Twinkl is a friendship bracelet for the 21st century

Telling people that you’re thinking about them is so much of a chore for energy-deficient millennials that something had to be done. That’s the idea behind Twinkl’s charm bracelet, a wearable that lets you send positive thoughts to your chums at the push of a single button. Each device comes with five slots that you can buy charms for, each one identifying a family member, close friend or your favorite content creator. When you want to let ’em know they’re in your mind, simply hit their corresponding button and their wrist will buzz.

The product is launching this week in Denmark and is aimed squarely at the much-coveted 13-to-16-year-old market. This modern-day friendship bracelet is connected to your smartphone and will last for one and a half days of “normal usage,” although if you have no friends it’ll last closer to a week. Tweens will then be encouraged to shell out for custom charms to fill the bracelet so that they can better represent their social circle. A heart charm, for instance, signifying their significant other, while the BFF button is.. you get the idea.

The bands themselves retail for just $60, and each individual charm will set you back a further couple of bucks a time. One particular charm covers your friend circle more generally, and can be used to contact up to eight people, with a colored LED underneath used to differentiate ’em. That’ll be closer to $6, although really the charm itself is just a piece of etched plastic, it’s the code to enable the LED that you’re paying for.

Twinkl’s strategy is only partly hardware-based, however, since it has one eye on developing a fresh alternative to Snapchat and/or YouTube. The firm has paired up with a group of successful Danish YouTubers that’ll enable kids to buy personalized charms. My favorite Danish YouTuber is Kristine Sloth, so I’d love to spend $13 on a Kristine Sloth charm that’ll let me tell her how much I’m thinking of her, and vice versa.

The other part of the deal is that the YouTubers in question have pledged to produce original content for the Twinkl app. If you buy one of the celebrity charms and your wrist buzzes twice, you’ll know that there’s a new behind the scenes photo or short video clip that’s exclusively available for those who’ve bought the charm. It’s also, as creator Róbert Jónsson notes, a nice and easy way to get some good publicity for a nascent startup without any money.

One thing that won’t be coming to the wristband is the ability to serve notifications more widely, from platforms like Facebook or WhatsApp. That would only serve to dilute the device’s purpose and place it in the same group as several other basic notification watches. Duh.

Source: Twinkl (Facebook)

Under Trump the future of Net Neutrality and broadband is uncertain

On January 20th, Donald Trump will be sworn in as president of the United States. With a Republican controlled House and Senate behind him, things in this country are going to change… a lot. One of the things that might be on the chopping block early in his administration is Net Neutrality.

This is obviously an issue near and dear to our hearts here at Engadget, and it’s pretty safe to assume that the rules instituted by the FCC in 2015 will be gutted by a Trump administration. In 2014 he described the concept as “top down power grab” that “will target the conservative media,” and compared it to the Fairness Doctrine — referring to the FCC rule eliminated in 1987 that required broadcasters to present contrasting views on topics of public interest. While it might be tempting to dismiss those vaguely paranoid sounding declarations as simple Twitter bluster, it’s unlikely to be an issue that flies under the radar once he moves into the White House.

Tony Romm at Politico reported that Trump will be appointing Jeffrey Eisenach as the point man for telecom issues in his transition team. Eisenach has made a career out of crusading against industry regulation. He’s spent the last several years at the conservative American Enterprise Institute and has authored several papers and op-ed pieces that were funded by Net Neutrality opponents like Engadget’s parent company Verizon.

Once gutted, there’s little hope that even a weakened version of Net Neutrality could find itself enshrined in law under a President Trump. One of the few concrete policies he’s proposed is a moratorium on new regulations from government agencies.

His fight against industry regulation will also limit the expansion of broadband in America. As a candidate his plan to push high-speed internet deeper into the rural areas of the country and bring the cost down for low-income households has been vague at best. Efforts like these largely rely on regulations, tax breaks and government programs to incentivize businesses to build out infrastructure and subsidize costs for the poor.

Connect America Fund, Rural Utilities Service program, and Broadband Technology Opportunities Program were core to Hillary Clinton’s goal of giving 100 percent of households access to affordable broadband by 2020. But government programs like these face an uncertain future and likely funding cuts under the new administration. And these decisions wont just impact the reach of broadband for the next four years, but potentially for decades to come.

That said, Trump has promised to invest in infrastructure, though not broadband specifically. And there’s a chance that by lowering regulatory walls and offering tax incentives a Trump administration could lure companies to build out broadband in rural areas, but these moves will do little reduce costs. And with with pesky net neutrality rules out of the way, it will be possible for providers to charge higher fees to consumers while actively putting competitors at a disadvantage. As the walls between service providers and content creators crumbles, Net Neutrality rules become more important than ever. But under a President Trump those are unlikely to survive.

New neural interface restores severed spinal connections without wires

People suffering from spinal cord injuries could soon have another treatment option at their disposal — one that doesn’t involve strapping themselves into a mechanical exosuit. Rather than hardwiring an electronic bridge into a patient’s back, a new neural interface bypasses the damaged spine’s air gap and transmits motor signals from the brain to the legs wirelessly.

Researchers at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale Lausanne (EPFL) collaborated with others from Brown University, Medtronic and Fraunhofer ICT-IMM to develop the system. “The system we have developed uses signals recorded from the motor cortex of the brain to trigger coordinated electrical stimulation of nerves in the spine that are responsible for locomotion,” David Borton, assistant professor of engineering at Brown, said in a press statement. “With the system turned on, the animals in our study had nearly normal locomotion.”

The research teams managed this by first implanting a pill-sized electrode array in the monkeys’ brains which recorded the signals generated by the motor cortex. These signals are then bounced by a wireless neurotransmitter to an external computer which translates the electrical impulses to mechanical commands. The computer then retransmits these commands to an electrical spinal stimulator implanted in the lower back, below the injury.

While the damage inflicted on the two test monkeys wasn’t permanent, it would have taken the primates over a month to recover full use of their legs. But with the neural interface active, they regained control nearly instantly.

This is heartening news to spinal injury sufferers but the research is still quite a ways away from human trials. The researchers must first determine how well test animals can use their restored appendages — in terms of balance and how much weight can be borne — before moving on to larger primates and, eventually, humans.

Can VR help to reduce police shootings?

VR is already used to help juries understand crime scenes, so it’s no surprise it could also be used to better educate police officers. That’s the idea behind BEST, a VR police training simulator that’s been built to try and reduce police-related violence. The company’s Jed Merrill explained that on average, in 2016, close to 2.6 people are shot by officers every single day. His hope is that, with more immersive training, those incidents can be avoided.

Merrill explained that police officers are really “peace officers,” and should be encouraged to “think more broadly” about that. The system is designed to emphasize deescalation methods as well as promoting key concepts like behavior, ethics, strategy and tactics (the BEST of the name). It’s hoped that with more exposure to nuanced situations in the simulator, officers will — when appropriate — be less hasty out in the real world. One example Merrill offered was calming people with mental health issues whose feelings of panic could be misinterpreted as a show of violence.

As well as potentially saving lives, there’s a practical, slightly harder-nosed element to all of this, which is the cost of each fatality. After all, the total cost to the taxpayer of a police shooting can frequently go up to $2 million when you include compensation, trial expenses and the loss of an officer while under investigation. With close to a thousand deaths each year, that’s a lot of money that could be saved with some reasonably inexpensive training.

Merrill wants to install a BEST setup at every police academy in the country, potentially in rooms similar to those created by VR entertainment firm The Void. That’s where blank, maze-like environments are constructed for VR players to feel their surroundings, which would be perfect for training rookie cops for specific scenarios. Officers will also get used to peeping around corners and avoiding nasty surprises wherever possible. The system can easily be widened to other first responders, giving EMTs and fire officers practical experience of rare events that could potentially save lives.

Of course, Merrill was more reticent to discuss how his system would, or could, address the notions of institutionalized racism within the police. While more caucasians are killed by officers in a calendar year, when adjusted for population demographics, African Americans are 2.5 times more likely to be shot. Although he did say that he hopes that by solving a “public problem,” he can help solve a private one too.

Source: BEST

Pandora Redesigns Website With New UI and Premium Playback Features for Pandora Plus Listeners

Pandora today began the rollout of a “completely overhauled” desktop site for its streaming radio service, coming on the heels of its rebranded iOS and Android apps last month. Pandora.com now has a couple of new features including an enhanced user interface and new additions for Pandora Plus listeners, which should begin appearing throughout the day as the rollout continues.

The changes begin with the music player on Pandora’s web platform, which is now a fixed bar at the bottom of the screen, ensuring that users will “never lose sight” of the currently playing track. Because of this shift, album artwork is at the center of the screen and provides prompts to artist information like tour dates, lyrics, bios, and more. The flat blue aesthetics of the site also now closely mirror that of the company’s mobile app and its logo.

Pandora has also streamlined a few navigation features when users create and organize stations, look at their favorite tracks, and use playback controls. The company said that “the updated features across the platform allow you to easily control your listening experience.”

Listeners on Pandora Plus can use the replay button to restart a song from the beginning, or even jump back in the current listening session and find an old track to replay. A skip option will also let them get to the next song quicker, as well. The ad-supported version of Pandora on the web supports these features too, but in a limited capacity. Whenever users on the free tier run out of skips or want to listen to a track again, the company said that they can “watch a video ad to get those extra features for added control” over the service.

Much like the app rebranding in October, the slight shift in Pandora’s web platform today is setting up the launch of the company’s impending on-demand music listening service, which CEO Tim Westergren has confirmed will arrive “later this year.” The service — which is believed to cost $9.99/month — will enter the music streaming race as an Apple Music and Spotify rival, with features expected of such a competitor, including on-demand music listening, playlist creation, radio access, and more.

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New MacBook Pro Has Already Outsold All Competing Laptops This Year

Apple’s latest MacBook Pro has already outsold all competing laptops this year, according to new data shared by research firm Slice Intelligence.

Slice Intelligence says the new MacBook Pro accumulated more revenue from online orders during its first five days of availability than the Microsoft Surface Book, ASUS Chromebook Flip, Dell Inspiron 2-in-1, and Lenovo Yoga 900, based on e-receipt data from 12,979 online shoppers in the United States.

The new MacBook Pro generated over seven times the revenue that the 12-inch MacBook did over its first five days of availability, according to Slice Intelligence. If accurate, that means it took the new MacBook Pro just five days to accumulate 78% of all the revenue generated by the 12-inch MacBook since its April 2015 launch.

The data follows Apple marketing chief Phil Schiller’s claim the new MacBook Pro had received more online orders than any previous MacBook Pro as of November 2. Apple has also reportedly told its overseas manufacturers to expect strong MacBook Pro shipments to last until at least the end of 2016.

The new MacBook Pro’s apparent early success may come as a surprise to a vocal crowd of professional users who have criticized, among other things, the notebook’s lack of ports and limited RAM. Schiller said the early criticism and debate has been “a bit of a surprise” to him, but common for any new Apple product.

Slice Intelligence extracts detailed information from hundreds of millions of aggregated and anonymized e-receipts. The research firm has a panel of 4.4 million online shoppers signed up for its services such as Slice and Unroll.me. It is also the exclusive e-commerce data provider for the NPD’s Checkout Tracking e-commerce service.

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