There’s no shortage of smart water bottles on crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo. But when a brand like Thermos enters the game with a new smart lid for its bottles that tracks hydration and even monitors the temperature of your water, you better pay attention. Read more…
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Thermos’ New Smart Bottle Tells You When Your Water’s Warm and Gross
The Matchstick , a Firefox-OS-based Chromecast-style device, kickstarted on the promise of bringing open, user-rights-respecting video to our homes — then they decided to add DRM. Read the rest
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Open "Chromecast killer" committed suicide-by-DRM
Judging by recent announcements, we’re about to enter a golden age of fast, nearly unlimited storage for all the high-res selfies you can shoot. Following an announcement by Intel and Micron last week , Toshiba and partner SanDisk revealed their own 256Gb flash chips. Toshiba already has the smallest flash cells in the world at 15 nanometers, which it stacks in 48 layers to maximize density. The new chips add in 3-bit tech (first used by Samsung ) to squeeze even more bytes in, helping it double the storage of chips it announced just a few months ago. The result will be faster and more reliable memory for smartphones, SSDs and other devices. Intel and Micron announced 256Gb chips using different, 32-layer tech earlier this year , so they may beat Toshiba/SanDisk to the manufacturing punch. Consumers will be the main beneficiaries of the rivalry, in any case. Micron said the tech will eventually yield up to 10TB laptop drives at much lower prices per gigabyte than current models. It’ll also result in cheaper and faster memory chips for smartphones and other mobile devices. Toshiba’s in the process of building its new fab plant in Japan, and said the 256Gb chips will be available sometime in 2016. Filed under: Storage Comments Source: Toshiba
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Toshiba’s new flash chips hold twice the data
Cellular service appears to be down across every major provider throughout Tennessee, Alabama and Kentucky with Nashville, Chattanooga, and Knoxville being the hardest hit. According to the website Down Detector , more than 10, 000 AT&T, 1, 000 Verizon, 7, 000 T-Mobile and 300 Sprint customers are without internet or phone access. None of the affected companies have disclosed the specific reason for the outage yet, though they all have already issued vague statements about how they’re working on the issue. Update : Verizon is reporting the issue is resolved as of 8PM ET, however we haven’t seen an update from the others yet. Verizon issued the following statement after fielding numerous complaints on its Twitter account: A connectivity issue is causing a service interruption in our market. Our engineers are aware of this issue and are working with our vendor partners to resolve this issue quickly. At present we do not have an estimated time of resolution. As did T-Mobile: @baegail Customers across all carriers are affected in your region. Engineers are on it and working to restore your services asap! *MMH – T-Mobile USA (@TMobileHelp) August 4, 2015 Sprint followed the same pattern in its statement: We are aware of the impacts to service in which customers may be unable to access voice and some data services. This appears to be an issue caused by a local exchange provider and our network team is working with the provider to restore service to impacted customers as quickly as possible. We apologize for any inconvenience. As did AT&T: Some customers across parts of the Southeast are experiencing wireline and wireless service issues. We are investigating the cause and working as quickly as possible to restore service. We apologize for this inconvenience. According to Re/code , a Sprint rep has hinted that the issue originated at a local exchange provider that works with the affected companies. “We are aware of the impacts to service in which customers across multiple carriers may be unable to access voice and some data services, ” the rep said. “This appears to be an issue caused by a local exchange provider and our network team is working with the provider to restore service to impacted customers as quickly as possible.” Filed under: Internet , Mobile , Verizon , Sprint , AT&T , T-Mobile Comments Via: Gizmodo Source: WATE 6
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Cell service out for thousands across the American Southeast
Helping to dispel the notion that 3D printers are only really useful for making plastic trinkets, New Zealand’s Lance Abernethy is back with another impossibly tiny 3D-printed power tool that’s powered by an equally small hearing aid battery. Read more…
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You Could Accidentally Swallow the World’s Smallest Circular Saw
You’ve probably heard of malware-laden ads causing havoc on the web, but rarely on this scale. Malwarebytes has discovered a malware campaign that was using Yahoo’s ad network to target legions upon legions of visitors — Yahoo’s main site racks up 6.9 billion visits per month. While it’s not clear what would happen if you fell victim to an attack, the Flash-based exploit kit linked to the campaign typically includes both ad fraud and ransomware . In short, there’s a real chance that you could have been locked out of your PC simply by checking on your fantasy sports league . Notice the emphasis on the past tense, though. Yahoo was quick to take this “malvertising” campaign down, so you’re not at risk as I write this. Even so, it’s not exactly comforting that malware writers could even slip their code into such a large ad network. Yahoo’s still investigating what happened, but it appears that online ad giants may need stricter filters on what gets through. [Image credit: AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez] Filed under: Internet Comments Via: New York Times Source: Malwarebytes Tags: ads, advertising, flash, internet, malvertising, malware, ransomware, security, web, yahoo
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Huge malware campaign used Yahoo’s ad network
Back in March, Native Instruments — the company behind the ubiquitous Traktor DJ software — announced Stems : a music format that lets DJs and remixers to control individual parts of a track. Today Stems launches to the buying public on a number of popular music stores including Beatport and Traxsource have them listed already, Bleep, Juno, whatpeopleplay, and Wasabeat will also be selling them. For years DJs and producers’ only chance of finding a cappella versions of songs was to hope a vocal-only recording existed. The advent of the internet made finding these a little easier, but they were still rare. Expensive software can sometimes help you surgically remove parts or a track, or isolate vocals, but the results aren’t always very clean. Stems makes all that a thing of the past. The new file-format allows DJs to turn the separate parts of a track on and off at will. Importantly, Stems is open, so anyone will be able to export music as a compatible file (Native Instruments will release tools for this later in the year), and big artists and labels are already on board. A Stems file will break a song into four parts; usually drums, vocals, bass and lead, each of which can be manipulated independently with compatible hardware (Native Instruments’ Kontrol S8 , D2 , and F1 for example). Beatport, will even let you audition tracks as separate parts in the browser (as seen below). It’s unlikely most casual listeners need to worry about Stems — it’s definitely more for performers — but, if there’s a killer track, with a really annoying vocal , there might just be a workaround at last. An update for Traktor that adds Stem compatibility is available via NI Service Center today. Filed under: Misc , Home Entertainment Comments Source: Stems , Beatport
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DJs can buy remix-friendly ‘Stems’ music files starting today
While the IT managers of the world stress about Windows 10’s buggy mail client , default browser , and dodgy domains, for the gamer, Microsoft’s latest and greatest OS is an exciting proposition. Windows 10, if you didn’t know, comes with DirectX 12 , which promises significant performance increases (particularly for AMD graphics card users), thanks to its new low-level API features. The trouble is, right now, there aren’t actually any games out there that use DX12. While Nvidia and AMD have both launched new drivers to bring DX12 support to a range of their current GPUs, there’s not a single DX12 game to play. 3DMark has a neat draw call benchmark that gives us some idea of how much faster DX12 will be, but it’s entirely synthetic. One of the first games to actually use DX12 will be StarDock’s upcoming RTS Ashes of the Singularity , with an early beta build showing a significant uplift in performance. We were hoping to check out a special benchmark build of the game this week, but sadly it’s been pushed back. Read 17 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Apple is testing a service that will let Siri take your calls, record them and transcribe them to text, according to Business Insider . The company is reportedly referring to it as iCloud Voicemail, and it’s similar to the existing visual voicemail service. However, instead of playing a pre-recorded message to your caller when you can’t pick up, Siri will take over the chore. It can then let certain contacts know where you are and why you can’t take the call, provided you give permission. The voice message will then be shunted over to Apple’s servers and transcribed into text. It works in much the same way that Siri transcribes your voice commands, but it’s unclear if the system would require carrier support. Currently, Apple’s visual voicemail service (which can also back up messages to iCloud) only works with select operators. It’s also not clear if it’d be free, as certain carriers charge extra for that. Nevertheless, it sounds like a good idea — as BI pointed out, lots of folks aren’t fond of voicemail, but the less tech-inclined still prefer to leave them. Employees of the company are reportedly testing the service, and if it’s reliable enough, it’ll be launch next year along with iOS 10. As always, however, take such rumors with a large chaser of skepticism. Filed under: Cellphones , Internet , Apple Comments Source: Business Insider Tags: apple, Siri, transcription, voice to text, Voicemail
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Apple reportedly wants to turn Siri into your receptionist
Uber is getting richer and richer. It’s now valued at $51 billion after raising another $1 billion in funding, and it got to this stage two years faster than Facebook did. As always, the ride-sharing service has attracted an assortment of investors during its latest funding round — one of them’s none other than tech juggernaut Microsoft, according to The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal . While neither company has admitted it yet, Bloomberg says Microsoft has agreed to back Uber to the tune of around $100 million. It’s unclear whether this means they’re pursuing a deeper relationship or if they’re working together on a project or two, at least. If you recall, though, Uber’s snapped up a portion of Bing’s mapping tech back in June, along with a hundred of Redmond’s employees. Microsoft is neither the first nor the only tech corporation/personality that has invested in the ride-hailing service. Chinese internet giant Baidu jumped in weeks after it was announced that Uber was already valued at $40 billion with an investment that could’ve been as big as $600 million. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos put his money in the company way back in 2011, while Google Ventures backed it with $258 million in 2013. That was years before both companies announced their intentions to develop self-driving taxi services, making them future competitors. In all, Uber now has $5 billion to spend on the aggressive expansion it’s planning in India , China and Southeast Asia. [Image credit: Getty Images] Filed under: Transportation , Microsoft Comments Source: The New York Times , Bloomberg , The Wall Street Journal
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Uber reaches $50 billion value thanks (in part) to Microsoft