Plex’s incubator launches a Winamp-inspired music player

Plex’s comprehensive media server, complete with live TV and all-round entertainment playback, is a big draw for cord cutters. But, it seems the company is itching to unleash even more products. To that end, it just unveiled Plex Labs, a new incubator that promises to deliver internal passion projects and give shout-outs to work from its community (as long as it’s not piracy related, of course). The incubator’s first product is Plexamp: a desktop music player that crams tons of features into its tiny, Winamp-inspired, package. If you already use Plex for music, then you’ll probably want to check out the free player, which works on macOS and Windows.

While it’s name and unobtrusive, single window design channels Winamp (a local Windows file-player from a simpler time), Plexamp is built from open-source audio player Music Player Daemon — along with a mix of ES7, Electron, React, and MobX tech. It all makes for the smallest Plex player in terms of pixel size. Though, you can play around with its dimensions using four amusingly titled fits, among them “Nihilist” and “Hipster.”

A choice of 11 visualizers should appeal to those who still fire them up on iTunes. Another nod to Apple comes in the form of media keys for music controls and a Spotlight-style global activation hotkey, that helps with scouring your music library. More keybindings are available for advanced users too. On the audio side, gapless playback and soft transitions are thrown in for album-obsessed purists.

Plexamp is also launching with a bunch of features that will be limited to Plex Pass subscribers in the future. They include loudness levelling for normalizing playback, smart transitions between tracks, and “soundprints” that use an album artwork’s color palette to create track visuals. There’s also “waveform” for a graphical view of tracks, and library radio stations.

Source: Plex Labs (Medium)

Wink pairs with Sonos to auto-tune your smart home

Sonos announced it was opening up its ecosystem a couple months back and, sure enough, controls for Tidal and Pandora followed, with Airplay 2 support also inbound. Unsurprisingly, its upcoming Alexa integration hogged the limelight, but the smart speaker-maker also promised smart home partnerships with the likes of Wink and Alarm.com, among others. Fast forward more than two months, and the Wink team-up is now a reality, courtesy of the Wink Hub 2’s compatibility with all Sonos products.

Wink’s successor to its original Hub is essentially a control panel for all your connected products. After paring your Sonos system via the Wink app, you can trigger smart home devices to auto-play tracks and playlists, for example when you step in the house, using Wink Robots. You can also add Sonos music controls to the Shortcuts section in the Wink app, in order to blast tunes throughout the house from virtually any room. Then all that’s left is to nail the smart lighting to match the jams.

Source: Wink

MIUI 9: Everything you need to know

MIUI 9 introduces new features along with a ton of under-the-hood optimizations.

Xiaomi’s MIUI custom ROM is one of the most popular manufacturer skins around, with over 280 million users across 220 countries. A majority of users are from Xiaomi’s home market, China, but with the brand seeing a lot of momentum in India and other Asian countries, it is now offering features tailored to a global audience.

Here’s a look at what’s new in MIUI 9, and when you can start using it on your Xiaomi phone.

What are the new features in MIUI 9?

With MIUI 9, Xiaomi’s main goal was to improve stability and speed, and to that effect the company optimized over 20 areas of the interface for better performance. The result is that MIUI 9 feels much more responsive when compared to older versions of the ROM.

And with the ROM seeing a lot of usage in markets like India, Xiaomi rolled out a retooled notification pane designed for global markets. The notification panel in the global ROM comes with bundled notifications and in-line replies, features that aren’t present in the Chinese version of the ROM.

While the Chinese ROM leverages Xiaomi’s digital assistant and universal image search, the global variant comes with an all-new image editor that can easily remove background elements from photos, a new video player, exclusive themes and stickers, and a Google Now-style pane that lists your frequently used apps.

MIUI 9: Nine new features you need to know

What devices will receive the MIUI 9 update?

Xiaomi is rolling out the MIUI 9 update to a total of 32 phones. Basically, most Xiaomi phones released over the last five years will be getting updated to MIUI 9. Here’s the full list:

• Mi Mix 2
• Mi Mix
• Mi Note 3
• Mi Note 2
• Mi Note
• Mi 6
• Mi 5
• Mi 5s
• Mi 5s Plus
• Mi 4i
• Mi 4
• Mi 3
• Mi 2
• Mi Max 2
• Mi Max
• Mi Max Prime
• Redmi Note 4
• Redmi Note 4X
• Redmi Note 5A
• Redmi Note 3
• Redmi Note 4G Prime
• Redmi Note 2
• Redmi Note 4G
• Redmi 4
• Redmi 4X
• Redmi 3
• Redmi 3S
• Redmi 3S Prime
• Redmi 2
• Redmi 2 Prime
• Redmi Y1
• Redmi 5A

While it’s great that the five-year-old Mi 2 is picking up the update, XIaomi has announced that MIUI 9 will be the last stable release for the device, along with five other Xiaomi handsets — the Mi 4i, Redmi Note 4G, Redmi 2, Redmi 2 Prime, and the Mi Note.

When will my phone get the MIUI 9 update?

Following its rollout last month, the MIUI 9 OTA has rolled out to Xiaomi devices, with the likes of the Redmi Note 4, Mi Max 2, Mi Mix 2, Mi 5, Redmi 4, Redmi 4A, and the Redmi Y1. The update is also currently making its way to the Mi Note 2, Mi 5s, Mi 5s Plus, Mi Max, Redmi 3, Redmi 3S, Redmi Note 3, and the Redmi Note 2.

Xiaomi is rolling out weekly builds with bug fixes and feature additions following feedback from the MIUI community. With over 30 phones set to receive the update, it will be a few months before Xiaomi rolls out the latest version of its custom ROM to older devices. But with the major launches from the last two years already receiving the update, the company will be shifting focus to older devices in its portfolio over the coming months.

Did you receive the MIUI 9 update on your Xiaomi phone? How are you liking the new additions?

Adidas closes its digital sports division

Sportswear brands might be reviving their interest in fitness technology, but Adidas is staging its comeback in a very roundabout way. The company’s American segment is closing its dedicated digital sports division and folding the group’s work into “all areas” of its business. Just how this will affect Adidas’ wearable tech strategy isn’t clear, but reports suggest the brand is centering its efforts around Runtastic and its shopping app.

This won’t affect Adidas’ partnership with Fitbit to release an athlete-focused version of the Ionic smartwatch in 2018. The two are “moving forward as planned,” a spokesperson tells Engadget.

Thankfully, the closure won’t necessarily carry a steep human cost when Adidas is looking at new positions for the 74 affected workers. The main concern is whether this hurts or hinders Adidas’ digital fitness efforts. It’s part of a broader effort to make Adidas a more responsive company, and folding the digital team into other areas may help if it speeds up decision making and makes technology a mainstay of the company’s products. At the same time, it’s hard not to see this as a loss in some form. Adidas no longer has a central team that can unite all its digital efforts, and there’s only so much Runtastic can do to fill in any gaps.

Via: Mobi Health News

Source: Just-Style, PBJ (sub. required)

US government names North Korea as the source of WannaCry

Donald Trump’s homeland security adviser, Tom Bossert, said in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that “after careful investigation, the U.S. today publicly attributes the massive “WannaCry” cyberattack to North Korea.” Coming during increasing tensions between the two countries over nuclear threats and Twitter outbursts, Bossert said this attribution is based on evidence and agrees with the findings from the UK and Microsoft.

In the op-ed we did not see traces of the evidence used to link the May attack to the “Lazarus Group” (also blamed for the Sony Pictures hacking incident) and North Korea, but the White House will reportedly follow up Tuesday with a more formal statement. While some, like Microsoft, have blamed the US government for stockpiling vulnerabilities — the WannaCry attack used an exploit based on technology apparently stolen from the NSA — the op-ed says:

Stopping malicious behavior like this starts with accountability. It also requires governments and businesses to cooperate to mitigate cyber risk and increase the cost to hackers. The U.S. must lead this effort, rallying allies and responsible tech companies throughout the free world to increase the security and resilience of the internet.

Bossert also called the attack reckless, while Reuters cites a “senior administration official” who declined to comment on whether or not the US believes it was a deliberate attack or accidental. So what happens now? According to the piece, the Trump administration “will continue to use our maximum pressure strategy to curb Pyongyang’s ability to mount attacks, cyber or otherwise.”

Source: Wall Street Journal

What’s on TV: ‘Bright,’ ‘Christopher Nolan 4K Collection’

As the clock ticks down on 2017, we’re finally checking out Netflix’s $90 million+ movie. Bright stars Will Smith as a cop in a world full of orcs and other mystical creatures, and we’ll see if it’s enough to pull attention away from flicks currently in the box office. For other home movie options (or last minute gift ideas) viewers can grab many of Christopher Nolan’s movies on Ultra HD Blu-ray, either in boxed sets or individually. Movies like The Dark Knight, Interstellar, Inception and of course Dunkirk are available this week in 4K. On HBO, Game of Thrones fans can watch Kit Harington (Jon Snow) in Gunpowder this week, while PC gamers can enjoy v1.0 of PUBG and there’s even a new Kinect game for Xbox One. Look after the break to check out each day’s highlights, including trailers and let us know what you think (or what we missed).

Blu-ray & Games & Streaming

• Dunkirk (4K)
• Christopher Nolan Collection (4K)
• The Dark Knight Trilogy (4K)
• Inception (4K)
• Interstellar (4K)
• The Prestige (4K)
• Mother!
• The Lego Ninjago Movie
• Stronger
• Leatherface
• Suspiria
• American Gothic
• The Apartment
• Hammerwatch (PS4)
• Defunct (PS4)
• Brawlout (Switch)
• Shooty Fruity (PS4, PC)
• Life is Strange: Before the Storm – Episode 3 (PC, PS4, Xbox One)
• Crawl (Switch)
• PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PC)
• Future War: Reborn (Xbox One)
• Tiny Metal (Switch, PC, PS4)
• The Coma: Recut (Switch)
• Tiny Troopers Joint Ops (Switch)
• The Next Penelope (Switch)
• The Deer God (Switch)
• Max: The Curse of Brotherhood (Switch)
• Mom Hid My Game! (Switch)
• Raining Blobs (Xbox One, PS4)
• Boom Ball 3 for Kinect (Xbox One)
• 36 Fragments of Midnight (PS4)
• Accounting+ (PS VR)
• Rollercoaster Legends (PS4)
• Ultrawings (PS VR)
• VirtuGo (PS4)

Monday

• Falcons/Buccaneers, ESPN, 8:15 PM
• Man With a Plan (fall finale), CBS, 8:30 PM
• Superior Donuts (fall finale), CBS, 9 PM
• The Hollywood Walk of Fame Honors 2017, CW, 9 PM
• Tickling Giants – The Arab Spring in Egypt, Starz, 9 PM
• 9jkl (fall finale), CBS, 9:30 PM
• Gunpowder (series premiere), HBO, 10 PM
• The Year in Memoriam 2017, ABC, 10 PM
• Scorpion (fall finale), CBS, 10 PM
• MTV Floribama Shore, MTV, 10 PM
• Ill Behaviour (season finale), Showtime, 10:30 PM
• Desus & Mero, Viceland, 11 PM

Tuesday

• Marvel’s Runaways, Hulu, 3 AM
• The Indian Detective (S1), Netflix, 3 AM
• Russell Howard: Recalibrate, Netflix 3 AM
• A Home for the Holidays with Josh Groban, CBS, 8 PM
• Finding Your Roots (season finale), PBS, 8 PM
• WWE Smackdown, USA, 8 PM
• The Year: 2017, ABC, 9 PM
• The Voice (season finale), NBC, 9 PM
• Major Crimes, TNT, 9 PM
• Inside the NFL, Showtime, 9 PM
• Fantomworks, Velocity, 9 PM
• Gunpowder, HBO, 10 PM
• The Mane Event, BET, 10 PM
• Who Killed Tupac? (season finale), A&E, 10 PM
• The Challenge, MTV, 10 PM
• Drop the Mic, TBS, 10:30 PM
• Desus & Mero, Viceland, 11 PM

Wednesday

• La Casa de Papel (S1), Netflix, 3 AM
• 15: A Quinceanera, HBO, 7 PM
• Survivor (season finale), CBS, 8 PM
• The Librarians,TNT, 8 PM
• Vikings, History, 9 PM
• Happy!, Syfy, 10 PM
• Are You the One? (season finale)
• Gunpowder (season finale), HBO, 10 PM
• Happy!, Syfy, 10 PM
• Survivor: Reunion Special, CBS, 10 PM
• Knightfall, History, 10 PM
• Desus & Mero, Viceland, 11 PM

Thursday

• Peaky Blinders (S4), Netflix, 3 AM
• Black Lake (S1), Shudder, 3 AM
• Great News, NBC, 8 PM
• Young Sheldon (fall finale), CBS, 8:30 PM
• Van Helsing, Syfy, 9 PM
• Mom (fall finale), CBS, 9 PM
• Life in Pieces (fall finale), CBS, 9:30 PM
• Beerland, Viceland, 10 PM
• Top Chef, Bravo, 10 PM
• Damnation, USA, 10 PM
• Ghost Wars, Syfy, 10 PM
• The Menendez Murders, A&E, 10 PM
• SWAT (fall finale), CBS, 10 PM
• Desus & Mero, Viceland, 11 PM
• Superstition, Syfy, 11 PM
• The Rundown with Robin Thede, BET, 11 PM

Friday

• Bright, Netflix, 3 AM
• The Grand Tour, Amazon Prime, 3 AM
• Fuller House (S3 finale), Netflix, 3 AM
• The Last Post (S1), Amazon Prime, 3 AM
• Dope (S1), Netflix, 3 AM
• The Toys That Made Us (S1), Netflix, 3 AM
• 72 Dangerous Animals: Latin America (S1), Netflix, 3 AM
• Bahamas Bowl: Ohio vs. UAB, ESPN, 12:30 PM
• Blindspot (fall finale), NBC, 8 PM
• Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (fall finale), ABC, 9 PM
• A Football Life: Lynn Swann & John Stallworth, NFL Network, 9 PM
• All Def Comedy, HBO, 10 PM
• Kevin Hart Presents (season finale), Comedy Central, 11 PM
• The ELeague Cup: Rocket League Finals, TBS, 12 AM

Saturday

• Vikings/Packers, NBC, 8:20 PM
• Dollar General Bowl: Appalachian State vs. Toledo, ESPN, 7 PM

Sunday

• No Activity, CBS AA, 3 AM
• Hawaii Bowl: Fresno State vs. Houston, ESPN, 8:30 PM
• The Girlfriend Experience (season finale), Starz, 9 PM

[All times listed are in ET]

China will allow self-driving car tests on public roads

China is opening up its roads to self-driving cars. The Beijing Municipal Transport Commission released a statement today saying that on certain roads and under certain conditions, companies registered in China will be able to test their autonomous vehicles.

Last year, Chinese authorities banned self-driving vehicles from the country’s highways until new regulations could be created and approved. But those have been slow to arrive, which is why Chinese company Baidu and its CEO Robin Li can under fire this summer for conducting an apparently illegal demonstration of its driverless technology.

The new regulations will allow companies to apply for temporary permission to test their autonomous vehicles on a yet-to-be-determined group of approved roads. The cars will have to have traffic accident liability insurance and a human behind the wheel to take over if anything goes wrong.

With this development, China now joins a number of other countries allowing self-driving technology developers to test their products in real-life scenarios.

Via: MIT Technology Review

Source: Beijing Municipal Transport Commission

Researchers create less invasive method for placing brain electrodes

Our neurons are firing all the time, receiving signals from other neurons and sending signals of their own. To get a better understanding of how the brain works, scientists often listen in to those signals to see what kind of messages certain neurons send and how often they send them. Doing that often requires researchers to implant an electrode into the brain, which when it’s close enough to a neuron, can pick up on the electrical signals that propagate through the neuron. However, getting an electrode into the brain isn’t so easy. They either have to be rigid enough to penetrate the brain and remain straight or be inserted through needles that can keep them straight until they’re safely in place. The problem is those rigid structures cause damage as they move through the brain and minimizing that damage is a goal that scientists are constantly working towards.

Researchers in Texas have come up with a new method that allows them to insert tiny, flexible electrodes into the brain, reducing inadvertent damage. Just trying to push the electrodes into brain tissue doesn’t work — they buckle and can’t get into the tissue. These researchers instead placed the electrodes inside small tubes and surrounded them with a viscous fluid. When the fluid was quickly pushed through the device, it pulled the electrode along with it and with enough force for the electrode to penetrate millimeters deep into tissue on its own.

“The electrode is like a cooked noodle that you’re trying to put into a bowl of Jello,” Jacob Robinson, a Rice University researcher on the project said in a statement. “By itself, it doesn’t work. But if you put that noodle under running water, the water pulls the noodle straight.” And the team pointed out that with flexible items, it’s easier to pull them than push them. “That’s why trains are pulled, not pushed,” said Rice University chemist Matteo Pasquali. And because it surrounds the electrode, the fluid’s pull is distributed all along the electrode, preventing it from buckling when it hits the tissue.

The team showed that their device could successfully insert a flexible electrode into a gel, a small, squishy, water-dwelling organism called a Hydra, slices of mouse brain and living rats’ brains. In the Hydra, brain slices and rat brains, the researchers were able to record neuronal activity with the electrode.

This method could be very useful for scientists studying the brain and the researchers say it has the potential to be used in treatment applications that use electrodes to manage certain conditions like epilepsy or allow people to control artificial limbs.

The research was recently published in ACS Nano Letters. You can check out the fluidic microdrive in action in the video below.

Via: Rice University

Source: ACS Nano Letters

A space startup receives $90 million to help it put a billboard on the moon

“We’ve got a startup idea. We want $90 million to invest in projection technology for high tech billboards. On the moon.”

At least, that is how we assume the pitch went from Japanese space startup iSpace Technologies Inc., which just announced the conclusion of its Series A round of venture funding. Its goal? To launch a spacecraft into lunar orbit by 2019, land on the moon the year after that, and then set up the necessary infrastructure for a moon-based advertising business. Heck, you can’t fault the company’s ambition!

iSpace’s $90 million will cover two space flights in 2019 and 2020. Once iSpace’s spacecraft is safely landed on the moon, it will then make one giant leap for digital marketing by setting up its billboard, which can be rented by companies wanting their logo to be seen against the picturesque backdrop of … well, Earth. “Human beings aren’t heading to the stars to become poor,” Takeshi Hakamada, chief executive officer of iSpace, said at a recent press event in Tokyo. “That’s why it’s crucial to create an economy in outer space.”

Groups keen to be part of the new lunar economy, who invested in iSpace’s dream, include major Japanese businesses including Japan Airlines and TV network Tokyo Broadcasting System Holdings, in addition to the Innovation Network Corp. of Japan and the Development Bank of Japan.

iSpace’s ambitions don’t end at a simple billboard, either. It also plans to use lunar exploration vehicles to search for water from 2021, which it will then turn into hydrogen fuel that could be used to support a lunar settlement. To give an idea of some of its plans, iSpace has released a “2040 Vision Movie,” which depicts how it imagines life on the moon will look in a few decades’ time — complete with lunar refueling stations that may be used to support both moon settlers and regular day trips from Earth.

The company started through Google’s Lunar Xprize, which promises to award $20 million to whoever can land and drive a spacecraft on the moon’s surface. Heck, we guess it only makes sense that a company with links to Google would be interested in futuristic high-tech approaches to advertising.

Editors’ Recommendations

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Apple removes imposter ‘Cuphead’ iOS game from the App Store

An iOS version of the run-and-gun platformer Cuphead found its way onto the App Store on Monday, December 18, but was taken down after it was confirmed to be a scam. According to TouchArcade, the game appeared to look official — with screenshots, support page links, and all — but was confirmed by video game developer Studio MDHR to be an imposter app.

Cuphead is based on a cartoon that literally has a cup for a head. In the game, Cuphead and his brother, Mugman, have to buy their souls back from the Devil after a night at the casino goes wrong.

After years of anticipation and released footage, the game was officially released in September. It’s currently available for Xbox One and Windows 10, but Studio MDHR has yet to release anything for iOS.

While the app looked real, the support link associated with it was registered to someone who isn’t listed as part of the Studio MDHR staff, The Verge reports. Before it was taken down, you were also able to actually play the version of Cuphead using touch controls but it was low-resolution and the touchscreen was glitchy.

Not too long after the game was uploaded to the App Store, Studio MDHR took to Twitter to confirm the app wasn’t real. Apple officially removed only a couple hours later.

There is a Cuphead imposter app on the iOS store — this is a scam. We are working on removing the fraudulent app ASAP!

— Studio MDHR (@StudioMDHR) December 18, 2017

TouchArcade took a deeper look into the sophisticated Cuphead scam and noticed how high-quality it looked at first glance. There was an animated video trailer, it’s listed as 1.9GB, and the developer name looked correct — unless you knew the domain didn’t actually have the word ‘games’ in it.

Eventually, an anonymous developer reached out explaining that it was most likely a porting outfit behind the scam. TouchArcade explained that it could be possible the scam was built from the original source file. Someone could have then either stolen the project, or the porting company might’ve also released it.

Since the game was pulled from the App Store, users will no longer be able to download it. If you were among those who did end up purchasing the game for its $5 price, you can still receive a refund from Apple.

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