Lyft will test its autonomous cars in a former military base

In July 2017, Lyft announced that it’s joining the autonomous vehicle race and even opened a dedicated research facility in Palo Alto. Now, it’s already preparing to put its technology to the test: the ride-hailing firm plans to test its self-driving cars at Gomentum Station in California. It’s a 5,000-acre autonomous vehicle proving grounds, which used to be the Concord Naval Weapons Station military base. Testing vehicles at the proving grounds will bring Lyft closer to unleashing its vehicles on public roads — something it has to do before it can officially release a self-driving fleet.

It’s unclear when trials will begin, but the vehicles it’s putting to the test at Gomentum Station will come straight from its Level 5 Engineering Center in Palo Alto. Lyft’s self-driving tactic involves teaming up with various automakers and tech giants. Level 5’s engineers, hardware and software developers are working with companies like General Motors, Land Rover, Jaguar and Waymo under Lyft’s Open Platform Initiative in order to develop the ride-hailing firm’s technology.

Lyft will probably test familiar cars loaded with its self-driving tech at the Station — we’ll know for sure once the company reveals more info about this particular project in the future. “By partnering with GoMentum Station,” said Lyft’s VP of Engineering Luc Vincent, “we’re able to test our self-driving systems in a secure facility and advance our technology in an efficient way.”

Source: Gomentum Station

The Tasty OneTop smart cooker ruined my dinner party

It’s been quite a drama for me in the kitchen lately: Due to a leak in my building, my cooking gas was shut off for 11 months. It’s back now, but for most of last year I had to get by with takeout, microwaveables and oh-so-many salads. Tasty’s OneTop seems tailor-made for these type of situations. It’s an induction cooktop, which means it goes anywhere you can plug it in. And Tasty’s step-by-step instructions make the whole cooking process manageable. It’s the kind of thing you’d happily play with in a college dorm. Or, in my case, a small New York City apartment with no working stove. Every year I always have a few people over to watch the Oscars, so that seemed like a good opportunity to give the OneTop a spin. Home-cooked food and a new gadget to play with! Perfect pre-show entertainment!

The big conceit of the OneTop over other electromagnetic induction burners is how it connects with the Tasty app over Bluetooth. Tasty specializes in those bird’s-eye videos that walk you through each stage of a recipe quickly. They’re fun to watch and generally give you a good idea of how hard a given dish might be to prepare. The app lets you watch the video at your own pace and follow along at home. The OneTop’s advantage is that when connected to the app, it can automatically adjust its temperature according to what stage you’re at in the recipe. It’s supposed to be easier and more precise.

The first step in this supposed ease of use was to download the Tasty app. I whipped out my Android device and went poking through Google Play, where there were several apps called Tasty but none that were the official one. It turns out that Tasty is iPhone-only right now. I ended up grabbing my iPad and installing it there. The lack of an Android app was annoying, but the decision to not have an actual iPad app is puzzling, given how many people use their tablets for cooking. That’s definitely among the top five uses I have for my own iPad, as I appreciate having the larger screen to work with.

In the app itself there’s an icon at the bottom for the OneTop, which takes you to a screen filled with recipe categories and a giant blue button to connect. I tapped it, the OneTop chimed and it was done. I’ve struggled in the past to get devices to connect, so this was a relief.

Things got a bit murkier as I poked through the app looking for a test recipe to cook. The number of OneTop “exclusive” recipes numbers 38, with an additional 26 from the Tasty archives that are “OneTop Friendly.” That’s … not a lot. To be fair, it’s comparable to what you get in a general-purpose cookbook, but it’s still disappointing from a site that has hundreds of recipes at its disposal.

It’s also not well organized — there are a few major categories like “steak” and “eggs,” but at least three rice dishes and four desserts were tossed into the “more” section of the app when they could have occupied their own sections. And you can’t even search recipes! To find something to cook I had to browse through each dish manually, glancing over the required ingredients and equipment to gauge the difficulty level for myself. I eventually settled on a deep-fried buffalo-cauliflower recipe.

Tasty sells a set of branded pots for the OneTop on its site. They’re not required; any pot made out of magnetic material should do. However, I was sent a set with the OneTop review unit, so I gave them a spin. They’re nice pots, sturdy with good heft. I put the stock pot on the OneTop and followed the instructions to fill it halfway with oil.

I emptied the contents of a new, unopened bottle of vegetable oil into the pot and … it wasn’t enough. It stopped just shy of the temperature probe. I thought about switching pots, but the temperature probe was too long for any of the smaller ones I owned. I had to send one of my guests out to buy another bottle of oil just to fill the pot enough to reach the probe.

Now, I could have figured out how much oil I needed with a bit of research — it’s an 8-quart stock pot, so I would have needed at least four quarts. That’s far more than the 48-fluid-ounce bottles I tend to keep around my kitchen. But when the point of the OneTop is to make things easier, I shouldn’t have to look this stuff up. It should be explicitly written down in the recipe.

After that initial snafu, the next few steps were relatively simple. The OneTop began heating the oil, and I started battering the cauliflower in the cornmeal-hot sauce mixture. What’s nice about the Tasty app here is that it displayed the current temperature of the oil, so I had a general idea of how much time it was until the next step. I wouldn’t have been able to move on anyway — the “next step” button won’t appear until the OneTop is ready to go. It’s a great idea for newbies who need to stay organized but frustrating if you want to peek ahead. The app doesn’t let you go backward either. If you want to re-review a previous step or get an idea of what’s coming next, there’s a drop-down menu that lets you read the instructions, but you won’t be able to watch the corresponding video.

Once the oil was done, the “next step” button reappeared, and we were prompted to put the cauliflower in. So we brought the battered vegetables over to where we had set up the OneTop and carefully dropped them into the hot oil. It all seemed great until a few minutes later, when the app happily announced it was finished and turned off the cooker. This was not so: The cauliflower florets were still pale and soft, most definitely not the “golden brown and crispy” the recipe called for. It looks like the app started its timer the minute we advanced to the frying stage, not taking into account the time spent getting the cauliflower in. I tried to restart the timer but with no success — eventually I turned it back on manually and asked my Google Home Mini to alert us instead.

While we waited for the cauliflower to cook, I futzed with the app to try to get us back on track. The inability to go back meant I ended up restarting the entire recipe, and the timer still didn’t seem to know what it was doing. At this point I gave up on using the step-by-step mode and just went to the straight text instructions to finish up the dish. We took the cauliflower nuggets out of the oil, let them dry a bit, tossed them in the sauce and then ate straight out of the mixing bowl. There was no point in plating it at this point; I was tired of the whole thing and didn’t want to dirty more dishes. They were pretty tasty, at least.

Fantasy vs. reality

We had another cauliflower head, but at this point it just wasn’t worth the hassle. I turned off the OneTop, dumped out $14 worth of dirty oil and then opened up Seamless to order vegetarian food. That too was tasty. It was also quicker, cheaper and didn’t make me want to throw my iPad out the window.

The OneTop promises to make cooking easy, but by taking away so much of my control, all it did was make it harder to fix problems when they arose. That’s an essential skill to have in the kitchen, one you’ll never learn if you lean on the Tasty app’s half-baked experience.

Bose’s AR glasses are all about audio, not video

Bose announced today that it’s getting into the augmented reality game. But Bose AR isn’t about video, it’s about audio and through a “wafer-thin acoustics package,” the company says it can introduce a useful and relevant layer of audio into your everyday activities. Bose says the small audio technology produces powerful and clear sound and can be incorporated into wearables like headphones, eyewear and helmets.

“It places audio in your surroundings, not digital images, so you can focus on the amazing world around you — rather than a tiny display,” John Gordon, VP of the consumer electronics division at Bose, said in a statement. “It knows which way you’re facing, and can instantly connect that place and time with endless possibilities for travel, learning, music and more. And it can be added to products and apps we already use and love, removing some of the big obstacles that have kept AR on the sidelines.”

Bose sees the technology being useful in a variety of settings. While traveling, for example, Bose AR could be used to simulate historic events at landmarks, play a speech from the historic figure whose statue you’re standing in front of or help you navigate an airport. Bose’s AR tech could also help translate a sign you’re reading or provide the history behind a painting you’ve approached in a museum. And when listening to music, you wouldn’t need to mess with your phone when wanting to change a song. Instead head movements would allow you to navigate your playlist.

There’s no camera or lens included in the system. Alternatively, a Bose AR wearable would use sensors to track head motion and an iOS or Android mobile device’s GPS to determine location. That data would then be aggregated by a companion app, which, based on that information, would return relevant audio content to the user.

The company has developed a prototype pair of glasses that incorporates its AR technology. The tiny acoustics package is embedded into each arm, giving the glasses headphone-like functionality. A Bose spokesperson told CNET that the glasses will only be available to developers and manufacturers at first and the company says it will likely have an updated version of them as well as its AR SDK ready this summer.

Bose is collaborating with companies like Strava, TripAdvisor and Yelp as well as academic institutions like the MIT Media Lab and the NYU Future Reality Lab. Additional collaborations will be announced in the future.

Source: Bose

Japan tells netizens to stop confusing the olds with internet slang

Sure, internet-speak can be confusing, so older folks oftentimes can’t understand WTH younger users are trying to say. The problem is apparently much worse in Japan than it is here, however, because the government itself has decided to weigh in. Much to the amusement of many netizens, the Agency for Cultural Affairs has issued a report asking people, in effect, to knock off the crazy emojis and slang.

The report keys in on what the government considers the overuse of emojis and the misuse of internet acronyms like “TL;DR.” Japan, of course, has it’s own slang, such as “orz,” in which the letters form a pictogram to represent someone bowing in apology, as Soranews helpfully illustrates.

As many folks point out, however, nobody uses some of the examples mentioned in the report, like “おK,” which means “OK” (they just say “OK”). Commenters thus roasted it, asking “is this a headline from ten years ago?” and “haven’t we been using [this slang] for like the last 15 years?”

To be fair, the aim of the report was to keep such communication out of the workplace and is timed for the upcoming graduation of many students into the workforce. You might think that it would be fairly obvious to keep your “AFs” and “TBHs” out of formal communication, but this is a problem that has been going on for a while.

Via: SoraNews24

Source: Agency for Cultural News (translated)

Facebook has exclusive rights to 25 MLB games this season

Facebook will get exclusive rights to stream 25 afternoon MLB games, starting with one on April 4th between the Philadelphia Phillies and the New York Mets. This isn’t the first time the platform has aired baseball games — they started livestreaming some back in May 2017 — but It will be the first time a US major league has granted a social network sole rights to broadcast games.

BREAKING: @facebook gets EXCLUSIVE U.S. rights to 25 afternoon @MLB games- mostly Wednesdays beginning w/@Phillies-@Mets on 4/4. First time a major U.S. league has granted social network exclusivity. “Part of the next great leap,” says consultant @LHB_SportsMedia #sportsbiz

— Scott Soshnick (@soshnick) March 9, 2018

Fans can watch the games on the MLB Live show page on Facebook Watch, which will be globally available aside from “select international markets,” according to a press release. Each of the 25 Facebook-exclusive games will be in the afternoon (typically 1PM or 4PM ET), so no prime-time yet, but they’ll be produced by the MLB for a look and feel fans are familiar with. But they’re also the MLB’s first digital-only broadcasts, and every team is on board: All 30 major league clubs unanimously approved the deal.

On top of the live broadcasts, the MLB will also release extra content on Facebook Watch like on-demand highlights for every regular season game, as well as weekly recap highlights for each team. Late last year, sources told Sports Business Journal that Facebook would spend ‘a few billion dollars’ on sports streaming deals, and given that Amazon paid $50 million for Thursday night NFL games a year ago, the MLB arrangement might be investing in a market the social network already had a foothold in. It’s unclear how much the major league baseball deal cost Facebook.

Source: MLB Live | Facebook Watch

Apple Earns Top Spot as ‘Most Intimate Brand’ for Millennials

MBLM this week published part of its Brand Intimacy 2018 Report, with the preliminary findings focusing on responses from millennials and other young age groups. MBLM surveyed 6,000 consumers and performed 54,000 brand evaluations across 15 total industries in the United States, Mexico, and the United Arab Emirates in order to discover which brands had the deepest emotional connections with respondents.

For millennials (typically individuals in their early twenties to late thirties as of 2018), Apple earned the top spot as the most intimate brand in the U.S. In second place was Disney, followed by YouTube, Target, and Amazon. The top four spots last year for millennials were Disney in first, followed by Amazon, Netflix, and then Apple, so the company has climbed and beaten out a few well-known brands this year.

Image via PRNewsfoto/MBLM
MBLM said it was “surprised and pleased” to see YouTube climbing the rankings this year.

“We were surprised and pleased to see YouTube as an addition to the top three most intimate brands for millennials this year,” stated Mario Natarelli, managing partner, MBLM. “We believe its rise is due to our culture’s continued need for escape and the brand’s immediate, diverse content, personalities and growing offerings in movies and live TV. YouTube is clearly an established ritual in the lives of many millennials today.”

A younger age group of individuals between 18 and 24 years old kept Apple as their most intimate brand, but listed Amazon in second, then YouTube, PlayStation, Starbucks, Nintendo, Google, Netflix, Coca Cola, and Walmart.

This is just a snapshot of the larger Brand Intimacy 2018 Report, which MBLM said it will be sharing next week, on March 13. Since Apple has earned the top spot in two important age groups, it’s expected for the company to sit at number one for the overall rankings. For the 2017 list, Apple was MBLM’s “top-ranked brand overall” and earned high marks in various categories like “can’t live without” and frequency of use.

Tags: MBLM, Brand Intimacy
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Barclays Says AirPods Continue to Grow, HomePod Sales Have Been Underwhelming

Barclays analyst Blayne Curtis and his associates recently spent a week in Asia meeting with companies within Apple’s supply chain, and today they shared research on iPhones, AirPods, and the HomePod gathered from their trip.

In terms of AirPods, the analysts expect Apple will continue to increase production of the wireless earphones. Barclays forecasts that AirPods shipments will likely approach 30 million units in 2018, within the ballpark of KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo’s estimate of 26-28 million units.

AirPods remain backordered on Apple’s online store, with orders placed today estimated for delivery within 12 to 13 days in the United States and several other countries. The wireless earphones have been in short supply since December after availability briefly improved during the fall months.

The lengthy shipping estimates for AirPods suggests Apple may still be having difficulties manufacturing the wireless earphones, can’t keep up with strong demand, or is dealing with some combination of those two factors.

Apple doesn’t disclose AirPod sales, but chief executive Tim Cook said the company’s total revenue from wearables was up almost 70 percent year over year. Apple’s broad “Other Products” category, including AirPods, Apple TV, and Apple Watch, set a new all-time record with $5.5 billion in revenue last quarter.

In contrast with the popularity of AirPods, Barclays says HomePod sales have been “underwhelming” so far. The research note says Apple planned an initial production run of 6-7 million units, but it’s unclear how many have sold.

Apple will soon release a wireless charging case for AirPods to be used with its upcoming AirPower charging mat. Beyond that, Bloomberg reported that Apple may release new AirPods with “Hey Siri” functionality as early as this year, and a subsequent pair with water resistance as early as next year.

Barclays also believes Apple will release a new pair of AirPods in early 2019, but it’s unclear if they are referring to the pair with “Hey Siri” functionality or the subsequent water-resistant ones.

And for the HomePod, a relatively sketchy rumor out of China suggests Apple may release a smaller version of the speaker later this year for between $150 and $200 in the United States. No further details were provided.

The research note corroborates Apple’s widely rumored plans to launch a new iPhone X, a so-called iPhone X Plus, and a lower-priced 6.1-inch iPhone X-like device with some design compromises such as an LCD instead of OLED display, 3GB of RAM instead of 4GB, a single-lens rear camera, and no 3D Touch.

An excerpt from the research note, edited slightly for clarity:

Looking ahead, we expect iPhone X production to cease entirely before this year’s launches and now believe the 6.1″ LCD model could be half or even more of the mix in the second half of 2018. The LCD version will likely be tiered between the iPhone 8 and iPhone X2 with cut down features; we expect it will have only 3GB RAM, a single rear camera, and lack 3D Touch, but still have the new form factor with Face ID. In terms of lower Bill of Materials, we note the LCD screen module costs less than half the cost of an OLED one. Further, we expect the iPhone X2 and a Plus-sized version to also be launched, likely with 4GB of RAM, and Intel to gain modem share this cycle. However, rear 3D-sensing doesn’t happen until 2019 or later.

The information about the new iPhones is entirely in line with research previously shared by KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo.

Related Roundups: HomePod, AirPodsTag: BarclaysBuyer’s Guide: HomePod (Buy Now), AirPods (Caution)
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Capital One’s virtual credit cards could help you avoid fraud

Capital One is no stranger to trying new things — especially when it comes to technology. Its Eno texting chatbot, for example, is a quick and conversational way for its customers to check their balances and perform simple tasks, like checking on recent transactions. Now, the bank is bringing Eno to web browsers with an intriguing new feature: virtual credit card numbers.

Whenever customers check out from an online store, they’ll be able to quickly generate a new card number from the Eno plugin, and use that number for repeat visits. Whenever they return to the store, Eno will also autopopulate the virtual card and their billing info. It’s tied to customers’ actual credit accounts, and it functions just like a real card number. The idea is that you can create individual virtual cards for every retailer, so if something like the Target hack happens again, you’ll be able to quickly halt charges or delete the card completely. All the while, your actual credit card is safe.

Currently, the Eno plugin will only work with credit cards, but Capital One says it’s working on bringing the feature to debit cards. It might seem like a stopgap measure for wider banking system issues, but it’s a faster way to protect consumers than waiting for the payment industry to wise up, representatives told Engadget. At the very least, it’s an easy way to get some peace of mind while shopping online.

Additionally, the company is launching a new augmented reality feature for its Auto Navigator app, which helps shoppers find cars and quickly secure financing. Instead of searching for financing information about a car manually, you can just hold your iPhone up to see make and model details right above the vehicle, as well as what your monthly payment would be. It’s still in its early stages, but it could help shoppers to navigate car lots without being pestered by annoying sales reps.

While this AR feature is iPhone only for now, Capital One eventually plans to bring it to Android. For now, users on other platforms can upload photos of cars to Auto Navigator on the bank’s website. It’ll fetch the same information, it just won’t be floating above the car in real time.

With both products, Capital One is trying to push the idea of banking forward by providing genuinely useful tools for consumers. We’ve never seen competitors offer virtual cards in the same way, for example. The company isn’t divulging too many details about how its technology works, but representatives noted that it was similar to the way mobile payment offerings like Apple Pay handle tokenization. Whenever those services handle a transaction, they create a random virtual number, rather than passing along your actual account information. The AR feature, meanwhile, relies on a machine learning algorithm that can identify thousands of car models. Ultimately, it just serves as simple way to grab a car loan through Capital One.

Qarnot’s wall-mounted heater doubles as a crypto-mining rig

As a student, I used to joke that my Xbox 360 doubled as the flat’s central heating system. A few hours of Red Dead Redemption and boom, I could slip under the covers and fall asleep without an icy-cold mist forming around my breath. Qarnot, however, isn’t joking about its new QC-1 “crypto heater.” That’s right, the startup is promoting its first crypto-mining rig on the inevitable warmth produced by its innards. Generating Bitcoin and other “digital gold” requires expensive electricity, so why not save some money by heating your home at the same time? That’s the pitch, anyway.

It resembles a radiator, which (I can’t believe I’m saying this) is actually sort of cool? The black grille and wooden top make it feel like a piece of furniture that could easily blend into your living room. Inside are two Sapphire Nitro+ Radeon RX 580 graphics cards capable of mining at up to 60MH/s. Qarnot says it’s “perfectly noiseless” because there are no fans or hard drives inside. It mines Ethereum by default but can be set up to generate Litecoin and other cryptocurrencies. Users will be able to monitor their account and activate a “heating booster mode” through a mobile app.

The QC-1 is available for 2900 euros (roughly $3,570) online. Qarnot will make them in batches — if you reserve one before March 20th, the company says it will arrive in the first wave “before June 20th.” That’s expensive, though as TechCrunch reports you can expect to make around 100 euros, or $120 per month mining Ethereum (based on its current price) with this machine. There’s also the heat benefits to consider, which will vary depending on your home and how much you currently spend on heating. Still, it seems rather silly to sell a mining rig based on how hot it gets — it’s not hard, after all, to build a PC that can rival a three-bar fire.

Via: TechCrunch

Source: Qarnot

ASOS’ visual search tool is now available to all of its shoppers

Last August, retailer ASOS launched its Style Match tool in select markets. It lets users take a picture or upload an image — whether it be a photo they’ve taken, a screenshot or something from a magazine — and then search ASOS’ products for clothing or accessories in that image. So for instance, if the shoes your favorite actor was wearing on their latest red carpet strike your fancy, you can take that image, tap the camera icon in the ASOS app search bar, upload the image, focus on the shoes and search. The app will bring up items ASOS sells that are similar to what you’re looking for. Style Match has been largely limited to the UK so far, but today, ASOS is making Style Match available to all of its 16 million active customers on both iOS and Android.

Style Match is similar to Pinterest’s Lens tool, which launched last year, and eBay’s Image Search function. And it certainly makes sense given how users tend to shop with ASOS. The company says that 80 percent of its UK traffic and 70 percent of its UK sales come from users on mobile devices and since ASOS carries around 85,000 products, being able to get right to the items you want is certainly a useful addition to the app.

Style Match is rolling out to all ASOS markets today.