Facebook reportedly pauses smart speaker plans for obvious reasons

Even though it seems like everyone is selling some sort of smart speaker, Bloomberg reports that Facebook will not be the next company joining in and has scuttled plans for a reveal at its F8 developer event. Despite earlier rumors of a device that would compete with the likes of Echo, Home, and HomePod, it seems that the company has considered its current privacy debacle and decided this isn’t the right time to try and sell customers (and, likely regulators) on an always-listening assistant/video chat device with built-in facial recognition.

Of course, the market hasn’t exactly been receptive to Facebook’s previous hardware efforts either — remember the HTC First with Facebook Home? — so the potential of anything beyond Oculus Go remains hazy. Consensual or not, there are already rumors-that-won’t die about Facebook and Instagram listening in on your conversations, and we’d expect some solid answers on privacy before there’s any movement in that direction.

Source: Bloomberg

Amazon may spend $1 billion to adapt hit Chinese sci-fi novels

Amazon’s bid to create worldwide blockbuster shows may extend well beyond very familiar Western stories like Lord of the Rings. Investors speaking to the Financial Times claimed that Amazon is in talks that would let it spend up to $1 billion for the rights to Liu Cixin’s massively successful sci-fi novel trilogy Remembrance of Earth’s Past, also known as The Three-Body Problem. The internet giant is reportedly hoping to acquire rights from Chinese game developer Youzu Interactive’s Lin Qi and turn it into a three-season Prime Video series.

Whether or not Amazon does get the rights is in the air. YooZoo Pictures (part of Youzu) told Caixin and other media outlets that it had sole rights, and that its partnership with Liu Cixin was “ongoing.” The author himself, meanwhile, explained to Mtime that he hadn’t been aware of Amazon’s reported bid, and wasn’t sure if he would be involved. These don’t completely rule out an Amazon adaptation (companies tend not to acknowledge deals unless they’re completed), but it’s worth taking the rumor with a grain of salt.

A deal like this wouldn’t be out of line for Amazon. The company has been pushing for shows that could be international hits, and it wouldn’t get much bigger than one of the most popular sci-fi trilogies in Chinese history. The production would have a strong allure in its home market (where a movie adaptation has been stuck in purgatory), and might expose the story to a much wider audience.

It’s not as if Amazon has been reluctant to spend gobs of cash, either. Reports had Amazon paying $1 billion for Lord of the Rings, so shelling out that much for three seasons of a probable hit isn’t that much of a stretch. Whatever Amazon would spend up front might be more than worthwhile if it gave the company the sort of must-watch show that could give it an edge over Netflix.

Via: io9

Source: Financial Times, Mtime (translated), Caixin

Apple needs more than apps to win over educators

Earlier today, Apple announced a brand new iPad. It’s has a 9.7-inch screen, an 8-megapixel rear camera, 10 hours of battery life, a front-facing FaceTime HD cam, an upgraded A10 Fusion chip plus support for Apple’s Pencil. But the main talking point of today’s iPad unveiling is the fact that it was done in a high school, in an education-themed event that was clearly focused on the classroom. The pitch: Schools should invest in iPads.

At $299 (and $50 to $99 more if you want to get a compatible stylus), schools might not have the budget to get both a tablet and a traditional laptop for students. With the financial constraints of most public schools, they probably have to pick one of the two. And while Apple’s case for the iPad as an educational tool is a strong one, laptops remain a more sensible option for most students. Which begs the question: Why hasn’t Apple made a low-cost Macbook for education instead?

Apple is likely making a push into schools in an attempt to recapture some of its glory days in the education sector. Apple famously made a deal in 1978 with the Minnesota Education Computing Consortium (MECC) to supply 500 computers to schools, and by 1982, MECC was the largest seller of Apple computers in the country. Steve Jobs told Computerworld in a 1985 interview that “one of the things that built the Apple II was schools buying Apple IIs.”

It used to be that Apple computers were commonplace in learning institutions, with Macintoshes and eMacs present in schools and universities across the country throughout the 1980s and early 2000s. Much of that was due to efforts such as large-scale computer donations, deals with top colleges, and making eMacs (and other models) a little less capable and more affordable, than the rest of Apple’s consumer lineup.

In the mid-2000s, Apple did make a low-cost Macbook for schools… sort of. It was the basic polycarbonate Macbook, and while it was initially intended for consumer audiences, it was still marketed and sold in schools as a low-cost alternative. When they were taken off the retail shelf in 2011, Apple still sold them exclusively to educational institutions for around $900 per machine.

In recent years, however, things have changed. According to a recent survey by FutureSource Consulting, Apple has fallen to a distant third behind Google Chromebooks and Windows PCs in the education market. That’s because Chromebooks and PCs are more affordable. In an effort to make its products sleeker and faster, Apple’s done away with most of its entry-level products. The cheapest Macbook right now, for example, is $1,300, which is definitely not a budget laptop by any stretch of the imagination.

So why can’t Apple make a cheap laptop? “Theoretically Apple could do this, although the first step they would have to take is to reduce their profit margin,” said analyst Rhoda Alexander from IHS Markit. “However, that profit margin is a key component of Apple’s success, allowing Apple to constantly reinvest in the brand, driving innovation and R&D across hardware, software and content development.”

Apple could also make cheaper laptops with plastic cases and cheaper CPUs, but making mass quantities of cheap hardware doesn’t seem to be part of Apple’s current strategy. “There are other compromises they could make at the design and component level to reduce their cost, if their end goal was to drive unit volume,” continued Alexander, stating that Apple likely wants to maintain a “premiere standard across the entire brand line.”

Which seems to be why Apple seems to be so keen on iPads as part of its education strategy. Not only are the tablets portable, lightweight and easy to use, they’re also part of Apple’s “post-PC” narrative, where most tasks only need a touchscreen and an accessory or two.

In a way, it makes sense. When Engadget tried replacing a laptop with an iPad Pro for a week, we found it to be surprisingly effective, letting us do most tasks with ease. No, it didn’t quite replace a laptop for us — batch-resize images was a struggle, for example — but it was close. And for kids, that might be good enough.

The fact that so many parents already use iPads with their kids should not be underestimated. After all, this is a device that many children are already familiar with, and moving from what you have at home and bringing the experience to school makes sense. While laptops and keyboards are what we as adults are familiar with, children who grow up with hand-me-down tablets will be more adept with touchscreens. Combined with just how many educational apps there are available on the iPad, it’s no surprise that Apple sees the iPad as key to getting back into classrooms.

Yet, the cost is a barrier. Given the choice between a $300 iPad and Chromebooks that start at $150, it’ll be hard for schools to pick the former over the latter. Sure, one has sleek and powerful apps, but the other has a keyboard, with all the important functionality, for a cheaper price.

Apple could make a student-only iPad or Macbook just for the educational market, perhaps constructed out of a durable polycarbonate. As long as there was enough performance and power to properly run any and all educational apps as well as Apple’s own productivity tools without hiccups. It might not be as shiny and glossy as the iPad announced today or the current Macbook line, but it wouldn’t need to be.

But the reality is, we probably won’t see anything like that anytime soon. At the end of the day, Apple has stuck to its guns as a purveyor of high-end electronics. It would be very unlike Apple to suddenly produce cheaper, budget versions of its hardware just to keep up with its rivals (the iPhone 5c didn’t last long, remember). Which is unfortunate, because that might be what it needs to do in order to convince more schools to switch to iPad.

Catch up on all of the news from Apple’s education event right here!

This amazing robot intestine barfs out perfectly mixed rocket fuel

It’s not every day that the prospect of space exploration makes us feel a little bit nauseous. But that’s certainly the case with a new excreting robot designed to mimic the function of the human intestines. It was created by researchers from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and Japan’s Chuo University.

While it kind of looks like something that might appear on the robot version of Jackass, in fact it’s a tool intended to replicate the involuntary wavelike contractions of the digestive tract for the purpose of properly mixing rocket fuel. The idea is that turning the solid rocket fuel manufacturing process into a continuous pumping process is more efficient and safer than producing it in batches.

The gooey mixture that’s squeezed out of the robo-intestine (which sort of resembles the white android blood in the Alien movies) is a combination of ammonium perchlorate powder, aluminum powder, and an elastomer binder that’s composed of hydroxyl-terminated polybutadiene (HTPB). For those keeping track at home, those are the ingredients in rocket fuel. The tube-like system is closed off at both ends, and the materials is added in the middle, alongside pressurized air. As the tubing contracts and expands, the mixing process is carried out, with the end result being the expelling of rocket fuel. After it is expelled in this form, the gooey rocket fuel can then be cured to turn it into a rubbery solid.

A paper describing the innovative concept was previously published under the title The Continuous Mixing Process of Composite Solid Propellant Slurry by an Artificial Muscle Actuator. For safety purposes, the material manufactured in the above demonstration was a simulated propellant. However, the researchers behind the project have had a go at mixing real propellant to make sure that their proof of concept experiment works. They even took the liberty of firing off a bench-top rocket to prove the system’s efficacy.

So, a gross-looking bio-inspired robot that craps or vomits out real working rocket fuel? There is literally nothing about that concept that we don’t love. Now we just have to cross our fingers and hope that one of the groups leading today’s next-gen space race incorporates this into their setup.

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Nvidia shows off the world’s largest GPU at its GTC conference

Nvidia’s Graphics Technology Conference keynote just wrapped, and the two-hour-plus talk covered a lot of really interesting topics — if you’re a graphical engineer, data scientist, or autonomous vehicle enthusiast. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang didn’t even allude to the upcoming 11-series graphics cards, or the long-rumored Turing-series cryptocurrency mining GPUs. There were a few tidbits of interest for the rest of us, like the introduction of the world’s largest GPU and a brand-new Nvidia Quadro GPU, but other than that it was mostly a technical talk aimed at enterprise customers. Let’s get into it.

Nvidia Quadro GV100

The first actual product shown off at Nvidia’s GTC keynote was the Quadro GV100, a new high-end professional-grade GPU. This thing is lightning-fast but unfortunately, it’s not for gaming so don’t get your hopes up. The GV100 is designed to power professional workstations and pump out CGI using cutting-edge real-time RTX raytracing which Nvidia first showed off at GDC. It features Nvidia’s next-gen Volta architecture and 32GB of memory, and if its predecessor, the GP100 is any indication, this card will cost more than an arm and a leg. The GP100 started at $7,000, so we can probably expect the GV100 to come in around that price.

The world’s largest GPU

Also unveiled at the GTC keynote was one of Nvidia’s most powerful — and most expensive — pieces of hardware: The Nvidia DGX-2, a GPU supercomputer that weighs in at around 350 pounds. The “mini” supercomputer features 16 individual Tesla V100 GPUs, each with 32GB of system memory. These cards all work together through Nvidia’s NVSwitch technology, meaning this massive machine is capable of crunching some serious numbers. Designed for deep-learning applications which require massive amounts of processing power, the DGX-2 is impressive, but again not for the average user. Unless you have a spare $400,000 laying around.

Clara medical imaging supercomputer

In what could be the most important announcement to come out of the GTC keynote, Nvidia briefly demoed a cloud supercomputing technology called Clara. The system could enable doctors and medical professionals working with old or outdated equipment to provide better care to patients without having to invest in multi-million-dollar imaging technology. The system, as demoed, can take the standard data output from a 15-year-old ultrasound machine, run it through its artificial intelligence models and actually infer more information than the ultrasound originally contained. During the demo, we saw Clara take a simple two-dimensional image of a heart beating and turn it into a fully three-dimensional image, complete with blood pressure estimates and other health diagnostics.

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Tanks for the beer! Robotic vehicle follows you around, brings you a brewski

We’re lovers, not fighters here at Digital Trends — but for this awesome tank robot, we’re happy to make an exception. Created by maker Balázs Simon, the WalaBeer tank is a homemade Alexa-connected vehicle that treks around your apartment with the express goal of delivering you a beer. To do this, it uses Walabot, a do-it-yourself device that’s able to see through walls. You can keep your Roomba vacuum cleaner; this is the home robot for us!

“WalaBeer Tank is a voice-controlled, tracked vehicle that sees you with its special 3D sensor, Walabot,” Simon told Digital Trends. “It can do this by using microwaves; it doesn’t even need light to see. If you ask the tank to follow you, it will try to keep you in its target zone. If you leave the zone, the tank will move accordingly to keep you about 80 centimeter from its front. The fun part comes when you reach your destination and ask it to give you a beer. The top will open up and a crane will start to elevate with a beer.”

Balázs Simon

The tank’s electronics are built around an Arduino MKR1000 and Raspberry Pi 3 Model B. The Arduino interacts with the hardware, while the Raspberry Pi processes the data from the Walabot, handles the voice commands of the Amazon Echo, and controls the Arduino in the robot’s “follow me” mode. The tank itself was sourced from an existing kit, reinforced with some extra wood and plastic. The beer-lifting mechanism was created using Erector Set pieces and a slow servo motor.

“I wanted to build a robot car for years,” Simon says. “I’ve had some ideas on how to build one from scratch, but a couple of months ago I found a cheap tank chassis on a web shop that looked great. I bought it immediately. It wasn’t a car, but it was better. I planned to use it as an experimenting platform. The plan was to build an autonomous vehicle. However, I thought that roaming around the house aimlessly was not that fun. I wanted to give it a purpose — and beer transporting seemed an interesting and awesome goal.”

A bill of materials, along with build instructions, can be found at Hackster.io. If you don’t think you’ve got the necessary skills, though, Simon did mention that commercialization isn’t out of the question if the idea proves popular enough. We certainly hope so.

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You need a GeForce GTX 1070 or better to get the best out of HTC’s Vive Pro

The pre-order option for HTC’s upcoming Vive Pro virtual reality headset is now live, and with it arrives an updated list of system requirements you need to get the best experience possible. The company now provides two sets of graphics card requirements: Minimum and recommended. The Vive Pro doesn’t ship until April, so you still have time to upgrade and get the most out of HTC’s newest VR headset when it finally arrives. 

Here are the hardware specifications: 

Minimum
Recommended

Processor:

Intel Core i5-4590
AMD FX 8350

Intel Core i5-4590
AMD FX 8350

Graphics:

Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060
AMD Radeon RX 480

Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070
Nvidia Quadro P5000
AMD Radeon Vega 56

Memory:

4GB

4GB

Video output: 

DisplayPort v1.2 

DisplayPort v1.2 

Connections: 

1x USB-A 3.1 Gen1 

1x USB-A 3.1 Gen1 

Platform: 

Windows 8.1
Windows 10 

Windows 8.1
Windows 10 

 Compared to the original Vive headset’s “recommended” requirements, the Pro’s minimum hardware specifications are seemingly unchanged save for the removal of the HDMI connection requirement, and an upgrade to USB 3.1 Gen1. But the Pro’s “recommended” system requirements are understandable given it demands a bit more processing power to render virtual reality at a higher visual level. The vanilla Vive unit provides a 2,160 x 1,200 combined resolution versus the Pro’s 2,880 x 1,600 combined resolution. 

The drawback to the Vive Pro is that for $799, you’re only getting the headset and its companion link box — base stations and controllers are not included in that price. The optional accessory starter kit includes two base stations and two controllers, setting you back an additional $450. A single controller costs $130 while a single base station is another $135. That said, you can get a complete HTC Vive “vanilla” first-generation kit for $500 and still have a great experience. 

Keep in mind, for the “best” experience for the Vive Pro, an upgrade to the GTX 1070 will cost at least $400 based on Nvidia’s Founders Edition pricing. But in the real world, prices are substantially higher due to a short supply and traditionally higher price tags supplied by manufacturers. Meanwhile, AMD’s Radeon RX Vega 56 suffers the same fate, with prices hovering around $538 and higher. 

So let’s do the math. If you’re just jumping onto the virtual reality bandwagon, here are the options along with how much you will likely spend in total if your graphics card needs an upgrade too. We threw Facebook’s Oculus Rift into the mix as well: 

Complete Cost
With GPU upgrade

HTC Vive Pro

$1,250

$1,800 (GTX 1070)

HTC Vive

$500

$870 (GTX 1060)

Oculus Rift

$400

$770 (GTX 1060)

If you’re already set hardware-wise, then the only component you need to consider is how much you want to sink into a niche market. If you need both the headset kit and a new graphics card to support the device, now simply isn’t a good time unless you have money to burn. As stated, the graphics card shortage is generating higher prices with the current stock. And with Nvidia’s next-generation graphics cards just around the corner, you’ll be better off playing the waiting game for now…. at least until June.

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Qualification for this year’s Overwatch World Cup starts now

The third annual Overwatch World Cup will take place in California this November and Blizzard has now announced how qualification and team-building will play out this year. From now through April 28th, Blizzard will track the average skill rating of every country’s top 150 players, and the top 20 countries will get a seat at the Cup. France, South Korea, Thailand and the US will be this year’s Group Stage host countries and will automatically qualify, bringing the total number of competing teams to 24.

Committees will work a little differently this go around. GMs will be selected by Blizzard and while individuals can apply, Blizzard will also do a bit of scouting. As for coaches, anyone with an account in good standing can apply to coach their country’s team and their country’s top 150 players will each vote on who they would like to lead the team. After the first vote, the top three candidates will then be voted on again. The community lead will also be chosen through a two-step voting system. A country’s entire player base can vote for community lead and the top 10 from round one will be the candidates included in the second round of voting.

Committees will be revealed on May 31st and will hold tryouts from June 1st through July 5th. Final rosters can have up to 12 players and Blizzard will work with teams to select the seven players that will represent the team at various live events.

You can see a breakdown of voting round dates here and application links for Committee positions will be provided by Blizzard at a later date.

Source: Overwatch League

AT&T launches the base of its FirstNet public safety network

After roughly a year of partnership, AT&T’s LTE-based FirstNet public safety network is starting to come alive — the carrier has launched the service’s network core nationwide. The rollout provides the foundation for a communications network devoted solely to emergency crews, with multiple priority levels and toughened security that includes around-the-clock monitoring. This doesn’t represent full-fledged service, but it’s now more a matter of weeks than months.

AT&T is in the midst of a “controlled introduction” that gives first responders a relatively limited set of features. Cities will still have to connect their sites to the network core to make it truly useful. The provider expects to start moving more of its clients to FirstNet sometime between April and May, however. Also, the network core launch enables the use of FirstNet-friendly devices that are already either on the market or on the way, such as the Galaxy S9 or Netgear’s Nighthawk M1 mobile router. Ultimately, the hope is to have a full FirstNet experience within five years.

The AT&T network has the backing of all 50 states, but it’s still under close scrutiny. In the first five years, it’ll be partly dependent on $6.5 billion in success-driven payments from the First Responder Network Authority. There’s also the question of network upgrades. FirstNet is getting started just ahead of the first 5G deployments — AT&T previously said it would “explore” upgrading FirstNet to 5G, but it might not have much choice once 5G is mainstream and LTE seems old in the tooth. That could lead to a complicated (or at least expensive) transition.

Source: AT&T

Uber agrees to pay $10 million in discrimination lawsuit settlement

The San Francisco Chronicle reports today that Uber has agreed to a $10 million settlement in a class action lawsuit that claimed it discriminated against minorities and women who worked for the company. The lawsuit was filed in October and represents 420 women and people of color who were employed by Uber as software engineers going back to 2013. Additionally, the Chronicle reports that the company has also agreed to change how it manages compensation and promotion. The lawsuit alleged that women, black and Latino/Latina employees were not given raises, bonuses, stock and benefits at the same rate as male and white or Asian coworkers.

Uber has had an ongoing problem with discrimination and harassment. Former Uber employee Susan Fowler detailed her experience with harassment at the company last year in a blog post and Uber later fired more than 20 employees for harassment following an internal investigation. Earlier this year Uber hired its first chief diversity officer — a move that was recommended by those conducting a probe into the company’s culture.

“This settlement involves claims dating back to July 2013 and, while we are continually improving as a company, we have proactively made a lot of changes since then,” Uber said in a statement. “In the past year alone we have implemented a new salary and equity structure based on the market, overhauled our performance review process, published our first Diversity & Inclusion report and created and delivered diversity and leadership trainings to thousands of employees globally.”

The judge handling the case still has to approve the settlement and a hearing has been scheduled for May 1st.

Via: Axios

Source: Law.com