HTC has a new high-res Vive Pro VR headset

HTC has a few upgrades in store for its Vive virtual reality headset, the Vive. First up, the Vive Pro, which features a pair of higher resolution OLED screens (2880 x 1600 versus the original’s 1080 x 1200) and built-in headphones. The Oculus Rift headset had attached headphones when it was released to retail in early 2016.

The Vive Pro will work with the original headset’s base stations for room-scale motion tracking. You can just buy a standalone headset and your wand controller and everything else will remain compatible with the upgraded display hardware. The Pro’s headphones also feature integrated 3D audio.

The electronics company has also announced a wireless adapter for the Vive, creatively dubbed the Vive Wireless Adapter. It taps Intel’s WiGig tech to cut the umbilical. And if you want a standalone VR headset from the company, check out the Vive Focus.

When we spoke with Vive co-creator Chet Faliszek in 2016 he admitted that increased resolution was one of the things the company was working toward. But that it wouldn’t make much sense to release a full-on second-gen model until graphics cards could hit 90 frames per-second in VR. There’s no word on when the Vive Pro will be available just yet.

Click here to catch up on the latest news from CES 2018.

Ex-Google employee behind anti-diversity memo sues for discrimination

James Damore, the Google employee who was fired after circulating an anti-diversity memo last August, isn’t over his dismissal apparently as he has now filed a lawsuit against his former employer. Damore filed a class-action complaint today in a California court alongside another former Google employee, David Gudeman. Both men say they were “ostracized, belittled and punished for their heterodox political views, and for the added sin of their birth circumstances of being Caucasians and/or males.”

The suit also goes on to say, “Google’s management goes to extreme — and illegal — lengths to encourage hiring managers to take protected categories such as race and/or gender into consideration as determinative hiring factors, to the detriment of Caucasian and male employees and potential employees at Google.” While these comments may sound like the most absurd caricature of a men’s rights activist one could muster, they appear to have been made in all seriousness. The long section titled “Anti-Caucasian postings,” which lists memes and comments from internal communications, also, somehow, doesn’t appear to be a joke.

Many companies in the tech world including Facebook, Tesla, Uber and Google have come under fire for discrimination and sexual harassment. Between wide pay gaps, disproportionately low hiring rates and sexual harassment, the often closed and unwelcoming culture of the tech world has been well-documented. But Damore’s complaint appears to focus on how hard it is to be a white man in a primarily white and largely male-dominated field and goes after Google for discrimination against being male or Caucasian and its “open hostility for conservative thought.” If Damore thinks it’s so difficult to advance in a tech firm as a white male, he should try being literally anybody else.

The complaint seeks monetary damages as well as an injunction against conservative discrimination on the part of Google. We’ve reached out to Google for comment and we’ll update this post if we hear more.

Via: Bloomberg

Source: Scribd

HTC unveils a wireless adapter for Vive VR headsets

The dream of a wire-free HTC Vive is close to becoming a practical reality. HTC has unveiled a Vive Wireless Adapter that uses Intel’s WiGig to eliminate the corded connection for both the original Vive and the Vive Pro while keeping lag and interference to a minimum. There’s no word on price, but you will have to wait — the compact add-on won’t ship until sometime in the summer.

Click here to catch up on the latest news from CES 2018.

Source: Vive

AI adds background noise to Google Street View scenes

Google Street View is a great way to imagine you’re somewhere else, walking the streets of a bustling foreign city or making your way through a quiet, tree-lined neighborhood. Now, thanks to a project from Nao Tokui, it’s become even more immersive. He’s put together a feature called Imaginary Soundscapes that creates background noise based on what you’re looking at in Google Street View. It’s a soundtrack for your virtual walks that was first identified by the Tumblr user Prosthetic Knowledge.

Imaginary Soundscapes works by using two different neural networks. One is able to identify the content within the different Street View images, while the other can pinpoint audio and separate the sounds and acoustics of the environment. Tokui has put both together for this project; the two neural networks can find open source audio and play it in the background, based on what you’re looking at in Google Street View. For example, on an residential street in a busy Washington, DC, urban neighborhood, I heard an imagined soundtrack of buses, cars and people chatting as they walked by.

You can give it a try yourself at Imaginary Soundscapes’ website; it only works on PC in Chrome and Firefox, though I was able to access it in Chrome on a Mac. By default the site takes you to a random location. You have a choice to input your own street address or visit another random place. The sound will play automatically.

It’s not perfect, of course. Fast Co.Design points out that in the quiet, grass-filled fields of Tokyo Stadium, there are the sounds of cars zooming by. Regardless, it’s a pretty cool AI. You can go more in depth into how it works at the creator’s Medium post and a short paper for a workshop on Machine Learning and Design.

Via: Fast Co.Design

Source: Imaginary Soundscape, Medium

Live from Samsung’s CES 2018 press conference!

Samsung press conferences rarely disappoint, and we’re hoping that’ll be the case today — the company’s big CES 2018 keynote is about to kick off, and we’ll be bringing you all the news live. Samsung hasn’t made too many pre-CES announcements, aside from a couple laptops, so most of what’s coming here should be a surprise. But we know we’ll see some massive, beautiful TVs as well as some home appliances that are “smarter” than they have any right to be. But the story will likely be how all of Samsung’s devices play well together and make up an ecosystem throughout your home. And who knows, we may even end up with a Galaxy S9 sneak peak. Stay tuned — the event kicks off at 5PM ET / 2PM PT, and we’ll bring you all the news right here.

LG Display’s giant rollable OLED TV is indistinguishable from magic

LG Display managed to showcase a hand-rollable OLED screen a few years ago at CES, but it was clearly in its early prototype stages. Sure, exciting but also distant. Now, the world’s first rollable 65-inch 4K OLED display offers a more realistic (yet still kinda crazy) use for OLED tech that’s flexible — something that we’ll probably see in a few — probably premium — TV models in the next few years.

Now, 65 inches isn’t the biggest TV at CES, or even at LG Displays showroom. (In fact we got to stare lovingly at a monstrous 88-inch 8K OLED in the same room). It is however, the only one that can roll itself into a box a fraction of the size.

Like smartphones in the last few year, the bigger our TVs get, the more unwieldy they become: Many of these huge screens are a hassle to install / get delivered / move — rollable OLEDs are one way to keep our screens huge and our door frames intact.

Yep, it’s still a prototype, but LG Display explained that this particular tech demo is closer to real consumer devices than the aforementioned 88-inch 8K OLED.

Even at this prototype stage the screen subsidiary of LG is showcasing multiple modes for the rollable. Beside the typical, full 65-inch screen, it’s got a more cinematic 21:9 ratio option and a slender notification panel that can house weather info and act as a music player when you don’t need the screen up front and center. Naturally, there’s the viewing angle benefits, deep contrasty blacks and rich color gamut: It’s business as usual as far as OLED quality goes. Once unfurled and upright, you wouldn’t think this was any different to LG’s on-sale OLED TVs.

Getting to this size from the smaller prototype shown in 2015 meant ensuring the screen itself was hardier and tougher, while still maintaining the flexibility needed to roll up. There’s a lot more tension acted on the screen as you add inches to its size, so the company had to figure out ways to strengthen the slender layers that make up an OLED screen. This new disappearing screen is the fruits of that labor.

Click here to catch up on the latest news from CES 2018.

CES 2018: Kohler’s New Sensate Kitchen Sink Faucet and DTV+ Shower System Will Support HomeKit

Kohler at CES 2018 this week has introduced a collection of new smart kitchen and bath products based on its new Kohler Konnect platform, which itself is based on Microsoft’s Azure internet-of-things cloud solutions.

A spokeswoman for Kohler told MacRumors that its Sensate touchless kitchen faucet and DTV+ shower system will be the first of the Kohler Konnect products to support Apple’s HomeKit platform for smart home accessories.

Kohler’s Sensate faucet allows you to turn the water on and off or dispense water to a measured volume, such as an eight-ounce cup or a large pot, with simple voice commands or touch-free motion-based interactions.

The faucet also monitors your water usage and lets you track the consumption using an upcoming Kohler Konnect companion app.

Meanwhile, the DTV+ showering system enables homeowners to create and automate personalized showering experiences. The Kohler Konnect app allows you to, for example, create and manage presets for sound, water, steam, and lighting.

With an optional bridge, you can use voice commands to access those presets, or use the system’s wall-mounted interface, to adjust water temperature, and control shower heads, music, lighting, steam, and shower duration.

HomeKit compatibility should enable both products to be controllable with Siri or Apple’s Home app for iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch.

Kohler’s other new smart home products integrated with its Kohler Konnect platform include its Verdera mirror with built-in Amazon Alexa, Numi intelligent toilet, PureWarmth toilet seat, and PerfectFill technology for bathtubs.

Kohler said the Verdera mirror with Amazon Alexa will be available for purchase from March 2018 in the United States. The other new Kohler Konnect products are planned for release later this year. Pricing has not been disclosed.

The Home Depot sells Kohler’s existing Sensate faucet and DTV+ shower system sans Konnect for $523 and $794 respectively in the United States.

Tags: HomeKit, CES 2018, Kohler
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