Fitbit tracker may help to improve your health — even if you don’t own one

Fitbit’s reputation for building reliable fitness trackers is solid enough that the government has decided to use 10,000 of them in its All of Us health research program run by the National Institute of Health (NIH).

All of Us is part of a wider, long-term research effort called the Precision Medicine Initiative, announced in 2015 by the then president Barack Obama. The aim is to gather anonymous lifestyle, biological, and environmental data from a million Americans to learn about how individual differences affect health, and to use the findings to develop better individualized care.

As part of the research, the NIH will hand out 10,000 Fitbit Charge 2 and Fitbit Alta HR devices to participants, which they’ll be asked to wear for a period of one year.

“The study will generate a data set that presents a unique opportunity to explore the relationship between health indicators such as physical activity, heart rate, and sleep in conjunction with other critical health outcomes that will be captured as part of All of Us,” Fitbit said in a release.

Adam Pellegrini, general manager of Fitbit Health Solutions, said that “as part of the global shift towards precision medicine, wearable data has the potential to inform highly personalized healthcare.”

So why were Fitbits chosen over other devices? Importantly, the Charge 2 and Alta HR track a combination of physical activity, sleep, and heart rate parameters, all useful data for the researchers. Ease of use and a decent battery life were also listed as factors behind their selection.

Fitbit devices are also already popular among health researchers; in fact, they’re the most commonly used tracker in this field. According to the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, 89 percent of trackers used in published biomedical research are made by Fitbit, as are 83 percent of devices used in clinical trials. In NIH-funded research the figure jumps to 95 percent.

Accuracy?

Clearly those working in the medical field are confident about the accuracy of Fitbit’s devices, an issue of understandable concern among anyone that decides to fork out for a fitness tracker. In 2016, a class-action lawsuit claimed that the PurePulse sensor that’s built into Fitbit’s trackers failed to accurately measure the heart rate. Subsequent tests by Consumer Reports, however, said Fitbit’s devices “passed our tests handily, accurately recording heart rates at everything from a leisurely walk up to a fast run.”

On its own site, Fitbit notes that accuracy is “affected by physiology, location of device, and different movements,” and offers tips on how to get accurate readouts.

Besides all of the data coming in from the 10,000 Fitbit participants, the All of Us study will gather a huge amount of other information from at least a million participants, which when analyzed together will help researchers learn more about the relationship between lifestyle behaviors and health outcomes, leading to more effective ways of preventing and treating disease.

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Video game voice actors gain bonus payments with new contract

Members of SAG-AFTRA have voted overwhelmingly to approve a new video game contact that grants performers bonus payments. The deal comes just over a month after the gaming industry’s voice talent agreed to suspend one of the longest strikes in US history. Launched against 11 major game publishers (including EA and WB Games) on October 21st 2016, the strike lasted 340 days in total. Now that the trade union’s board has given the proposal the thumbs up, the strike is officially over.

The notable feature in the three-year Interactive Media Video Game Agreement is a new bonus structure, which gives performers extra payments based on sessions worked. The bonus payments begin with an additional $75 and can add up to $2,100 after ten sessions.

In addition, the new transparency rules are seen as a way to enhance the bargaining power of voice actors. As part of the agreement, video game companies will have to disclose the code name of a project, its genre, whether the game is based on previously published intellectual property, and whether the performer is reprising a prior role.

Members must also be notified of unusual terminology in a game (including profanity or racial slurs), whether there will be sexual or violent content, and if vocal stunts will be required. But, SAG-AFTRA still hasn’t come to an agreement on the issue of vocal stress. The contract will come into effect on November 8th.

Source: SAG-AFTRA

Panasonic’s photo-centric Lumix G9 borrows from the GH5

The 10-bit, 4K GH5 video powerhouse is Panasonic’s most famous camera, and now it’s trying to bring that mojo to its new photography flagship. The Lumix G9 uses the GH5’s 20.3-megapixel sensor without a low-pass filter, and has a restyled, slimmed-down, dust-proof and splash-proof magnesium alloy body better suited to still than video photography. While it also does 4K at 60fps like GH5, its signature feature is an 80-megapixel photo mode, created by taking up to eight separate images.

“The G9 is a flagship camera with a very different body,” Panasonic’s Dan Unger told Engadget during a conference call. “It’s representing a new era for Lumix as an imaging brand. We’ve been known as a video camera manufacturer … but photography is the main focus for this system.” That body includes plenty of manual dials and knobs, making it easier to adjust the aperture, shutter speed and other settings.

Panasonic tuned the GH5’s sensor for the G9 for better AF speed and performance. As a result, the autofocus is as fast as 0.04 seconds under certain conditions, and Panasonic claims that “with its high-tracking performance … the Lumix G9 does not lose the target subject.” The system still uses Panasonic’s DFD contrast autofocus system, however, which some video users in particular have found to be finicky for continuous focus on the GH5.

The G9 can shoot in full, 20.3-megapixel burst mode at a stellar 60 fps in AF-S mode (fixed focus), and up to 20 fps in continuous AF-C using the electronic shutter. In those modes, you can capture up to 50 RAW or JPEG images, and if you need more, you can switch to the 6K/4K Photo mode for lower-resolution capture. Using the mechanical shutter, you can capture up to 9 fps with continuous AF for up to 600 JPEG, or 60 RAW files.

You’ll also get an improved 5-axis in-body stabilization that gives up to 6.5 extra stops of brightness, with 1/8,000th of a second mechanical shutter and up to 1/32,000th of a second electronic shutter. It packs an all-new, 3,680 dot electronic OLED viewfinder (EVF) with a big 0.83 times magnification and a 120 Hz maximum refresh. “No blackouts occur even in high-speed burst shooting,” Panasonic says.

As for the 80-megapixel “high resolution mode,” it gives you a 10,368 x 7,776 image by “marrying eight consecutively shot images while shifting the sensor,” says Panasonic. This works in RAW or JPEG mode, and is obviously intended for landscape, art, product or other types of still photography — not sports.

Specs aside, Unger said that the G9 offers “the highest picture quality in a Lumix camera to date, with the smoothest gradation of colors, and correct and natural skin tones.”

On the video front, the Panasonic G9 can do 4K at 60 fps, but unlike the GH5, it can’t do 10-bit video with up to a billion colors. Instead, it does 4:2:0 8-bit at a decent 150Mbps data rate. That should be fine for the photographers in its intended market, who will likely just use video from time to time. As always with such things, however, it’s annoying to think that Panasonic could probably enable the feature via hardware or software, but would cannibalize the GH5 if it did so.

Wrapping up the feature set is a 3.0-inch free-angle touchscreen LCD with 1080K dot resolution, dual SD memory card slots with UHS-II compatability, an autofocus joystick, and Bluetooth 4.2 and WiFi connectivity. Panasonic also introduced a lightweight, 200mm Elmarit f/2.8 Power OIS lens (35mm optical equivalent to 400mm) for $3,000 with a 1.4x teleconverter. An optional 2x teleconverter will cost $600.

That takes us to the price. Unlike the higher cost some had feared, the G9 will retail for a reasonable $1,700 (body only), quite a bit less than the $2,000 GH5. The camera, lens and all accessories including the $350 battery grip, will be available in early January of 2018.

Sky could sacrifice Sky News to ensure Fox merger

While the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) investigates the potential merger with Fox, Sky has warned that it may be forced to close down Sky News if it obstructs the approval of the deal. In a submission to the CMA last month, which was released this week, Sky told the regulator that it would “would likely be prompted to review” its position “in the event that the continued provision of Sky News in its current form unduly impeded merger and/or other corporate opportunities available in relation to Sky’s broader business”.

Sky warned it would be forced to consider the action if shareholders also vetoed the deal. “The CMA should not in its assessment simply assume the ‘continued provision of Sky News’ and its current contribution to plurality, “absent the Transaction,” it noted in its statement.

The competition watchdog is currently eight weeks into its 24 week investigation, which centres on whether the two companies would “operate against the specified public interests.” Broadcasting standards and media plurality (whether it presents different viewpoints during bulletins) are particular focuses.

Just this week, communications regulator Ofcom ruled that two Fox News shows, hosted separately by Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson, had breached a number of broadcasting regulations before the channel was removed from UK screens in August. The breaches are a concern because should the deal be approved, the Murdochs’ would control the Times, Sunday Times, The Sun, Wall Street Journal and Sky News, putting them in control of much of the UK’s media.

Despite its size and influence, Sky News is a loss-making venture. The channel, which has been on the air for almost 30 years and reaches more than 107 million homes, continues to lose tens of millions each year. However, BBC News reports that it would likely prefer to sell the business before resorting to shutting it down.

Via: CNBC

Source: Competition and Markets Authority (PDF)

Xiaomi Mi Mix 2: Everything you need to know!

Xiaomi continues its dominance in late 2017 with a high end, bezel-less phone: the Mi Mix 2.

In late 2016, Xiaomi released the Mi Mix: a high end phone with a stunning, bezel-less design, ushering in characteristics now seen on the Galaxy Note 8, LG V30 and iPhone X. Xiaomi beat all these big players to the punch, and is back in 2017 to refine the formula further with the Mi Mix 2.

This is everything you need to know about the Xiaomi Mi Mix 2.

Check out our Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 review

We’ve had our hands on the Mi Mix 2 for a while now, and we’ve loved what we’ve seen. Be sure to read our full review to get a long-term look at the phone’s design, software and usability.

More: Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 review: Astounding, audacious, accessbile

It actually works in the United States

Xiaomi has long been known for offering high-end specs at lower prices than other phone manufacturers, in part because it makes up for this with revenue from its software services in its primary markets. These low prices have made Xiaomi phones attractive for consumers willing to import them, but carrier compatibility has been a mess.

Fortunately, with the Mi Mix 2 that has changed. The phone is fully compatible with AT&T and T-Mobile in the United States, with support for 42 total LTE bands. If you’re hoping to use the Mi Mix 2 in your home country, odds are good that it’ll work.

More: Xiaomi Mi Mix 2: In pictures

The camera is pretty damn good

Xiaomi stuck with a single rear camera this year, rather than follow the dual camera path that other manufacturers have gone down. Despite this, the camera is pretty great: it bests the similarly-priced OnePlus 5 in most daylight and nighttime conditions.

In our comparison with the two phones, the Mi Mix 2 is able to pick up finer details in most scenarios. The front-facing camera is still on the bottom bezel, which is still awkward in third-party apps that use the camera such as Duo or WhatsApp.

More: Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 vs. OnePlus 5: How much do you care about bezels?

There’s no headphone jack

If you’re interested in the Xiaomi Mi Mix 2, you’ll also be interested in some Bluetooth headphones.

It’s available in India

India is Xiaomi’s second-largest market, so its only fitting the Mi Mix 2 would be available in the country. The only variant available in India is the 128GB storage/6GB RAM configuration for ₹35,999 and it is available exclusively on Flipkart and in Mi Home stores.

More: Xiaomi’s Mi Mix 2 with 6GB RAM and 128GB storage lands in India for ₹35,999

Check out the forums!

Have any other questions about the Mi Mix 2, or any other Xiaomi phones? Be sure to check out our super helpful forums!

Free Google Home Mini promo codes now going out to Pixel 2 and 2 XL buyers

Free Google Home Mini codes are going out to Pixel 2 customers.

Google threw in a free Google Home Mini with all Pixel 2 and 2 XL purchases, and the company is now sending out promo codes via email to those that picked up either handset. You’ll see a link in the email which will take you to the Google Store, where you can choose the color variant of the Google Home Mini — it’s available in Chalk, Charcoal, or Coral.

The Google Home Mini is a competitor to Amazon’s Echo Dot, offering the full capabilities of Google Assistant in a compact package. Early units had a bug that recorded conversations 24/7, but Google rolled out a fix that permanently disabled the touch-activated listening feature.

The Google Home Mini costs $49, and the discount should be applied automatically as long as you’re signed into the same Google account you used to purchase your Pixel 2 or 2 XL.

Google Hardware

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Google Wifi:

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Google Home:

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Chromecast Ultra:

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Taylor Swift’s ‘Reputation’ won’t be on streaming its first week

Don’t think you can simply hop on Spotify and listen to Taylor Swift’s Reputation when it drops on November 10th. According to Bloomberg, the artist is keeping her new album off streaming services during its first week of sales. If you’ve been following Swift’s career, your first thought might have been “well, duh” — the musician is known for being one of streaming services’ most prominent critics. She famously pulled her entire catalog off Spotify in 2014 after penning an op-ed lambasting streaming companies for offering unpaid, ad-supported tiers. “It’s my opinion that music should not be free,” she wrote.

Swift seemed to have softened her stance earlier this year, because she agreed to give streaming services access to her entire catalog again. But she clearly still believes streaming (alongside piracy and file sharing) can affect album sales. Taylor wasn’t the first artist or the last to pull their music from streaming as an act of protest. As one of the biggest acts in music today, though, her voice has been the loudest and has certainly affected how Spotify did business. In addition to writing a personal appeal to Swift, Spotify also limited free streaming for Universal artists as part of its deal with the label.

Bloomberg says Spotify and its rival companies are still negotiating with Swift’s camp on when they can start offering her new album. Considering her songs tend to be huge hits, they’re likely pushing for a deal that’ll allow them to put up Reputation as soon as possible.

Source: Bloomberg

Instagram’s latest Stories feature is all about flashbacks

While Snapchat struggles to nab more users, Instagram is steaming ahead the only way it knows how: By copying Snapchat. The Facebook-owned service is adding a feature to its (vastly more popular) take on Stories that’s all about throwbacks. The update essentially allows you to add pics and videos to your Story that are more than 24 hours old — a function that was oddly amiss in the past. That way, the entire camera roll is available for your disappearing #FlashbackFridays posts.

When you add an image or clip that’s older than 24 hours to your Story, it will come with a new date sticker. As usual, you’ll have the option to resize, rotate, and move the date stamp — or just bin it. If it helps, Snapchat fans can gloat that the feature has been on the app since the launch of Memories in June 2016. The Instagram update is now available on iOS and Android.

Source: Instagram

Buried under emails? The best email clients can help you dig out

Picking the right email client is a big decision. Email is still a major component of how we communicate with one another. Doing so through an email client that has all the right features for you is important. But which are the best email clients?

In this guide, we’ll introduce you to some of our favorites and why we feel they’re worthy of your consideration.

Web-based

Online web clients are some of the most accessible, as you can use them anywhere and do so without needing to install an app – though that can often make the experience more streamlined. On top of being the best web email clients out there, the following services are all entirely free and work on both MacOS and Windows.

Gmail

As the most popular online email client in the world, Gmail remains one of the better options out there. As part of your overall Google account, the client gives you 15GB of storage space for free, which is ample space for most users, even if you aren’t the most fastidious at deleting older emails. It also has an intuitive interface that is clean and easy to navigate, and there are plenty of tabs and tools for segregating emails of different types into categories to make managing a busy account that bit easier.

Gmail has protections for users like spam blocking, virus scanning, phishing warnings, and two-factor authentication for logins. As part of the overall Google service, you can also use your Gmail account for chatting with people using the built-in messaging service, as well as initiate video calls. Gmail also has a translation service for sending and receiving messages in a foreign language.

There are a few less well-known tricks you can do, too. All of these features are accessible through the web-client or on smart devices using the official Android or iOS application.

That’s not to say Gmail is perfect. There are concerns about privacy with some suggestion that Google uses your email communication to market products and services to you on behalf of advertisers, and some have complained about the time it takes to stick attachments onto emails. As an overall web client though for handling your email, Gmail is one of the better options.

ProtonMail

For those concerned about privacy, ProtonMail comes highly recommended. Not only are all emails sent using ProtonMail entirely encrypted end-to-end, but all of the company’s servers are located in Switzerland and are therefore protected by the country’s strict privacy laws. With email, your security is only as strong as the person you’re sending the email too, but at least with ProtonMail everything at your end is as secure as it can be.

The interface for the online client is clean and a little easier on the eyes due to the use of muted greys, rather than the starker whites of some other clients. It’s also easy to navigate, and features tabs and categories for streamlined browsing. You can access your account using the free applications available on both iOS and Android.

The downside to ProtonMail is that its free account is limited to just 500MB, and you are limited to sending 150 messages per day. That should be enough for most users, but if you need more, a mere $5 a month will get you 5GB of space and up to 1,000 messages per day.

Zohomail

With more of a professional slant than some of the other clients on this list, Zohomail still ranks as one of the most recommended email clients around. It’s easy to set up and manage and it doesn’t feature adverts, even on free accounts. It also makes a firm pledge to never scan email contents for marketing purposes.

The free offering comes with 5GB of space per user, up to 25 users per account, an attachment limit of 20MB, and you have the ability to set up a custom domain name — so it’s a little more custom than just being an @Zohomail address. Paid offerings increase storage up to a terabyte, increase your attachment limit, and support multiple domain names.

Whichever account you opt for, you’ll benefit from features like anti-spam and anti-virus protection, an instant chat tool, and integration with other Zoho products like its Docs, Calendar and Notes services. You can access them through the web client, or via one of its various iOS or Android apps.

Outlook

Although Microsoft’s Outlook client might be known as a desktop tool, its online replacement for the aged Hotmail web-client is a solid option for those looking for a cloud email client. It comes with 15GB of space as standard, though Office 365 Home and Office 365 Personal subscribers can get 50 GB of space instead.

As well as integrating directly with Microsoft’s offline office software, Outlook can also pair up with services like Paypal, Skype, and Uber to make various forms of communication and interaction easier. That means automatically adding events such as travel plans and shows to your calendar.. You can also attach files to emails directly from your Google Drive, OneDrive or Dropbox account. Those files can be up to 50MB in size, which is more than most web-clients offer.

The interface for the web-client itself is easy to navigate, and is compartmentalized, so you only need look at the most important emails if you wish.

You can access your Outlook account through the web client, via applications on iOS or Android devices, or through the local client on Windows PCs.

Yahoo

Yahoo’s email client has been around for much longer than most of its competition. Although the company behind it may long have fallen from its perch as one of the biggest web-giants, its email service is still easy to recommend.

The most immediate standout feature of Yahoo Mail is that free accounts come with 1TB of storage space. That’s much more than all of the other free clients combined, and means that you’ll never need to delete an email.

Yahoo Mail features robust spam-filtering, and any address you highlight as being a spammer will see all future communication from them redirected into your spam folder, so you can block them entirely if you so choose.

Navigation of the client is easy, though the layout is a little different to some of the other popular web clients. You can access features like instant messaging and SMS texting from within the client.

The one concern some may have with Yahoo’s mail client is privacy. The company has always had a serious presence in online advertising, and its recent purchase by Verizon was most likely due to the reams of customer data it holds. If privacy is the top of your list with a web client, some of the above entries would be better choices.

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Code mistake freezes up to $280 million in digital currency

Imagine if one person’s code error deprived you of a pile of money, and there was no guarantee you’d get your funds back. Wouldn’t you be hopping mad? That’s how many cryptocurrency owners are feeling right now. The digital wallet company Parity is warning users that a large volume of Ethereum funds have effectively been frozen after code contributor devops199 claims to have accidentally deleted the library needed to use multi-signature wallets (those that require more than one signature to move funds) created after July 20th. Devops triggered a long-unpatched bug that turned Parity’s wallet contract into a standard multi-signature wallet, making every wallet “suicide” and erase the guiding library code.

Whether or not you believe that it was a mistake, it could have very serious consequences. Observers estimate that there could be more than 1 million in ether locked away, which would amount to roughly $280 million. A lower estimate still pegs the damage at over $150 million. Parity describes these figures as “speculative” and suggests you should take them with a grain of salt, but there’s no question that some Ethereum holders are suddenly without a lot of cash.

This doesn’t mean that the currency is permanently off-limits, but unfreezing it and compensating users could involve a bailout. And whatever happens, the incident highlights a simple problem: digital wallets and cryptocurrency in general are only as reliable as the code that guides them. The software needs to be airtight if you’re going to tie your livelihood to non-traditional income.

Via: Comae (Medium), Business Insider

Source: Parity, Twitter, GitHub