Google gebruikt weer Samsung-scherm in Pixel 3 en 3 XL
Na een kort maar ongelukkig uitstapje naar LG maakt Google weer gebruik van een AMOLED-paneel van Samsung voor de Pixel 3 en Pixel 3 XL. Een strategie die zo z’n vruchten afwerpt want het paneel scoort meteen hoge ogen; de Pixel 3 XL heeft volgens DisplayMate het beste telefoonscherm ooit.
Samsung maakt naast telefoons ook AMOLED-panelen. Die vinden we uiteraard terug in haar eigen telefoons maar ook in sommige andere telefoons, waaronder dus in die van de Google Pixel 3 en Pixel 3 XL. Google deed dat al voor de eerste Pixels maar stapte voor de Pixel 2 over op panelen van LG. Een pijnlijk uitstapje want het paneel ontving stevige kritiek met name om de slechte kijkhoeken en de kleurweergave. Google heeft zich die kritiek aangetrokken maakt nu weer van Samsung schermen gebruik, zo blijkt uit een teardown van iFixit.
Samsung-scherm in Google Pixel 3 XL
Volgens de bevindingen van iFixit maakt Google nogal veel van lijm gebruik om het scherm op z’n plek te houden, het vervangen zal dus de nodige tijd kosten. Dat Google toch weer voor een Samsung-paneel gekozen heeft komt toch als een verrassing, tijdens de introductie liet Google er niets over los. Wel dat het was overgestapt van een P-OLED naar een Flexible OLED-paneel maar dat lijkt meer een andere benaming voor vrijwel hetzelfde product. De testers van DisplayMate waarderen de scherpte, lage reflectie en hoge kleurechtheid. Bovendien zou het scherm afleesbaar zijn in portrait en landscape met een gepolariseerde zonnebril, iets wat met vele LCD-schermen niet lukt. Google brengt de Pixel 3 hier officieel niet uit maar ze zijn ondanks dat toch verkrijgbaar via grijze import.
Ontvang een e-mail wanneer de Pixel 3 XL verkrijgbaar is
How to View Folder Sizes on Your Mac Using Finder
When you use Finder’s List view to work with files on your Mac, a glance at the Size column tells you the size of each file, but when it comes to folders in the list, Finder just shows a couple of dashes instead.
Finder skips showing folder sizes because calculating them takes time – if several folders contained thousands of files, working out the total size would likely slow down your Mac. So while omitting this information can get annoying, it does ensure file browsing in Finder stays snappy.
But what if you want to use List view and still keep an eye on the size of a handful of folders in a specific location – in Documents, for instance, or in a directory synced to a cloud storage service? It might not be obvious, but thankfully it is possible to make Finder calculate folder size when navigating items as a list.
To do so, open the folder in question, select View -> Show View Options from the menu bar or press the keys Command-J, and check Calculate All Sizes. Finder will now remember your viewing preference for that particular location only.
If you’re looking for a more global solution for keeping tabs on folder sizes that will work in any Finder view mode, you might consider enabling the Preview panel. To do this, open a Finder window and select the menu bar option View -> Show Preview, or press the keys Shift-Command-P.
In the Preview panel, the size of the selected folder always appears immediately below the folder name. If this is the only folder information you want to see in the Preview panel, you can select the menu bar option View -> Show Preview Options and uncheck all other metadata options.
To be honest though, relying on the Preview panel to keep a check on individual folder sizes isn’t a great use of Finder window space. This is where the menu bar option File -> Get Info (or key combo Command-I) can come in helpful. Opening a separate Get Info panel lets you see the size of the item in question, regardless of whether it’s a file or a folder.
The only problem with a Get Info panel is that it only relates to the item you originally selected it for, and every new panel that you open for each additional selected item will hang around on your desktop until you close it manually.
Fortunately, this inconvenience can be easily solved: Click File in the menu bar and hold the Option key, and Get Info will turn into Show Inspector. Unlike a Get Info panel, the Inspector panel is dynamically updated and will always display information for the active Finder window’s currently selected file or folder – including, of course, its size.
Related Roundup: macOS Mojave
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Google Maps Can Now Help Users Find Electric Vehicle Charging Stations
Google has announced it is introducing electric vehicle (EV) charging stations to its Maps coverage, allowing EV drivers to see on the map where they can stop to recharge during their journeys.
Searching in Google Maps for keywords like “ev charging” or “EV charging stations” will display the nearest supported stations, including information on the types of ports available, charging speeds, and how many ports there are. However, there’s currently nothing to tell you how many ports are currently occupied at a given station.
Typical location information is also provided for EV stations, so you can check out user-posted photos, ratings, reviews, and questions. Businesses that have charging stations will also feature links to information about the chargers.
The types of charging stations Google Maps supports around the world:
- Global: Tesla, Chargepoint
- US: SemaConnect, EVgo, Blink
- UK: Chargemaster, Pod Point
- AU & NZ: Chargefox
Google says the ability to search for electric vehicle charging stations is rolling out now on Android and iOS devices after users have updated the Maps app, with desktop support launching in the coming weeks.
Google Maps can be downloaded from the App Store for free. [Direct Link]
Tag: Google Maps
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YouTube is back after crashing for users around the world
YouTube went down for a little more than an hour on October 16, a rare outage for the Google-owned company.
The video-streaming site, which has nearly 2 billion monthly active users, began suffering issues globally at around 9 p.m. E.T. on Tuesday.
During this time, the website and apps weren’t fully accessible. On desktop, for example, the site showed parts of the homepage together with a string of incomprehensible text and a statement saying its engineers are dealing with the issue.
Click through to a YouTube video from a working website and users were met with a message that read: “An error occurred, please try again later,” or “Sorry, that video does not exit. Sorry about that.” The issue affected YouTube Music and other YouTube platforms.
About an hour after the problems began, YouTube posted a message on Twitter acknowledging the issue and apologizing to its users for the blackout: “Thanks for your reports about YouTube, YouTube TV and YouTube Music access issues. We’re working on resolving this and will let you know once fixed. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and will keep you updated.”
The company has since issued a statement saying YouTube is back. We can confirm it’s working normally for us on desktop and mobile. What’s missing is an explanation for what exactly happened to cause the outage.
We're back! Thanks for all of your patience. If you continue to experience issues, please let us know. https://t.co/NVU5GP7Sy6
— Team YouTube (@TeamYouTube) October 17, 2018
The problem came just hours after Twitter started sending out nonsensical notifications to many of its users, though that’s now been sorted out. Indeed, Twitter was the very place where YouTube fans headed to sound off about the outage.
They better hurry and fix this #YouTube pic.twitter.com/sO0o1LDrtu
— Jelan Abrams (@JelanAbrams) October 17, 2018
@YouTubeTV great job Google. Opening night of the NBA and your TV service goes down. Call center is closed! #goodjob #YouTube #celtics
— Rik Morton (@RikMoto) October 17, 2018
You gotta be kinding me YouTube is down like come on@YouTube #YouTubeDOWN #youtube pic.twitter.com/xD1HUD5I4l
— nolimitc0dy__ (@jarrodsav__) October 17, 2018
back to having no social life ????????
— ♕ a'lysse ♕ (@alyssetho) October 17, 2018
YouTube has suffered few outages as serious as this one in its 13-year history. We’ve reached out to YouTube and Google for a comment on what’s going on, and will let you know if they get back.
This story will be updated as it develops.
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It’s not just you — YouTube TV is down
Yes, again.
If you’re thinking to yourself “Ya know, you guys never mention the 99.9 percent of the time that YouTube TV is working just fine …” Well, you’re right. We don’t. But this isn’t one of those times and so we’re going to mention (again) that YouTube TV (and YouTube proper, along with YouTube Music, apparently) is struggling a bit this evening.
That in and of itself is not the end of the world. On the other hand, the end of the world will likely not cost us $40 a month. (Or cost us anything at all, for that matter. Or at least not for very long.) The point is, YouTube TV is down. It is not working. It is an ex-TV.
Thanks for your reports about YouTube, YouTube TV and YouTube Music access issues. We’re working on resolving this and will let you know once fixed. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and will keep you updated.
— Team YouTube (@TeamYouTube) October 17, 2018
Last time this happened — in the middle of the damned World Cup semifinals — we got a week of credit for our troubles. This time? We’ll see.
So no YouTube TV for you this evening. Maybe it’s a good time to call your mother instead.
Drop everything and watch Boston Dynamics’ robo-dog dance to ‘Uptown Funk’
After a few years of Earthbound training, Boston Dynamics’ SpotMini robot dog is ready to take on Mars. Bruno Mars, to be precise. If that doesn’t make too much sense to you, it will after you’ve checked out the company’s latest video — in which everyone’s favorite future Skynet pet grooves to Mars and collaborator Mark Ronson’s 2014 toe-tapping hit, “Uptown Funk.” The results are the most cheerful reminder of the impending rise of the machines we’ve seen in ages!
There’s not a whole lot of information that accompanies the video, which is charmingly titled “Uptown Spot.” However, it’s a pretty neat demonstration of SpotMini’s naturalistic movement. We also get a glimpse of its impressive agility, including moments in which it changes direction while jumping, and a rendition of the “running man” dance moves (running dog?) that would surely impress even Janet Jackson herself. You can check out more about Boston Dynamics’ dog robots’ journey from mere cyber-pups to canine superstars here.
This isn’t the only attention-grabbing video Boston Dynamics has released as of late. Last week, it debuted a video showcasing Spot’s humanoid sibling Atlas pulling off some impressive parkour moves in the gym. That video demonstrated an even more dazzling level of acrobatics and robo-athleticism, although it apparently took more than 20 attempts to nail the routine for the demo.
We imagine that this latest Spot video, which has already clocked up half a million views within a few hours, may be an effort to drum up publicity on the part of Boston Dynamics. While the SoftBank-owned robotics firm has never exactly found it difficult to get press attention, there’s now an added incentive: the company will start selling its SpotMini robot in 2019. This will mark the first time in 26 years that one of Boston Dynamics’ showcase robots will be available for purchase. No price has yet been announced, but the latest SpotMini prototype is reportedly 10x cheaper to build than its predecessor — which hopefully bodes well for our wallets.
You’ll probably have to pay extra for your own Spotify or Apple Music subscription, though. Unless you want Spot dancing in eerie silence, that is!
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These gloves will make virtual reality feel even more immersive
Virtual reality can be a truly immersive experience, but a touch of an object in the virtual world doesn’t quite equate to a physical touch you would expect in real life. That is exactly what scientists from EPFL and ETH Zurich have worked to address with newly developed thin and light VR gloves.
Called Dextres, the glove comes in at less than 8 grams per finger and allows for haptic feedback an “unparalleled” freedom of movement when touching objects in the virtual world. The glove is also 2mm thick and is currently powered by a thin electrical cable, but the system is low voltage and scientists developing the project are working to use a very small battery instead.
Designed of a nylon material, the glove features thin elastic metal strips over the fingers. Those strips are separated by a thin insulator, which can react whenever contact is made with a virtual object. As part of the reaction, an onboard controller applies a shock to the metal strips, which causes them to stick together. That, in turn, creates a braking force which then blocks the movement of the fingers, signaling that a virtual object is being held. Once the virtual object is dropped, the voltage is then again removed to allow movements once again.
“The human sensory system is highly developed and highly complex. We have many different kinds of receptors at a very high density in the joints of our fingers and embedded in the skin. As a result, rendering realistic feedback when interacting with virtual objects is a very demanding problem and is currently unsolved. Our work goes one step in this direction, focusing particularly on kinesthetic feedback,” Otmar Hilliges, head of the Advanced Interactive Technologies Lab at ETH Zurich, said in a statement.
The Dextres glove improves on current VR gloves by removing a bulky exoskeleton, pumps, and thick cables. It is a step in the right direction and researchers are looking to scale up the glove and bring it to other parts of the body using conductive fabric. Though just a concept for now, the technology definitely looks promising for gamers and the augmented reality field. It might even be something that NASA can use in training.
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Self-correcting quadcopter can keep itself aloft even if one rotor fails
Compared to a vehicle with a single main rotor, like a helicopter, you’d think a quadcopter would be altogether safer. After all, hasn’t it got multiple possible failure points before it can no longer remain aerial? Unfortunately, that’s not correct. Most drones will struggle to fly unless all four rotors are operational. That’s something that researchers from the Netherlands’ Delft University of Technology have been working to solve.
At the recent International Conference on Intelligent Robots (IROS 2018) in Spain, the team demonstrated a “fault tolerance controller” which allows a quadrotor to continue flying at high speeds, even if a rotor has broken or a motor has failed. No, it doesn’t look quite as pretty doing so, but, crucially, it remains stable. Just as importantly, it is able to do so while retaining forward momentum. This is thanks to some smart math on the part of the Delft investigators, who were able to draw on information such as the drone’s built-in gyroscope and accelerometer to work out how flight should be achieved using the remaining three rotors.
“Imagine that when a quadrotor is delivering an important package over water where strong wind blows. All of sudden one motor malfunctions,” Sihao Sun, a researcher on the project, told Digital Trends. “Normally in this case, the drone will crash into the water together with the package. But with our technology, it is able to continue flying at a considerable speed to fly back to a safe landing place. This could save the package and the drone itself.”
In another use case, it’s possible to imagine how a drone with a damaged rotor could be set to return to its base of operations in a safe manner, without endangering people and property.
The team put the drone (a standard, off-the-shelf Parrot Bebop 2) through its paces in a wind tunnel to simulate forward flight without actual forward movement. The quadrotor reached a top speed of 9 meters per second, roughly half the maximum top speed of a Bebop with four functioning rotors. The team hopes to soon extend this to outdoor flights.
“The next step in this project is the combination of this fault tolerant control technology with real-time fault detection and envelope prediction and protection,” Coen de Visser, another researcher on the team, told us. “An important question that we are hoping to answer with our research is this: How can we make the drone ‘aware’ of its own physical limitations and capabilities after a failure has occurred? Without such an awareness, after a failure, the drone cannot make an informed decision about whether it should conduct an emergency landing, attempt to fly back to base, or even continue the mission with reduced performance.”
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Google will start charging Android manufacturers to use its apps in Europe
It looks like Google is set to significantly change how it works with Android manufacturers, at least in Europe. To date, Android device makers have been able to load Google’s apps and services onto their Android phones free of charge. Now, however, Google will begin charging those device makers that want to use its apps.
The move comes as a response to a July ruling in which Google was ordered to stop “illegally tying” Google Chrome and some search-related apps to Android. Companies will now be able to license Chrome, the Play Store, and other Google mobile apps rather than having to bundle all of them together. Companies will also be able to license Google apps for forked versions of Android, which may make for more phones with alternative versions of Android.
Traditionally, Google hasn’t charged for the use of these apps because of how much money it makes from search and Chrome. Being required to stop tying them altogether changes how much money Google could potentially make from them. We don’t yet know exactly how much Google will charge for the licensing of its apps.
“Since the pre-installation of Google Search and Chrome together with our other apps helped us fund the development and free distribution of Android, we will introduce a new paid licensing agreement for smartphones and tablets shipped into the [European Economic Area],” Android head Hiroshi Lockheimer said in a blog post.
It’s important to note that Android as a whole will still be free — it’s just that now the apps that we most often associate with Android may not be. Not only that, but those apps may not come pre-installed on every Android device — so if you want them, you may have to download them separately.
Ultimately, Android device manufacturers may still be tied to Google. They will likely still need to license the use of the Google Play Store, where users can download all of the Google apps that otherwise would have come with their phone. Not only that, but it’s possible Google will be able to continue bundling all of its apps together in the future — the company is appealing the European Commission’s decision. Still, in the meantime, it has to comply with the decision, and as such the changes will go into effect starting on October 29.
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MIT is building a new $1 billion college dedicated to all things A.I.
You would expect one of the United States’ premier tech universities to be on the very forefront of artificial intelligence (A.I.) research — and that’s exactly what the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has demonstrated with a massive $1 billion planned investment. The impressive cash lump sum will go toward creating a new college of computing that is intended to offer the best possible education to future machine learning experts.
“As computing reshapes our world, MIT intends to help make sure it does so for the good of all,” MIT President L. Rafael Reif said in a statement. “The MIT Schwarzman College of Computing will constitute both a global center for computing research and education, and an intellectual foundry for powerful new A.I. tools. Just as important, the college will equip students and researchers in any discipline to use computing and A.I. to advance their disciplines and vice-versa, as well as to think critically about the human impact of their work.”
What makes the new center so exciting is that it will not just look to churn out single-discipline artificial intelligence graduates, but work to integrate machine learning into other fields — whether that’s history, politics, chemistry, or anything else. In his comments, Reif referred to the goal of educating “bilinguals,” referring to people who know about A.I. in addition to another discipline. This is a crucial step because, as even a cursory overview of the most exciting current A.I. projects will reveal, it’s the intersection of different fields where the really exciting stuff happens.
So far, around two-thirds of the $1 billion sum has been raised. About $350 million comes from private equity firm Blackstone CEO Stephen A. Schwarzman, who the college will be named after. In all, the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing will reportedly create 50 new faculty positions, half of which will focus on computer science. The other half will be appointed by the college and other MIT departments. The college will offer its first program starting in the fall semester of 2019. It will then move into its own dedicated space in 2022.
We’d advise you to get applying as soon as possible!
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