Apple iPhone 8 might include two 5.5-inch models with dual cameras
The next iPhone – or iPhones – will be big and pack a dual-camera design.
Apple is rumoured to be working on three new iPhone models for 2017, which happens to be the phone’s 10th anniversary. According to analyst Ming-Chi Kuo of KGI Securities (via Apple Insider), two of those phones will be 5.5-inch models with dual-lens cameras. Also, one of the phones will be a redesigned OLED version, while the other will simply have a LCD display.
Kuo forecasted that between 65 and 75 percent of new iPhones shipped next autumn will boast “dual-camera displays”. Keep in mind he has said previously that the two-camera system would be an exclusive feature for iPhone Plus models. As for that third phone, it will have a 4.7-inch form factor and an LCD display, but it won’t launch with a dual-lens camera design.
Other features rumoured for the next iPhone include a glass back, a curved screen, and a Touch ID sensor built into the display. Check out Pocket-lint’s rumour round-up for more details on what the phone could feature.
Report: Snapchat secretly, officially filed for its IPO
It’s no secret that Snap Inc. (née Snapchat) has been thinking about selling stock to the public, but it looks it has officially — and quietly — pulled the trigger. According to a report from Reuters the ephemeral messaging company confidentially filed for an initial public offering just before the US presidential election, a move that would keep its crucial financials away from its competitors’ prying eyes for at least a little longer. That initial sale of stock could take place as early as next March, and if all goes well (according to Bloomberg, anyway) the company could raise up to $4 billion.
The potential problem with an IPO, of course, is that organized shareholders and activist investors could influence the company’s plans in motion. The folks at Twitter have had to mull this problem over recently too, but hey — we’re getting ahead of ourselves a bit. This IPO was only matter of time.
Batting away a multi-billion dollar offer from Facebook in 2015 was a crystal clear signal that Snap Inc. had ambitions beyond just being another company’s subsidiary, and lots of outside money would be needed to fuel that growth. That’s why so few people were surprised when CEO Evan Spiegel said the company “needed” to IPO not long after he had rebuffed Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s financial advances. Since then, we’ve seen the company face down clone-like competition from Facebook’s own products — Instagram Stories, anyone? — and broaden its focus with the release of its first hardware product, a pair of funky camera-laden sunglasses called Spectacles.
Make no mistake: the company’s flagship product will always be Snapchat, which continues to act as an eyeball magnet for around 150 million daily users around the world. They’re not just dining and dashing, either — as of this past February, people spent around an average of 25 to 30 minutes in the app daily, a metric Spiegel seems to value even more strongly than the sheer number of people using Snapchat. With any luck, a big influx of cash could help Snapchat stave off competitors and firm up its position as a prime player in social media for years to come.
As expected, a Snap Inc. spokesperson declined to comment.
Oxford University will offer free online courses in 2017
The highest ranked university in the world will soon join prestigious institutions like Berkeley, Harvard and MIT in offering free massive open online courses (MOOCs). Starting in February 2017, Oxford University will partner with nonprofit online learning platform edX to teach a freely available economics class titled, “From Poverty to Prosperity: Understanding Economic Development.”
While the idea of free online learning has started to catch on in the United States — the New York Times declared 2012 “the year of the MOOC” — Oxford has held out on such programs until now. Appropriately enough, this particular course is a perfect fit for promoting accessibility in places of higher education: it will be taught by Oxford Economics and Public Policy professor Sir Paul Collier, and will “examine the vital role that governments play in boosting economic development,” according to a statement from the university.
“The School’s mission is to improve government around the world through research and education, and this requires better educated public officials, teachers, entrepreneurs, journalists and citizens,” Professor Ngaire Woods, the Dean of Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government said. “We see this first massive open online course as an effective way to expand access to knowledge beyond the classrooms of Oxford, and to help people understand how their community and country can flourish wherever they are in the world.”
Enrollment is open now through edX’s platform and students can expect to spend about two to three hours per week on the six-week course. The materials will also be available to view after the course closes.
Via: BBC
Source: Oxford University
BMW expands its ReachNow car-share service to Brooklyn
At the LA Auto Show today, BMW announced that its car-sharing service, ReachNow is expanding to Brooklyn starting today. The city joins Seattle and Portland as municipalities that have access to BMWs and Minis for one-way rentals within a set geographic range.
The company also announced that in December it plans to launch a ride-hailing service similar to Uber and Lyft in the Seattle area called ReachNow Ride. The new service will use the same app the company already uses for car-sharing. Users will have the option of choosing a ride from someone or reserving and driving one of seven types of vehicles currently available for rent in the city.
What sets ReachNow apart from soon-to-be-rivals Lyft and Uber is that drivers will use the company’s vehicles instead of their own cars. But as with more established ride-hailing services, the folks behind the wheel will be considered contractors, not employees. There’s no word on when this service will expand to Portland or Brooklyn, where ReachNow car-sharing is already available.
Indeed, Brooklyn is especially important to BMW. “Part of the reason we choose Brooklyn was we wanted to make it clear we weren’t just a West Coast solution,” ReachNow CEO Steve Banfield told Engadget. “We weren’t just a regional product. Our mission has been from the beginning to cover the continent.”
And while there are no announcements about additional markets, the company has been aggressively courting other urban areas including San Francisco where it had a similar car-sharing service called DriveNow. Unfortunately, city regulations about parking shut it down. But ReachNow is hoping to return soon. “We would love to take a look and come back to San Francisco.”
But in the meantime it continues to expand and add more services. In fact, today it also announced a pilot program (ReachNow Share) that allowed Seattle owners of 2016 and 2017 Minis to rent their cars to ReachNow customers.
Source: ReachNow
Lucid Motors’ super-secret car makes an appearance
Automotive startup, Lucid Motors dropped by the LA Auto Show with its super-secret sedan today. Because it’s electric and doesn’t have a traditional engine taking up space, the company has designed the car to have a smaller footprint that a luxury sedan like the BMW 7-Series. But, boasts the roughly the same amount of cargo and passenger space as those high-end vehicles.
That’s not the only time the car has been caught on camera. Earlier in the day, the automaker released its own photo of the vehicle sitting between a BMW 7-Series and Mercedes S-Class to show just how much smaller it is than those sedans.
The company says the yet-to-be-seen-without-camouflage sedan will have a 300 mile range and potentially fully autonomous features when it launches. Unfortunately, there’s no current information about when you’ll actually be able to buy one.
Elusive ‘Overwatch’ hero Sombra is now available to everyone
Blizzard has been teasing the second post-launch Overwatch character, Sombra, for months — cryptic clues and leaks have been floating around since the first extra character showed up. At last, though, she’s here. After about a week of public testing, Blizzard has released a finished update that brings Sombra’s stealthy hacking to PC, PS4 and Xbox One players. To recap, she’s an “infiltrator” who can temporarily become invisible, teleport to a beacon, disable enemy shields with EMP blasts and hack both health kits as well as Torbjörn’s turrets. She’s who you send in to undermine a stubborn defense before your main assault.
The patch isn’t just about Sombra, as fans will be quick to tell you. Overwatch now has an Arcade that rotates maps, modes and rules that wouldn’t be at home in the more conventional Quick Play or competitive modes, such as a ban on switching heroes. There’s also a new Arena map, Ecopoint, that ties into Mei’s backstory. All told, there’s a lot more to do even if you ran dry months ago. Sombra will force at least some teams to rethink their strategies, and the Arcade should shake things up when the familiar six-versus-six mechanic feels stale.
Via: Polygon
Source: Battle.net
China completes first human trial with CRISPR-edited genes
As predicted, it happened: On October 28th, Chinese oncologists at Sichuan University were the first in the world to insert CRISPR-modified cells into a patient suffering from an aggressive form of lung cancer, according to Nature. The journal reports that this first round of treatment in a safety trial went well enough to warrant a second injection of the Cas9-edited cells, and that nine more people will undergo the treatments in the future. From there, the patients will be monitored for at least six months, if not longer, to “determine whether the injections are causing serious adverse effects.”
The idea behind the continued monitoring is to ensure that the edited cells act as they should. That is, that their (now deactivated) PD-1 proteins no longer halt a cell’s immune response and let cancer spread. “The hope is, without PD-1, the edited cells will attack and defeat the cancer,” Nature wrote.
This might not be the silver bullet against cancer, though. Naiyer Rizvi from Columbia University’s Medical Center posits that the gene editing process could encounter a roadblock because it’s a complex procedure and isn’t very scalable — especially compared to other methods like using antibodies.
“Unless it shows a large gain in efficacy, it will be hard to justify moving forward,” he said.
Source: Nature
MacBook Pro With Touch Bar Now Available for Purchase at Some Apple Retail Stores
Just a day after the first MacBook Pro with Touch Bar orders began arriving to customers, a select number of Apple retail stores have received stock and are offering limited quantities of the new machine.
MacRumors reader Nicholas was able to purchase a new 15-inch MacBook Pro at the Apple Store in La Brea, California, and according to a Reddit thread, several other stores across California have also been selling Touch Bar MacBook Pro models. New MacBook Pros have been spotted in Rancho Cucamonga, Fairview, Emeryville, and Walnut Creek, and one Redditor claims to have purchased a 13-inch MacBook Pro from the Soho Apple Store in New York, while a MacRumors reader says he found a MacBook Pro in New Jersey.
In other parts of the United States, stores do not yet have Touch Bar MacBook Pro models available for purchase, but multiple customers have been told to expect the machines to be in stock starting tomorrow. At some locations, however, customers have been told no MacBook Pro models will be available before Thanksgiving, so country-wide in-store availability may not happen for a few weeks.
Along with limited stock, Apple retail stores are expected to have display models on hand before the end of the week. In Hong Kong, the Touch Bar MacBook Pro has been on display since yesterday, and several customers have reported being told that display models will be in stores as soon as Wednesday.
In store pickup is not available for the new MacBook Pros, so customers hoping to skip the 4 to 5 week wait for a Touch Bar machine will need to call or visit an Apple retail store in person to check stock levels.
Related Roundup: MacBook Pro
Buyer’s Guide: MacBook Pro (Buy Now)
Discuss this article in our forums
Trump’s Facebook focus helped him win the election
Despite Facebook’s arguments to the contrary, its social network helped Donald Trump win the US election… if not for the reasons you’d suspect. Wired has learned that the Trump campaign focused very heavily on its Facebook strategy, eclipsing a Clinton campaign that (while definitely digital-savvy) still devoted a lot of its attention to TV. Most of Trump’s $250 million in fundraising came from supporters on Facebook, and it was extremely aggressive in running and refining ads. Trump’s digital team ran between 40,000 to 50,000 variants of its promos per day, endlessly figuring out which strategies worked best. They knew if subtitles would help, or if a video was more effective than a still image.
Combine this with Trump’s fondness for Twitter and it’s clear that the campaign was constantly reaching out to the internet, making sure that anyone receptive to its ideas could interact. Contrast that with the relatively insular Clinton campaign. While her team certainly made an effort to influence undecided voters, its unofficial online support included massive private Facebook groups that served as echo chambers. Simply speaking, undecided voters more likely to hear from Trump while skimming their social feeds. This suggests that future American political candidates may have to emphasize Facebook if they want to win — they can’t just treat it as one part of a larger plan.
Source: Wired
Google Wifi now on sale from Amazon, Best Buy and Google Store
Google’s new smart router system is arriving in the first week of December.
Google Wifi was the final hardware product we expected to ship after its October 4 launch event, with Pixel phones, Daydream View, Google Home and Chromecast Ultra already available to buy. Now listings are popping up on popular retailers — including Google’s own store — to pre-order the intelligent Wi-Fi router system for an early December release.
Amazon, Best Buy and the Google Store have Google Wifi available in either a single router configuration for $129 or a three-pack for mesh networking for a discounted price of $299. The single router is rated to cover 1500 square feet, which is quite robust, but the three pack of course can cover 4500 square feet with much more reliability.
The Google Wifi system is all about simplicity, as it uses an app to help you quickly configure and manage your network without confusing settings or tons of extra work. It’s designed to just work, and the individual routers themselves are extremely small, simple and meant to be seen rather than stashed away in a corner. If you’re interested in putting down the cash for a pre-order, you can do so below.
Google Wifi single router:
AmazonBest BuyGoogle Store
Google Wifi three-pack:
AmazonBest BuyGoogle Store
