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Liquid nitrogen is an endless source of fun. You can freeze things and smash things into pieces. Or you could pour it onto things and then watch the smoke monster move around and then smash things into pieces. Or you could dunk things in it and then watch the smoke disappear and then smash things into pieces. You get the point.
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When they appear in the wild they can be devastating, but in a controlled environment fire tornadoes are not only mesmerizing to watch, it turns out a new iteration might also provide a more eco-friendly way to deal with man-made disasters like oil spills.
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New research shows that male dogs have been suffering from a rapid decline in fertility over the past three years, and all signs are pointing to contaminated pet foods as the culprit. The University of Nottingham researchers say a similar effect may be causing decreases in human male fertility.
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The first time we heard about Prime Air it was emblazoned on drones Jeff Bezos showed off for 60 Minutes in 2013. Now Amazon is revealing the logo on a flying machine that operates on a much larger scale. Amazon One is just one of its 11 dedicated planes, and the Boeing 767-300 will be flying this weekend at a Seattle airshow. The company says that maintaining its own air cargo network — the planes are leased from shipping partners, with plans to expand to 40 over the next couple of years — will help it keep shipping speeds up.
While we’re still waiting to hear more about those delivery drones, Amazon has made several moves to take control over other steps in the delivery process. The mega-retailer is getting involved in oceanic freight shipping, and rolled out thousands of Amazon-branded semi-trailers at the end of last year, around the same time rumors that it would lease jets started popping up.
Source: Amazon
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By Nick Guy
This post was done in partnership with The Wirecutter, a buyer’s guide to the best technology. Read the full article here.
Bluetooth trackers are small gadgets you attach to important items you’re worried about losing (such as keys or a bag) that let you use an app on your smartphone to locate those items—usually with an audible tone on the tracker itself and a map on your phone’s screen. After 10 hours of research and another 10 hours of hands-on testing, we found the best Bluetooth tracker for most people is the second-generation Tile. Not only is it the least expensive of the trackers we tested—with an even lower price if you buy multiple Tiles—but it also has the longest range, making it the most useful for finding your stuff.
After checking Amazon and Google for major players in this category, we used comparative reviews from The Wall Street Journal and Yahoo to compile a list of five models to test. We quickly dismissed the XY Find It (which has since been replaced by a newer version we haven’t yet tested)​ because it can’t ping your phone, and the Pebblebee Honey because it uses a silent push alert that’s all but worthless. We were left with three models: Tile, Protag Duet, and TrackR Bravo.
We went to a park to test how far away we could move a connected smartphone from each tracker before the Bluetooth connection was lost; longer ranges are better because your phone is more likely to stay connected to the tracker and thus help you find your lost item. After ensuring that only one tracker was paired to the test phone at a time, we set that tracker down on a bench, then we walked away while measuring the distance using a measuring wheel. Once the tracker’s app showed the tracker as out of range, we recorded the distance before walking back toward the tracker until the connection was reestablished, and then recorded that distance. We also tested the loudness of each tracker’s alarm and incorporated those findings in our recommendations.
The best Bluetooth tracker for most people is the second-generation Tile. It maintained its connection to a smartphone at the longest range, and reconnected from the farthest distance. We got about 120 feet away before the connection was lost with the Tile, while the Protag Duet disconnected at 84 and the TrackR at 56. As for how close we had to be before the tracker and phone reconnected, the Tile at 40 feet was right behind the Duet at 42 feet. The TrackR came in a distant third at 19 feet.
Though the Tile’s alarm isn’t the loudest—the Protag Duet was louder in absolute terms by about 7 decibels—we could hear it better in a quiet park than we could hear the competition thanks to the tone sequence the company uses. Specifically, we could still hear the Tile’s alarm from about 100 feet away in the park, whereas we couldn’t hear the Protag Duet from more than about 40 feet away. We also like that the Tile keeps making noise until you manually turn it off, whereas the Duet’s tone plays for only 10 seconds. The Tile also has a crowd-finding feature that lets other users of the Tile smartphone app help you locate items that are out of Bluetooth range.
Finally, setup is as easy as it gets, thanks to Tile’s use of Bluetooth LE, which makes connecting devices easier and also extends battery life.
Perhaps the biggest downside to the Tile is its lack of a replaceable battery. When the charge runs out after a year, the hardware is dead. Tile does have a replacement program that’s a pretty good deal: For $12 per Tile–about half the price of a fresh purchase–the company will ship you a replacement, and it’s the most current version of the hardware at that.
The company will include an envelope for you to mail back the old Tile for recycling, which we’re happy to see. Yes, it’s more expensive than just putting a new battery in one of the competing trackers, and it’s more wasteful than if you could simply replace the battery, but getting new hardware every year is a big plus.
Although the Protag Duet was the runner-up in our distance test and a favorite among reviewers, we can’t recommend it based on both our own testing and really, really bad Amazon customer reviews. For example, when we paired the Duet with a Galaxy S6, the Protag app showed the device’s location in Africa, instead of our actual location of Buffalo, New York; and one of our review units also made a weird clicking noise. On Amazon, 49 percent of the 154 reviews are one star. We rarely see any sort of product with ratings that bad. Most of the complaints are about the build quality, reliability of the Bluetooth connection, false positives (the tracker’s geofencing alarm going off even when the Duet is in range), and poor geolocating.
TrackR released a new version of the Bravo at the beginning of October 2015. It supposedly had improved range and a louder alarm than the previous version. In our testing, however, the Bluetooth range was poor, even with the new hardware: The TrackR Bravo disconnected from our test phone at less than half the distance of the Tile (56 feet) and didn’t reconnect until it was only 19 feet away. These results were terrible compared with the other models we tested.
We also considered testing the Pebblebee Honey and the XY Find It. The Pebblebee Honey has some great attributes, at least at first glance. The battery is replaceable, and the tracker has a crowd-finding feature. Unfortunately, when you press the tracker’s button to trigger an alert on a missing phone, it sends a silent text alert, rather than playing an audible tone. A message popping up on the screen doesn’t do much good when you’re looking for the handset.
The XY Find It, on the other hand, offers proper geofencing, something most of the competition lacks. But the tracker has no way of pinging a paired phone, disqualifying it from a top spot.
This guide may have been updated by The Wirecutter. To see the current recommendation, please go here.
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Japan and technology are often mentioned in the same breath. Bullet trains, robots, only-in-Japan phones that’ll never leave the island, digital pop-idols and so on. Tech legends like Sony, Nintendo, Panasonic, Sharp, Nikon, Canon, Toyota and more were born here, but most have had mixed fortunes in recent decades. Some missed out on (or were too late to) the smartphone boom, or suffered from declining point-and-shoot-camera sales. Others simply faced stronger competition from Korean and Chinese companies. Smartphones, wearables and VR have generally come from elsewhere. Japan’s reputation for getting the newest technology first doesn’t ring very true these days — in fact, those aforementioned tech giants have a reputation for being a risk-averse and slow to change. (Many, if not most companies still request that I fax over my RSVP for their press conferences and meetings. I kid you not.) Then there’s Softbank.
Softbank is now best known as one of Japan’s top three phone carriers, but at a time when Japan’s big tech firms are shrinking (or pairing off), it’s launched a humanoid robot, teamed up with Honda to make smarter cars and just bought out the company that designs the chips for most smartphones — including the iPhone.
But first, there’s Pepper. Years after Sony’s Aibo robot faded into obscurity and Honda’s Asimo walked, waved — and not much else — the idea of a personable home robot was replaced with faceless automated vacuum cleaners. Then SoftBank, with no history of robots, announced a large humanoid robot that would come to its phone shops — and even homes.
Early adopters and companies alike seemed to love it. Despite Pepper costing more than a high-end laptop, the first waves of the four-foot robot sold out in minutes. Japanese banks and companies like Nescafe and Pizza Hut all claimed one to help project their images of a futuristic company hiring android help. Pepper is far from perfect, but SoftBank managed to reinvigorate the robot dream in a country whose love for robots has never faltered — as well as inspiring a new generation of rivals. It’s an effort to restart the robot revolution. It’s still not the bot of our dreams, but it’s exciting, OK?
Last month SoftBank announced it’s buying ARM, the UK company responsible for the reference processor designs found in nearly all smartphones. Processors designed by the firm also power a lot of lightweight VR headsets, wearables and and myriad Internet of Things devices. It’s a powerful move for the company: Softbank is buying a major part of the tech supply chain, one that even Apple depends on for chip blueprints that it further develops.
While Internet of Things is taking its time becoming a true revolution, SoftBank is well-placed to profit from it when it does. "ARM will be an excellent strategic fit within the SoftBank group as we invest to capture the very significant opportunities provided by the ‘Internet of Things,"’ CEO Masayoshi Son said in a statement about the purchase. "This is one of the most important acquisitions we have ever made."
In the same week as said "most important acquisition ever," Son took to the stage with Honda’s CEO to announce a partnership aimed at developing cars that drivers can speak and interact with, channeling the same cloud-based processes found inside Pepper the robot. Details aren’t all that specific, but the companies say they’re looking into combining the technology so that cars could speak and interact with the driver, assess the driver’s emotions through vehicle sensors and cameras and offer support during long trips or while trying to park.
Perhaps even weirder: Honda and Softbank hope that by letting mobility products "grow up" while sharing various experiences with the owner, the user will form a stronger emotional attachment with the car. SoftBank talked a similar game before it launched Pepper, although we’re still waiting for a true reaction to our illogical human emotions.
Softbank isn’t new to Japan’s tech scene. Founded back in 1981, it’s changed and adapted what it sells and deals in. CEO Son started the company specializing as a software distributor and soon launched PC magazines at the start of the personal computing boom — a lucrative time to do so.
The company is also used to taking risks. After struggling for years to enter Japan’s carrier market, SoftBank acquired Vodafone Japan in 2006, and in 2008 it was the first (and only) phone operator in the country to offer the iPhone 3G — an exclusive it kept until 2011. Being the exclusive carrier for the iPhone sounds like common sense, but at the time it was surprisingly risky. Japan is the country of the "Galapagos" phones: flip-phones that had high-resolution cameras, TV tuners, GPS and music downloads for years before the iPhone arrived on the scene.
Apple’s (innovative but still new) PC-style Safari browser didn’t work with Japan’s already well-established mobile sites, and there weren’t even any emoji (gasp!). Phones with embedded NFC chips for contactless payments had already existed in Japan since 2004. To many Japanese phone users, it didn’t look quite as revolutionary as the rest of the world saw it.
History explained the rest: The iPhone was a huge success and helped SoftBank as a carrier gain a foothold in the Japan’s competitive phone market. Softbank’s long-running series of hugely popular TV ads ensure that everyone in Japan knows the company. The ads are weird, confident, funny — and now all the other native phone carriers are trying to copy the same magic for their own advertisements. Softbank-owned Sprint even tried to repurpose them in the US — even if it didn’t work out so well.
Softbank has so far struggled to turn around the American carrier, but it forms just one part of CEO Son’s bid to make Softbank a truly global organization. The company, primarily focused on Japan, also owns a substantial 28 percent share of China’s e-commerce giant Alibaba — it’s like Amazon, but way bigger. And of course, it now owns the UK-based ARM.
The gambles are paying off: SoftBank announced it increased profits 19 percent last quarter. And while the most recent moves may seem hugely disconnected, combining its moves into artificial intelligence (Pepper, autonomous cars) with ownership of ARM (and the chips it designs) Softbank could eventually be the company that truly makes internet of things a … thing.
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This article has been updated with comments from FCA.
It seems the news regarding vehicle hacking continues to get worse, especially when it comes to products from Fiat Chrysler Automobiles. Last year, a Jeep Cherokee in St. Louis, Missouri, was wirelessly hacked from Pittsburgh. Nissan had to shut down its Leaf app because of vulnerabilities. Now, a pair of hackers in Houston, Texas, stole more than 30 Jeeps over a six-month period. The two were arrested by police last Friday while attempting to steal another vehicle.
ABC 13 in Houston reports that police had been following Michael Arcee and Jesse Zelay for several months but were unable to catch them in the act until now. The two were using a laptop to connect to and start a vehicle. It’s unclear if the connection was through OBD II or USB or, but FCA says that these thefts were not related to the UConnect remote hacks from last year.
According to ABC 13, Homeland Security is investigating more than 100 stolen FCA vehicles that they believe were hacked using similar software. After their theft, the vehicles were brought across the border to Mexico. FCA is currently conducting an internal investigation into the matter.
After this article was posted, the company reached out to Autoblog, stating "FCA US takes the safety and security of its customers seriously and incorporates security features in its vehicles that help to reduce the risk of unauthorized and unlawful access to vehicle systems and wireless communications. FCA US has been cooperating with Houston Police Department since they first started the investigation. This investigation is ongoing and as such, the Company has no further comment."
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Source: ABC 13
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