Eric Schmidt to step down as executive chairman of Alphabet

Eric Schmidt will no longer serve as the executive chairman of Alphabet’s board of directors. According to a company statement, he will be transitioning to a new role as technical advisor on “science and technology issues.”

Schmidt has held several roles within Google. He was Google’s CEO in 2001 and then became executive chairman in 2011 when co-founder Larry Page took over the role of CEO. He stayed as executive chairman after the Alphabet restructuring.

“Larry, Sergey, Sundar and I all believe that the time is right in Alphabet’s evolution for this transition. The Alphabet structure is working well, and Google and the Other Bets are thriving,” said Schmidt in a statement.

Alphabet expects to appoint a non-executive chairman in the near future.

After ten years as CEO and seven as Executive Chairman, I can’t wait to dive into the latest in science, technology, and philanthropy. I look forward to working with Larry and Sergey on our future here at Alphabet. https://t.co/nVnZqMEHoI

— Eric Schmidt (@ericschmidt) December 21, 2017

14 and 18-Core iMac Pros May Arrive Sooner Than Expected

While deliveries of the first 8 and 10-core iMac Pro orders are set to begin as soon as next week, customers who opted for upgraded 14 or 18-core options were given shipping estimates ranging from 6 to 8 weeks for the machine when ordering.

It appears the 6 to 8 week estimate may not be quite accurate for all orders, as MacRumors reader Adam, who ordered a top-of-the-line machine with an 18-core processor, has received an updated delivery estimate of January 8 to January 9, which will be just a little over three weeks after the iMac Pro was first was ordered.

MacRumors forum member gobluejd has also received a sooner-than-expected shipping estimate for his 14-core iMac Pro, which will arrive on January 9 to 10 instead of the end of January.

Other customers who purchased 14 and 18-core machines may also be seeing updated delivery estimates from Apple, though on Apple’s site, iMac Pro orders placed today still list the same 6 to 8 week shipping estimate for high-end iMac Pro configurations.

It’s likely that once initial orders go out, Apple will be able to improve those shipping estimates for new orders.

Customers who ordered 8 and 10-core machines will begin receiving their orders in the near future, as some iMac Pro orders started shipping just this morning in the United States and Canada.

The iMac Pro is still listed as unavailable in retail stores. Apple said the new machine would be available in stores by the middle of this week, a deadline that’s been missed, but we could still see them in pop up in stores on Friday or Saturday.

Apple’s iMac Pro is a workstation-class machine aimed at professional users who have demanding workflows. The iMac Pro supports up to an 18-core Xeon W processor, 128GB ECC RAM, an AMD Radeon Pro Vega 64 graphics card with 16GB of HBM2 memory, and up to 4TB of SSD storage.

Pricing on the iMac Pro starts at $4,999 and goes up to $13,199 for a fully maxed out model.

Related Roundup: iMac ProBuyer’s Guide: iMac Pro (Buy Now)
Discuss this article in our forums

Innovative robotic harness helps Parkinson’s patients battle mobility issues

Neurodegenerative disorder Parkinson’s disease can be debilitating for the growing number of people affected by it — 50,000 people are diagnosed each year in the United States alone. Although exciting breakthroughs are being made, there’s currently no cure for the disease. A team of researchers at Columbia University is working on alternative ways to help patients and has developed a smart robotic harness that can be used to “teach” Parkinson’s patients to improve their balance, thereby reducing the likelihood of falling.

“We have developed a cable-driven robot that consists of a lightweight belt worn by a participant on the pelvis to which several wires are attached,” Sunil Agrawal, professor of mechanical engineering and rehabilitation and regenerative medicine at Columbia Engineering, told Digital Trends. “Desired forces and moments can be applied at the pelvis in any direction, and at precise time points within the gait cycle. This technology, which we call Tethered Pelvic Assist Device (TPAD), does not add inertia and rigid links to the human body. In this study, we used the robot to apply unpredictable controlled waist-pull perturbations over short time duration, while subjects are walking. We found with such a training, subjects improved their balance post training.”

In experiments, the technology was used to work out exactly how Parkinson’s disease affects a person’s balance and ability so they can react while walking. It was also demonstrated as being capable of improving patients’ gait stability in a single session, both while they were using it and in the short term afterwards.

“At the moment we envision this development as a training device in the laboratory,” Dario Martelli, a post-doctoral researcher at Columbia Engineering, told Digital Trends. In the future, it’s also possible to imagine how some of these insights could one day be baked into a lightweight assistive exoskeleton, worn during waking hours, which could help counter certain body motions, like shaking, associated with the disease.

“Future studies need to examine whether a multisession training will demonstrate lasting effects on walking balance, accompanied by improved functional levels, and a reduction in the number of falls during long-term follow-up assessments,” Martelli continued.

A paper describing the work was recently published in the journal Scientific Reports.

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Put all of humankind in the palm of your hands with ‘Civilization VI’ on iPad

Sid Meier’s Civilization VI wowed us upon its release in 2016, perfecting the formula after 25 years of refinement. It’s now one year later and Civilization VI has returned to fit in the palms of peoples’ hands. Strategy game fans can now download this award-winning title from the iOS App Store on iPad. Controlling an empire now takes only the touch of a finger.

This iPad port marks the first time the core Civilization series has been playable on iOS (Civilization Revolution was made exclusively for mobile). The full base game has been brought over, with the only exception being expansion content. Despite the missing expansions, this iPad version still features traditional local multiplayer modes, along with smaller bite-sized situations to complete in a single session. This way, short commutes are sure not to interrupt the game.

Published by 2K Games, Civilization is a turn-based strategy game from legendary game designer Sid Meier. The goal is to build an empire that begins in the Stone Age and lasts through the Information Age. Players become Ruler of the World by leading their civilization through war, conducting diplomacy, and advancing culture. Some of history’s greatest leaders go head-to-head with players to create the better empire.

New to the series in Civilization VI is a tutorial system designed to introduce newcomers to the game’s complexities. For veteran players, there are many new ways to build and improve their civilization for a greater chance at success. For example, instead of “one unit per tile,” units can now be combined. Pair anti-tank support with infantry, warriors with settlers, or similar units together to form powerful “Corps” units.In order to get a leg up, we’ve assembled some starting tips for both newcomers and veterans alike, including city planning and strategic resources. There is also a guide for the various strengths and weaknesses of each leader that players can choose from.

Civilization VI is currently available at the discounted price of $30, with newcomers able to play the first 60 turns for free before reaching for their wallets. This 50 percent discount is available until 11:59 p.m. PT on January 4. Before purchasing, be sure your iPad Pro, iPad Air 2, or iPad 2017 has been updated with iOS 11.

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5 things didn’t know you could buy with bitcoin

This year, bitcoin went from being a niche hobby to a money-making phenomenon. We can’t tell you exactly how much it’s worth when you are reading this (due to its constant fluctuation), but it’s probably enough to have gotten you curious at some point.

One of the biggest hurdles with any alt-currency is knowing what exactly you can do with it. However, the more established bitcoin becomes, the more retailers and businesses will be willing to accept it as a legitimate currency. Here are five things you probably didn’t realize you could buy with your bitcoins.

Gift cards

Not only can gift cards be used as actual presents, they also greatly expand where you can spend your stock of bitcoin. At sites like Gyft and eGifter, you can purchase gift cards for all sorts of retailers that don’t formally take bitcoin yet.

Perhaps most significantly, you can purchase Amazon gift cards and, from there, buy literally anything.

Pizza

We knew bitcoin was for real when we first found out you could buy pizza. PizzaForCoins has been around for a while, allowing you to place orders for various pizza chains through their website and paying with your bitcoin.

Like many of these methods of spending bitcoins, this is a workaround to pizza chains actually accepting cryptocurrencies, but hey — it works.

Airline/hotel/space flight tickets

Travel companies have been ahead of the game on bitcoin for a while now. Surprisingly, big companies like Expedia and CheapAir now accept bitcoin directly through their websites for hotel reservations and airline tickets.

You can even go to space with bitcoin through Virgin Galactic.

Computers

In 2014, Dell announced that it would be accepting bitcoin through its online retail store, making it the biggest company at the time to do so.

But you don’t have to limit yourself to Dell if you want to buy a computer with bitcoin. You can also head over to Newegg and buy pretty much any computer or computer component you could ever need.

Pretty much anything

We mentioned above that gift cards are a good way of opening up the purchasing power of your bitcoins, but this one takes it one step further.

The Amazon-competitor, Overstock, has become the first major online retailer to accept bitcoin for purchases. The CEO of the company is so all-in with cryptocurrencies that just this week he launched a $250 million Initial Coin Offering through the company’s exchange, tZero.

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Yes, Apple is slowing down your old iPhone. But if you’re angry, you’re crazy

It’s true, there is a “feature” on your iPhone that slows it down over time. This isn’t a conspiracy theory anymore, Apple has said so after a researcher for Geekbench, and others before it, illustrated how much slower an aging iPhone 6S was compared to a sparking new iPhone 6S. Apple, most likely through gritted teeth, revealed the presence of algorithms that manage processing power on iPhone devices with batteries that are in poor condition.

Apple throttles the eager chip to avoid unexpected device shutdowns due to the processor asking too much of a doddering old battery. The iPhone remains active, just not performing at its best. If you own an iPhone 6, iPhone 6S, or an iPhone SE then it’s already embedded inside the software, ready to spring into action when the day comes. It’s also coming to the iPhone 7 as part of iOS 11.2, and presumably to other iPhones in the future.

It’s the end of the world as we know it. Planned obsolescence is real, Apple is actively pushing it, and we’ve been tricked into buying a phone that will absolutely need replacing in the future because Apple’s making it that way. Why weren’t we told? We needed that information to make an informed buying decision! Batteries last forever, right? After all, I planned to keep my current iPhone for at least two decades, and I expected it to be as spritely on day 12,875 as it was on day 1.

Chemistry 101

Settle down and stop being so 2017 about it. Apple was stuck between the internet and a hard place on this. Those crying about transparency would have been the same ones crying over said transparency if Apple had talked about this before it was forced to. Apple, like every business out there, was hardly going to make a big deal — and it would have been a big deal however the news was revealed — over what would have inevitably been construed as admission of fault in its hardware.

Planned obsolescence is real, Apple is actively pushing it.

Except it’s not a fault. It’s chemistry. Batteries don’t supply infinite power at a steady rate, they get less efficient over time because we’re right on the limit of what a Lithium-Ion battery can do. Add in our regular abuses of the battery, whether it’s running it out until the phone switches off, then using every charger to hand — fast chargers, battery packs, third-party chargers, in-car chargers — to top up the battery a little every day, and it’s perhaps surprising they last as long as they do.

Anyone complaining about the slowdown would also be complaining if the phone kept shutting down unexpectedly each day. Understandably so, especially if they were right in the middle of an angry tweet or Reddit post. Apple’s solution — yes, solution — avoids that, and the world will just have to wait a while longer to read said angry tirade because switching between apps took a few seconds more than it did six months ago.

If anything, Apple’s algorithm and throttling of old iPhones proves again how desperate the technology industry is for new, improved batteries. We’ve been waiting for years, and since a viable alternative hasn’t arrived yet, we’re left with clandestine software “features” making our old phones feel even older.

The solution no-one wants

Except we’re not. There’s a cure. It’s not expensive, it can be done in your Apple Store, and it’ll return your iPhone to tiptop condition. It’s called a new battery, and it costs from $80, depending on your phone. Tests have shown this stops the throttling, and as a wonderful surprise, your phone will last longer between charges too.

But that’s not good enough. CNBC’s Todd Haselton says Apple should offer one free “goodwill” battery swap to all those affected. Why, exactly? Companies (and people, if they cared to admit it) know the battery is the weak link in a phone, and many don’t even cover the cell for the entirety of its device warranty. Apple is one of the good guys, and covers it for a year. Honor, for example, covers the battery and charger for six months, while the phone is covered for 24 months. Demanding a freebie is like asking for free car tires because you spent hours doing donuts in the car park, and now they’re a bit bald.

How about the iOS equivalent of a check engine light?

Apple says its batteries are designed to retain 80 percent capacity for at least 500 charging cycles, which should take a couple of years to reach under normal use. At that time, if Apple’s throttling has kicked in, you can go and get a new battery fitted and everything will be fine. If it’s within a year, then you’ll probably get it under warranty.

But you don’t want to do that, and you never have either, right? We don’t want to know slowdown is due to natural degradation of the battery. We don’t want an easy and cheap fix, or a free battery replacement. We want to whinge and moan as we wander off to our nearest Apple Store, begrudgingly ordering a new iPhone because “the old one has got so slow.” You’ll swear it’s a conspiracy, and bask in the joy of the dopamine hit as the Genius hands over your shiny new model. “See you in 24 months,” you’ll imagine he slyly whispers as you leave the store.

Replacing the battery is boring. Conspiracy theories about slowdown and planned obsolescence, or just ignorance of the entire problem, are simply used as an excuse to upgrade. Which, if we’re honest with ourselves, we all want to do anyway.

Check your iPhone’s engine

Apple still needs to manage this situation now, so how does it get out of this and placate the angry mob? Now it has told us all about the throttling, because it was forced to, we’d suggest owning it. Not with great big notifications on the phone saying it’s throttling, or that the battery is coming to the end of its life, because those would be hateful. Instead, how about the iOS equivalent of a check engine light? A little indicator alongside the battery level meter that appears once 500 cycles have elapsed, or throttling kicks in early due to a duff battery.

When a car goes into limp home mode, or the check engine light comes on, we usually take it back to the dealer for a service. Why shouldn’t we do the same with a phone? Transparency achieved, and a hidden, misunderstood “feature” is turned into something helpful. All without much of a fuss. Ultimately, we want to understand why these things happen, and not feel as if we’re going mad because our phones do feel slower over time.

Imagine the happiness (and justification) of seeing the “time to upgrade” icon flash up on your old iPhone. The day has come, and you can point it out to everyone you meet. “Oh no, I need a new phone,” you’ll tut. It won’t actually mean that, but that’s what you’ll read into it. Will that make you feel better?

Alternatively, buy an Android phone and enjoy the eventual slowdown without anything being done about it at all.

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Chinese ridesharing service Didi Chuxing to use new funding to go international

While Uber’s troubles continue to grow and multiply, one of its largest rivals appears to be flourishing. On Thursday, December 21, Chinese company Didi Chuxing, which merged with Uber last year to become the primary ridesharing service in the country, announced its intentions to expand internationally with a new $4 billion funding round. The new cash influx will not only help the company expand its footprint outside of China, but will also help “scale up investments in A.I. talents and technologies,” which the firm will use to bolster its intelligent (read self-driving) capabilities, Didi noted in a press release.

Seeking to “bring more innovative and diversified transportation services to broader communities around the world,” the burgeoning transportation giant noted that it would also “embark on initiatives in building new energy vehicle service networks, as part of the company’s efforts to lead the transformation of automobile and transportation industries and work toward global energy interconnection.”

Investors include Mubadala, an Abu Dhabi state fund, and Japan’s SoftBank, which also recently invested in Uber. The decision by international forces to back Didi seems to suggest the companies growing influence beyond its home market, which could spell trouble for U.S.-based ridesharing services.

While Uber still boasts a higher valuation at $70 billion, Didi’s latest funding round brings its own valuation to $56 billion, per a New York Times source. And given Uber’s current troubles and Didi’s upward trajectory (it was valued at $50 billion just a few months ago), the Chinese company could overtake its American rival.

That said, we shouldn’t be expecting to see Didi cars on American highways anytime soon. While the new funding is said to help the company expand beyond Chinese borders, it seems as though the company may first focus on other Asian markets. For example, Didi recently noted that it was planning on bringing its services to Taiwan via a local partner. All the same, just because Didi may not be operating in other countries doesn’t mean it doesn’t already have an international presence in other respects — the company has invested in a number of other ridesharing firms, including Lyft, Taxify, Careem, Ola, and Grab; these companies operate in the U.S., Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, India, and Southeast Asia.

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HDR monitors are here, but don’t get your wallet out yet

HDR. These three letters, which stand for “high dynamic range,” are the key technology you need to look for when buying a new television. HDR is, as we’ve explained in the past, a huge leap forward, perhaps even surpassing 4K in importance.

You can understand then why we were stoked to see HDR monitors appear this year. Monitors still lag HDTVs in image quality by no small margin, so it was great to see a key feature of cutting-edge TVs appear in monitors. But, as it turns out, the feature’s not all it should be.

The monitors themselves are partly to blame. Monitors have always been a step behind the image quality of televisions — and that hasn’t changed. Even the best monitors, like the Samsung CF791 and LG 32UD99-W, struggle to exceed a contrast ratio of 2000:1 or a maximum luminance above 500 nits. That does allow for some improvement, as standard dynamic range (SDR) content loses detail above about 200 nits, but the best HDTVs can exceed well over 1,000 nits.

You can see the difference with ease. HDR-mastered content shows more detail on an HDR monitor, but bright scenes can still appear as sheets of white. A good HDTV will tease out details these monitors can’t handle.

But it’s not just the monitors that are blame. What you can view on them is an issue, too. Most streaming services do support HDR, but that doesn’t mean everything they show does. Selection is limited. It’s a similar situation with games.

Worse, Windows 10 is extremely finicky about how it handles HDR. There are situations where HDR will only be available only with HDR turned on in Windows 10’s settings – but turning that on can mess with how other apps look, as they’re not developed with HDR in mind. Outside of games, you’ll typically have to flip the system-wide HDR switch on or off manually, which quickly becomes annoying.

I’m not saying HDR is worse. It looks good in a few, rare cases – gamers being the most likely to enjoy it. It’s not the reason to buy one monitor or another though, and most of the monitors that offer it seem to charge a premium for it. You’re better off spending your money on a feature that you can appreciate all the time, like 4K resolution or a wider color gamut.

We hope to see more capable monitors at CES 2018, and hope Microsoft can improve Windows 10’s lackluster HDR support.

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Cracked screens may be a thing of the past with this self-healing glass

If shelling out hundreds of dollars to replace the cracked screen of the smartphone you already paid hundreds of dollars for doesn’t exactly sound like your idea of fun, we may have some good news for you. A team of Japanese researchers claims to have created a new self-healing kind of glass that just might be the antidote to your butterfingers. The glass is constructed with a light polymer known as “polyether-thioureas,” and is said to be capable of fixing cracks and breaks without needing any sort of high heat. In fact, you need only to press the glass together to mend it, which means that your cracked screen may not be an expensive problem in the future.

In research results published in the magazine Science, lead researcher Takuzo Aida from the University of Tokyo noted that the glass could aid in sustainability across a number of devices. And not only would a self-healing glass be a boon to consumers, but it could also help reduce environmentally unfriendly waste at large.

“High mechanical robustness and healing ability tend to be mutually exclusive,” the researchers noted. And while some self-healing materials do exist, they continued, “in most cases, heating to high temperatures, on the order of 120-degrees Celsius or more, to reorganize their cross-linked networks, is necessary for the fractured portions to repair.”

This, however, is not the case with the new glass. The new polymer is said to be able to heal itself at room temperature, unlike similarly regenerative rubbers and plastics that are currently on the market.

As reported by the Guardian, polyether-thioureas glass’ impressive capabilities were actually discovered by accident by graduate student Yu Yanagisawa, who was planning to use the polymer as a glue. But when he cut the surface of the polymer, he found that edges would actually stick to one another, and after 30 seconds of being pressed together, would come together to form a “strong sheet.” And after experimenting a bit more, Yanagisawa found that the material managed to return to its original strength after a couple hours passed.

“I hope the repairable glass becomes a new environment-friendly material that avoids the need to be thrown away if broken,” he told Japan’s NHK. Needless to say, so do we.

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Cracked screens may be a thing of the past with this self-healing glass

If shelling out hundreds of dollars to replace the cracked screen of the smartphone you already paid hundreds of dollars for doesn’t exactly sound like your idea of fun, we may have some good news for you. A team of Japanese researchers claims to have created a new self-healing kind of glass that just might be the antidote to your butterfingers. The glass is constructed with a light polymer known as “polyether-thioureas,” and is said to be capable of fixing cracks and breaks without needing any sort of high heat. In fact, you need only to press the glass together to mend it, which means that your cracked screen may not be an expensive problem in the future.

In research results published in the magazine Science, lead researcher Takuzo Aida from the University of Tokyo noted that the glass could aid in sustainability across a number of devices. And not only would a self-healing glass be a boon to consumers, but it could also help reduce environmentally unfriendly waste at large.

“High mechanical robustness and healing ability tend to be mutually exclusive,” the researchers noted. And while some self-healing materials do exist, they continued, “in most cases, heating to high temperatures, on the order of 120-degrees Celsius or more, to reorganize their cross-linked networks, is necessary for the fractured portions to repair.”

This, however, is not the case with the new glass. The new polymer is said to be able to heal itself at room temperature, unlike similarly regenerative rubbers and plastics that are currently on the market.

As reported by the Guardian, polyether-thioureas glass’ impressive capabilities were actually discovered by accident by graduate student Yu Yanagisawa, who was planning to use the polymer as a glue. But when he cut the surface of the polymer, he found that edges would actually stick to one another, and after 30 seconds of being pressed together, would come together to form a “strong sheet.” And after experimenting a bit more, Yanagisawa found that the material managed to return to its original strength after a couple hours passed.

“I hope the repairable glass becomes a new environment-friendly material that avoids the need to be thrown away if broken,” he told Japan’s NHK. Needless to say, so do we.

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