Sofie Thyme

The experimental car is limited to closed-circuit driving right now, but public tests are expected in 2018. It’s not shocking that Yandex would rush into the autonomous vehicle game. Russia is more than a little eager to reduce its dependence on foreign technology , and that’s bound to include self-driving cars. The question is whether or not Yandex can move quickly after this. It doesn’t need to offer a full-fledged transportation service at the same time as rivals like Waymo, but it also doesn’t want to risk seeming perpetually behind. Still, this is good news — it shows that driverless cars are rapidly gathering support around the globe. Don’t be surprised if you’re hailing a robotic ride if you visit Moscow in the coming years. [embedded content]

China remains the world’s largest ecommerce trading market, where transactions through unconventional e-platforms reached 26.1 trillion yuan last year, up 19.8 percent from the previous year, according to a Sina news report citing data from the Ministry of Commerce. The value of China’s ecommerce market accounted for 39.2 percent of the global market as of the end of 2016, making it the largest globally for consecutive years, according to the report. The ecommerce-related services market also reached 2.45 trillion yuan in 2016, up 23.7 percent from the previous year. Latest news on Asia The report indicated that the scale of online shopping users, value of ecommerce transactions, and the number of employees served in ecommerce sectors all reported steady growth in China last year. In China last year, the number of internet users reached 731 million, accounting for 53.2 percent of the country’s entire population. Online shopping consumers reached 467 million, or 63.8 percent of

And beyond that, the sensors on offer are more flexible than you might expect. Remember that module that tracks motion for VR? Machina says it could pretty easily double as a fitness tracker that embeds itself in clothing … that is, assuming developers out there are willing to craft the necessary software to interpret that sensor data. (An SDK is forthcoming, I’m told.) The haptic module, meanwhile, could buzz up against your skin whenever a notification pops up on your phone. If you had several attached to your smart shirt, you could feasibly have different parts of your body vibrate based on who’s trying to contact you. Perdigon says Machina is working on an IFTTT-style app to connect to those sensors, so connecting them to your favorite services should be dead-simple. “If you got a ‘like’ on Facebook, for example,” he said, “the sensor over your heart could vibrate.” Who says technology can’t make you feel loved? Fashion and technology don’t always collide elegantly, but Machina’

The $299/£299 Nest Cam IQ looks a lot like last year’s Nest Cam Outdoor . In contrast to the very first camera, it has cute and curvy, all-white polycarbonate shell and a fancy, patented hinge that allows you to orientate the lens any way you want it. An LED notification ring now encircles the camera’s eye, glowing green when anyone is viewing the live stream and flashing blue if the watcher begins talking through it. Behind the glass-covered front is one of the biggest upgrades: A new, 8-megapixel sensor capable of capturing 4K, HDR video in a 130-degree field of view. A user will never actually see 4K footage from the camera, as it records and streams at a maximum resolution of 1080p. However, some of the new features exclusive to the Nest Cam IQ do utilize the 4K input before it’s compressed. “Supersight,” for example, uses the feed to digitally zoom in on areas where motion is detected. Say a burglar crawls in through your window. In the Nest app, you’ll see a 4x zoomed, 1080p clo

Not to be outdone by rival camera maker Olympus, Nikon is getting ready to launch a rugged point-and-shoot of its own. The new Coolpix W300 borrows a few features from the AW130 that was introduced in 2015, including the same 16-megapixel (1/2.3-inch) CMOS sensor, wide-angle lens with 5x optical zoom, 3-inch LCD as well as built-in NFC, WiFi and GPS. Naturally, the W300 is also waterproof (100ft/30m), freezeproof (14F/-10C), shockproof (7.9ft/2.4m) and dustproof. But the main new feature here is support for 4K UHD (3,840 x 2,160) video at 30fps. Aside from being able to record your adventures at a super high resolution, you can take still images while you’re shooting in movie mode — which isn’t something a lot of 4K cameras let you do. In terms of ergonomics, Nikon says its W300 is an improvement over the AW130, thanks to a slightly redesigned grip that should make it easier to grip and hold it comfortably in your hands. If that’s enough to peak your interest, the Coolpix W300 will

Instead, Laundroid will only work with Cerevo’s Lumigent, a desk lamp that responds to voice control. “Lumigent lights up automatically when spoken to. The integration will enable Lumigent to command the basic Laundroid operations,” says the press release . Pricing on the lamp isn’t available, but it will likely set you back between $400 and $700 . It’s not clear what other IoT devices, if any, that Laundroid will connect with (it comes with onboard WiFi and is controlled by an app), though presumably Seven Dreamers is working on further integration. Adding insult to injury, Laundroid is ridiculously expensive —the first-run units are expected to be priced around 1.85 million yen, which is roughly $16,500. The company is accepting limited reservations for units in Japan starting today. While adding new features and integrations such as voice control is a good idea, doing so in such a limited, proprietary way is frustrating. Why not open the Laundroid for use with Siri, Amazon Alexa a

As we explained in our review, whether or not you like the KEYone comes down to one question: how much do you want a physical keyboard? It’s a very capable phone with high build quality, a good camera, thoughtful touches (such as a keyboard that doubles as a trackpad) and exceptional battery life, but you still need to like the notion of pecking on plastic instead of the usual virtual keys. This is for people who still miss their old-school BlackBerry phones — it’s great for them, but a niche device for everyone else.

“We wanted to make a game that had plenty of challenge and exciting action, but where the fear and frustration of getting stuck was not a factor,” Kasavin says. “Picking yourself up after being defeated could be part of the journey, rather than something that took place in your head while looking at a Game Over screen. “So, one of the unique aspects of Pyre is how you are never forced to lose progress. Whether you prevail or fail, your journey continues.” Sounds cool, right? There’s also the three-on-three combat, in addition to the oh-so-vibrant hand-painted landscapes and Darren Korb’s original score on the old gramophone to look forward to. Last year, Kasavin said that launching on multiple platforms would add additional work to Supergiant’s small team’s plate and that it wouldn’t be feasible. But, considering the smattering of places you can play Bastion — including Xbox One — maybe Microsoft fans will get to play it at some point as well. Considering that the Xbox One stil

The network is pairing with its usual partner LiveLike to livestream the match through the free Fox Sports VR app. Fans who download it and sign in with their TV subscription credentials can tune in before the game starts at 2PM ET this Saturday, June 3rd for pre-match material. The app doesn’t require any fancy equipment — just your smartphone, though it’ll be easier to watch with a simple headset like Samsung’s Gear VR or Google Cardboard.

[embedded content] Dubbed the “Rice Haptic Rocker”, this device is fitted on the user’s upper arm and brushes a soft rubber pad against the skin. The more the hand closes, the farther the pad brushes. Based on this tactile feedback, the wearer is able to infer the relative position of the prosthetic without having to actively look at it, a sensation known as “muscle sense” or proprioception. “This ‘muscle sense’ is what allows people to type on a keyboard, hold a cup, throw a ball, use a brake pedal and do countless other daily tasks,” Marcia O’Malley, professor of mechanical engineering at Rice, explained in a press statement. During a recent small-scale trial, 18 able-bodied volunteers donned prosthetic hands which open and close based on which forearm muscles the user is flexing (which you can see in the video above). While blindfolded, they were asked to hold two objects in the prosthetic hand and guess which was larger. The test subjects guessed correctly 70 percent of the time

The resulting bacteria appears to be largely healthy. It grows about as quickly as the completely natural variety, and there aren’t any serious growth defects. This is still early work, so you’re not about to have customized bacteria coursing through your body any time soon. Salmonella is relatively easy to edit, and there’s a big difference between a lab experiment and crafting bacteria that reliably produces a specific result. However, it’s promising. Gene editing techniques like CRISPR don’t have enough throughput to make these kinds of large-scale changes, and other methods are often slow and complicated — this allows for quick yet drastic modifications. Simply put, this could help unlock the fuller potential of genetic engineering. Instead of making tiny tweaks, geneticists could rewrite DNA sections so large that the result is almost unrecognizable compared to the original.

Zika may not be the top story on the evening news anymore, but that doesn’t mean that the virus has gone away. Between January and May 24th of 2017, the CDC has reported 121 instances of infected people living in the United States. BluSense, in fact, won a cash prize as part of USAid’s Grand Zika Challenge to develop an effective way of diagnosing the problem. Once the fingerprick has been taken and drawn up into the plastic cartridge, it is mixed with magnetic nanoparticles. The sample is then loaded into the BluSense machine, which contains a small turntable to centrifuge the sample for nine minutes. Once that’s done, the blood is then scanned — amusingly, with the same sort of blue laser that you’d find in a Blu-ray player — and a result provided. BluSense’s EVP, Jessie Sun, explained that the company already has validation for its Dengue tests, and is currently working with the FDA on its Zika diagnostics. Sun is confident that the company will breeze through the process, since

It’s technically called the ROG Swift PG35VQ, though no one would blame you for not remembering that. As you’ve probably guessed by its resolution, this one’s runs at an ultra-wide 21:9 aspect ratio. More importantly, this display now sits at the top of the ASUS heap — it just barely edges out the existing 34-inch Swift PG348Q, for those keeping track of sizes. Throw in the obligatory support for NVIDIA’s G-Sync and you’ve got yourself one of the most tantalizing new display options out there, period. It’s also worth noting that if you’re not a gamer, you’d probably still enjoy the screen’s beautiful absurdity — the PG35VQ is utter overkill for Excel, for instance, but just think of how many rows and columns you could immerse yourself in at one. (Then again, the slightly garish etchings around back the lighting effects at the monitor’s three-pronged base aren’t for everyone.) Alas, we’re not yet sure how much this display will cost yet — we’ll report back as we learn more. Click here

So what’s the deal with that pen poking through the hole here, you ask? Well, first of all, the ZenScreen does come with that pen. Secondly, it is intended for propping up the monitor in either orientation, should you wish to ditch the bundled foldable smart case to take full advantage of the device’s 8mm thickness and 780g weight. It also looks nicer that way. But make no mistake: the ZenScreen doesn’t support stylus input nor does it have a touchscreen, so don’t go drawing on the glass with that pen. Other goodies include automatic screen rotation, four levels of blue light filter, TÜV Rheinland-certified flicker-free technology and eight video preset modes. You’ll also find a USB-C to USB-C cable plus a USB-C to USB-A adapter in the box. The ZenScreen is priced at US$249 which is significantly more than its conventional counterparts, but at least road warriors will be able to grab one soon — it’s about to hit the stores in Taiwan, with other markets to follow afterwards. Click her

Priced at $1,999, the 7980XE is clearly not a chip you’d see in an average desktop. Instead, it’s more of a statement from Intel. It beats out AMD’s 16-core Threadripper CPU , which was slated to be that company’s most powerful consumer processor for 2017. And it gives Intel yet another way to satisfy the demands of power-hungry users who might want to do things like play games in 4K while broadcasting them in HD over Twitch. And as if its massive core count wasn’t enough, the i9-7980XE is also the first Intel consumer chip that packs in over a teraflop worth of computing power. If 18 cores is a bit too rich for you, Intel also has other Core i9 Extreme Edition chips in 10, 12, 14 and 16-core variants. Perhaps the best news for hardware geeks: the 10 core i9-7900X will retail for $999, a significant discount from last year’s version. All of the i9 chips feature base clock speeds of 3.3GHz, reaching up to 4.3GHz dual-core speeds with Turbo Boost 2.0 and 4.5GHz with Turbo Boost 3.0. A

The all-wheel drive hypercar won’t just deliver levels of performance unparalleled outside the world’s racetracks, but will be able to run as a pure battery-electric car for up to 15 miles and, unique for a hypercar, its zero-emission mode will be front-wheel drive. That should make it capable of circumventing limitations on internal-combustion, high-powered cars in some city centers around the world. “It shifts up the boundaries of what is technically feasible,” AMG Chairman Tobias Moers said, with production limited to just 275 models. “We are the first to make pure bred F1 technology roadworthy.” “Our objective is not speed, but to be the benchmark. If we have a strategy and we move into a new era of performance at AMG, maybe it’s good to have something that opens the door in a very authentic way to that new era and this is it. “Plug-in hybrid is going to be the future for AMG. We get more performance and more efficiency and what’s wrong with that?” he asked. Technically, though,

[embedded content] Conch shells have a complex, three-tiered structure with a zigzag matrix that makes them resistant to breakage. Small cracks don’t typically lead to big ones, since they have to go through a maze to become bigger. However, to be able to replicate that quality, scientists need more data on how exactly cracks appear and spread. That’s why the team used the samples they printed to perform a series of drop tests. Since these samples are identical, unlike conch shells that have variations in quality, they gave the scientists a way to collect more accurate data. By the end of the testing period, the researchers were able to conclude that the shell’s structure is 85 percent better at preventing cracks than the strongest base material and 70 percent better than a traditional fiber composite arrangement. The material, the researchers find, is perfect for impact-resistant gear, since it’s capable of resisting damage and dissipating energy before it hits your body. Team mem

How we picked and tested Our testing pool after a few rounds of security testing. Photo: Duncan Niederlitz We spent many hours researching all the locks available from the major brands in the bicycle industry, attending the Interbike trade show to see not-yet-available options, reviewing our previous guide, looking into the most popular locks on Kickstarter, and searching for well-reviewed locks from smaller companies or lesser-known brands. Manufacturers make dozens of locks in very similar styles. With supposedly different levels of security and proprietary ratings systems, however, it can be hard to decide which locks are comparable with each other, other than blindly going by price or researching the ratings from independent organizations that rate bicycle locks. Unfortunately, these institutions use different rating scales, and not all lock manufacturers submit all of their locks to be tested. We decided that our only way forward was to order the most expensive locks from eve

It’s been a big week of things finally happening. Uber’s making good on the backpay it owes its drivers, Target settled its data breach lawsuits and some semen that spent nearly a year in space proves to still be viable. Numbers, because how else will you know how long you’ve waited?

Albeit with ads. You can play ‘Crazy Taxi’ on your smartphone for free If you’ve always been intrigued by the early noughties appeal of Crazy Taxi, but didn’t want to lay down cash on that curiosity, you now have no excuse. Sega has made both Android and iOS versions free to play. And if the ads drive you crazy, you can plunk down a mere two bucks. Or just delete the thing. It’s been eight years since Victorian London was swept underground by a swarm of bats. ‘Fallen London’ and the secret to writing an infinite gothic game Fallen London is a deep choose-your-own-adventure game that debuted back in 2009, with no moving pictures to guide players into new worlds. Instead, it’s text-based, allowing fans to decide how they’ll react to certain scenarios while they wander around a Victorian version of London that’s trapped in an underground dimension. It’s still available in browser form, but it’s also on iOS and Android, spawning a successful spinoff mobile franchise in the proce

This isn’t about to enter mass production, so you’ll have to wait for a walkthrough from The Sega Holic if you’re determined to mod your own Nomad. However, he hints that even more is possible. There’s nothing stopping you from outputting the system’s audio and video over USB-C, so you could create a Nintendo Switch -style dock or breakout box that returns Genesis games to your TV screen. Is this overkill? You bet — but this still shows how a little engineering can improve on a classic handheld, and maybe even give it a second life. [embedded content]

Richard Hanbury, the company’s chief, worked on the technology as a solution to his chronic pain issues that make it hard to go to sleep. It was put to the test when Bertrand Piccard relied on the technology to make sure he had enough rest when he piloted the Solar Impulse on a round-the-world journey last year. He could only nap three hours a day divided in 20-minute blocks and needed the extra help to make the most of each. At the moment, Sana Health is testing the device on athletes in need of restful nights while traveling. Sana Sleep isn’t just for pilots and athletes, though: it’s for everyone who’s having trouble going to bed. Now that the company has successfully closed a $1.3 million round of seed funding, it’ll start working towards mass production. Hanbury says you’ll be able to buy the mask by the second quarter of 2018 at the earliest, and it will set you back $400.

The attack pulled data off the magnetic strips of credit cards used in physical Chipotle locations around the US. The company has not said how many customers were affected, though it offered a searchable list of locations that were actually hit in the attack, including the dates each restaurant was vulnerable. Some were compromised for about a week, and others for the full four weeks. If you swiped a credit card at a Chipotle in March or April, check out the list of affected restaurants right here . “Because of the nature of the incident and the type of data involved, we do not know how many unique payment cards may have been involved,” Chipotle spokesperson Chris Arnold told Engadget. As Reuters notes, Chipotle is not offering credit monitoring services to compromised customers. The company said monitoring services don’t alert customers when a fraudulent charge is made in their name. “Chipotle takes this kind of issue very seriously, and we regret any inconvenience or concern it m

The team’s own experiments also limited their metrics to the likelihoods of crashes, injuries (including severity) and “conflict events.” Based on estimates, the improvements would be dramatic… to put it mildly. Researchers believe that 1,000 miles under their method could be equivalent to between 300,000 and 100 million miles of real-life driving. You could match Waymo’s yearly driving experience (635,000 miles in 2016) in the space of a day. Just don’t get too excited. The researchers are aware that they need to account for many, many more situations before this testing method is ready for practical use. How does a self-driving car handle jaywalkers, overloaded trucks or snow-covered streets? And of course, there’s no guarantee that you’ll see such a massive improvement with every car or every test. If the real results come even vaguely close to this, though, the automotive industry could be in for a shakeup. You may still end up waiting several years or more for viable driverless

Google said it would have to spend over $100,000 and up to 500 hours to be able to fulfill the DoL’s request. That’s such a small amount for a tech titan that Ian Eliasoph, one of the agency’s lawyers, pointed out that the company has a $28 billion annual income. “Google would be able to absorb the cost as easy as a dry kitchen sponge could absorb a single drop of water,” he said. He also mentioned that the company has funds dedicated to improving diversity and that Google shouldn’t be immune to anti-discrimination investigations just because it’s “too big to comply.” The big G’s lawyers argued, however, that Mountain View has already spent $500,000 and 2,300 hours of manpower to be able to comply to the agency’s demands. They called those demands too “broad and unconstitutional,” since giving the department the company’s salary info would violate employees’ privacy. A Google spokesperson told Recode that the requests “include thousands of employees’ private contact information which

At CES we were quite impressed by the Hisense lineup of smart TVs , and now the company says its 2017 models are arriving at retail. The H6D, H7D, H9D and H9D Plus series cover a range of price points and sizes, with 4K models ranging from the 43-inch H6D for $348 to the top of the line H9D Plus 65-inch with advanced motion processing and ULED edge LED lighting for $2,000. There’s no word yet on other items like versions with Roku technology built in, but its freshly redesigned platform includes access to Amazon, Netflix, YouTube and Vudu, which should cover most of the bases. We’re also keeping an eye out for the 4K Laser Cast TV projector, but until then, these will have to do battle in the crowded midrange 4K TV segment. That won’t be easy, a look at the competition shows Vizio’s M-Series selling a 65-inch model for $1,200 that compares very well to the 65-inch H9D with a price about $100 higher.

[embedded content] All in all, this VR payment is almost exactly like real life payments, which doesn’t seem terribly innovative. As we’ve moved away from using credit cards in real life purchases, one would think that there would be a better option for buying things in VR. Along with gaming purchases, WorldPay says it’s also interested in working with companies like Ikea that have started experimenting with VR in their own sales. A useful application once we phase out bulky VR headsets and controllers that would make real life payments cumbersome. Market research conducted by the company suggests the demand for VR payments will vary a lot by country. While 93 percent of Chinese citizens surveyed said they could see themselves using VR payments, only 35 percent of UK participants did. And zero percent of the people writing this article envision making VR payments anytime soon.

After a slight delay , the first official Friday the 13th game since 1989 is available today on PC , PlayStation 4 and Xbox One . If you want to jump right into the action at Camp Crystal Lake, though, you might have to wait for Friday the 13th: The Game ‘s servers to accommodate the apparent rush of people trying to kill the counselors/survive the maniacal Jason Voorhees. The official Twitter accoun t has been dropping updates since the wee hours of this morning, so if you’re having issues make sure to check there first.

Yes, the cars in Blade Runner , The 5th Element and Back to the Future are cool, and who wouldn’t want to push a button and take to the sky in their Honda Civic? But it’s not going to happen any time in the next few decades, if ever. Frankly, the average driver can’t be trusted with anything that breaks free of the earth. Plus, adding potentially millions of vehicles to the sky is a logistical nightmare that’s sure to end in more than a few collisions that, unlike earth-based vehicles, would end with potentially hundreds of injured or killed bystanders. But that doesn’t mean the only time we’ll take to the skies for transit will be via international airports. Instead of flying cars, get ready for fleets of small “air taxis” zipping from hub to hub within a region, delivering passengers to their destinations. There’s a reason Uber is so bullish on this idea — it’s an outstanding complement to its current business model. The company wants a world where you take an Uber to one of its

As Ars Technica points out , it’s a metadata file that exists in the root directory of the OS’ NTFS file system. When something tries using it, like a malicious website accessed through Internet Explorer in this case, the NTFS driver never releases its lock on the file. This in turn blocks other legitimate processes from accessing the file system. From here, every program trying to access any type of file will start to hang and you can see where this is going. Now, this type of vulnerability isn’t new (older versions of Windows had similar responses calls for c:\con\con), and neither is the fix. Simply reboot your machine and you should be good to go. Microsoft is aware of the problem, but isn’t going to fix the bug in Windows Vista. Considering that Redmond is still supporting Windows 7 and Windows 8 there may be a patch coming, though. We’ve reached out for more information and will update this post should it arrive.

At least, officially. More enthusiastic Vive gamers have been able to tap into ReVive, a software workaround that let Steam VR users access to Oculus exclusives like Superhot VR since last year. That said, Github files and a little bit of hard work aren’t for all of us, and the official release on Steam is a good sign for the remaining Vive owners looking for a VR title to tide them over until E3 next month. The game’s posit is cleverly simple: Time moves forward as you do. It’s arguably more of a puzzle game than shooter, as you plan your movement through levels to avoid getting trapped — and then filled with bullets. Available on Steam now, Superhot VR is launching with an early-bird 20 percent discount (down to $20) through til the start of June.

HTC’s Vive headset supported room-scale VR from the get-go, and Oculus has been playing catch-up for some time now. In its experimental phase, the Rift’s implementation wasn’t exactly user-friendly, leading Oculus to craft a four-part blog series conveying setup advice and educating owners about compatibility issues with older USB standards , among other things. While this may still serve as useful reference material, the notes accompanying the version 1.15 software release state “tracking with three sensors is now fully supported,” meaning there shouldn’t be any major issues getting it up and running.

The museum actually inducted The Oregon Trail into the Video Game Hall of Fame back in 2016 , and the new exhibit will include playable original versions of the game so younger generations can experience the excitement of hunting for buffalo in all it’s 8-bit glory. Aside from teaching countless schoolkids grammar with Word Munchers , MECC is also considered a pioneer in STEM education that popularized computer learning. To preserve that legacy, a group of former MECC employees, including Oregon Trail co-creator Don Rawitsch and co-founder Dale LaFrenz, recently donated a cache of documents, videos, and software to the museum that will show how the company evolved from a part of the public school system to a beloved piece of our collective memories. The Oregon Trail, MECC, and the Rise of Computer Learning exhibit officially opens on June 17th . But if you can’t make it to Rochester, New York, you can also explore and play the original on Archive.org or take a trip down memory lan

For instance, shelves of shoes will also show if each design is available in your size or if you have to go online to find it. In future fitting rooms, the mirror might welcome you back when you walk in, and it’ll already know your preferred fit, cuts, brands and sizes so it can predict what you might like to try on. If you’ve bought a particular shade of foundation, a screen on the shelf can show you looks that are mapped to that hue. When you drive up to a gas pump, it will already know which credit card you’ll be using because it detected and authenticated your license plate and identity. These scenarios are just examples that form part of Healey Cypher’s vision of the retail store of the future. He’s the CEO of San Francisco-based startup Oak Labs, which calls itself a “retail innovation company” and has been working with brands like Ralph Lauren and Rebecca Minkoff to embed tech in their stores for unique shopping experiences. “It’s not a lot of screens or holograms or robots

PlayStation VR Street price: $400; MSRP: $400; Deal price: $340 This is a new low price on our PS4 owner’s pick for best VR headset (for now). The PS VR hasn’t moved much from it’s $400 price point, and this deal brings it $10 below the previous best price. It should be noted that this is the standalone headset only – no Move controllers or cameras. The PlayStation VR is our PS4 owners pick in our guide to the best VR headsets for PC and PS4 . Signe Brewster writes, “Sony’s PlayStation VR headset can’t track you quite as well as the competition can, but it’s good enough to provide a fun, solid virtual reality gaming experience. If you own a PlayStation 4 or 4 Pro (or would rather buy one than an expensive gaming PC), the PSVR’s $500 price tag makes it an easy pick. There are plenty of games to choose from—including PSVR exclusives like Rez Infinite as well as games like EVE: Valkyrie that are available on Vive and Rift—its camera and controllers are PlayStation accessories you ma

When you send a permanent, non-disappearing photo to a buddy with Instagram Direct, you don’t have find the perfect square crop anymore. Simply grab a portrait or landscape oriented photo from your camera roll and let fly. Sounds a lot easier than uploading non-square photos in the regular Instagram feed. Also, when you send a link, phone number or address in Direct, your friend can tap through to launch the appropriate app to handle it, like Safari, the phone app or your contacts. Instagram added more Snapchat -like features — disappearing photos and live video — to its Direct service in November 2016. It also bundled permanent and disappearing photos together this past April. These new additions might further encourage users to stay within the walled Instagram garden when chatting, instead of hopping over to apps like Snapchat. Landscape and portrait uploads are available on iOS now with Android to come later. Links, however, are available with the update on both platforms.

Buckle up. Coming soon. https://t.co/AF34IVISL2 — Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) May 17, 2017 While Lyft and Uber are celebrating, the city isn’t. The bill, HB 100, would override the state’s 20-plus local ordinances and require ride-sharing companies to conduct criminal background and sex offender checks for drivers — but allow them to use ones they prefer. Uber’s internal checks have failed to discover criminal records before, and when Massachusetts enacted tougher background research rules last month, over 8,000 current drivers were rejected for violent/sexual crimes or drunk or reckless driving. Doubtless these enhanced checks aim to weed out predatory chauffeurs — like Uber drivers who have sexually assault passengers, which the company has tried wiggling out of legal responsibility for. Once Lyft and Uber activate their drivers, both ride-sharing titans will have to compete with local operators that sprung up in the interim. Companies like Fare and Fasten along with the no

B&O is exhibiting the BeoSound Shape as part of London’s Clerkenwell Design Week, and the accompanying presentation is slanted appropriately. I heard about how the mosaic speaker system is “domesticating technology” and how the peaked, many-faced design plays with light in the same way mountain ranges do at dusk. The tagline “good sound, good silence” came up at one point, but cut through the colorful, emotive pitch and you’re looking at a fairly elaborate bit of kit. Not all tiles that make up the speaker installations are equal. The heart of every system is a hexagon B&O calls the “Core.” This is what drives the amps that, in turn, power the speakers. It supports several wireless streaming protocols including humble Bluetooth, as well as AirPlay and Chromecast, and plays nice with B&O’s other speakers for multi-room shenanigans . The Core is also responsible for tweaking the output of individual speakers, so no matter the eye-pleasing geometric arrangement, sound is spre

National Radio Astronomy Observatory – Image: Education Images/UIG via Getty Images Between April and July of 1960, Drake recorded some 150 hours of tape speckled with radio noise. While no meaningful encoded signals or patterns emerged from those readings, Drake still earned himself a place in history for performing what would become the first scientific search for extraterrestrial intelligence in the modern era. Since then, research organizations around the world have performed nearly 100 SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence) experiments. Even NASA got in on the hunt, working with the SETI Institute between 1988 and 1993, when Sen. Richard Bryan (D – Nevada) introduced an amendment that cut the program’s government funding. “Senators kind of looked at this line item and said, ‘Hey wait a minute. Are we are we paying to search for little green men?'” explained Steve Croft, an assistant project astronomer at the UC Berkeley SETI Research Center and researcher with the

Although today’s result wasn’t as “close” as the first match, where AlphaGo won by just half a point , Deepmind CEO Demis Hassabis said that Ke Jie played “perfectly” for much of the contest before he resigned, at least according to AlphaGo’s evaluations. “For the first 100 moves it was the closest we’ve ever seen anyone play against the Master version of AlphaGo,” Hassabis confirmed in the post-game press conference. “Today’s game was different from the first,” Ke said, reported by The Verge . “AlphaGo made some moves which were opposite from my vision of how to maximize the possibility of winning. I also thought I was very close to winning the game in the middle but maybe that’s not what AlphaGo was thinking. I’m a little bit sad, it’s a bit of a regret because I think I played pretty well.” #AlphaGo wins game 2. What an amazing and complex game! Ke Jie pushed AlphaGo right to the limit. — Demis Hassabis (@demishassabis) May 25, 2017 AlphaGo is in China visting the Future of G

Created in 1996, the Long Now is a San Francisco-based non-profit organization dedicated to long-term thinking. Among its founders are prominent luminaries in science and technology. Examples include Stewart Brand, who’s an editor of The Whole Earth Catalog and co-founder of The WELL (an online community that’s been around since 1985); Danny Hillis, a computer theorist who worked on the idea of parallel computers — the basis for supercomputers and RAID arrays; and Kevin Kelly, the founding executive editor of Wired . “They were all kind of part of Silicon Valley, realizing that a lot of things were happening that were not allowing for some of the longer-term issues in society that needed to be addressed,” said Alexander Rose, executive director of the Long Now. “There wasn’t an excuse to think of certain things in long enough terms, like climate change or hunger. None of these things have a ‘return on investment’ as it were. We were just writing them off as things we weren’t going to