Blackberry Announces New All-Screen ‘Motion’ Smartphone With 4,000mAh Battery

Blackberry announced its latest crack at an all-screen smartphone during the GITEX Technology Week in Dubai on Sunday. The Motion is the company’s third Android phone to ditch the keyboard following the release of the DTEK50 and DTEK60 in 2016. Blackberry also released the KEYone earlier this year, but that device includes a keyboard below the touchscreen.

The Motion’s 5.5-inch AMOLED display and Snapdragon 625 system-on-a-chip is powered by a large 4,000mAh battery (the iPhone 8 Plus has a 2,675mAh battery), which Blackberry hopes will appeal to business users looking for all-day battery life. Like all of the company’s branded handsets these days, the Motion is actually made by Chinese company TCL Communication.

The Blackberry Motion (Image: Evan Blass)
The phone will be initially available in Middle Eastern markets for approximately $460, with availability in the U.S. likely further down the line.

Blackberry officially discontinued its keyboard-rocking Blackberry Classic in July 2016 and later declared it would cease internally developing its own handsets, relying on partnerships with other companies instead while it focuses on software development.

The rise of the iPhone famously wiped out Blackberry’s smartphone market share, but the company’s pivot towards mobile security has been a profitable one, with its recent quarterly earnings report exceeding expectations.

The company reported record gross margins of 76 percent, up from 67 percent last quarter and 62 percent a year ago, despite the fact its hardware market share essentially remains zero.

Tag: BlackBerry
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China denies carrying out cyberattacks against US-based activist

China claims it wasn’t behind the hacking of a US think tank that was set to host exiled Chinese tycoon-turned-activist Guo Wengui. The Hudson Institute abruptly canceled its event with Guo last week, claiming it had detected a Shanghai-based attack aimed at crippling its website.The incident was raised by US Attorney General Jeff Sessions in his meeting with Chinese government officials on Wednesday, according to The Wall Street Journal. Guo himself also claimed that the law firm representing his US political asylum bid backed out after it was targeted by Chinese hackers. In a statement, China’s Ministry of Public Security told Reuters it had found “no evidence” of government involvement in the alleged cyberattacks.

Guo, who left China in 2014, is an outspoken critic of the country’s Communist Party. The New York-based tycoon’s unsubstantiated accusations against top-tier Chinese officials on Twitter and YouTube have garnered him quite the social media following. For its part, China has issued a global “red notice” through Interpol for Guo’s arrest. Although the exact charges against him remain unclear, the country’s state-run media has previously accused him of bribing a vice-minister. And, in August, Chinese police opened a new investigation against the billionaire on rape charges. Guo is also facing a series of defamation lawsuits in the US from various Chinese individuals and companies. He denies all the allegations against him.

China is no stranger to charges of state-sponsored hacking. Last year, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation pointed the finger at the Chinese military for a spate of cyberattacks launched against it since 2010. And, in August, the FBI said it had arrested a Chinese national linked to the massive data breach that struck the Office of Personnel Management back in 2014 to 2015.

Source: Reuters

Black lawmakers call on Facebook and Twitter to purge racist ads

Facebook and Twitter are facing renewed calls from US lawmakers to ensure ads on their respective platforms aren’t used to spread hate. The two firms are currently cooperating with Congressional investigators looking into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. And now, black Congress members are urging them to probe new ads, and make leadership changes. In a letter obtained by Recode, Reps. Robin Kelly, Bonnie Watson Coleman, and Emanuel Cleaver further press the companies to clamp down on ads “aimed at inciting racial discontent” or “voter suppression.” They also suggest the companies appoint people of color to their boards of directors, and conduct new audits of targeted advertisements.

Facebook recently handed over evidence to Congress on the 3,000 Russia-linked ads that were allegedly used to sow discord among US voters. And, it followed up by hiring 1,000 people to review targeted ads based on “politics, religion, ethnicity or social issues.” Twitter, too, presented congressional investigators with data relating to alleged Russian bots on its service. Like Facebook, the company explicitly forbids ads containing hate speech. But, neither firm has been able to fully prevent the misuse of its respective system: Twitter’s fallen prey to ads containing racist terminology, and Facebook recently allowed advertisers to target anti-semites.

It’s an issue the Congressional Black Caucus has raised in the past. In the wake of a 2016 ProPublica report into racially segregated Facebook ads, black lawmakers claimed these types of promos were in violation of the Fair Housing Act of 1968. The backlash prompted the social network to update its ad policies to ban discrimination based on race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or age, among other factors.

You can bet Facebook and Twitter will have to field these types of questions once more when they face the House and Senate Intelligence Committees next month.

Source: Recode

Cubibot promises to be the world’s smallest 3D printer

Why it matters to you

Think 3D printing is out of your reach? Think again, thanks to Cubibot.

3D printing is no longer reserved for the highly affluent or highly technical. Just about anyone can experience the magic of this 21st century printing technique, thanks to the team behind Cubibot, And now that the barriers to entry have been eliminated, demand is clearly very high. Just half an hour after launching its Kickstarter campaign, Cubibot raised more than $150,000, and at this point, has already raised more than $500,000 from nearly 1,700 backers.

Part of the appeal of the Cubibot, of course, is its accessible entry price point of $149. But not only will it spare your savings account, it also won’t take up a lot of space on your countertop. Heralded as the world’s most compact 3D printer, the Cubibot boasts cloud-printing capabilities, a heated bed, and of course, a companion mobile app.

“We’ve been perfecting Cubibot for over two and a half years to achieve a smarter, safer and easier-to-use personal product that makes 3D printing accessible to the masses and it does not require 3D printing expertise,” according to Aria Noorazar, Co-founder of Cubibot, which is based in the San Diego Innovation Center. “If you can set up and use a regular printer, you can use Cubibot.”

The countertop device, which fits onto virtually any tabletop, boasts a host of features that make it suitable for first time printers and experts alike. For example, there’s a fully automated smart self-leveling build platform; the ability to print in PLAs, ABS, nylon, and other materials; an easily accesible web-based platform; a high-temperature nozzle; and plug-n-print capabilities, which means all you need to do to operate the Cubibot is plug it in and click on print.

The Cubibot prints in resolutions of between 50 and 300 microns, with print speeds of up to 80 millimeters per second. The machine comes loaded with CubiSoft, the web-based software that allows for an easy out-of-the-box experience. Simply design within CubiSoft and hit print for your design to come to life.

“We hope to give people the freedom to create their designs whether they’re already 3D printer pros or if they’re completely new to 3D printing,” Noorazar said. “We invite the existing 3D printing community and newcomers who would want to support our mission to bring easy-to-use, compact, safe, remote, smart, and affordable 3D printing to the masses.”

Shipment is anticipated for February 2018.

Watch Hulu’s first teaser for Stephen King’s ‘Castle Rock’

Ever since Hulu announced Castle Rock, there’s been a lingering question: just what would JJ Abrams’ take on Stephen King’s universe look like? You now have a better idea. Hulu has posted the first trailer for the series, and it makes more than a few references to King’s many stories. Shawshank State Prison gets more than one nod, to start. Even the casting pays tribute. It star Bill Skarsgård shows up at one point, while Carrie’s Sissy Spacek is returning to King’s landscape — albeit as a different character.

The trailer doesn’t offer many clues as to the storyline, although that’s not surprising when Castle Rock isn’t slated to arrive until 2018. This is more about rekindling buzz around the series (the first teaser appeared in Feburary) than giving fans everything they want. Still, what we’ve seen here is a good sign: it suggests that Abrams is eager to pay respect to one of horror’s best-known authors.

Via: Variety

Source: Hulu (YouTube)

Steven Soderbergh’s ‘Mosaic’ app lets you choose a show’s narrative

Many TV shows have apps, but they’re usually meant as nothing more than companions that encourage you to tune in. What if you could actually choose how the story is presented? Steven Soderbergh is trying just that. His upcoming HBO miniseries Mosaic will be accompanied by iOS app that gives you control over a branching narrative, letting you change how the story is told. And this isn’t just a conventional show cut up into pieces. Soderbergh says he produced the story with the app in mind, and there are even different conclusions. While it won’t be a Choose Your Own Adventure experience with big-name actors (Sharon Stone, Beau Bridges and Paul Reubens are part of the cast), it’s likely as close as you’ll get for a long while.

One of the best parts: effectively, you’re getting an early peek at the series. The Mosaic app will be available for free in November, two months ahead of the show’s HBO premiere in January. It’s meant to drum up hype for the show, of course, but it’ll also give you a rare opportunity to pick your own narrative and see how it compares to a ‘definitive’ take on TV. We wouldn’t count on other shows following suit (not every producer has the luxury of shooting scenes exclusively for an app), but it might inspire others who have more of a story to tell than a linear TV show allows.

Source: HBO (Medium)

Scientists create ‘tooth cracker’ device to harvest stem cells

That pesky wisdom tooth you’re glad you got rid of is apparently a great source of stem cells that could save lives. However, it’s not easy getting to the tooth root pulp that contains those cells: drilling into the tooth generates damaging heat that lowers the number of cells that can be harvested. In addition, the water used to rinse the tooth could have corrosive elements and the enamel particulates from the drilling could contaminate the pulp. To solve that issue, a team of researchers from the University of Nevada Las Vegas have developed a device they hilarious call the “Tooth Cracker 5000” to extract 80 percent of the stem cells a pulp contains.

The “Tooth Cracker 5000” has a clamp that holds a tooth in place while a blade carefully cracks it. This method doesn’t damage or contaminate the pulp and results in a perfectly halved tooth — the team proved that the technique is effective by testing it on 25 teeth samples and achieving a 100 percent success rate. The scientists were able to harvest 80 percent of those sample pulps’ stem cells, which is four times more than what you could typically extract from a pulp that was extracted by drilling or shattering teeth.

Dr. James Mah, team leader and director of UNLV’s advanced education program in orthodontics, said:

“Saying the test results were promising is a gross understatement. We realized we’d invented an extraction process that produced four times the recovery success rate for viable stem cells. The potential application is enormous.”

Stem cells, as you might know, can transform into other cells and have the potential to be used as treatments for various diseases. They could turn into neurons, for instance, and be used to treat people suffering from Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s. They could also turn into cells that produce insulin for patients with diabetes. Most stem cell therapies are still experimental, though. That’s why the next step for Mah and his team has something to do with preserving them: they’re thinking of developing a cryogenic process to freeze stem cells harvested from teeth for future use.

Source: University of Nevada Las Vegas

BlackBerry Motion arrives with no keyboard and a giant battery

That didn’t take long — mere days after images emerged, BlackBerry has launched the Motion. As expected, it’s effectively a KEYone without the keyboard… and a couple of extra perks. You’re still looking at a mid-range device with a Snapdragon 625 chip, 4GB of RAM, 32GB of storage and a 12-megapixel rear camera, just with a 5.5-inch 1080p display taking up most of the front (there’s still a fingerprint reader). However, it’s what you can’t see that makes the difference. The Motion is IP67 water-resistant, and it packs a whopping 4,000mAh battery. Given the middling processor, this likely translates to a phone that can easily handle a full day off the charger.

The software will still seem familiar. The Motion is running a customized take on Android 7.1 like its predecessor, and you’ll get the same security-focused apps intended to make it business- and privacy-friendly.

Don’t plan to snap one up right away. The Motion is only shipping to a handful of Middle Eastern markets at first (including Saudi Arabia and the UAE), with a price equivalent to about $460. There’s no mention of North American releases so far, although we wouldn’t rule them out given the KEYone’s availability at Sprint and Canadian carriers.

Even so, the phone may face an uphill battle in North America. The KEYone was considered expensive for the feature set when new, but you could easily point to the keyboard if you had to justify the price. You can’t do that with the Motion — you can mention the battery and what appears to be top-notch build quality, but there are other touch-only phones in this price range (say, the OnePlus 5) that offer faster performance and additional tricks. This is really for workers and those BlackBerry fans who remain loyal, but not so loyal that they insist on physical keys.

Being shown off today at @GITEXTechWeek #BBMotion pic.twitter.com/j15ZU63XWy

— BlackBerry Mobile (@BBMobile) October 8, 2017

Via: Android Central

Source: GITEX (Twitter), BlackBerry Mobile (Twitter)

The tabletop wargame classic ‘Ogre’ roars into the digital age on Steam

Why it matters to you

Many gamers fondly recall the turn-based strategy wargames from when they first got into gaming.

Steve Jackson is a legendary figure in the world of tabletop gaming. His company, Steve Jackson Games, was a prolific publisher of sci-fi themed wargames in the ‘70s and ‘80s with titles like Car Wars and GURPS, the “Generic Universal Role-Playing System.”  Now, thanks to a monstrously successful Kickstarter campaign, one of the company’s biggest hits is available for PC on Steam.

Tabletop wargaming is undergoing a renaissance right now, with new Kickstarter projects cropping up every month and games based on Fallout and Civilization hitting the market. Board games have proven to be the most popular game-related category on funding sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo.

The concept behind Ogre is simple enough – it’s an asymmetrical futuristic combat game, where one player controls the titular “Ogre” (a giant, nearly indestructible tank), while the other player wields a variety of conventional units such as hovercraft, infantry, and armor in a never-ending world war across irradiated battlefields. First released in 1977, the game was played on a hex grid with various terrain modifications using a large rulebook, damage charts, and multiple dice rolls. It was basically Bismark, except with hovercraft and laser beams.

Forty years later, Ogre is now available on Steam for a new generation of wargamers as the result of a wildly successful Kickstarter fundraiser. Back in 2012, Steve Jackson started the campaign to create a “Designer’s Edition” of Ogre, a massive 14-pound behemoth that would sell for $100. The modest goal of the initial campaign was $20,000.

As of this writing, funding has surpassed $900,000.

One of the campaign’s “stretch goals” was a computer version of Ogre, and it’s now available on Steam for $25. Developed by Auroch Digital, it’s a turn-based strategy game with a 10-mission solo campaign that pits you against different Ogres (Mark I to Mark VI) in various scenarios, as well as online or hot-seat multiplayer. The game also allows you to design your own maps and scenarios for custom games against computer or human opponents.

For fans of classic wargames, this is great news. Jackson has already announced that another campaign for Car Wars will begin soon (another stretch goal), so hopefully this will start a new renaissance of classic tabletop-style wargaming.

Microsoft exec says Windows 10 Mobile is no longer a ‘focus’

It’s no secret that work on Windows 10 Mobile has wound down given the lack of new devices and software features (talk of mobile Windows updates was virtually absent at Build, for example), but what’s happening with it, exactly? Well, Microsoft’s Joe Belfiore has just settled the matter. The Windows VP (and former Windows Phone program manager) informed Twitter users that new features and hardware for Windows 10 Mobile “aren’t the focus” any more. There will be fixes and security patches, of course, but you shouldn’t expect more than that.

As for why the platform has been all but dropped? The executive boils it down to one main reason: the difficulty of getting developers to write apps. Microsoft tried paying companies to produce apps and even wrote them itself when creators couldn’t or wouldn’t get involved, but the number of users was “too low for most companies to invest.” Why build an app for a relatively small bunch of Windows phone owners when there are many more Android and iOS users? Belfiore himself switched to Android for the “app/[hardware] diversity.”

It’s a bit more complicated than that, of course. You can point to a few other factors in Windows’ fate on phones, such as slowness in responding to Apple and Google as well as an inconsistent hardware strategy (you could rarely count on getting a timely sequel to a handset you liked). Whatever the reason, it’s safe to say that Microsoft isn’t just acknowledging that Android and iOS hold a clear lead — it’s quashing any hopes for a comeback, at least for the foreseeable future. That’s no doubt sad if you’re a long-time fan, but you’ll at least have software like the Microsoft Launcher and Edge to keep you company.

Of course we’ll continue to support the platform.. bug fixes, security updates, etc. But building new features/hw aren’t the focus. 😟 https://t.co/0CH9TZdIFu

— Joe Belfiore (@joebelfiore) October 8, 2017

Via: Windows Central

Source: Joe Belfiore (Twitter 1), (2), (3)