Amazon.ca launches Black Friday deals hub because Canadians love buying tech

Amazon just can’t wait until Black Friday to start offering amazing deals.

Over the next three weeks, Amazon.ca will be featuring thousands of deals as they countdown the days to November 25, aka Black Friday. There will also be some exclusive deals available to customers using the Amazon mobile app, and even more if you’re a Prime member, which you can try for free if you aren’t already a member.

There are deals across a bunch of different categories, but we know what you’re all here for! You can browse the electronics deals section here. Amazon has teased a number of tech deals to keep an eye out for, including:

• 25% off select Bluetooth headphones
• 25% off select Bluetooth Sound Bars
• 25% off select Android TV boxes
• 25% off Briefcase Turntable Stereo Systems

Here are some sweet deals we’ve found today to get you started. They might not last past today, so you’ll want to jump on them quick:

• Save 71% on an Anker 40W/8A 5-Port USB Charger PowerPort 5
• Save 50% on an Adeon 3-in-1 Bluetooth speaker, 7800 mAh powerbank, 3 LED flashlight

If you’re an Amazon Prime member, you can take advantage of these deals and enjoy unlimited free two-day delivery, or if you’re in Toronto or Vancouver, free same-day delivery on eligible orders — even for orders made on Saturday and Sunday.

Amazon is also making it much easier to deal with returns this holiday season. They’ve extended their return policy, allowing any purchases made between November 1 and December 31 to be returned for a full refund up until January 31, 2017.

If you haven’t started your holiday shopping, there’s no better time than the present!

What the Transhumanist candidate learned from the election

Zoltan Istvan is many things: a journalist, a futurist and entrepreneur. Mostly, though, he’s been a cheerleader for the transhumanist movement, a philosophy focused on merging humans together with technology. The ultimate goal? To live forever as a new post-human species. Istvan kicked off a presidential campaign as head of the Transhumanist Party in 2014, mostly to spread the word about the movement. We sat down to talk with him about his experience running for president, and why voters should care about the transhumanist movement.

Was the process of running this campaign what you expected? Where there any surprises for you?

My campaign has been pretty much to always spread the message around transhumanism. It was never to win, and I said that from the very beginning. What I didn’t expect is that I would very quickly enter into the top 10 candidates for almost the entire two years. Just three years ago, I signed with one of the major websites that puts you together with candidates. To think one of the largest websites would include me in the top 8 was good news.

It’s happened because Hillary and Trump, and the candidate before as well, were so unpopular. It’s made a lot of the third party activities much more visible than you ever would have had. And I think we had a couple big pushes. When Bernie Sanders quit, a huge amount of people said, “Wow, we’re not going to the establishment,” and then they started looking elsewhere. The dismay over the main candidates has certainly made this election season the perfect moment for a small political party like mine to move in and really generate coverage.

Was this a good election season to introduce transhumanism in general?

What’s happening is that in the last two years, everyone has been hit in the face with how fast technology has been changing. And I think the best example right now is Uber. Everyone was so excited Uber was creating millions of new jobs for people — then they announce driverless cars. And everyone realizes, oh wait a sec, this technology comes and goes and then it takes jobs. I think what happened is a lot of people began to realize is, wow, genetic editing, exoskeleton technology for the disabled, blind people seeing through robotic eyes, telepathy via brain wave headsets, everything is starting to shift very quickly.

You’ve admitted you’re mainly doing this to spread the word, it’s not going to be a wining campaign. What do you see the role of the campaign after the election?

We’d like to build out the party. I’d like to run again, there’s no question I will. Whether I would do so for the transhumanist party, is another matter. You know, without the funding, without the backbone, it’s incredibly difficult. I think it’s a great idea, but it really does take 20 years to establish a party… [The Libertarians] honestly have zero chance at winning, and they have a few people in little local offices. And that’s 40 years later. So we’re two years later, you can imagine there are hundreds of political parties in America, and very few actually make a dent unless a billionaire comes in.

Did you try to raise donations?

We did, but we were basically unsuccessful at raising anything substantial. And the reason is very wealthy people, some who support transhumanism, said “We’d like to see you in 2020, let’s see how you do this time.” And they also said, “I would rather spend my dollars and have them go somewhere.” And I understand that, I have friends at Google — I live in the Bay Area — I have friends at Apple and Singularity University… But nobody is really interested in the big splurge yet. And that’s what it takes. It’s going to take at minimum a few million dollars to change the party and change the nature of ballot access.

That’s funny though. We’ve seen Peter Thiel invest millions in Trump. I would think he’s someone who supports the transhumanist ideals too.

You know, we asked and he didn’t get back to us. I don’t know what the agenda is. I’m surprised he did that too. I know he’s into life extension, and that’s the main premise of my campaign, to get the government to put money into that field. However, I just think it’s really a matter of establishing legitimacy. You start off small and it’s like a snowball. We’re excited that two years later it’s gone so far, but it could take ten years to become competitive to even the Green party. And it would take big funders to get onboard.

So is the plan if you were to run again to join a more established party?

I interviewed to be Gary Johnson’s vice president… And I had a great interview with him. He had me over at his house overnight in New Mexico, and I had like a 20 hour interview. I would probably run under the Libertarian party next time. The problem though, is that I actually lean quite far left. When you actually look at who I am, I’m as much o the Democratic side as I am on the Libertarian. I am what they call a left-leaning Libertarian. So most Libertarians would say I’m not Libertarian enough. And a lot of Democrats would say, you’re not like us, you’re not Bernie Sanders enough.

Has your message changed at all since the beginning?

The biggest one I tweaked is that I decided to incorporate a universal basic income into the platform after a lot of discussion. And what’s happened, after just two years, the amount of robots and automation taking jobs has increased dramatically. I took a campaign bus across the country, and one of the things that came out from those four months was spending a lot of time with truck drivers. Lo and behold, Europe had this driverless truck traveling across Europe. There’s no question that within five years, in my mind, assuming Congress allows it, that there will be driverless vehicles on the rode. And I don’t think drivers will survive. So we decided to support a universal basic income and we’re really the first political entity to do that with any visibility.

Have you laid out how you can make that possible? I know you want to lower taxes in general, but you need more taxes to do this.

I think up front, you’d certainly need more. We have three policies at this point, and generally the one percent would have to pick up the tab… Take the idea of truck drivers. Most of them are older males, most are gun carrying, hard men, you can’t take away their jobs and say there’s nothing else you can do. You can’t retrain them — you’re going to retrain them and in another five years the robots are going to take those jobs too. So these are three to four million men out there who are essentially going to cause civil strife if they don’t get something back. And they don’t want to be on welfare, they’re kind of a proud people.

The rich people don’t want that revolt to happen. The best thing for the rich people to have is that society functions smoothly, science and technology grows, the economy grows. That can happen by keeping less civil strife. So there will be higher taxes on the rich. The second policy, definitely the manufacturers at some point must be partially responsible. If Google creates AI, at some point Google has to say, well we’ve replaced 30 million jobs with our machines, what have we done for society. I think at some point that has to be addressed.

But the biggest thing that I would do, and this is quite controversial: the federal government owns a huge amount of resources. Half of the 11 Western states are owned by the federal government. Because I believe as a transhumanist we’ll be upgrading some point into machines, or into cyborgs, using less natural resources, I have suggested we either loan or sell off large chunks of that federal land. I don’t know if in a hundred years America is going to exist. What if we go through the Singularity…

Whatever happens, we have trillions of dollars of untapped wealth, we could buy 15 or 20 years of the universal basic income off of those kinds of things alone. Now I know the environmentalists will just hate that, but at the same time there’s so much untapped wealth there. And it would certainly be a good way to feed people, and to give them housing and education, rather than let that land be there for a species that I believe is going to be fundamentally changed in a hundred years.

It also seems like the main thing you’re promoting is life extension, but that leads to overpopulation. Maybe we will need that space if you want your main goal to come true.

Yes, this is the number one issue I get with life extension… The thing is, as countries become wealthier, there’s definitely less population. People stabilize it too. There’s a good chance, as the world develops, we’ll probably stabilize around 15 billion. The thing is, you have to look at what future technologies are going to bring. There’s a very good chance that genetic editing will bring our ability to grow foods five times quicker, maybe ten times quicker, and regrow rainforests to take care of the environment.

My environmental policy is firm, I believe humans have destroyed the planet. I did a lot of work for National Geographic covering these things. But, I don’t believe that the best way is to lessen our carbon footprint. I think the best way is to spend much more money on aggressive green technologies…

A third of the arable land on Earth is going towards grazing. Well, if we have meatless meat made in a factory we won’t need all that…. With overpopulation, we’ll be able to feed many more people, I think the world can handle 15 billion people, especially as people migrate more to cities. So the question is we probably won’t need as much federal land. And a lot of that land are places where people wouldn’t want to work anyway. We’re talking mineral rights, just sheer mineral rights worth trillions of dollars.

I’m making a long bet that the human being won’t remain human, and that machines would take less resources, and our planet would be able to be pristine again. We won’t be based on what we’re doing now, things like agriculture and expanding and destroying the planet. Hopefully one day we’ll have a lot of technology to make it a better place. Also, there’s the whole Star Trek thing. At some point, maybe it’ll be very interesting to get people off the planet.

You’ve mentioned on your website that you’re proudly an atheist, and that’s unique for a presidential candidate. But the way I’m reading transhumanism right now also seems faith based. You’re taking it on faith that technology will upgrade us and things will change in 100 years. How do you view your faith versus traditional religious faith?

You’re right. Everyone always says, well the Singularity seems no different than a religious experience. I can’t deny that’s true, because the Singularity is this concept that’s beyond human understanding. With my idea of transhumanism I try to stay in the next 10 to 15 years of what might happen. We’ll have robotic arms that are better than human arms, and should we electively get it? If I can give you a robotic eye that can see gasses and germs, or stream media live, those are the things I really advocate for.

When I drove my bus, everyone was saying, “Oh are you some kind of Christian?” And I said no, we’re actually a science and technology-based moment. But the idea is that I think it’s just a matter of getting it out and convincing people. Hearing the word [transhumanism] and associating it with secularism, science and technology, and people say oh that’s just a movement. Sometimes when we say Greenpeace, we automatically think activists who are over the top. And that’s our impression of it.

We’re trying to make it so that doesn’t happen. So the word and the movement is seen as something that’s just a science thing.

But it sounds like personally you believe in 100 years things could radically change. We’ll be uploading consciousness to machines and things like that. That sounds like an afterlife.

That’s where my atheism falls apart. I say I’m an atheist in my campaign, but I’m actually a theocidist. What I believe in, there’s a trillion galaxies out there. There’s almost certainly aliens and artificial intelligences. I did my senior thesis in college in brains in a vat.

I’m a big believer in the idea we live in a holographic universe… I think it’s true, I can’t prove it, but I have good arguments. And it would completely throw out this theist [mentality]. When I say I’m an atheist, what I’m really saying is I’m against fundamentalist conservatism that says Jesus died for me. I was raised Catholic, so I have my little battles to fight.

When you’re bringing up the idea of gene editing, I think there are valid reasons to consider a moratorium. Scientists might need to take a step back when we reach certain milestones and really think about the ethical and moral implications of something. That could be something that’s not tied to religion. Do you think we need to take that step and really think about things? Or should we constantly be moving forward?

You’re one hundred percent right. The problem, though, is when we don’t have something like my campaign or the Transhumanist party there, then the moratorium is so one-sided. It’s like how it’s important for me to run as an atheist, just to make a stand against what I find oppressive. The fact that our virtually our entire government is believing in this fundamentalist idea.

Or they say they do. It’s a convenient narrative like you’re attempting.

I hope so. And if that’s the case we have much less to worry about. But I think it’s important to sometimes set up a wall just to make sure the balance of the universe continues. That way you have a much more democratic picture. And I do a lot of aggressive activism that I really don’t see as completely philosophically valuable, but I see it as necessary.

If I had a choice, I would say, well you’re right, a moratorium is fine, let’s consider it. The problem is some of the people calling for it are so hellbent on keeping their conservatism in the picture, that I’m afraid they’re going to do what George W. Bush did with stem cells, which is shut it down for seven years. I want to say no, wait a sec. If we have someone like Obama who wants to give it some funding, that’s a good way to move forward with science. My worst fear is if someone like Ted Cruz got into office, and all of a sudden this entire gene editing revolution occurred during his term, and he freaks out and says we don’t want to be gods. That would be tragic for science, and in particular American science, because places like China and India are going to take off with it.

It’s important to offer resistance sometimes just for resistance sake.

Would you say you have more faith in technology than people?

I actually have faith more in technology. That said, I really believe technology is neutral. It’s really what people make of it. But for me, technology is the offshoot of the most complex and intellectual side of ourselves. And I think it’s very important to try to understand that technology in the future, especially when we create consciousness, might be the better version of ourselves. We should consider that technology and what we create in artificial intelligences could be better than biology.

I’m very much into merging with that. I would like to be a complete digital consciousness. I think the complexity of that would be much more complex than this three-pound bag of meat that we have right now. But I realize that’s wrought with danger as well. I don’t want an AI that’s smarter than me on Earth as well, unless I’m part of it, or I’m one with it.

But if it’s truly AI, we wouldn’t really have a choice. If it’s smart enough to know your biological flaws are too inefficient, they probably would rather be their own thing.

Technically yes, I’m hoping we’ll have a method to stay directly an integral part of that. I’m not sure how that technology or science will work yet. I’m assuming if we ever turn on the “On” switch for AI, we should have the 100 best people in the world connected to it, so that we have some ability to control it. But that’s impossible to know.

That’s where all the fears come from. If AI were to actually happen, we wouldn’t have any control over it, and it would be omniscient in a way.

That’s why I’d never endorse turning it on. I think I’d rather find the perfect transhumanism world through a mixture of cybernetics, machine parts, these kinds of things and skip the AI. It just might be too dangerous to do, at least until we have better knowledge.

But that’s the thing that’s definitely going to happen. Maybe even more so than uploading our consciousness.

It’s very scary. We still have the 50/50 chance it’ll be beneficial.

A lot of what you’re talking about sounds great for the more affluent folks, but what will transhumanism do to equalize things in society? We still have issues with things like poverty and discrimination, those seem like more legitimate concerns.

I worry about that too. One of the things that changed in my campaign was, when I started I sort of took on a Libertarian perspective, and I started pushing left until I really became hard left, really embracing many of Bernie Sanders’ ideas. I said, you know what, I don’t really want to be the guy that’s responsible for creating a dystopia. And that’s where it can go if we let the one percent get all these technologies and nothing else is affordable. The artificial hear that they have in France now is a good example. It’s $200,000 — they’re still experiment with it. But nobody can afford that, so is it only the one percent doesn’t have to worry about heart disease?

This is where a universal basic income swallows healthcare. We delivered the Transhumanist Bill of Rights. It decreed that aging is a disease, and that everybody has a universal right to overcome aging, overcoming suffering through technology if they want. And that’s the government job to provide that to society. And that’s really when I lost a lot of my Libertarian followers.

I can’t in good faith remain someone who’s trying to bring all this technology knowing a huge amount of people aren’t going to get it. And we must insist insist they’re get it. There must be universal rights set up just like education with the UN that insist all transhumanist technology is distributed freely.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

Nintendo finally gives up the ghost on Wii U, production ceased

With the Nintendo Switch now announced and the Japanese gaming giant looking forward not back, it comes as no surprise that the Wii U is yesterday’s news. However, it is mildly surprising to learn that the company is completely severing ties with its biggest console failure.

Ask a Wii U owner about their machine and you’ll often hear superlatives. In terms of games, it plays host to some of the best titles available. But it is reported by Eurogamer that Nintendo will cease all production of the console at the end of this week. It is, for all intents and purposes, dead.

Sadly, it also means that the Nintendo Wii U goes in the history books as the company’s biggest flop – one of its most expensive misfires for sure.

Nintendo only managed to ship 13.36 million units by the end of September this year. Even the GameCube, considered by many to be a spectacular failure, managed to sell 21 million consoles in its short lifespan.

• Nintendo Switch: Release date, specs and everything you need to know
• Nintendo Switch games: The games revealed so far and what we’d like to see
• Nintendo Switch: Is this the NX console we’d hoped for?

But as much as the death of the Wii U is sad, times are looking up for the brand. Not only has Pokemon Go made a stack of money for Nintendo without the company having to lift a finger, the Nintendo Switch has had great critical response since its unveiling in a teaser video a couple of weeks ago.

Bellabeat’s new Shell app can capture the sound of your womb

Bellabeat, the company that makes health trackers designed to look like jewelry, has developed an app for expecting parents.

The new app, called Shell, works with an add-on. Together, they can record and listen to fetal heartbeats – without any Doppler technology. The Shell wraps around your iPhone much like a phone case and works with the free Shell app, which launched 1 November, to make it easy for you to capture a baby’s heartbeat and share it. The Shell app records the sound of your womb via the iPhone’s built-in microphone.

While the new app can isolate the sound of the heartbeat through an algorithm that “amplifies key tones and filters out background noise”, the Shell add-on has a horn that focuses the sound waves of a fetal heartbeat and improves the sound reproduction of your iPhone’s speaker. It also physically separates the mic and speaker, cancelling all possible sound oscillations.

Shell is basically a non-invasive prenatal monitor that amplifies the sound of your baby’s heartbeat. Belkabeat has experience in making wearables for the fashionably-conscious, so it’s describing the add-on as having a shape and functionality that resembles a seashell. The wave pattern “illustrates the soothing rythmic sound of the heartbeat,” it explained.

It’s not yet clear when the Shell add-on will be available to purchase, but you can already start playing with the free Shell iPhone app. Bellabeat apparently had a million people on the app’s waitlist at launch.

There’s no word yet if an Android app is in the works.

Hello’s ‘Sense’ sleep sensor gets voice controls

Hello Inc. has launched a new version of its sleep sensor called “Sense with Voice,” with the highlight being (wait for it) voice commands. As a reminder, it consists of a sphere-shaped monitor and pill-shaped sensor that attaches to your pillow and detects your movements. Rather than just controlling it with a smartphone as before, you can now say “Okay Sense” to set the alarm, gauge your sleep quality or check environmental factors like the humidity and temperature.

Thanks to a digital microphone array and echo cancellation, the device can hear from anywhere in your bedroom, even if the alarm is sounding. The pill has also been redesigned so that it’s easier to attach to your pillow, has longer battery life and is “almost completely indestructible,” Hello says. On top of the temperature, light, air quality, humidity and noise detectors, it now measures UV light, carbon dioxide, volatile organic compound, light temperature and barometric pressure, in case you think any of those things actually affect your sleep.

Another new addition is smart home control. The Sense with Voice works with Philips Hue lights and the Nest thermometer, letting you “set your ideal room temperature for when you awake and be gently awoken by your lighting,” the company says. It’ll integrate with other smart home devices in the future, and Hello says you can control everything via voice commands.

The company launched the original Sense with a successful $2.4 million Kickstarter campaign, backed up by $10.5 million in investor cash. However, some critics found that the core feature of the device — sleep tracking — doesn’t really work that well, making it a nice, but expensive alarm clock. If the sleeping part is key, you may want to consider a wearable like the Fitbit Blaze or the Withings Aura, which uses a mattress pad to measure your sleep quality.

Whether the updated monitor and new pillow sensor will track your sleep better remains to be seen, but with the new features, the company can nearly justify the $149 price tag. You can now buy the Sense with Voice at the company’s website, Amazon, Target and Best Buy stores across the US.

‘Lifelogging’ startup Narrative isn’t dead yet

Narrative, the company behind the lifelogging camera of the same name, was all set to die, but death is no longer on the agenda. Instead, six of the moribund wearable firm’s employees, including its co-founders, have mounted a rescue out of their own pockets. In an interview with TechCrunch, CTO Björn Wesén revealed that he and his friends have purchased Narrative’s assets in the hope of launching a new company that can carry on the name and legacy of the Narrative Clip.

The first stage of the turnaround plan is to preserve the user’s data on the company’s servers, which should only mean people lose a day or two’s worth of service. Next, the team will attempt to return the Narrative Clip 2 back to production in the hope of servicing those fans who wanted a model before money woes struck. Finally, if the team can turn a profit from user subscriptions and hardware sales, it’ll look into developing the Narrative Clip 3.

Of course, there’s still the question of how Narrative plans to generate sales in a world where lifelogging seems almost antiquated. Wesén told our sister site that Narrative managed to sell 40,000 units of the first two devices, but only managed to ship the 2 to pre-order customers before the money ran out. As such, he’s feeling confident that there’s potentially a large market that might still want to document their daily lives. It’s a bet that he, and his colleagues, believe so strongly that they’re prepared to put their own livelihoods on the line.

Source: TechCrunch, (2)

The UK’s first pro drone race will be hosted in London next June

With backing from big broadcasters like ESPN and Sky Sports, drone racing is already making its mark on TV. The Drone Racing League’s (DRL) inaugural five race season is now two races deep, having visited Miami and Los Angeles, but the company is already thinking ahead to next year’s championship. After revealing that the UK would host its first professional drone race in 2017 back in September, the DRL today confirmed that the winner-takes-all season finale will be hosted at London’s iconic Alexandra Palace on June 13th.

Professional drone racing, if you’re not aware, sees pilots compete in four “level” events that they hope will earn them enough points to qualify for the World Championship. Each racer is given a selection of custom-designed drones, which are crafted by DRL to ensure races focus on skill and not construction smarts, which beam back a first-person live feed to a VR-style headset. Courses are designed in three dimensions, requiring pilots to navigate tight turns, steep climbs and avoid large obstacles at speeds of up to 90 miles per hour.

When the series reaches London next year, eight pilots will battle to become the “World’s Greatest Drone Pilot” at the winner-takes-all event. If you can’t make it, Sky has confirmed it will continue to broadcast the remainder of the 2016 series and will also show the crowning of a new champion at the London race on its new Sky Sports Mix channel.