Apple cozies up to Google with Siri and Spotlight search results

Why it matters to you

Now that Google is the default search engine for Siri and Spotlight searches, you’re probably going to see more helpful search results any time you ask Siri a question it doesn’t know how to answer.

As of Monday, September 25, Google will be the default search provider for Siri and Spotlight on iOS and MacOS. Previously, your Siri search results were served up by Bing, which will continue to be the default search engine for images. But any time you stump Siri with a question and she presents a list of search results instead of an actual answer, those results will be sourced from Google going forward.

It’s not a huge change, but Apple’s reason for jumping ship is pretty simple: Consistency. In MacOS, Safari already used Google as the default search engine, so ensuring Google’s results were served across all iOS and MacOS devices — when you use Siri or Spotlight for search — makes sense. Plus, your search results will be a bit more helpful, now that Bing is — partially — out of the picture.

“Switching to Google as the web search provider for Siri, Search within iOS and Spotlight on Mac will allow these services to have a consistent web search experience with the default in Safari. We have strong relationships with Google and Microsoft and remain committed to delivering the best user experience possible,” Apple told TechCrunch.

So where are you going to see all these new Google search results? Pretty much anytime you stump Siri with a weird question or hit up your Spotlight search in MacOS for the name of that pizza place you can’t quite remember. It’s certainly not the biggest change you are apt to see in the new iOS 11 and MacOS High Sierra ecosystem, but it marks an interesting development as Apple works to consolidate its user experience across all of its devices.

According to TechCrunch, the deal with Google means better search results for iOS and MacOS users, along with a sizable chunk of change for Google.While Bing will continue to serve up image results, Google will serve standard web search results, alongside video results — so you will probably see a lot more YouTube videos in your search results.

You won’t be served ads in your iOS or MacOS search results but links you click — to watch YouTube videos for instance — will potentially generate ad revenue for Google, further adding to the substantial amount of revenue Google gains from its $3 billion deal with Apple to remain the default search engine on iOS and MacOS devices.

A microneedle skin patch could help melt fat right off of us

Why it matters to you

With this technology, weight loss may be as easy as sticking on a skin patch.

There are all sorts of strange and scientific weight loss tricks out there. A new technique developed by researchers at Columbia University and the University of North Carolina might sound pretty crazy but, according to a new study, it actually works. The method uses a microneedle skin patch to deliver a fat-shrinking drug to specific regions that are a bit thicker than desired.

“Our group has previously developed several microneedles patched for different applications, including insulin patch, glucagon, and PD1 patch,” Zhen Gu, patch designer and study co-lead, told Digital Trends. “One day my wife just asked me how about an anti-obesity patch. Meanwhile … our collaborator Doctor Li Qiang contacted me for such a patch also, so we just started.”

Human fat is divided into two types: White fat and brown fat. White fat helps store excess energy in large droplets, while brown fat uses smaller droplets and mitochondria — the powerhouse of the cell — to burn fat and generate heat. The thing is, humans don’t have a whole lot of brown fat once we reach adulthood. Researchers have been attempting to find a method to turn a person’s white fat into brown fat to treat obesity and diabetes, but a clean and effective solution has remained elusive.

“There are several clinically available drugs that promote browning, but all must be given as pills or injections,” Qiang said, the study’s co-lead. “This exposes the whole body to the drugs, which can lead to side effects such as stomach upset, weight gain, and bone fractures. Our skin patch appears to alleviate these complications by delivering most drugs directly to fat tissue.”

With the patch, the drugs are only delivered to targeted regions through nanoparticles, invisible to the naked eye, which are packed into microscopic needles that are stacked on the centimeter-sized patch. Once the patch is applied, they painlessly pierce the skin and release the drug into fat tissue.

In lab trials, mice treated with the patch experienced a 20 percent reduction in fat, while also lowering fasting blood glucose levels.

“Many people will no doubt be excited to learn that we may be able to offer a noninvasive alternative to liposuction for reducing love handles,” said Qiang. “What’s much more important is that our patch may provide a safe and effective means of treating obesity and related metabolic disorders such as diabetes.”

The researchers are now studying which combinations of drugs will be best suited for human trials. The study was published this month in the journal ACS Nano.

Here’s how Dutch engineers plan to build one of the world’s tallest ice towers

Why it matters to you

Reinforced ice could give us a new sustainable material for building on parts of Earth that are permanently frozen.

A group of researchers from the Netherlands’ Eindhoven University of Technology wants to build a record-breaking, 30-meter high tower of ice in China — and they need your help to do it.

Over the past six years, the Dutch researchers have worked to prove the potential of a certain type of high-tech ice as a building material; developing a special variant of the cold stuff that is reinforced using fibers from wood or cellulose to make it stronger and tougher. Having previously demonstrated the material closer to home with projects like a giant 2014 dome, which set a record for the largest ice dome ever built, they now want to head to China’s Harbin International Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival, the world’s largest ice event. Once there, the plan is to construct an enormous ice tower as the most impressive proof of concept yet for their chilly material.

“Previous projects were constructed in Finland,” Yaron Moonen, a graduate student from the University of Technology Eindhoven’s department of structural design and construction technology, told Digital Trends. “However, the unstable weather forced us to another place. That place is Harbin in China. Since the world ice festival is held there every year, it was the ideal place for our new project.”

Creating their structures is not simply a matter of piling up reinforced ice. The process involves first creating the structure using inflatables, which are then sprayed layer by layer. An ice shell is then formed, the inflatable removed, and the structure is left with the ability to stand on its own.

For the Harbin project, Moonen and other researchers from Eindhoven and the Catholic University of Leuven are turning to Kickstarter to help fund their journey. While it’s not a classic Kickstarter in terms of bringing a product to market, the creators are nonetheless offering some pretty sweet rewards — ranging from samples of the material to a tour of the building site (flights not included). Plus you get the warm, fuzzy feeling of knowing you contributed to some fascinating work.

In the future, the dream is that the technology could help build sustainable housing on the approximately 12 percent of the Earth’s surface that’s permanently covered in snow and ice. “We try to show the possibilities of building with ice,” Moonen continued. “By building our projects, we hope to inspire people to use ice. Not only can it be used in areas with permafrost, but it can also be used as temporary storage during winter periods.”

The hope is that the reinforced fiber-packed ice could even extend to being a material for building on places like Mars, without having to transport large quantities of building materials into space to do so.

Robot farmers successfully harvested barley without any human hands

Why it matters to you

Robot-ran farms have the potential to increase efficiency in the agriculture industry.

Humans have been cultivating plants for some 10,000 years and, for much of that time, we’ve used beasts of burden to help tend the fields. Just last century, humans turned from animal strength to machine power, leading to huge leaps in agricultural efficiency and scale. Over the past few years, farms have deployed emerging technologies like drones and autonomous driving systems to make the farmers’ job even less strenuous — but human hands were still needed throughout the process.

Now, researchers at Harper Adams University and agricultural company Precision Decisions have removed humans from the farm entirely in a project called Hands Free Hectare. From planting to tending and harvesting, no human stepped foot on the acre and a half barley farm in rural England. It was all done by robot farmers.

“There’s been a focus in recent years on making farming more precise, but the larger machines that we’re using are not compatible with this method of working,” Jonathan Gill, one of the researchers involved in the project, said in a statement. “They’re also so heavy that their damaging farmers’ soils. If combines in the future were similar to the size of the combine we used in this project, which was a little ‘Sampo combine’ with a header unit of only two meters, it would allow more precise yield maps to be created. They would also be much lighter machines.”

Among the tasks assigned to the autonomous vehicles and drones were drilling channels to precise depths for barley seeds to be planted; applying specific amounts of fungicides, herbicides, and fertilizers; and, finally, harvesting the crops once they were ready.

“This project aimed to prove that there’s no technological reason why a field can’t be farmed without humans working the land directly now and we’ve done that,” said Martin Abell, from Precision Decisions. “We set out to identify the opportunities for farming and to prove that it’s possible to autonomously farm the land, and that’s been the great success of the project.”

Although the autonomous work systems were freshly developed for these tasks, the machine used to harvest the barley was 25 years old and still performed better than the tractor used for planting, according to the researchers.

The team plans to repeat the experiment again with a winter crop. But first, they will brew a batch of beer with the spring harvest. Cheers to that!

Google extends Nexus 5X and 6P security updates until Nov. 2018

Google has updated its ‘Minimum update & support period’ to show an extra couple of months for the Nexus 6P and 5X.

Back when Google began separating out security patches from platform updates, it established a cadence for its Nexus line that stands true today: two years for platform updates — in other words, two major releases — and three years for security patches, rolled out monthly.

It appears that, for some reason, Google has decided to extend the security update portion of the Nexus 5X and 6P. As first spotted by Droid Life, both phones will receive security patches until November 2018, two months longer than originally planned. While the extension could be because one of Google’s vendor partners — say, Qualcomm — extended its contract, it’s also possible that the change is merely because Google can do it, so it is. Neither phone is expected to be upgraded to Android P when it debuts next year, so Google likely wants them to be as stable on Oreo as possible.

What are your thoughts on this change? Will it postpone an upgrade if you were thinking of it? Let us know in the comments below!

Nexus 6P

• Nexus 6P review
• 5 things to know about the Nexus 6P
• Read the latest Nexus 6P news
• Learn about Project Fi
• Join our Nexus 6P forums
• Nexus 6P specs

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Nexus 5X

• Nexus 5X review
• 5 things to know about the Nexus 5X
• Read the latest Nexus 5X news
• Learn about Nexus Protect insurance
• Learn about Project Fi
• Join the Nexus 5X forums
• Nexus 5X specs

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Stop searching for a place to plug-in and charge with the $5 RAVPower mini battery pack

This small portable charger can fit in your pocket keep your phone charged to full!

The whole point of the smartphone revolution was we could carry the power of a full-blown computer in our pocket. We didn’t have to make room for more stuff… until it came time to charge the battery. Then you needed a backpack just to carry all your cords and power adapters and giant, monolithic, battery packs.

That’s the beauty of a mini external charger like the RAVPower Luster Mini 3350mAh portable battery pack. It can fit in your pocket, or purse, and you don’t have to go out of your way to keep your phone juiced up. Right now it’s down to $4.99 with code RAV3K5SD.

Its normal street price is $11. We haven’t seen another deal on this RAVPower since the end of August and that deal only dropped it to $7, not $5.

Despite its size, it still has enough power to fully charge an iPhone 7 and similar phones. Assuming you actually leave the house with a full charge (and didn’t forget to charge it all night like I usually do), it should keep you topped off while you’re out. Other features include:

• Thoughtful And Ergonomic Design: White plastic cap at the top and unique clip-inspired design prevent the charger from scratching and rolling off your desk
• Easy-to-press power button plus three status LEDs keep you informed of remaining capacity
• 1A output and 1A input: charge faster and smarter than others. Automatically detects and delivers the optimal charging current for any connected device, which ensures the fastest and most efficient charge
• Short-circuit and over-current protection will make the charger automatically shut down if a short circuit or overload output occur while the unit is charging
• Ultra reliable Lithium-Ion battery with over 500 battery charge cycles

RAVPower offers an 18-month warranty for the charger as well.

This charger only comes with one USB to micro USB cable, so grab an extra USB-C cord or Lightning cable if you need one.

See at Amazon

More from Thrifter:

• 8 weird things you probably have in your house that sell on eBay
• How to save money when driving

For more great deals be sure to check out our friends at Thrifter now!

Siri now uses Google to search instead of Bing

Bye bye, Bing — Apple is now using Google as its default for Siri and Spotlight web search results.

Yes, it has finally happened. According to a statement released by Apple today, now when you ask Siri a question and it falls back on a web search, the default search engine used will be Google instead of Microsoft’s Bing. The company had the following to say about the change, citing the consistency of search results as the reason behind it:

Switching to Google as the web search provider for Siri, Search within iOS and Spotlight on Mac will allow these services to have a consistent web search experience with the default in Safari. We have strong relationships with Google and Microsoft and remain committed to delivering the best user experience possible.

TechCrunch further explained the ins and outs of Siri’s functionality post-Bing:

The search results include regular ‘web links’ as well as video results. Web image results from Siri will still come from Bing, for now. Bing has had more than solid image results for some time now so that makes some sense. If you use Siri to search your own photos, it will, of course, use your own library instead. Interestingly, video results will come directly from YouTube.

This is all good news for Apple users who continually find Bing search results lacking. It can be frustrating to begin with when Siri can’t answer your queries, but to be served subpar search results afterward is a bit like adding insult to injury.

You can find more details about the change in TechCrunch’s article:

Apple switches from Bing to Google for Siri web search results on iOS and Spotlight on Mac

Cassini’s life passes before its eyes in NY art exhibition

Cassini became a cultural touchstone not just because it was a useful and productive space probe, but because it completed a classic hero’s journey. So it’s fitting that an art exhibition presented by the WOW visual design studio at HGPRP Gallery in New York City celebrates the life of the probe not in technical, but abstract terms. “It’s been said, just before a person dies their life’s biggest moments flash before their eye,” WOW writes. “Fleeting moments and flashbacks allow viewers to celebrate 20 years of Cassini’s achievements in a very personal, non-linear, stylized exhibition.”

Created by artist Gabriel Pulecio and produced by WOW and Covalent Artists, the exhibition features a series of abstract images meant to evoke Cassini’s narrative. All of that is enhanced by Pulecio’s trippy signature “infinity mirrors” and a music-scape by composer Jeff Dodson that includes the sounds violent lightning storms on Saturn recorded by Cassini.

Recalling Cassini’s life, it’s easy to understand why we see it almost as person rather than a device. It departed Earth in a dramatic night launch aboard a Titan IVB/Centaur rocket on October 15th, 1997, and circled the Sun twice to pickup speed, visiting Venus and Earth again on the way. It received a final gravitational boost from Jupiter before arriving at Saturn on July 1st, 2004.

Over the next five years, Cassini dropped the probe Huygens on the surface of Titan, discovered an atmosphere and ice plumes on the moon Enceladus, made close passes to Titan numerous times and captured the best images, by far, of Saturn and its rings. After its mission “ended” in 2009, Cassini got funding for its third act, the “Solstice” mission, and completed an additional 155 orbits.

WOW captured many of those highlights, like the flyby of Venus, the plumes of Enceladus and encounters with its moons. Some of the pieces, like the infinite hectagonal tiles that follow the user, appear to be based on Pulecio’s previous Tiles of Virtual Space exhibition. Highlights are shown in the videos above and another here.

Cassini was programmed to crash into Saturnt at over 77,000 mph in a “Grand Finale,” so as not to corrupt the moons with any microscopic life that may have hitched aboard from Earth. Part of the exhibition, particularly the image at top, captures the chaos of its destruction after so much steady service. Even that wasn’t quite the end, though. Part of Cassini — its final radio signals — arrived on Earth some 83 minutes after its death. “Who knows how many PhD theses are in that data,” said JPL Cassini Director Mike Watkins.

Beyond Cassini is still playing at the HPGRP Gallery, but just until Wednesday, September 27th. So if you’re going to catch it, now’s the time.

Via: Spoon & Tamago

Source: WOW

Univision map offers up-to-date info about damage in Puerto Rico

The news out of Puerto Rico post-Hurricane Maria is, quite frankly, horrifying. The entire island could be without power for months. A crucial dam, the Guajataca, may be about to burst. Communication with the island is limited at best. There are many people still trying to get in touch with family, to make sure that loved ones living on the devastated island are okay.

Now, Univision News is trying to make that a bit easier. They’ve built a tool (available in Spanish only) where you can choose the region of the country you’re concerned about, and Univision will tell you the most recent and up-to-date news about the situation in that area.

The information provided includes a roundup of pictures, tweets and other social media, reports from sources on the ground in the area and more. Everything we’re hearing about Puerto Rico has been so dire. It’s nice to have a concrete resource with timely information that can help.

Univision News is also trying to directly connect people with friends and relatives in Puerto Rico. Using their reporting team on the island, as well as a social media team in Miami using radios, WhatsApp and Zello, they’re doing what they can to locate and reconnect people. You can request their help by filling out this Google form and see inspiring and heartwarming stories of the connections they’ve already made happen on their website.

Source: Univision

‘Star Trek: Discovery’ deserves better than CBS’s streaming service

I’ve been a Star Trek fan my entire life. It goes without saying, then, that I was eagerly anticipating the premiere of Star Trek: Discovery. Even through the myriad production delays and departure of key behind-the-scenes staff, I remained optimistic. The casting was good. The promo images were good. The trailer was good.

Now, the first two episodes have arrived, and the question remains: Just how good is Star Trek: Discovery?

This show is solid. It could even be great, given the chance.

In fact, it seems like it’s just as good as anything CBS has on air. So the question is: why the requirement of a subscription just for US viewers? After all, it’s airing on Netflix in the rest of the world, except for Canadians, who can see it on the Space channel.

It’s becoming increasingly clear we’re past the point where you could subscribe to just one or two streaming services and watch most of what you wanted. More and more companies are creating their own exclusive services, but you have to have the content to justify that. CBS All Access, at least as it exists right now, does not. Because the other offerings on the streaming service are so poor (it doesn’t even have full back catalogs of many of its own shows), CBS is basically asking people to pay $7 a month for the privilege of watching one show, maybe two (with commercials. To remove them, it’s $10 per month). That being said, the strategy appears to be working: CBS claims it had a record number of signups in a single-day for the debut.

CBS also has been on the defensive when it comes to its fall lineup of television. They didn’t pick up a single show for the network with a female lead (though they have a high percentage of women viewers), which makes it all the more baffling that Discovery is confined to All Access. Here is a show with a black female lead. Why wouldn’t you want that on your network, easily accessible for all to enjoy? It’s doubly frustrating that All Access’s other exclusive property, The Good Fight (a spinoff of The Good Wife starring Christine Baranski) is also female-led.

Additionally, at a time when it seems as though every headline contains dire news, we need Star Trek. It’s always been a groundbreaking show, centering values of diversity. What we watch influences how we think about the world, and Star Trek shaped so many young minds. The idea that children from less affluent homes, who can’t afford to subscribe, will be denied the chance to see a new installment of the show is upsetting.

But it also makes the show difficult to talk about. I’ve been tweeting about Discovery quite a bit since it was announced, and at every turn, I’m faced with people complaining at me about the fee to watch it. I sympathize, though I’m willing to pay for it. But this discussion essentially derails any and every conversation around it. What’s more, in the future, it will mean less productive chatter surrounding any problematic aspects of Discovery, which shape how television grows and adapts. Fans of a franchise are often going to be less critical of it than those who are trying it out for the first time.

Ultimately, CBS is short-changing Discovery, a show with potential that is so much greater than what they’re currently allowing. It’s a visually stunning show. And it should be — it costs about $8 million to produce a single episode. But Star Trek isn’t about cinematics. The real fear among existing Star Trek fans was that in trying to make the show speak to a post-9/11 world, and the desire to attract new fans, it would be too grim. It would erase the very core of hope and optimism that defines Star Trek.

The show is dark, to be sure. It’s also action-packed. It has the slick aesthetics of the movies. What this show does very well is marrying the Abrams-verse look with the essence of a Star Trek television show. It’s not the Trek we’re used to, but expecting it to be the same show it was three decades ago is not realistic. They threaded a very difficult needle — making this show relevant to our current times (which the franchise has always done) while also giving it the feel of Star Trek. And it excels at that.

Is it perfect? Definitely not — but no Star Trek is, and trying to hold this show to those expectations is unfair, to say the least. Plotting and dialogue are uneven. Additionally, the decision to treat the two episodes separately, rather than making it a two-hour pilot, is baffling. It’s one complete story that sets up the rest of the show, and the second half is the stronger of the two. Presumably, CBS only wanted to give non-subscribers access to half of it. But they shouldn’t just be milking an existing fan base for cash; this has the potential to bring in new viewers as well.

Star Trek: Discovery is too good to be hidden behind that kind of paywall. This is a show that deserves to unfold over years and be widely seen. It’s got some growing up to do, and I’m eager to see it happen. I just hope it gets the chance.