Geek News

As a woman whose long, thick hair has undergone several chemical treatments, I've always been concerned about the health and quality of my tresses. When I heard about Schwarzkopf Professional's new hair analyzer , I was naturally intrigued by its potential uses. The company is bringing its SalonLab Analyzer system to Schwarzkopf salons across the US and Europe in 2018, so you can get a better understanding of how damaged your hair is. Not only that, salons can also use the information learned to better cater their treatments to your needs, as well as create personalized shampoos on the spot. I went for a quick consultation at CES 2018 , and am so far impressed by what it offers. To be clear, this system isn't meant to replace hairstylists. In fact, it requires the input of an experienced professional to fill out a brief questionnaire about your hair, based on her observations and expertise. At Schwarzkopf's suite in Las Vegas, I was attended to by the company's ...

Before the start of CES 2018, the only real smart speakers with a display were the Amazon Echo Show and the Echo Spot . But now that Google has partnered with several manufacturers to make a whole line of Echo Show rivals, a bona fide new device category has been born: the smart display. And based on the devices revealed this week, I believe the smart display will slowly start to outnumber smart speakers and will likely be the norm going forward. The simple reason for this argument is that the display makes such devices much more useful. Sure, you could have Alexa or Google Assistant tell you there's a Starbucks 1.5 miles away from you. But wouldn't it be nice to actually see where it is on a map? Or if you wanted to know the time, you could just, you know, look at the screen. Or if you wanted to know who the artist of the song is but couldn't be bothered to interrupt the track, you could do the same. That extra visual layer is really useful, especially for quick, gla...

Starting this month, Pokémon Go players will be able to participate in monthly events that will bring out special Pokémon with exclusive moves. Community Days will be worldwide events and to take part, you'll just have to head outside to your local park. Each Community Day will feature a special Pokémon that will pop up more frequently for a few hours. Other event perks could include increased XP or Stardust, and Lure Modules activated on Community Days will last for three hours. The first Community Day is scheduled for January 20th and the special Pokémon will be Pikachu, which will boast the exclusive event move Surf. As an added bonus, players will also dearn double XP during the Community Day event. You can see what time your region's event will take place here . Source: Pokémon Go via Engadget RSS Feed "http://ift.tt/2r3pjrS"

Technology is bad for sleep. It keeps us constantly exposed to an endless cycle of bad news , and the blue light emitted by smartphone and tablet displays suppresses our ability to produce melatonin . Combine that with the feelings of inadequacy generated by watching other people's picture-perfect lives on social media, and it's no surprise that we're all restless. Sleep technology exists to solve this issue, and there were plenty of companies exhibiting new devices here at CES 2018. Many of them intend to tell you how well, or poorly, you have slept each night, in the hope you'll make better decisions the following day. But, as well as becoming more commonplace, sleep gadgets are going to become far more diverse, at least according to what we saw at the show. Smartwatches and fitness trackers have tracked sleep for years, using the principles of actigraphy: Monitoring how you move as you sleep with algorithms used to calculate your cycles. The less you move, the t...

A preview version of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds launched on Xbox One on December 12th and at the end of 2017, it already had over three million players. The game broke records left and right last year, so this may not be too big of a surprise. But it's notable since PUBG had quite a few issues when it launched on the console last month. When announcing the milestone, Xbox's General Manager of Games Marketing Aaron Greenberg pointed out that four updates had already been released since the preview's launch and he said that updates would continue to roll out regularly. At the end of December, PUBG beat its previous concurrent player record on Steam, logging a whopping 3,106,358 players at one time . Around 25 million players were playing it on PC overall at the time. In the first two days of being available on Xbox One, PUBG pulled over a million players . Source: Xbox via Engadget RSS Feed "http://ift.tt/2mquc8O"

It's been about a month since American Express and Mastercard decided to stop requiring signatures for EMV chip credit cards. Now Visa is joining their ranks, making signatures optional for chipped transactions in North America. "Visa is committed to delivering secure, fast and convenient payments at the point of sale," said VIsa's Dan Sanford in a statement . "Our focus is on continually evolving the market towards dynamic authentication methods such as EMV chip, as well as investing in emerging capabilities that leverage advanced analytics and biometrics. We believe making the signature requirement optional for EMV chip-enabled merchants is the responsible next step to enhance security and convenience at the point of sale." Contact and contactless chip-enabled points of sale are taking over, of course, for their enhanced security and convenience for retail transactions. Visa notes that it has deployed more than 460 million EMV chip cards and reader...

Waymo's self-driving minivans are now ready for the road. The company has confirmed to TechCrunch that it's testing its autonomous Chrysler Pacifica vehicles on San Francisco streets, where the "hilly and foggy" environment should give them "even more practice." Suffice it to say the densely packed city could provide a greater challenge than Chandler, Arizona , whose spacious suburban landscape is well-suited to driverless car experiments. The testing is a callback of sorts for Waymo -- the formerly Google-owned company notes that it conducted some of its first tests in San Francisco back in 2009. Circumstances have changed a lot in the past 9 years, of course. Where self-driving cars had barely gotten started the first time around, they're now advanced enough that driverless taxi services loom on the horizon. It's still likely to be a long while before a robotic ride takes you from SoMA to North Beach, but there's a good chance you won...

Last year, Allied Esports and Esports Arena announced plans to convert a Luxor Hotel and Casino nightclub into the Las Vegas strip's first dedicated eSports arena . That arena is almost complete and is scheduled to open on March 22nd. To celebrate the opening, Esports Arena Las Vegas will host a multi-day, live-streamed tournament that's invitation only. "With Las Vegas rapidly becoming a hub for eSports, Esports Arena Las Vegas at Luxor will be the city's home for competitive gaming and interactive entertainment," Allied Esports CEO Jud Hannigan said in a statement . Along with the Las Vegas spot, Esports Arena has also debuted its mobile eSports gaming venue, Esports Arena Drive. It's a semi that unfolds into a gaming arena, with a stage, social media center and VIP lounge. You can check it out in the tweet below. Next month, Esports Arena Drive will host a multi-day tournament at the Daytona 500. The #RoadToVegas was a success! The #EsportsArenaDrive...

Sam Mathews founded Fnatic about 13 years ago, when he was just 19. Today, Fnatic is a household name for eSports fans: It's one of the most successful and prolific professional gaming franchises in the world, regularly competing at the top tier in games like League of Legends and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive . The brand has expanded past the games and into hardware, and Mathews showed up at CES this year to demo Fnatic's latest keyboards and mice, which are due to hit the market in the coming months. The Clutch 2 and Flick 2 are updated versions of Fnatic's existing mice, while the Streak and Streak Mini are new mechanical keyboards. All of Fnatic's hardware is designed specifically for (and with) professional players, including features like rounded edges, built-in mic controls and an adjustable wrist rest to help combat injuries. But Fnatic's presence at CES is about much more than new gear. More people than ever are watching eSports; its leagues are ma...

Duo is Google's video calling app, and it looks like the tech giant wants to spread the word about it. According to Android Police , Duo users can now call people who don't have the app installed and who haven't registered with the service. It works like any other Duo communication, except that at the end of any call, recipients who don't have the app installed will then be prompted to install Duo. They also have the option to decline future Duo calls from that person. We've contacted Google for confirmation. It's a good move for accessibility -- and should encourage those who do have the app installed to use it more widely. Additionally, it will help expand the user base. Cody Toombs at Android Police notes, though, that he wasn't able to reach all of his contacts through Duo. It's unavailable for all non-Android phones (sorry iPhone users, you'll just have to install Duo first), but Toombs reports there are likely more criteria that play into w...

Ever since the Detective Pikachu game launched in Japan in early 2016, there's been a lingering question: when would it be available elsewhere, if it ever left Japanese shores? At last, there's a date. The Pokémon Company has announced that its 3DS sleuth title will reach the US and Europe on March 23rd, 2018 for $40. On top of that, there will be a $30 giant Detective Pikachu amiibo (nearly double the usual height at 5.35 inches tall) which unlocks videos that might provide clues. In a sense, an international release was inevitable. If the Ryan Reynolds-starring Detective Pikachu live-action movie is going to premiere outside of Japan in May 2019, it's going to need a fan base eager to see that movie. And besides, there's still clearly an audience for Pokémon games . The developers would be leaving money on the table if Detective Pikachu didn't get a wider release. As it stands, the game won't be alone. Nintendo has unveiled plans to launch a Pikach...

Earlier this week, Intel said it would have Meltdown and Spectre fixes available by the end of the month for all recently made chips. But as the Wall Street Journal reports, some of the patches the company has released have caused some problems of their own. Some firmware updates are apparently causing computers to reboot. The Wall Street Journal got its hands on a document Intel was sharing with some of its customers, in which it advised them to "delay additional deployments of these microcode updates." Stephen Smith, Intel's data-center group general manager, told the publication that the bugs didn't have anything to do with security and that the document was being shared with computer makers and large cloud providers. Since the Wall Street Journal published its report, Intel has released a blog post explaining the systems affected by the reboots are running Broadwell and Haswell CPUs. "We are working quickly with these customers to understand, diagno...

Introduced at the Frankfurt auto show in September, the Smart Vision EQ from Mercedes-Benz is the automaker's EV concept that combines mobility, autonomy and connectivity. The result is a car built on the Smart Fortwo platform, can wink at pedestrians, has level-five autonomy (no steering wheel or pedals), and welcomes passengers by name. It also took me for a short ride on the Las Vegas Strip. Mercedes says the concept vehicle isn't made to be sold to individuals and would instead be part of an autonomous ride-sharing fleet. The way Mercedes envisions a car like this would work is that it would arrive at a location and display the name of the individual that hailed the ride on the front of the car. They would enter the vehicle, and the dash would show their name, photo and other information they shared with the car-share service. Then the electrical vehicle would cruise autonomously around and eventually drop you at your location and bid you farewell. One interesting feat...

Hyperkin is working on something for retro gamers looking to retire any venerable Game Boys that have seen better days. The aluminum-hewn Project Ultra GB might be the hardware you need to break out your old Game Boy hits. It takes the original cartridges, as well as keeping the dimensions of the Game Boy Pocket and those iconic simple controls. Not much has changed -- in a good way -- but I really liked the idea (and feel) of a metal Game Boy. While controls and design haven't changed, Hyperkin does plan to upgrade the audio-out for anyone that likes to make their own chip tunes with old Nintendo tech: This prototype will evolve to include left and right audio for stereo as well as an audio amp. The team is even trying to add LSDJ chip tune software to the device internally. Beyond audio, the final device will also have a USB-C charging port (it's currently rocking an old-school AC port), while the screen will include an RGB wheel to cycle through color options, including...

There's been a discouraging trend in computer shipments recently; year-to-year growth has declined steadily over the last six years. But now, IDC has a bit of good news : It looks as though the PC market actually grew 0.7 percent in the holiday season of 2017. This contradicts IDC's forecast, which predicted a 1.7 percent decrease in shipments. The first holiday season growth of PC shipments in six years is certainly worth nothing; the team at IDC believes that, while the computer market is still weak, it's beginning to stabilize. Overall, the year's shipments were down 0.2 percent, with a total of 259.5 million units shipped. A decline, sure, but better than 2016's 1.5 percent decline . The top PC performer in 2017 was HP, with a market share in the US of 34 percent. Lenovo followed, with Dell in third place. Apple remains in fourth place, growing its shipments 7.3 percent in the fourth quarter of 2017. ASUS and Acer were tied for fifth place. It's good ne...

NASA and private companies like SpaceX are busy planning Mars missions, but only have a vague idea of how they're going to find critical water supplies. Now, using the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), researchers have discovered abundant, easy-to-access H20. A survey found no less than eight sites where cliff erosion has exposed thick deposits of nearly pure ice that lie just three to six feet below rock and dust. The findings mean that future missions, both manned and robotic, may have an easier time than expected digging up water for drinking and making rocket fuel. As reported in the journal Science (paywall), the water was found in both the north and south of Mars, at latitudes equivalent to South America and Scotland. The exposed areas were found on scarps as steep as 55 degrees. Based on the absence of craters in the regions, scientists believe that the features formed relatively recently. "The discovery reported today gives us surprising windows where we can ...