Geek News

The AliveCor KardiaBand, a sensor compatible with the Apple Watch, can detect dangerous levels of potassium in blood with 94 percent accuracy. Though the US Food and Drug Administration has not yet approved KardiaBand for this purpose, it’s an interesting step forward considering that, right now, the condition is usually caught using invasive blood tests that use needles. The KardiaBand by AliveCor is a sensor that snaps into a slot on the watchband. The user touches the sensor, which then takes a reading of the electrical activity of the heart, called an electrocardiogram (EKG). This reading can reveal abnormal heart rhythm and atrial fibrillation (AFib), and the sensor sends the information to an app. Yesterday, at the American... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2FumXci"

Philips has announced that it’s bringing the Brilliance 492P8 curved 49-inch monitor to the United States in Q4 2018 — with an upgraded QHD display. It’s not the first 49-inch curved computer monitor ( that honor goes to the Samsung CHG90 , released last year), but with a 5120 x 1440 display, it’s the highest resolution we’ve seen in a 32:9 form factor yet. The Brilliance 492P8 was originally announced at IFA last summer with a more pedestrian 3840 x 1080 display, similar to the Samsung CHG90, but it seems that Philips has decided to up the ante for the Brilliance 492P8’s US debut. Philips seems to be focusing the Brilliance 492P8 for productivity, rather than gaming; there’s no mention of support for either AMD’s FreeSync or Nvidia’s... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2Ikp405"

Samsung is apparently no longer looking at using an in-display fingerprint sensor for the Galaxy Note 9, according to a research note from KGI analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, via AppleInsider . Kuo had originally speculated last August that Samsung was looking at the technology for the upcoming Note 9. The company skipped including the feature in the recently released Galaxy S9 models, which featured a more traditional fingerprint sensor on the back of the device. But according to Kuo, Samsung is apparently delaying the feature from this year’s models due to issues with power consumption and the sensors not working reliably with screen protectors or in different environments. If Kuo’s report is accurate, that would leave Vivo as the only major... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2GkJu8L"

Augmented reality is almost exclusively associated with vision, but it doesn’t have to be. Audio company Bose announced a project it’s calling “Bose AR” at this year’s SXSW festival, and it showed off a pair of prototype glasses that demonstrate what sound-based AR might look and feel like. The company plans to ship 10,000 of these glasses to developers and manufacturers this summer, with the intent of developing its own line of commercial glasses and partnering with other eyewear companies. Bose AR devices combine data from embedded motion sensors with GPS information from your phone, which they connect with via Bluetooth. GPS detects where a user is, and the nine-axis sensor can determine which direction they’re looking and moving.... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2Fuas0h"

Microsoft’s Slack competitor, Microsoft Teams, is turning a year old this week and to celebrate the company is unveiling some new features today . Perhaps the most interesting are Cortana integration and inline message translation. Cortana integration is coming to Microsoft Teams soon, with support for voice interactions through Team-enabled devices like IP phones and conference room devices. Message translation will allow Microsoft Teams participants to automatically translate messages in channels and chat messages. That’s a particularly useful addition if you’re working with remote teams that communicate in a variety of languages. Alongside Cortana and translation, Microsoft is also adding cloud recording for meetings with automatic... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2p6ntTq"

YouTube TV’s monthly subscription is about to get a bit more expensive with a $5 increase starting tomorrow. That makes today the last day that you’ll be able to subscribe at the old $35 / month price. The price increase was announced last month alongside the addition of a bunch of new channels, including TBS, TNT, CNN, Adult Swim, Cartoon Network, truTV, Turner Classic Movies, NBA TV, and MLB Network. (New channels don’t come cheap, apparently.) Anyone already paying the $35-per-month cost will be grandfathered in with the old rate, so if you’ve been thinking about subscribing to YouTube TV, today is probably a good time to do it if you don’t want to get stuck with the higher price. For some quick comparison shopping, Hulu’s live TV... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2p8lM7q"

Food, water, and shelter are basic human needs, but 1.2 billion people in the world live without adequate housing, according to a report by the World Resources Institute’s Ross Center for Sustainable Cities. Today at SXSW, an Austin-based startup will unveil its approach to combat that deficiency by using low-cost 3D printing as a potential solution. ICON has developed a method for printing a single-story 650-square-foot house out of cement in only 12 to 24 hours, a fraction of the time it takes for new construction. If all goes according to plan, a community made up of about 100 homes will be constructed for residents in El Salvador next year. The company has partnered with New Story , a nonprofit that is vested in international housing... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2Ikc4HP"

Microsoft’s big promise with Windows 10 has always been a version of Windows that will run across multiple devices. While we’ve seen Windows 10 power devices like the HoloLens, an Xbox One console , or even phone hardware, Microsoft has often created separate interfaces and software to sit on top of the underlying core of Windows. That’s meant the Xbox home screen looks different to the Xbox app on Windows 10, and that the mobile version of Windows 10 has always felt like a truly separate version of Windows. Microsoft’s future vision now involves clever modes for clever hardware. Sources familiar with Microsoft’s Windows plans tell The Verge that the software giant is developing Windows to adapt and run on a single device with many... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2Dmo6wq"

The popular Hue lineup of smart lighting devices from Philips has now been extended to the garden, yard, and terrace. The new outdoor lights include wall-mounted luminaries, spotlights, and pillar post available in a variety of styles and color output to match your taste. The new outdoor lights work with your existing Hue bridge and app which means they’ll work seamlessly with the vast Hue ecosystem of supported products. That means they can be controlled with Alexa, Siri, or Google voice assistants; and can be triggered with the Hue Home and Away feature to light up a pathway using the new Hue Calla, for example, when you (and your smartphone) return home. Or, if you prefer, set the new Hue Lily spotlight to automatically come on... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2FCSFQM"

Nascent technologies are sometimes described as solutions in search of a problem, and that’s certainly something that could be said for AR glasses right now. AR glasses have been positioned as everything from phone replacements to sports goggles to entertainment devices to work tools, but are still far from mainstream in any one area. That last value proposition is what Toshiba is going for with its new dynaEdge AR Smart Glasses, a new head-mounted display tethered to a PC pocket pack. The PC maker is launching the product today, starting at $1899, and is aiming it straight at business users. To call this product AR Glasses is a little bit of a misnomer; it’s not so much augmented reality as it is a heads-up display. Toshiba says it... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2FKBG1T"

Health When entire countries lose an hour of sleep simultaneously, bad things happen. Only a narrow band of people are really that affected by daylight saving. But gosh darn it, we will complain about it loudly every year. via Popular Science "http://ift.tt/2tHUSIO"

Elon Musk is still warning us that super-intelligent AI is going to doom the planet , but robots are out here just trying to get their groove on. See the recent video above of quadruped research bot ANYmal, which was recently taught to dance (sort of) by researchers at Swiss university ETH Zurich. As doctorate student Péter Fankhauser explains to The Verge , the interesting thing happening here is that ANYmal is reacting to the music it hears in real time, rather than relying on pre-programmed dance moves. This requires the robot to analyze the speed of the song, plan how it might move in time to the music, start dancing, and then check its own movements to see if they’re synced to the beat. “We wanted to have it so, if you bring the... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2Hq9Cy3"

Google’s Pixel Buds smart headphones may be getting new enhancements that include customizable gesture controls according to analysis of code in the latest beta edition of the Google app, reports 9to5Google . There are potential new customizations for double tapping on the right earbud (which has a touch sensor), new functions for triple tapping, and also an in-ear detection feature that can pause your music when you remove the right earbud. Currently, double tapping the right earbud allows you to listen to notifications, or stop Google Assistant. The code reveals a possible new option to customize the gesture to skip songs — a feature that’s frustratingly missing, as we noted in our review . Triple tapping would allow users to manually... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2Fzi1yB"

WhatsApp has quietly changed the way its message deletion feature works. Originally introduced in October , the WhatsApp “delete for everyone” used to only allow you to delete messages up to seven minutes after you sent them. WABetaInfo has noticed that the latest version of WhatsApp extends that time limit significantly to one hour, eight minutes, and 16 seconds. It’s not clear why the limit is now so specific, apart from being 2^12, and the WhatsApp support pages don’t provide any additional info on the time limit. An hour means you now have far longer to delete messages sent by mistake, or can wipe out entire conversations from a friend’s phone. WhatsApp doesn’t have a secret conversations option like rivals where it creates a... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2Fw5fFu"

Last month, Twitter announced a number of new rules on how users and apps can automate tweets in an effort to cut down on spam and bots that spread propaganda. The company says that users using multiple accounts can “amplify or inflate the prominence of certain tweets,” and according to BuzzFeed , it has just banned a number of accounts that were known for mass-retweeting or for copying and stealing tweets from other users. BuzzFeed says that a number of accounts — such as @dory, @girlposts, and @ginah, some with “with hundreds of thousands or even millions of followers” — violated the company’s new spam policies and have been suspended. A Twitter spokesperson pointed The Verge to new rules that the company rolled out in a broader effort... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2FvXXRK"