Friday, 25 January 2019

The Morning After: Unlimited MoviePass part two

Engadget Email Newsletter

It's Friday, January 25, 2019.

Hey, good morning! You look fabulous.

Where were you when we defeated the robots? If you missed yesterday’s Starcraft II stream, we’ll fill you in on the details of DeepMind’s latest gaming exploits. Also, MoviePass is ready to try unlimited tickets again, and we’ve got another new phone with (almost) no ports.

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Rise and fly, humans.

DeepMind AI AlphaStar goes 10-1 against top 'StarCraft II' pros

After laying waste to the best Go players in the world, DeepMind has moved on to computer games. Its AI agent, named AlphaStar, managed to pick up 10 wins against StarCraft II pros TLO and MaNa in two separate five-game series that took place back in December. The pros scored a victory in a live match once the AI was forced to play with some restrictions on its view.

How much are you willing to pay?

MoviePass is planning to relaunch an unlimited movie plan

Khalid Itum, the executive vice president of MoviePass, said a new unlimited plan would arrive next week -- but he didn’t say how much it will cost.

The number of tournaments is increasing.

When esports blew up, DDR moved to the suburbs

In an age when esports have become synonymous with big business -- with the Overwatch League selling out Barclays Center and DOTA 2 smashing global Twitch records -- American DDR remains a strange anomaly: a completely grassroots movement with regional organizers keeping their local communities engaged.

Four Apple iPad deals you shouldn't miss

Flexible phones are already an old trend.

Vivo's all-glass phone has no ports and a full-screen fingerprint reader

Following yesterday's Meizu Zero, today Vivo has announced its latest concept 5G device, the APEX 2019, which is yet another smartphone with almost no holes.

The brand is moving beyond home theater.

Sonos is reportedly working on wireless headphones

Sonos will reportedly target the high-end market for its headphones, which may cost upwards of $300 and could be released next year. As with its speakers, it seems Sonos wants the headphones to work with a number of music services and audio assistants while delivering high-quality audio.

F1 2050.

McLaren imagines a future with AI co-piloted race cars

Formula One racing will be more like a video game in 30 years, according a fanciful vision of the future unleashed by supercar maker McLaren. According to its MCLExtreme research project (don't try to pronounce that), future formula race cars will do everything short of flying. The concept designs are pretty fun, even if it seems like McLaren's engineers saw Ready Player One a few too many times.

But wait, there's more...

1. Apple hires former Samsung exec to lead its battery division

2. 'Anthem' demo is available to pre-load on all platforms

3. Netflix might be working on a 'Resident Evil' TV show

4. BleemSync modding tool can put a Super Nintendo in your Playstation Classic

5. Microsoft Office is finally available on Apple's Mac App Store

6. Samsung Galaxy S10+ leak shows off its dual 'hole-punch' camera

7. Netflix's 'Umbrella Academy' trailer showcases an offbeat superhero saga

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Thursday, 24 January 2019

Editor's Pick: DoL Seeks $400M for Oracle Workers Underpaid Due to Discrimination

DoL Seeks $400M for Oracle Workers Underpaid Due to Discrimination

John P. Mello Jr.
Jan 24, 2019 5:00 AM PT

The U.S. Department of Labor has filed a court action against Oracle for underpaying non-white male employees by as much as $400 million. "Oracle suppressed starting salaries for its female and non-White employees, assigned them to lower level positions and depressed their wages over the years they worked for Oracle," states a filing by the DoL's Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs. [More...]

More Picks:

Apple Pay's US Expansion Will Fuel Mobile Payment Turf Wars
Apple on Tuesday announced more large retailers will accept Apple Pay: Target, Taco Bell, Hy-Vee supermarkets in the Midwest, Speedway convenience stores, and the Jack in the Box fast food chain. With those additions, 74 of the top 100 merchants in the United States, and 65 percent of all retail locations across the country, now support Apple Pay, the company said. [More...]

Dutch Doc Wins 'Forget My Suspension' Case
Google must remove search results about medical regulators' conditional suspension of a Dutch physician in the first "right to be forgotten" case of its kind in the European Union. After Google and Dutch data privacy watchdog Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens rebuffed the doctor's initial attempts to get disciplinary actions purged from online search results, a district court in Amsterdam sided with the surgeon. [More...]

Jaguar I-Pace vs. Tesla Model 3: Which Is the Better Electric Car?
To suggest that electric cars are having a painful birth would be a colossal understatement. Tesla clearly plowed this field and quickly recognized that the lack of a charging infrastructure was going to be a problem and, with reasonable effectiveness, dealt with it tactically. However, those "tactical" chickens are about to come home to roost and it probably won't be pretty. [More...]

Should You Run Linux Apps on Your Chromebook?
Linux apps now can run in a Chromebook's Chrome OS environment. However, the process can be tricky, and it depends on your hardware's design and Google's whims. It is somewhat similar to running Android apps on your Chromebook, but the Linux connection is far less forgiving. If it works in your Chromebook's flavor, though, the computer becomes much more useful with more flexible options. [More...]

Top CRM Blogs of 2018: Countdown, Part 2
The Top 10 blogs on our top 20 list are written by people well known to CRM professionals. There's a reason for that: In order to understand and appreciate the discipline of CRM, you must be a person who values other people, and part of valuing people is being able to communicate with them. As a result, these bloggers bring a unique combination of insight and personality to their posts. [More...]

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The Morning After: Amazon delivery robots roll out

Engadget Email Newsletter

It's Thursday, January 24, 2019.

Hey, good morning! You look fabulous.

Boeing is testing its air taxi, Elon Musk is making more promises about Teslas and there’s a Chinese phone that has zero ports -- not even a speaker grille. It’s that kind of Thursday morning.

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If you want live TV, however, you're paying more than before.

Hulu cuts the price of its basic service to $6 per month

Passive aggression is the source of most price cuts, right? In a not-so-subtle dig at Netflix's recent price hikes, Hulu is becoming more affordable... at least on its basic tier where the service will cut the price from $8 to $6 per month as of February 26th.

The ad-free tier will still cost $12 per month, but if you want the Hulu + Live TV bundle, you'll be paying $5 more per month ($45) for the privilege of watching shows as they premiere. Hulu’s rivals don’t end at Netflix, however: YouTube TV just launched nationwide coverage, and it starts at $40 per month.

Its secretive automotive project is in the news again.

Apple lays off 200 employees working on self-driving cars

Apple hired former Tesla senior engineering VP Doug Field in August 2018 to head up Project Titan, and it sounded like the tech giant planned massive changes for the division under his leadership. Titan already changed course in 2016, moving away from developing its own vehicle to create a self-driving system that can be incorporated into existing ones instead.

In a statement to CNBC, an Apple spokesperson said: “As the team focuses their work on several key areas for 2019, some groups are being moved to projects in other parts of the company, where they will support machine learning and other initiatives, across all of Apple.”

If they have AutoPilot 2.5 hardware or higher.

Elon Musk teases Tesla 'sentry mode' that captures video in 360 degrees

Tesla is working on a "sentry mode" security feature that could let owners record damage and break-ins using the vehicle’s built-in cameras and sensors.

You can get this 70 hour coding masterclass for just $39

Where we’re going, we won’t need ports.

This is a smartphone without a charging port

Meizu’s Zero doesn't have a headphone jack, a charging port or even a speaker grill. There’s no SIM card slot nor the buttons you'd usually see on a phone -- the only elements that disturb the surface of its all-display, 7.8mm-thick ceramic unibody are its 12MP and 20MP rear cameras and two pinholes. One is a microphone, while the other is for hard resets. The Zero will use embedded SIM or eSIM technology, with the phone's retail launch in China tied to local carriers' progress with the eSIM. So, for now, launch date unknown.

It's delivering packages to customers in a Washington neighborhood starting today.

Amazon starts testing its Scout delivery robot

Amazon is working on delivery robots, and it's already bringing the self-driving machines to the streets. Starting today, six Amazon Scout devices will deliver packages in a neighborhood in Snohomish County, Washington, north of Amazon's Seattle home base. While the robots can navigate by themselves, an Amazon employee will accompany them, at least for now.

It's a significant step toward airborne cross-town travel.

Boeing's self-flying taxi completes its first flight

Boeing just took an important step toward making flying taxis a practical reality. The aircraft maker has completed the first test flight of its autonomous electric VTOL aircraft, verifying that the machine can take off, hover and land. So yeah, it still can’t go forward, let alone transition from vertical to forward-flight modes. It’s still ahead of the competition, though.

Oh, the MailOnline might not be factually accurate?

Microsoft's mobile Edge browser begins issuing fake-news warnings

Microsoft's Edge mobile browser has started flagging fake-news sites as part of its latest update for iOS and Android. Previously only available as a desktop plug-in, the feature is powered by news-rating company NewsGuard -- which makes a point of using journalists, not algorithms, to identify "unreliable" websites. Its eponymous fake-news extension is also available for Chrome, Firefox and Safari. In our early tests, MailOnline and Breitbart were flagged.