T-Mobile more than doubles its gigabit LTE availability

At an event today in San Jose, Qualcomm and T-Mobile are getting together to demonstrate the power and speed of gigabit LTE. In conjunction with the event, the self-proclaimed Uncarrier announced that its higher-speed LTE Advanced speeds are now available in more than 920 markets, and, more importantly, that at least 430 of those markets are now gigabit LTE-ready.

According to Qualcomm, gigabit LTE is achieved when you combine carrier aggregation along with 4X4 MIMO and 256 QAM technologies. Seeing as 430 of those markets have all three technologies, they are the first to be gigabit LTE compatible. T-Mobile also plans to invest in License Assisted Access (LAA), which is a tech that taps into unlicensed spectrum for even more speed.

In a live demonstration on stage, T-Mobile showed a Samsung Galaxy S8 (one of the first gigabit LTE phones) running Ookla’s Speedtest app. The test resulted in download speeds of 611.33 Mbps and upload speeds of 47.35 Mbps.

“This is what I’m talking about when I say T-Mobile has America’s best unlimited network and the only one purpose built for unlimited,” said Neville Ray, T-Mobile’s CTO in a statement. “Not only do we have a nationwide LTE footprint that’s every bit as broad as the Duopoly’s, and the fastest according to multiple third parties – it also keeps getting faster. gigabit Class LTE technology is part of the secret sauce behind our success – and why others are struggling under the weight of unlimited – and we’re only continuing to advance with LAA on the horizon.”

T-Mobile is not the only carrier getting into gigabit LTE. All the other major carriers — Verizon, Sprint and AT&T — are also heavily investing in this space. That said, not all phones will support gigabit LTE. Some of the phones that do include the Samsung Galaxy S8/S8+, the Galaxy Note 8, the Galaxy S8 Active, the Moto Z Force Edition and the LG V30/V30+.

And while there’s been a lot of talk about 5G speeds, gigabit LTE isn’t really that. “We’re not going to call gigabit LTE 5G,” said Mark McDiarmid, T-Mobile’s VP of network engineering. Still, both Qualcomm and T-Mobile say that Gigabit LTE is an important milestone toward 5G.

“Global momentum for gigabit Class LTE is continuing to pick up around the world, and we’re delighted that T-Mobile is planning to deliver gigabit connectivity to millions of consumers in the United States,” said Mike Finley, Qualcomm’s senior VP and and president, in a statement. “In addition to providing blazing fast mobile connectivity, gigabit Class LTE enables operators to expand network capacity to accommodate increasing demands by unlimited data plans, and increases overall spectral efficiency, enabling faster speeds for all users in the network.”

Developing…

Source: Qualcomm

PayPal makes it easy to pool money for gifts

These days, you have a lot of ways to choose from when splitting bills with friends. You can send money through Facebook Messenger, chip in for dinner mid-Skype chat or even pay your debt as an email attachment on Gmail. PayPal has launched another new feature that caters to group of friends and family, but this one focuses on making things easier when pooling money for group gifts or holiday trips. “Money Pools” is PayPal’s answer to its 2017 Holiday Money Habits Study finding that most Americans get stressed out when holiday shopping. You can use it to keep track of everyone’s contributions and ensure that, say, all your siblings have sent in their share for mom’s Christmas gift.

You can personalize each money pool by setting a goal and a deadline, as well as typing in a description of what gift you’re buying or what you’re collecting money for. If you want to spruce it up even more, you can add a cover photo. And depending on what it’s for, you can choose to make contributor names public or to keep them private.

You can access the feature by going to “Your Pools” on desktop or mobile. Once you’re done setting one up, you can send your friends not-so-subtle reminders with a link to it via text, e-mail, Facebook or Twitter, which could save you the trouble of having to repeatedly ask them for their part. To be 100 percent sure, though, you can always check who’s already chipped in through the pool’s activity feed.

Most of the respondents in the company’s holiday survey said they plan to shop from their mobile devices, and PayPal is likely hoping you’ll use Money Pools if you go the phone shopping route. If you were going to use PayPal anyway, then it wouldn’t hurt having easy access to friends’ contributions to make sure you don’t go overbudget or spend your own money when you don’t need to.

Source: PayPal Money Pools

NASA insists its Mars rocket will still launch in 2019

NASA is aiming to launch its deep space-bound Space Launch System (SLS) in December 2019, even though a review has suggested it’s not likely to fly until mid-2020. The launch date has already been pushed back once due to technical issues, but NASA is confident it will hit its 2019 target and has taken steps to “protect” the launch date.

“While the review of the possible manufacturing and production schedule risks indicate a launch date of June 2020, the agency is managing to December 2019,” Robert Lightfoot, acting NASA administrator, said in a statement. “Since several of the key risks identified have not been actually realized, we are able to put in place mitigation strategies for those risks to protect the December 2019 date.”

The proposed uncrewed mission, known as Exploration Mission-1 (EM-1) will lay the foundations for EM-2, the first crewed mission, which is slated for 2023. Despite EM-1’s setbacks, NASA is keeping EM-2 on schedule by planning tests for the rocket’s launch abort system before EM-1, instead of afterwards, as originally proposed. NASA’s clear objective is getting humans into deep space, and to preferably be the first space agency to do so (SpaceX is quickly catching up), but its delays do mean its focused on getting it right the first time around.

Source: NASA

Apple expands its free coding curriculum to schools outside of the US

Apple’s free coding curriculum, which launched for high schools and community colleges in May, has been growing in popularity over the last few months. It had six community college systems on board at launch and in August, the company announced that over 30 had worked the curriculum into their course offerings for the 2017-2018 school year. Now, Apple has gone global with its coding instruction and over 20 colleges and universities outside of the US have now adopted the App Development with Swift Curriculum.

Universities in Denmark, the Netherlands, New Zealand and the UK are among those that have signed on. RMIT University, Australia’s largest higher education institution, has adopted the year-long course as well, which it will be offering online, and its students will also be able to enroll in a new on-campus vocational course. Additionally, RMIT is offering scholarships for school teachers who want to take courses in coding and will host a free summer school course for high school students.

Apple has been working on providing coding learning tools to all age ranges, with the Swift Curriculum geared towards older students and its Swift Playgrounds app aimed at the youngest aspiring coders. Other in-school coding initiatives have also been developed by the BBC and Code.org while earlier this year, GM gave Girls Who Code a grant to bring after-school STEM clubs to underserved areas of the US.

“We launched the Everyone Can Code initiative less than a year ago with the ambitious goal of offering instruction in coding to as many people as possible. Our program has been incredibly popular among US schools and colleges, and today marks an important step forward as we expand internationally,” Apple CEO Tim Cook, said in a statement. “We are proud to work with RMIT and many other schools around the world who share our vision of empowering students with tools that can help them change the world.”

Source: Apple

Pinterest boards can be split into sections

Pinterest has made it easier to keep on top of all your pins with a new board sections feature, which lets you create multiple sections within a single board. So if you’re big into home inspo, you could have a single “living room” board with separate sections for furniture, artwork and lighting, rather than lumping them all in together, or having to keep track of multiple boards.

It’s Pinterest’s most-requested feature of all time (with early beta tests showing more than three million pins have been saved to nearly 100,000 separate sections) and while it’s hardly groundbreaking, it is common sense. Why did it take so long to arrive? Especially when you consider the likes of Instagram and Google have been “borrowing” heavily from its user experience offering. If you’ve been waiting for more detailed organization, the feature is rolling out now across all platforms and will be available to all Pinners in the coming days.

Intel nabs AMD’s Radeon chief to make high-end graphics chips

Just when you thought Intel and AMD’s relationship might be warming up a bit, following this week’s reveal of a new Core processor with AMD graphics, comes a bombshell announcement. Intel has hired AMD’s Radeon lead, Raja Koduri, to head up a new graphics division: the Core and Visual Computing Group. In particular, he’s going to be focused on delivering “high-end, discrete graphics,” something Intel has never attempted to tackle before. That’ll put the company in direct competition with AMD and NVIDIA when it comes to dedicated GPUs. Basically, don’t expect Intel’s partnership with AMD to last very long.

According to Intel, Koduri will help to bring together and evolve the company’s overall graphics capabilities. It’s not just something that will make games run faster — the company says it’ll also help with things like media, imaging and machine intelligence. Unfortunately, Intel isn’t saying much else about its graphics plans yet, but there’s certainly plenty of room for it to improve. AMD’s recently announced Ryzen laptop CPUs promise decent gaming performance, thanks to their integrated Radeon Vega graphics. That’s something Intel can’t compete directly with today, it still has to rely on additional graphical power from NVIDIA and AMD.

Koduri re-joined AMD in 2013, where he spearheaded the development of the company’s new Polaris GPUs. That line kicked off with the Radeon RX 480, a $200 card that was fast enough to power VR headsets. It arrived just as NVIDIA was delivering its ultra-powerful GTX 10-series cards, but the RX 480 was notable for being cheaper than anything NVIDIA was offering at the time. Intel says Koduri will officially start his new role in December.

Source: Intel

The best laptops to give as gifts

There’s a reason we didn’t include many computers in our 2017 holiday gift guide: They make fairly expensive gifts! For those of you who have the means, though, we did name-check a few, most of them meant for mainstream use. (Most of them, too, have a portable design, because we figure that’s what most people want.) Topping our list are the 12-inch MacBook; the ASUS Chromebook Flip, for folks on a budget; and two Microsoft offerings, the Surface Laptop and latest-gen Surface Pro. And that’s not counting a few notebooks in our PC gaming section, including the Alienware 13, ASUS ROG Zephyrus GX501 and the Razer Blade. If all of the above are pricier than what you were hoping to spend this holiday season, our guide includes 112 other items, many of them under $100.

Source: Engadget Holiday Gift Guide 2017

Twitter halts verification after backlash over Charlottesville organizer

Over the last month, Twitter seemed to finally wake up to the need to fight the rampant hate speech and abuse that happens on its platform. That made yesterday’s decision to verify Jason Kessler, the leader of the white supremacist rally that took place in Charlottesville, VA this summer, incredibly odd (or incredibly foolish). Regardless, the blue checkmark is firmly in place on Kessler’s account, and users pretty quickly told Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey they weren’t happy about this move.

This morning, Twitter responded — not by revoking Kessler’s verified status, but by saying it was pausing all general verifications to resolve confusion around what being verified really means. “Verification was meant to authenticate identity & voice,” reads a tweet on the company’s support account, “but it is interpreted as an endorsement or an indicator of importance.”

Verification was meant to authenticate identity & voice but it is interpreted as an endorsement or an indicator of importance. We recognize that we have created this confusion and need to resolve it. We have paused all general verifications while we work and will report back soon

— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) November 9, 2017

Unfortunately, Twitter’s long and fuzzy history with verifications makes this a bit hard to swallow. In the past, Twitter has pulled verified status from users as a form of “punishment” — perhaps most notably in the case of noted troll Milo Yiannopoulos. It appeared then that Twitter pulled his verification due to unspecified rules violations. Kessler’s own Twitter account isn’t lacking in exactly the horrible behavior Twitter claims to be trying to stamp out, which puts his verification seemingly at odds with the company’s past actions.

Hey @jack: very active user, 2.1M followers here: this is disgusting. Verifying white supremacists reinforces the increasing belief that your site is a platform for hate speech. I don’t want to give up Twitter, but I may have to. Who do you value more, users like me or him? https://t.co/5ymcNfFvH0

— Michael Ian Black (@michaelianblack) November 9, 2017

It’s worth noting that Twitter opened up its verification process following the Yiannopoulos incident last year, letting anyone apply to be verified. It still doesn’t explain why Kessler’s account was verified — and regardless of the reasoning, outrage around this move is spreading quickly. Comedian and active user Michael Ian Black tweeted that “verifying white supremacists reinforces the increasing belief that your site is a platform for hate speech.”

That’s the opposite of what Twitter has claimed it wants, but its actions continue to be at odds with its stated goals. How exactly Twitter plans to clear up the confusion it created around verification remains to be seen. And it’s likely that pulling Kessler’s verified status after granting it could be just the kind of move to rile up alt-right trolls into making things even worse for everyone else using Twitter.

Amazon series goes behind-the-scenes with Manchester City FC

Amazon is taking an “anything you can do, I can do better” approach to competing with Netflix these days. Just a month after Netflix announced a Juventus FC documentary, Amazon is responding with a Prime Video series covering English Premier League frontrunners Manchester City FC. The original show will offer a peek into the British soccer (aka football) club as it pursues glory in the ongoing 2017/2018 season, including the week-by-week drama of its players, managers and coach Pep Guardiola. The series will be available worldwide when it premieres sometime in 2018.

Sports docs certainly aren’t new for either Amazon or Netflix, but they were clinging to American football until October. Amazon has had shows following the Arizona Cardinals and Los Angeles Rams, while Netflix has followed a community college team for two seasons. The relatively quick international expansion shows just how cutthroat the competition between these streaming giants has become — they’re determined to find weaknesses in each other’s programming, and counter if they’re caught off-guard. Don’t be surprised if you see many more sports shows as Amazon and Netflix scramble to corner a relatively untapped market.

Source: Amazon

UberEATS now includes restaurant ratings and recommended dishes

Today, Uber announced a few changes to the UberEATS app aimed at helping users decide on what to eat. First, the company has brought a five-star rating system to the restaurants listed in the app and users can now rate a restaurant they’ve ordered from as well as give individual dishes a thumbs up or a thumbs down. All of these community ratings are displayed in the app for anyone to see and they’ll reflect the previous 90 days’ data.

Along with ratings, Uber has added two more tweaks intended to improve the user experience. Now, based on what you order and how you rate what you’ve eaten, restaurants in the app will provide dish recommendations tailored to you. And users will also be able to favorite a restaurant they like, ensuring that it stays at the top of their feed.

These are useful changes, particularly for those that use UberEATS quite a bit, and they’ll also help keep restaurants informed as to what dishes are popular or what could be trimmed from the menu. Further, along with helping users find what they want to eat, Uber has been working with restaurants to provide in-demand cuisine that isn’t currently available. As TechCrunch reports, Uber has been testing virtual restaurants in certain regions. When Uber finds that a number of users in the same area are searching for a particular type of food that isn’t currently offered by nearby restaurants, it approaches others that might be able to provide that cuisine. Uber looks for restaurants with similar ingredient lists to the in-demand but under-supplied food and asks if they want to create a virtual restaurant within the UberEATS app that would make that cuisine available to users.

For example, Uber noted that a lot of people in a certain part of Chicago were searching for chicken and since none was available, it asked a pizzeria if it would want to create an UberEATS virtual restaurant focused on fried chicken. It did, and in the past year since the chicken side business has been available on the app, chicken sales have surpassed pizza delivery orders, according to TechCrunch.

The tweaks released today seem like a smart move and with so many food delivery apps available, offering features that stand out from the rest can only help.

Image: UberEATS

Via: TechCrunch

Source: Uber