Sticker Market: Emoji Keyboard lets you get creative while you chat (Review)

Overview

If you like to spice up your online conversation with creative stickers and GIFs, then you’ll be glad to know there are dedicated apps out there which offer access to entire libraries of fun stickers. This is the case of Sticker Market: Emoji Keyboard, a fun little app designed to replace your standard keyboard in order to give you access to all kinds of emoji while you’re using your favorite social media apps.

Getting started

Just head on to the Google Play Store and download the Sticker Market: Emoji Keyboard for free on your Android device and install it. The app is also available in the App Store and can be accessed as a Chrome extension on your desktop computer.

Overall experience

Once you fire up the app, you will be asked to sign in either with your Facebook or Google account (or register with another email). After you’re done you’ll have to go through the keyboard setup tutorial which shows you the simple steps you need to take to activate the keyboard.

Sticker Market

Then you should be transported to the main screen, where you’ll be able to check out your profile and from there, access the Sticker Market which comes packed with stickers, GIF images, and templates. The interface feels quite familiar, as it’s reminiscent of the Google Play Store which means you’ll be able to find your way with ease.

From the Sticker Market, you can download all the stickers you want. Just bear in mind that for some you’ll have to pay. You can browse them by categories including “Top Free”, “Trending” or “Top Paid”.

There’s always a search function, so you can find stickers by searching for keywords in the search box. You can also activate different search filters to sort stickers by your preferred creator, pricing, sorting, and animation.

The app stores the stickers, templates, and GIFs you’ve downloaded in the cloud for later access.

Sticker Keyboard

The second major segment of the app is the Sticker Keyboard which is laid on top your phone’s regular keyboard. You’ll notice a dedicated Sticker button on your keyboard which once tapped will give you access to all the stickers you’ve downloaded so far.

You can use the keyboard in concert with all your social media and messaging apps including WhatsApp , Facebook or Snapchat. The keyboard is customizable as you can choose between a Light Theme and a Dark Theme. It also supports multiple languages including English, Spanish, Polish, Romanian, Armenian and French.

Sticker Cam

But that’s not all, the app also includes a feature called the Sticker Cam. Here you can either add masks or templates and superimpose them on your selfie pictures (similar to Snapchat), or create your own face emoji. How do you do that? By taking a self-portrait and then cropping the part which you want to turn into an emoji. All these custom-made emojis will then be saved under the emojis category in the menu.

Speaking of which, if you’re the creative type Sticker Market invites you to become a sticker creator. Designers and illustrators can submit their work and start selling them on the market.

While the app is easy and fun to use, using the Sticker Cam would at the times result in freezing. I couldn’t load certain templates and some would just force the app to shut-down.

Loading up some types of emojis takes longer than others, but in order to prevent such issues, you should make sure you’re on a stable Wi-Fi connection.

I would also have liked the app to provide more keyboard customization options, not just the light and dark themes, but who knows maybe they will be added later on.

Conclusion

All in all, Sticker Market: Emoji Keyboard is a fun, easy-to-use app that delivers tons of stickers right at your fingertips. The best thing about it is that you no longer have to switch between apps and keyboards to get your daily new emoji fix. Just download the app and start chatting.

Visit the Sticker Market website or;

Download the Sticker Market: Emoji Keyboard app from the Google Play Store

Ras Al Khaimah will soon be home to the world’s longest zip line

Why it matters to you

Looking for a new thrill? The world’s longest zip line, soon to open in the UAE, may fit the bill.

Adrenaline junkies, pack your bags. It’s time to take a trip to the United Arab Emirates. In December, the city of Ras Al Khaimah will have a new bragging right — it’ll become home to the world’s longest and highest zip line, which will be located on the nation’s highest peak — Jebel Jais. So if you’d like to fly through the air and live out your wildest superhero dreams, this may just be the zip line for you.

While it’s unclear as of yet exactly how long the zip line will be (the Jebel Jais websites notes that this information is a “closely guarded secret”), given that the project allegedly costs multiple millions of dollars, we can bet that it’ll be quite a lengthy ride. Currently, the longest zip line honor goes to the Monster in Puerto Rico, located in Toro Verde Adventure Park in Orocovis. This ride is 7,234 feet long and about 1,200 feet high.

But Ras Al Khaimah hopes to put even this line to shame, noting that the opening of its own thriller will “propel [the city] into the major leagues of global adventure tourism and cement Jebel Jais as the region’s leading active adventure tourism destination.”

In creating the zip line, the UAE city partnered with Toro Verde, the same folks behind the aforementioned Monster in Puerto Rico. Heralded as the world’s leading zip line operator, Toro Verde will help Ras Al Khaimah break the current world record.

But this isn’t just about thrills and Guinness World Records. Rather, the Jebel Jais team points out, the zip line will use solar energy and locally sourced natural materials, thereby exposing visitors to a largely natural experience (despite the decidedly man-made zip line) in the mountains.

Folks of all ages will be allowed to take a turn on the ride, though eager participants must meet a weight minimum of 35 kilograms (77 pounds), and a height minimum of 120 centimeters (just under 4 feet). The maximum weight the zip line can sustain is 150 kilograms (330 pounds). So if you don’t have any Christmas plans just yet, you may consider making an end-of-year trip to the UAE.

Oculus Rift vs. HTC Vive: Prices are lower, but our favorite remains the same

HTC and Oculus remain at the forefront of PC-based virtual reality. When first released, the Rift and Vive had some stark differences. Now that the Rift has Touch controllers, however, is that still the case?

Check out our Oculus Rift vs. HTC Vive spec comparison below for an in-depth look at how we think the two kings of VR stand up against one another.

Oculus Rift

HTC Vive

Display
OLED
OLED
Resolution
2160 x 1200
2160 x 1200
Refresh Rate
90Hz
90Hz
Platform
Oculus Home
SteamVR, VivePort
Field of view
110 degrees
110 degrees
Tracking area
5 x 5 feet (two sensors), 8 x 8 feet (three)
15 x 15 feet
Built-in audio
Yes
Yes
Built-in mic
Yes
Yes
Controller
Oculus Touch, Xbox One controller
Vive controller, any PC compatible gamepad
Sensors
Accelerometer, gyroscope, magnetometer,  Constellation tracking camera.
Accelerometer, gyroscope, Lighthouse laser tracking system, front-facing camera
Connections
HDMI, USB 2.0, USB 3.0
HDMI, USB 2.0, USB 3.0
Requirements
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 / AMD Radeon RX 470 or greater

Intel Core i3-6100 / AMD FX4350 or greater

8GB+ RAM

Compatible HDMI 1.3 video output

2x USB 3.0 ports

Windows 7 SP1 or newer

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 /AMD Radeon RX 480 equivalent or greater

Intel Core i5-4590 equivalent or greater

4GB+ of RAM

Compatible HDMI 1.3 video output

1x USB 2.0 port

Windows 7 SP1 or greater

Price

$400 on sale ($500 after)
$600
DT review
2.5 out of 5 stars
4 out of 5 stars

Design

Neither the Rift or Vive are going to win any fashion awards. Both are bulky, yet lightweight devices you strap to the front of your head like a wearable brick, which then allow you an unobstructed view into the world of virtual reality.

The Rift and Vive both utilize adjustable Velcro straps and comfortable padding on the interior faceplate. The Vive is still the heavier of the two, which makes sense given it touts 37 visible sensors on the front, designed to connect to wireless cameras within the tracking space. Getting the Vive on and off can be a bit tricky. The Deluxe Audio Strap improves that, and adds headphones — you have to use your own, otherwise — but it’s an extra $100.

The Rift, on the other hand, showcases a sleeker, fabric-coated exterior design and smaller footprint. It’s easier to get on and off, and may feel more comfortable over time due to its lighter weight. While the Vive still looks a bit experimental, the Rift looks like a futuristic device you’ll be happy to show off.

Both models accommodate glasses (though with some added discomfort), and connect via USB and HDMI to your PC.

Display quality, field of view

Virtual reality headsets are only as good as the display they utilize. The Rift and Vive both come outfitted with vibrant OLED displays, each of which offers 1,080 x 1,200-pixel resolution for each eye. Said displays bring the final resolution to 2,160 x 1,200, with 90Hz refresh rates, thus ensuring the frame rate is high enough to prevent motion sickness and provide a smooth experience overall.

By the specs sheet, both headsets also offer a 110-degree field of view (FOV), though in actual usage there’s a lot of subjective evidence (and some slightly more scientific) to suggest that the Vive offers a slightly wider and certainly taller field of view. It’s not hugely noticeable when you’re in the midst of gunning down robots or exploring abandoned buildings, but it’s there.

One aspect that does affect the visuals of each headset is their lens designs. While there are some differences in manufacturing style, the only time it’s noticeable is when bright objects appear on darker backgrounds. The Vive has somewhat obvious concentric rings that appear due to the lens’ machining. In comparison, the Rift has a more general aura around the bright objects.

Both detract from the visuals in that particular setting, though neither ruins the experience in any meaningful way. Overall, the two headsets are evenly matched in visual quality.

Controls and tracking

As important as the headset is to your virtual experience , the way you interact with it is equally so. The Rift and the Vive both utilize custom, motion tracked controllers — known as Oculus Touch and Vive Controllers, respectively. Although an Xbox One controller initially shipped with the Rift, the Touch controllers now come as standard. Read our hands-on for the details.

The Touch controllers have a joystick and button setup. They utilize the same low-latency tracking technology that determines the relative position of the headset, and allow for some simple gesture mapping based on how you’re holding the controller. The design allows the pair of controllers to function more like your real hands when gaming, capitalizing on internal tracking sensors and haptic feedback. They help differentiate between different kinds of impacts in game and translate them to your real hands.

The Vive takes a different approach. The device’s controllers, available at launch and bundled with the headset, function much like a modified Steam Controller. They sport touch-sensitive, circular pads under your thumbs, and trigger buttons that act as primary selection buttons. There’s also a pair of grip buttons on the sides, which some developers have used for in-game grasping mechanics.

Two “lighthouse” sensors track the Vive controllers and headset and when placed in opposite corners of a room can track a space that’s 15 x 15ft. They were designed to offer roomscale tracking from the get go, so the two bundled sensors are all that’s needed for it. With a combination of pulses and sweeping lasers and the 70 sensors on the headset and controllers, the Vive tracking works near flawlessly most of the time.

In comparison, the Rift set up uses a Constellation tracking camera, which uses infrared light to offer 360-degree positional head tracking in a short, but broad and deep play area. The second camera bundled with the Touch motion controllers improves that tracking space depending on placement. However, three are still recommended for a solid playspace and even then, Oculus only recommends a maximum tracking space of eight by eight feet to avoid occlusion.

Despite their external sensor differences, both headsets utilize magnetometers, gyroscopes, and accelerometers built directly into the headsets to handle tilt tracking.

While the Vive offers a larger and, in our experience, more reliable roomscale experience, both headsets support a digital safety grid to prevent you bumping into anything. The Vive has its Chaperone, while the Rift has its Guardian. Both throw up a translucent grid near the edge of your playspace so you don’t hit the walls when trying to take out your next VR enemy. The Vive’s Chaperone is a little more customizable, and can also make use of its front-facing camera to give you a better view of the real world outside the headset.

Performance and requirements

So, how do the Rift and Vive perform in real-world scenarios when stacked directly against one another? That’s a difficult question to answer, since virtual reality is really one of those technologies you have to try before you really understand how immersive it can be. That said, there are some differences between the two offerings from the industry’s biggest players.

When it comes to minimum requirements, Oculus has the lowest, but there is a caveat. To get the Rift running comfortably on your PC (and face), Oculus recommends an Intel i3-6100 or AMD FX4350 or better processor, at least 8GB or RAM, and Windows 7 SPI. You’ll also need a GTX 960 or AMD RX 470 graphics card and a few USB ports.

The caveat is that, with this hardware, your PC will likely have to make use of something called asynchronous spacewarp, which essentially renders the games at half the minimum frames per second and uses some clever guess work to make it feel like it’s running at the typical 90 FPS. This is great for comfort, but if you want the full experience, you need similar hardware to that recommended for the Vive.

The Vive’s requirements are a little heftier and more in line with what the Oculus Rift requires for solid, 90 FPS gameplay. You’ll need either an Nvidia GTX 1060 or AMD RX 480, along with an Intel i5-4590 or AMD FX 8350 processor, at least 4GB of RAM, and Windows 7.1 or later.

If you need to build your own VR rig, check out our PC build guide to see the hardware we suggest.

Software

The Oculus Rift is compatible with software through the Oculus Rift store, as well as supporting games through Steam — though, the latter took some “encouragement.” The headset currently comes with seven games: Lucky’s Tale, Medium, Toybox, Quill, Dead and Buried, Dragon Front, and Robo Recall.

The Rift store has a decent library of titles, though the total is noticeably less than that of the Vive’s catalog.

Oculus has been helping to develope the WebVR standard too, which makes it easy to jump into quick VR experiences such as 360-degree photos and videos from within your browser. Oculus also hopes that developers will begin using its React, a Javascript interface that aims to make the web a comfortable place to browse while in virtual reality.

HTC’s Vive, meanwhile, is designed to primarily work with Valve’s Steam platform. Steam does have a catalog of more than 400 games and experiences to enjoy, and ultimately gives the Vive the most extensive content library of any VR headset right now. When you buy the headset, you also get free copies of Richie’s Plank Experience, Everest VR and Tiltbrush.

For those not wanting to buy games up front, HTC also has its Viveport subscription service with a rotating library of available titles.

Pricing and availability

The Rift headset bundle is currently at its lowest yet, thanks to a $400 special offer as part of the Rift Summer Sale. You do still need to spend $60 for each extra Constellation camera, however. In comparison, the Vive is sold at a base price of $600. Both headsets now come with motion controllers and roomscale tracking as standard, though the Vive’s tracking has fewer problems with controller occlusion.

That means that for now, the Rift is the cheaper option, even factoring in the cost of an additional sensor. However, that price gap will narrow when the Summer Sale comes to an end, as the bundle price at that point will increase to $500. The $500 bundle will also include less hardware — it’ll be missing the Xbox One controller, for instance. When you factor in the cost of a third sensor for the Rift, which is recommended for large roomscale VR, the price difference will be negligible.

Of course, none of this factors in the cost of the powerful PCs required to run them.

Conclusion

The Oculus Rift and HTC Vive are the still the two flagship VR headsets, even now that the PlayStation VR is available for $370.

Many of the hardware specs, such as the internal display and field of view, are comparable between the Rift and Vive. Other facets — notably the controllers and tracking system on each device — differ, even if they aren’t that far apart in price.

While the specifications make it difficult to declare a winner, our personal experiences with the Vive have been more favorable, as you can read in our review. Even though the Oculus Touch controllers bring the experience up to par with the Vive, the room-scale focus of the HTC headset still feels like the better choice. Even with comparable hardware, the Steam setup and game library are better on the Vive, with a larger array of motion-tracked, room-scale content available.

Meet Unistellar, the next evolution in backyard telescopes

Why it matters to you

With Unistellar, backyard stargazers can study the sky in more detail and even generate scientific data while doing it.

For centuries, astronomers have explored the cosmos through personal telescopes. And, although these devices have grown stronger over the years, they have remained relatively simple in both form and function.

Now a French startup unveiled a powerful new evolution in personal telescopes that make the act of stargazing brighter, clearer, and more engaging. Dubbed Unistellar, the new telescope enhances the image of objects in the sky by accumulating and amplifying the light that they are emitting, according to its creators. They’re demonstrating the device at IFA 2017 in Berlin.

They’re calling Unistellar an Enhanced Vision Telescope (eVscope), which uses electronics and optics to magnify a cosmic object’s brightness in real time. Distant galaxies go from blurred to crisp and colorful.

“Apart from the four main planets Mars, Venus, Jupiter, and Saturn, for which they are a great tool, classical telescopes, even high-end [ones], don’t really allow you to really see colors and details of other objects. So even if astronomy is a popular subject among the population, many people tend to be disappointed,” Arnaud Malvache, Unistellar president and co-founder, told Digital Trends. “Our first goal was to solve this problem. As scientists we also wanted to foster more interest about astronomy and science in general, so we also focused on finding other ways to make astronomy easier and more exciting.”

The eVscope feature can be turned on and off for stargazers who would rather use the Unistellar as a traditional telescope, or for those wanting to compare just how powerful the technology is.

The telescope also comes equipped with an automatic field detection algorithm that allows it to identify celestial objects in its field of view.

“This allows for two features,” Malvache said, “it can be used for automated pointing of unprecedented accuracy and can provide overlayed information to the user.”

The Unistellar team also made an effort to engage citizen scientists in generating useful scientific data. This initiative caught the attention of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute, who recently partnered with Unistellar in its hunt for alien life.

“They felt a huge potential for research applications for planetary defense, supernovae, and more,” Malvache said, “and they were as excited as we were to transform astronomy in such an interactive and popular science.”

The telescope will be available for pre-order this fall and will retail around $1,000.

Journalist claims Google used strong-arm tactic to get story taken down

Why it matters to you

Google might be a tool we all need, but this story will naturally raise concerns about the firm’s scope and reach.

A journalist has come forward to protest the monopolistic power of Google in the online world, claiming that a few years ago she was silenced by the search giant. Supposedly, the Google gag forced the author to remove an article from the website she was working for because it was critical of Google’s actions.

Give3n how crucial some web services are to our lives, it’s becoming a matter of increasing concern that they’re all run by companies with their own agendas and goals. One of those is invariably making money, so it’s not too surprising when we occasionally see governments and regulatory bodies clamp down on some internet giants for anti-competitive or shady practices. In the case of Gizmodo writer Kashmir Hill, though, it was not the government, but Google that cracked down on her.

Back in 2011, Hill was writing for Forbes. That was during the era when Google+ was launched, and Google was keen to make it a major part of the web, encouraging websites to offer comment links on content as they do for Facebook and Reddit. Purportedly, Google staffers asserted, in no uncertain terms, that if sites like Forbes didn’t do that, their search engine rankings could suffer.

When Hill reported on this, pointing out the clear conflict of interest involved, Google wasn’t happy. In fact, she claims that the search giant demanded she take the story down. While Google didn’t claim it was fake news, it did state that the meeting had been confidential.

Hill claims that that wasn’t something she was aware of or had agreed to, nor had she signed any form of non-disclosure agreement. Oddly enough, she suggests that at that time, Forbes didn’t have a traditional editorial team, so the onus to take the article down, or indeed, to keep it up, was on her.

Under pressure from Forbes staff and Google, she took it down, something she still regrets to this day.

However, that wasn’t to be the end of the story. Cached versions of her report still existed after she removed the original story, but those copies quickly disappeared, too. Although it can only be speculation, it appeared that Google had removed those cached versions , or at least made them much harder to find.

While Google claims that it was Forbes that removed the story, Hill doubts the technical know how to do so existed at the site at that time, pointing out that more recently removed articles can still be found in search results.

This story comes to light as Google is in the spotlight again for possibly leaning on an organization to fire someone who was critical of the search giant. If confirmed, this would only raise additional questions about the overwhelming influence of some of the internet’s biggest corporations.

No, it’s not cuddly, but the Pup scanner makes document scanning painless

Why it matters to you

If you do a lot of document scanning and hate how time-consuming it is, then the portable Pup scanner is for you.

Whether you’re scanning a big pile of receipts for your expense report, digitizing an old book, or capturing your child’s latest artwork to share, the Pup scanner makes the process quick and painless. Compared to something like the Epson DS-320, this device takes portability to a whole new level. It’s a stand-alone scanner that’s just 5.3 inches long, 1.26 inches wide, and weighs 7 ounces (200g). All you have to do to scan is hold it over the document you want to capture, line up the red laser frame with the edges, and press the button on top.

The document is automatically uploaded to the cloud via Wi-Fi and stored or shared based on your preferences. Use the smartphone companion app and you can configure precisely what you want the Pup scanner to do with your scans. There is also a small touchscreen for quickly changing settings directly on the Pup scanner. Although it works via Wi-Fi, the Pup does have storage onboard, giving it enough space to record 10,000 pages if you’re offline.

You can send documents to one or more email addresses, store them on a server somewhere, or print them out. The Pup scanner also supports optional character recognition, or OCR, so you can export text directly into Word or Excel if you want. By mapping the document in 3D, the Pup scanner can remove curvature or deformation, and it has a built-in LED light to ensure your target is perfectly illuminated. You can also choose to automatically crop, rotate, and compress documents, set your preferred sharpness, and decide between color or black and white.

We tried the Pup scanner out for ourselves at IFA in Berlin and found it really fast and easy to use. You can scan multiple pages in seconds, and it has a comfortable, rounded design, so you can scan with one hand and change pages with the other. The built-in battery gives you 12 hours of scanning time, and there’s a USB-C port for recharging. Just make sure you have a good USB-C cable.

The Pup scanner comes from the most successful French startup ever to run an Indiegogo campaign — they raised $620,000, more than triple the original goal. It’s set to ship in December and if you want one, it will cost you $199. Check out the website for more information.

No, it’s not cuddly, but the Pup scanner makes document scanning painless

Why it matters to you

If you do a lot of document scanning and hate how time-consuming it is, then the portable Pup scanner is for you.

Whether you’re scanning a big pile of receipts for your expense report, digitizing an old book, or capturing your child’s latest artwork to share, the Pup scanner makes the process quick and painless. Compared to something like the Epson DS-320, this device takes portability to a whole new level. It’s a stand-alone scanner that’s just 5.3 inches long, 1.26 inches wide, and weighs 7 ounces (200g). All you have to do to scan is hold it over the document you want to capture, line up the red laser frame with the edges, and press the button on top.

The document is automatically uploaded to the cloud via Wi-Fi and stored or shared based on your preferences. Use the smartphone companion app and you can configure precisely what you want the Pup scanner to do with your scans. There is also a small touchscreen for quickly changing settings directly on the Pup scanner. Although it works via Wi-Fi, the Pup does have storage onboard, giving it enough space to record 10,000 pages if you’re offline.

You can send documents to one or more email addresses, store them on a server somewhere, or print them out. The Pup scanner also supports optional character recognition, or OCR, so you can export text directly into Word or Excel if you want. By mapping the document in 3D, the Pup scanner can remove curvature or deformation, and it has a built-in LED light to ensure your target is perfectly illuminated. You can also choose to automatically crop, rotate, and compress documents, set your preferred sharpness, and decide between color or black and white.

We tried the Pup scanner out for ourselves at IFA in Berlin and found it really fast and easy to use. You can scan multiple pages in seconds, and it has a comfortable, rounded design, so you can scan with one hand and change pages with the other. The built-in battery gives you 12 hours of scanning time, and there’s a USB-C port for recharging. Just make sure you have a good USB-C cable.

The Pup scanner comes from the most successful French startup ever to run an Indiegogo campaign — they raised $620,000, more than triple the original goal. It’s set to ship in December and if you want one, it will cost you $199. Check out the website for more information.

Long Live Lexar — acquisition saves popular SD card brand from the ax

Why it matters to you

Lexar’s SD cards and flash drives will be sticking around, despite the parent company’s decision to focus on other areas.

After parent company Michron announced the end of the Lexar brand earlier this year, the fate of the popular storage device maker was up in the air. But the Lexar brand will continue to remain on shelves — Longsys, a flash storage company, announced the acquisition of the Lexar brand on Thursday, August 31.

Longsys says that Lexar products will continue to be available, while existing Lexar owners will also still have access to tech support. The company plans to continue expanding the Lexar lineup, which includes SD cards, Compact Flash, USB drives, and card readers.

“We are very honored to acquire the Lexar brand,” Huabo Cai, CEO of Longsys Electronics Limited, said in a press release. “Lexar has built a great brand name and our vision is to make it even greater. Existing customers can rest assured that the innovative solutions and excellent support that they have experienced from Lexar will continue. The mission to make Lexar the go-to brand for high-performance removable storage continues, and we will expand upon it to offer even more compelling solutions as the age of wireless and big-data impact the consumer storage markets.”

Longsys has been in the flash storage business for over 18 years — Foresee, the company’s embedded storage brand, leads the market in China. According to the company, Longsys sells over 100 million flash products every year. Longsys says the company strategy and culture, including a focus on products for emerging technology like 8K video and virtual reality, will help the Lexar line to continue.

Michron announced plans to discontinue the Lexar brand in June, saying that the decision was made in order to ensure the company was well-positioned for the future. At the time, Michron said that it was looking for a buyer for the Lexar brand.

As a brand that has been around for over 20 years, Lexar is well known for its camera cards, USB drives and card readers alongside other well-known brands such as SanDisk. A shift in the camera market as smartphones replace point-and-shoots and manufacturers focus on advanced cameras could be partially to blame for its current woes, though the latest data suggests that decline is over. As the file sizes from those images and video grow with more megapixels and 4K video, choosing a fast memory card becomes even more important.

Weekly Rewind: Driverless pizza delivery, defusing volcanos, a 707hp Jeep

A lot can happen in a week when it comes to tech. The constant onslaught of news makes it nigh impossible for mere mortals with real lives to keep track of everything. That’s why we’ve compiled a quick and dirty list of this week’s top tech stories, from what to expect at IFA 2017 to Domino’s driverless pizza car  — it’s all here.

What to expect from IFA 2017, and how to watch major live-streamed announcements

IFA (Internationale Funkausstellung Berlin) is a consumer tech show in Germany that’s widely considered the CES of Europe. This year, we’ll almost certainly be treated to great products including new smartphones, smart home and Internet of Things devices, laptops, and more.

The show runs from September 1 to September 6, but press conferences from major manufacturers, like Samsung, begin on August 30. Here’s everything we expect from the show.

Read: What to expect from IFA 2017, and how to watch major live-streamed announcements

LG V30 hands-on review

LG may have been one of the first smartphone manufacturers to release an edge-to-edge “bezel-less” phone in 2017, but the G6’s early release forced the company to use an older Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 processor. Nearly all other flagship phones utilize the superior Snapdragon 835 chip. Sales of the G6 haven’t been stellar, but the latest LG V30 smartphone may finally put the company on the right track. It features hardware specifications that match other high-end 2017 phones, and it continues the design trend of minimizing edges around the screen. In our LG V30 hands-on review, we found it to be a great phone all-around, with plenty of nifty features to love.

Read: LG V30 hands-on review

An AI just beat George R.R. Martin to writing the latest ‘Game of Thrones’ novel

When it comes to information processing, computers tend to be way faster than we are. The same thing may be true when it comes to generating new plotlines for A Song of Ice and Fire, the series of novels better known to TV fans as Game of Thrones. After all, with six years having elapsed since his last book, 2011’s A Dance With Dragons, was published, author George R.R. Martin certainly appears to be in no rush to publish its follow-up. So it’s no surprise that the producers of the TV show are currently coming up with their own storylines.

That’s where the work of one computer science-savvy fantasy fan enters the picture. Colorado-based software engineer Zack Thoutt has trained a recurrent neural network (RNN) to predict events for the as-yet-unfinished sixth novel in the series, The Winds of Winter. As with the real-life writers on the TV show, the data set the RNN is gleaned from the roughly 5,000 pages of existing novels in the series. It was then set to generate chapters, with Thoutt kicking each one off by giving the AI a “prime word” to riff on, before letting it go off in its own direction.

Read: An AI just beat George R.R. Martin to writing the latest ‘Game of Thrones’ novel

Scientists detect strange repeating radio burst on the other side of the cosmos

It seems like every time we attempt to take a step toward better understanding our cosmos we are left with more questions than answers — a regular Bonini’s Paradox. Just a few years ago we didn’t even know that the cosmic phenomena known as fast radio bursts (FRB) — rare, bright, and inexplicable signals from beyond our galaxy — existed. And until recently, only one of these FRBs had been recorded on more than one occasion. However, last week, a team has recorded yet another repeating FRB.

The scientific community has been perplexed by these enigmatic signals for the past 10 years. Currently, the explanation behind these FRBs range from outbursts of neutron stars to some sort of propulsion system used by an alien civilization on the opposite side of the universe. Some have even suggested these signals are the result of dark matter — another space phenomenon we know very little about — smacking into black holes.

Read: Scientists detect strange repeating radio burst on the other side of the cosmos

How to use the Amazon trade-in program

Did you know you can trade-in products like smartphones and tablets to Amazon and get store credit? The Amazon Trade-in program has been around for some time, but if you haven’t heard about it before, here’s how to use it.

Through the program, you can trade in a slew of different items — but perhaps the most important these days is the smartphone. If you’re in the market for a new phone, Amazon will buy your old phone from you to help offset the cost. Interested in the new Samsung Galaxy Note 8? Amazon could pay you up to $170 for a Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge, which could go straight to helping you buy your new phone.

Read: How to use the Amazon trade-in program

Domino’s and Ford are working together on driverless pizza delivery

Soon, you may not have to tip your pizza delivery driver anymore but not because the fast food industry is going tipless — rather, because it’s going driverless. That is right, your pies could soon be coming your way in autonomous delivery vehicles. That is, if you are ordering from Domino’s. According to The Verge, the pizza franchise partnered with Ford to test self-driving pizza delivery cars, hoping to gauge how well (or poorly) pizza enthusiasts respond to and engage with this newfangled technology.

Over the course of the next few weeks, some Domino’s customers in Ann Arbor, Michigan, will have the option of getting their pizzas delivered in a Ford Fusion Hybrid autonomous research vehicle. Alas, the car won’t be entirely without a driver (so you should probably still tip). All cars will be operated by a Ford safety engineer, and will actually have quite a few other passengers in the form of additional researchers who will be tasked with examining the last 50 feet of the drive and the customer experience.

Read: Domino’s and Ford are working together on driverless pizza delivery

Here’s how Amazon could change Whole Foods (and grocery shopping)

What would the world be like if Amazon owned actual retail stores? We’re on the cusp of the answer to that question. Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods Market has been finalized. Amazon now owns 431 Whole Foods supermarkets. But don’t worry — Whole Foods will still operate under its own brand, and remain headquartered in Austin, Texas. The company also assures loyal shoppers that it will continue to grow its team and create jobs by opening new stores and expanding support of local farmers and artisans.

The deal between Amazon and Whole Foods Market was announced in June. Deciding that competitors won’t be harmed and people will still have plenty of places to buy food, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) blessed the merger in late August, according to Bloomberg. On the same day, Whole Foods Market shareholders approved the deal, Reuters reported.

Read: Here’s how Amazon could change Whole Foods (and grocery shopping)

2018 Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT Trackhawk first drive review

2018 Jeep® Grand Cherokee Trackhawk

A 707-horsepower sport utility vehicle seems a bit out of step with a car industry that’s currently fixated on electrifying everything and even taking the driver out of the equation whenever possible. And to gas-mileage-be-damned enthusiasts, the concept of a high-riding SUV with super car-like capability is a bit of a curiosity. As we discovered in our 2018 Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT Trackhawk review, it’s a sentiment that hasn’t been lost on Jeep’s brass.

“You might be asking yourself the question, ‘Why make this vehicle?’” Jeep brand director Scott Tallon confessed to a room full of journalists before our test drive. With a 6.2-liter supercharged Hemi V8 under the hood, along with hardware from the likes of Brembo, Bilstein, and other racing name plates — this track-focused machine seems out of step for a company that built its reputation on crawling over rocks. But Tallon assured us that the Trackhawk’s actions would speak louder than words.

Read: 2018 Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT Trackhawk first drive review

NASA has a crazy plan to prevent the Yellowstone supervolcano from exploding

Life on this little space rock of ours is delicate to say the least. Be it an asteroid impact, pandemic, or casual nuclear launch, there are dozens of unique ways in which we could easily too go the way of the Dodo. While we’ve spent boatloads of money preparing for a cataclysmic extinction-level asteroid impact event, there’s a much more imminent threat lurking just beneath our feet. The Yellowstone supervolcano is due for an eruption and could send us back to the Stone Ages in just a few fiery moments — but don’t worry, NASA has a plan.

A study by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory concluded that the Yellowstone supervolcano, a massive pool of magma beneath the national park, is a much graver existential threat to life on this planet than any potential large-scale asteroid impact event. There are 20 known supervolcanoes on Earth with a major eruption occurring every 100,000 years or so. Here’s the bad news: An eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano could bury the bulk of the United States under tons of ash and lava, change the climate of the Earth for centuries, and potentially kill millions in the process.

Read: NASA has a crazy plan to prevent the Yellowstone supervolcano from exploding

Weekly Rewind: Driverless pizza delivery, defusing volcanos, a 707hp Jeep

A lot can happen in a week when it comes to tech. The constant onslaught of news makes it nigh impossible for mere mortals with real lives to keep track of everything. That’s why we’ve compiled a quick and dirty list of this week’s top tech stories, from what to expect at IFA 2017 to Domino’s driverless pizza car  — it’s all here.

What to expect from IFA 2017, and how to watch major live-streamed announcements

IFA (Internationale Funkausstellung Berlin) is a consumer tech show in Germany that’s widely considered the CES of Europe. This year, we’ll almost certainly be treated to great products including new smartphones, smart home and Internet of Things devices, laptops, and more.

The show runs from September 1 to September 6, but press conferences from major manufacturers, like Samsung, begin on August 30. Here’s everything we expect from the show.

Read: What to expect from IFA 2017, and how to watch major live-streamed announcements

LG V30 hands-on review

LG may have been one of the first smartphone manufacturers to release an edge-to-edge “bezel-less” phone in 2017, but the G6’s early release forced the company to use an older Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 processor. Nearly all other flagship phones utilize the superior Snapdragon 835 chip. Sales of the G6 haven’t been stellar, but the latest LG V30 smartphone may finally put the company on the right track. It features hardware specifications that match other high-end 2017 phones, and it continues the design trend of minimizing edges around the screen. In our LG V30 hands-on review, we found it to be a great phone all-around, with plenty of nifty features to love.

Read: LG V30 hands-on review

An AI just beat George R.R. Martin to writing the latest ‘Game of Thrones’ novel

When it comes to information processing, computers tend to be way faster than we are. The same thing may be true when it comes to generating new plotlines for A Song of Ice and Fire, the series of novels better known to TV fans as Game of Thrones. After all, with six years having elapsed since his last book, 2011’s A Dance With Dragons, was published, author George R.R. Martin certainly appears to be in no rush to publish its follow-up. So it’s no surprise that the producers of the TV show are currently coming up with their own storylines.

That’s where the work of one computer science-savvy fantasy fan enters the picture. Colorado-based software engineer Zack Thoutt has trained a recurrent neural network (RNN) to predict events for the as-yet-unfinished sixth novel in the series, The Winds of Winter. As with the real-life writers on the TV show, the data set the RNN is gleaned from the roughly 5,000 pages of existing novels in the series. It was then set to generate chapters, with Thoutt kicking each one off by giving the AI a “prime word” to riff on, before letting it go off in its own direction.

Read: An AI just beat George R.R. Martin to writing the latest ‘Game of Thrones’ novel

Scientists detect strange repeating radio burst on the other side of the cosmos

It seems like every time we attempt to take a step toward better understanding our cosmos we are left with more questions than answers — a regular Bonini’s Paradox. Just a few years ago we didn’t even know that the cosmic phenomena known as fast radio bursts (FRB) — rare, bright, and inexplicable signals from beyond our galaxy — existed. And until recently, only one of these FRBs had been recorded on more than one occasion. However, last week, a team has recorded yet another repeating FRB.

The scientific community has been perplexed by these enigmatic signals for the past 10 years. Currently, the explanation behind these FRBs range from outbursts of neutron stars to some sort of propulsion system used by an alien civilization on the opposite side of the universe. Some have even suggested these signals are the result of dark matter — another space phenomenon we know very little about — smacking into black holes.

Read: Scientists detect strange repeating radio burst on the other side of the cosmos

How to use the Amazon trade-in program

Did you know you can trade-in products like smartphones and tablets to Amazon and get store credit? The Amazon Trade-in program has been around for some time, but if you haven’t heard about it before, here’s how to use it.

Through the program, you can trade in a slew of different items — but perhaps the most important these days is the smartphone. If you’re in the market for a new phone, Amazon will buy your old phone from you to help offset the cost. Interested in the new Samsung Galaxy Note 8? Amazon could pay you up to $170 for a Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge, which could go straight to helping you buy your new phone.

Read: How to use the Amazon trade-in program

Domino’s and Ford are working together on driverless pizza delivery

Soon, you may not have to tip your pizza delivery driver anymore but not because the fast food industry is going tipless — rather, because it’s going driverless. That is right, your pies could soon be coming your way in autonomous delivery vehicles. That is, if you are ordering from Domino’s. According to The Verge, the pizza franchise partnered with Ford to test self-driving pizza delivery cars, hoping to gauge how well (or poorly) pizza enthusiasts respond to and engage with this newfangled technology.

Over the course of the next few weeks, some Domino’s customers in Ann Arbor, Michigan, will have the option of getting their pizzas delivered in a Ford Fusion Hybrid autonomous research vehicle. Alas, the car won’t be entirely without a driver (so you should probably still tip). All cars will be operated by a Ford safety engineer, and will actually have quite a few other passengers in the form of additional researchers who will be tasked with examining the last 50 feet of the drive and the customer experience.

Read: Domino’s and Ford are working together on driverless pizza delivery

Here’s how Amazon could change Whole Foods (and grocery shopping)

What would the world be like if Amazon owned actual retail stores? We’re on the cusp of the answer to that question. Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods Market has been finalized. Amazon now owns 431 Whole Foods supermarkets. But don’t worry — Whole Foods will still operate under its own brand, and remain headquartered in Austin, Texas. The company also assures loyal shoppers that it will continue to grow its team and create jobs by opening new stores and expanding support of local farmers and artisans.

The deal between Amazon and Whole Foods Market was announced in June. Deciding that competitors won’t be harmed and people will still have plenty of places to buy food, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) blessed the merger in late August, according to Bloomberg. On the same day, Whole Foods Market shareholders approved the deal, Reuters reported.

Read: Here’s how Amazon could change Whole Foods (and grocery shopping)

2018 Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT Trackhawk first drive review

2018 Jeep® Grand Cherokee Trackhawk

A 707-horsepower sport utility vehicle seems a bit out of step with a car industry that’s currently fixated on electrifying everything and even taking the driver out of the equation whenever possible. And to gas-mileage-be-damned enthusiasts, the concept of a high-riding SUV with super car-like capability is a bit of a curiosity. As we discovered in our 2018 Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT Trackhawk review, it’s a sentiment that hasn’t been lost on Jeep’s brass.

“You might be asking yourself the question, ‘Why make this vehicle?’” Jeep brand director Scott Tallon confessed to a room full of journalists before our test drive. With a 6.2-liter supercharged Hemi V8 under the hood, along with hardware from the likes of Brembo, Bilstein, and other racing name plates — this track-focused machine seems out of step for a company that built its reputation on crawling over rocks. But Tallon assured us that the Trackhawk’s actions would speak louder than words.

Read: 2018 Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT Trackhawk first drive review

NASA has a crazy plan to prevent the Yellowstone supervolcano from exploding

Life on this little space rock of ours is delicate to say the least. Be it an asteroid impact, pandemic, or casual nuclear launch, there are dozens of unique ways in which we could easily too go the way of the Dodo. While we’ve spent boatloads of money preparing for a cataclysmic extinction-level asteroid impact event, there’s a much more imminent threat lurking just beneath our feet. The Yellowstone supervolcano is due for an eruption and could send us back to the Stone Ages in just a few fiery moments — but don’t worry, NASA has a plan.

A study by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory concluded that the Yellowstone supervolcano, a massive pool of magma beneath the national park, is a much graver existential threat to life on this planet than any potential large-scale asteroid impact event. There are 20 known supervolcanoes on Earth with a major eruption occurring every 100,000 years or so. Here’s the bad news: An eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano could bury the bulk of the United States under tons of ash and lava, change the climate of the Earth for centuries, and potentially kill millions in the process.

Read: NASA has a crazy plan to prevent the Yellowstone supervolcano from exploding