Start with the $50 SmartThings hub and expand your smart home

All things SmartThings are on sale right now.

The Samsung SmartThings Hub is down to $49.98 on Amazon. This is part of a greater sale on SmartThings devices, which includes the motion sensor and the water leak sensor.

There’s even the full SmartThings Home Monitoring Kit for sale at $150. It normally sells above $200. It comes with a Hub and several other accessories, so you can just skip right to this bundle if you want to go all in.

Hubs like this act as the “brain” of any smart home. As you start adding more smart features, like a motion sensor or smart plugs, you want to be able to control all of them at once. The hub lets you connect everything to it and then control them from one single place. The $150 home monitoring kit, for example, can use that hub to connect all of your appliances, monitor your home and notify you when anything unexpected happens. The SmartThings Hub works with Wi-Fi networks and wireless protocols like ZigBee and Z-Wave. It has a Bluetooth radio but apparently, that hasn’t been activated.

The Samsung SmartThings Hub is one of the best reviewed smart hubs out there. Tom’s Guide called it the Best Smart Home Hub in 2017. PC Mag named it their Editor’s Choice, gave it 4.5 stars out of 5, and called it “one of the most versatile home automation hubs around.”

Add a smart bulb or two to the kit to control your lights or a motion sensor if you need to cover more rooms.

Bitcoin is failing as a currency

It’s been a good year for bitcoin investors but a terrible one for those who hoped that the cryptocurrency would become the de facto tender for the internet. Satoshi Nakamoto, its creator, may be dismayed at what has become of the project, intended as peer-to-peer electronic cash that didn’t require the supervision of banks. Instead, bitcoin has become an investment vehicle, embraced by many on Wall Street, an asset class like every other. For all the success of the blockchain and bitcoin’s soaring value, it’s clear that Nakamoto’s original vision has failed.

Historically, people needed a way of storing their money in manners more sophisticated than stuffing their mattresses. The practice was to buy precious metals — like gold — and hope that it would retain, and appreciate in, its value over the years. But as economies grew and society matured, it was necessary to move toward fiat currencies, which weren’t intrinsically valuable in and of themselves. Bitcoin was Nakamoto’s deliberate attempt to undo this by building a digital equivalent to gold.

And boy, did it work. In the past 12 months, the value of bitcoin has risen from a low of $777.91 up to a high of $17,178. The currency has always been volatile, but for a while its ceiling was around the thousand-dollar mark. Prices began to surge in the second half of this year, and TechCrunch’s John Biggs believes that this new surge was entirely due to the investment community. On Dec. 10th, CBOE Global Markets began offering investors the chance to bet on the future health of bitcoin in the same way they can for any other futures market.

This surge in interest from the investment world is helping to elbow out any hope that bitcoin will mature into a method of exchange. Currencies need to remain broadly stable in their valuation to ensure that commerce can take place. Sure, there will be some shift in the value of the coins in your pocket — it’s why foreign exchange trading is a thing — but put simply, a dollar should buy you the same thing on Monday as it does the following Friday.

“[Bitcoin is] unsuitable as a currency, because people are far more likely to hold it in anticipation of it appreciating in price.” — Kain Warwick

That’s why Jeffrey Dorfman, the hard-libertarian professor of economics at the University of Georgia, believes that bitcoin is an asset rather than a currency. Earlier this year, he wrote that its volatility strips bitcoin of the characteristics needed “of a plausible substitute currency,” making it instead a “speculative asset, a get-rich quick scheme.” He adds that stable values are required to encourage both commerce and investment, since people need to understand the value of what they’re buying, and buying into.

Kain Warwick agrees, saying that for the foreseeable future, “bitcoin will continue to appreciate in price, as demand for it as a store of value increases.” Warwick is the CEO of Havven, a company launching an Ethereum-backed currency that would directly rival bitcoin. He believes that bitcoin’s soaring price makes it “unsuitable as a currency, because people are far more likely to hold it in anticipation of it appreciating in price.”

Nakamoto designed bitcoin to be deflationary — artificially limiting the supply of bitcoin to 21 million, forever. Of that figure, there are significantly fewer in circulation, because several have been destroyed — such as the 7,500 bitcoins that were lost in a Welsh garbage dump. The thinking is that the scarcity will ensure that its value will increase over time. But there’s a problem with using deflationary money to run an economy, best explained by Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman.

Krugman told the story of a babysitting cooperative that was set up in the late ’70s by Washington civil servants. In order to make sure that each of the 150-ish couples pitched in, the group printed a limited number of coupons, each one equal to an hour of child minding. But the parents began hoarding coupons for the future rather than engaging in babysitting commerce with one another. The slowdown plunged this primitive economy into a recession, mirroring the Great Depression of the early 20th century.

The solution, of course, was to inject more liquidity into the market, printing more coupons to lower their value and discourage hoarding. But because bitcoin has no mechanism for this sort of relief, it’s likely that the economic theory underpinning it will come back to haunt it. That’s not to mention that the more people who sit on bitcoin in the hope of its value increasing, the more risk there is that its value will plummet.

There is another obstacle standing between bitcoin and a life as the internet’s dominant form of exchange. Transactions on the system have become lengthy, painful and oftentimes prohibitively expensive. Very simply, people earn bitcoin by offering up computing power (and energy) to the network to validate future transactions. But this means that in times of high demand, users are either left waiting days for payments to process or have to cough up for faster service.

“Compared with fiat currencies, it’s painfully inconvenient and expensive to use as a means of payment,” writes Leonid Bershidsky in a Bloomberg column last month. At the time, the average commission to process a transaction was $11.38, making it uneconomical to buy a cup of coffee with the money. It’s for this reason that Valve, which began accepting bitcoin payments through its Steam platform last year, reversed the decision on Dec. 6th.

“In the past few months we’ve seen an increase in the volatility in the value of bitcoin and a significant increase in the fees to process transactions on the bitcoin network,” writes Valve’s Kurtis Chinn. Users were buying a game on Steam, but by the time the payment was processed, the value of their coinage, and the transaction costs, had fluctuated. “The value of bitcoin is only guaranteed for a certain period of time so if the transaction does not complete within that window of time, then the amount of bitcoin needed to cover the transaction can change.”

Consequently, the service then had to begin a process of requesting top-up payments or issuing refunds, depending on the fluctuations each day. Then there were the sheer costs themselves: As Chinn says, when Valve began accepting bitcoin, commissions were worth around 20 cents; in the past few months, that figure has leapt to closer to “$20 a transaction.”

This sluggish transaction speed is due to the fact that every bitcoin block is capped at 1MB, an artificial limit on transaction size. In 2016, prominent bitcoin developer Mike Hearn quit the platform, declaring that the “bitcoin experiment” had “failed.” This block limit, he claimed, was a way of ensuring the system worked smoothly during its early days but was little more than an ad hoc fix.

The limit ensures that miners in China, who have to navigate the Great Firewall, have access to the cryptocurrency. Removing the limit would put those miners at a disadvantage, and so Hearn accused vested interests of damaging the system for their own benefit. Bitcoin Cash, a hard fork of bitcoin, removed that limit, but this does not have any impact on the original bitcoin infrastructure.

As for where the vanilla bitcoin goes from here, it seems locked into its destiny as a replacement for gold, not dollars and euros. “We know exactly how many bitcoins will ever be mined, as opposed to gold, of which we only presume that the supply is limited,” said blockchain entrepreneur Vladimir Lupenko. Consequently, Lupenko believes that bitcoin has “the potential to outperform gold as the in-demand store of value asset.” Carl Bennetts of Status, an Ethereum-backed startup, agreed, saying that in bitcoin’s “current form, the transaction costs are too high to be used as a medium of exchange.” He, too, feels that the currency’s main strength right now is as a “store of value” that “is better described as a digital asset.”

Bitcoin may have failed in its original mission, but its greatest victory may be to open the door for other, more-scalable cryptocurrencies. Harnessing the power of the blockchain, projects like Ethereum, which have fewer of the limits imposed by Nakamoto on their own creation, have the potential to spread much wider. Perhaps in a few decades, people will be saving for their digital pensions with bitcoin but buying their groceries with Ethereum. That’s assuming, of course, that the bitcoin bubble doesn’t burn everyone’s fingers for several decades to come.

(All bitcoin prices are correct as of 9:00am ET, Dec. 14th, 2017.)

Netflix, Google and others voice frustration with net neutrality vote

Today, with a three to two vote, the FCC voted to repeal net neutrality protections put in place in 2015. While Commissioners Clyburn and Rosenworcel made it very clear how much they disagreed with the move in their dissents, others are also voicing their concerns over the decision.

Netflix tweeted, “We’re disappointed in the decision to gut #NetNeutrality protections that ushered in an unprecedented era of innovation, creativity & civic engagement. This is the beginning of a longer legal battle. Netflix stands w/ innovators, large & small, to oppose this misguided FCC order.” While Google released a statement saying it was still committed to promoting net neutrality.

Google statement on #NetNeutrality repeal. pic.twitter.com/WVgmswBCJW

— Mark Bergen (@mhbergen) December 14, 2017

The Electronic Frontier Foundation said that the FCC’s vote was a major mistake and one that it would continue to fight against in court. And New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has already released a statement saying he will be taking this decision to court. “New Yorkers deserve the right to a free and open internet. That’s why we will sue to stop the FCC’s illegal rollback of net neutrality,” he wrote. “This is not just an attack on the future of our internet. It’s an attack on all New Yorkers, and on the integrity of every American’s voice in government – and we will fight back.”

The FCC’s decision to abandon its traditional role in protecting an open and free Internet will go down as one of the biggest mistakes in Internet policy history.

We will fight in the courts, in the states, and in Congress to restore #NetNeutrality.

— EFF (@EFF) December 14, 2017

The ACLU has also joined those saying that the decision was wrong, calling it a “radical and foolish action.” It added, however, that the fight for net neutrality wasn’t over. “But nobody should think that network neutrality is dead. We at the ACLU and our allies will be fighting back — at the federal, state, and local level — to restore the protections that the FCC has now eviscerated,” it said in a statement.

Senator Brian Schatz, a member of the Senate Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, Innovation and the Internet said in a statement, “Today, Trump’s FCC dealt a major blow to the free and open internet by repealing net neutrality rules. Because of Chairman Pai and the other Republican commissioners, there are no longer any rules in place to stop internet service providers from changing the internet as we know it. They are now free to block apps, slow websites, or even limit access to certain kinds of content. The best way to move forward is to turn our tweets and our comments into action.”

Senator Patrick Leahy shared similar sentiments saying in a statement, “Today the FCC took a wrecking ball to the pillars of freedom and openness upon which the internet was built…This has been a rushed, cynical and slipshod process that has been fundamentally flawed…As a staunch supporter of net neutrality rules, I will keep fighting until these protections are restored.”

Representative Mike Doyle also vowed to introduce legislation that would overturn today’s FCC order in a more permanent manner. “I’ve tried repeatedly to convince Chairman Pai to abandon his plans to dismantle the Open Internet Order – most recently by organizing a letter from 118 Members of Congress urging him not to take this vote today – and now that the FCC has voted to kill net neutrality and give ISPs a green light to control access to the internet, I will introduce legislation under the Congressional Review Act to overturn today’s order and restore net neutrality,” he said in a statement.

“Ending net neutrality undermines the free and open Internet. Today’s FCC decision is yet another example of how Republicans are padding the pockets of big corporations at the expense of consumers and small businesses,” Representative Betty McCollum said in a statement. “Congress should now overturn this new rule, preserve net neutrality, and save the internet. I am proud to co-sponsor Representative Doyle’s legislation to do just that.”

Representative Jerry McNerney said, “Today’s decision by the Commission sets us on a dangerous path backwards. Net neutrality protections are essential for ensuring that the internet serves as a forum for the free flow of information and a gateway for economic opportunity. I’m proud to join Congressman Doyle to push to reverse this drastic action.”

Senator Bernie Sanders said in a tweet that the decision was “an egregious attack on our democracy” and “we must do everything we can to stop this decision from taking effect.”

This is an egregious attack on our democracy. The end of #NetNeutrality protections means that the internet will be for sale to the highest bidder. When our democratic institutions are already in peril, we must do everything we can to stop this decision from taking effect. https://t.co/8GGrJFMdrU

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) December 14, 2017

Twitter also said it would keep fighting for net neutrality and said the FCC’s decision was a threat to innovation and free expression.

The @FCC’s vote to gut #NetNeutrality rules is a body blow to innovation and free expression. We will continue our fight to defend the open Internet and reverse this misguided decision. https://t.co/TXTQWDiBNC

— Twitter Public Policy (@Policy) December 14, 2017

And Brian Chesky, cofounder and CEO of Airbnb, said in a tweet, “The FCC’s vote to repeal net neutrality is wrong & disappointing. A free & open internet is critical to innovation, an open society, & widespread access to economic empowerment. @Airbnb will continue to speak out for net neutrality.”

For those wondering what the vote means and what happens next, you can check out our discussion of that here.

Nintendo is really excited about the Switch’s detachable gamepads

Nintendo has always believed in the power of local multiplayer games. The company built a business creating digital experiences that are best when shared by people sitting in the same room, on the same couch — not simply connected via headphones and tinny chat services.

The Switch is a testament to this history. The console itself doesn’t support voice chat or online invitations, instead relying on a separate smartphone app to connect anyone who dares to play Splatoon 2 with a friend in another city. The hardware is built for local multiplayer: It’s a portable system with two small controllers attached to either side of the screen, making it easy for newcomers to join a game in person.

For veteran Zelda and Mario producer Yoshiaki Koizumi, these detachable controllers — called Joy-Cons — are the most intriguing aspect of the Switch.

“[A] really exciting hardware feature of the Nintendo Switch is the fact that you can separate the controllers,” Koizumi says. “This makes lots of new forms of play possible, and we’re currently researching a lot of different and interesting ideas. We’ve also seen many amazing and great ideas from our third-party development partners, as well as the Nindies community.”

Nintendo’s longtime motion-capture guru and director Shinya Takahashi agrees with this assessment.

“You can quickly start playing with another person no matter where you are,” he says. “This made a big difference in how we thought of the experiences in 1-2-Switch, which also has a lot of experiences that make use of the HD Rumble feature as well. These are experiences you can only have with Nintendo Switch. We would like to continue making new types of software that make use of these unique features of the hardware.”

There’s no word on what specifically Nintendo is building with these Joy-Cons in mind, but both Koizumi and Takahashi have solid track records designing, writing and animating some of the company’s most influential games.

Koizumi has been with Nintendo since 1991: He’s helped lead the story and design of Zelda games as far back as A Link to the Past. He designed the manual and wrote the story of Link’s Awakening; he’s the reason Z-targeting exists in Ocarina of Time (and just about every other 3D action game since), and he played a huge role in conceptualizing the three-day time loop of Majora’s Mask. Koizumi also helped direct and produce Super Mario 64, Super Mario Galaxy and, most recently, Super Mario Odyssey. He’s currently general producer of the Nintendo Switch.

Takahashi has an even longer tenure at Nintendo, starting as a designer in 1989 and eventually directing the N64 game Wave Race 64. He brought motion capture to Nintendo in the mid-90s for Ocarina of Time, years before other studios started dabbling with in-house mocap. Today, Takahashi is in charge of a lot at Nintendo as general manager of the company’s Entertainment Planning and Development Division.

Both Takahashi and Koizumi have adapted to new technologies over the decades, and this hasn’t stopped with the Switch. They’re now tailoring their design processes to the console’s dual controllers and its portable nature.

“You can get up and play quickly and have a very enjoyable experience in a short amount of time,” Koizumi says. “That has certainly changed how we think about the software side of things as well. Both [Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey] have some experiences that are tailored for short play periods. For example, in Breath of the Wild you can focus on getting a Korok Seed. In Super Mario Odyssey you can focus on getting just one Power Moon.”

The Switch has faced criticism regarding its lack of cloud support and inability to save any game progress to external storage devices. This means if the system breaks, is lost or stolen, or someone accidentally deletes your 140-hour Zelda save file, you’re out of luck. Call this another result of Nintendo’s reluctance to truly embrace the online ecosystem.

However, Takahashi says the biggest criticism he’s heard about the Switch is that people want to buy a console but are unable to track one down. “We’re trying to address this by increasing our supply,” he says.

Engadget

The foundational idea behind the Switch, according to Takahashi, is the way it allows people to play “any time, anywhere, with anyone” — in person, of course. He delights in watching people boot up Breath of the Wild in public or start up a Mario Kart 8 Deluxe match at parties, but he wants to see even more. Nintendo has sold a respectable 10 million Switch consoles since its launch in March — which means there are at least 20 million Joy-Cons out in the wild.

“We want more people to have these kinds of experiences, so that’s what we have been working towards,” Takahashi says. “But that’s also why I feel that it is too early to talk about our success. Rather, I feel like we are still on the road to that success. We would like to see so many more people having these experiences, and I do believe that we can get there.”

Snapchat’s Lens Studio helps create your own AR effects

As fun as Snapchat’s augmented reality World Lenses can be, there are only so many times you can see a headphone-toting hot dog before you crave something new. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could make your own? Well, you can: Snap has unveiled a Lens Studio tool that lets anyone on Mac or Windows create their own AR effects for use in Snapchat. You do need some experience in 3D object creation, but you’re otherwise off to the races — you can submit your masterpiece and give others a Snapcode to unlock it. Those codes only last for 24 hours, unfortunately. However, you can share codes again if you like, and recipients can share them with others and spread the word.

And yes, Snap is aware of the potential for abuse. There’s an initial moderation process to make sure a World Lens isn’t offensive, and you can report Lenses to a moderation team if offending examples somehow slip through the cracks.

This isn’t just to enable hobbyists, as you might have surmised. Snap sees this as a business play — companies should have an even easier time whipping up AR advertising. It’s also an acknowledgment that Snapchat has had trouble growing as a closed platform. While it’s not guaranteed that opening World Lenses to everyone will put Instagram on notice, it could foster a community spirit that keeps Snapchat fans coming back.

Via: TechCrunch

Source: Snap

Amazon will start selling Apple TV and Chromecast again

Amazon pulled Apple TV and Chromecast from its retail lineup back in 2015, ostensibly because neither device offered easy access to Prime Video. Now that Amazon Prime Video is finally an app on Apple TV, it appears as if Amazon is bringing Apple TV and Chromecast devices back to its web site again (after a false start a couple of months ago).

Last week, Google started blocking YouTube on Amazon’s Echo Show and Fire TV, citing a “lack of reciprocity.” This new move by Amazon may be just what Google needs to allow its popular video service back on Amazon devices. Amazon reportedly confirmed the return of Apple TV and Chromecast to CNET, though it offered no further details. We’ve reached out to Amazon for more and will update this post when we hear back.

Source: CNET

Samsung reportedly eyes first half of 2018 for smart speaker debut

Astonishingly, Apple’s long-delayed HomePod speaker might not be the last to market when it launches early next year. Samsung will release its own smart speaker in the first half of 2018, according to a Bloomberg report. Unsurprisingly, it will reportedly run Bixby, Samsung’s personal assistant rivaling Siri and Alexa, and may be priced at $200.

The yet-untitled speaker will focus on audio quality and managing smart home devices, sources told Bloomberg. It will sync up with Samsung gadgets, TVs and Galaxy smartphones. It will also work with the SmartThings service and product network, the company Samsung acquired back in 2014.

Its pricing and release window are still in flux, the sources said, as the company improves voice-commanded web searches on the speaker. Samsung teased a Bixby-running speaker back in July, but that was just before the voice assistant’s troubled launch. The company promised more functionality would be coming with an eventual series of updates, titled Bixby 2.0, that should bring its smart capabilities in line with — and eventually surpass — its rivals.

Source: Bloomberg

The first ‘Wolfenstein II’ add-on pack is available now

Killing Nazis and protesting are two of the most American things you can do. And if you need another avenue for (virtually) doing the former, that’s where the first expansion for Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus comes in. “The Adventures of Gunslinger Joe” changes up the base game’s formula with a new protagonist who, thanks to his football skills, can run through walls and Nazis alike. Sounds good? There are two more packs incoming, and you can pick them up as part of the $25 season pass.

Source: Bethesda (YouTube)

Facebook will try running ads in front of Watch videos

Facebook has been willing to run ads in the middle of videos, but it has historically been reluctant to put ads in front of videos and irk people just trying to watch a clip that surfaced in their News Feed. However, it might be willing to break with tradition in a limited way. The social network plans to test pre-roll ads in the Watch tab and other spaces where you “intentionally go to watch videos.” You won’t see pre-video ads while you’re scrolling through your friends’ updates, in other words, but you might when you sit down for a viewing. The trial will start in 2018 with 6-second clips, with Facebook studying the results to see what works best for different audiences and shows.

There will be some changes to how videos are prioritized in your News Feed. Facebook is updating its ranking system to increase the distribution of videos that people are looking for (such as through search or a company page) and those that people keep coming back to watch on a regular basis.

In both cases, Facebook’s aims are clear: it wants to both make more money from videos and encourage producers to keep making videos. If you know your kitten compilations will both rake in more ad revenue and reach a wider audience, you’re probably going to keep posting those clips. The ads could certainly be nuisances, but Facebook is betting that you won’t mind if those and the News Feed tweaks lead to more of the videos you’d like to see.

Via: TechCrunch

Source: Facebook Media, Facebook Newsroom

Airbnb makes it easier to list bed and breakfast rooms

Airbnb was inspired by actual bed and breakfast spots around the globe; it’s right there in the company’s name. It makes sense, then, that the room-sharing company would finally partner up with the Association of Independent Hospitality Professionals (AIHP) and a leading B&B reservation management system, ThinkReservations, to make it easier for B&B owners to offer their spaces up on Airbnb itself.

The partnership between the three entities will let bed and breakfast operators use ThinkReservations to advertise their rooms on Airbnb and get bookings and guest information from Airbnb’s site directly into the ThinkReservations calendaring system. “We’ve seen how these small, independent businesses can deliver the kind of experiences Airbnb guests expect and deserve, said Airbnb’s Cameron Houser in a statement. “We’re dedicated to giving guests unique, local experiences and excited to continue our work with small business owners who share our commitment to creating a world where anyone can belong anywhere. Airbnb is thrilled to have AIHP as the industry’s leading inn-keeping association as a partner and we look forward to continuing to work with them.”

The steps to connect ThinkReservations and Airbnb accounts is pretty simple — it’s no trickier than using a Facebook sign in, for example. B&B operators simply add their Airbnb credentials onto the ThinkReservations website, create listings there, and then confirm those listings in Airbnb. All the important information will share across both systems. Ultimately, using Airbnb to manage actual B&Bs makes a lot of sense for everyone involved.

Source: Airbnb