Google’s Phone app is getting chat heads like Facebook Messenger

An update rolling out to Google phones, including Pixel and Android One devices, will give the Phone app a new but familiar feature. Android Police has discovered in an APK teardown that the app is getting circular floating chat heads, which are pretty much identical to Facebook Messenger’s. They’ll appear when you leave the call screen — you can drag them anywhere on your display, and they’ll stay visible on top of other apps. You’ll also see a menu when you tap on the icon, with options to go back to call, to mute, to put it on speakerphone or to end it. Unfortunately, it’s unclear if it’ll eventually make its way to all Android devices.

Android Police has captured the bubble icon in action, and as you can see above, it looks just like Messenger’s. In addition to chat heads, Phone app version 17 might finally add Real-Time Text support for the hearing or speech-impaired and pretty much anyone who needs it. Android Police says it’s unsure if the feature is rolling out with version 17 or if Google is merely getting close to releasing it. In the APK’s page, though, it says “Google-powered voicemail transcription for T-Mobile USA users” under “What’s New.” You can download the APK yourself if you want to get Phone version 17 right now, but you can also wait for Google to officially roll out the update.

Source: Android Police

Peter Thiel might be getting out of Silicon Valley

The Wall Street Journal reports today that Peter Thiel — billionaire, investor and Gawker-killer — might be cutting many of his ties with Silicon Valley. The paper spoke to sources it says are familiar with Thiel and his plans and they said that the shift is largely due to the Bay Area’s left-leaning politics and what Thiel sees as its intolerance for conservative views. Supposedly, he’s considering leaving Facebook’s board and plans to move to Los Angeles. Thiel Capital and Thiel Foundation, companies that manage his investments, may also be relocated to LA.

Thiel, a co-founder of PayPal and an early investor of Facebook, has had his hands and his cash in a number of startups and major tech companies, and he’s been an influential Silicon Valley figure for decades. But he hasn’t been welcomed by everyone there. His politics, and particularly his support of Donald Trump’s campaign and early presidency, ruffled a lot of feathers in the tech world, including those of Facebook board member and Netflix CEO Reed Hastings. The possibility of Thiel leaving Facebook’s board came up during the height of Thiel’s dispute with Hastings, but Mark Zuckerberg released a statement at the time saying the company was keeping him around because it supported diversity.

But Facebook isn’t the only company that has come under fire for its involvement with Thiel. Diversity initiative Project Include cut ties with venture incubator Y Combinator because of its connection with Thiel and though it wasn’t clear why, Y Combinator later parted ways with Thiel. Over the last couple of years, Thiel has also left the boards of Zenefits and Asana and has sold off the majority of his stakes in Twilio and Facebook. But he remains involved with other companies, including Palantir Technologies — a data-mining and analytics company whose tools are used by US Customs and Border Protection as well as ICE to track immigrants in the US.

If Thiel really does pull back from Silicon Valley and the tech world, it would be rather notable, if for nothing else because of just how involved he’s been. Some may welcome the thought, but even if Thiel moves, it doesn’t mean he’s going away. And according to the Wall Street Journal’s sources, Thiel’s next move might be a conservative media outlet. Time will tell if these reports reflect Thiel’s true intentions, but Silicon Valley eyes will certainly remain on the billionaire, whether they’re watching him stay or go.

Source: The Wall Street Journal

Facebook Community Help crisis tool is no longer limited to individuals

Facebook has been evolving its Safety Check feature over the last year, adding complementary capabilities to go alongside it and building it into a crisis hub. Last February, Facebook introduced Community Help, a feature that allowed users to find and provide help during a crisis and in September, it launched Crisis Response, a one-stop spot where people could access Safety Check, Community Help and media, like articles and videos, related to an ongoing crisis. Now, Facebook has announced some changes to Community Help that will allow organizations and businesses to post in the forum rather than just individuals.

“Enabling organizations and businesses to post in Community Help will give them a new way to reach communities impacted by crises,” Facebook said in its announcement. “For example, they might post about helping people find everything from free transportation to supplies and connecting volunteers with organizations that need help.” It pointed out that Community Help had been used during more than 500 global crises including Hurricane Harvey, the floods in Brazil and Mumbai, the earthquake in Central Mexico and the attack in Barcelona. Through over 750,000 posts, comments and messages, people have accessed and organized volunteer opportunities, emergency shelter as well as food and clothing donations.

Facebook is rolling out the feature to businesses and organizations starting now and at launch groups like Direct Relief, Feeding America, International Medical Corps, the California Department of Forestry and Fire, Lyft and Save the Children have access. Facebook says it will become available to more groups in the coming weeks.

“We hope this update makes it even easier for people to get the help they need in times of crisis and will give businesses and organizations an opportunity to build stronger communities around them,” said Facebook.

Source: Facebook

Essential’s PH-1 phone is getting new limited edition colors

Essential’s first smartphone wasn’t exactly perfect, but it was beautifully designed. Its existing black and white models aren’t striking enough for everyone, though, which is why the Andy Rubin-helmed startup will soon start pushing out a handful of limited edition color options. And thankfully, the first one to be released is the blue-and-copper Ocean Depths finish the company teased from the very beginning.

Here’s how the process will work: starting today, that Ocean Depths model will be available directly from Essential. Then, the Stellar Gray model with a matte black back and a dark titanium frame will go on sale on February 20, followed by a piano black model with a bright copper frame on February 22. All of these limited edition devices will sell for $599, and after seeing them very, very briefly, I can conclusively say they look lovely. Essential declined to comment on how large these production runs are, though, so there’s no telling how long it’ll take for these things to sell out.

Essential

Honestly, it’s not hard to look at the release of these colorways as an attempt to drum up interest in a phone whose hype has largely quieted since its launch last year. After all, a recent report from IDC suggests the startup sold fewer than 90,000 devices during its first six months on the market, even after Essential chopped $200 off the phone’s permanent price. (When asked, an Essential spokesperson told us the company “doesn’t comment on third-party reports.”) The limited nature of these redesigned devices, however, means they may not have a huge impact on overall unit sales and Essential’s bottom line. Ask Essential, though, and they’ll tell you this is by design.

From the beginning, Essential positioned itself as a company uninterested in selling millions of devices out of the gate. Its approach, as a result, feels sort of artisanal, and that seems even more true of these limited edition models. Rather than partner with ceramics vendors that could more quickly scale up production of these new colors, Essential instead decided to work with an experienced vendor from Japan on a smaller run where they could more closely control the quality of these finishes. (The Ocean Depths model, in particular, was a difficult one to perfect — some back panels came out more green than blue and vice versa.)

It’s currently unclear whether these will be the last updated Essential phones to be released before the true sequel is finished. In any case, we’ll soon see if a handful of new colors is all it takes to get people excited about Essential again.

Viveport VR subscriptions will cost $2 more starting March 22nd

HTC launched a monthly subscription for VR apps last spring, allowing users to choose up to five titles per month for $6.99/£6.99. As of March 22nd though, the price of that Viveport plan is going up. The company announced today that beginning next month, a Viveport subscription will cost $8.99/£8.99. However, there are a few caveats. First, existing customers will stay with the original $6.99 price through “at least” the end of the year.

Second, anyone who signs up before the March 22nd deadline will be locked in to the current pricing as well. Only new users who opt in after the cutoff date will have to pay the higher rate. As you might expect, there aren’t any specifics listed as the cause of the change. “We believe Viveport Subscription is the absolute best value offering in VR today, and we want to make sure you get the best value,” a blog post explains. Of course, it’s not really a surprise that a subscription like Viveport would get a price increase at some point. The service currently touts over 375 titles and snapping up new content isn’t cheap — just ask Netflix.

To help offset the price hike, there will be some changes to what’s included with a Viveport subscription. Members can expect free codes for apps and games starting this month with new items arriving “regularly.” The so-called Weekend Deals on Viveport discounts will now be exclusive to subscribers and the company says more perks will be announced at a later date.

Source: Vive

B&O’s upgrade for old speakers requires some heavy tinkering

In 2018, most new speakers come with WiFi and/or Bluetooth as standard options. Let’s face it: Almost everyone is using their phone to access music these days, so wireless connectivity is a must. However, if you invested in a set of non-connected speakers before the wireless craze hit, you may not want to shell out more money to replace them just yet. For older passive speaker setups, Bang & Olufsen has an option for getting that connectivity thanks to a collaboration with HiFiBerry. You’ll have to get your hands dirty, though.

The $189/£149 Beocreate 4 channel amplifier is a development-style board that can be added to those older speakers to bring them new life in 2018. We’re talking about models like the Beovox CX50 and CX100 that haven’t been made for years. And as you might expect, B&O and HiFiBerry say the Beocerate will work with “any generic loudspeaker” in a similar fashion. The add-on brings up to 180 watts of power, enough for up to four 4-8 Ohm speakers. It also packs in a four-channel DAC (digital-to-analog converter) and runs on a 12-24 volt power supply.

B&O’s Beovox CX50

Here’s the catch: You have to supply your own Raspberry Pi to make the most of the Beocerate 4. If you don’t, you only get the benefits of the amp without the WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity. This also means that you won’t be able to tap into included software, even though HiFiBerry warns only experienced DSP tinkerers should make any tweaks there.

Beocreate is a very specific option for passive loud speakers that you’re likely already using with a receiver. Chances are that setup also has an audio jack that can accommodate a device like Chromecast Audio — which provides the aforementioned connectivity for older gear with a lot less fuss. B&O and HiFiBerry are turning those passive speakers into standalone connected devices which (unsurprisingly) takes more effort. Sure, this is for experienced audio nerds, but for those who don’t have the time or skills required, easier (and cheaper) options do exist.

Source: HiFiBerry

Samsung halts S8 Android Oreo update due to reboot glitch

If you were hoping Android Oreo would make its way to your Galaxy S8 soon, well, it sounds like you’re going to have to wait. Samsung has halted the firmware rollout, as spotted by SamMobile, because the software was causing some handsets to randomly reboot. The rollout began in Europe, where users in the beta program noticed the problem. If you already downloaded and installed, you can keep using the software. But if you downloaded and didn’t install, apparently the files will be deleted from your phone. Samsung is working on a fix but hasn’t revealed when it will arrive.

Via: The Verge

Source: SamMobile (1), (2)

Defunding the ISS might just help get us to Mars

There’s good news for NASA in the Trump administration’s proposed FY2019 budget and some bad. On the one hand, the space agency would receive a minor funding boost — NASA itself would get $19.9 billion, a 1.3 percent increase over 2017, while its science directorate would receive $5.9 billion, a 2.3 percent increase.

On the other hand, not only does the current administration want to cut funding for the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST), which would hunt for exoplanets and dark matter, it also wants to defund the International Space Station after 2024, when the US’s current commitment to the multinational project expires. Instead, Trump’s team hopes that a consortium of private businesses will take over running the station come 2025. The problem is, nobody really knows how (or even if) that would work.

But don’t worry just yet, according to NASA documents obtained by the Washington Post, it’s not as if the ISS is going to come crashing out of the sky unannounced in the middle of the next decade. “The decision to end direct federal support for the ISS in 2025 does not imply that the platform itself will be deorbited at that time — it is possible that industry could continue to operate certain elements or capabilities of the ISS as part of a future commercial platform,” the document states. “NASA will expand international and commercial partnerships over the next seven years in order to ensure continued human access to and presence in low Earth orbit.”

Congress has long grappled with what to do with the aging station, which is coming up on 18 years of service. While President Obama extended federal funding to the ISS by a decade in 2014, the debate over what to do with it after that remains a sticking point. During a House Subcommittee on Space meeting in 2017, advocates argued that the station should be privatized in order to keep it operational past 2024.

“The ISS has really been an amazing platform,” Dr. Ellen Stofan, NASA’s Chief Scientist from 2013 to 2016, told Engadget. “What we’ve achieved as an international community with the ISS, I think is amazing on many fronts — obviously as an international tool of showing how countries can get along in space, when they can’t get along necessarily on the ground.”

“We’ve done a lot to show that microgravity is a really interesting environment that has a lot of potential that we just fully don’t understand,” she continued “To give you one example, some bacteria become more virulent in space. Some become less virulent. There are basically genes switching on and off in response to microgravity, in ways that you can certainly argue we really haven’t had enough time to fully investigate.”

In fact, NASA has made intriguing advancements in a variety of fields, from the effects of microgravity on combustion to the growth of protein crystals, which is of great interest to the pharmaceutical industry, and especially what microgravity does to the human body, critical information we’ll need to know if we’re ever going to successfully send people on an eight-month trip to Mars.

“We’ve learned an awful lot, and we’ve been putting that to use in terms of saying how do you plan to get humans out further into deep space,” Stofan said. “The ISS has been the ideal test platform for that.”

However, this scientific progress comes at a cost. Keeping the station running requires an annual investment of $3 to $4 billion and totals more than $87 billion since its inception in 1993. What’s more, the US has already spent an additional $136 million on a 10-year contract with the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS) to manage non-NASA research aboard the station.

In July of last year, NASA extended that contract to 2024 at a further cost of $60 million. However, earlier this year, NASA’s Office of Inspector General released audit findings stating that CASIS was severely underperforming despite the fact that, “much of the ISS’s future success as a research platform for non-government entities hinged on CASIS’s ability to attract sufficient funding from private users.”

Instead, Stafon believes the more prudent course of action is to take the ISS budget and apply it towards getting people progressively farther from Earth; first to the moon and then to Mars. “In the fiscally constrained budget environment we’re in, NASA can’t expect another three to five billion dollars that it’s gonna take to get humans beyond low earth orbit,” she explained. “So you have to say, unless we wanna stay in low earth orbit forever, we’re gonna have to take that wedge of money and apply it [to deep space research].”

We’d be buying probably Russian rides to the Chinese space station, which just sounds like a geopolitical disaster.

“NASA’s part of the discretionary part of the federal budget,” she continued. “There’s not another three to five billion dollars that’s coming to us; the federal government just doesn’t have that kind of money.

That said, not everybody is onboard with the idea. “I don’t think it’s an either/or proposition but what I do think is important to realize that we cannot explore deeper space without having a presence in the Earth’s orbit,” Michael Lopez-Alegria, former NASA astronaut and Commander of the ISS, told Engadget. “If we give up the idea that prematurely we’re going to lose our presence.”

“I think it’s premature to say we’re going to get rid of the ISS on a certain date,” he said. Instead, the switchover should occur “whenever we are comfortable that the successor to the ISS is viable such that we can continue to have access to low Earth orbit.”

Lopez-Alegria isn’t the only one with reservations about this plan. Senator Bill Nelson (D-Florida) is a vocal opponent against the plan. He worries that ending federal funding for the ISS would be catastrophic for the domestic commercial aerospace industry, much of which is located in his state.

If the administration plans to abruptly pull us out of the International Space Station in 2025, they’re going to have a fight on their hands. This would likely decimate FL’s commercial space industry and hinder our ability to experiment in low-Earth orbit. https://t.co/MdBVwCYHVR

— Bill Nelson (@SenBillNelson) January 25, 2018

But Nelson isn’t just howling at the moon here. As a member of the Senate Commerce Committee, he helps oversee both NASA-related legislation and the confirmation of officials to the agency. Nelson has already dug his heels in against the Trump administration’s recommendation of Rep. Jim Bridenstine (R-OK) as the new NASA administrator, whom Nelson believes is unqualified to hold the position.

There’s also the issue that no ISS is an island. The station is not sovereign American territory but rather a 15-nation collaboration. As such, “I think this has to be a conversation,” with our international partners Stafon said. “They’re interested in going to the moon and going to Mars. And everybody is dealing with tight budgets. All of the partners of the ISS need to come together and have a joint conversation” to make some hard decisions about the fate of the station moving forward.

The US also stands to lose face amongst the international community, should it pull the plug on the ISS too soon. China has already announced plans to set up its own six-person space station in LEO by 2023. Giving up the ISS and relying on the Chinese to house international astronauts — much like how the US relied on Russian rockets to ferry crew members to the ISS after ending the Shuttle program — does not sit well with Lopez-Alegria.

“At the risk of sounding kind of nationalistic, I think that’s a terrible idea,” he said. “I hate to say it but we’d sort of be abdicating our leadership role [in space exploration]. If we eliminated the ISS partnership, that would put a serious dent in that reputation.” Not unlike America’s abdication of its leadership role in climate change after withdrawing from the Paris Accords. And we all saw how well that turned out.

Lopez-Alegria points out that NASA has already spent a large amount of money on developing crewed access to the ISS as part of its Orion project, which hasn’t even gotten off the ground yet. “If ISS went away, if there were no US commercial successor, we’d be buying probably Russian rides to the Chinese space station, which just sounds like a geopolitical disaster.”

Of course, this could simply be another example of Trump’s bluster and saber-rattling. “I’m not reacting too negatively to this news in the President’s budget request because it doesn’t take place for a long time, and who knows what’s going to happen between now and then?” Lopez-Alegria concluded. “But I do think it is a shot across the bow, so to speak, to both industry and NASA to start working harder on that transition.” Lucky for America’s space ambitions, there’s at least one (probably two) administration changes between now and 2024. We’ll have to wait and see how the situation shakes out.

FDA approves blood test that determines severity of concussions

The FDA announced this week that it has approved a blood test that can quickly and reliably detect signs of a concussion. Typically, when someone seeks medical care following a head injury, they’re subjected to a neurological test and/or a CT scan. However, CT scans can only detect bleeding or swelling in the brain, and for injuries that are more minor but still serious, those scans aren’t terribly useful. Additionally, if CT scans don’t spot anything, and in many cases they don’t, the person undergoing the scan has been subjected to unnecessary radiation and, usually, an unneeded expense.

Similarly, neurological tests, which take some time to complete, aren’t always accurate since the medical professional conducting it doesn’t always have the patient’s baseline performance to compare it to. So, taking all of that into account, serious brain injuries can slip through the cracks. But a blood test could provide an objective measure of head trauma that could give physicians more solid information to work off of and help guide their treatment plans.

The test approved by the FDA was developed by Banyan Biomarkers and it measures two proteins the brain releases into the blood after a head injury. The FDA says that it was able to predict the presence of a brain lesion 97.5 percent of the time and correctly determine who didn’t have a lesion 99.6 percent of the time. Such a test could be used by physicians to help them decide whether more extensive examinations, like CT scans, might be warranted.

The FDA says that the test, or the Brain Trauma Indicator as it’s called, is only approved for adults for now, but Banyan Biomarkers plans to conduct a clinical trial that will evaluate its effectiveness in children who’ve sustained a head injury. While the test will likely appeal to the sports world, and particularly those involved in football — which has become infamous for head trauma that is suspected to be linked to life-threatening disorders like chronic traumatic encephalopathy — it’s also caught the eye of the US Department of Defense. Military officials have been interested in a way to effectively detect brain injuries in soldiers and the New York Times reports that the Pentagon funded a clinical trial that helped get the test approved.

A quick and accurate way to detect concussions is certainly a useful tool and one that stands to help thousands or even millions of people who sustain head injuries each year. However, preventing and treating concussions is also an important part of the puzzle.

“Helping to deliver innovative testing technologies that minimize health impacts to patients while still providing accurate and reliable results to inform appropriate evaluation and treatment is an FDA priority,” FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said in a statement. “Today’s action supports the FDA’s Initiative to Reduce Unnecessary Radiation Exposure from Medical Imaging — an effort to ensure that each patient is getting the right imaging exam, at the right time, with the right radiation dose.”

Via: New York Times

Source: FDA

Apple Recorded More Than Half of Total Smartphone Industry Revenue in iPhone X Launch Quarter

Apple captured a record 51 percent share of revenue in the worldwide smartphone industry last quarter, which encompassed the launch of the iPhone X, according to research firm Strategy Analytics.

iPhone revenue totaled $61.5 billion in the fourth quarter of 2017, as Apple disclosed in its earnings report earlier this month. Strategy Analytics estimates Apple’s smartphone revenue was three times higher than its nearest rival Samsung and seven times more than Chinese competitor Huawei.

Apple accounted for more smartphone revenue than the rest of the entire industry combined in the quarter, driven by “solid demand” for the iPhone X, said Strategy Analytics executive director Neil Mawston.

iPhone’s average selling price was $796 last quarter, up from $695 in year-ago quarter, which Strategy Analytics estimates to be almost three times higher than the overall industry average. Apple sold 77.3 million iPhones in the quarter, but it didn’t disclose how many of those sales were iPhone X models.

Priced at $999 and up, the iPhone X has undoubtedly helped Apple increase its revenue share in the smartphone industry. What’s more important is profits, however, and the iPhone often accounts for over 100 percent of net income in the smartphone industry when factoring in the losses posted by some rivals.

Related Roundup: iPhone XTag: Strategy AnalyticsBuyer’s Guide: iPhone X (Buy Now)
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