Geek News

The concept of a smart contact lens has been around for a while. To date, though, they haven't been all that comfortable: they tend to have electronics built into hard substrates that make for a lens which can distort your vision, break down and otherwise cause discomfort. A team of Korean scientists might just come to the rescue. They've developed a smart lens that could help diabetics track blood glucose levels while remaining stretchable enough to be comfortable and transparent enough to preserve vision. The lens achieves its flexibility thanks to a design that puts its electronics into isolated pockets linked by stretchable conductors. there's also an elastic material in between that spreads the strain to prevent the electronics from breaking when you pinch the lens. And when the refractive indicies all line up, you should get a lens that's as transparent as possible and largely stays out of your way. The sensor in question is straightforward: an LED light sta...

Miitomo , Nintendo's initial entry into the world of smartphone apps, is shutting down. Nintendo has announced that it will stop selling Miitomo coins, the in-app currency, today, and service will end altogether on May 9th. You'll still be able to use the app and receive Miitomo coins through login bonuses until then, and Nintendo is also planning to refund players for any purchased Miitomo coins that went unused. Although Miitomo evidently didn't set the world alight, it's a surprisingly swift end for what was a widely hyped app upon its launch just under two years ago. Miitomo made use of Miis, the company's trademark avatars, and offered several quirky ways to communicate with friends. But with Miis deemphasized on Nintendo's current... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2n7TERp"

If you want evidence that VR is maturing as an entertainment medium, you just got it. CityLights just bought the rights to Spheres , the three-part VR black hole series written by Eliza McNitt and produced by Darren Aronofsky's Protozoa Pictures, for a "seven-figure" amount at the Sundance Film Festival. That might not sound like much by Hollywood standards, but it's the first-ever seven-figure VR purchase at the event. It was slated to reach the Oculus Rift in 2018 (Oculus and Intel backed the project) and should get wider distribution as a result. The project's pedigree helps, and not just because Aronofsky's outfit is involved. While McNitt is best-known for producing conventional shorts and documentaries, she'll have Jessica Chastain as narrator and Stranger Things artists Survive providing the series' all-important soundtrack. You aren't about to see VR titles fetching the prices normally associated with blockbuster movies and TV shows. ...

Samsung has started sending out invites for the Unpacked event this year, where it will take the wraps off the Galaxy S9. The date? February 25th. Its upcoming flagship phone will make its debut at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, just like what DJ Koh, the Korean conglomerate's mobile chief, promised at CES. From 02.25.2018. #Unpacked will change how you experience everything. pic.twitter.com/llrGt0Q6gF — Samsung Mobile (@SamsungMobile) January 25, 2018 Source: Samsung (Twitter) via Engadget RSS Feed "http://ift.tt/2E4m329"

Samsung sent out invites this evening to its planned Galaxy S9 launch event next month, which is now slated for February 25th in Barcelona. We knew that Samsung was saving the reveal of its next flagship smartphone for the Mobile World Congress conference in Spain, which officially runs from February 26th to March 1st. It appears now we have a date and time, with the Samsung Unpacked event kicking off at 6PM CET (12PM ET / 9AM PT) a day ahead of MWC’s start. The event will be live streamed via Samsung’s website. Usually, these kinds of invites are either completely obtuse or subtly revealing, and yet Samsung’s this go around is a bit down the middle. The invite text, “Camera, reimagined,” isn’t exactly groundbreaking. Cameras are... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2n8Hg3Y"

In 2015, Google debuted a new feature in its Inbox app: Smart Replies, which offered a trio of context-aware options for users to quickly reply with a few taps. That spread to other services in the company's suite, from Gmail last year to news last week that it might be added to Gboard . Now it's coming to tje Android Messages app -- but only for Project Fi subscribers, at least for now. Messaging on the go? Smart Reply for Android Messages lets you text with a tap, rolling out starting today on Project Fi. pic.twitter.com/FRYO4hu9Ah — Project Fi (@projectfi) January 24, 2018 Per the above tweet, Smart Replies are now live for Android Messages users subscribed to Google's WiFi-based carrier. It's unclear why Project Fi will be getting this feature on the Android Messages app exclusively, or when it will be available on other carriers, but we've reached out to Google for clarification. Via: Android Central Source: Project Fi (Twitter) via Engadget RSS...

Fat Month A belly isn't a big deal when you're eating 5,000 calories a day over 1,000 pounds. Bodybuilding and strength competitors look very different, and there's good reason. via Popular Science "http://ift.tt/2DDwGw4"

Space 27 engines all roaring and ready to go. We’ve been waiting for so long. SpaceX has managed to keep anticipation high for its Falcon Heavy debut basically since it was first announced back in 2011. via Popular Science "http://ift.tt/2DCxbqd"

Flying cars have always been a goalpost of the future, but last year companies like Toyota , Airbus , DeLorean and Volvo's parent company invested in or announced plans to get their own units flying soon. If you wanted to get in on the ground floor of tomorrow's transportation, you might try joining the first class of 'flying car engineers' in a new nanodegree program at Udacity fronted by Sebastian Thrun, the former leader of Google's self-driving car program. Thrun has quite a pedigree as a founder of Udacity himself along with the Kitty Hawk prototype flying ' car ,' but the rest of the course's instructors are likewise impressive. They include MIT professor Nicholas Roy, founder of the Alphabet-backed Project Wing whose drones air-delivered burritos to Australians last October; Aerospace professor at University of Toronto Angela Schoellig; And lastly the founder of Kiva Systems (now Amazon Robotics), Raffaello D'Andrea. The course itself ...

Scientists have designed a smart contact lens to measure the wearer’s blood sugar without using a needle. So far, the needle-less prototype has only been tested in rabbits — and it’s not clear if it’s even possible to accurately monitor blood sugar using tears. But if it works, it would be a massive upgrade for people with diabetes. The lens is made out of the same transparent, flexible material that’s in some soft contacts on the market. Inside, the researchers embedded electronics including a little LED light and a glucose sensor. If glucose levels rise above a certain level, the continuously lit LED light flickers off to alert the wearer, the researchers report today in the journal Science Advances . The scientists, led by Jang-Ung... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2E8Cies"

US regulators are making good on their promise to get tough on crypto fraud . The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has filed complaints charging My Big Coin Pay and two of its operators, Randall Crater and Mark Gillespie, with using the company's My Big Coin cryptocurrency as part of an ongoing, not-so-subtle Ponzi scheme. Crater and Gillespie allegedly drew investments in the virtual money by making numerous bogus claims (that it was traded on multiple exchanges, backed by gold and had a MasterCard partnership) and promptly "misappropriated" the $6 million in funds for buying a home, jewelry, vacations and other indulgences. To make matters worse, the scammers reportedly tried to hide their fraud by issuing additional coins and claiming to have a new exchange deal that 'conveniently' made it a bad idea for customers to redeem their holdings. This isn't the only case in the pipeline. The CFTC had already filed fraud charges against three other operato...

Ever since cloning produced Dolly the sheep , scientists have copied a slew of mammals ranging from dogs to ponies. Primates, however, have been elusive -- until now. Chinese researchers have successfully cloned a macaque monkey fetus twice, producing sister monkeys Hua Hua and Zhong Zhong using the same basic method used to create Dolly. The team removed the nucleus from monkey eggs and replaced it with DNA from the fetus, implanting the resulting eggs in female monkeys for them to give birth. The process wasn't easy. It took 127 eggs and 79 embryos to get these results, and it still required a fetus to work (Dolly was cloned from an adult). Still, it reflects progress in cloning science. The team managed the feat by injecting both a form of mRNA and an inhibitor, the combination of which improved the development of blastocysts (the structures that form the embryo) and the pregnancy rate for transplanted embryos. Both baby macaques are healthy, the researchers said, and genet...

Science The Office of Science and Technology Policy exists to provide the President with objective scientific advisement. There's neither a director nor an official mandate in the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy—not since President Donald Trump took office. via Popular Science "http://ift.tt/2E8NV5q"

The man who served as Snap’s vice president of product is leaving the company. Snap confirmed to TechCrunch that Tom Conrad, who joined the company in March 2016, is quitting to spend some time outside the tech industry. “It’s time for me to put my energy outside of tech, into music, food, photography and things closer to art than entrepreneurship,” Conrad told TechCrunch . Before coming to Snap, Conrad had been a longtime employee at Pandora, where he served as chief technical officer. At Snap, as we reported earlier this month , Conrad had become a trusted deputy to CEO Evan Spiegel. “He keeps a pulse on the spokes, and is a shadow for Evan,” one person told us. “He extends Evan’s view when Evan’s not in the room.” Conrad’s departure... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2GfOzhQ"

Poor Tay Tay . The queen of pop music has just been deposed on the streaming service she fought with most by none other than Drake himself. According to Pitchfork , the artist's latest song, "God's Plan" now holds the title for the most streams in a single day ever. When reached for comment, Spotify confirmed the news with Engadget. "We can confirm 'God's Plan' by Drake now holds the US record as the most streamed track in a single day on Spotify," a spokesperson told us in an email. "The song has overtaken previous record holder Taylor Swift with 'Look What You Made Me Do.'" Pitchfork notes that Drake was the most streamed artist back in 2016 and also set the record for Spotify's most-streamed song of all time, "One Dance." Now, of course, Ed Sheeran's "Shape of You" holds that title. Drake was also the most popular artist in 2015, making this new victory over TSwift even sweeter. Via: Pitchf...

Google parent company Alphabet has a new business and it's all about cybersecurity. Chronicle is an independent business under the Alphabet umbrella and it's aimed at helping companies find, track and stop cyber attacks. With two branches -- a cybersecurity and analytics platform as well as a malware intelligence service called VirusTotal -- Chronicle will use its massive processing power and data storage capabilities to both assist businesses in searching for and retrieving information much more quickly than they can on their own as well as spot patterns that may become more apparent when years of data are able to be analyzed. "Add in some machine learning and better search capabilities, and we think we'll be able to help organizations see their full security picture in much higher fidelity than they currently can," said Chronicle CEO Stephen Gillett in a blog post . Gillett says that because companies are often hit with thousands of security alerts per day, i...

Back in December, the unsavory hobby of a Reddit user by the name of deepfakes became a new centerpiece of artificial intelligence debate, specifically around the newfound ability to face-swap celebrities and porn stars . Using software, deepfakes was able to take the face of famous actresses and swap them with those of porn actresses, letting him live out a fantasy of watching famous people have sex. Now, just two months later, easy-to-use applications have sprouted up with the ability to perform this real-time editing with even more ease, according to Motherboard , which also first reported about deepfakes late last year. Thanks to AI training techniques like machine learning, scores of photographs can be fed into an algorithm that... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2DCNinu"

Technology Digital practice for PyeongChang 2018. U.S. Olympic athletes have been using footage from the men’s and women’s downhill ski events to practice the course in VR. via Popular Science "http://ift.tt/2F8fDyc"

As of today, there’s a new company under the Alphabet banner: Google X announced a new spinoff focusing entirely on cybersecurity, dubbed Chronicle. Billed by Google X chief Astro Teller as a “digital immune system,” Chronicle focuses on detecting threats by analyzing and storing security-related data within large enterprises. Using Google’s infrastructure, the company claims to be able to detect threats faster and at a broader scale than existing systems, which is potentially the key to stopping hacks early. “We think we’ll be able to help organizations see their full security picture in much higher fidelity than they currently can,” founder Stephen Gillet said in a Medium post announcing the launch . Further details on the project are... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2Bq8p6E"

YouTube has faced some serious backlash against awful content, lately, from exploitative childrens' videos to Logan Paul's ill-advised video of a corpse . YouTube needs to up its positivity, and it may be doing so with a $5 million additional investment in its socially-aware Creators for Change program, which premiered at the Tribeca TV festival last year. YouTube notes that people around the world spent hundreds of thousands of hours watching Creators for Change videos tens of millions of times. The company says that it's taught more than 15,000 young people in over 200 locations with workshops and school programs. Students surveyed in Germany and the UK, said Google, were able to feel more confident in identifying and countering hate speech, for example. Source: YouTube via Engadget RSS Feed "http://ift.tt/2DtHaK7"

It has been a little over three weeks since YouTuber Logan Paul posted his now infamous Aokigahara forest video and aside from an apology, Paul has been largely silent on his channel. But today, Paul posted a new video , one that's quite different from his usual content. In the video, which isn't monetized, Paul says the public backlash caused him to rethink the reach he has and made him want to learn about suicide, the resources available to those who are thinking about it and how others can help. He talks to Bob Forrest, founder of Alo House Recovery Centers , John Draper, director of the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline and Kevin Hines , a suicide attempt survivor and activist. He shares fives ways people can help those in their lives that might be considering suicide and also pledges to donate $1 million to suicide prevention organizations. While the video takes a much more serious tone than his previous daily vlogs, only time will tell if Paul has really learned a...

Health All aboard the nicotine train. Ever since they came on the scene in 2006, electronic cigarettes, more commonly known as e-cigs or vapes, have been the subject of a rather lethargic debate. via Popular Science "http://ift.tt/2Gd9Clv"

One of Google Allo’s biggest features , when compared to regular SMS texting, was the AI-powered Smart Replies that Google brought over from Google Assistant. But if you, like most people, don’t actually use Allo, you’ll soon be able to take advantage of smart replies in the regular Android Messages app, as announced by the Project Fi Twitter account . Messaging on the go? Smart Reply for Android Messages lets you text with a tap, rolling out starting today on Project Fi. pic.twitter.com/FRYO4hu9Ah — Project Fi (@projectfi) January 24, 2018 The feature seems to work similarly to how it does in Allo, Gmail, or Assistant: Google analyzes the text of the conversation, and automatically generates contextual responses in the messaging app... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2Dy2cY8"

Science It's hot down here, eh? Researchers at Curtin University in Australia think this could help find out more about super old supercontinents. via Popular Science "http://ift.tt/2E7amYz"

Fitbit said in a blog post today that it was extending support for Pebble smartwatches until June of this year, which is another way of saying that support for Pebble will come to its inevitable conclusion in June. RIP Pebble, but for real this time. Pebble will soon become less of a smart timepiece and more of a relic of a time when Kickstarter projects were successful and scrappy startups could claim a slice of the smartwatch market. Many of Pebble’s features will be sunset, including Pebble’s App Store, the Pebble forum, the Pebble cloud development tool, voice recognition features, and SMS and email replies. There are some caveats to the Pebble wind-down. Pebble’s main mobile apps for iOS and Android will continue to work for now,... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2GfmIP2"