Thursday, 1 February 2018

The Morning After: More Mario and sold-out flamethrowers

Engadget Email Newsletter

It's Thursday, February 01, 2018.

Hey, good morning!

Welcome to February, which we’re starting off with lost-in-space satellites, a piano that plays in response to interpretive dance and Samsung getting into bitcoin. Oh, and Nintendo snuck out a bunch of announcements. Let’s hit those first.

All Nintendo everything.

Switch Online, ‘Mario Kart’ mobile and a ‘Mario’ movie

After announcing how great sales of the Switch are going, Nintendo decided to celebrate with a surprise dump of info. First up is its online gaming service for the Switch, which will officially debut in September. Second is Mario Kart Tour, its next mobile game for smartphones following Super Mario Run and Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp, which will arrive by next spring. Last but not least: There’s a Mario movie on the way (no, it’s not live-action).

Sensors relay movement to AI, which triggers an automatic piano.

Yamaha's AI transformed dance moves into piano notes

Artificial intelligence touches the arts again. Yahama showed a new kind of AI tech that translated the movements of renowned dancer Kaiji Moriyama into musical notes on a piano, which the company calls "a form of expression that fuses body movements and music." Moriyama used it during a Tokyo concert entitled Mai Hi Ten Yu, dancing and "playing" the piano with his body, accompanied by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra Scharoun Ensemble.

Last seen in 2005.

NASA makes contact with satellite lost in space 13 years ago

Proving that things tend to turn up when you least expect them, NASA has just rediscovered a satellite it lost in space more than a decade ago. The Imager for Magnetopause-to-Aurora Global Exploration (IMAGE) was launched in 2000 to create the first comprehensive images of atmospheric plasma. It completed its initial mission in 2002 but failed to make contact again on a routine pass by the Earth in 2005.

How to make $10 million

Elon Musk sells all 20,000 $500 Boring Company flamethrowers

Even though the website said they were overpriced and “You can definitely buy one for less elsewhere.”

Can Amazon Go help the unbanked go digital?

You'd better have a smartphone and checking account if you want to shop there.

If Amazon's new Go supermarket is any indicator, shopping with physical currency won't be an option for much longer. Instead of human cashiers (or even self-checkout stands), the store relies on a range of technology to know who's shopping and what they're buying. Amazon then automatically deducts the cost of your items from your bank account. From a turnstile entrance that identifies shoppers by scanning their smartphones to tracking cameras that know what is pulled from each shelf, Amazon Go bills itself as the shopping experience of the future.

But where does the working poor fit into such a future? Or otherwise underserved and rural communities that may not have access to internet connections, smartphones or even checking accounts?

The company raked in a record $12.97 billion in total revenue last quarter.

We spend less time on Facebook, but it still makes loads of money

The past few weeks haven't been easy for Facebook. After announcing an overhaul to its News Feed earlier this month, one that places emphasis on people's interactions over content from brands, the company has been taking heat for its new approach. Not only because Facebook is leaving publishers who relied on its platform behind, but it also isn't offering the best solution to fix its fake-news problem. Facebook revealed that even though users are indeed spending less time on its site, it is making more money than ever. The company raked in a record revenue total of $12.97 billion last quarter, a 47 percent year-over-year increase.

It stopped to snap a tourist shot at Vera Rubin Ridge.

Curiosity's sweeping Mars panorama shows how far it's come

Stare at this beautiful Mars panorama.

But wait, there's more...

1. SpaceX rocket survives an intentional water landing

2. Appeals court rules Tinder Plus' age-based pricing is discriminatory

3. AT&T's big DirecTV Now update arrives this spring, including a cloud DVR

4. Netflix resumes 'House of Cards' production without Kevin Spacey

5. NVIDIA proves the cloud can replace a high-end gaming rig

6. Samsung made a special chip for mining cryptocurrency

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Wednesday, 31 January 2018

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Apple May Be Gearing Up to Crack E-Books
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AT&T Raises Eyebrows With Call for Internet Bill of Rights
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Alphabet's New Chronicle Promises to Speed Threat Data Analysis
(Posted 30-Jan-18)
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/85096.html

The Ironic Weirdness of Apple and Intel vs. Qualcomm
(Posted 29-Jan-18)
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/85092.html

NYC Data Science Academy CTO Vivian Zhang: Do the Difficult Things First
(Posted 26-Jan-18)
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/85058.html

Apple Spotlights Key iOS 11.3 Features
(Posted 25-Jan-18)
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/85085.html

Intel Reports Progress on Patch-Related Performance Issues
(Posted 25-Jan-18)
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/85089.html

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The Top 20 CRM Blogs of 2017: Countdown, Part 2
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Self-Service AI Aims to Grease the Wheels for B2B Sales Teams
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This Week's Top News Headlines From LinuxInsider

Free Linux Tool Monitors Systems for Meltdown Attacks
(Posted 27-Jan-18)
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SolydXK Plasma Rewards Effort With Stunning Results
(Posted 25-Jan-18)
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The Morning After: Super Moon Xtreme Championship Edition

Engadget Email Newsletter

It's Wednesday, January 31, 2018.

Hey, good morning! You look fabulous.

As we bid farewell to cold, frosty January and welcome slightly-less-cold February, we’re banging our heads against earnings season. Samsung and Nintendo both have good news for shareholders and fans, and there’s a special Super Blue Blood Moon lunar eclipse happening this morning -- tune in live to see its peak at 8:29 AM ET.

Like everyone expected, but in half the time.

Nintendo Switch sales have surpassed the Wii U

Nintendo had a stellar holiday quarter, shifting 7.23 million Switch consoles and bringing lifetime sales to 14.86 million already. In short, the company almost doubled its user-base in a single three-month period. The Wii U, for comparison, sold 13.56 million total -- a paltry sum in comparison to the Wii's 101.63 million units.

In light of these results, Nintendo has revised its forecast for the financial year: It expects to make 160 billion yen ($1.47 billion). That's a 33.3 percent increase on its previous profit forecast -- and it seems pretty viable. The company just has to keep the hit games coming.

AI-generated porn is just the beginning.

Fake porn is the new fake news, and the internet isn’t ready

Ever since Facebook finally admitted to having a fake news problem, it's been trying to fix it. It hired thousands of people to help block fake ads, pledged to work with third-party fact-checking organizations and is busy building algorithms to detect fake news. But even as it attempts to fight back against fraudulent ads and made-up facts, another potential fake-news threat looms on the horizon: artificially generated fake video.

Motherboard recently uncovered a disturbing new trend on Reddit, where users create AI-generated pornographic clips by transferring other people's faces on to porn stars. The outlet first reported on the phenomenon a month ago when Reddit user deepfakes posted a video of Gal Gadot's face swapped on to a porn star's body (he's since created more fake porn with other celebrities). The video was created with machine learning algorithms, easily accessible open-source libraries and images from Google, stock photos and YouTube videos. It’s a worrying new development.

It looks, smells and feels great, but...

Azio's Retro Classic keyboard is luxurious, but imperfect

Senior editor Daniel Cooper has an unusual love for ostentatious mechanical keyboards. The madder the design and the louder its keys, the more he wants it. So here’s Azio's latest offering: The Retro Classic is a USB or Bluetooth-equipped input device styled to make a steampunk faint in admiration. So he had to have it.

Monitor your home – anytime, from anywhere

It wasn't an accidental click as initially claimed.

FCC: Officer behind Hawaii false missile alert thought it was real

The FCC has published the preliminary findings of its investigation into Hawaii's false missile alert, and it suggests the story didn't play out as you might have heard. The FCC said the officer fully intended to send the alert -- after misinterpreting a mangled message. The midnight shift supervisor had apparently played a standard recording that included both the usual "exercise, exercise, exercise" language and the text from a real Emergency Alert System message, which includes "this is not a drill." Although other officers saw this was a drill, the one who clicked the alert was convinced it was real.

For better or worse, policy still heavily impacts the energy industry.

The state of solar installers after Trump’s tariff

Two days after President Donald Trump signed hefty tariffs on imported solar panels, a five-man team was hauling slabs of them up the outside of a brownstone in Brooklyn's Sunset Park. The team from Brooklyn SolarWorks, an installation company with 21 full-time employees, finished the job around sunset. The contract cost about $27,000. But James Luria, a media consultant who has only owned the house for six months, expects to pay around $3,000 for the installation. "It was the obvious thing to do," Luria said.

Among the reasons for the cut price: a 30 percent federal tax credit, 25 percent New York state credit, 20 percent off property tax in New York City and a net-metering policy that allows homes to sell their excess solar power back to the grid.

What scandal?

Samsung sets record Q4 profits ahead of Galaxy S9 launch

Samsung's head honcho was found guilty of bribery last year, and its vice-chairman stepped down due to an "unprecedented crisis," but that didn't affect the Korean conglomerate's cashflow at all. In fact, the company did very well in the fourth quarter of 2017 and the year as a whole: It posted a $14 billion operating profit for the quarter and $50 billion for 2017, thanks mostly to its strong chip and display business. That dwarfs its $8 billion operating profit for the fourth quarter of 2016, though that year's earnings were admittedly tainted by the Note 7 fiasco.

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