FAA names seven nuclear research labs as no-drone zones

The FAA has granted DOE’s request to make seven of its facilities no-drone zones — and they’re all nuclear research laboratories. Starting on December 29th, you can no longer fly your UAVs within 400 feet of Hanford Site in Franklin County Washington, Pantex Site in Panhandle Texas, Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, Idaho National Laboratory, Savannah River National Laboratory in Aiken South Carolina, Y-12 National Security Site in Oak Ridge Tennessee and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Some of them are no longer operational — the Hanford site where plutonium was produced for the nuclear bomb detonated over Nagasaki, for instance, is now mostly decommissioned — but some are still active.

The agency didn’t reveal DOE’s explanation for the request, but it clarified that there are (a few) exceptions wherein drones will be permitted to fly near the facilities. Most likely, the FAA will approve requests to fly UAVs over the labs for inspection and the like — those who get caught flying over the sites without permission are subject to civil penalties and criminal charges.

Over the past few years, the FAA has prohibited drones from flying near numerous other locations, including military bases, Washington DC and 10 famous US landmarks such as the Statue of Liberty. If you’re keeping an eye on where you can fly your machine, take note that the list will just likely keep on growing: According to the FAA’s announcement, it’s currently considering more “no-drone zone” requests from federal security agencies.

Source: FAA

Apple’s Newest Mac Pro Turns Four Years Old Today

Today marks the fourth anniversary of Apple last updating the Mac Pro.

The second-generation Mac Pro was released on December 19, 2013 for $2,999 and up, and it remains the current model despite having at least four year old hardware.

That hardware includes up to a 12-core Intel Xeon E5 processor, 64GB of ECC RAM, 1TB of SSD storage, and dual AMD FirePro D700 GPUs, with prices topping out at $6,999.

The lack of a Mac Pro refresh in several years generated concerns that Apple was less focused on professional users, eventually prompting the company to respond.

Specifically, in April, Apple took the rare step of revealing it was working on an all-new Mac Pro with a modular design, while a high-end iMac Pro was released earlier this month.

Apple briefly reiterated that promise at the bottom of its press release about iMac Pro availability last week, noting that the new Mac Pro will be not only upgradeable, but also a high-performance, high-throughput system.

In addition to the new iMac Pro, Apple is working on a completely redesigned, next-generation Mac Pro architected for pro customers who need the highest performance, high-throughput system in a modular, upgradeable design, as well as a new high-end pro display.

Apple hasn’t provided any additional details, including tech specs or a release date, but fingers are crossed for a 2018 launch. As we discussed in our story last week, Apple could return to a similar design as the 2006 to 2012 tower Mac Pro, but its exact definition of modular remains to be seen.

Apple still hasn’t provided any word about when if ever we can expect a new Mac mini, which hasn’t been updated in over 1,150 days, according to the MacRumors Buyer’s Guide. The current Mac mini launched in October 2014.

Related Roundup: Mac ProBuyer’s Guide: Mac Pro (Caution)
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Apple Appoints New Sales Lead in India Following iPhone Price Hike

Apple has appointed one of its longest serving executives as its new head of sales in India, as the company goes in search of a bigger share of the country’s massive smartphone market.

Michel Coulomb will replace Sanjay Kaul as lead of sales operations, according to Reuters. Coulomb has worked with Apple since 2003, and was most recently Apple’s managing director in South Asia, according to details available on his LinkedIn profile.

Earlier on Tuesday, the Economic Times reported that Kaul would be leaving after six years with Apple, citing people familiar with the matter.

Rumors of the new appointment followed news on Monday that Apple has increased retail prices for most of its iPhones in India, after the government last week raised taxes on imported phones in an effort to boost local manufacturing.

In line with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Made in India initiative, customs duty on phones increased to 15 percent from 10 percent. Apart from iPhone SE units which are assembled in Apple’s Bengaluru-based plant, the price of iPhone models rose by about 3.5 percent across the board. The most expensive model, a 256GB iPhone X, now costs 105,720 rupees ($1,646), up from 102,000 rupees ($1,593).

Apple has been pursuing a range of tax and policy changes in recent months to help build out its iPhone assembly infrastructure in India, as it seeks to grab a bigger share of the world’s third-largest smartphone market.

Earlier this month, Reuters reported that Apple had asked the Indian government to defer a planned increase in import taxes on mobile phone parts, in order to give the company time to expand its manufacturing in the country, but that plea appears to have fallen on deaf ears.

Apple’s sales in India rose 17 percent to $1.81 billion in the fiscal year to March 2017, but that’s a lot slower than the 50 percent growth in the previous year. Apple’s market share in the country remains at around 2 percent.

Tag: India
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‘AutoSleep 5’ Brings Live Sleep Tracking to Apple Watch and iPhone X Support

Third party sleep tracking app AutoSleep reached version 5.0 on Tuesday, introducing a slew of new features and improvements, including iPhone X support and live sleep tracking on Apple Watch.

With later models of Apple Watch benefiting from major improvements in battery life, many Watch owners now wear their device to bed. Despite this, Apple still doesn’t provide a native sleep tracking feature in watchOS, which has allowed third-party apps like AutoSleep to step in and fill the void.

While AutoSleep can track sleep quality and duration using just an iPhone, one of the app’s biggest draws has been its Apple Watch component. Up until now, users had to sync the app to their iPhone to review calculated sleep metrics, but with AutoSleep 5, the Apple Watch app can now automatically track sleep without needing any help from an iPhone.

With sleep independently calculated on their wrist, users have the ability to scroll through sleep quality rings, deep sleep stats, and recharge summaries using the Digital Crown or by scrolling with a finger.

The Watch-based Lights Off feature, which lets users track how long it takes them to fall asleep, has also been rewritten. The progress display now has muted colors for viewing at night, and shows how much time the user has actually been asleep versus time spent just lying in bed.

Back on the iPhone app, sleep detection is now considerably faster, while motion detection has been discontinued for users who wear their Watch to sleep, but remains an option for non-Watch wearers.

The information screens have also been unified, so instead of metrics and graphs being on a separate tab, everything now appears on one scrollable screen. In addition, sleep quality rings have been redesigned and are now more clearly labeled, making key information more easily available at a glance.

The sleep analysis graph has been moved to just below the sleep clock, and reveals different data points such as sleep zones and heart rate as the user scrolls. Elsewhere, the configuration and troubleshooting sections of the app have been modified to be easier to use, and AutoSleep now has additional share options for sleep recording notetakers and social media users.

In addition to iPhone X layout optimization, several other improvements have been made under the hood, according to the developer. More information can be found in the release notes for AutoSleep 5, which costs $2.99 on the App Store. [Direct Link]

Related Roundups: Apple Watch, watchOS 4, iPhone XTag: health and fitnessBuyer’s Guide: Apple Watch (Buy Now), iPhone X (Buy Now)
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Drone ban: FAA adds to the list of places where you can’t fly your bird

While it seems unlikely that everyday drone hobbyists would want to make a beeline for their nearest nuclear facility to grab some aerial shots, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has nevertheless announced a ban on drone flights over such locations in the U.S., namely:

• Hanford Site, Franklin County, WA
• Pantex Site, Panhandle, TX
• Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM
• Idaho National Laboratory, Idaho Falls, ID
• Savannah River National Laboratory, Aiken, SC
• Y-12 National Security Site, Oak Ridge, TN
• Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN

As you can see, they’re mainly labs, while the Hanford Site, for example, is a mostly decommissioned nuclear production complex. Another of those listed, the Pantex Site, is an active nuclear weapons assembly and dismantlement plant. The restrictions, which come into force on December 29, have been put in place “to address concerns about unauthorized drone operations over seven Department of Energy (DOE) facilities,” the FAA confirmed on its website.

It added that “operators who violate the airspace restrictions may be subject to enforcement action, including potential civil penalties and criminal charges.”

The FAA’s ban follows others that have been put in place over the last year as the government plays catch-up with a technology that has become hugely popular with consumers over the last couple of years.

Following an FAA regulation earlier this year banning drone flights over 133 military facilities in the U.S., the Pentagon said over the summer that it would be OK for personnel at the facilities to destroy any drones flying into restricted areas if they were deemed a threat to security. In other words, they can shoot the flying machines down.

Continuing to gradually broaden the restrictions, the FAA then issued flight bans around 10 famous tourist sites, among them the Statue of Liberty in New York City, Hoover Dam in Nevada, and Mount Rushmore National Memorial in South Dakota.

Flights near locations such as airports, prisons, and sports stadiums are also off-limits for drone pilots.

Millions of people are likely to be firing up their very first drone over the holiday season, and the FAA is encouraging them to download its B4UFLY mobile app (iOS and Android), which offers information on safe flying as well as areas that are out of bounds for drone flights. The FAA also has a comprehensive FAQ page on its website offering advice for new and current drone owners.

Finally, if they haven’t already done so, drone owners need to register their details on a national database. The database has been in place for two years, but mandatory registration was paused in May over a legal issue. But since last week, it’s now necessary for anyone with a drone weighing between 0.55 pounds and 55 pounds to once again submit their details via the FAA’s registration page.

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Alamo Drafthouse to open video rental store with rare VHS tapes

Do you miss the days when finding a movie to watch meant browsing the local video store, hoping that you’d stumble across some rare gem? Alamo Drafthouse sure does. After amassing collections from small shops, the enthusiast-driven theater chain is opening a “reimagining” of rental stores, Video Vortex, that will sit in the lobby of the company’s future Raleigh location. It’ll include Blu-ray and DVD titles, but the real highlight will be a “massive” selection of rare VHS tapes, some of which never made the leap to digital. Alamo will even rent you a VCR (complete with an RCA-to-HDMI adapter), since you probably don’t have one hooked up to your 4K TV.

You can also buy hand-picked Blu-ray titles, movie paraphernalia and Mondo releases. And the store will definitely live up to the “drafthouse” portion of Alamo Drafthouse — there will be a lounge with 40 local draft beers.

This would be an odd move for just about any other known theater, but it makes sense for Alamo. Video Vortex earns its name from a longstanding series that celebrates the heyday of straight-to-video releases. And even if you’re not familiar with Video Vortex, it’s no secret that Alamo is devoted to preserving and fostering not-so-mainstream movies. And that might prove crucial with VHS. Many of the companies from that era either no longer exist or have no interest in converting an old, neglected movie to a modern format. If there’s an obscure title you remember renting as a kid, this might be your only way of seeing it again.

Via: Variety

Source: Alamo Drafthouse

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)