a researcher from Meiji University in Japan who’s invented what’s being described as a taste display that can artificially recreate any flavor by triggering the five different tastes on a user’s tongue.
Years ago it was thought that the tongue had different regions for tasting sweet, sour, salty, and bitter flavors, where higher concentrations of taste buds tuned to specific flavors were found. We now know that the distribution is more evenly spread out across the tongue, and that a fifth flavor, umami, plays a big part in our enjoyment of food. Our better understanding of how the tongue works is crucial to a new prototype device that its creator, Homei Miyashita, calls the Norimaki Synthesizer.
It was inspired by how easily our eyes can be tricked into seeing something that technically doesn’t exist. The screen you’re looking at uses microscopic pixels made up of red, green, and blue elements that combine in varying intensities to create full-color images. Miyashita wondered if a similar approach could be used to trick the tongue, which is why their Norimaki Synthesizer is also referred to as a taste display.
There have been many attempts to artificially simulate tastes on the tongue with and without the presence of food, but they tend to focus on a specific taste, or enhancing a single flavor, such as boosting how salty something tastes without actually having to add more salt. The Norimaki Synthesizer takes a more aggressive approach through the use of five gels that trigger the five different tastes when they make contact with the human tongue.
The color-coded gels, made from agar formed in the shape of long tubes, use glycine to create the taste of sweet, citric acid for acidic, sodium chloride for salty, magnesium chloride for bitter, and glutamic sodium for savory umami. When the device is pressed against the tongue, the user experiences all five tastes at the same time, but specific flavors are created by mixing those tastes in specific amounts and intensities, like the RGB pixels on a screen. To accomplish this, the prototype is wrapped in copper foil so that when it’s held in hand and touched to the surface of the tongue, it forms an electrical circuit through the human body, facilitating a technique known as electrophoresis.
Electrophoresis is a process that moves molecules in a gel when an electrical current is applied, allowing them to be sorted by size based on the size of pores in the gel. But here the process simply causes the ingredients in the agar tubes to move away from the end touching the tongue, which reduces the tongue’s ability to taste them. It’s a subtractive process that selectively removes tastes to create a specific flavor profile. In testing, the Norimaki Synthesizer has allowed users to experience the flavor of everything from gummy candy to sushi without having to place a single item of food in their mouths.
In its current form the prototype is a bit bulky, but it could be easily miniaturized to a device as compact as the vapes everyone is already carrying around and regularly using. But instead of simulating the experience and flavors of smoking, it could recreate the satisfying feeling of eating a piece of chocolate, or drinking a milkshake, without having to ingest a single calorie.
ThinkPad’s keyboards have a fiercely loyal following, and for $100 you can keep using the design that time forgot with this detached wireless version that will work any other laptop or computer.
The ThinkPad TrackPoint Keyboard II is now available on Lenovo’s website, and it looks like a piece of hardware that dates back over 25 years to the early ‘90s. In 1992, IBM, the company that created the ThinkPad laptop, introduced the TrackPoint which was a small rubber nub embedded in the middle of the keyboard that was used to move the cursor around. There are those who hated it, but more than enough that loved it for Lenovo (who purchased IBM’s PC division in 2005) to continue to offer the TrackPoint on its current laptop lineup, alongside a touchpad.
But you won’t find a touchpad on the ThinkPad TrackPoint Keyboard II—it’s TouchPoint only, with a trio of mouse buttons located just below the space bar. There’s nothing stopping you from using a mouse alongside it, but the small nub means you can still navigate a cursor-driven user interface if you don’t have a lot of desk space at your disposal or you are using the keyboard on your lap.
It connects to other devices using an included wireless USB dongle or Bluetooth, meaning it can be used with mobile devices as well. But unlike previous versions, it can’t be tethered to another device with a cord. Its USB-C port is used for charging only, which really only has to be done about every two months, depending on usage. Keyboard snobs might still want to pass on this one, however, because hidden beneath the contoured chiclet-style keys you’ll find scissor-switches instead of a more complex mechanical switch.
It seemed like a bit of a risk when Mazda decided to not offer a touchscreen in the new Mazda 3. But Mazda may have just been ahead of the trend, as Honda has also abandoned some reliance on the new Honda Jazz’s touch controls because they just aren’t “intuitive.”
Despite nearly a decade of dominating conversations about automotive design and not, for some reason, the risks of distracted driving, touchscreens are finally being seen for what they really are: annoying.
Jazz project leader Takeki Tanaka explained: “The reason is quite simple – we wanted to minimise driver disruption for operation, in particular, for the heater and air conditioning.
“We changed it from touchscreen to dial operation, as we received customer feedback that it was difficult to operate intuitively. You had to look at the screen to change the heater seating, therefore, we changed it so one can operate it without looking, giving more confidence while driving.”
And here’s the part where anyone who has reviewed a car in the last decade goes and screams into their pillow with frustration, because that’s exactly the sort of feedback automakers have been getting from focus groups, customers and reviewers for about as long as these touchscreen systems have been in cars.
Touchscreens are worse than touch controls for one very obvious reason: A touchscreen requires two human senses—touch, obviously, and sight. But with enough experience, the genius of the human brain is capable of motor memory, so touch dials and buttons will eventually only require the memory of where it’s located and a finger to touch it. Eyes can stay on the road.
The problem is people want cool technology in their cars. They want to feel like their hard-earned loan is going toward something nice and fancy and smarter than them. This is why some people like the Tesla tablet—they think its efficient to put literally thousands of functions all in one very distracting toy. That’s not very safe. It’s safer to put the toys away and just turn a knob to be more comfortable.
Simplicity is the greatest efficiency, and I’m pretty jazzed for a touchscreen-less future. It’s like music to my ears.
Scientists have crafted a tiny flexible electrical device capable of generating terahertz waves that can penetrate walls and microscopic cells, potentially paving the way for new imaging techniques – and fast switching in chips.
Terahertz radiation lies in the electromagnetic spectrum where microwaves and infrared meet. These so-called T-waves, ranging from 0.3 to 3THz according to the ITU, have interesting properties: they can travel through clothing, wood, walls, and even human skin, for one thing.
However, they can be tricky to produce, depending on the application, as you often need expensive and clunky equipment. Now, a team of researchers led by the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland believe they’ve created something that not only emits high-power terahertz radiation but is both compact and cheap. Which is useful for miniaturization and productization.
The gizmo detailed in a paper published in Nature this week works by producing so-called nanoplasma.
Here’s how it works: two tiny metal plates are placed 20 nanometres apart and a voltage is applied. Electrons migrate towards one of the plates to create a nanoplasma. When enough negative charge has accumulated and the voltage across the plates reaches a critical threshold, the electrons instantly flock to the other plate.
“The very high electric field in the small volume of the nanoplasma leads to ultrafast electron transfer, resulting in extremely short time responses,” the paper explained. This back and forth motion of the electrons on each plate continues, and the device emits a high-intensity pulse of terahertz waves.
“We achieved an ultrafast switching speed, higher than 10 volts per picosecond (10-12 s), which is about two orders of magnitude larger than that of field-effect transistors and more than ten times faster than that of conventional electronic switches,” the academics said.
The tiny nanoplasma devices were fabricated on bits of Kapton tape pasted onto a sapphire substrate, where a thin layer of gold or tungsten was stacked on top of titanium.
“High-frequency semiconductor devices are nanoscale in size,” said Elison Matioli, co-author of the study and an electrical engineering professor at EPFL.
“They can only cope with a few volts before breaking out. High-power devices, meanwhile, are too big and slow to generate terahertz waves. Our solution was to revisit the old field of plasma with state-of-the-art nanoscale fabrication techniques to propose a new device to get around those constraints.”
“High-frequency, high-power and nanoscale aren’t terms you’d normally hear in the same sentence,” he added.
The fast switching speeds could help deliver ultrafast chips that could be used in wireless communication, sensors, or even biomedical imaging.
Ireader C6 is a full color e-reader and will be released soon
the company has just announced they are working on a new color
e-reader that is capable of displaying 4,096 colors and will be released
on March 26th.
The iReader C6 will feature a six inch capacitive touchscreen display with 300 PPI and it is employing the new E INk Print-Color e Paper technology. It has a front-lit display system with 24 LED lights, so you will be able to read in the dark.
Underneath
the hood is a quad-core high-speed processor, 1GB of RAM and 16GB of
internal storage. It has integrated speakers and weighs 150 grams, is
6.9 millimeters thick, is light and comfortable, and can be held with
one hand.
iReader disclosed that they have completed mass production on this device and it will be available on JD.com on March 26th.
The
color e-reader is currently called the iFlytek Ebook and it features a 6
inch display with 300 PPI for black and white mode and 212 PPI for
color. You will be able to read in the dark via their front-lit display
system with 24 LED lights. It has 4,096 colors, which will make manga,
comics and other materials shine, it is employing the E INK Just Print tech.
It has integrated speakers and 4 voices for their TTS engine, so it can read aloud ebooks to you. The other hardware specs like processor, RAM and internal storage is currently unknown. There is also no word on what operating system it is running, but it looks like it will be sold on JD.com and other Chinese e-commerce sites.
NFC is usually only used to for quick text transfers, like a tap-and-pay transaction at a register or a quick data transfer from an NFC sticker. A company called “Waveshare” is really pushing the limits of NFC, though, with a 7.5-inch e-ink display that gets its data, and its power, from an NFC transfer. The $70 display doesn’t have a battery and doesn’t need a wired power connection. E-paper (or e-ink) displays have the unique property of not needing power to maintain an image. Once a charge blasts across the display and correctly aligns pixels full of black and white balls, everything will stay where it is when the power turns off, so the image will stick around. You might not have thought about it before, but in addition to data, NFC comes with a tiny wireless power transfer. This display is designed so that NFC provides just enough power to refresh the display during a data transfer, and the e-ink display will hold onto the image afterward.
NFC data transfers max out at a whopping 424 kbit/s. While that’s enough for an instant transfer of credit card data or a URL, the 800×400 image the display needs will take several seconds. Waveshare says the display takes five seconds just to refresh, and that doesn’t count the data transfer, which will vary depending on how complex your image is. The video shows a start-to-finish refresh that takes 10 seconds. If you want to use a phone, an Android app will convert your image into several different black-and-white styles and beam it to the display. Sadly, there’s no iOS app yet. iOS apps didn’t have the ability to write to NFC devices for the longest time. Writing to NFC was added with the launch of iOS 13, which only happened a few months ago.
Researchers at the University of California San Diego developed a wearable technology that can hide its wearer from heat-detecting sensors such as night vision goggles, even when the ambient temperature changes–a feat that current state of the art technology cannot match. The technology can adapt to temperature changes in just a few minutes, while keeping the wearer comfortable.
The device, which is at the proof-of-concept stage, has a surface that quickly cools down or heats up to match ambient temperatures, camouflaging the wearer’s body heat. The surface can go from 10 to 38 degrees Celsius (50 to 100.5 degrees Fahrenheit) in less than a minute. Meanwhile, the inside remains at the same temperature as human skin, making it comfortable for the wearer. The wireless device can be embedded into fabric, such as an armband. A more advanced version could be worn as a jacket.
Thanks to recent software updates, the most sophisticated systems—Cadillac‘s Super Cruise and Tesla‘s Autopilot—are more capable today than they were initially. This report on those systems includes a lesser known third player. For $998, upstart Comma.ai sells an aftermarket dash cam and wiring harness that taps into and overrides the factory-installed assistance systems in many Honda and Toyota models as well as some Chrysler, Kia, and Lexus vehicles, among others. When activated, Comma.ai’s Openpilot software assumes control over the steering, brakes, and throttle, and it reduces the frequent reminders to keep your hands on the wheel. As you might imagine, automakers do not endorse this hack.
[…this bit is where they discuss the Chrysler and Tesla systems in the article…]
Comma.ai’s control is based almost exclusively on a single windshield-mounted camera. A model-specific wiring harness plugs into the vehicle’s stock front camera behind the rearview mirror. That’s where it taps into the car’s communication network, which is used for everything from the power windows to the wheel-speed sensors. There it inserts new messages to actuate the steering, throttle, and brakes on its command while blocking the factory communication. However, certain safety systems, such as forward-collision alert, remain functional. There are no warning lights to indicate that the vehicle senses anything is amiss. And if you start the car with the Comma.ai unit unplugged, everything reverts back to stock. There is no sophisticated calibration procedure. Just stick the supplied GoPro mount somewhere roughly in the middle of the windshield and pop in the Eon camera display. After doing nothing more than driving for a few minutes, the system announces it’s ready.
Given its lack of sensors, we were shocked at the sophisticated control of the system and its ability to center the car in its lane, both on and off the highway. Importantly, Comma.ai collects the data from the 2500 units currently in use in order to learn from errors and make the system smarter. Compared with the others, Openpilot wasn’t quite as locked on its lane, and its control on two-lane roads wasn’t as solid as Autopilot’s, but its performance didn’t degrade perceptibly at night as Super Cruise’s did. However, the following distance, which isn’t adjustable, is roughly double that of Autopilot and Super Cruise in their closest settings, making us feel as though we were endlessly holding up traffic.
Like Super Cruise, the Comma.ai system employs a driver-facing camera to monitor engagement and doesn’t require regular steering inputs. Unlike Super Cruise, it lacks infrared lighting to enable nighttime vision. That will be part of the next hardware update, Hotz says.
Obviously, the system is reliant on the donor vehicle’s hardware, including the car’s steering-torque limitations. So our Honda Passport couldn’t keep up with the sharpest corners and would regularly flash warning messages to the driver, even when the system handled the maneuver appropriately. Hotz promises the next release will dial back the too-frequent warning messages.
Hotz says he has had conversations with car companies about selling his tech, but he doesn’t see the top-down approach as the way to win. Instead, he envisions Comma.ai as a dealer-installed add-on. But that will be difficult, as both Honda and Toyota are against the installation of the system in their vehicles. Toyota has gone so far as to say it will void the factory warranty. This seems shortsighted, though, as the carmakers could learn a lot from what Comma.ai has accomplished.
Residents donning surgical face masks while venturing outside their homes or meeting strangers have found themselves in an unfamiliar conundrum. With their faces half-covered, some are unable to unlock their phones or use mobile payments with their faces.
People wearing protective masks to help stop the spread of a deadly virus, which began in Wuhan, at the Beijing railway station on January 27. (Picture: Nicolas Asfouri/AFP)
“Been wearing a mask everyday recently and I just want to throw away this phone with face unlock,” said one frustrated user who posted on Weibo using an iPhone.
“Under the current circumstances, for the past two days, I’ve been basically wearing a mask all the time except while sleeping. In times like this, the iPhone’s Face ID doesn’t really work that well,” another user wrote, adding that she hopes Apple will bring back fingerprint unlock.
It’s more than just handset troubles, though. In China, facial recognition is being deployed from train stations and airports to stores and hotels. Some people say they now have trouble entering gated communities protected by facial recognition systems.
“Just came in through the community gate. I was standing under the facial recognition [camera] but it didn’t recognize me,” one user said. “Around two minutes later, I realized I was wearing a mask.”
[…]
For some people, though, facial recognition has become such an integral part of life that older technology now seems annoyingly inconvenient.
“I’ve gotten used to WeChat Pay’s facial recognition,” said one user. “I’ve been wearing masks these days. Not really used to changing to passcode payment.”
“Fingerprint payment is still better,” another wrote. “This facial recognition, I don’t even dare pull down my mask. And passcode comes so slow. All I want is to pay and quickly run.”
Last August, in what was widely hailed a victory for the right-to-repair movement, Apple announced it would begin selling parts, tools, and diagnostic services to independent repair shops in addition to its “authorized” repair partners. Apple’s so-called Independent Repair Provider (IRP) program had its limitations, but was still seen as a step forward for a company that’s fought independent repair for years.
Recently, Motherboard obtained a copy of the contract businesses are required to sign before being admitted to Apple’s IRP Program. The contract, which has not previously been made public, sheds new light on a program Apple initially touted as increasing access to repair but has been remarkably silent on ever since. It contains terms that lawyers and repair advocates described as “onerous” and “crazy”; terms that could give Apple significant control over businesses that choose to participate. Concerningly, the contract is also invasive from a consumer privacy standpoint.
In order to join the program, the contract states independent repair shops must agree to unannounced audits and inspections by Apple, which are intended, at least in part, to search for and identify the use of “prohibited” repair parts, which Apple can impose fines for. If they leave the program, Apple reserves the right to continue inspecting repair shops for up to five years after a repair shop leaves the program. Apple also requires repair shops in the program to share information about their customers at Apple’s request, including names, phone numbers, and home addresses.
[…]
Participating repair shops must allow Apple to audit their facilities “at any time,” including during normal business hours. According to the contract, Apple may continue conducting audits, which can involve interviewing the repair shop’s employees, for five years following termination of the contract.
These audits go beyond Apple dropping in on businesses to interrogate workers. The contract requires that IRPs “maintain an electronic service database and/or written documentation” of customer information to assist Apple in its investigations. According to the contract, that database must include the names, phone numbers, email addresses and physical addresses of customers, stipulations that gave Perzanowski “serious misgivings.” As he noted, “some consumers may prefer an independent repair shop, in part, to reduce the data Apple maintains about them.”
[…]
the one-sidedness of Apple’s terms are evident from the outset, when it defines its “agreement” with independent repair businesses to include any additional documents Apple chooses to release in the future.
“Like Darth Vader, they can alter the deal and you can only pray they don’t alter it any further,” Walsh said.
Google is making it easier for developers to purchase the latest version of its smart glasses, with the company saying on Tuesday that the Glass Enterprise Edition 2 is now available from some hardware resellers.
“We’ve seen strong demand from developers and businesses who are interested in building new, helpful enterprise solutions for Glass,“ Google said in a blog post, adding that the new headset was already being used by people with jobs in logistics, manufacturing and field services.”
Alias is a teachable “parasite” that gives you more control over your smart assistant’s customization and privacy. Through a simple app, you can train Alias to react to a self-chosen wake-word; once trained, Alias takes control over your home assistant by activating it for you. When you’re not using it, Alias makes sure the assistant is paralyzed and unable to listen to your conversations.
When placed on top of your home assistant, Alias uses two small speakers to interrupt the assistant’s listening with a constant low noise that feeds directly into the microphone of the assistant. When Alias recognizes your user-created wake-word (e.g., “Hey Alias” or “Jarvis” or whatever), it stops the noise and quietly activates the assistant by speaking the original wake-word (e.g., “Alexa” or “Hey Google”).
From here the assistant can be used as normal. Your wake-word is detected by a small neural network program that runs locally on Alias, so the sounds of your home are not uploaded to anyone’s cloud.
About 35 years after the MIDI 1.0 Detailed Specification was established, instrument manufacturers voted unanimously on January 18th to adopt the new MIDI 2.0 spec. So what’s changing for audio interfaces? The “biggest advance in music technology in decades” brings two-way communication, among many other new features while remaining backwards compatible with the old spec.
Companies like Roland, Native Instruments, Korg and Yamaha are part of the MIDI Manufacturers Association behind the update, and we’ve already seen Roland’s A-88MKII keyboard that will be ready for the spec when it goes on sale in March.
And it’s about time for a new standard, while the 5-bit DIN cables used in the 1980s couldn’t handle high resolution audio, the MIDI 2.0 spec is ready for any digital connector you’d like to use, and will start by targeting USB ports. That allows for far more accurate timing, and far more resolution by upgrading messages from seven bits to as much as 32-bit.
It should also make instruments easier to use, with profiles that will automatically set up gear for its intended use and a feature called Property Exchange that uses JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) to send over more detailed configuration info. You’ll spend less time shuffling through presets and more time simply making music, plus some of these features can be used even on older MIDI 1.0-spec hardware. As Reverb.com notes, there’s still room for improvement on things like networking multiple devices, but it represents a massive upgrade over the old standard, and will be useful for anyone trying to make a Grammy-winning album, whether it’s in their bedroom or a fully-kitted studio.
PC hardware maker NZXT has just announced the latest additions to its line of liquid CPU coolers, the Kraken X-3 and Z-3. The X-3 has a bright LED ring and rotates so the logo can be repositioned. The Z-3 comes with a 2.36-inch, 24-bit color LCD screen capable of displaying images, computer data, or animated GIFs, because maybe that is a thing people want.
The animated GIF of the CPU cooler displaying animated GIFs atop this post? With the Kraken Z-3 installed on my PC, I could display that GIF of a CPU cooler displaying GIFs as a GIF on my CPU cooler. I could put some anime there. Or maybe some looping pornography. Then I would turn my computer to the side with the glass window facing away from me and never see it again. I need a better way to display the glowing and flashing things inside of my PC. Maybe a mirror or something.
I’ve found NZXT liquid cooling quite reliable in the past. The idea of that reliability combined with this frivolity tickles me to no end. Look, they’ve even made a little trailer showing it off.
The Kraken X-3 and Z-3 are available for purchase in the U.S. starting today. The X-3 is available in 240mm, 280mm, and 360mm sizes for $130, $150, and $180. The Z03, AKA the one with the GIFs, costs $250 for the 280mm and $280 for the 360mm size. That means the ability to have an animated GIF on your CPU cooler costs $100.
Spectrum customers who are also users of the company’s home security service are about a month away from being left with a pile of useless equipment that in many cases cost them hundreds of dollars.
On February 5, Spectrum will no longer support customers who’ve purchased its Spectrum Home Security equipment. None of the devices—the cameras, motion sensors, smart thermostats, and in-home touchscreens—can be paired with other existing services. In a few weeks, it’ll all be worthless junk.
While some of the devices may continue to function on their own, customers will soon no longer be able to access them using their mobile devices, which is sort of the whole point of owning a smart device.
On Friday, California’s KSBY News interviewed one Spectrum customer who said that he’d spent around $900 installing cameras and sensors in and around his Cheviot Hills home. That the equipment is soon-to-be worthless isn’t even the worst part. Spectrum is also running off with his money.
The customer reportedly contacted the company about converting the cost of his investment into credit toward his phone or cable bill. The company declined, he said.
Motherboard on Thursday revealed that a “secretive” U.S. government vendor whose surveillance products are not publicly advertised has been marketing hidden cameras disguised as seemingly ordinary objects—vacuum cleaners, tree stumps, and tombstones—to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, among other law enforcement agencies, and the military, in addition to, ahem, “select clients.”
Yes, that’s tombstone cams, because absolutely nothing in this world is sacred.
The vendor, Special Services Group (SSG), was apparently none too pleased when Motherboard revealed that it planned to publish photographs and descriptions of the company’s surveillance toys. When reached for comment, SSG reportedly threatened to sue the tech publication, launched by VICE in 2009.
According to Motherboard, a brochure listing SSG’s products (starting at link from page 93) was obtained through public records requests filed with the Irvine Police Department in California.
Freddy Martinez, a policy analyst at government accountability group Open The Government, and Beryl Lipton, a reporter/researcher at the government transparency nonprofit MuckRock, both filed requests and obtained the SSG brochure, Motherboard said.
In warning the site not to disclose the brochure, SSG’s attorney reportedly claimed the document is protected under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), though the notice did not point to any specific section of the law, which was enacted to regulate arms exports at the height of the Cold War.
ITAR does prohibit the public disclosure of certain technical data related to military munitions. It’s unlikely, however, that a camera designed to look like a baby car seat—an actual SSG product called a “Rapid Vehicle Deployment Kit”—is covered under the law, which encompasses a wide range of actual military equipment that can’t be replicated in a home garage, such as space launch vehicles, nuclear reactors, and anti-helicopter mines.
Sleep Number first made a name for itself with its line of adjustable air-filled mattresses that allowed a pair of sleepers to each select how firm or soft they wanted their side of the bed to be. The preferred setting was known as a user’s Sleep Number, and over the years the company has introduced many ways to make it easier to fine-tune its beds for a good night’s sleep, including its smart SleepIQ technology which tracks movements and breathing patterns to help narrow down which comfort settings are ideal, as well as automatic adjustments in the middle of the night to silence a snorer.
At CES 2017, the company’s Sleep Number 360 bed introduced a new feature that learned each user’s bedtime routines and then automatically pre-heated the foot of the bed to a specific temperature to make falling asleep easier and more comfortable. At CES 2020, the company is now expanding on that idea with its new Climate360 smart bed that can heat and cool the entire mattress based on each user’s dozing preferences.
Using a combination of sensors, advanced textiles, phase change materials (a material that can absorb or release energy to aid in heating and cooling), evaporative cooling, and a ventilation system, the Climate360 bed can supposedly create and maintain a separate microclimate on each side of the bed, and make adjustments throughout the night based on each sleeper’s movements which indicate a level of discomfort. What isn’t built into the bed is a full air conditioning system, however, so the bed can only cool each side by about 12 degrees, but is able to warm them up to 100 degrees Fahrenheit if you prefer to sleep in an inferno.
The Climate360 bed goes through automatic routines throughout the night that Sleep Number has determined to be ideal for achieving a more restful sleep, including gently warming the bed ahead of bedtime to make it easier to drift off, and then cooling it once each user is asleep to help keep them comfortable.
Instead of a rigid panel wrapped in fabric, Bosch’s Virtual Visor features an LCD panel that can be flipped down when the sun is hanging out on the horizon. The panel works alongside a camera that’s pointed at a driver’s face whose live video feed is processed using a custom trained AI to recognize facial features like the nose, mouth, and, most importantly, the eyes. The camera system should recognize shadows cast on the driver’s eyes, and it uses this ability to darken only the areas on the LCD visor where intense sunlight would be passing through and impairing a driver’s vision. The region of the visor that’s darkened is constantly changing based on both the vehicle and driver’s movements, but the rest should remain transparent to provide a less obstructed view of the road and other vehicles ahead.
The Virtual Visor actually started life as a side project for three of Bosch’s powertrain engineers who developed it in their free time and harvested the parts they needed from a discarded computer monitor. As to when the feature will start showing up as an option in new cars remains to be seen—if ever. If you’ve ever dropped your phone or poked at a screen too hard you’ve already aware of how fragile LCD panels can be, so there will need to be lots of in-vehicle testing before this ever goes mainstream. But it’s a clever innovation using technology that at this point is relatively cheap and readily available, so hopefully this is an upgrade that’s not too far away.
Soundbar and smart-speaker-flinger Sonos is starting the new year with the wrong kind of publicity.
Customers and netizens are protesting against its policy of deliberately rendering working systems unusable, which is bad for the environment as it sends devices prematurely to an electronic waste graveyard.
The policy is also hazardous for those who unknowingly purchase a disabled device on the second-hand market, or even for users who perhaps mistake “recycle” for “reset”.
The culprit is Sonos’s so-called “Trade Up Program” which gives customers a 30 per cent discount off a new device, provided they follow steps to place their existing hardware into “Recycle mode”. Sonos has explained that “when you recycle an eligible Sonos product, you are choosing to permanently deactivate it. Once you confirm you’d like to recycle your product, the decision cannot be reversed.” There is a 21-day countdown (giving you time to receive your shiny new hardware) and then it is useless, “even if the product has been reset to its factory settings.”
Sonos suggests taking the now useless gadget to a local e-waste recycling centre, or sending it back to Sonos, though it remarks that scrapping it locally is “more eco-friendly than shipping it to Sonos”. In fact, agreeing either to return it or to use a “certified electronics recycler” is part of the terms and conditions, though the obvious question is how well this is enforced or whether customers even notice this detail when participating in the scheme.
The truth of course is that no recycling option is eco-friendly in comparison to someone continuing to enjoy the device doing what it does best, which is to play music. Even if a user is conscientious about finding an electronic waste recycling centre, there is a human and environmental cost involved, and not all parts can be recycled.
Sonos has posted on the subject of sustainability and has a “director of sustainability”, Mark Heintz, making its “Trade Up” policy even harder to understand.
Why not allow these products to be resold or reused? Community manager Ryan S said: “While we’re proud of how long our products last, we don’t really want these old, second-hand products to be the first experience a new customer has with Sonos.”
While this makes perfect business sense for Sonos, it is a weak rationale from an environmental perspective. Reactions like this one on Twitter are common. “I’ve bought and recommended my last Sonos product. Please change your practice, at the very least be honest about it and don’t flash the sustainability card for something that’s clearly not.”
According to a Verizon press release, the new Motorola Razr will clock in at the eye-popping price of $1,500 retail (still less than foldable competitors Samsung Galaxy Fold at $1,980 or more and Huawei Mate X at $2,420). Its 6.2-inch screen is ultrawide and the device packs a 16-megapixel main camera; Verizon added that when folded, the Razr’s “touchscreen Quick View external display lets you respond to notifications, take selfies, play your music, use Google Assistant, and more without having to flip open your phone.”
Graphic: Verizon
Graphic: Verizon
Slashgear has some more details on the device, including that the main display is a pOLED running at 2142 x 876 resolution while the Quick View display is a 2.7-inch OLED running at 600 x 800. Replying to text messages and emails via the external display requires using smart replies or dictation, though it will also function as a music controller and preview screen for the camera. It also has a Snapdragon 710 processor, 6GB of memory, and 128GB of storage, running Android Pie 9.
Graphic: Verizon
Downsides noted by Slashgear include no wireless charging and fast charging that caps out at 15W, as well as a 2,510 mAh battery. That’s considerably lower than the 3,000 mAh battery in Samsung’s flagship Galaxy S10 and newer iPhones, most models of which come in closer to or slightly over 3,000 mAh. Additionally, the new Razr follows other manufacturers’ leads by ditching the 3.5mm headphone jack for a USB-C connector, a decision widely reviled by consumers used to simply plugging in whatever headphones they have available at the moment. And despite Verizon’s big talk about their 5G network, the Razr will cap out at current-gen 4G LTE speeds.
US mega-retailer Best Buy will switch off the “smart” portion of its Insignia-branded smart home gadgets this coming Wednesday, rendering them just plain old dumb gear.
Folks who’ve bought these soon-to-be-internet-less Internet-of-Things gizmos can apply for some money back in the form of a gift card, though a full refund is off the cards, literally.
“As the Insignia Connect platform will be discontinued on November 6, 2019, this process will determine your eligibility for compensation for your eligible Insignia Connect products,” Best Buy stated on its webpage about the shutdown. An FAQ with more details is here.
“The compensation will not be a full refund of your product, and will be determined by product type.”
The affected Insigna Connect line includes smart power plugs, in-wall light switches, security cameras, and a God-damn freezer. Yes, a freezer. Being Wi-Fi-connected, these devices can be remote-controlled via an iOS or Android smartphone app, allowing you to turn lights off and on, monitor power usage, schedule stuff to turn on, view camera footage, and so on, wherever you are. They can also be directed via Amazon’s voice-powered assistant Alexa or Google Assistant.
However, when the Insigna line’s backend systems are shut down for good, and the phone apps withdrawn, on Wednesday, this gear will degrade to normal non-smart stuff. Crucially, though, the camera will be completely useless – and the footage inaccessible from the apps by the time you read this – and while the NS-SP1XM8 smart plug with metering will work with Apple’s Home app, via HomeKit, the other plugs will just be normal plugs.
Google’s Senior Vice President of Devices & Services, Rick Osterloh, broke the news on the official Google blog, saying:
Over the years, Google has made progress with partners in this space with Wear OS and Google Fit, but we see an opportunity to invest even more in Wear OS as well as introduce Made by Google wearable devices into the market. Fitbit has been a true pioneer in the industry and has created engaging products, experiences and a vibrant community of users. By working closely with Fitbit’s team of experts, and bringing together the best AI, software and hardware, we can help spur innovation in wearables and build products to benefit even more people around the world.
Earlier this week, on October 28, a report from Reuters surfaced to indicate that Google was in a bid to purchase Fitbit. It’s a big move, but it’s also one that makes good sense.
Google’s Wear OS wearable platform has been in something of a rut for the last few years. The company introduced the Android Wear to Wear OS rebrand in 2018 to revitalize its branding/image, but the hardware offerings have still been pretty ho-hum. Third-party watches like the Fossil Gen 5 have proven to be quite good, but without a proper “Made by Google” smartwatch and other major players, such as Samsung, ignoring the platform, it’s been left to just sort of exist.
In 1999, at the peak of Hydrogen fuel cell company start ups in California he left BAe to start his own fuel cell company. “My old boss at Rolls Royce pointed out that the Hydrogen needed to come from somewhere. So I looked at other technologies and found metal-air,”he says.
Technically described as “(Al)/air” batteries, these are the — almost — untold story from the battery world. For starters, an aluminum-air battery system can generate enough energy and power for driving ranges and acceleration similar to gasoline-powered cars.
Sometimes known as “Metal-Air” batteries, these have been successfully used in “off-grid” applications for many years, just as batteries powering army radios. The most attractive metal in this type of battery is aluminum because it is the most common metal on Earth and has one of the highest energy densities.
Think of an air-breathing battery which uses aluminum as a “fuel.” That means it can provide vehicle power with energy originating from clean sources (hydro, geothermal, nuclear etc.). These are the power sources for most aluminum smelters all over the world. The only waste product is aluminum hydroxide and this can be returned to the smelter as the feedstock for — guess what? — making more aluminum! This cycle is therefore highly sustainable and separate from the oil industry. You could even recycle aluminum cans and use them to make batteries.
Imagine that — a power source separate from the highly polluting oil industry.
“I rented a lab, read everything on it and then turned back into a Development Engineer, which means: thinking, making, testing and tweaking until you find answers. One or two bolts from the blue and I saw a massive difference on one test,” says Jackson.
But hardly anyone was using them in mainstream applications. Why?
Aluminum-air batteries had been around for a while. But the problem with a battery which generated electricity by “eating” aluminum was that it was simply not efficient. The electrolyte used just didn’t work well.
This was important. An electrolyte is a chemical medium inside a battery that allows the flow of electrical charge between the cathode and anode. When a device is connected to a battery — a light bulb or an electric circuit — chemical reactions occur on the electrodes that create a flow of electrical energy to the device.
When an aluminum-air battery starts to run, a chemical reaction produces a “gel” by-product which can gradually block the airways into the cell. It seemed like an intractable problem for researchers to deal with.
But after a lot of experimentation, in 2001, Jackson developed what he believed to be a revolutionary kind of electrolyte for aluminum-air batteries which had the potential to remove the barriers to commercialization.
“Everything was steady, the hydrogen and gel were almost gone but the power was a lot better.”
His specially developed electrolyte did not produce the hated gel that would destroy the efficiency of an aluminum-air battery. For Jackson, it seemed like a game-changer: “All I needed to do was to tell the government. ‘Simple’, I thought.”
The breakthrough — if proven — had huge potential. The energy density of his battery was about eight times that of a lithium-ion battery. He was incredibly excited. Then he tried to tell politicians…
Despite a detailed demonstration of a working battery to Lord “Jim” Knight in 2001, followed by email correspondence and a promise to “pass it onto Tony (Blair),” there was no interest from the U.K. government.
And Jackson faced bureaucratic hurdles. The U.K. government’s official innovation body, Innovate UK, emphasized lithium battery technology, not aluminum-air batteries.
He was struggling to convince public and private investors to back him, such was the hold the “lithium battery lobby” had over the sector.
This emphasis on lithium batteries over anything else meant U.K. the government was effectively leaving on the table a technology which could revolutionize electrical storage and mobility and even contribute to the fight against carbon emission and move the U.K. toward its pollution-reduction goals.
Disappointed in the U.K., Jackson upped sticks and found better backing in France, where he moved his R&D in 2005.
Finally, in 2007, the potential of Jackson’s invention was confirmed independently in France at the Polytech Nantes institution. Its advantages over Lithium Ion batteries were (and still are) increased cell voltage. They used ordinary aluminum, would create very little pollution and had a steady, long-duration power output.
As a result, in 2007 the French Government formally endorsed the technology as “strategic and in the national interest of France.”
At this point, the U.K.’s Foreign Office suddenly woke up and took notice.
It promised Jackson that the UKTI would deliver “300%” effort in launching the technology in the U.K. if it was “repatriated” back to the U.K.
However, in 2009, the U.K.’s Technology Strategy Board refused to back the technology, citing that the Automotive Council Technology Road Map “excluded this type of battery.” Even though the Carbon Trust agreed that it did indeed constitute a “credible CO2-reduction technology,” it refused to assist Jackson further.
Meanwhile, other governments were more enthusiastic about exploring metal-air batteries.
[…]
Jackson tried to tell the U.K. government they were making a mistake. Appearing before the Parliamentary Select Committee for business-energy and industrial strategy, he described how the U.K. had created a bias toward lithium-ion technology which had led to a battery-tech ecosystem which was funding lithium-ion research to the tune of billions of pounds. In 2017, Prime Minister Theresa May further backed the lithium-ion industry.
Jackson (pictured below) refused to take no for an answer.
He applied to U.K.’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory. But in 2017 they replied with a “no-fund” decision which dismissed the technology, even though DSTL had an actual programme of its own on aluminum-air technology, dedicated to finding a better electrolyte, at Southampton University.
Jackson turned to the auto industry instead. He formed his company MAL (branded as “Metalectrique“) in 2013 and used seed funding to successfully test a long-range design of power pack in its laboratory facilities in Tavistock, U.K.
Here he is on a regional BBC channel explaining the battery:
He worked closely with Lotus Engineering to design and develop long-range replacement power packs for the Nissan Leaf and the Mahindra Reva “G-Wiz’ electric cars. At the time, Nissan expressed a strong interest in this “Beyond Lithium Technology” (their words) but they were already committed to fitting LiON batteries to the Leaf. Undeterred, Jackson concentrated on the G-Wiz and went on to produce full-size battery cells for testing and showed that aluminum-air technology was superior to any other existing technology.
In tests, Jackson’s Aluminium-Air power technology could create a 1,500 mile range battery with a 90 second swap system. The benefits are obvious: Cost effective for the driver; safe & CO2 free; recyclable and reusable; and with an £0.08 / mile cost to driver. The batteryis also low cost: just £60/kWh (Battery Price to OEM).
[…]
The advantages of aluminum-air technology are numerous. Without having to charge the battery, a car could simply swap out the battery in seconds, completely removing “charge time.” Most current charging points are rated at 50 kW which is roughly one-hundredth of that required to charge a lithium battery in five minutes. Meanwhile, hydrogen fuel cells would require a huge and expensive hydrogen distribution infrastructure and a new hydrogen generation system.
But Jackson has kept on pushing, convinced his technology can address both the power needs of the future, and the climate crisis.
Last May, he started getting much-needed recognition.
The U.K.’s Advanced Propulsion Centre included the Metalectrique battery as part of its grant investment into 15 U.K. startups to take their technology to the next level as part of its Technology Developer Accelerator Programme (TDAP). The TDAP is part of a 10-year program to make U.K. a world-leader in low-carbon propulsion technology.
The catch? These 15 companies have to share a paltry £1.1 million in funding.
And as for Jackson? He’s still raising money for Metalectrique and spreading the word about the potential for aluminum-air batteries to save the planet.
What happens when it runs out of juice? You replace it with a new one while the old one gets recycled. At the beginning of the electric car era when charging infrastructure was nonexistent, the idea of swapping spent batteries for fully charged new ones was considered feasible. Jackson says such a thing could be the future, with his batteries/fuel cells sold at grocery stores and retail outlets. He says the process of disconnecting the old one and connecting the new one will take about 90 seconds.
But is it tin foil hat time? Is this story just another example of some crackpot inventing some radical new product that defies conventional physics, like cold fusion? Lots of people think so, and in fact Jackson says powerful forces have attempted to prevent his idea from reaching a larger audience. But an independent evaluation by the UK Trade and Investment agency in 2017 said Jackson’s invention was a “very attractive battery” based on “well established’” technology, and that it produced much more energy per kilogram than standard electric vehicle types, according to a report in theDaily Mail.
Some comparisons are in order. A Tesla Model S can drive up to 370 miles on a single charge. Jackson says if you drove the same car with an aluminum-air cell that weighed the same as the Tesla’s lithium-ion battery, it would have a range of 2,700 miles. Aluminum-air cells also take up less space. If that same Tesla were fitted with an aluminum-air fuel cell the same size as its current battery, it could run non-stop for 1,500 miles.
[…]
Jackson has also secured a £108,000 grant for further research from the Advanced Propulsion Center, a partner of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. His technology has been validated by two French universities. He says: “It has been a tough battle but I’m finally making progress. From every logical standpoint, this is the way to go.”
Austin Electric has three targets for the new batteries — the three-wheeled tuk-tuks used for transportation in many countries such as Pakistan, electric bicycles with far more range than current models, and a program that will convert front wheel drive cars with internal combustion engines into hybrids by fitting aluminum-air batteries and motors to drive the rear wheels.
Jackson expects the conversion operation to start next year. He says the cost of each conversion will be £3,500 or about $4,000. He thinks this will be a proof of concept “stepping-stone” phase in the transition to aluminum-air batteries for all vehicles. “We are in discussions with two aircraft manufacturers. It’s not going to be suitable for jets. But it would work in propeller planes, and be suitable for short-haul passenger and cargo flights.”
It’s ridiculous that this invention is only now going into small scale production and only gets 108k for development. Considering this is relevant and the technology is really viable, this should be on the top of the agenda. What happens to li-ion batteries is melt and destroy the environment.
Earlier in October, Hyperstealth filed a patent for the material, which doesn’t require a power source and is both paper-thin and inexpensive — all traits that could make it appealing for use on the battlefield.
According to a press release, it works by bending the light around a target to make it seemingly disappear. This light can be in the visible spectrum, or it can be ultraviolet, infrared, or shortwave infrared light, making the material what Hyperstealth calls a “broadband invisibility cloak.”
Ready for Battle
Alongside the news of the patent application, Hyperstealth released more than 100-minutes worth of footage describing and demonstrating the material — and if the press release doesn’t make it clear that the military is the company’s target customer, the video footage sure does.
In one segment, Hyperstealth shows how it can hide a scaled-down version of a tank by placing a sheet of the material above it. In another, it renders a small jet invisible by placing it behind the “Quantum Stealth” material.
As for the phone’s more traditional specs, there’s a Qualcomm Snapdragon 855+ processor, 5G connectivity, 12GB of RAM, 512GB of storage, 40W wired fast-charging, and a 4,050mAh battery. That last spec would perhaps suggest that Xiaomi doesn’t imagine you having the whole screen turned on all the time.
Xiaomi describes the Mix Alpha as a “concept smartphone” and isn’t going to be mass-producing it any time soon. The phone will go into small-scale production this year and go on sale in December for 19,999 yuan, or about $2,800. The original Mi Mix was also given the “concept” label and released in small quantities, with the Mi Mix 2 following a year later as a more mainstream device.
On one hand, this design poses obvious issues with cost, durability, battery life, accidental touch recognition, privacy, and so on. On the other, well, just look at it:
