Samsung Pay now offers its own rewards program in the U.S.
Double dip with your rewards program by using a credit card in Samsung Pay.
A year after launch, Samsung is looking for even more ways to keep customers regularly using Samsung Pay — today’s announcement of its own bespoke Samsung Rewards program does just that. It’s simple, really: just use Samsung Pay starting this week (in the U.S. only for now) and you’ll start racking up rewards points that you can later spend on tons of items.
With Samsung Rewards, you’ll pick up points every time you use Samsung Pay to make a purchase, and like other similar programs you’ll have opportunities to gain bonus points through offers at certain retailers or specific times of year. Anyone who joins Samsung Rewards before the end of 2016, for example, will receive double points for every purchase. Samsung Rewards will also have loyalty tiers that multiply your points — up to four times the points — on every single purchase.
When you have amassed a wallet full of Rewards points, you can redeem them for Samsung products, discounts on its website, a prepaid Visa card or gift cards from various retailers. There’s also the possibility that you could win extra prize giveaways, like trips to hot destinations.
Even though Samsung Rewards works very similarly to credit card-based rewards programs, it doesn’t have any effect on what you earn from your credit card issuer. This means you can double up on points, if you wish — get the points from your credit card issuer or bank for purchases, but also get extra rewards from Samsung because you made the transaction in Samsung Pay.
Samsung Pay already has a pretty loyal following by those who have found it’s far easier to use than NFC-only payment methods like Android Pay, and Samsung Rewards is yet another reason for people to stick with the platform.
Samsung
Samsung is a massive South Korea-based multinational company that makes some of the best-selling phones, tablets and mobile accessories, but also spans industries such as televisions, appliances and semiconductors (like memory and processors). Samsung is the largest Android device manufacturer worldwide.
- Best Samsung phones
- Samsung Galaxy S7 edge review
- Best microSD card for Android
Save 50% on select Ringke Fusion cases for the Google Pixel!
Looking to pick up a new case for your Google Pixel but don’t want to spend a ton? Right now Ringke is offering 50% off its bumper clear case in a variety of colors. The quantities here are limited for this deal, so if you are interested you’ll want to act quickly to pick up one of these slim cases. While the case itself is clear, you can get it with an accent color, as noted below. If you want to prevent scratches and dings from gunking up the back and sides of your phone, you’ll want to get one of these.
For the coupons to work you will need to select the option to have it fulfilled by merchant (Ringke in this case) and not fulfilled by Amazon. You may need to click on see more sellers in order to view the other option, so if the coupon doesn’t work at first make sure that you are purchasing it from the correct place.
Google Pixel
- Drop Protection TPU Bumper Clear Back Case : Clear – $5.99 with coupon R4T6PZKZ
- Drop Protection TPU Bumper Clear Back Case : Smoke Black – $5.99 with coupon IL4A32DY
- Drop Protection TPU Bumper Clear Back Case : Rose Gold – $5.99 with coupon 5S7X5UZI
Google Pixel XL
- Drop Protection TPU Bumper Clear Back Case : Clear – $5.99 with coupon F75CPLV
- Drop Protection TPU Bumper Clear Back Case : Smoke Black – $5.99 with coupon C2I4B83X
- Drop Protection TPU Bumper Clear Back Case : Rose Gold – $5.99 with coupon 64H3VPRN
These codes won’t last long, so if you are interested be sure to get your order in sooner than later! Which color did you end up grabbing? Let us know in the comments!
The closest your Nexus camera will get to Pixel performance is being publicly tested
Maybe you can keep that Nexus just a little longer now.
Google’s Pixel cameras are outstanding, and a lot of it has to do with some downright clever software in the new camera app. That zero shutter lag experience is one of those things you don’t know you care about until you see someone else with it, and when you combine that with the overall quality of the images you get from a Pixel it’s easy to feel the urge to click the purchase button.
If the camera on your Nexus 6P or Nexus 5X has been feeling slower than usual after seeing some of the things Pixels are capable of, you’re probably going to want to install Camera NX V4.
Charles Chow has been working hard to make the Nexus cameras feel a little lighter, and after poking around at the camera software Google has been using in the Pixel phones he has cobbled together a solution for anyone with a 5X or 6P to sideload for themselves. Camera NX V4 implements the Pixel tools for zero shutter lag and that background processing for HDR shots, making the Nexus cameras feel a whole lot faster. You aren’t going to get an exact compare with a Pixel, especially since some of what is happening to make that camera so fast is hardware, but it’s much faster than what you’ve got right now.
Keep in mind this is not an official app from the Play Store, and has its own bugs you’ll find while trying to take pictures. This is mostly for folks who want to tinker and see how much better this camera really is, but there’s a good chance no matter who you are you’ll be impressed with the results. If you want to install the app, head over to Chow’s site and scroll all the way to the bottom. Read to find the right link for you, and enjoy!
Google Pixel + Pixel XL
- Google Pixel and Pixel XL review
- Google Pixel XL review: A U.S. perspective
- Google Pixel FAQ: Should you upgrade?
- Pixel + Pixel XL specs
- Understanding Android 7.1 Nougat
- Join the discussion in the forums!
Google Store
Verizon
Marshall launches new wireless on-ear cans called Mid Bluetooth
Marshall has a new pair of wireless cans just in time for the holiday season.
The headphones, called Mid Bluetooth, follows the Major II in Marshall’s line of Bluetooth-ready headphones, so if that’s any indication, they should be loud, with plenty of bass. They feature a 30-hour battery life, Bluetooth aptX and 40mm drivers, and a single analog knob for controls. You can use it to play, pause, shuffle, and adjust volume. You can also use it to answer and end calls.
Marshall
Again, similar to the Major II, the Mid Bluetooth can also share audio with someone else while wirelessly connected to your phone. All you need is a the included 3.5mm audio cable. The main difference between the $150 Major II and the new $200 Mid Bluetooth is looks. The new headphones are on-ear cans that sport a black design with gold accents and the iconic script logos.
If this interests you, the Mid Bluetooth is available now from Marshall’s website.
- Best Bluetooth headphones 2016
Hydroelectric dams cause more emissions than we thought
It turns out that you can’t even rely upon hydroelectric dams as a source of hope and optimism in 2016. Researchers have found that the technology is far more damaging to the climate than previously thought. A new study reports that dams emit 25 percent more methane than expected, and are the cause of 1.3 percent of all human-created emissions. It’s the hope that kills you, really.
It’s not so much the dam itself that’s the problem, but the body of water that sits adjacent to it that provides the pressure for power. Those dam lakes are wide and deep, with little oxygen and plenty of algae and bacteria floating around at the bottom. When plant matter is carried down the river, it settles on the lake bed, making a hearty meal for the aforementioned bacteria. When broken down, the old leaves and branches are turned into methane and CO2, which then rise up into the atmosphere.
Bridget Deemer, lead author of the study, told the Guardian that while methane doesn’t linger in the atmosphere like CO2, it’s probably worse. She’s quoted saying “Over the course of 20 years, methane contributes almost three times more to global warming than CO2.” If nothing changes, and we expand the number of hydroelectric stations we build in the future, then those numbers will increase.
On the upside (please God, let there be an upside), this doesn’t mean we should abandon the technology outright. Instead, future projects need to take into consideration ways to reduce the proliferation of plant matter and bacteria. Or maybe just hire thousands of unemployed pool attendants to rake out the bottom once a month.
Via: The Guardian
Source: BioScience
The PowerWatch is a body heat-powered smartwatch that does very little
One of the biggest problems with smartwatches is avoiding a dead battery. Whether it’s forgetting to plug them in in time, or having to fiddle with the unwieldy magnetic disk chargers, keeping a wearable juiced up is not as convenient as it should be. With that in mind, startup Matrix Industries devised a way to harness our body heat to power smartwatches, and its technology is making its debut in the PowerWatch. I had a chance to try out an early prototype of the device, and though it did indeed work, it only offered very basic functions.
Body-heat as an energy resource isn’t new, not even in watches (remember the Seiko Thermic?). But it doesn’t take much energy to simply move a second hand around, whereas much more is needed to run a processor. The PowerWatch will be the first wearable to be powered entirely by warmth, thanks to what the company says is the world’s lowest power-consuming microprocessor, called the AMBI Q. Earlier processors were too power-hungry to be effective, says Akram Boukai, founder of Matrix Industries. Without the processor, the PowerWatch would not have been possible, he says, even though thermal technology has been in existence for far longer.
It may be power-efficient, but the AMBI Q doesn’t appear to do very much. The PowerWatch is only capable of displaying the time, tracking your steps and sleep quality, setting timers and stopwatches and monitoring the amount of energy you’re generating. That last bit is displayed as a power meter made up of blocks circling the watch face, and gets fuller as your body temperature increases, say when you’re exercising, creating a larger difference between your skin’s surface temperature and the surrounding air.
The power you produce also acts as a more accurate measure of your calories burned, since a calorie is defined as a unit of heat energy anyway. The watch will send this information to your phone via Bluetooth, displaying it in circular charts so you can see how much energy (in milliamp hours) you’re creating and compare it to data from previous days. You’ll also be able to set goals for distance and steps like you can in most fitness apps.
Those are all the functions this first-gen wearable is capable of, so don’t expect this to be a truly smart watch that can receive phone’s notifications on your wrist. The company did say these features could be added in future iterations of the product, though.
I placed the chunky PowerWatch prototype on my wrist during a recent demo and saw its display turn on after a second or two of contact with my skin. A four-bar power meter showed up on the screen, with all blocks filled up. Boukai told me that just one bar needs to be filled to provide enough energy for the watch’s basic functions. Anything generated beyond that goes towards charging the device’s 200mAh battery, which Boukai said can last two years when idle. Meaning: The device goes to sleep when you remove it, but continues to keep track of the time and store your collected data.
A fully functional prototype wasn’t available at the time of my demo, but the final version of the watch will sport a round 1.2-inch black-and-white display and 18mm or 20mm straps. It’s available now for pre-order on Indiegogo for $99, with an expected arrival of July 2017, but the price will rise to $160 when it eventually ships. While the PowerWatch appears to be a very basic, proof-of-concept device at the moment, Matrix Industries’ plans for the future are far more interesting. It intends to make hearing aids and wireless earbuds that can be powered by body heat as well, and is already working on a slew of other applications for its more efficient and reliable means of generating energy.
Facebook didn’t stop fake news because it’s afraid of conservatives
In the last week, Facebook’s been battling the accusation that fake, often inflammatory stories showing up in users’ Newsfeeds influenced how people voted in the presidential election. The social media giant vowed it is currently taking the issue seriously and is searching for an unspecified solution even as CEO Mark Zuckerberg personally defended Facebook, claiming that over 99% of stories on the network are authentic and that it was “extremely unlikely” that fake news impacted the election outcome. But within Facebook, a fierce debate has allegedly roiled since May about whether to install an update that curbs fake and hoax news — but they didn’t deploy it because stories from conservative news sources were disproportionately downgraded and removed from users’ Newsfeeds.
To be clear, there’s not much known about the update’s efficacy to accurately scrub fake news. But ultimately, it was shelved and buried, sources told Gizmodo. One said that, “They absolutely have the tools to shut down fake news,” but that product decisions (i.e. whether to install the update) were affected by fear of offending conservative readers even further after a mini-scandal six months ago.
Back in May, Facebook’s Trending Topics section got flak for how much its curation team “routinely suppressed” stories of interest to conservative readers. This likely contributed to the decision to pink slip the team and ditch human control of trending entirely in favor of a supposedly impartial algorithm in August. That incident sunk company mood, according to a New York Times report released last weekend: “The Trending Topics episode paralyzed Facebook’s willingness to make any serious changes to its products that might compromise the perception of its objectivity.”
Without their human editors, hoax stories blossomed across the social network. Fake reports circulated that Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly had been fired just after the Trending Topics team was let go, while a 9/11 tabloid conspiracy story rose to the top of the algorithm-controlled Trending Topics just prior to the anniversary.
But it was election-related fake news that have raised concerns in the last few days. Posts like “FBI Agent Suspected in Hillary Email Leaks Found Dead in Apparent Murder-Suicide” or “Pope Francis Shocks World, Endorses Donald Trump for President, Releases Statement,” points out Gizmodo, were circulating leading up to the election. In his November 12th post addressing the issue, Zuckerberg rejected the premise that those kinds of stories affected voters: Not only do they account for less than 1% of content passing around Facebook, he said, but hoax posts showed up on both sides of the aisle — and many don’t involve politics at all.
Even relying on napkin math, that’s still almost 1% of stories in front of Facebook’s 1.79 billion users. And since 44% of US adults use the social network as a news source according to a Pew survey, that’s still a chunk of Americans who kept seeing the fake news, and however many that trusted the authenticity of stories on Facebook to keep circulating the stories. Considering how many states’ electoral votes hinged on less than one percent of votes swinging one way or another, the marginal influence of fake news isn’t something to dismiss.
Update: A Facebook spokesperson shared this statement with Engadget over email, responding to Gizmodo’s story:
The article’s allegation is not true. We did not build and withhold any News Feed changes based on their potential impact on any one political party. We always work to make News Feed more meaningful and informative, and that includes examining the quality and accuracy of items shared, such as clickbait, spam and hoaxes. Mark himself said “I want to do everything I can to make sure our teams uphold the integrity of our products.” This includes continuously review updates to make sure we are not exhibiting unconscious bias.
Source: Gizmodo
Apple Pay now lets you donate to nonprofits
Apple Pay has had a great couple months. While global expansion explained its 500 percent year-over-year sales increase, the service is also growing online, as it added Squarespace support back in September. It’s not stopping with commercial business, either: Today, the company announced that you can now use Apple Pay to instantly donate to nonprofit organizations.
The full list includes many high-profile charities like the American Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders, UNICEF and the World Wildlife Foundation, among others. Others that will soon support Apple Pay include the American Cancer Society, DonorsChoose.org and PBS.
Source: Apple newsroom
Marshall’s new headphones let you jam for (at least) 30 hours
If you’re looking for a pair of affordable wireless headphones for your holiday wish list, Marshall has a new model just in time to alert Santa. The Mid Bluetooth follows the Major II in the company’s line of Bluetooth-equipped headphones, touting the same 30-hour battery life as that previous model. We found the Major II to exceed that figure by about 7 hours, so hopefully that’s the case with the Mid Bluetooth as well.
With a combination of Bluetooth aptX and 40mm drivers, I expect great sound quality with plenty of bass and enough volume to make you reach for the controls to turn them down from time to time. If the Major II is any indication, these new headphones will be plenty loud. Speaking of controls, the Mid Bluetooth features the same single knob as the Major II. It’s what you’ll use to handle play, pause, shuffle and volume adjustments. You can also use it to answer, reject and end calls should someone interrupt your listening session.
As was also the case with the Major II, the Mid Bluetooth can also share audio with someone else while connected to your phone wirelessly. All you need is a 3.5mm audio cable. And yes, there’s one included in the box for that purpose and to connect to your device when you’re unable to replenish a dead battery.
So, what’s the big different between the $150 Major II and the new $200 Mid Bluetooth? It’s mostly a matter of design. This new model carries a different look than Marshall’s previous wireless headphone, and personally, I prefer it. The design seems more refined while still offering a heavy dose of the company’s trademark textured black materials and gold accents, as well as several iconic script logos. They’re still on-ear headphones though, so hopefully Marshall will offer something for people who prefer the over-ear style soon enough. If you’re looking to nab a pair, the Mid Bluetooth is available now from the company’s website.
Source: Marshall
Worldwide carbon emissions were flat for third year in a row
For the third year in a row, carbon emissions around the world have remained flat, according to the research group Global Carbon Project. The group revealed its findings in the Global Carbon Budget 2016, which measures how much carbon is emitted by countries around the world, and then how much of that is absorbed into the earth by plants, land and oceans. The remaining carbon hangs out in the atmosphere and drives global warming, and it’s the focus of Global Carbon Project’s research.
The group previously discovered that carbon emissions in 2014 and 2015 plateaued, and today’s report says 2016 is on track to continue this trend. Carbon emissions growth was less than 1 percent in 2016, the Global Carbon Project says. The report notes that the plateau is due to declines in emissions from China and the United States, the world’s two largest sources of CO2. The Paris agreement and Marrakesh plan of action, two global initiatives aimed at encouraging countries to reduce their carbon output, also helped drive down CO2 emissions.
Some of this progress is threatened by the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States. Trump consistently rejects the science of climate change and says he wants to shut down crucial government projects designed to shrink the US’ carbon footprint, including pulling out of the Paris agreement and dissolving the Environmental Protection Agency altogether. Such actions could end up pumping billions of tons more carbon into the atmosphere than the US produced under President Barack Obama.
Though carbon emissions have stalled for now, they’re still 63 percent above emissions in 1990, the Global Carbon Project notes. The use of fossil fuels and industrial activity generated more than 36 billion tons of carbon dioxide in 2016; the key to halting global warming is to bring emissions to zero.
Bob Ward, policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, tells The Washington Post that there are many reasons carbon emissions have stalled around the world, but efforts to reduce coal consumption in the US and China are major drivers of this phenomenon.
“However, Donald Trump as president could undermine this achievement if he carries through with his threat to scrap the Obama Administration’s Clean Power Plan, and encourages an increase in the use of coal for electricity generation,” he says.
Via: The Washington Post
Source: Global Carbon Project
AIVAnet 