Man Turns to Body Modification to Keep AirPods Held in Place
The majority of user reports suggest Apple’s AirPods fare pretty well at sitting securely in the average lug hole, but at least one owner has had issues with them falling out of his ears. Fortunately he found an effective, albeit unusual, solution.
Figured out how I’m gonna keep these AirPods from falling out of my ears pic.twitter.com/5AKmzVIX5b
— Andrew Cornett 🌚🏡⏳ (@amotion) December 21, 2016
Andrew Cornett recruited a pair of stretched ear piercings to accommodate the stems, allowing his modified lobes to act as little holders that ensure his AirPods always stay in place.
As with individual pain thresholds, prices vary at piercing studios for opening holes in flesh, but all Apple Stores across the U.S. charge a consistent $69 to replace a lost AirPod, regardless of whether or not they’re still under warranty.
Tag: AirPods
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LG CES 2017 plans revealed: Smart Home appliances to get smarter with deep learning
LG is set to unveil a range of smart home appliances during CES 2017 that adopt deep learning technology to make them smarter than ever before.
During the January consumer electronics show in Las Vegas, the company will debut a new robot vacuum cleaner, refrigerator, air conditioner and washing machine – much like it did with the Signature range at the 2016 event. Each will have deep learning features to help them understand your life and therefore make things a little easier for you.
The robot cleaner will use deep learning to recognise objects around a room and react to them accordingly. It will capture surface images of its surroundings and learn to avoid them over time. It will also recognise different objects, such as electrical wires and slippers, and even tell the difference between a person and a chair in order to ask the human obstacle to kindly shift out of the way.
- CES 2017: What is it and what to expect
The fridge analyses usage and eating patterns in order to predict what tasks should be undertaken and when. For example, it will only make ice at the times of day it is most needed, or change sterilisation system patterns on its own when it detects a higher temperature outside.
LG’s new air conditioner also analyses the behaviour of home owners. It will learn which parts of the home are most occupied during the day and adjust temperatures to suit.
Finally, the new washing machine detects the quality of water used and adjusts programmes automatically, such as the temperature and amount of water used in a hard water area with excessive calcium carbonate.
“Deep learning technology is the next phase in the evolution of smart appliances,” said Song Dae-hyun, president of LG Electronics.
Pocket-lint will be at CES 2017 from 3 January to the end of the show in order to bring you all of the news, hands-ons and other announcements as they happen.
Huge leak seemingly confirms three iPhones for 2017
We’re still just under a year away from Apple unveiling its 2017 iPhones but the rumour mill is churning away at full speed. The latest leak is of alleged manufacturing documents from Apple’s East Asian supply chain, posted to Weibo and picked up by Apple Insider, that seemingly confirm there will indeed be three iPhone models in 2017.
- Apple iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus: What’s the story so far?
It’s not the first time we’ve heard there will be three phones next year, but this new leak has more concrete evidence to back it up. It mentions three models: D20, D21 and D22. D20 and D21 are said to be the standard upgraded models over the current iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus, but D22 will be a high-end model, currently codenamed ‘Ferrari’. Interestingly, the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus were known internally as D19 and D20 according to cnBeta.
It’s unlikely the high-end model will sport a red paint finish and do 0-60mph in under 4 seconds, but it’s said to be the model that will feature a bezel-less OLED screen, embedded home button and wireless charging.
Apple Insider goes on to say the ‘Ferrari’ model will receive a complete internal overhaul that will split the logic board into two pieces. One will play host to the new A11 processor chip and flash storage, while the second will house the Wi-Fi and communications components.
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One thing the leak doesn’t talk about is naming of the new models. Some rumours suggest we’ll get the iPhone 7S and iPhone 7S Plus while others allude to an iPhone 8 because 2017 will mark the 10th anniversary of the iPhone. As for the high-end model, we’re still none the wiser.
Propel X-Wing battle drone: The ultimate toy for Star Wars fans
Drones are the hot tech gadget at the moment. They come in all shapes and sizes, whether it be the high-powered, high-tech DJI Mavic Pro quadcopter with foldable arms, or the mammoth fixed-wing Parrot Disco drone which looks more like a mini aeroplane.
For Star Wars fans however, there’s only one manufacturer worth looking at. Propel has created three new interactive Star Wars drones, and we got our hands on the X-Wing model. If for whatever reason you’re not an X-Wing fan, there’s also a TIE Advanced X1 fighter and a 74-Z Speeder Bike.
X-Wing Drone preview: What comes in the box?
The packaging, contents and presentation are probably the most interesting part of the drone. That’s not to downplay the fun of flying the X-Wing drone, but rather highlight how well presented it is.
As soon as the lid is lifted from the box, the plinth holding the drone lights up and immediately starts playing Star Wars themes and a scene from the original trilogy movies. You’ll be whisked back to the first attack on the Death Star with all the Red fighters confirming their standby status. It’s pretty impressive.
Undoubtedly the coolest unboxing. Ever. #starwars #drone #xwing
A video posted by Cam Bunton (@cambunton) on Dec 20, 2016 at 2:20am PST
Once you remove this display case you get to the rest of the contents, all of which are packaged neatly in their own grey card boxes.
There’s the large remote control pad, which looks similar in design and size to the big white control used by DJI, except the power button is a large Rebel Alliance logo.
The power adapter comes with interchangeable UK and EU electrical plugs, and plugs in to both the battery charging dock and the display case.
Pocket-lint
There are two batteries which come shipped in X-Wing cockpits. These were perhaps one of the biggest highlights of the experience. Having a battery port that was naturally part of the ship’s design, and that slots in and out so easily is great.
- Best drones to buy in 2016, whatever your budget
Other parts that ship with the drone include the propellers, including eight spares, a propeller removal tool, spare screws and the protection cage which stops the propellers from being damaged and/or taking someone’s eye out.
X-Wing Drone preview: Do the wings fold open?
In the Star Wars movies, the X-Wing fighter gets its name from the fact that it can open its wings in to a wide “X” shape. Its name pretty much tells you that. Sadly, the wings on the drone are fixed in position, so they can’t open. That was more than likely a necessity to make such a small drone possible.
Pocket-lint
The entire drone feels mostly hollow, and made from plastic, then painted to make it look like one of the original T65 X-Wing fighters. In fact, it’s even got a finish that makes it appear slightly battle-worn.
Perhaps the only part that doesn’t look authentic is the pair of arms sticking out from near the front of the cockpit. Of course, these are needed for the front propellers, but do look very strange on an X-Wing.
In an effort to keep the rest of it as X-wing like as possible, Propel – the manufacturer – used completely transparent propellers, and placed the rear pair directly below the wings. This ensures that from above you can’t really see the blades at all.
Pocket-lint
As with most drones, there are lights placed at the front and back. The red lights at the back are appropriately built in to the rear burners. The white front lights are built in to the front of the wings, and flash when the drone isn’t connected to the remote, then switch to a solid white when connected.
X-Wing Drone preview: How do you fly it?
You fly the drone using the included, massive controller pad. The drone itself powers on as soon as the battery unit is slotted in to the unit, so you never have to worry about finding an on/off switch.
Before powering on the controller, you need to find four AA batteries, and place them inside the base of the control pad. To get to the battery silos, you first need to pull out the tiny screwdriver which is stealthily placed inside its own slot in the side of the controller.
It must be said, having a micro USB port and lithium ion batteries for easy recharge-ability would be much more convenient. This is a fiddly and cumbersome method of keeping the controller working.
Pocket-lint
Once the batteries are in, you press the large round button emblazoned with a big red Rebel Alliance logo and hold it for a couple of seconds. The control pad powers up, then you move the left joystick up, then down and it’ll pair with the drone.
Like so many other drone controllers, the left joystick adjusts the altitude and spins the drone around, while the right joystick moves it forwards, backwards, left and right. Four curved buttons on the inside of the joysticks have specific functions, like auto take off and landing, calibrating the gyroscopic sensor or skipping through music tracks.
On the front of the controller there’s a selection of secondary trigger buttons which are used to change flight speed, fire infra-red weapons and perform special moves.
Pocket-lint
The controller also happens to play sound effects, theme songs and character quotes from the movies, just to make the experience that bit more Star Wars-y.
X-Wing Drone preview: What else can it do?
The fun really begins when you have two of these Battle drones in the same area. They have IR transmitters and receivers, so that you can take part in aerial duels. If your drone is hit three times by an enemy ship – like the TIE fighter version – your ship crashes (read auto-lands) and you lose.
X-Wing Drone preview: How much is it and where can I get one?
The X-Wing drone is available now for £199, and an be purchased from a number of high street and online retailers, including Maplin, eBay, Amazon, the Disney Store and Argos.
First Impressions
“Red Leader, standing by” is exactly what you’ll be shouting to yourself while flying this toy around your living room this holiday season. Incidentally, it’s also what you’ll hear the moment you lift the lid off the X-Wing battle drone for the first time. It’s £200, and is about as much fun as you’ll get from a drone if you’re a Star Wars fan.
Apple Watch refurbs lower the cost of outfitting your wrist
You no longer have to wait for a sale to snag an Apple Watch at a more reasonable price. Apple has quietly started selling refurbished Series 1 and Series 2 models through its American online store, lowering the barrier of entry if you don’t insist on untouched wristwear. They’re currently the most common models, to no one’s surprise (no ceramic Apple Watch Edition here), but you’re getting a sizable 15 percent discount over brand new: Series 1 begins at $229, while the GPS-equipped Series 2 variants start at $309. The Series 2 lineup also includes a few stainless steel versions starting at $469.
These aren’t the lowest prices we’ve seen. At the height of the holiday shopping frenzy, you could buy a Series 1 for under $200. With that said, these discounts are considerably more reliable… and importantly, they lower the official cost of entry for the Apple Watch world. While we wouldn’t exactly call $229 an impulse buy, it’s considerably more palatable if you’re not sure about this whole smartwatch thing and would rather not spend more than necessary.
Via: 9to5Mac
Source: Apple
Facebook simplifies Android SMS verification
Facebook has rolled out a new system aimed to make logins easier for its users and, by extension, its ad partners. The latest developer Account Kit SDK now includes instant verification, a two factor system that lets you skip the usual drill of receiving an SMS and then entering a code. When you attempt a Facebook login for a third-party site and enter your phone number, “we attempt a match with the verified phone number listed on the person’s Facebook profile,” the company said in its developer blog.
The system only works if you’re logged into the Android Facebook app on the same device. If so, it can verify without sending a one-time password via SMS, and if not, you’ll receive a text on your smartphone and will need to enter it on the other device. “This feature is used only to improve the verification process in a secure way and no additional Facebook information is shared with the app,” the social network adds.
Instant verification produces a 97 percent conversion rate, making it highly likely that users will successfully log in to partner sites. Facebook ads that it’s particularly useful “in areas of the world where SMS delivery is not reliable.” Citing partner Familonet, it says the instant verification method boosted conversion rates by five percent.
That’s a nice convenience for Facebook’s users and partners, but is it secure? Instant verification still relies on SMS, which isn’t exactly a panacea, as the US government recently said. The alternative is custom apps that generate much more secure codes like Google’s Authenticator, or even hardware dongles that work in a similar way. For now, it’s still the best bet for keeping you secure, along with a non-terrible password.
Source: Facebook
Google employee sues company for ‘illegal’ confidentiality policies that violate labor laws
Google’s motto is ‘don’t be evil.’ Google’s illegal confidentiality agreements and policies fail this test.
A Google product manager has accused the company of violating California labor laws via its restrictive confidentiality policies. According to The Information, the employee filed a suit with the California Superior Court in San Francisco, alleging that Google is running an internal “spying program” that encourages employees to report co-workers suspected of leaking information to the media.
The lawsuit also states that Google’s policies prohibit employees from reporting illegal activities within the company, even to its own attorneys. There’s also a policy that prevents employees from writing a novel about working for a Silicon Valley corporation without getting approval from Google.
One of the reasons for the stringent policies is to ensure that confidential information isn’t leaked to the press. Anyone found guilty of doing so would be terminated, according to the lawsuit. The suit also says that confidential information is classified as “everything at Google,” which prevents employees from talking about their workplace conditions with the “press, members of the investment community, partners, or anyone else outside of Google.”
If Google is found to be guilty of the alleged 12 violations of California’s labor laws, it could payout as much as $3.8 billion in total, with 75% of the penalty collected by the state and the rest distributed to Google’s 65,000 employees. That comes out to $14,600 per employee.
Here’s a full copy of the lawsuit, as obtained by The Verge:
Twitter’s search results are now sorted by relevance
Earlier this year, Twitter started moving away from the reverse chronological timeline and started prioritizing algorithmically “relevant” tweets in order to keep users more engaged. Starting today, Twitter will now be ordering its search results the same way in hopes that more relevant results will improve the search experience as well.
Lisa Huang, a senior software engineer on Twitter’s Search Quality team, explained the reason for the change in a blog post by pointing out that Twitter moves fast and the most recent results may not be the exact tweet you were looking for. (When you’re looking up a tweet with an original joke, for example, but search only turns up the endless quotes and retweets.)
In order to decide which tweets to show, Huang’s team has been testing a variety of factors to perfect the results layout as well as the machine learning model that actually ranks the results. But it is ultimately what you (and everyone else on Twitter) click on that gives Twitter its definition of what is relevant.
“A person’s behavior on Twitter provides an invaluable source of relevance information,” Huang wrote. And Twitter has data showing everything from which tweets you’ve seen to which tweets you’ve interacted with and how you interacted with them. “Using this information,” Huang continued, “we can train machine learning models that predict how likely a Tweet is to be engaged with.” Those machine learning models then rank “relevant” tweets based on the probability that users will engage with it.
While it make sense that everyone wants to see the most appropriate information to their search, the fact that a tweet is likely to get a lot of retweets doesn’t necessarily make it relevant either. To show the new results page in practice, Twitter offered a side-by-side of comparison of the old layout (below left) versus the new (right) for a search of #MrRobot. While the new page is less cluttered, at least in this example it also seems to favor the brands and official accounts while pushing individual users further down the page.
Via: VentureBeat
Source: Twitter Blog
Mark Zuckerberg shows off his ‘Jarvis’ home AI in two cute videos
In case you haven’t heard, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is designing a J.A.R.V.I.S. for his home, and he’s just released adorable concept videos to demo how it would ideally work.
Okay, so it’s not the actual highly advanced computerized AI featured in the Iron Man films, but it’s similar. In fact, it’s even called Jarvis. After detailing his work on the project, Zuckerberg released one video to showcase some of the real-life tasks that Jarvis can theoretically do. It’s like a souped-up Google Assistant or Amazon Echo, but with actor Morgan Freeman’s voice.
Zuckerberg’s Jarvis system isn’t as useful or functional as the one depicted in the clip. The whole idea is for us to get a better look at Zuckerberg’s vision of a robot assistant. The video is full of awkward dad jokes from Zuckerberg, plus we get an inside look at his life with his wife and new daughter. We even get to see that T-shirt cannon he rigged up in his house.
Zuckerberg also posted a second video to show a fictionalised account of how his wife, Priscilla, interacts with Jarvis. But, this time, Arnold Schwarzenegger is the original voice of Jarvis. Check out Zuckerberg’s post detailing Jarvis if you want to know more about the AI. The CEO claimed AI is closer to being able to drive cars and even cure diseases than one might expect.
7-Eleven of all places was first to trial US commercial drone deliveries
The 7-Eleven convenience store chain has just shed some new details on its drone delivery project, and apparently, 77 customers in Nevada have now received drone-delivered items from 7-Eleven to their doorsteps.
The company has been testing drone flights from a store in Reno. Roughly a dozen select customers within a mile of the shop have had their goods dropped off via drones, which are from 7-Eleven’s partner, drone maker Flirtey. The delivery pilot marks the first regular commercial drone delivery service to operate in the US. Keep in mind the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)’s initial drone regulations essentially prohibited commercial drone deliveries, because they said drones must stay within a pilot’s line of sight and cannot fly directly over people.
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But the FAA has been working with private companies to develop broader rules. In September, for instance, UPS announced it started testing the use of drones for urgent deliveries in hard-to-reach areas in the US. Still, 7-Eleven has beat Alphabet’s Project Wing and Amazon’s Prime Air to the punch when it comes to regular commercial drone deliveries, though Amazon recently demonstrated its first delivery to a customer in the UK. In July, the UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) provided Amazon with permission to test drone operations in rural and suburban areas.
While Amazon’s drone delivery was held in the UK countryside, the 7-Eleven drone delivery pilot was held in November in populated urban and suburban areas. Customers ordered food and beverages and over-the-counter medicines. The drones used a GPS system to locate the customer’s house and lowered the packages to the ground. Deliveries were completed within 10 minutes after the orders were placed, Recode said.
Per regulations, all the deliveries happened within the line of sight of the drone pilot, but the drones flew autonomously. In October, NASA and the FAA conducted tests in Reno to research a low-altitude air traffic control system that allowed pilots to watch their drones in the air the entire time. Air traffic control for drones will be a major component of drone delivery in the US before they roll out on a larger scale.
Project Wing once held an one-off trial in the US, where a single drone completed a delivery test. 7-Eleven’s is more significant because it included 77 drone deliveries over a month period.
AIVAnet 