The Morning After: Tuesday December 27, 2016

Welcome back from the long festive weekend. In the midst of all that egg-nog, present opening and family router troubleshooting, you might have missed Apple’s first published AI research, the worst gadgets of the year, and the latest Chinese luxury smartphone that goes all-in on battery life.

No, you’re the worst.
The worst gadgets of 2016

Sidestepping the rest of the bad news that 2016 managed to deliver, there were some stinkers when it came to this year’s new gadgets. Smoking (then exploding) phones, plain racist app photo filters, excessively overpriced smartwatches and those dongles.

It’s all about object recognition.
Apple reveals its work on artificial intelligence

When Apple said it would publish its artificial intelligence research, we had a few questions: Would the company keep potential trade secrets close to the vest? What exactly is the company working on? Well, in its first published AI paper, it outlined the issues with teaching AI to recognize objects using simulated images, which are easier to use than photos (since you don’t need a human to tag items) but poor for adapting to real-world situations. Apple says the trick is to pit neural networks against each other: one network trains itself to improve the realism of simulated images (in this case, using photo examples) until they’re good enough to fool a rival “discriminator” network. Ideally, this pre-training would save massive amounts of time. It’s still far too early to say how this will make its way to Apple’s assembled collection of goods or services. For now.

Big battery, big price tag.
China’s latest luxury phone goes all-in on battery life

China’s Gionee is taking a different approach with its new big-screened premium phone: it’s giving you one huge feature that might help to excuse its ‘luxury’ price tag. It just launched the M2017, a metal-and-leather 5.7-inch phone that houses an enormous 7,000mAh battery. Possibly a bigger battery than your tablet. When the M2017 goes on sale in China on January 6th (an international release isn’t likely), it’ll start at about $1,007 for a 128GB version and jump to $2,500 for a 256GB model. Not the most expensive smartphone, but likely more than that iPhone 7 Plus model you were eyeing up in the new year sales.

Floating egg.
LG has a floating speaker ready for 2017

Levitating (and magical) Bluetooth speakers have been around for years, but LG is the first major electronics company to throw a product in the ring, and is doing so with its classy-looking, albeit blandly named, “Levitating Portable Speaker,” which will make its debut at CES in January. The company promises 10 hours of playback, although it looks like we’ll have to wait for the big tech show in a week to pin down a price.

But wait, there’s more…

• Tesla’s next-generation Superchargers should be much faster
• This week: The biggest losers of 2016
• Fake news starts an Israel-Pakistan Twitter dispute
• A new ‘Double Dragon’ game is on its way next month

The Morning After: Weekend Edition

Letter from the Editor

Happy Holidays everybody! As 2016 winds to a close, we’re spending its last two weeks looking at the best and worst in the world of technology. On this Christmas Eve, I give you the greatest successes in the tech world over the past year. (Those hoping for some holiday schadenfreude will have to wait until next week.)

In case it wasn’t already apparent, Elon Musk has done pretty well for himself in the past 12 months. Roberto Baldwin detailed how Musk’s car company made major strides toward vertically integrating sun to volts and realizing his master plan to get everyone driving (or being driven by) his EVs. It’s his world, y’all, we’re just living in it.

Meanwhile, where Musk’s extra-terrestrial pursuits with SpaceX saw some setbacks, Mariella Moon explained how NASA truly thrived in 2016 (particularly on social media), despite having fewer relative resources than in years past. Turns out, most of us think learning about space is cool, but apparently not cool enough to get Congress to increase the agency’s funding.

Netflix increased its own funding by raising the cost of its streaming services. Much to the delight of shareholders, that price hike couldn’t stop the company’s upward trajectory. Richard Lawler wrote that the company’s success was driven by its growing slate of original shows and international expansion, among other things.

And finally, Aaron Souppouris explained how augmented and virtual reality entered the mainstream in 2016, but they’re really just stepping-stones on the road to mixed reality — the true melding of real and digital worlds.

Spoiler alert if you haven’t seen the sequels to “Rogue One”DARPA’s LUKE bionic arm is going to vets first

After eight years of development, two of Dean Kamen’s prosthetic arms have been delivered to the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. Dubbed LUKE (Life Under Kinetic Evolution), it was inspired by the Star Wars character and can understand multiple commands at once, allowing for more natural movement.

Gamers, hide your walletsMicrosoft, Sony and Valve are all offering big holiday sales

Now that you’ve snagged gifts for everyone else (if you’ve waited until the last minute, don’t worry, we can help), it’s time to pick up a few things for yourself. If video games are your habit of choice, you’re in luck: Deep discounts are available on PC and consoles alike, covering every genre and style of release we can think of.

ShockerApple is reportedly putting Mac development on the back burner

If you think Apple’s computers aren’t getting enough love, this report could help explain why. MacBook Pro issues and a focus on mobile devices mean there aren’t as many resources for developing new desktops. Tim Cook says Apple has “great” desktops in its roadmap, but who knows when we’ll actually see them.

Real-time fantasyNBA InPlay app listens in to know what game you’re watching

The NBA is rolling out a fantasy basketball app that works in a unique way: to rack up points, you have to watch the game. It uses the audio to recognize national broadcasts, while viewers select players and get points from their performance. The league’s slate of Christmas Day games is a perfect opportunity to try it out, which is probably why InPlay came to Android and iOS this week.

Remember: The Warriors blew a 3-1 lead in the NBA Finals2016: The year in winners and losers

So far, our looks back through 2016 are all positive, so peruse the year’s winners while you can. Tesla, Netflix, mixed reality and NASA all walk away from 2016 with heads held high and a seemingly bright future. All that changes next week when we figure out who took a step backward in the past twelve months.

But wait, there’s more…

• Samsung Gear S3 Frontier review: Lots of features, not enough apps
• Sling TV accidentally reveals its set-top box for cord cutters
• Death isn’t enough to keep a classic character out of the latest “Star Wars” film
• The first trailer for “Blade Runner 2049” is here

Australia fines Valve $2.2 million over its Steam refund policy

Australia’s federal court has fined Valve AUD$3 million (USD$2.2 million) after ruling that the company breached consumer law when it didn’t offer refunds between 2011 and 2014. This is the maximum fine requested by Australia’s competition regulator and it’s 12 times more than Valve itself suggested it should pay, according to The Sydney Morning Herald. Justice James Edelman said he imposed such a harsh penalty because Valve willfully disregarded Australian law.

When Valve established Steam in Australia, it did not seek out legal advice or ensure it followed local regulations until the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission was alerted in 2014, Valve’s general counsel Karl Quackenbush said. This lack of forethought did not sit well with Justice Edelman.

“[Valve] had a culture by which it formed a view without Australian legal advice that it was not subject to Australian law, and it was content to proceed to trade with Australian consumers without that advice and with the view that even if advice had been obtained that Valve was required to comply with Australian law the advice might have been ignored,” his judgement reads, according to the Morning Herald.

Valve is a United States company serving 2.2 million accounts in Australia, and between 2011 and 2014 it received 21,124 tickets with the word “refund” from Australian IP addresses, Justice Edelman said.

Australia’s federal court found in March that Valve’s lack of a refund policy on Steam violated consumer law. Valve implemented an international refund policy in mid-2015.

Valve initially suggested it should pay a AUD$250,000 penalty, but Justice Edelman said that figure was “not even a real cost of doing business. It would barely be noticed.”

Luckily, refunds are now definitely a thing on Steam — and the site’s winter sale is going on right now.

Source: The Sydney Morning Herald