Turing Robotics files for bankruptcy, CEO assures company isn’t finished

Back in mid-2015, Turing Robotics Industries unveiled its delightfully quirky debut smartphone, an encrypted Android device encased in colorful chrome. Though we cautioned that it could be delayed for a myriad of reasons that often plague small companies, we looked forward to their release in December…then delayed until early 2016…and long story short, it didn’t ship at all. Now the company is filing for bankruptcy in Salo, Finland where it had rented a warehouse for manufacturing.

But not to worry, Turing Robotics CEO Steve Chao assured customers in a Facebook post: That doesn’t mean the company is actually bankrupt. Finnish publication Salon Seudon Sanomat broke the news of the company’s financial issues, reporting that creditors had filed a claim with Turing Robotics last year leading to the seizure of its movable property.

Whether that’s true or not, the company has strung along customers for years, pivoting the phone to Sailfish OS in early 2016 and chasing news of more delays with promises for wildly better features in entirely new phones. But Chao isn’t ready to give up: In a following report, he told Salon Seudon Sanomat that he’s starting a new company in Salo with his old partners, and naming it Turing Robotic Industries Kepler.

Via: Android Police

Source: Salon Seudon Sanomat

Google adds AR objects to its GIF-making Android app

Google is the latest company to borrow Snapchat’s augmented reality features, although this time it’s not grafting them on to a social app. The company has released a new version of Motion Stills for Android that brings AR objects to your animated GIFs and videos. You can add chickens, dinosaurs and other objects to any horizontal surface in your shot, whether it’s your hand, a plant or a table. And importantly, you don’t have to be finicky when capturing your footage to make the result seem ‘natural’ — it’s using instant motion tracking tech that avoids the jarring visual anomalies you sometimes get in AR.

The moment you tap the viewfinder to place an object, Motion Stills plunks an object in that scene with the assumption that the surface in question is parallel to the ground, using the phone’s accelerometer as a reference point. It then separates the camera’s rotation and translation estimates to create a 3D translation, and combines that with gyroscopic data to give you a truly perspective-correct view of virtual objects, even if you pan away and come back. You don’t need to calibrate it, and it should work on any Android device with a gyroscope (that is, you shouldn’t need ARCore).

There’s no mention of if or when this might be available for iOS users. That might require considerably more work if it happens, since the current implementation is dependent on Android tech. If you do have an Android phone, however, this gives you an easy way to spice up clips that you can share just about anywhere, not just on your social network of choice.

Source: Google Research Blog, Google Play

Embark’s self-driving semi completes trip from California to Florida

Last year, autonomous trucking company Embark announced that it would begin using its Level 2 autonomous semis to deliver refrigerators from Texas to California. Now, TechCrunch reports, the company has taken it a step further as one of its trucks has now completed a 2,400 mile trip from Los Angeles to Jacksonville, Florida. The trip took five days, which included scheduled rest breaks for the driver that was on board, and TechCrunch says that Embark’s team is now assessing all of the trip’s data. While there’s no word yet on just how often the system required the driver to step in, those on board said that the truck went “hours at a time with no disengagements, and when they did occur they were usually only a few seconds,” according to Embark CEO Alex Rodrigues.

Embark’s autonomous systems don’t use high-resolution maps. They instead use sensor data and machine learning and the success of this long-distance trip demonstrates that this sort of setup is adequate for highway driving. Rodrigues told TechCrunch that the company plans to have 40 trucks in its fleet by the end of this year.

Embark says that its trucks aren’t aimed at replacing human drivers but are instead a means of dealing with growing driver shortages. In a statement he made last year, Rodrigues said, “By allowing automation to work together with local drivers to handle less desirable long haul routes, we will be able to increase productivity to address the current 50,000 driver shortage while also creating new local driving jobs that attract younger drivers for the industry.”

Via: TechCrunch

SpaceX successfully launches its Falcon Heavy rocket

Today, SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket successfully lifted off from Pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. This was the first flight of the 27-engine rocket; so far, the mission appears to be going well. The rocket made it through the the moment of maximum stress and released the two outer cores, which have now successfully landed back at Kennedy Space Center.

However, it will be some time before we know whether the Falcon Heavy’s demo flight was a full success. After liftoff, the rocket will coast for six hours before a trans-Mars injection burn. Elon Musk revealed the details of the Falcon Heavy mission in a conference call with the press earlier this week and emphasized the risks at every stage of the flight.

The successful launch of the Falcon Heavy signals a giant step forward in spaceflight; it is the most powerful operational rocket in the world. The rocket has a few more launches scheduled, but now that SpaceX has demonstrated that it works (and assuming the mission goes well), it’s likely more customers will be interested in the Falcon Heavy.

Update, 4:19 PM ET: We’re still not sure what’s going on with the core booster. We’ll update as soon as there’s word from SpaceX.

Update: 4:40 PM ET: Looks like the upper stage of the rocket is performing as expected, according to Elon Musk.

Upper stage restart nominal, apogee raised to 7000 km. Will spend 5 hours getting zapped in Van Allen belts & then attempt final burn for Mars.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 6, 2018

Mallory Locklear contributed to this post.

Get your hotel rooms and flights right from Google search

Google Flights is already a great place to search when you’re headed out on vacation or business trips. It uses AI to predict possible flight delays, too, and helps you find rate information on hotels and airline tickets based on peak travel times. Now some new updates will help you find and book hotels and flights right in a Google search.

The company says that it also added improved price filtering, easier to find information on amenities, along with the new booking feature. There are some new interface features that help you check travel options on your mobile phone, too. Over the next few days, you’ll see a “Hotels” option to tap at the top of a Google Flight search page. That way, you can see hotel availability and prices for whatever destination city you’ve already chosen. If you’d rather search for hotels first, you can flip over to the Flights tab as well to check prices and book your air travel. In addition, you can search by destination, then look up flights and hotels from there. Plus, companies like Last Minute Travel are connected to the system, so you can use them from your search results, too.

Need more? Simply tap on “More Destinations” at the top left of your search results and see more places to go. If you’ve booked travel via Google or have reservations in your Gmail, you’ll be able to see it all in the new private Your Trips section. You can email these details directrly from Your Trips, too. If you need offline access, they’ll show up in the Google Trips app.

Source: Google

‘Game of Thrones’ showrunners will write a new ‘Star Wars’ series

If you were excited for Rian Johnson’s upcoming trilogy of Star Wars films, there’s even nerdier news incoming. Another film series in a galaxy far, far away has just been announced — and they will be written and produced by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, the showrunners of HBO’s Game of Thrones.

The only thing we know about the new series is that it will be from both the main Skywalker saga and Johnson’s trilogy. Otherwise, nothing has been announced regarding their focus or release dates, though Weiss and Benioff noted they won’t start work on the films until Game of Thrones’ final season wraps. But at least this suggests a broader Star Wars universe beyond the stories we grew up watching.

“David and Dan are some of the best storytellers working today,” Kathleen Kennedy, president of Lucasfilm, said in a statement according to Variety. “Their command of complex characters, depth of story and richness of mythology will break new ground and boldly push Star Wars in ways I find incredibly exciting.”

“In the summer of 1977 we traveled to a galaxy far, far away, and we’ve been dreaming of it ever since,” Benioff and Weiss said in a joint statement. “We are honored by the opportunity, a little terrified by the responsibility, and so excited to get started as soon as the final season of Game of Thrones is complete.”

Source: Variety

Snap’s efforts to reel in new users are starting to pay off

It’s been a year since Snap Inc filed for its IPO, and all told, it’s been a tepid 12 months for the company. Despite launching its own TV shows as well as those in collaboration with big-name companies like NBC, ESPN and MGM Television, Snap has struggled to win over new users, and even saw a major partner like CNN end its daily Snapchat show. But according to its fourth quarter earnings report, the company has finally managed to add new daily active users (DAU) at a record high rate of 5 percent, which represents “the highest net adds since Q3 2016.” That’s still measly compared to Instagram’s 100 million new users in the third quarter of 2017, but at least Snap is making some progress.

At the company’s last earnings call, CEO Evan Spiegel admitted that user growth had been slower than he would have liked. To encourage more people to use its service, Snap launched a big redesign, continued to add more features to its filters and brought its Stories to the web. But the company still struggled, laying off 22 employees last month and centralizing its operations in Los Angeles.

All these measures appear to have contributed to the improved user growth though. Spiegel said in prepared remarks that were released alongside today’s earnings that “Our business really came together towards the end of last year.” He also cited improvements to the company’s Android app as part of the reason DAU numbers have risen, saying “people who try Snapchat on Android are much more likely to stick around and become Daily Active Users.” According to him, the app saw “significantly more new Android users as a percentage of net additional users than any other quarter in our history.”

Its iOS apps continue to dominate, as Spiegel said Bitmoji and Snapchat ended the year as the first and second most popular apps of 2017 in the Apple App Store, which bears out. Snapchat’s AR filters prove to be popular as well, with Spiegel claiming that “every week, on average, more than half of the entire 13-34-year-old population of the United States plays with augmented reality Lenses.”

According to a recent leak, though, Snapchat also has a hard time getting people to use its non-chat features. Most recently, it launched an in-app store to sell plush toys, hats and apparel featuring characters from its popular stickers — a curious decision that signals a capitalization on its brand rather than making more ill-fated Spectacles.

Still, Snap saw its revenue grow 104 percent (to about $825 million) since the previous year, although the company recorded an overall net loss of about $3.4 billion. That includes $2.6 billion of stock-based compensation expenses.

While we still don’t really know how well Snapchat’s shows perform, Spiegel said the company’s been “seeing great traction around our new Shows format.” He provided this statistic to prove his point: “In the fourth quarter, more 13-34-year-old US viewers watched an average episode of Face Forward by E! on Snapchat than many of the most popular television shows during the same period.”

We got more concrete numbers around the popularity of Snapchat’s sports content — “this season we entertained more than 30 million football fans in the United States with over 400 NFL Stories.” With these results, Snap has “generated over $100 million in revenue for our content partners” and looks to “deepen these relationships” in the coming years.

Spiegel also addressed the company’s human resources challenges, noting that the company had hired 2,400 people in the past two years (translating to a rate of about 100 a month). He said that Snap plans “to moderate the growth of our team over the next year.” He added, “We are determined to have a close-knit, hardworking team that is brimming with positive energy and we will continue to make the necessary changes to ensure that everyone at our company is aligned with our values.”

This story is developing…

Arnold Schwarzenegger will star in Amazon western series

Arnold Schwarzenegger is set to appear in yet another Terminator film next year, but soon he’ll branch out into a new genre for the veteran action hero: Westerns. Amazon is developing a new series called Outrider, with the former California Governor set to play a ruthless Federal Marshall helping a deputy hunt down a legendary outlaw.

The show doesn’t have a release date yet. Schwarzenegger will executive produce, as will Mace Neufeld, who’s performing the same function for Amazon’s upcoming Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan series. While it’ll be fun to see the Austrian film legend take on television, it’s a shame he hasn’t been attached to the just-announced Conan the Barbarian show on the same streaming network.

Via: Variety

Source: Deadline

Latest iOS beta shows how battery health settings will work

In a letter to Senator John Thune, Apple confirmed that it would bring transparency to the way its iPhones handle CPU slowdowns due to aging lithium-ion batteries. If you have an Apple Developer account, you can check out the solution the company has baked right into its upcoming iOS 11.3 release. As first noticed by 9to5Mac, the iOS 11.3 beta has a new “Battery Health” system preference screen, with a “Performance Management” section.

In the new “Peak Performance Capability” section of the Battery Health screen, you can now see the maximum capacity of your battery (as compared to when it was new), and you can also see if the operating system has applied a performance management tweak due to an “unexpected shutdown because the battery was unable to deliver the necessary peak power,” as the explanation reads.

Image Credit: 9to5Mac

9to5Mac notes that all devices that upgrade to the new iOS will start with this management system disabled. Your iPhone will enable it if it shuts down unexpectedly, and you can disable it in the Battery Health section now. In its letter to the senator this past weekend, Apple said that newer iPhones like the 8, 8 Plus and X use a more advanced system to manage battery performance.

Source: 9to5Mac

Target Launches iTunes Digital Card Sale: Buy One, Get One 20% Off

Target this week has launched one of the first notable App Store and iTunes gift card discounts since the holidays, offering shoppers the chance to buy one iTunes card at regular price and get a second one for 20 percent off. While not as good as the straight 15 percent discounts for a single card we’ve seen over the past few months, this is one of the only iTunes card sales going on right now, so it could be a good opportunity to add some credit to your iTunes account.

Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with some of these vendors. When you click a link and make a purchase, we may receive a small payment, which helps us keep the site running.

The offer is valid on $15, $25, $50, and $100 iTunes cards and will be delivered via email. The 20 percent discount will be applied to the lower priced item, so multiple price tiers can be added at once, and after two cards are placed in your cart you’ll notice the discount. Target noted that quantities are limited, but the sale is planned to last through Friday, February 16 at 11:59 p.m. PT. We’ve rounded up a few examples of the savings you can net with Target’s new offer below:

• 2x $15 iTunes cards: $27, down from $30
• 2x $25 iTunes cards: $45, down from $50
• 2x $50 iTunes Cards: $90, down from $100

If you’re a Costco member, you have a chance to save a bit more money with discounts closer to the 15 percent savings seen in previous iTunes gift card sales. Costco’s members-only iTunes sale will end this Saturday, February 10.

In addition to the iTunes card sales, Amazon’s Gold Box Deal of the Day might be worth checking out for anyone interested in saving money on an older, refurbished iMac. The timed deal has the 21.5-inch iMac from late 2013 (2.9GHz, 8GB RAM, 1TB HD) priced at $699.99, down from $1,199.99. The iMac is sold by Woot through Amazon, and is said to show limited or no wear and include all original accessories.

If you’re looking for more information on the latest discounts, head over to our full Deals Roundup.

Related Roundup: Apple DealsTag: Target
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