Comcast launches its own cable-free TV with Stream

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2015/07/12/comcast-xfinity-internet-stream/

The latest (and most interesting) entrant to the cord-cutting TV wars is here: Comcast. Tonight the company announced Stream, a service that delivers TV exclusively over the internet (Correction: it is "IP-based managed network" connection, check after the break for why that matters) to phones, tablets and computers -- but now TVs. The big catch? You'll need Comcast internet service to subscribe, and the Stream TV feeds only work while you're at home. It's only available in select areas to start, and will launch in Boston this summer. For $15 a month, subscribers get about a dozen channels, including all broadcast networks and HBO (but not ESPN or any other cable channels, according to the New York Times). It also has access to the usual TV Everywhere cable authenticated-streaming for when you're away from home, plus Comcast's Netflix-like Streampix service for movies.

As for the at-home restriction on TV service, that's because, as a Comcast representative tells Engadget, this is "an IP-based cable service that offers live, on demand and cloud DVR delivered over our managed network in the home." In case you're somehow not familiar with what that means, it translates to this service not using the open internet everyone else uses to reach subscriber's homes, even though it runs through the same wiring and modem over the last mile. Comcast made the same distinction when it launched video on-demand streaming to the Xbox 360 a few years back, and Reed Hastings was not happy with the explanation. Given the current climate around net neutrality, we can't imagine this launch will go over without any controversy, and expect to hear more about that bit soon.

Stream is very much cable TV without the cable box (or TV) -- assuming you have the company's internet service and live in the right area, all you'll need is a phone call to activate it. Unfortunately, it carries a surprisingly long list of restrictions, even for a brand new service. When Sling TV launched, you could get it everywhere, with PlayStation Vue, it came to your TV via consoles. While Stream has a DVR, network TV and HBO, it doesn't have quite enough to make me interested without a hook-up to real TVs or options for popular cable channels, and isn't going available where I live anyway.

Comcast already has an IPTV service it offers through universities, and made earlier efforts to push TV on phones and tablets in-home with its AnyPlay box. With cloud DVR tech in-hand, the company knows what many of us want -- TV service that works anywhere whether at home or away, with recordings, and smaller/cheaper bundles would be nice -- but will continue to play keep-away for now. If you're still interested, you can sign up for more info here.

Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD

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Source: Comcast

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Amazon's Fling is its version of AirPlay and Google Cast

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2015/07/10/amazon-fling-sdk/

If you've been hoping for an AirPlay or Cast-like tool to beam content to your Amazon streaming gadgets, you'll soon be in luck. The company revealed its Fling feature this week, a tool that will allow developers to include a way to control media from a mobile device on your Fire TV. Right now, the software will let you send video, audio and still images from an Android or iOS device to the set-top box (or dongle, we'd surmise) for viewing. Devs can also employ "two-way communication" between the Fire TV and a phone or tablet to "engaging second screen experiences."

The company released an SDK so eager app makers can get started, and Karaoke Party and Rivet Radio are among the first selections to employ the tech. Rather than building the tool into it's OS like Apple and Google, Amazon is allowing app developers to add in Fling as they wish. Amazon's mobile devices run a version Google's operating system after all, and some folks who own its streaming gear probably also own an iOS or Android device. That being said, it'll be interesting to see if the likes of Netflix, Hulu and others will decide to opt in.

Filed under: Home Entertainment, Software, HD, Mobile, Amazon

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Via: CNET

Source: Amazon

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Framing Pictures With Fingers Would Be the Best Google Glass 2.0 Feature

Source: http://gizmodo.com/framing-pictures-with-fingers-would-be-the-best-google-1716432783

The first Google Glass might’ve died an ignominious death, but don’t give up on face computers just yet. Google will most likely launch some kind of updated Glass in the future, and when it does, features like framing up pictures with your fingers could make it a whole lot better than version 1.0.

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Google's DeepStereo makes Street View 'tourism' more realistic

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2015/07/08/googles-deepstereo/

Who here uses Street View to do some virtual traveling? It's not a shabby option if you want to look at places you might never visit within your lifetime, but Google thinks there's still a better way to simulate real-world tours. A team of the company's researchers has developed a technique that uses Google's experimental machine vision algorithm called DeepStereo to transform Street View panoramas into seamless virtual tours. See, Street View photos don't usually capture every detail of a location -- there are always a few frames missing in order to construct convincing digital reproductions of places like museums and houses. DeepStereo can synthesize those missing frames based on the ones that go before and after them, giving Google the ability to create realistic virtual tours.

In order to "train" DeepStero, the team had to feed the algorithm with images captured out of a moving vehicle; after that, it was able to start recreating images. It's still not perfect at this point -- some objects like trees or grass are hard to synthesize and details vanish from the recreated frame if the machine lacks pertinent details. In addition, it takes as long as 12 minutes on a powerful workstation to build a single synthetic frame. DeepStereo's obviously still a young technology, but the team believes it could be used not just to create virtual tours, but to generate environments for movies and virtual reality content in the future.

Filed under: Misc, Google

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Via: MIT Technology Review

Source: Google

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A Chinese artificial intelligence program just beat humans in an IQ test

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/chinese-ai-beat-humans-in-an-iq-test-2015-6

Science just took us a small step closer to HAL 9000.

A new artificial intelligence (AI) program designed by Chinese researchers has beat humans on a verbal IQ test.

Scoring well on the verbal section of the intelligence test has traditionally been a tall order for computers, since words have multiple meanings and complex relationships to one another.

But in a new study, the program did better than its human counterparts who took the test.

The findings suggest machines could be one small step closer to approaching the level of human intelligence, the researchers wrote in the study, which was posted earlier this month on the online database arXiv, but has not yet been published in a scientific journal.

IQ isn't the end-all, be-all measure of intelligence

Don't get too excited just yet: IQ isn't the end-all, be-all measure of intelligence, human or otherwise.

For one thing, the test only measures one kind of intelligence (typically, critics point out, at the expense of others, such as creativity or emotional intelligence. Plus, because some test questions can be hacked using some basic tricks, some AI researchers argue that IQ isn't the best way to measure machine intelligence.

Intelligence Quotient (IQ) Tests, an idea first proposed by German psychologist William Stern in the early 1900s, usually consist of a standard set of questions designed to measure human intelligence in logic, math and verbal comprehension. The verbal questions usually test a person's understanding of words with multiple meanings, synonyms and antonyms, and analogies (for example, a question might ask fo! r the multiple choice answer that best matches the analogy "sedative : drowness.")

Only a handful of computer programs for solving IQ tests exist, which could make this new achievement a pretty big deal.

Bin Gao, a computer scientist at Microsoft Research in Beijing, and his colleagues developed the new AI program specifically to tackle the test's verbal questions.

First, they wrote a program to figure out which type of question was being asked. Next, they found a new way to represent the different meanings of words and how the words were related.

They used an approach known as deep learning, which involves building up more and more abstract representations of concepts from raw data. (For example, Google uses deep learning in its search and translation features.) The researchers used this method to learn the different representations of words, a technique known as word embedding.

Finally, the researchers developed a way to solve the test problems.

The researchers gave a set of IQ test questions to their computer program and to a group of 200 people with different levels of education, recruited using Amazon Mechanical Turk, a crowdsourcing platform.

Still, the results are striking

The AI's results were striking. Although it scored better than the average person in the study, it didn't fare so well against some participants, such as people 30 and over and people with a master's or doctorate degree.

Other scientists not involved in the study praised the findings, but cautioned that they were just baby steps for now.

Robert Sloan, a computer scientist at the University of Illinois at Chicago, said the Chinese AI's performance was a small step forward, but noted that these kinds of multiple choice questions are just one type of IQ test, and may not be comparable to the kinds of open-ended reasoning tests administered to students by trained psycholo! gists.

Within AI, "the places where so far we’ve seen very little progress have to do with open dialogue and social understanding," Sloan told Business Insider. For example, if you ask a child what to do if they see an adult lying in the street, you expect them to call for help. "Right now, theres no way you could write a computer program to do that," he said.

In 2013, Sloan and his colleagues developed an AI that scored the same on an IQ test as a human four-year-old, but the program's performance was extremely varied. If a child varied that much, people would think something was wrong with it, Sloan said at the time.

Hannaneh Hajishirzi, an electrical engineer and computer scientist at the University of Washington in Seattle who designs computer programs that can solve math word problems, also found the results interesting. The Chinese researchers "got interesting results in terms of comparison with humans on this test of verbal questions," she said, adding that "we're still far away from making a system that can reason like humans."

So maybe AI isn't about to take over the world, as Stephen Hawking and others might have us believe. But at the very least, we'll end up with computers that are really good at making analogies.

UP NEXT: The CEO of IBM just made a bold prediction about the future of artificial intelligence

SEE ALSO: Here's when artificial intelligence could go from helpful to scary

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NOW WATCH: Benedict Cumberbatch And The Cast Of 'The Imitation Game' Have Mixed Feelings About Artificial Intelligence

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Stretchy conductive ink puts computing power on your clothes

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2015/06/28/stretchy-conductive-ink/

Those dreams of having computers in your clothing might be more realistic than you think. Japanese researchers have developed a printable conductive ink that maintains a circuit even when you stretch fabric to three times its usual length -- you could have athletic gear with hidden activity trackers, sensors and other computing devices. The key is a careful mix of fluorine, an organic solvent and silver flakes which, when combined, keeps transmitting electricity even under heavy abuse.

The current prototype for the ink, a wristband that tracks muscle movement, is pretty crude. You'd need much smaller circuitry before your apparel replaces your step counter or smartwatch. However, it only takes one step to print the ink. As such, it'd be relatively easy to produce on the large scales you need for shirts and wristbands. Smart fitness clothing already exists, but this invention would make it both more commercially viable and a heck of a lot more comfortable.

[Image credit: Takao Someya/University of Tokyo]

Filed under: Wearables, Science

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Via: EurekAlert, Nikkei Technology

Source: Nature

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Google Has Its Own Alternative to GitHub: Cloud Source Repositories

Source: http://gizmodo.com/google-has-its-own-alternative-to-github-cloud-source-1713829382

If you work with code every day, you’re likely used to GitHub—a place to store code with all the revision history you ever need. Now, though, Google has its own take on the service, open as a beta release for you to use for free.

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The Blade is a 3D-printed supercar

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2015/06/24/the-blade-is-a-3d-printed-supercar/

3D printing technology has already revolutionized the aeronautics industry. Manufacturers can create lighter, stronger components at a fraction of the time and cost of traditional production methods. Now a San Francisco-based startup called Divergent Microfactories is trying to do the same in the automotive industry. To that end, the company debuted a 3D printed supercar dubbed "Blade", reportedly the first such vehicle to ever be additively manufactured.

The Blade's chassis is quite unique. Instead of having to generate the entire thing as a single unit, Divergent developed an 3D printed aluminum "Node" joint. The printed carbon fiber tubes that make up the chassis plug into these nodes to form a strong and lightweight frame for the rest of the vehicle. Divergent claims that this method can reduce the weight of the chassis by as much as 90 percent compared to conventional cars though the fact that it's carbon fiber and not steel or aluminum probably has a lot to do with those weight savings. In all, the vehicle weighs just 1,400 pounds (just a touch more than the Caterham Seven 620 R) but features a 700HP engine capable of running on both CNG and gas.

The company plans to produce a limited number of these vehicles to start (surprised Jay Leno doesn't already own one) but hopes to franchise its technology and let smaller boutique manufacturers build their own cars. And seriously, if the Department of Energy can build its own e-Cobra, how tough could it really be?

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Lenovo is the latest to hop on the PC-on-a-stick bandwagon

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2015/06/23/lenovo-ideacentre-stick-300/

Who knew that stick computers were suddenly in vogue? In the wake of pocket-sized desktops from Intel, Dell and Google, Lenovo is joining the fray with the Ideacentre 300 Stick. The extra-tiny Windows PC is much like a sleeker, more polished version of Intel's Compute Stick. It shares the same 1.3GHz Atom chip, 2GB of RAM and 32GB of built-in storage as its counterpart, and you'll also have the familiar USB port and microSD card slot for those moments when wireless peripherals won't cut it. The system's biggest difference (and really, biggest draw) is its price. It'll cost $129 when it hits stores in July -- that's about $20 less than the Intel stick, and you're getting a full-fledged home computer versus a corporate "thin client" like Dell's similarly priced Wyse Cloud Connect.

Filed under: Desktops, Lenovo

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Source: Lenovo

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Article: Intel Remote Keyboard for Android lets you control your PC from your couch

Intel quietly launched a free Android app over the weekend, that lets you use your phone as a keyboard and trackpad for your PC. Intel Remote Keyboard was designed for use with mini PCs that are about the size of a flash drive and don't ship with peripherals — but you can use it on any system run...

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Facebook and Google get neural networks to create art

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2015/06/20/facebook-and-google-ai-image-creation/

For Facebook and Google, it's not enough for computers to recognize images... they should create images, too. Both tech firms have just shown off neural networks that automatically generate pictures based on their understanding of what objects look like. Facebook's approach uses two of these networks to produce tiny thumbnail images. The technique is much like what you'd experience if you learned painting from a harsh (if not especially daring) critic. The first algorithm creates pictures based on a random vector, while the second checks them for realistic objects and rejects the fake-looking shots; over time, you're left with the most convincing results. The current output is good enough that 40 percent of pictures fooled human viewers, and there's a chance that they'll become more realistic with further refinements.

Google's take heads in the opposite direction. Instead of striving for realism, it's producing art by letting the neural network run wild and decide on the visual elements that it wants to emphasize. If you give the machine a photo of the sky and it thinks there are birds in the scene, it'll keep amplifying those avian traits until they're impossible to miss. The finished work is more than a little trippy, especially if you give it random noise as its source material -- as you can see above, the results give impressionist and surrealist painters a run for their money. You're not likely to see these Facebook and Google programs replacing human artists and photographers, but they're skilled enough to draw images you might enjoy.

Filed under: Science, Internet, Software, Google, Facebook

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Via: The Next Web, Singularity Hub

Source: Facebook (ArXiv.org), Google Research Blog

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Light-based battery makes its own power

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2015/06/21/light-based-battery/

Sure, you can make solar-powered devices that store their excess energy in a battery, but what about the battery itself? Unfortunately, it's still behind the times -- the lithium-ion cells you see today have to be connected to another device to charge, and they're occasionally very dangerous thanks to their chemical makeup. A team of Indian researchers may have just licked those problems, though. They've developed a battery whose titanium nitrate anode (where current flows into the device) is driven by light, both natural and artificial. In a well-lit area, a prototype can recharge itself without using either an external source or unstable chemicals.

The existing technology isn't ready for prime time yet. While it tops up in 30 seconds, it's barely powerful enough to run an LED light or a small fan, let alone your phone. If the technology improves, however, you could see more gadgets that not only don't have to be plugged in, but won't ignite if you drop them a certain way.

Filed under: Science

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Source: ACS

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360 Degree GoPro

Now that Google has announced Jump, a new VR technology platform that lets you create and share 3D content, you're probably wondering how you can do exactly that. Well, Google has partnered with GoPro to come up with a solution: a 360-degree camera array built out of 16 GoPros. The circular rig boasts camera syncing, multi-camera control and a super-long battery life so it can stand out there to capture as much crazy 3D footage as you can conjure up. From there, you can just hand over the video to Google's Jump software and it'll process it for you. And, if you like, you can share it with the world so that anyone with a VR headset -- Cardboard or not -- will be able to see it. We're hearing from Google that the 360-degree camera will be seeded out to a few select YouTubers at least initially, but it'll eventually be up for purchase to any and all wannabe VR content creators. Meanwhile, you should check out the video below to see an interactive (use your keyboard or mouse to look all around you) 3D video shot with the GoPro 360-degree camera array.

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his telescope is really just 10 Canon lenses strapped together

Hunting for extremely dim galaxies is especially difficult with single-lens telescopes. That's because, no matter how technologically advanced, the device's design cannot fully eliminate detail-obscuring scattered light from the resulting images. The University of Toronto's Dragonfly Telephoto Array, however, deftly avoids that issue. This array -- one of the smallest multi-lens astronomy telescopes in use today -- is comprised of 10 Canon 400mm f/2.8 L IS II USM telephoto lenses, each costing $10,000. What's more, each lens is coated in a unique subwavelength nanomaterial that drastically reduces light reflection within the optic. And, like its insect inspiration, the Dragonfly's ten eyes can work in concert with one another to further reduce unwanted illumination in the resulting image, bringing out otherwise unseen detail in cosmic structures. According to the University of Toronto spokesman Roberto Abraham, this $100,000 system is ten times as accurate as its nearest rival.

[Image Credit: U of Toronto]

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I Can Barely Watch This Video of the World's Longest Skywalk

Source: http://gizmodo.com/i-can-barely-watch-this-video-of-the-worlds-longest-sky-1704539127

You’ll want to read the rest of this post with your eyes shut if you have even the remotest fear of heights: This is the world’s longest skywalk, which recently opened in China. The skywalk allows crazy people to walk 87 feet off a cliff for spectacular vomit-inducing views. Don’t worry, it’s only about a half-mile down to the valley floor.

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Article: Samsung will make its smartphone chips available to developers of wearables, drones, and more

Smartphones, smart TVs, smart refrigerators, smart washing machines. Samsung Electronics wants to put a chip in everything it makes—and in things made by other companies, too. The world's largest smartphone maker today debuted a new series of all-in-one chip modules, called Artik, that help devel...

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NVIDIA's GRID cloud gaming service gets 1080p 60 FPS streaming

NVIDIA just flipped on a major upgrade for its GRID cloud gaming service: Full 1080p support at a blistering 60 frames per second. That's the same resolution and frame rate as many games running on the Xbox One and PS4, and it's pretty much the gold standard for PC gamers. And most importantly for NVIDIA, the update makes it the first company to offer game streaming at such a high resolution over the internet. To take advantage of the new streaming feature, you'll need to grab one of the company's SHIELD gaming devices (either the original handheld console or its gaming tablet), sign up for the SHIELD Hub beta group and have at least a 30 Mbps internet connection. We'd imagine it'll likely be a compelling draw for the company's upcoming SHIELD Android set-top box.

So far, NVIDIA is offering around 35 games for free streaming over GRID, including Ultra Street Fighter 4 and Batman: Arkham Origins. Come June, it'll also debut a premium option (no, we don't have pricing details yet).

While you can get 1080p/60p game streaming within your local network in a variety of ways -- including Nvidia's own GeForce Experience offering on PCs and Valve's Steam platform -- offering it remotely over the internet will be the holy grail for plenty of game companies. At this point, Valve's got a major head start -- and it's still making progress. The company also announced today that it's opening up two new GRID data centers in the southwestern US and Central Europe. It's currently running six data centers around the world, offering GRID to gamers in 20 countries.

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Article: This Crazy Camera Rig Takes Wildly Realistic 3D Pictures

Welcome to the (almost) holodeck We've all seen basic 3D pictures before. There are those distorted picture-globes you can take with your phone, or Google's Street View photospheres. They're impressive in their own way, but they're just 2D images arranged in a slightly 3D-ish manner. Pretty, but ...

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Microsoft shows off Windows Holographic running Windows 10 apps

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2015/04/29/windows-holographic-windows-10-apps-hololens/

When Microsoft debuted its Windows Holographic software and HoloLens headset a few months back, Windows 10 apps were mentioned as a possibility. Well, at Build 2015 today, the folks in Redmond offered a look at Windows 10 Universal apps in holographic action. During the onstage demo, apps could be placed on walls or set to float in space, and resized based on the user's needs -- something we'd only seen in videos up to this point. Of course, this means that users in different locations can collaborate on 3D models without having to be in the same room. Any Windows 10 app can be used as a hologram with the headset, so getting work done at a place other than your desk will soon be a possibility.

With those apps in play, you can overlay a hologram on top of a physical object and make tweaks without heading back to the keyboard. Just like the real and virtual robots we saw onstage, you wrangle simple changes, like the color of an LED, with gestures and the projected UI. Microsoft partnered with Case Western Reserve University to develop medical solutions for the platform, and those were shown off, too. Up-close examinations of the nervous and skeletal systems are now possible without the use of cadavers, and each of the body's systems can be displayed as a separate model in seconds. For architects, Windows Holographic brings the ability to walk through buildings without leaving the office, or through those projects that are still just blueprints. Of course, we'll have to wait and see what the final version looks like, but Microsoft's vision for how we'll work in the near-future is pretty enticing.

Filed under: Misc, Microsoft

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3 atom-thick transistor promises ultra-thin electronics

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2015/04/29/3-atom-thick-transistor-promises-ultra-thin-electronics/

Researchers from Cornell University announced a breakthrough in transistor technology in the latest issue of the journal, Nature. The team has reportedly developed a novel and highly efficient method of producing an experimental material known as transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD). TMD is an exceedingly thin (but highly conductive) film, which makes it useful in many high-tech applications -- everything from solar cells to flexible, wearable gadgets -- but also makes it a huge pain to produce in appreciable quantities. That is, until now.

"Our work pushes TMDs to the technologically relevant scale, showing the promise of making devices on that scale," Saien Xie, one of the paper's lead authors. TMD, like the similarly touted wonder-material graphene, could help extend Moore's Law by providing a stable and compact substrate onto which engineers can pack an ever-increasing number of circuits. However, since it's only three atoms thick, TMD production typically suffers from a high rate of breakage and failure. The new method from Cornell, which mixes diethylsulfide and a metal hexacarbonyl compound atop a silicon wafer and then bakes them for 26 hours in hydrogen gas, has proven far more successful.

Out of a batch of 200 such wafers created for the study, only two failed -- that's a 99 percent success rate. With these results in hand, the research team hopes to streamline the manufacturing process as well as improve the consistency of the resulting film. The technology is still at least a few years away from being commercially viable but when it is, we could see it usher in a new era of paper-thin, super-powerful electronics.

Filed under: Science

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Via: The Verge

Source: Nature

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Get your Windows 10 preview for Raspberry Pi 2 while it's hot

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2015/04/30/windows-10-preview-raspberry-pi-2/

Day one of Microsoft's Build 2015 conference is in the books, but that doesn't mean the news has stopped. The Windows 10 IoT Core Insider developer preview (phew!) has launched for small devices including the Raspberry Pi 2. Redmond admits that it's still pretty rough around the edges, but it's hoping that the maker community can provide feedback for how the platform's turning out along the road to a full release. What's more, the software giant is partnering with Arduino for a series of "Arduino Certified" products to bring the ubiquitous DIY boards into the Windows family and take advantage of all that the software has to offer. For example, cloud computing, a familiar user interface, image processing and a ton more. It follows the theme of bringing everything under one roof that Nadella and Co. have been so vocal about lately, and should hopefully help tinkerers develop some pr! etty pow erful stuff in their garage.

The Windows IoT shell is a Universal app like any other on Win10. That's all your RPi will do :D pic.twitter.com/GwVkUxUCPA

- Steve T-S (@stroughtonsmith) April 30, 2015

This is what your Raspberry Pi 2 running Windows 10 will boot up to (you can run the x86 version on your desktop): pic.twitter.com/td1qonbdhX

- Steve T-S (@stroughtonsmith) April 30, 2015

Filed under: Desktops, Microsoft

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Source: Windows Blog, Steve Troughton-Smith (Twitter) (1), (2)

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Take notes on your wrist with Google Keep and Android Wear

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2015/04/23/take-notes-on-your-wrist-with-google-keep-and-android-wear/

Keep, Google's cloud-based note taking app, has always been pretty handy. But having to pull out and unlock your phone, then launch the program, open a new note and finally type in your thought is often enough to make anybody yearn for a pencil and pad of paper. Luckily, Google has a newly updated means of jotting down ideas as easy as talking to the back of your hand -- you just need to shell out a couple hundred bucks for an Android Wear watch to use it.

According to the official Google Android Blog, Android users with devices running Ice Cream Sandwich and newer will be able to access the Note app directly from their wristwatch while leaving their phone in their pocket. Users can activate the app with "OK Google, open Keep" or jump directly to dictation with the command "OK Google, take a note." Existing features like swipe-and-tap navigation and adding reminders to existing notes directly from the watch are still supported.

Filed under: Cellphones, Wearables, Internet, Google

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Source: Official Android Blog

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