Tag: entertainment

New York City’s whole subway system gets WiFi in 2016

Forget having to remember which New York City subway stations have WiFi — by the end of this year, you won’t have to pick and choose. State governor Andrew Cuomo has promised that every underground station will get WiFi by the end of the year, guaranteeing at least some kind of internet access while you’re waiting for your train. Complete cellular service will come slightly later, with end-to-end access ready by early 2017. Either is heartening news if you regularly commute underground, since Transit Wireless (which is handling the service) had previously targeted late 2017 for full WiFi service. There should be more in the works, too. Cuomo has proposed a contactless payment system that would let you use your smartphone or newer bank cards to pay your fare, rather than busting out your MetroCard or some tickets. The current proposed phone system looks a bit clunky with its QR-based scanning, but NYC buses and subways won’t get this feature until 2018 — hopefully, it’ll include NFC-based payments (such as Apple Pay or Android Pay) by then. Both the Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North Railroad will have mobile ticketing within half a year. And yes, the city plans to drag trains (and buses) into the modern era. You’ll get real-time arrival data for all subway lines, and more countdown clocks. Also, subway cars will start getting USB charging ports this year (400 will have them by next year), and every new bus delivered from this year forward will have WiFi hotspots. In short, NYC’s mass transit system will soon revolve around mobile. While there will still be gaps in coverage (most notably when you’re in the middle of some tunnels), they may soon become the exception rather than the rule. [Image credit: AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews] Via: NY1 , The Verge Source: MTA , Gov. Andrew Cuomo (Twitter)

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New York City’s whole subway system gets WiFi in 2016

Samsung’s Ultra HD Blu-ray player is coming soon for $399

There aren’t many Ultra HD Blu-ray players to choose from, but the first one you can buy is this one from Samsung. We’d seen it before at IFA last year, but this week Samsung announced the UBD-K8500 will go on sale in the US this March. Talking to reps from Samsung and the Ultra HD Association, I was told it could start selling as soon as February 22nd, and we expect to see the first Ultra HD discs arrive at the same time. Pre-orders are up on Samsung’s website and Amazon.com now for $399. The player itself is just like any other disc player you’ve seen, with a small arc detail along the bottom edge. In terms of features, it will play everything from 4K streaming apps to Blu-ray 3D discs, and it will even rip CDs for you (to WAV or MP3, which can be stored on a USB drive). As Samsung and Fox are collaborating on the UHD rollout, its booth featured a number of discs from the studio, including The Martian, Wild, Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials, Pan and others planned for early release in the format. I didn’t get a chance to play around with the device, but by all appearances it’s fast and capable. The days of the original Blu-ray players (remember the $1, 000 BD-P1000 and how long it took to load discs?) are well behind us, and if you’ve been waiting to jump into Ultra HD this should be a good entry point.

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Samsung’s Ultra HD Blu-ray player is coming soon for $399

YouTube to join Netflix and Amazon with HDR video

With big-name TV makers and movie studios all pledging to support high dynamic range (HDR) technology , it was only be a matter of time until the world’s biggest online video platform got in on the action. According to Mashable , Robert Kyncl, YouTube’s Chief Business Officer, confirmed that the service will soon roll out support for HDR, allowing streamers to watch videos in a lot more detail. While HDR has become a buzzword, it’s likely to make a big difference to the way you watch TV and movies this year. In brief terms, HDR captures a wider range of contrast and brightness. The resulting images show greater detail in darker parts of the screen and highlights a wider range of colors, allowing you to pick out details that you may not have noticed before. What it does mean, though, is that you will need a compatible TV or display to view YouTube’s range of HDR videos the way they’re meant to be viewed. LG , Sony and Vizio will soon release new 4K sets with high dynamic range support built in and PC makers are following the trend. Netflix and Amazon are on board too, ensuring that streamers can also board the HDR bandwagon. Source: Mashable

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YouTube to join Netflix and Amazon with HDR video

New Dell Tech Support Scams Have Customers Worried Company Was Hacked

Trailrunner7 writes: A new twist on the fake tech support scam has arisen that has victims wondering whether Dell has been hacked.There has been a recent rash of calls to Dell customers in which the caller says he is from Dell itself and is able to identify the victim’s PC by model number and provide details of previous warranty and support interactions with the company. These are details that, it would seem, only Dell or perhaps its contractors would know. One person who was contacted by the scammers wrote a detailed description of the call, and said the caller had personal details that could not have been found online. Dell officials say they’re looking into it. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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New Dell Tech Support Scams Have Customers Worried Company Was Hacked

Intel’s new Atom and Core M Compute Sticks get faster and look better

Andrew Cunningham Intel’s new Compute Stick has a better-looking design. 7 more images in gallery Intel’s original Compute Stick  was an neat idea that ultimately wasn’t executed very well. Any system based on one of Intel’s Atom processors is going to be a little slow, but flaky wireless, inconsistent performance, and a clunky setup process all made it less appealing than it could have been. It had all of the hallmarks and rough edges of a first-generation product. Today Intel showed us its next-generation Compute Sticks, and it’s clear that the company is taking seriously the criticism of the first model. There are three new versions to talk about: the lowest end stick uses a Cherry Trail Atom CPU and is the closest relative to the first-generation Compute Stick. The other two use more powerful Skylake Core M processors—one has a Core m3-6Y30 processor, and another has a Core m5-6Y57 CPU with Intel’s vPro management features enabled. All three sticks share the same basic design. The first-generation stick used a bulky, glossy plastic housing that made it look and feel more like a reference design than an actual shipping product, but all three new models switch to a softer, curvier case that looks more refined. Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Intel’s new Atom and Core M Compute Sticks get faster and look better

Snapchat closes its lens filter store despite decent sales

You probably wouldn’t give up hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue a month, but then you’re not Snapchat . The social app will close down its popular lens store this Friday after opening it just a couple of months ago. As a reminder, with the camera in selfie mode, you can add a variety of free or 99 cent filters that make you a snowball target (above) or let you puke out rainbows, for example. The company will let you keep the lenses you’ve already bought, of course, and will eventually offer many of the paid lenses for free. Snapchat told Business Insider that it shut down the store in order to focus on its advertising business, despite the fact that it was selling tens of thousands of filters per day. However, the company will still sell sponsored lenses to businesses like Beats for hundreds of thousands of dollars, reportedly. Snapchat has been trying to monetize its millions of users of late, but has run into to trouble due to a lack of data on how many people actually interact with the app. We’re sure the $10 billion company will figure it out, but in the meantime, if you want to get some lens filters, grab them by January 8th. Via: Business Insider Source: Snapchat

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Snapchat closes its lens filter store despite decent sales

Heads-up displays come to paintball goggles

Recon Instruments , the Canadian wearables outfit purchased by Intel last year, has released a heads-up display for paintball enthusiasts. Much in the same way Recon partnered with Oakley to produce its Airwave sports goggles , the firm has teamed up with Empire Paintball to create the Empire EVS. The device uses the game guts as the Airwave — a technology known as Snow2 — albeit in a new mask that’s designed to withstand the rigors of paint-based conflict. According to the firm, the heads-up display will be able to show battle-critical information like ammo counts, field maps and teammate locations. The device itself is running a version of Android and is packing a 1GHz dual-core processor, Bluetooth 4.0, WiFI as well as GPS. The mask, meanwhile, comes with dual-pane lenses that prevent internal fogging and a lower skirt that encourages ball bouncing. We don’t know yet how much the device will set you back, and the company has also been a little tight-lipped about when we can expect shipments to begin. For the former, Oakley’s Airwave retails for around $649, while the Snow2 smart glass insert on its own is $399, so we’d guess $500 is a reasonable amount of cash to start saving.

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Heads-up displays come to paintball goggles

See how much fat you’re burning just by breathing out

Using a weighing scale to keep track of your weight is tricky. Your body can lose water, muscle or fat but the scale simply picks up your overall weight. It doesn’t reflect your gym obsession or fat loss with any accuracy. LEVL is a new portable device that analyses your breath to tell you if your body is in fat-burning mode. A white box holds a proprietary nano sensor that checks your breath for the level of acetone, a molecule that your body releases when it goes into fat burning mode or ketosis. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen tech like this: in 2013, NTT DoCoMo demonstrated something remarkably similar. The process is simple: breathe in, breathe out into the inhaler and place it in a white device for an instant reading of the acetone concentration. There is an accompanying app that tracks your analysis to help you maintain a record of your readings over time. The app provides analysis of the amount of calories (and, by extension, pounds) burned off during the day. In many ways, the only thing that LEVL provides is a vague indication that your weight-loss regime is working, or not. But is that really something you would, or need to monitor to such an obsessive level? We’re not entirely sure. Daniel Cooper contributed to this report.

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See how much fat you’re burning just by breathing out

802.11ah Wi-Fi Standard Approved

alphadogg writes: A new wireless standard that extends Wi-Fi’s reach down into the 900MHz band will keep the 802.11 family at the center of the developing Internet of Things, the Wi-Fi Alliance announced today. 802.11ah, combines lower power requirements with a lower frequency, which means that those signals propagate better. That offers a much larger effective range than current Wi-Fi standards, which operate on 2.4GHz and 5GHz frequencies, and lets the newer technology penetrate walls and doors more easily. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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802.11ah Wi-Fi Standard Approved

IPv6 Turns 20, Reaches 10 Percent Deployment

An anonymous reader writes: Ars notes that the RFC for IPv6 was published just over 20 years ago, and the protocol has finally reached the 10% deployment milestone. This is an increase from ~6% a year ago. (The percentage of users varies over time, peaking on the weekends when most people are at home instead of work.) “If a 67 percent increase per year is the new normal, it’ll take until summer 2020 until the entire world has IPv6 and we can all stop slicing and dicing our diminishing stashes of IPv4 addresses.” “A decade or so ago, it was still quite common for people to complain about certain IPv6 features, and proclaim the protocol would never catch on. Although part of that can be blamed on the conservative nature of network administrators, it’s true that adopting IPv6 requires abandoning some long standing IPv4 practices. For instance, with IPv4, it’s common to use Network Address Translation (NAT) so multiple devices can share the use on an IPv4 address. IPv6 has more than enough addresses to give each device its own, so there’s no NAT in IPv6. The Internet is probably better off without NAT and the complications that it adds, but without NAT as a first but relatively porous line of defense against random packets coming in from the open Internet, it’s necessary to be much more deliberate about which types of packets to accept and which to reject.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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IPv6 Turns 20, Reaches 10 Percent Deployment