to slip past the experts who oversee security and are really good at writing this sort of thing out of the operating system. And the answer is that it happened because Bluetooth is a giant, complicated mess.

It’s not the Bluetooth SIG’s (Special Interest Group) fault, even if it is their responsibility to ultimately address this. Bluetooth started out in 1998 as a simple short-range wireless connection. It’s now on more than 8 billion devices worldwide and has grown and grown in features and complexity. And it has to be backward compatible, so portions of it have to be left as-is when it comes to things like advanced connection security standards. If an encrypted paired-key connection can’t be established, it has to be able to try something less secure and keep trying until it connects, runs out of ways to try, or the security management features tell it to stop. Exploit the SMP layer and you’re in. And as new features get added to newer versions, it only gets worse.

There are exploits in proprietary software, too. We just don’t know about them until it’s too late.

The people writing an operating system and the security team whose job it is to break it will all take their share of the responsibility here, too. The problem here is that they’re dealing with impossibly complex code in the Bluetooth stack and while they are busy trying to patch it against one thing other things could also be exploited. Google did change a good bit of the “default” Bluetooth implementation for Linux, as did Apple and Microsoft. The things you use are well-protected against things like a man in the middle attack or a way to get admin permission over Bluetooth. That’s because those have traditionally been the way Bluetooth was exploited, and there is always plenty of work to do prevent it from happening.

Finally, this is a great example of why open-source code is great. The researchers at Armis were able to find this exploit, see exactly how it works and determine exactly how to patch it because they have access to the code itself. While Apple and Microsoft don’t use a fully open source Bluetooth stack, they knew exactly where to look to patch their version. If every company involved used closed proprietary code this exploit would still exist, but we wouldn’t know about it until it was too late and other folks knew about it, too.

What should you do about it?

Every person reading this probably has one or more Bluetooth devices. Your watch, your phone, your laptop, your TV, and the list could go on and on; Bluetooth is everywhere and on almost everything. That means you’re likely to have Bluetooth enabled on your phone, and that’s all it takes to be vulnerable to this if your phone is still unpatched.

The saving grace here is that Bluetooth is a short-range connection standard. Bluetooth 5 is working on extending the range, but you’re pretty much confined to about 30 feet before the signal gets bad. That means you’re really only at risk when you’re within 30 feet of the person trying to get into your phone.

Bluetooth’s short range means an attacker has to be near you to use the Blueborne exploit.

And the way this exploit works is scary, but it also means you’re probably going to notice it. If your phone is sleeping and locked, an attacker can still connect. But as soon as they attempt to access your stuff or get tricky and try to take control, the screen would light up and they would need to unlock the phone. For now, at least. Don’t think for a minute that people aren’t working on a way around this because they are. And they will find it.

I’m not going to suggest you stop using your smartwatch or your favorite Bluetooth headset and shut down Bluetooth permanently. But there are a few things we can do to make it harder for someone to get in through Bluetooth while we’re waiting for a patch. And again — if your phone has the September 2017 security patch, you’re protected.

• Shut Bluetooth off when you’re not using it. You’re probably safe at home or at work, but if you get into the habit of turning Bluetooth off when you don’t need it you won’t forget the next time you go to Starbucks. There is no way for an attacker to turn Bluetooth on. At least not yet.
• Make sure you have a secure lock screen. Dead stop. If you don’t already have a password, PIN, pattern, fingerprints or anything else set up so your phone is locked until you unlock it yourself, go do it now.
• Turn off trusted devices while you’re at it. Tapping in a 4-digit PIN or scanning your eyeballs is way more convenient than getting new credit cards and talking to your bank, even once. Trust me, I’ve been there. (Thank’s, Target. Idiots, I swear.)
• Don’t leave your phone unattended. Put it in your pocket or purse and take it with you even if you’re only stepping away for a minute or two.
• If you see the screen turn on, look and see why. This is the biggest “flaw” in the exploit; it will turn your screen on if someone tries to do anything after they are connected.
• Ask the company you gave money to when you bought your phone when you should expect an update to fix this. Asking nicely lets it know that you care about it, and when enough people show they care a company will decide to care. The patch is available to every phone running Android 4.4 and higher.

There probably isn’t an army of people armed with laptops and Mountain Dew patrolling the streets, ready to hack “all the phones” through Bluetooth. But there could be that one guy, and he could be at McDonald’s or the library or anywhere else. In cases like this, it’s always better to be safe because the things we can do are pretty easy.

Your stuff is worth it.

Nikon is making a full-frame mirrorless camera

To say Nikon has been conservative with mirrorless cameras would be an understatement. While most of its rivals have embraced mirrorless (even a cautious company like Canon takes them seriously), Nikon’s efforts have been timid at best — the 1 series is closer to point-and-shoots in spirit than a DSLR replacement. Thankfully, it’s mending its ways. In an interview with Xitek, company R&D manager Tetsuro Goto says that any new Nikon mirrorless camera “must” be full-frame. Given that the firm’s president has already said that a mirrorless camera is in the works, it’s clear that this upcoming model will come with a giant sensor.

As for the reason why? Goto claims that competitors like Fujifilm, Olympus and Sony don’t really cater to pro photographers with their mirrorless cams, and Nikon could fulfill that role. “There is no professional using their products,” he says. We’d disagree strongly with that statement (the Sony A9 is very clearly aimed at pros), but it’s true that most mirrorless cameras are aimed at enthusiasts and others who don’t depend on photography as their main source of income.

Goto unsurprisingly isn’t revealing specifics. However, Nikon has patented two full-frame lenses (a close-up 36mm f/1.2 and an ultra-bright 52mm f/0.9), so that will at least give you an idea of what to expect — Nikon wants high-quality glass for portraits and other shots that pros like to take. This definitely won’t be cheap, but it may scratch the itch for serious photographers who don’t want to lug around a giant DSLR just to take print-worthy shots.

Via: Nikon Rumors, PetaPixel

Source: Xitek (translated)

Pirate Bay ‘borrows’ visitor CPUs to mine virtual coins

Piracy websites can’t really depend on ads, so how do they make money? By using your PC’s processor cycles, apparently — whether you want to or not. Visitors to The Pirate Bay have discovered JavaScript code in the website that ‘borrows’ your processor for the sake of mining Monero digital coins. It doesn’t always happen (it mainly appears in search results and category listings), but you’ll definitely notice the sharp spike in CPU usage when it kicks in.

The site tells TorrentFreak that it was testing the feature for about 24 hours as a new way of generating revenue, and that it could eventually be enough to replace ads. In short, don’t be surprised if this becomes a mainstay of the site going forward. Users have found that they can block the miner through their browser settings or add-ons like ad blockers, so it’s not inescapable.

Without warnings, however, many inexperienced visitors won’t even realize what’s happening, let alone figure out how to stop it. And that’s the real concern. While there isn’t much sympathy to be had for pirate site hosts eager for revenue, the unsuspecting visitors are another story — they didn’t ask to bog down their systems.

Via: Neowin

Source: TorrentFreak

Wind energy mines digital cash to support climate research

Climate change is frequently described as a vicious cycle that depletes the very resources needed to fight it. In the case of Julian Oliver’s latest project, however, it could almost be described as virtuous. His Harvest project uses a 700W wind turbine to power a PC mining cryptocurrency (specifically, Zcash) that directly funds climate change research. In other words: the more the symptoms of climate change manifest themselves, the more money goes toward fighting that change. It was commissioned as a piece of art, but it’s a very practical design that could find plenty of uses in the real world.

The PC itself is mostly off-the-shelf, with the GPU-heavy specs that you’d expect from a mining rig: it’s using ‘just’ a Core i3 processor, 4GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD, but it packs a hefty GeForce GTX 1080 Ti to process virtual cash as quickly as possible. The biggest changes are the obligatory weatherproof casing and a controller to regulate the incoming charge. The turbine itself has two hefty 150Ah batteries (each weighs about 95lbs) to store excess energy for use around the clock.

If you want to see Harvest as of this writing, you’ll have to visit Sweden’s Konstmuseet i Skövde (Art Museum in Skövde) between now and when the exhibition ends in mid-November. Oliver will donate the mined cryptocurrency to three climate-related non-profit groups when it’s over. However, that’s not necessarily the end of the story. Oliver sees this as a prototype, and envisions “hundreds” of these machines raising money in windy areas. And strictly speaking, it wouldn’t have to be used for money mining. It’s easy to see this being useful for rural internet access and any other infrastructure where you want always-on systems and don’t want to (or can’t) rely on the conventional power grid.

Source: Julian Oliver

Fender Newport: The king of guitars arrives into the Bluetooth speaker scene (Review)

I shouldn’t even introduce a brand like Fender. They are so famous and renowned throughout the world that there’s nothing I could say that you didn’t know already… Except for one thing: they are now making Bluetooth speakers. It’s like a match made in heaven: a brand that has dedicated its entire life to creating music instruments is now manufacturing their own Bluetooth speakers. What could go wrong?

The answer is: almost nothing. Fender didn’t make these devices just for fun or for making a quick buck. They actually thought this through and has come up with a superb product that, despite some very minor flaws, matches or outperforms its competitors.

Specs

These are the specs for the Fender Newport, right out of Fender’s official website:

• Maximum Output Level: 30 watts.
• Speakers: Two woofers and one tweeter.
• Dimensions: 3″ (7.5 cm) W x 7.25″ (18.41 cm) L x 5.25″ (13.3 cm) H.
• Weight: 3.2 lbs (1.5 kg).
• Battery: Up to 12 hours.
• Ports: 3.5mm auxiliary port, USB-A port, charging port.
• Bluetooth: Version 4.2, range of approximately 33 foot, codecs apX, AAC, SBC
• Microphone: Integrated, echo cancellation.

Massive giveaway!

Celebrating ten years of Android and AndroidGuys (Giveaway Week 3)

September 14, 2017

In the box you will find the speaker, AC adapter, 3.5mm audio cable, a USB to microUSB cable, and manuals.

Design and Build

Upon receiving your box, the first thing you will notice will be its weight. It’s not an assumption, it’s a fact. This thing is heavy, but it could be worse. Other speakers with similar prices, such as the Marshall Kilburn and JBL Xtreme are even heavier. However, the Bose SoundLink Mini II and Marshall Stockwell are lighter, allowing easier transportation.

I had to carry this around New York City while taking pictures of it and it was definitely noticeable. It is not something you would carry with you “just in case,” but rather because you are 100% sure that you are going to use it.

After you stop lamenting about the speaker’s weight, you will be amazed at how good it looks. You will not mistake it for one of Fender’s original amplifiers (like you might do with a Fender Monterey), but this is no conventional Bluetooth speaker either.

The metallic grid on the front accompanied by the Fender logo looks and feels superb. While the Monterey used a rugged plastic that closely resembles an amplifier, the Newport uses a soft, smooth surface that still manages to avoid feeling cheap.

On the top you will find perhaps the most unique aspect about this speaker. If the overall design wasn’t enough for you, Fender made sure that you actually feel like you are using an amplifier by making its controls look like one. Instead of having buttons only, the Newport has three knobs (for volume, bass, and treble), one switch for power, two small buttons for pairing and answering calls, and one indicator light. They all feel incredibly sturdy and premium.

I had the chance of checking out some actual Fender amps and the similarities are incredible. The Newport knobs feels strikingly similar to the ones in real Fender equipment.

As always, looks are subjective, but this device has caught the attention of absolutely everyone that has seen it. I always get a “that is so cool” (or its equivalent in Spanish) from the people I’ve shown it to, and the fact that it is made by Fender means that everyone immediately associates it with high quality and superb sound. Of course, it was just a small social experiment that I made, but I think it is safe to say that Fender has done a superb job in the design department, and that very few devices in the market look as good as this one.

Connectivity

Fender didn’t stop with the amplifier resemblance at the design level. Each action that you do will trigger a nice guitar sound. The company has included tunes for turning it on, pairing, low battery, and everything in between.

My only gripe with them is that they don’t respect the volume knob setting. Even if I have it at position 0, it still sounds loudly. I feel sorry for my flatmates, since they have to listen to these guitar tunes every day every time I turn the speaker on and there’s no way I can make something to avoid it.

Pairing the speaker with your preferred Bluetooth device is extremely easy. You just need to press the Pair button, select it from the available devices in your device, and away you go. The speaker will make a sound accordingly and the pair button will stop blinking to let you know that everything went as expected.

I haven’t had any connection drops, even when I moved my device to other rooms with several walls between the speaker and my Samsung Galaxy S8.

I did notice a couple of skips when testing with a Huawei Honor 7 Lite, but, since these skips were not present when testing with the S8, I attribute it to a poor antenna in my Huawei phone rather than a flaw with the speaker.

Apart from the Bluetooth connection, the speaker has a couple of tricks up its sleeve. The first one is a regular AUX port. I tested it with the included cable and found no troubles with it whatsoever. I would definitely not use it but it’s good to know that it’s there for people who prefer the reliability of a regular AUX connection.

The other one is a USB port. No, not a microUSB port, but a regular USB port. You can use this port to charge your device. I am really glad that Fender decided to add this to the speaker because there’s nothing sadder than having to stop the music at your social gathering because the phone with the premium Spotify account just died (been there).

Sound Quality

Of course, any connectivity features or nice looks are irrelevant if the speaker sounds bad, right? Fortunately, it doesn’t. From the moment I played my first tune, I quickly realized that this was one of the best Bluetooth speakers that I’ve had the chance of using.

This is courtesy of Fender’s tri-driver system, in which they have incorporated two woofers and one tweeter into the speaker. The arrangement produces a (maximum) output level of 30 watts. Fender hasn’t provided figures for the frequency range of the speakers, though, but it is probably no different than competing products, around the 90 to 20000 Hz range.

Sound is clear and powerful, but it’s is fairly balanced. There is no emphasis on anything, just a balanced, crisp sound. You could say that bass sounds a bit muffled and not as strong as it could be, but, other than that, the sound that the Newport produces is top-notch.

In case the default sound is not up to your standards, you can change the bass and treble knobs to adjust the output. I normally setup my devices to have a bit more bass than the default. I found out that setting the Bass knob on 10 is not as noticeable as one would expect, but it is a huge improvement from the normal setting.

I don’t consider myself a person with a varied taste in music, but I did test songs like The Solace System by Epica, Panic Station by Muse, Hell Yeah by Rev Theory, and On the Rocks by Amaranthe. Songs like Panic Station, which rely heavily on bass (you could say the same for a lot of Muse’s songs, frankly), are greatly enhanced with the bass knob turned up a bit. Songs from Dragonforce, for example, that don’t rely as much on bass sounds, benefit from adjusting the treble instead. It’s just a matter of finding what works best for you, but when you do, the Fender Newport sounds as good as the best speakers in the price range.

Another thing. This thing can get VERY LOUD. At first, I thought that it wasn’t as loud as I would expect when testing it with my S8, but nothing ever tested with this phone is loud. That’s when I figured that maybe I should try it with something else, and my Honor 7 Lite came to the rescue.

The first time I tested the maximum volume, my mother freaked out about the fact that I would disturb our neighbors. This is incredibly handy in open spaces and gatherings with several people, where a speaker with middle-range volume won’t cut it.

Finally, in case you receive a phone call, the Fender Newport has a built-in, echo-cancelling microphone. When you receive a phone call, the Talk button will flash on the top of the speaker and you will be able to answer the call. Overall, it worked pretty well the two times I received a phone call while testing this, and the other party didn’t mention anything in particular, neither positive nor negative. It’s there and it does its work the way it should.

Battery Life

The official specs say that this speaker can last for up to 12 hours. You don’t have to be so modest, Fender. This thing lasts forever. I haven’t been able to replicate this figure, but I’ve been getting at least 15 hours of playback time consistently. This is while having it on max volume (through the hardware knob only, not through Spotify) throught days and days of testing. I’ve always had the bass and treble on five (out of a possible ten).

Granted, I’m not much of an outside person, but knowing that, if the time comes where I have to see the outside world, I can just take this speaker with me and blast some Nightwish for 12 to 15 hours in a row, makes things much easier. I use this speaker every day for at least a couple of hours in my apartment, and not having to worry about its charge is something I appreciate a lot.

If that wasn’t good enough, the charging time for the speaker from 0% to 100% was approximately one hour and a half. However, this is possible thanks to a propietary charger that comes with the device.

Hopefully you are careful with your stuff, since, if you lose it, then that’s the end of your air jamming sessions. In case you were wondering, you can charge it and play music at the same time.

Apart from laptops, I can’t think of another device that comes with a propietary charger these days. It’s either microUSB, USB-C, or Lightning, and any of the three are easily available. I’m pretty sure that you could find this charger online as well in case something happens to yours, but I would gladly trade up charging time in return of a more universal cable.

On the bright side of things, this charger is capable of accepting 110V to 240V currents, so you can just use an adapter if you buy the US version and want to use it in Europe, for example. Believe me, that’s exactly what I did.

Conclusion

Even though it is Fender’s first foray into the Bluetooth speaker scene, it is definitely a solid one. It should definitely be on your list if you are in the market for a high-end Bluetooth speaker. If you want to buy one, you can head to Fender’s website and get yours. It will set you back $199.99/€225. This positions the Newport in the upper end of the market, competing with products like the Bose SoundLink Mini II, Marshall Kilburn and JBL Extreme. However, you get a quality, good-looking speaker with great sound quality and impressive battery life for your hard-earned cash. That sounds like a good deal to me.

Buy the Fender Newport from Fender’s official website.

Google Earth VR now takes you down to Street View level

Why it matters to you

If you have an Oculus Rift or HTC Vive headset, your Google Earth VR experience is about to become even more immersive.

Google has just enhanced its already impressive Earth VR experience, adding Street View imagery to make the virtual reality app even more immersive.

Up to now, you could fly around the planet like Superman, exploring locations from above using an Oculus Rift or HTC Vive headset. But now you can drop down to ground level to explore Street View imagery from 85 countries using the Google Earth VR app. The content comes from the Street View team as well as regular folks who’ve been contributing 360 photos to the online tool.

In a post outlining Earth VR’s new trick, Google’s Joanna Kim suggests a few choice spots where you might want to get started. They include AT&T Park in San Francisco, and Dubrovnik in Croatia, which Kim notes will be familiar to Game of Thrones fans.

Google Earth VR’s latest feature takes the app to a whole new level — in every sense of the expression — and looks set to make your sofa-based excursions even more real. Offering Street View imagery from so many locations around the world and embedding the functionality into the app should also prove useful for planning trips and checking out places before you go.

Besides the new Street View element, Google Earth VR lets you use the VR headsets’ hand controllers to pass high over countries, with the option to fly around and zoom in to landmarks and other places of interest for greater detail — check out Rome’s Colosseum, Switzerland’s Matterhorn, and Seattle’s Space Needle for some exciting Earth VR experiences. You can also drag the sun and sky around to quickly flip between day and night views.

Google launched Earth VR in 2016, breathing new life into the huge amount of Google Earth content it’s been gathering and creating in recent years. The app has been getting rave reviews, and several updates, like the one this week, are helping it to build on its initial success.

As we noted earlier, you’ll need either the HTC Vive or the Oculus Rift headset to enjoy the new Google Earth VR feature. But if you have neither, you can still check out Street View in VR with a smartphone by downloading the Street View app for the Daydream and Cardboard viewers.