Google Pay now lets Las Vegas Monorail riders use phones to board
Google announced today that it’s making purchasing and using tickets for the Las Vegas Monorail a little bit simpler. Now, riders will be able to buy tickets online through the Monorail site, save them to Google Pay and then just wave their phone near the fare gate to board. You don’t even need to open the app. Once your ticket has been accepted, a blue check mark pops up on your screen and you’re good to go.
The mobile tickets are powered by NXP’s Mifare technology and beyond using the tickets, the Google Pay app will also show you recent transactions, trips and where the nearest Monorail station is located. Google, which united its Google Wallet and Android Pay services earlier this year, says the ability to use Google Pay for transit will be coming to more cities soon. Portland’s TriMet transit system announced a beta test of virtual transit cards housed within Google Pay last year.
Images: Google
Source: Google
Philips tests LiFi in a real office
This week, Philips announced that its LiFi, or Light Fidelity, tech is currently being tested at the offices of Icade, a French real estate investment company. LiFi provides broadband internet through lights, using LEDs to transmit a high-speed connection of up to 30 Mb per second through light waves.
LiFi works through LED luminaires that are equipped with built-in modems. For now, users will need to plug a USB dongle into their computers to access LiFi, but the tech will eventually be built into other devices. The dongle uses an infrared link to access LiFi, which is purported to be more secure and more reliable than WiFi.
There are many real benefits to LiFi. First, it works in areas where WiFi radio frequencies might interfere with equipment, such as hospitals, and where these signals can’t penetrate. Because LiFi is transmitted via lights, it can reach areas that are deep underground. Seamless hand-off technology ensures that the signal will remain constant as you move from one light to another. It’s also easy to control the range of LiFi; because light can’t penetrate walls, creating a short-range, secure signal is easier than with WiFi.
That doesn’t mean there won’t be challenges to its implementation, though. Because it requires line of sight, implementation in a building without a lot of open space would be challenging and expensive. Additionally, as previously mentioned, computers and devices do not currently have onboard tech to access LiFi. There are certainly still some kinks to work out, but it will be interesting to see how this tech proliferates in the future.
Source: Philips
Games will soon livestream directly to Facebook
Facebook is determined to challenge Twitch, Mixer and YouTube for the livestreaming throne, and it might have claimed an important edge: built-in broadcasting. The social site has unveiled a programming kit that lets developers build Facebook livestreaming directly into their games, with no go-between client or capture hardware required. True, it’s not hard to get basic broadcasting elsewhere (such as the Xbox app on PCs), but the Facebook tool eliminates even that minor hurdle.
The software tools will be available to developers in the “coming weeks,” although you can sign up for information today.
Gamers will have a better reason to tune in, for that matter. There’s now a widely available rewards feature that gives viewers free perks for watching, such as in-game equipment. You aren’t about to win prizes, but this could give you an incentive to stick around for longer than a couple of minutes. The feature officially launches during the Paladins Premier League on March 24th.
Facebook has scored a number of deals for live game broadcasts. With that said, there’s no doubt that Twitch remains the dominant force in livestreaming between its large user base and streams for many of the largest eSports tournaments, such as EVO. This theoretically gives you an incentive to stream to Facebook instead, since it’s that much easier. The problem is getting developers to adopt it — they might not bother if they expect most players to gravitate toward a rival live video offering.
Source: Facebook Developers, Facebook (sign-up)
GrubHub and Yelp now offer delivery from over 80,000 restaurants
To combat rival services DoorDash and UberEats, Grubhub is expanding its partnership with Yelp to deliver meals from over 80,000 US restaurants on the food listing company’s site and app. This finalizes GrubHub’s $288 million acquisition of Yelp’s Eat24 directory that it began last fall. In exchange, Yelp will get an undisclosed cut of every GrubHub order made through its service.
By more than doubling the number of Yelp restaurants Grubhub offers delivery to, the latter hopes to trim delivery fees overall by sheer scale. If drivers are making multiple deliveries in a single trip, it costs less per order, the logic goes.
“I see a point where we could conceivably have extremely low if not free delivery for consumers,” GrubHub chief executive Matt Maloney told The Wall Street Journal.
As anyone who’s tried ordering from Seamless (which merged with GrubHub in 2013) or another service, high delivery costs sour the novelty of convenience. DoorDash and UberEats have tried to woo customers by delivering Wendy’s and McDonald’s, respectively, but there’s little point in getting inexpensive fast food if the extra costs are as much as the order.
Source: The Wall Street Journal
How to live stream every March Madness game (if you’re not already)
By Daniel Howley
March Madness is well underway, and that means you’re either hyped to see your favorite school’s team take to the hardwood, or you can’t wait until everyone stops talking about the tourney altogether. Unfortunately, the NCAA schedules a number of games for the afternoon, so if you’re at work, or in school, it’s hard to keep up. Luckily, there are plenty of ways to keep up on the tournament from your smartphone, tablet, laptop or, if you don’t have cable, streaming TV service.Here are the best ways to stream the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament through CBS, TBS, TNT and TruTV, the networks that will broadcast the games. And don’t forget to check out Yahoo Sports’ coverage of the big event from March 15 through April 2.
CBS
CBS is broadcasting 21 of the 67 March Madness matchups. If you don’t have a cable subscription, though, there’s nothing to fear. You can live stream all 21 games for free via your computer, smartphone or tablet. If you’ve got a TV antenna, and I strongly suggest you pick one up, you can watch all of the CBS games for free on your TV. You can also stream CBS’s coverage via the CBS All Access app, which is available for devices ranging from the Apple TV to the Xbox One, but costs $5.99 per month.
TBS
Turner Broadcasting’s TBS will also broadcast 21 NCAA Tournament games this year, but unlike those CBS games, you’ll need a cable or satellite subscription to live stream them. So if you haven’t talked to your parents in a while, now’s a great time to get in touch, butter them up and snag their cable login. You can download the TBS app for your Google (GOOG, GOOGL) Android and Apple’s (AAPL) iOS devices, Apple TV, Amazon’s (AMZN) Fire TV, Roku (ROKU) or on TBS.com.
If they don’t have cable, and no one else you know trusts you enough to give you their cable login, you can opt for an over-the-top streaming service.
Sony’s (SNE) PlayStation Vue, offers access to TBS and can be viewed on every streaming device, with the exception of Microsoft’s (MSFT) Xbox One, as well as on your smartphone, tablet or computer.
Dish’s (DISH) Sling TV also gets you access to TBS as part of its base $20 per month package. You can stream Sling TV on Apple’s Apple TV and iOS devices, Android devices, Amazon Fire TV, Roku, Google Chromecast, Xbox One, and your PC and smart TVs. Unfortunately, you can’t stream Sling on Sony’s PlayStation 4.
Google’s YouTube TV also offers TBS through its $40 per month package, and can be streamed via your smartphone, tablet or computer.
TBS is also available via Hulu Live TV for $39 per month. Hulu is available on Apple’s iPhone, iPad and TV, Android phones and tablets, Roku, Chromecast, Xbox One and Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 and Amazon’s Fire TV.
TruTV
TruTV is broadcasting 13 March Madness games this year and, naturally, you’ll be able to stream them via the TruTV app for your Apple and Android devices, Fire TV and Xbox One. Don’t have cable? You can get TruTV through Sling TV’s $25 package, PlayStation Vue, Hulu Live TV and YouTube TV.
TNT
TNT is offering up 12 games from the first and second rounds of the 2018 NCAA tournament. If you’ve got a cable subscription, you can download the TNT app for your Apple iPhone, Apple iPad, and Android smartphones and tablets. You can also stream the channel via its Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV and Roku apps, or on your computer through your web browser.
If you don’t have a cable subscription, you can get access to TNT through Sling TV’s $20 plan, YouTube TV or Hulu Live TV.
Now that you know how to stream all 67 games of the tournament, you just have to figure out how to hide the fact that you’re watching basketball during work from your boss and coworkers. As for predictions, I’m calling this year’s bracket for my alma mater Stockton College: the fighting ospreys. They’re not a part of the tournament, and probably never will be, but that doesn’t mean I can’t walk around with my old hoodie and tell people they are.
Enjoy the games.
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IBM’s tiniest computer is smaller than a grain of rock salt
IMB has unveiled a computer that’s smaller than a grain of rock salt. It has the power of an x86 chip from 1990, according to Mashable, and its transistor count is in the “several hundred” thousand range. That’s a far cry from the power of Watson or the company’s quantum computing experiments, but you gotta start somewhere. Oh, right: it also work as a data source for blockchain. Meaning, it’ll apparently sort provided data with AI and can detect fraud and pilfering, in addition to tracking shipments.
The publication says that the machine will cost under $0.10 to manufacture, which gives credence to IBM’s prediction that these types of computers will be embedded everywhere within the next five years. The one shown off at the firm’s Think conference is a prototype, of course, and as such there’s no clear release window.
If you watched Last Week Tonight’s segment on cryptocurrency, err, last week and were left wondering how we’d build an even bigger worldwide blockchain network from where we are now, well, this seems like a logical starting point.
Source: Mashable
Apple Announces Shinjuku Store Opening in Tokyo on April 7, Natick Mall Store Closing for Renovations April 22
Apple updated its website recently with the announcement of a new retail location’s grand opening in Tokyo, Japan, along with renovation news for its store in Natick, Massachusetts.
In Japan, Apple will open its new Apple Shinjuku location on April 7, 2018 at 10:00 a.m. local time. The store will be located in the Shinjuku Marui main building — a department store in Tokyo — and mark the eighth location for Apple in Japan. Apple previously launched one of its high-end Apple Watch shops at the Isetan Department Store in Shinjuku, allowing customers to browse the original $10,000+ Apple Watch Edition and other models.
In the United States, the company announced that it will close Apple Natick Collection for renovations starting Sunday, April 22. The store is located in Massachusetts’ Natick Mall, which is the largest shopping mall in New England by number of tenants, reaching 250 as of 2018. Apple notes on its page for the store that customers can visit Apple.com/retail to find the next store closest to them while the Natick mall location is closed.
More of the latest Apple Store openings in 2018 include Apple Kärntner Straße in Austria and Apple Garosugil in South Korea. In terms of the overall tally of Apple retail locations around the world, Apple Garosugil was the company’s 500th store opening on January 27, 2018, following seventeen years after Apple’s first two stores opened in May 2001.
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Meet Federico Tenga: The guy who teaches North Koreans about Bitcoin
Despite being the most hermetic country on Earth, North Korea is certainly no stranger to cyberspace—in both its uses and abuses. Despite a tiny local internet user base and just a few dozen local websites, cybercrime in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) is estimated to be a multi-billion dollar industry.
Bitcoin, in particular, has undoubtedly caught the attention of the North Korean regime. According to FireEye, the DPRK is specifically interested in stealing Bitcoin and other virtual currencies to not only evade sanctions but also to obtain hard currencies to fund the regime.
It was no surprise, then, that Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST) invited Federico Tenga, an avid Bitcoiner, and co-founder of Chainside, to teach their Computer Science and Finance students about Bitcoin.
ExpressVPN spoke with Federico to delve into the details of the course he taught in Pyongyang.
Ciao Federico! Could you tell us a bit about yourself?
I consider myself to be a “Bitcoiner”—I got interested in 2011, and from there I’ve worked towards eventually co-founding a Bitcoin company, in 2016. We work on products and services that help businesses and companies interact with Bitcoin.
“It’s one of the only places which feels fundamentally different from the rest of the world…”
I’d also consider myself to be a Libertarian, so visiting a country so controlled by the government like North Korea was particularly intriguing to me. It’s one of the only places which feels fundamentally different from the rest of the world because they aren’t as connected to it.
So I was interested to see if I could merge the two things—my passion for Bitcoin and my curiosity about North Korea, which I was actually able to do by teaching North Korean students what Bitcoin was.
How did you get in touch with the university?
I managed to get in touch with PUST by email in 2016. They were very interested in the subject, and I was initially going to tag Bitcoin and blockchain technology at the end of a generic finance course at the university.
But when we finally got around to arranging it they already had a finance professor, so I ended up focusing on the Blockchain and Bitcoin because they really wanted their students to be exposed to the innovations of the outside world. For them living in a country that’s still very closed-off, the professors and faculty members really wanted to give something more to their students.
Did you need to do much persuading to get the university interested in Bitcoin?
Not at all. Right from the very beginning, the university was keenly interested in “blockchain technology”—to which I had to tell them that there was no such thing as blockchain technology without tokens, but they were quite ok with it.
Even when we lost contact after the conference, they still got back to me after a year to ask about me teaching at PUST, so there was certainly a sustained interest.
What were the students like? Were they easy to teach? Did they know a lot about how computers and the internet work? And how was their English?
They speak English very well. Not all of them are super fluent, but the language was not an issue.
As Computer Science students they definitely came to the class with a bit of background knowledge, and they’re pretty good programmers, but since they don’t have much access to the outside world they obviously haven’t experienced the same internet that a European Computer Science student has experienced.
As for teaching Bitcoin, it isn’t as complicated as it seems when the topic is broken down into little pieces. I simply divided it into four parts: i) how do digital signatures work, ii) what is proof of work, iii) how does the blockchain work, and iv) how to coordinate against double spending. After breaking it down, it’s not too difficult to grasp the concepts.
Was there one part of the course that you found the students were most interested in?
I’d say there were a few moments where I caught their attention. They were interested in mining—when I did a simulation of manual bitcoin mining and showed them that they’d have to try many many times, they were curious about whether they had to do it manually as surely it could be done automatically?
When I showed them pictures of Bitcoin mining farms, they were like “Wow, this is so cool!” While it did get a little technical at times and it was a mandatory course, Bitcoin is an inherently interesting concept that people can easily get passionate about so by if explained well enough.
Students also asked about how Bitcoin could be used as a medium of exchange if the price was not fixed, which is valid criticism since price volatility and Bitcoin’s deflationary nature could jeopardize the success of Bitcoin as a widely used medium of exchange.
Bitcoin can be a politically sensitive subject, was it problematic talking about things like censorship resistance?
Well, it depends on how you approach it. Bitcoin lets you do stuff that your government doesn’t want you to do, and that may be a complicated topic in the DPRK. But if you frame censorship resistance as a method of performing transactions and accessing advanced financial services without having to ask permission from foreign banks they’re obviously more interested.
“As a completely socialist country, money is not the primary motivator—duty to country is.”
When I was teaching them, clearly I couldn’t say “Yeah you could use this stuff to go on the black market and have access to stuff that you wouldn’t otherwise have.” I instead focused on how they’d be able to use it after they graduate. As a completely socialist country, money is not the primary motivator—duty to country is.
There’s this feeling that a North Korean’s only motivation is to work for their country. By using Bitcoin, you can help regain some agency over your country’s finances, i.e., handle Bitcoin for the state. The contrast to the rest of the world is incredibly stark once you consider that Bitcoin outside of North Korea is used on an individual level because its users don’t trust their governments or financial institutions to handle their finances.
What’s the number one thing that you’d hope students get out of your course?
I really wanted to get them to understand how Bitcoin works and why it is important. Of course, there were exams at the end, and I wanted them to do well in those, but more so I wanted them to understand why we need this complicated system to solve these problems, why it was built in the first place, and how can one have censorship resistance and permissionless finance.
The last thing I wanted to cover was why the Bitcoin token is so valuable and how you can use it to optimise your financial portfolio. If for instance, you mixed bitcoin with other assets it can improve the preference of your portfolio since Bitcoin is not very correlated with other assets. Even if you’re not using Bitcoin to store value, you can still use it as a way to optimize your portfolio.
What surprised you when you went to North Korea?
One thing that really surprised me was that I had greater access to the internet than I did in China. When I transferred from Beijing, I had to use a VPN to access the internet, so it was pretty funny to land in Pyongyang and have freer access to the internet, although of course, such access to Wi-Fi is only available to a few people. I was also surprised that the students had some exposure to the outside world too—there were quite a few football fans who watched European football.
Wow! Who do they cheer for?
Yeah! I was quite disappointed because they were supporting teams like Barcelona and Real Madrid and I root for Juventus.
Amazon simplifies gaming competitions and prizes with ‘GameOn’
Much as it has with every other retail sector, Amazon has steadily expanded its gaming presence, especially since it purchased Twitch in 2014. Now, it’s unveiled a service that will allow it to break into another gaming arena. Built on Amazon’s massive AWS cloud infrastructure, GameOn will let developers integrate competitions natively into PC, mobile and console games. Furthermore, it’ll allow companies to offer in-game and even real-world prizes that are fulfilled by (wait for it) Amazon.
Amazon, naturally, will profit from this, earning about a third of a cent for every play. Developers can use the APIs for free until May 1st, and the first 35,000 plays per month will be free for a limited time. Physical prizes from Amazon will only be available in the US at launch.
Amazon has been testing GameOn with Millenial eSports’ Eden Games, nWay, Mindstorm and other developers in games “ranging from casual to core across different genres,” the company said. The APIs allow developers to do matchmaking, leaderboards and in-game tournaments. “GameOn saved us months of development and a whole lot of maintenance and logistical overhead in the long run,” said Eden Games CMO Pascal Clarysse.
The service will soon be used in competitions for Beach Buggy Racing 2 and a new Doodle Jump title, Amazon said. “Game developers have consistently told us they are looking for ways to increase player engagement and retention,” said Amazon Competitive Gaming Director Marja Koopmans. “We built Amazon GameOn to give developers simple, yet powerful tools to foster community through competitive gameplay.”
GameOn is one of Amazon’s big announcements for its Amazon Developer Day as part of GDC 2018, which launches today in San Francisco. Lately, Amazon has been heavily promoting — to developers and players alike — the idea of competitive gaming that doesn’t necessarily rise to the level of eSports.
Many other games and developers like Ubisoft already use Amazon’s AWS servers to host multiplayer games and competitions. Amazon has its own studio, Amazon Game Studios and even its own gaming engine, Lumberyard. With GameOn, it’s found another way to be involved and further profit from its sprawling cloud infrastructure.
Click here to catch up on the latest news from GDC 2018!
HTC’s Vive Pro headset is available to pre-order for $799
Once staunch rivals in high-end VR, it now seems Facebook-owned Oculus and HTC are treading different paths. While Oculus is gearing up to launch a more affordable standalone headset, HTC has gone in the opposite direction with the Vive Pro, a new top-of-the range facehugger announced at this year’s CES. Today, HTC has revealed the Vive Pro is the antithesis of affordable at $799/£799, and that it’s now available to pre-order globally ahead of its April 5th shipping date.
For that significant wad of dough, you’re getting higher-res OLED displays with a combined resolution of 2,880 x 1,600, up from the Vive’s 2,160 x 1,200. In addition to a sharper image, the headset promises more immersive sound through new built-in headphones with 3D audio and noise cancelling features. The Vive Pro should be more comfortable to wear, too, thanks to a redesigned strap that distributes the weight of the headset more evenly across your noggin — much like the Deluxe Audio Strap for the original Vive does. The Pro also includes dual, depth-sensing cameras on the front, the full potential of which is yet to be realized.
At $799 for just the headset, the Vive Pro is aimed at consumers wanting to be on the bleeding edge of VR hardware. It works with the existing Vive controllers and base stations for room-scale tracking (SteamVR Tracking versions 1.0 and 2.0 are supported), so no need to double up on peripherals if you already have them at home. If you pick up a Pro before June 3rd, you’ll get the added bonus of a free six-month subscription to Viveport (the monthly price of which increases by a coupla bucks in a few days, remember). After this time, as is the current offer, you’ll get just two months of all-you-can eat experiences thrown in, as well as the free copy of Fallout 4 VR every customer receives.
The Vive Pro isn’t meant to replace the existing Vive headset, but to reflect the fact there’s a new generation of hardware in town, the original Vive bundle (which includes controllers, base stations and other accessories) is being reduced by $100 to $499 — those outside the US will see an equivalent discount in their local currency. When HTC revealed the Pro at CES, it also showed off the Vive wireless adapter, which uses Intel’s WiGig tech to free you from the tyranny of tethers. There’s no word on when that might be available today, though, so for now you’re still tied to your PC even if you believe you’re in another world.
