Airline smart luggage ban will be a real headache for travelers

If you own any high-tech “smart” luggage and travel with it on planes, you may have a problem.

American Airlines, Delta, and Alaska Airlines announced on Wednesday, December 6, that if the battery is built into the luggage and cannot be removed, you won’t be able to take it onto the aircraft.

The ban is effective from January 15, 2018, and comes because of fears the batteries could overheat and catch fire.

United and Southwest could announce similar policies shortly.

To be clear, if the battery can’t be removed, you won’t be able to take it on board the plane as checked or carry-on luggage. If it can be removed, however, it can be left inside the bag and taken aboard as carry-on. Alternatively, you can remove it from the bag, check the bag, and then take the battery aboard as carry-on.

Alaska Airlines explains the policy like this:

• Smart bags will be allowed as carry-on baggage, if they meet carry-on size limits, and if it’s possible to remove the battery from the bag if needed.
• If the bag will fly as a checked bag, the battery must be removed and the battery must be carried in the cabin.
• If it’s not possible to remove the battery from the bag, the bag won’t be allowed on the plane.

So-called smart bags, which have been growing in popularity over the last year or so, feature a variety of (battery-powered) tech features that can be anything from GPS capability so you don’t lose it, to built-in digital scales so you don’t exceed your weight limits, to a motor that turns it into a scooter so you can whiz through the airport to your gate. DT reviewed some of the best ones just last summer.

The new rule will be a serious blow for outfits like New York-based Bluesmart, which came to prominence in 2014 with its debut smart suitcase that proved a hit with Indiegogo backers. It has since produced a range of smart luggage options and sold 64,000 of them globally, but their batteries can’t be removed.

“We are saddened by these latest changes to some airline regulations and feel it is a step back not only for travel technology, but that it also presents an obstacle to streamlining and improving the way we all travel,” Bluesmart said in a statement. It added that it plans to meet with the airlines to show its bags are safe in the hope that they’ll make an exception for their products.

Due to their fire risk, lithium-ion batteries have been a worry for airlines ever since the technology was introduced. The smart cases aren’t the first gadget to face an airline ban. Last year, the U.S. Department of Transportation banned Samsung’s troubled Galaxy Note 7 from being taken on planes, and before that bans were put in place for so-called hoverboards after some batteries inside the personal transporter suddenly exploded.

But banning a product whose very purpose is travel will come as a huge disappointment for the many travelers who’ve already spent out on the technology, and presents a worrying problem for makers of smart bags. Now we’re waiting to see if other airlines follow America, Delta, and Alaska.

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Japan’s king of cute wants to develop a lovable A.I. you can’t live without

Whether it’s robots or smartphones, AI or premium audio products, Japan has always been at the forefront of any conversation about technology. We recently spent several weeks in Tokyo discovering not only what some of the biggest names in new tech are creating, but also taking advantage of the exciting location to test out the best smartphone cameras, and discover the charm of its popular tech-tourism destinations. Make sure to check out other entries in our series “Modern Japan.”

In fall 2011, Line found itself in exactly the right place at the right time. The Apple iPhone 4S launched for the first time on all the major carriers in Japan, and exciting Android smartphones were arriving everyday to challenge it. Smartphones were becoming hugely popular, and although Line was a fledgling company — having released a dozen other apps with limited success — the smartphone-adopting population wanted a messaging app. Line was it, and in just three months, it caught on in a very big way.

Japan — just like the rest of the world — is on the cusp of another technical revolution, this time involving artificial intelligence.  Over the past seven months, Line has developed its own AI called Clova, and it may be poised to have the same impact on AI adoption in Japan that it did on messaging six years ago. While other companies focus on using AI in our homes as a voice-activated controller or assistant, Line’s vision is to create AI that also fits into our lives as an everyday companion.

We visited Line’s new offices in Tokyo to learn more about its AI ambitions, and understand the impact it could have on how we view and interact with artificially intelligent systems.

What’s Line? 

Line as a messaging app isn’t well known outside of its four biggest markets, Japan, Thailand, Indonesia, and Taiwan. But where Line is used, it’s used a lot. Its name has organically become a verb. In the same way we Google something on the web, to “Line a friend” is a common phrase saying you’ll send them a message.

Andy Boxall/Digital Trends

If you don’t know the messaging app, you may know Line Friends, the company’s cute characters. Brown the bear, Sally the chick, and Cony the rabbit are the best known, but there are many more. Each has its own distinctive personality and interweaving storyline, and this is important as it will become relevant later on. If you live in New York City, the Line Friends store is the place to be introduced to them all. It opened recently, and attracted 300,000 visitors in its first week. Line is also famous for pioneering in-app sharable stickers, which have since been adopted by Facebook Messenger, Google Allo, WeChat, and others.

Line is widely referenced in Japanese popular culture. It was the app used by the two main characters in “Your Name,” the anime movie that received international acclaim this year. It’s a common sight in anime and manga generally, along with appearing in mainstream television shows and even song lyrics.

Line and artificial intelligence

While its ubiquity in Japan and other Asian countries is clear, getting a large number of people to use it elsewhere is a challenge. But breaking into major new countries isn’t Line’s current focus, according to CEO Takeshi Idezawa. Instead, it’s hoping to once again get the timing right for the next major technology breakthrough.

“We think the next big movement will be AI.”

“Rather than concentrating on geographical expansion at the moment, we are thinking about artificial intelligence,” Idezawa told Digital Trends. “We’ve always been mindful about what’s coming next, and we think the next big movement will be AI.”

This thinking led to the creation of Clova, Line’s own artificially intelligent assistant, and the Wave speaker on which Clova operates. Beginning just seven months ago, Clova has been built from the ground up, including the software, hardware, and command structure, creating the world’s first Japanese speaking AI. Line has big plans for Clova, and they aren’t restricted to the AI simply living on a basic speaker, turning the lights on or off, or checking the weather forecast.

Creating AI from the ground up

Most AI systems in use today speak English, or started out that way. Clova started life speaking Japanese, which presented some very unique challenges. Line’s Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer Jun Masuda told us about them.

”If we could have bought an existing AI base, that would have been nice,” he laughed. “But none were available, so we built everything.”

Describing it as a, “difficult mission,” he explained the main components of AI — voice recognition, language comprehension, and voice synthesis  — are fundamentally different when the language isn’t English.

Andy Boxall/Digital Trends

“In English the verb comes first to explain what the command is, but in Japanese, the verb comes at the end,” he said. “So the command processing is completely different.”

This means an English assistant knows instantly what skill it will need. Say “Play me some music,” for example, and the AI knows immediately it’ll need to use the audio player, and listens out for the desired artist or track. In Japanese, the structure is reversed, meaning the artist and song would come before the command to play. Therefore a Japanese AI can only narrow down the options until the end of the sentence, as the question could be a request for information about an artist, rather than to play a song.

In Japanese, the structure is reversed, meaning the artist and song would come before the command to play.

How does this affect the way Clova listens for commands? The wake-up word for Clova is simply its name, and once it’s listening, Clova will make assumptions about the forthcoming command based on what you say. It will also learn by previous commands. For example, if you repeatedly ask to hear songs by a particular artist, Clova will prioritize that command for the future to improve speed and quality. But it gets harder.

“There are many different ways to express yourself in Japanese,” Masuda continued. “We have regular characters, along with those for expressing English words in Japanese, and also kanji, which are adapted from Chinese characters. All have to be processed by the AI for synthesis and understanding.”

Kanji poses a particular problem, as each character can have multiple meanings, and even people get confused over how they can be read. To build a functioning AI in less than a year, with challenges like these, seems like a monumental achievement.

A partner, not an employee

An AI assistant that can verbally interact with you is only the start. How do you get people to actually talk to it? After all, most people are used to touch interfaces, and are nervous of talking to devices. Masuda believes voice control will soon become the norm.

“It’s the most natural way to give a command,” he said. “Over the next 10 years,l we will enter a much more convenient era, when the relationship between people and computers will become much more natural. The hardware we are working towards is something that blends into people’s daily lives. There are two directions AI is moving in. One is like a remote control, and the other is more like a partner, one that converses with you.”

Takeshi Idezawa, CEO at Line Corporation

Line wants people to use Clova in all situations. It’s designed to have continuous, natural conversations, so there’s no need to say “Clova” before every interaction; but this also means Clova needs character and charm. If there’s one thing we already know about Line, due to Brown and the gang, it’s that it fully understands how to create lovable and relatable characters that people adore. When Clova was being created, the team wrote an entire profile, with everything from where it was born, its strongest skills, music it likes, and an educational background, to personality traits and how it interacts with friends. Line already knows who Clova is.

“We want to use characters to build people’s affection towards the device.”

For Line, if a situation arises where there are two choices, the one people are most likely to fall in love with is chosen. When describing adorable, interesting products, Masuda referenced Sony’s Aibo robotic dog as an example. The normal-looking Wave speaker is the beginning, and the next Clova products will look like Line’s famous Brown and Sally characters, gradually making Clova more relatable.

However, it’s Line’s partnership with Gatebox where things take a sci-fi turn. Gatebox has developed a holographic-style AI character to make living with a digital creation a reality. By bringing these two systems together, Line hopes to achieve wider acceptance for digital, artificially intelligent creations.

“Others in the industry are creating a general, more scalable assistant, and so it’s kept plain,” he said. “But we want to use characters to build people’s affection towards the device. It’ll take longer, but it ties in with our company mission statement of, ‘closing the distance.’ It’s not enough just to connect people.”

Line has built Clova’s architecture in a way that allows other character types to sit on the top, and both software and hardware development kits are coming. A new generation of Gatebox digital companions, or even robotic companions like Aibo, are a tantalizingly real possibility. Masuda believes the creepiness factor of something like Gatebox will take several years to pass, but he considers us living with AI in this way inevitable, particularly in Japan where characters, from beloved local mascots to virtual popstar Hatsune Miku, are generally accepted.

“It’s not just the technology that’s important,” Masuda said. “The key is how that new trend can be introduced into people’s lives, and what kind of user experience is needed to do that.”

Timing is everything

CEO Idezawa knows Line is up against some serious competition in AI, not least because in October, Google announced Google Home for Japan. Line was aware of Google’s intention to launch a Japanese version of Assistant, and worked hard to release Clova before it. Idezawa believes in the importance of great timing, and there’s no doubt Line got it exactly right in 2011. Can this be repeated with Clova? The direction it’s taking is one few others are talking about, potentially giving it a crucial head start in what’s becoming the biggest, and most exciting tech trends we’ve seen in years.

Japan is Line’s priority for Clova, followed by the other countries where it’s well-known; however Clova is being built with English language support in mind for the future. There’s no timeline for when this will happen though.

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HTC’s standalone Vive Focus launches in China for $600

While we’ve already taken a good look at the Vive Focus standalone VR headset with 6DoF “world-scale” tracking, HTC had yet to reveal its detailed specs nor price, but almost a month later, we finally have some answers. First of all, as of December 12th, the device will be available for pre-ordering in China starting from 3,999 yuan or about $600, with shipment commencing in January next year. The base price isn’t far off from the original PC-tethered Vive which is priced at $599 before tax in the US (in China it costs 5,488 yuan which is about $830). Better yet, that price applies to a new white version which, in my opinion, is much better looking than the original “electric blue” — that’s now a limited edition priced at 4,299 yuan (about $650).

In addition to pricing and availability, HTC also shed more light on the internal specifications. We already knew about the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 chipset deep inside the Vive Focus, and now we’re also told that there’s a 2,880 x 1,600 single-piece AMOLED display, which is actually sharper than the Vive’s 2,160 x 1,200 made up of two AMOLED panels. While both headsets have the same 110-degree field of view, the Vive Focus’ 75 Hz refresh rate is a little slower than the Vive’s 90 Hz. Alas, the mechanism of the inside-out tracking module remains a mystery for now. There’s also no figure on the weight yet, but as mentioned in our hands-on, it felt lighter than its tethered counterpart.

In terms of battery life, HTC claims that a single charge is good for up to three hours of continuous use or over a week on standby. When depleted, you can bring it back to life using Quick Charge 3.0 via USB-C. As for connectivity, the Vive Focus features WiFi and Bluetooth, but there’s no cellular radio here. The WiFi part also supports Miracast for streaming to TVs, which worked well during the demos I saw at last month’s launch event. And speaking of Bluetooth, that’s for hooking up to accessories such as the bundled 3DoF controller, which runs on two AAA batteries for up to 30 hours of usage.

That’s pretty much it in terms of fresh details regarding HTC’s Vive Focus. As before, it’s still unclear as to whether this VR headset will ever make it outside of China and go head-to-head against Oculus’ Project Santa Cruz (not to be confused with the $199, 3DoF-only Oculus Go). Still, with the seeming flexibility of porting content across Daydream and Vive Wave, HTC’s VR efforts in China should still be somewhat beneficial to Lenovo’s upcoming Daydream Standalone device, which the rest of the world can still look forward to.

Via: Engadget Chinese

Source: HTC Vive (Chinese)

The Morning After: Thursday, December 7th 2017

Hey, good morning! You look fabulous.

Black Mirror or The Twilight Zone? We have important news for fans, plus a look at YouTube’s top videos of 2017.

Happy New Year.‘Black Mirror’ season four hits Netflix on December 29th

The fourth season appears to take an even darker turn for Black Mirror, but the themes are as consistent ever. Prepare to be creeped out all over again with the new trailer.

800 million times the mass of our sun.Farthest-ever supermassive black hole reveals the early universe

Light from the Bañados quasar traveled for 13 billion years before it reached Earth.

How much will this cost?Ikea is teaming up with Sonos

Furniture retailer IKEA — arguably the antithesis of cost and complexity — has slowly been bringing home automation to the masses with its Home Smart range and is now turning its attention to sound products in a new collaboration with Sonos.

Fresh.Android Oreo comes to wristwear

Worried that Google had forgotten about Android Wear? It’s rolling out a version of Android Oreo 8.0 made just for wearable devices, with some small tweaks like battery-saving enhancements and vibration strength settings. An update has appeared for the LG Watch Sport, while owners of other watches will want to check with their manufacturers.

Try searching for Amazon to find it.Amazon Prime Video is finally available on Apple TV

While Amazon and Google are fighting, the Prime Video app has made its Apple TV debut. Better yet, it’s even available for third-gen boxes. All just in time for season two of The Grand Tour.

But wait, there’s more…

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Uber paid off a 20-year-old Florida man to destroy hacked data

More details are coming to light about Uber’s huge data breach. Reuters is reporting that a 20-year-old Florida man was behind the 2016 extortion-oriented cyberattack and was paid through the firm’s bug bounty program. We know that the individual, whose identity Uber refuses to disclose, received $100,000 for destroying the info, which exposed the personal data of roughly 57 million customers and drivers. The ride-hailing firm then kept quiet about the breach for more than a year. You can bet Congress and the five sates investigating Uber will be paying close attention to any new nuggets of info.

Bug bounties (where compensation is offered to hackers who find vulnerabilities) are commonplace within tech circles — everyone from Apple to Samsung utilizes them. And, while highly-publicized rewards of up to $200,000 are the norm, it’s rare that the largest sum is dispensed to any one person. Making Uber’s $100,000 silent payout an all-time record for HackerOne, the firm that hosts Uber’s bug bounty program, according to a former exec who spoke to Reuters.

The Florida hacker, described in the report as “living with his mom,” reportedly paid a second individual for help accessing GitHub’s resources to procure credentials for Uber data stored elsewhere.

Upon divulging the breach last month, the company fired chief security officer Joe Sullivan and one of his deputies, senior lawyer Craig Clark, for covering up the breach. But Reuters sources claim the coverup went straight to the top of the food chain to former CEO Travis Kalanick. Both Uber and Kalanick refused to comment.

Source: Reuters

Instagram experiments with a standalone messaging app

It happened to Facebook, and now it’s happening to Instagram. Today, the Zuckerberg empire is launching a standalone messaging app for Instagram called Direct. As The Verge reports, it’s technically a test and will only be available in six markets — Chile, Israel, Italy, Portugal, Turkey and Uruguay. Like Messenger, the Direct app effectively cuts the Instagram experience in half; your Inbox lives in Direct, while the regular feed remains in the Instagram app. If you want to keep tabs on both, you’ll have to shuffle back and forth. It sounds like both apps will have a built-in camera, however.

The idea, of course, is to get more people using Instagram’s private messaging features. Direct first launched in 2013 as a way to selectively share photos and videos with friends. It was perfectly functional, but felt out of place alongside Instagram’s traditional feed. The rise of Snapchat, of course, gave birth to Instagram Stories, which has expanded Direct’s utility tremendously. If you comment on a friend’s Story, for instance, it’ll go straight to their inbox, rather than a public comment thread. You can, of course, still send a regular photo or text message privately, but Stories have given more people a reason to start a conversation through the app.

When Facebook broke off Messenger into a separate app, people were angry. These days, however, it’s an accepted part of the Facebook ecosystem — Messenger sits near the top of the app charts on both iOS and Android. The move has also allowed Facebook to add increasingly complex features to Messenger, such as games and chatbots. If I was a betting man, I would guess that Instagram wants to do the same with Direct, adding Story-focused features to better compete with Snapchat (or at least, slow down any interest in its recent redesign). But do people want that? Instagram’s simplicity, after all, is part of the reason why it’s so popular.

Via: The Verge

Tidal Streaming Service Announces Apple CarPlay Support

Music streaming service Tidal on Wednesday announced its compatibility with Apple CarPlay, enabling subscribers to stream music through their vehicle’s dash-integrated infotainment systems.

The support comes via an iOS app update, which also includes interface harmonization with iPhone X screens, ensuring Tidal’s default dark theme makes the most of those 5.8-inch OLED displays.

We’re proud to announce that TIDAL is now CarPlay compatible! Get ready to access all your favorite music & TIDAL playlists right from your car’s dashboard. pic.twitter.com/JqqMFbJlwg

— TIDAL (@TIDAL) December 6, 2017

The My Collection section of the app is the hub of Tidal’s CarPlay integration, where listeners can gain access to their favorited tracks, albums, and playlists.

As noted by The Verge, a special version of the Explore section will also let users find new music and podcasts, including the most played versions of both.

The update follows Tidal’s announcement last month that it was providing in-app support for Sonos speaker systems, allowing subscribers to control their Sonos home sound systems directly from within the Tidal interface.

Tags: CarPlay, Tidal
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Google Removes Chrome Apps Section From the Chrome Browser Web Store

Google has shuttered the Chrome Apps section of its Chrome browser web store, following through on an announcement the company made more than a year ago. As of Wednesday, the Apps selection no longer appeared in the web store’s search panel filters below Extensions and Themes.

Prior to yesterday’s removal, Chrome apps were available in two flavors: packaged apps and hosted apps. As Ars Technica notes, hosted apps were little more than desktop bookmarks, but they gave Chrome OS users a way to pin important web pages to certain parts of the GUI.

Packaged apps, which first appeared on Mac in 2013, could be downloaded into the Applications folder where they were designed to function like native Mac apps, working offline, updating automatically, and syncing on any computer where a user was signed into Chrome.

By 2016, Google had decided they were no longer worth the resources, because only around 1 percent of users across Windows, Mac, and Linux actively used Chrome packaged apps, and by that time the functionality of most hosted apps had been implemented as regular web apps.

This week, Google began sending out emails to Chrome app developers informing them that Chrome Apps are now deprecated, and that the functionality of already installed apps will end early next year. As a replacement, Google is moving developers towards Progressive Web Apps (PWAs).

The hybrid software was launched earlier this year on Android and brings similar app features to websites, including push notifications and offline sync. Apple has already started building support for PWAs into Safari on iOS, while Google is reportedly aiming to release PWAs for desktop by the middle of next year.

Tags: Google, Chrome
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Lyft riders can now take a driverless-car trip in Boston

How long will it be before ridesharing services dispense with drivers altogether and start sending autonomous cars out onto the streets? Pretty soon, if the likes of Lyft gets its way.

The ridesharing company that once stuck furry pink mustaches to the front of its cars is already working hard on its driverless vehicle program, and has just launched a pilot scheme to test out the technology.

In June, Lyft partnered with nuTonomy, a technology company specializing in driverless car systems, to test autonomous vehicles. And now it’s putting them on the road in Boston’s Seaport district.

“Select passengers” using the Lyft app are being offered the chance to hop inside one of nuTonomy’s modified Renault Zoe electric cars for a short ride around the Seaport area — if they want to go further afield they’ll have to transfer to a human-driven car. A nuTonomy engineer will also come along for the driverless ride and be ready to take the controls in the unlikely event of anything going wrong.

NuTonomy says the trial has two primary goals: First, it wants to give members of the public the chance to try out the technology for themselves instead of simply hearing or reading about it the whole time. Once they’ve experienced a ride in a self-driving car, it wants to use feedback from the passengers to help improve the technology “so that we can deliver an autonomous transportation experience that is extremely safe, efficient, and comfortable,” the company said in a release.

With rival ridesharing service Uber also developing the autonomous technology, Lyft is continuing to invest heavily in its own efforts. In the last year in particular, it’s been inking a lot of partnership deals with relevant firms. Besides nuTonomy, it’s also hooked up with the likes of Alphabet-backed Waymo, Ford, and GM. Lyft also recently received a permit to test self-driving cars on the streets of California.

Confirming beyond any doubt that its interest in self-driving vehicles is not, as one of its own executives put it, “a side project [but] core to our business,” Lyft opened a research center in Silicon Valley, California, just last summer.

The company’s president, John Zimmer, said last year that breakthroughs in autonomous vehicle technology will mean that “by 2025, owning a car will go the way of the DVD,” and that even earlier, in 2021, the majority of Lyft rides will be in self-driving cars.

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Enter Hilton’s ‘connected room’ for a more modern hotel experience

Walking into a hotel room that’s too hot or too cold may not be the hardest thing you have to deal with in any given day, but hotel companies know that if you’re paying out big bucks for a room, things can make a difference.

That’s why Hilton’s latest smartphone app is incorporating a bunch of new features so you can set up your room just how you like it for when you arrive, travel website Skift reported this week.

“A guest will be able to save preferences in the app, such as by favoriting a TV channel or setting a thermostat, and their selections will be applied when they check in,” Joshua Sloser, senior VP of digital product, told Skift.

So when you enter the room, it’ll feel perfect right from the off, and when you turn on the TV, your channel of choice will be the first to appear so you don’t have to plow through hundreds of others in a bid to track it down.

“The end goal is that the experience will travel with the guest consistently and seamlessly as they visit various [Hilton] brands in various countries,” Sloser said of the company’s new concept, dubbed “the connected room.”

The app already lets you view room layouts and choose a room prior to booking, and you can also use it to check in so you can skip the front desk, head straight to your room, and unlock the door with your smartphone. The updated app throws in a few more goodies for when you’re inside the room, including TV remote with all the channels options showing up on your display (favorite any you like for fast access), light controller, and thermostat.

Sloser claimed Hilton is the first in the industry to “enable connected guest rooms with an integration at scale in a consistent experience.”

For anyone without a smartphone or who simply don’t want to fiddle around with it, Hilton is launching a “simplified” remote to fiddle around with instead. Failing that, you’ll have to actually have to move your body close to the various devices and adjust them manually.

According to Skift, Hilton isn’t yet ready to incorporate voice activation for controlling room amenities, thought that’s likely to become a feature at some point down the road.

The revamped app’s new features will be tested first at the Hilton in Memphis, Tennessee, by guests enrolled in Hilton’s “Honors” loyalty program. The hotel chain wants to have it rolling out to more properties in the next few weeks before taking it to all of its U.S. properties during 2018.

We like the sound of Hilton’s efforts, but we’d also like to see a few robots dropping by to help, or even an entire hotel run by robots. Hang on a minute, one of those already exists …

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