Amazon’s new Echo Look has a built-in camera for style selfies

With the addition of a camera, Amazon’s new Echo Look device can now see and hear all. The device is a sort of standalone selfie machine so users can take full-length photos and videos of themselves specifically for the sake of checking their fashion choices in the morning.

The new home assistant answers to commands like “Alexa, take a picture” and “Alexa, take a video” – for the latter, users spin around accordingly to get shot from all side, taking selfies while keeping their hands free. Videos shot with the hands-free selfie stick can be recorded or viewed in real time. At the very least, it’ll let you make sure no one’s adhered a Kick Me sign to your back before leaving the house.

It’s an interesting and unexpected addition to the company’s wildly successful product line. There’s no built-in display here, but users can see what it sees on their handset. The device also works with the company’s Style Check, a feature of the Echo Look app, which uses machine learning to compare different outfit choices, awarding them an overall style rating.

The app uses a combination of machine learning and advice from experts in the style space. Letting AI pick out your clothing in the morning should be a pretty interesting experiment.

The app will also recommend styles to users, which presents a pretty clear revenue stream for the company after the hardware has been sold. That, after all, has alway been Amazon’s M.O. when it comes to releasing hardware — sell it cheap and hook people in to buy more stuff through your service. The company has clearly been taking steps to increase style sales through its AmazonFashion vertical, and for those who are interested in such things, this is a pretty decent hardware hook.

The device looks a fair bit like one of the latest generation of smart home security cameras, with an oblong shape and a camera, mic and LED array at the bottom. The camera has a built-in depth sensor to blur out everything in the photo, save for the subject.

There’s also, thankfully, a large microphone and camera off button on the side of the device, so it’s not recording your every waking moment, a big concern with mounting security questions surrounding these ever more popular device. But now that video is being added to this category of always-on devices, a new set of worries is likely to increase among those who were already wary.

Of course, the thing’s also got the standard base of Alexa function on board, so users can also check the weather to make sure they’re properly dressed for the occasion. The style functionality feels a bit nichey, but then, I recognize that the product is for people like me who more or less wear the same clothes from day to day.

Given the fact that Echo is constantly updating, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a lot more camera specific functionality in the months and weeks ahead. For now, it can be purchased for $200, a $20 premium over the standard Echo.

Juicero may be the absurd avatar of Silicon Valley hubris, but boy is it well-engineered

The Juicero story is a funny one in some ways and a sad one in others, so let’s just assume they cancel each other out and admire the machine itself in a nice judgment-free moral vacuum.

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Or rather, let’s let someone qualified do it for us. Ben Einstein, general partner at Bolt, served up this excellent teardown of the Juicero on the company blog. If you were wondering how a juice press could possibly cost $400… well, this is how.

Without getting into the nitty-gritty (Einstein does it far better than I would, anyway), the gist is that this thing is extremely overengineered in the most fabulous possible way. Everything is custom, using the best processes and materials, and lots of ingenuity and care is on display at every level.

Unfortunately, the entire idea of the product is risible.

As Einstein puts it:

Our usual advice to hardware founders is to focus on getting a product to market to test the core assumptions on actual target customers, and then iterate. Instead, Juicero spent $120M over two years to build a complex supply chain and perfectly engineered product that is too expensive for their target demographic.

It’s a beautiful disaster of a product, and with any luck the engineers responsible for the former will get credit for it. Because those responsible for the latter already took off with the juice, leaving nothing but a flaccid sack of pulp behind.

Featured Image: Ben Einstein

This might be your last chance to buy the NES Classic

Nintendo is discontinuing the NES Classic Edition. While this decision is still puzzling, you might still be looking to buy one before it disappears into the ether forever. Best Buy stores have some of the last units starting today.

If you plan on buying one, I’d head to the closest Best Buy store right now as these units won’t be available on Best Buy’s website.

Nintendo has already stopped manufacturing the NES Classic Edition. Demand has been very strong and has largely outpaced production. But Nintendo doesn’t want to sell the NES Classic Edition forever.

The company probably wants to focus on the Nintendo Switch, saying that you should buy Nintendo’s latest console if you want to play Nintendo games. Rumor has it that Nintendo is also working on an SNES Classic Edition for the end of the year.

And if you don’t live in the U.S. and still want to play some good old NES games on your TV, you can still buy a Raspberry Pi and install some emulators on it. That could be a nice DIY weekend project.

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GoPro to release prosumer spherical camera in fall 2017

GoPro today announced the Fusion, a camera capable of capturing spherical video for use in VR and standard video formats through a software solution. The camera will be released this fall. GoPro has yet to name the price. If nothing else GoPro is becoming a camera company again.

The Fusion shows that GoPro is going back to its core competency in creating hardware. Action cameras existed before GoPro. But GoPro provided a better complete solution and the market responded by making the company top-selling vendor. GoPro likely hopes the same thing will happen with the Fusion and the rest of the spherical camera market.

Specific details are still a bit light since the camera will not be released until the fall. Even the images released by GoPro are clearly carefully composed to reveal more about the camera’s intended use rather than specifics about the camera. We even boosted the levels of the photo above to reveal a bit more.

The company says in a press release that the Fusion records 360-degree video at 5.2K30 and features a mode called OverCapture that lets users go back and carve out a standard video file from the spherical footage. Essentially, GoPro is building a camera that lets users record literally everything and then select the best framing later.

GoPro has built similar solutions in the past that involved mounting several GoPros into a rig that positioned the cameras to capture every angle and software then stitched the footage together. But with GoPro cameras costing hundreds of dollars each, these rigs are expensive. The Fusion will likely be less expensive than these rigs.

There are several other spherical cameras on the market though none have made a big splash. They range in price from a few hundred dollars to a couple thousand. GoPro’s advantage could be the software that lets users produce a standard POV-looking video from the captured footage. Traditionally videos captured by spherical cameras have a fish-eye look, which can be off-putting and distracting.

GoPro is opening a beta program this summer to get the Fusion in the hands of creative users. The company hopes this program will help further refine the user experience prior to releasing the camera on the general market. This is a smart move. The expectations are different and could help reduce negative reactions once the camera hits stores.

Shopify launches a free, in-house-designed card reader

Shopify has designed its own hardware for the first time, building out a design team and coming up with a unique approach to the simple card reader, that most basic tool in the real-world merchant’s arsenal. The new chip and swipe card reader makes its official debut at Shopify’s Unite developer conference in San Francisco today, and it’s a device with a superficial simplicity that only hints at how much care went into the design process.

From around 2013 onwards, Shopify began paying close attention to how much of its online-seller customer base began selling in person, via pop-up shops and also via small shops set up in their home towns. That year, it released Shopify POS for the first time, and the key difference in that was the hardware component. Shopify was happy to rely on partners for that hardware piece of the picture, as it wasn’t within its core set of skills.

“We’ve learned a ton over that period of time, in bringing people hardware and scaling point of sale to many tens of thousands of merchants,” explained Shopify VP of Product Satish Kanwar in an interview. “What we’ve seen is the evolution of the retail store as a place that was primarily a first channel for someone, to being a great experiential marketing strategy for people, and just a necessary part of the growth and evolution of any retail brand, whether you started online first or not.”

Retail is changing as a result, and that means merchants need a more seamless solution across both online and offline parts of their businesses, Kanwar says. That led them to set up creating their dedicated hardware unit within the company around one year ago, with the aim of taking all the lessons they’ve learned from their merchants’ collective experience with in-person sales.

“What people forget is that it’s not just the merchant that’s touching the hardware, like a cash register,” Kanwar said. “When it comes to a card reader, it’s the shopper that’s interacting with the device and inputting their card as well. What we realized is that it’s really hard to get a good balance of good quality, versatility and something that provides that delightful experience in something that’s also affordable.”

Shopify’s reader is a device designed to cover all those bases, with a detachable reader that you can use one-handed and can handle both swipes and chip-based “dips.” A subtle groove offers a solid thumb rest and Kanwar showed me how a merchant can even use it stacked with their phone with one hand thanks to the groove, paired with a textured surface that won’t slide off the back of your smartphone or tablet too easily.

The reader plugs into a base via micro USB, which is also the connector used to plug the base into a power source for charging. The battery in the reader should easily handle a full week’s worth of transactions even if left unplugged, and the modular design is intentionally made to fit with multiple different mounting options to come in the future, in addition to the current weighted base.

All of Shopify’s careful design work will likely remain mostly invisible to both merchants and shoppers, however, if they’ve done what they set out to do; Kanwar notes that the minimalist branding and largely white device is meant to help foreground the in-person shopping experience, rather than the tech that enables it.

Shopify’s card reader will be free, which for merchants might be the most important aspect of its design; that’s if you’re a Shopify merchant without a current Shopify POS solution — others can also buy them for $29 via the Shopify Hardware Store. The accessory supports both iOS and Android, and processes payments with rates starting at 2.4 percent per swipe. It connects to your phone via Bluetooth LE, too, meaning if you happen to be without a headphone jack you’re in luck.

Shopify is offering these for pre-order to its U.S.-based merchants now, and shipping should start in June. Now that the company has a dedicated team working on hardware, it’s likely this isn’t the end of their in-house device design efforts, but Kanwar only hinted at what might be possible in terms of different docking attachments for the reader when asked about the future.

Steve Jobs’ custom Apple I and other historic machines are on display at Seattle museum

Long before the iPhone or even the Mac, Apple was a handful of people working in an industry that was only just beginning to take the idea of personal computing seriously. In the earliest days of those early days, Steves Wozniak and Jobs made their first device together: the Apple I. Few of these were sold, and fewer still survive — but the Living Computers museum in Seattle managed to get three. And one of them was Jobs’ personal machine.

Paul Allen, the museum’s founder and patron, has caused to be assembled quite an impressive collection of devices from Apple’s history, many of which have been restored to working condition. The public will be able to tinker with a NeXT Cube as well as early Macs, but the pride and joy of the collection must be the Apple Is.

The new exhibit, which highlights the collaboration and competition between Apple and Microsoft over the years as the companies grew, is open today.

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The Apple I, you may or may not remember, wasn’t much of a hit. Only 200 were made — by hand — and it wasn’t long before the company put its hopes in the Apple II, which would go on to be more popular by far. One of the Is, however, Jobs kept in his office as a demo machine for industry people.

When Jobs left in 1985 he left in a hurry, and this I was left behind on a shelf. Don Hutmacher, one of the company’s first employees, grabbed it and it stayed in his possession until he passed away last year. His wife generously allowed the museum to take care of it, and you can imagine their gratitude.

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The team had their suspicious, but a tag inside the metal chassis — and the fact that it had a chassis at all, since Apple Is came just as boards — suggested it was more than a rare Apple I; it was the rarest. It’s signed “BF,” which would have been employee number one, Bill Fernandez. This was definitely, the team decided, Jobs’ custom machine.

Because the Apple I didn’t have a ROM, and Jobs didn’t want to have to program it from scratch any time someone wanted to see it in action, he had a custom EPROM attached to it that initialized the computer with BASIC when it started up. Its RAM, the engineering team suspects, was also augmented so it didn’t run out and crash during the demo.

The team at the museum read the contents of this EPROM and used it to set up a second, less historic Apple I. That one, which has had its power components modified to be a little less prone to catching fire or warping the circuit board, will now be available in this primed state for anyone to play with. Yes, anyone — the only operational Apple I on the planet right now, and your kid can type “butts” on it with fingers still greasy from the sandwich they got across the street.

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That’s the mission of the museum, though: the Apple I, along with dozens of other ancient computers, from Altairs to mainframes from the 60’s, are deliberately there to be touched and, if not truly understood (few kids know BASIC these days), at least experienced.

Ahead of the exhibit’s opening, a small reunion was held for a handful of people who had a hand in the early days of Apple, Microsoft, and the home computer industry. Steve Wozniak and Paul Allen met — for the first time, amazingly — and chatted over an Apple II. And it wasn’t until someone took stock of the situation that they realized that the entire original team that built the Apple I in Steve Jobs’ garage — minus the departed Steve — were together again for the first time in decades:

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The museum has also been working with the University of Washington to compile an oral history of this era of computing, and many of the people who figured in the creation of the Apple I.

Now that the exhibit is open, feel free to drop by the museum and touch a few pieces of computing history — though you may need to brush up on your BASIC.

Facebook will license its new 360 cameras that capture in six degrees of freedom

On day two of Facebook’s F8 conference, Facebook’s CTO Mike Schroepfer showed off designs for two new 360 cameras that the company is going to help push to market. The x24, with 24 cameras, and its little brother the x6, with six cameras, can each capture in six degrees of freedom for more immersive 360 content. Facebook plans to license the designs of the two cameras to select commercial partners to get each to market later this year.

Prototyped in Facebook’s Area 404, the x24 combines the FLIR camera system with Facebook’s proprietary architecture. Being able to shoot in six degrees of freedom (6DoF) cuts out a lot of the work that would traditionally be required to create 360 videos where the watcher can tilt their head in all directions without sacrificing the believability of a given shot.

The conceptual idea, sometimes referred to as volumetric capture, has been heralded for some time as a major milestone for VR. Startups like Lytro have been betting on light fields to get the job done, while 8i has taken a software approach. Instead, Facebook is taking a sparse lens orientation approach that avoids the complex rigs all-together.

“Unfortunately, capturing full 6-DoF 360 videos requires more complex hardware setups like camera arrays or light-field cameras that are not affordable and easy to use for novice users,” a team of Adobe researchers said in a recent paper on the subject.

The benefit of capturing depth information at the pixel level is that it enables fun post-production video masking where a creator could swap out mountains in the background of a video for a beach instead.

These new cameras, building on the original Surround 360, also look fantastic. The old Surround seemed to draw inspiration from the spinning top at the end of Inception, but the x24 and x6’s smaller, simple spherical design is exactly the familiar and welcoming look you want from futuristic technology.

“Part of what we are doing with the ecosystem, and the camera itself, is giving these tools to content creators so they can start to develop this artistic language,” explained Brian Cabral, Facebook’s director of engineering.

Bootstrapping a community is hard work, but Facebook realizes that the success of everything, from News Feed 360 videos to the Oculus itself, depends on an ecosystem of content creators. To this avail, Facebook is partnering with post-production companies and VFX houses, including Adobe, Otoy, Foundry, Mettle, DXO, Here Be Dragons, Framestore, Magnopus and The Mill.

Facebook's New VR Experience Looks Like Hell on Earth

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At its annual developer conference in San Jose today, Facebook unveiled some of its latest tech projects, assuring investors that it's catching up to competitors like Snapchat . Mark Zuckerberg himself took the stage to make painful jokes about Fast and Furious and opine on how Facebook wants to dominate what he sees as the next major platform: augmented reality. Being able to have animated sharks swimming around your cereal bowl is apparently the future of tech-according to Zuck, at least.

The company also introduced Facebook Spaces , which is essentially just Second Life integrated with Facebook and powered by virtual reality headsets. If I spent a week imagining a future designed to simulate damnation, it still wouldn't be as painful as watching Facebook's awkward announcement video.

Sure, the technology is cool, I guess, but who actually wants something like this? Would anyone besides people who describe themselves as "virtual reality enthusiasts" really want to strap on a bulky, expensive headset so they can have interactions that are both more awkward and less personal than real life?

Facebook's pitch is essentially, "Why take a picture with your friends when you can do the same thing but in virtual reality with the International Space Station in the background?" It appears Facebook Spaces will also include games, which is probably a far more appealing feature. It's a just toy! This might be fun to try out a few times, but Facebook is selling it as some kind of socialization supplement to replace actual human interaction.

Even on a big stage at a flashy developer conference, this stuff comes across as absurd , but in practice it seems like a very lonely and, honestly, pathetic experience.

Facebook F8 Conference starts tonight: Here’s what to expect

Rule the Playground With a Chainsaw-Powered Tricycle

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As a kid, you probably came up with a lot of terrible ideas your parents wisely stopped you from carrying out; that's why you're alive today. But once grownup, you're free to try anything that pops into your mind, like upgrading a toddler-sized tricycle so that it's powered by an old chainsaw .

YouTube channel ThisDustIn is responsible for this monstrous upgrade, which swaps the pedals on a classic kid's trike with a gas-powered chainsaw-minus the blade, which they're perhaps saving for a future video. Almost everything on the tricycle had to be reinforced and upgraded to survive the speeds it was suddenly being subjected too, including the welds holding it all together, and the addition of extra-strength supports for the back wheels so an adult-sized rider wouldn't crush them, although it doesn't seem like these geniuses bothered installing a brake. I guess that's what shoes are for.

[ YouTube ]

Snapchat embraces AR with New World lenses

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As Facebook goes after Snapchat with slowly adopting Snapchat features into its bouquet of apps, the popular image messaging app has rolled out New World lenses as part of its augmented reality (AR) drive.

"While Snapping with the rear-facing camera, simply tap the camera screen to find new Lenses that can paint the world around you with new 3D experiences," Snapchat said in a post late on Tuesday.

Snapchat launched Lenses over a year ago as a whole new way to help users express themselves on the platform.

Now, tapping the camera screen while using the rear-facing camera will bring up new 3D lenses.

You can create a cloud, a rainbow, flowers and a floating "OMG" among others.

Facebook has recently added Snapchat-style Stories and camera special effects to Facebook, Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram.

Facebook on Tuesday launched a platform for developers to encourage augmented reality (AR) camera effects -- another move to take on Snapchat.

Google's Greatest Time-Suck Invention Just Got a Lot Better

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Google Earth is one of the purest, most beautiful gifts the company has ever given us. Today, the globe-trotting software received a major overhaul that will delight hardcore fans and remind others that it's still a great way to throw away hours of your life.

It's been two years since the search giant last gave Google Earth a major update and it seems as if the virtual globe has become a new priority for the company. Last October, a new virtual reality version was introduced and now several additions have made the application extra sticky.

One of the biggest changes is that it no longer has to be a separate app that you download. On a desktop, you can just go to the URL in Chrome and start exploring. This may seem minor but you'll now be seeing a lot more of Google Earth because there's no need to open a separate app and sharing is an emphasized feature. With the Android app, you can quickly share a digital postcard with your contacts. The ability to use the service in browser is also a big deal for Chromebook users who were previously locked out. An iOS app is will be out soon as well as support for other browsers. ( Google Earth Pro is still an app and it's still outdated.)

Above all of the other updates, the most significant overall is the new "Voyager" feature, which is available by clicking the ship's wheel icon. Google has partnered with organizations like BBC Earth and DigitalGlobe to create little informative experiences. Clicking on " Endangered Species Around the World " will show you the locations of various endangered species, give you photos and a "knowledge card" gives some background about them. It's kind of like Wikipedia mixed with Google Earth. Other Voyager stories feature regular and 3D videos. "Itineraries" offer guided tours of cities and a lot more information has been added to major destinations. So far, there are a little over 50 stories but Google plans to add more every week. There are also 20,000 destinations with knowledge cards. It seems all but inevitable that a crowdsourcing model will be implemented eventually to flesh this tool out.

Fukuoka, Japan in Google Earth

If you want to go off the beaten trail, there's an "I'm feeling lucky" button. The first time I clicked it, I got Fukuoka Tower in Fukuoka, Japan. Cool tower. It was also a great destination for trying out the new 3D features that allow you to explore renderings of major cities and landmarks from any angle. We're still not close to photorealism yet but it has a lovely Simcity-esque quality.

All-in-all it's a solid refresh for Google Earth and I probably lost about 45 minutes of my night playing with it. But "lost" is really the wrong word. I visited some far-flung locations, learned some factoids about the lined seahorse and was once again reminded why Earth is the best planet. I also learned that my neighbors have a pool that I never noticed before.

[ Google , Engadget ]

Nokia ready to work with Chinese partners on innovation

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Among a series of documents signed by Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Finnish counterpart Sauli Niinisto here in April, the innovation partnership impressed Nokia 's head Risto Siilasmaa the most.

As agreed by the representatives of the two countries, a Sino-Finnish innovation council would be established to guide and promote business cooperation on innovation, explore new ways and provide policy advises, Xinhua news agency reported.

As Chairman of Nokia, the Finnish IT giant , Siilasmaa has been nominated to chair the Finnish team within the council.

"Both countries will nominate key players from the industry, and I hope very much I would get some of my old friends from the Chinese technology companies to join on the other side," Siilasmaa told Xinhua news.

While the list of members of the Chinese side has not been disclosed, Siilasmaa named as hopefuls Jack Ma , Pony Ma, Lei Jun, Robin Li, respectively head of Alibaba, Tencent, Xiaomi and Baidu.

Siilasmaa has sat on the same panel discussions and in the same advisory boards with the above figures and expects to continue working with them in the new framework.

"We are committed to working very hard on finding some innovative ways for the two countries to achieve our common goals together," said Siilasmaa.

Asked to speak about the shared goals, he said: "We have certain challenges that all the humanity faces." No further details have been published by either of the two governments over the new structure so far.

Siilasmaa echos Xi's call on many occasions for embracing "a human community with shared destiny."

"We are moving towards a world that would be even smaller. So we truly have to figure out the way for all of us to live together and support each other," said Siilasmaa.

"Finnish companies are very good in certain areas, on certain narrow but very deep fields, and in those areas we definitely can have an impact on China as well," he said.

Siilasmaa appreciated the fact that Xi praised the Finnish spirit of "sisu" -- a Finnish term meaning persistence in time of hardship.

He disclosed that Nokia China is under discussion with a Chinese investor to turn the Finnish subsidiary company into a joint venture.

Facebook is for all: Zuckerberg takes a jab at Snapchat

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In an apparent reaction to Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel 's purported disinterest in expanding business to "poor countries" like India, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Facebook is for everyone and not just for "the high end".

In a subtle jab at Spiegel, Zuckerberg told TechCrunch on the sidelines of the annual Facebook F8 developer conference in San Jose on Tuesday: "I think one thing that people probably don't think about as much as we do is innovation to serve everyone in the community, not just the high end, right? So we focus on a lot of things like Facebook Lite . It's up to 200 million people in like a year".

Last week, US-based news website Variety quoted Snapchat's ex-employee Anthony Pompliano as saying that Spiegel in September 2015 told him that "the app is only for rich people. I don't want to expand into poor countries like India and Spain".

Indians did not take the comment lightly and took to social media to lash out at the statement from the CEO. As the ratings of the app dropped, the criticism of the CEO and the app increased.

The controversy also resulted in the rating of the popular app dropping to a "single star" from an apparent "five star" on the App Store.

Snapchat's parent company Snap Inc later denied the allegation, saying no such remark was made by CEO Spiegel.

"The simple fact is that he (Pompliano) knows exactly nothing about Snap's current metrics. He and his lawyers are -- not to put too fine a point on matters -- just making things up," Variety reported Snap's attorneys as saying in another report.

Denying the claims of Snapchat being termed as a "rich people's app", the attorneys termed Pompliano a "disgruntled employee fired for poor performance".

Some users wrote, "Poor India & Spain need better than Snapchat", "Good bye, My Snapchat Account and Snap Inc. You'll be product of gone by era and derision", and "Poor Evan Spiegel".

The app was also trolled on Twitter. #boycottsnapchat became the most trending hashtag on Twitter overnight.

"I haven't seen any Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians etc Tweets yet. Thanks @Snapchat for uniting us," a user tweeted.

Some users even flagged the app for hateful content and left a message, "Dear @snapchatsupport, flagged you for hateful content. #boycottsnapchat".

Snapchat has more than four million users in India.

Julian Assange Tweets About Running in the UK Election

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Wikileaks founder Julian Assange speaks on the balcony of the Ecuadorean Embassy in London on February 5, 2016 (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

The Brits are having an election on June 8th, as Prime Minister Theresa May looks to shore up support before things really get messy with Brexit. But an unlikely person has just floated the idea of running for British Parliament. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange just asked his followers on Twitter if he should run for election .

Assange has been holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London since 2010, in what he claims is detainment without charge. In reality, he's free to step outside the embassy anytime he likes, though he's afraid of being extradited to Sweden or the US.

So what does it take to run as member of parliament in Britain? You have to be 18 or older. Assange is 45, so there's no problem there. And you have to be a citizen of the UK, a British Commonwealth, or the Republic of Ireland. As a citizen of Australia, Assange seems to qualify in the Commonwealth category. Lastly, you can't have any disqualifications. That's where it gets tricky.

What are the disqualifications for running as an MP in the UK? Funnily enough, one is that you can't run if you've been imprisoned or detained in the UK. Again, Assange insists that he's being detained without charge in London.

Specifically, the UK Election Commission says that being "sentenced to be imprisoned or detained" for over a year disqualifies you from running for office :

You are disqualified under the Representation of the People Act 1981 if you have been convicted of an offence, have been sentenced to be imprisoned or detained for more than a year and are detained anywhere in the UK, the Republic of Ireland, the Channel Islands or the Isle of Man, or are unlawfully at large.

So it would appear that Assange would have to make the case that he hasn't been sentenced to be detained in order to run for office in the UK. And if he hasn't been sentenced to be detained, then he's free to leave the embassy. So much for that idea, I guess.

India's BigBasket in talks for possible merger with Grofers India: report

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India's online grocery delivery service BigBasket and smaller rival Grofers India Pvt. Ltd. have begun talks on a possible merger , Indian newspaper Mint reported on Wednesday, citing sources.

If the merger goes through, SoftBank Group , which is an existing investor in Grofers', will participate in a $60 million to $100 million funding round in the merged company, the report added.

The talks, which are in early stages, may value BigBasket at about $700 million to $800 million, while Grofers could be valued at $150 million to $200 million, Mint added.

Online grocery sales are a fast growing segment in India's e-commerce industry as more consumers log in to internet for their purchases.

Nintendo Might Be Preparing a Mini SNES For the Holiday Season

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Last week, Nintendo dealt a crushing blow to retro gaming fans when it announced that it was discontinuing the uber-popular NES Classic Edition . We're still not sure what Nintendo was thinking-most companies do not choose to discontinue products that get such great reviews and sell out immediately and consistently across the globe-but the good news is, we might see a mini Super Nintendo at the end of the year.

According to Eurogamer -a publication with an excellent track record for this sort of thing-"sources close to Nintendo" confirmed that a mini SNES is planned for a Christmas launch. Eurogamer says that its sources indicate development is well on its way.

In fact, Eurogamer's sources say that the development of the mini SNES may have led to the discontinuation of the NES Classic Edition:

Nintendo's plans for SNES mini are also a major reason why last year's NES mini did not see a reprieve from discontinuation, Eurogamer understands, despite the latter's continued popularity and sell-out status.

Nintendo said that it never expected the NES Classic Edition to be "an ongoing, long-term product," and was caught off guard by its success.

Hopefully, when it comes time for a mini SNES, the company will have learned its lesson. Last fall, Andrew Liszewski and I compiled our list of the 30 games Nintendo should include on a mini SNES . And if you're not content waiting for Nintendo to release an official mini SNES console-that may or may not stay in production long enough for anyone who isn't hoarding them for eBay to buy-you can always build your own Rasberry Pi-based console .

Everyone loved the NES Classic Edition. Nintendo, I implore you, don't fuck with our hearts and actually do a mini SNES the right way.

[ Eurogamer ]

Scientists Are Making Horrible Red-Eye Mutant Wasps Because Why the Hell Not

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Oh fuck this (image: Akbari lab, UC Riverside)

Listen, scientists. I appreciate what you do, and boy I sure do love that evidence-based pursuit of knowledge, but did you have to make mutant wasps ? Did you?

The Nasonia vitripennis wasps' genomes happen to be one of the most studied of the order of insects that includes wasps, bees and ants , since they're super easy to breed and __play around with in the lab. But as a new paper points out, no one's successfully messed around with these wasps' DNA yet. So, why not be the first, the team of scientists from UC Riverside and Claremont McKenna probably said while engineering the wasps' eyes to be bright red.

The horrible process perfectly complemented N. vitripennis' horrible lifecycle: After the males and females mate, the female looks for a fly pupae to inject with her eggs, because this is a bug that uses another species' children's corpses as an external uterus. The scientists allowed their subjects to deposit some eggs inside some pupae, then took the fly sarcophagi, removed the eggs, and injected the future wasps with the custom gene as part of the CRISPR/Cas-9 system, the popular and easy-to-use tool that's essentially scissors and a glue stick for DNA. The scientists returned the eggs to the pupae, and after just 19 days-bam! Mutant wasp babies.

The change worked, and the normally black-eyed wasps now had bright red eyes, according to the research published today in the journal Scientific Reports. The wasps look pretty cool, to be honest, but man oh man do I hate wasps.

Mutations like these happen to be heritable, which would conceivably allow scientists to create stocks of mutant wasps should they require lots of them. That's nice, but the researchers do point out some drawbacks: Some of the CRISPR/Cas9 components were lethal to wasps, so there was a sort of trade off where more successful gene editing meant fewer wasps and vice versa. Plus, while this mutation worked well, editing other genes might kill the wasps (or worse).

Now, the researchers say this is one of the first times scientists have done a mutation like this in the Hymenoptera order (the one that includes bees, wasps and ants). It's not the first time, though-Japanese researchers have previously used CRISPR to edit honeybee genomes . But ultimately, since the N. vitripennis wasp has become such a useful lab animal, making the most popular gene editing tool work alongside it is incredibly useful for the slew of further experiments you might want to do to them. It might also help the researchers understand the bugs' equally strange method of procreating-unfertilized eggs become males, while fertilized eggs become females with twice the number of chromosomes.

Cool, great, science , woo. Ok, phew. Wasps are. So. Scary. And now they somehow got even scarier.  

[ Scientific Reports ]

Holiday Inn Cops to Massive Credit Card Data Breach

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It seems like every day there's news of another significant data breach, so here's today's: An internal investigation by the InterContinental Hotel Group, which owns Holiday Inn, has revealed that guests at more than a thousand of their hotels had their credit card details stolen. The company identified malware on front desk systems used between September 29 and December 29 in 2016, but that malware may not have been erased until the investigation was completed in March 2017.

The malware obtained data from credit cards including cardholders' names, credit card numbers, expiration dates and security codes.

Back in December, KrebsOnSecurity first reported that experts had identified a pattern of breaches at hotels. In February, IHG told Krebs that it had only identified a dozen  affected hotels. The final number, it turns out, was just a bit higher: 1,175 hotels were affected, according to Computerworld , all in the United States and Puerto Rico.

IHG's lookup tool , which Computerworld accurately calls "ridiculous," allows users to look up hotels by city and state, making it very hard to get a complete list or look up a large number of hotels, if you travel a lot. The page also contains a caveat that a "small percentage of IHG-branded franchise properties did not participate in the investigation," which is definitely not enough information.

The company advises customers to contact their bank and "remain vigilant" for fraudulent charges.

This type of fraud, where malware or other means are used to obtain card data and then used without the card itself (known as card-not-present or CNP fraud) increased 40 percent in 2016 according to a study performed by Javelin Strategy & Research. In 2015, Target agreed to a $10 million settlement for a 2013 breach that affected more than 70 million people.

Is the Xiaomi Mi 6 same as the Huawei Honor 8?

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Xiaomi was tipped to be the Apple of China back when it was starting to become popular. The company, with its range of affordable smartphones that did not compromise on the hardware and features sat plump on top of the market. But in 2016, a shakeup happened in the smartphone market in China. In the second quarter of 2016, according to analyst firm IDC , Shenzhen-based Huawei peaked overshadowing Xiaomi in terms of shipment volumes. That meant more people in China bought Huawei phones than ones made by Xiaomi.

With the Mi 6 which was unveiled in Beijing today , Xiaomi aims to clinch back its position on top. The phone is Xiaomi's flagship for this year and succeeds the highly successful Mi 5. Now, unlike the highly experimental Mi Mix which stunned the world with its bezel-less design and ceramic build, these flagships have been more mainstream, packing cutting edge hardware and incorporating the most demanded features to offer a package that is both affordable and attractive. The Mi 6 ships with the top-end Snapdragon 835 processor which is coupled with 6GB of RAM with a 5.15-inch IPS LCD display on top and dual cameras on the back.

Fancy Camera Maker Slaps Name on a Phone With a Totally Garbage Camera

Xiaomi was tipped to be the Apple of China back when it was starting to become popular. The company, with its range of affordable smartphones that did not compromise on the hardware and features sat plump on top of the market. But in 2016, a shakeup happened in the smartphone market in China. In the second quarter of 2016, according to analyst firm IDC, Shenzhen-based Huawei peaked overshadowing Xiaomi in terms of shipment volumes. That meant more people in China bought Huawei phones than ones made by Xiaomi.

Now, dual cameras are what helped Huawei take the top spot. Apart from the iPhone 7 Plus, Huawei is among the most accomplished in terms of dual camera technology courtesy the expertise it has thanks to a collaboration with legendary smartphone maker Leica. So, it's no wonder that Xiaomi, which is now chasing after Huawei, will look to beat Huawei at its own game. And it has. At least on paper. The Mi 6 is the first 5.15-inch phone to ship with the same camera as the iPhone 7 Plus. Twin 12-megapixel sensors- one wide-angle, another telephoto, allowing 2X optical zoom. But in its quest to trump over Huawei, did Xiaomi become Huawei?

A closer look at the overall design aesthetics and the materials used to make the Mi 6 reveals lots of similarities with Huawei's Honor 8 .

Let's start off with the common thread between the two- the dual cameras. Both phones have the cameras seamlessly integrated into the body with the ugly camera bump avoided. They are even positioned the same at the back. Both phones have the camera sensors located at the top left.

Even the dimensions are essentially the same. Both the phones have the same thickness of 7.5mm while the Mi 6 weighs a tad bit more because of the bigger 3,350mAh battery.

The Honor 8 touts a design involving an diamond-cut aluminium frame sandwiched between two 2.5D contoured glass which renders excellent ergonomics when the phone is cradled in our palms. The glass cover on the front and back is made to go through a 15-layer crafting process which ensures the glass catch light but isn't too shiny. The Mi 6, too uses similar materials in its design. The Mi 6 touts 3D curved glass on all four sides which renders the rounded corners with excellent ergonomics. There is a glossy, stainless steel outline running around the edges which Xiaomi claims is resistant to wear and tear, meaning the phone will look just as new even after some months of rough use. As a result, it could be argued that Xiaomi took cues from the design of the Honor 8 and attempted to refine it to make it more premium.

Gone are the days when it was hard to tell two phones apart because of the same hardware everyone used. With the spec-sheet war over, the attention is now on improving the usability and the design of the smartphone becomes the prime spot for battle. As a result, it's no surprise that Xiaomi has trained its eyes on one of the most ergonomically comfortable phones out there, which also happens to be from its closest rival in the Chinese market.

Critics will argue that the Mi 6 essentially competes with the iPhone 7 Plus courtesy the similar dual camera tech and the missing 3.5mm headphone jack. But it doesn't need to. And in all probability, Xiaomi doesn't intend to either. It makes more sense for the company to compete with Huawei, its closest rival, and with Oppo and Vivo becoming more popular than the both of them , it is only fair for Xiaomi to concentrate on its own market than have ambitions that can prove to be too lofty.

At Least Climate Change Will Bring More Icebergs to Kitesurf Over Like a Badass

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Climate change threatens to affect everything from the food we eat , to straight-up making the planet inhabitable for humanity. But our self-wrought apocalypse isn't all bad. As the ice caps keep crumbling , they're creating lots of icebergs we can use for badass kitesurfing stunts .

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Geza Sholtz headed to Greenland to capture these amazing shots of kitesurfing around giant mountains of floating ice, but give it a few years and icebergs will be making their way down to more temperate climates for those who'd prefer not to freeze. Don't wait too long, though, because those ice caps aren't going to last forever .

[ YouTube ]

'Facebook Killer' found dead after police chase

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The man known as the 'Facebook Killer' was found dead after a brief police pursuit in the US state of Pennsylvania , authorities said on Tuesday.

Steve Stephens had been the object of a multi-state manhunt since Sunday, when he murdered an elderly man in Cleveland, Ohio, and then posted video of the crime on Facebook, Efe news agency reported.

The 37-year-old shooter , who appeared to choose his victim at random, also posted that he had killed 12 people in all and vowed to continue killing.

"'Facebook Killer' Steve Stephens was spotted this morning by PSP members in Erie County. A traffic stop was attempted and, after a brief pursuit, Stephens shot and killed himself," the Pennsylvania State Police said on Twitter.

Erie County is in the northwestern corner of the state, roughly 100 miles (160 km) northeast of Cleveland.

Police said that Stephens was found dead in the same vehicle he was driving when he shot and killed Robert Godwin, 74.

The FBI joined state authorities in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Michigan, and New York in the search for Stephens, offering a reward of $50,000 for information leading to the suspect's apprehension.

Before murdering Godwin, Stephens had written on his Facebook page that he wanted to kill someone out of rage toward his ex-girlfriend.

Authorities have found no evidence of other victims besides Godwin.

Cockroaches are the common reason for your PS4s screwing up

Why Progressive Web Apps could be a threat to mobile apps

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Google is all set to do to mobile apps what Steve Jobs did to WAP-based browsers. Make them obsolete. In the latest beta update to Chrome, Google said it will be integrating progressive web apps into the Android operating system in a more deeper way, down to the system level. So much so that they will almost be indistinguishable from the native apps stored on your phone.

If you have ever used Flipkart’s mobile website or even Freecharge’s for that matter, you are already familiar with progressive web apps or PWAs. They load instantly, even when there’s little to no network, respond seamlessly to your flicks and swishes and feel just like using a native app. In essence, these are very much like mobile apps but doesn’t come with the baggage of taking up precious storage on your phone.

“In the next few weeks, we’ll be rolling out a new version of this experience in Chrome beta. With this new version, once a user adds a Progressive Web App to their Home screen, Chrome will integrate it into Android in a much deeper way than before,” said the Chromium blog.

The web app could previously be pinned on the home screen through Chrome shortcuts, but now these PWAs will be more integrated deep enough for them to appear on the app drawer as well as on the Settings app and allow them to interact with other apps installed in the system. A long press on them will surface notifications.

A move like this could potentially disrupt the mobile apps-space. If you have the option of getting the same experience of a native app from a mobile website, why take the pains of downloading it?

In fact, with app downloads slowing down globally, PWAs could be the final nail in the coffin. Opera’s VP for South and South East Asia, Sunil Kamath pointed out to Gizmodo India that such a move could be beneficial especially in a market like India.

“PWA could be an interesting trade-off for a market like India and 2017 could be a year it takes off. The dynamics are quite suitable for this market. If you go beyond tier 1 cities, the inertia to download an app over a data network is still an issue and the network itself is a bit questionable in India,” said Kamath in a conversation which happened a couple of weeks before Google announced the integration of PWAs in the Android app drawer.

Both Google and Microsoft have been hard at work trying to scale down the web to work more like an app. Apps have the advantage of minimal load times while pulling info from the web and displaying it on attractive splash screens. PWAs also do essentially the same, minus the need to install them on your local storage. With Progressive Web Apps and Hosted Web Apps, both Google and Microsoft have been pushing for this paradigm for quite a while.

Flipkart already uses Google’s platform for its Flipkart Lite web app with an enhanced mobile experience that completely does away with the need to install the native app.

"We know that everyone needs to build mobile-first experiences. With Flipkart Lite, we've developed a powerful, technically-advanced web app that performs as well as our native app. We now feel we have the best of both worlds,” said Amar Nagaram, an Engineering Director at Flipkart at the time told Gizmodo India.

Opera too have been at the thick of web apps for quite some time. Former CEO and co-founder Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner said, “ the idea behind progressive web apps has been around for many years and this is yet another effort to push it forward. We believe in this direction and hope to see even wider adoption.”

Opera launched the Opera Platform way back in 2003 for exactly this reason. It was a web-based UI for phones. To leverage elements like web widgets, web OSes, smart TVs, etc.

“This was all way ahead of its time and it is surprising that it has taken so long for Google to implement it. So for me, the time where Web applications were at the level of native applications was 14 years ago,” he claimed.

The slow uptake in the adoption of web-apps may be attributed to higher development costs as compared to a standard mobile website.

Tetzchner’s new company, Vivaldi which is coming out with a new browser that is due to hit smartphones sometime this year may also not come with support for PWAs from the beginning, pointing towards the incremental resources needed to enable support for PWAs.

Mozilla’s Firefox OS which was largely a cloud-based OS leveraging web apps wasn’t quite successful for this very reason.

However, considering the might of Google and Microsoft, along with innovators like Opera pushing hard for the adoption of PWAs, 2017 might just be the year web-apps finally breach the mainstream and become the status quo.

See Why Progressive Web Apps could be a threat to mobile apps >>

Google's Plan to Build Ad-Blocking Into Chrome Could Be a Very Good Thing

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It's not just you, online ads are getting worse. Auto-play video has become a standard, pop-ups are back in a big way and those inline ads seem accidentally clickier all the time. According to the Wall Street Journal , Google is well aware of this and it's planning to add a built-in ad blocker to the Chrome browser. If the plan is handled correctly, it could force sites to give everyone a better experience.

The Journal reports that sources familiar with Google's plan say that both the mobile and desktop versions could soon feature an ad-blocking system that would be turned on by default. But it wouldn't filter out all ads, only the ones that don't comply with the Coalition for Better Ads list of standards . For instance, auto-playing video ads with sound and large sticky ads would be out. The company is reportedly still deciding whether or not to block individual ads or all advertising on any site that doesn't meet the "threshold of consumer acceptability."

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But why would a company that makes billions on advertising add a feature to its own free product that would block advertising? Simply put, Google doesn't want more people downloading ad-blockers that it has no control over. Google has seen the reports that as many as 26% of desktop users have some sort of software to hide advertisements and it doesn't want that number getting any larger.

The online analytics firm StatCounter claims that Chrome has gobbled up a little over 52 percent of the worldwide browser market share. Its closest competitor is Safari with 14 percent and the rest are struggling with single digits. If Google decides that its browser will only allow ads that meet those predetermined standards, any website that wants to survive will comply.

Another thing that Google doesn't like is that services like Adblock Plus offer programs that allow companies to pay their way onto an "Acceptable Ads" list. The search giant currently pays Adblock Plus's parent company for exactly that. But that also raises some alarm bells when it comes to Google's consolidation of power in this situation. Would Chrome ever offer its own whitelisting service or will it stick to predefined standards set by an independent organization?

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If implemented correctly, this feature wouldn't just benefit Google. All online users would get a better experience and fewer people would download ad blockers. Considering that most of the world's major websites live and die based on ads (including this one), this is an effort to save the web as we know it.

According to the sources, Google could launch the feature in a matter of weeks or decide to kill it altogether.

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[ Wall Street Journal ]

Sony Rivals Canon's Best Camera with the Badass A9

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For a few years now, Sony's been the most innovative name in the camera game, besting incumbents like Nikon and Canon in several categories with awesome point-and-shoots, like the RX100 line, and the truly game-changing A7 full-frame mirrorless line. Far from just an innovator, there are signs the company's efforts are finding an audience: A few days ago Sony claimed to have overtaken Nikon as the second best-selling producer of full-frame cameras, the big expensive cameras preferred by anyone who makes their living shooting pictures. But Canon, with its super fast 1D series of full frame cameras, is still king when it comes to big, badass professional cameras used for shooting sports and NatGeo covers. Well, until now- Sony's new A9 has all the trappings of a a dethroner.

Sony's big __play on the A9 is the insanely fast focus and capture speeds. The A9 has a 24-megapixel full-frame, stacked CMOS sensor. The additional "stack" means there's memory built directly into the sensor, so it can capture and process images at insane speeds-like it can shoot 20 frames per second when it's in full electronic mode and there's no moving shutter. Its rival, the Canon 1D X Mark II shoots just 16fps. Moreover the A9 can shoot that fast while also constantly focusing. So if the sportsmen are sportsing in your direction you shouldn't lose focus like you potentially could with the 1D.

The 9's sensor is a moderate 24.2MP. That's about on par with the 22.3MP sensor in the Canon 5D Mark III and smaller than the 30.4MP sensor in the Canon 5D Mark IV, but it's actually bigger than what's found in the latest Canon 1D, the 1D X Mark II. That $6000 camera has a 20.2MP sensor.

Sony's also announced a 100-400mm lens. Just in case you weren't sure this camera is made for sports and wildlife shooters.

And while the Sony will definitely be a lighter camera to hold than anything Canon makes, that might not matter to the A9's target audience. Photographers are gear heads, but they're also creatures of habit. They have difficultly stomaching small changes in the ergonomics of their favorite camera body. Telling them to drop everything, sell off their current body, lenses, and batteries, and leap into the arms of Sony, requires them to make a major leap of faith. Even if the A9 is $1500 cheaper than the 1D X Mark II.

What's more, there's no telling if the A9 really holds up to the demands of a professional. Sure Sony has been on a role with cameras, but the requirements of photographers shooting high-intensity scenes like sports are crazy. Even if Canon-and Nikon of that matter-haven't drastically evolved their industrial design, well, ever, their professional cameras are time tested and proven.

Pre-orders for the A9 start Friday and it's going to retail for $4500 in the US. That's an appealing price that puts it right between the $3500 5D Mark IV and the $6000 1D X Mark II. With the features the A9 is offering at that price point it's enough to at least tempt even the most loyal Canon fans. I sure as hell know I covet the thing.