Source: http://www.engadget.com/2014/07/22/lgs-rollable-tvs-are-very-flexible/
Remember when LG announced that it had managed to create a rollable 18-inch display? Well, here's the proof: a very much flexible OLED display. The resolution might not be there yet (1,200 x 810, alas) but the hopes and dreams of a picnic-blanket TV set -- they're getting more real every day.
Via: OLED Display
When you start chugging a series, it's hard to stop, even for trips to the bathroom, or going to work, or catching up on sleep. It's a problem that Netflix loves to exploit, only giving you a few seconds before offering up the next episode of whatever series you're currently immersed in. For some reason, however, this post-play feature didn't work on the Apple TV, until it suddenly did a few days ago, without warning. The Roku-rival has even popped up on Netflix's list of supported devices, so never again will you have the option of stopping House of Cards after a single episode. Well, unless you disable it, of course.
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2014/07/22/ebay-brings-its-redlaser-barcode-scanner-app-to-google-glass/
You might know eBay as the website where you can buy a rare NES game for a hundred grand, but the company also has its own barcode scanner, called RedLaser. It's been out on Android and iOS for a while, and now the company is bringing it to Google Glass, allowing you to quite literally buy whatever you set your sights on. Like the existing app, the Glass version scans barcodes and spits back a list of current prices at different retailers. From there, you can find a brick-and-mortar store nearby, complete with directions, if you need them. And, of course, like any good online retailer, eBay will show a list of related products, similar to whatever it is you just searched for. All told, we're guessing you can probably spare a few minutes to stop what you're doing and use the phone app instead, but let's be honest: Scanning stuff with your eye sounds pretty fun. Just be aware, though, that if you want to purchase something, you will in fact have to pick up your phone -- the app will send an email notification to your mobile device so you can complete the transaction.
[Image credit: Angel Navarrete/Bloomberg via Getty Images]
Filed under: Google
Source: RedLaser, Glass Store
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2014/07/22/amazon-wallet/
Tried Apple's Passbook and Google's Wallet and not feeling satisfied? Perhaps Amazon's flavor of mobile payment app will strike your fancy. It's also named Wallet, and it arrived in beta form on the Google Play store recently. Like Apple and Google's versions, Amazon Wallet collects your gift cards, loyalty programs, and membership cards in one place -- on your phone -- and pushes them to the cloud. Should you switch from, say, Apple's iPhone to Amazon's Fire phone, all that information would move over with you, tied to your Amazon account.
There's another added benefit with Amazon's service in that your other, far more important financial info is likely already part of Amazon's system and connected to your profile. As a result, when you browse Amazon Wallet through the web, all that extra payment info is all in the same place.
It's not clear when Amazon Wallet is coming out of beta (if ever), but for now, consider yourself a guinea pig if you're jumping in.
Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds, Software, Mobile, Amazon
Source: Google Play, Amazon
There were so many TVs on display back at CES, that you'd be forgiven if they all blended together. So allow us to give you a recap: The Samsung UN105S9W was, in the company's own words, the "world's first, largest and most curved 105-inch curved UHD TV." Well then! Sounds like an expensive piece of kit, huh? You have no idea. Sammy just put its flagship TV up for pre-order and it's kind of a doozy. The whole thing costs $120,000 -- also known as a mortgage. For the money, you get 5,120 x 2,160 resolution on an unusually large screen, with an unusually wide aspect ratio of 21:9. Additionally, you'll receive a visit from one of Samsung's "Field Engineers" to walk you through all the features, if that's any consolation. It's also a Smart TV, with all the usual built-in apps, and the ability to separate the screen into four quadrants for watching live TV and surfing the web at once. Honestly, though, we'd be offended if a TV this expensive didn't do that. You can pre-order now if you like, but let's be real: Most of you are probably saving $120,000 for your future child's college tuition.
Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/images-of-alcohol-under-a-microscope-2014-7
It's not just to drink any more.
Instead of getting wasted, a company called Bevshots is using alcohol to do something amazing: They're crystalizing your favorite beer, wine, cocktails, and liquor and putting tghe results under a microscope. Booze never looked so beautiful.
The drinks were crystallized on a slide and photographed under a polarized light microscope. The light refracts through the drink's crystals and the results speak for themselves.
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2014/07/22/researchers-delete-hiv-from-cells/
So far, HIV has eluded a cure because it installs its genome into human DNA so insidiously that it's impossible for our immune system to clear it out. While current treatments are effective, a lifetime of toxic drugs are required to prevent its recurrence. But researchers from Temple University may have figured out a way to permanently excise it using a highly-engineered HIV "editor." Here's how it works: the team analyzed a part of our immune system that fights infection and built a "guide RNA" strand consisting of 20 nucleotides (RNA building blocks). Those strands were then injected into cells typically infected with HIV, like T-cells. There, they targeted the end parts of the virus's gene and snipped out all 9,709 nucleotides that made up its genome. Since the guide RNA strand contained no human DNA sequences, it left the host cell intact -- but free from HIV.
Though scientists eliminated the virus from cultured cells, there's still a lot of hurdles to clear before such therapy is ready for human trials. The virus's highly mutative nature means that there are numerous variants that the treatment would have to remove. The other challenge is to deliver the treatment to every infected cell, since complete removal of the virus is required to cure AIDS. However, Temple researcher Kamel Khalili said that "We are working on a number of strategies so we can take the construct into preclinical studies... we want to eradicate every single copy of HIV-1 from the patent. That will cure AIDS."
[Image credit: AP/NIAID]
Via: Motherboard
Source: Temple University
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2014/07/22/comcast-earnings/
Even as cable giant Comcast tries to get bigger by absorbing Time Warner Cable, its own revenue grew in the last quarter to $16.8 billion, up 3.5 percent from last year, and net income hit $1.99 billion. The most important number for a subscription business though is how many customers it has, and through a traditionally slow quarter, it managed to slow the loss of total "customer relationships" to 25,000 from 66,000 for the same period last year -- although my friend Ryan Block recently found out how difficult ending that relationship can be. More of the customers that remain are picking up internet and phone services, as it has over 21 million high speed internet subscribers alone. You can check out the numbers yourself right here, I'll be tuning in for the earnings call in a few minutes to find out if it has any new response to the recent customer service controversy, net neutrality and its battle with Netflix, or an update on the $45 billion TWC acquisition.
[Image credit: Associated Press]
Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD
Source: Comcast
It looks like the white dots in this optical illusion are all orbiting an imaginary point in space that, at the same time, is orbiting the center of that red circle. They are not. In reality, they are all moving in straight lines going from one side of the red circle to the opposite one.
Our eyes are too slow and our brains are too easily fooled. Just watch this video where Illusionist Eric Leclerc shows off by reading our minds through a simple YouTube video. He plays around with us in the beginning but at the end, he just jumped through the computer screen to peer into our wrinkled brain.
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2014/07/21/amazon-fire-phone-games/
Looks like Amazon plans to take advantage of the Fire phone's head-tracking tech at every turn, so it put its Game Studio to work developing two new titles especially for the device. The first one called Saber's Edge is a strategic pirate puzzle game, while the other, called To-Fu Fury, is a puzzle platformer (think 'Splosion Man) that stars a tofu martial artist. They sound like funny, typical mobile games, other than the fact that they support the Fire phone's "Dynamic Perspective" feature that tracks the movements of a user's head. Sadly, you can't exactly control the games by moving your noggin (that might sound silly, but at least that'll make the games truly unique), but you can peek around the corners to see hidden obstacles or bonuses. Of course, you can always just tilt the phone if you don't want to look silly in public. If you don't mind the games' limited support for the feature, you can grab em for $1.99 each -- but only if you're also getting the Fire Phone, which starts shipping this week.
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Amazon
Source: Amazon Games
Unlike compensatory damages where money is awarded to compensate for proven harm, loss, and injury, punitive damages are intended as punishment for a defendant's especially harmful behavior.
Although R.J. Reynolds is planning to file a motion for a reduction in the verdict, $23.6 billion is an astounding sum of money for a jury to award one individual, far larger than the $16.8 million in compensatory damages also awarded to Robinson. J. Jeffery Raborn, vice president and assistant general counsel for R. J. Reynolds, called the award a "runaway verdict" in a statement quoted by The New York Times.
"The damages awarded in this case are grossly excessive and impermissible under state and constitutional law," he said. "This verdict goes far beyond the realm of reasonableness and fairness and is completely inconsistent with the evidence presented."
Source: http://gizmodo.com/make-the-world-your-sauna-this-material-turns-sunshine-1608377420
Good news for vaporized water fans everywhere: MIT researchers have developed a disc-shaped material structure that generates steam using solar power.
Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/rickmote-gadget-hijacks-google-chromecast-2014-7
Living room trolls, rejoice.
Dan Petro, a security analyst for the Bishop Fox IT consulting firm, built a proof of concept device that’s able to hack into any Google Chromecasts nearby to project Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up,” or any other video a prankster might choose.
According to a blog post written by Petro (via TechCrunch), the “Rickmote,” which is built on top of the $35 Raspberry Pi single board computer, finds a local Chromecast device, boots it off the network, and then takes over the screen with multimedia of one’s choosing.
Petro’s 20-minute YouTube video breaks down how the Rickmote works, but to briefly summarize, the device employs an unencrypted command called “deauth,” which basically deauthorizes the device from the network. As TechCrunch points out, this isn’t a Chromecast bug, but actually a relatively common quirk among WiFi devices.
When the Chromecast receives the “deauth” command, it returns to its configuration mode, leaving it open for a device — in this case, the Rickmote — to configure it. At that point, the Rickmote tells the Chromecast to connect to its own WiFi network, at which point, Google’s streaming stick is effectively hacked.
When the Rickmote and Chromecast are connected, pranksters can send videos or songs of their choosing to Google's HDMI streaming dongle. But it gets worse for the victims: If the hacker leaves the range of the device, there’s no way to regain control of the Chromecast.
Unfortunately for Google, this is a rather serious issue with the Chromecast device that’s not too easy to fix, as the configuration process is an essential part of the Chromecast experience. We’ve reached out to Google for comment, and we’ll update this story as soon as we learn more.
Petro says he plans on releasing a “step-by-step guide on how to create a Rickmote controller out of a Raspberry Pi,” and will offer some details on August 6 at the Black Hat Tools Arsenal USA at the Mandalay Bay resort in Las Vegas. However, hackers and pranksters can already get started building their own devices with the open-source code and set of instructions, which is available at the Bishop Fox GitHub page.
“Once it’s ready, using the Rickmote could not be any easier,” Petro writes. “To start rick rolling, boot it up and press the big Rickroll button. One click is all it takes — and Rick Astley runs wild!”
SEE ALSO: One man's dream of customizable wireless earbuds just hit Kickstarter
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Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/urban-compass-raises-40-million-fundraise-at-a-360-valuation-2014-7
Ori Allon built and sold one startup to Google, then another to Twitter. His new company, which turned one in May, is now worth more than both of those startups combined.
Urban Compass has raised a $40 million series B round at a valuation that exceeds $360 million. Investors include Conde Nast's parent company Advance Publications, Joshua Kushner's Thrive Capital, Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, .406 Ventures, American Express CEO Kenneth Chenault and Salesforce founder Marc Benioff. The startup helps New Yorkers buy and rent apartments, and it raised $20 million at a $150 million valuation last October. Allon says his investors encouraged him to take more of their money so he could launch Urban Compass in other cities. Urban Compass is expected to roll out in Boston, Washington D.C., Chicago and possibly San Francisco later this year.
Allon is proud that his business has been making money since its first day. "We've built a real business and we're growing, mostly by word of mouth. We're helping people by giving our customers better real-estate tools," says Allon.
By the end of last summer, Urban Compass was generating $1 million per month and revenue has increased ten times since last June. Urban Compass' home sales business, which launched last fall, has grown five times faster than its initial rental business, Allon says. The startup works with local real-estate agents on a commission basis. Urban Compass currently employs more than 100 people full-time and it expects to double its staff by the end of the year.
Allon says the technology he's built significantly reduces the amount of time it takes to find a home. It's a cleaner experience than Craigslist and the startup prides itself on timely, accurate listings which it displays both online and via mobile app. Addr! esses ar e shown on a Google-like map as well as pictures of the homes.
If you want to see an apartment, you can schedule a viewing on Urban Compass which will put together an itinerary for you (Urban Compass is like ZocDoc – a real-time doctor appointment tool – for house hunting). Urban Compass acts as a broker, taking between 0 and 15% per completed deal.
While Allon has sold his last two startups, he says Urban Compass is different. "I do not want anyone to buy me out this time," Allon says. "Coming up with an idea and creating technology is exciting, but it's more exciting to grow a company — especially one customers like."
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