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...

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"

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...

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 ...

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...

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...

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...

Silicon valley has a diversity problem . Sexism and racism are everywhere in the technology sector, and it's time to put an end to it. The Internet Association, a lobbying group for some of the biggest names in tech (think Amazon, Airbnb, Uber, Facebook, Google and Twitter) has promised to hire a new person to focus on these issues. According to Recode , the new push comes in response to the threat of regulation from the Congressional Black Caucus. Two members of Congress wrote to the Association last November. In it, Emanuel Cleaver, II, and Bonnie Watson Coleman asked for more transparency and better policies to ensure the diversity of hires in the technology industry, ending with a bit of a threat. "If these issues go unchecked Congress will be left with few options and will demand increased regulations to address these issues," they wrote. The Internet Association's leader Michael Beckerman responded to this missive with a letter of his own (it was obtaine...

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed an executive order today requiring any internet service provider with a state contract to honor the principles of net neutrality. In a statement the governor said, "With this executive order, we reaffirm our commitment to freedom and democracy and help ensure that the internet remains free and open to all." The FCC's dangerous ruling goes against the core values of our democracy, and New York will do everything in our power to protect net neutrality and the free exchange of ideas. — Andrew Cuomo (@NYGovCuomo) January 24, 2018 According to the order, starting March 1st, any internet service provider entering or renewing a government contract will be required to sign a binding agreement ensuring that it will uphold the ideals of net neutrality and will not block, throttle or prioritize internet content. If they don't, the companies will not be granted a state contract. Montana Governor Steve Bullock signed a very similar ...

If you're still holding on to your Pebble smartwatch for dear life, we have good news: you won't have to let go for a while longer. Fitbit has extended its support for Pebble services from the original end-of-2017 cutoff to June 30th, 2018. You now have half a year longer to say your goodbyes and decide what (if anything) you'll wear next. There's an added incentive to part ways, too. Fitbit is sweetening the pot by offering a $50 discount on the Ionic if you own a Pebble watch. You'll get an email offering the discount if you bought before December 7th, 2016 and opted to receive Fitbit marketing messages, while everyone else can register for updates to get their discount. According to Fitbit, this is about a more graceful transition that gives developers more time to port Pebble content to the Ionic's Fitbit OS, and "passionate" fans more time to see what awaits if they make the switch. Of course, that's the rose-tinted version -- ultimate...

In December, a number of US Representatives sent a letter to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) asking it to investigate fraudulent comments submitted to the FCC's proposal to repeal net neutrality. Multiple groups found evidence that millions of the comments submitted during the FCC's public comment period were linked to fake email addresses , were fraudulently posted under others' names and addresses and were even attributed to people known to be dead. Congressional leaders , attorneys general and even FCC commissioners called for the FCC to delay its vote on the proposal while the extent of the fake comments could be properly investigated, though as we well know, the FCC went ahead with the vote anyway. Now, Ars Technica reports , the GAO has agreed to investigate the issue. NEWS: GAO has accepted 10 Democrats' request for an investigation of the pervasiveness of fraudulent comments made during a federal rule making process. pic.twitter.com/fVlBIxBAV...

Today, SpaceX performed a static fire test on its Falcon Heavy rocket. Also called the hold-down test, it involved loading the rocket with propellant and firing all of its 27 engines at once while the rocket was secured to the launch pad. The test appears to have been successful, though we are waiting on confirmation from SpaceX. The Falcon Heavy has had a long road to this point; it was first announced back in 2011. The target launch date has been delayed multiple times, but that isn't a surprise. This is an incredibly complex rocket, and the largest since the Saturn Vs that took us to the moon. Now that the static fire appears to have been successfully completed, assuming the rocket performed nominally, the company will likely set a launch date soon. via Engadget RSS Feed "http://ift.tt/2Gf8BJI"

If you're an Olympics nerd, then take note: Samsung has released the official app of the PyeongChang 2018 games. It's ready for download now in the App Store and Google Play Store . The app is available in Korean, English, French, Japanese and Chinese (it's not clear whether this means Mandarin, Cantonese or both). The app aims to deliver a smooth Olympics experience by functioning as a one-stop shop for athlete information, rankings, medal standings, records for both the Olympics and Paralympics and real-time updates. It's powered by Samsung, which has been involved with the Olympic Games since 1998, when they were set in Seoul. Now, the games are returning to Samsung's home country two decades later. via Engadget RSS Feed "http://ift.tt/2F9eeaU"

It's only been two weeks since Vivo's latest attempt with an in-display fingerprint reader on a smartphone, and even though it didn't work perfectly for us, the company thinks it's ready for prime time. In China, consumers will soon be able to use this cool feature on the new Vivo X20 Plus UD, which is available today for 3,598 yuan or about $560, and it'll be shipping from February 1st. As the "UD" in the name implies, the fingerprint reader here has been moved from the rear side to underneath the display, courtesy of Synaptics' Clear ID sensor . Apart from the special black-and-gold design, this device is otherwise identical to the original X20 Plus. You'll find the same 6.43-inch 2,160 x 1,080 (18:9) AMOLED screen, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 chipset, 4GB of RAM, a 3,905 mAh battery, a 12-megapixel-plus-5-megapixel f/1.8 dual camera on the back and a 12-megapixel f/2.0 camera on the front. As for storage, the X20 Plus UD here only comes in a ...