Day: October 26, 2017

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Amazon Prime members won’t have to pay for ‘premium’ Alexa skills

Amazon’s latest perk for Prime subscribers? "Free" access to some premium Alexa skills. It’s starting small, with Prime members getting access to an additional six Double Jeopardy! clues within the Jeopardy! skill. If you aren’t ponying up for Prime, but are smitten with the game, those half-dozen hints will run you $1.99 a month, and you can subscribe to them directly within the skill itself.

Developers beyond Sony Pictures Television won’t have access to the skill-subscription tools just yet, but Amazon says it’ll let you know when that’s ready. Like TechCrunch notes, this is interesting for a few reasons; app subscriptions themselves, and how they’ll potentially shape the future of the Alexa business model chief among them. Tying the subscription to a Prime membership is a bit odd when you consider that an Echo device is kind of pointless without a Prime subscription as-is, but the company says that not all premium skill experiences will necessarily be free as a part of Prime.

Amazon is still working on a revenue split for developers, too, and told Engadget that it hasn’t finalized its revenue sharing model for that. Typically companies take a 30 percent cut for app sales. If Amazon wants to keep these types of premium skills rolling though, it’ll have to make it worth the extra work for developers.

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Harvard’s new RoboBee can fly in and out of water

Apparently, we haven’t seen RoboBee’s final form yet. Harvard researchers introduced the robot back in 2013 and developed a version that uses static to stick to walls in 2016. Now, the scientists have created an upgraded robotic bee that can fly, dive into water and hop right back up into the air. That’s a lot tougher than it sounds, since the tiny machine is only two centimeters tall and is about one-fifteenth the weight of a penny. For such a small robot, swimming in water is like swimming in molasses and breaking through the water’s surface is akin to breaking through a brick wall.

To solve the issue, the researchers from Harvard Wyss Institute and John A. Paulson School of Engineering designed new mechanisms that make it possible for the RoboBee to transition seamlessly from water to air. First, they had to figure out the right flapping speeds for its wings in aerial and aquatic environments. By using a combination of theoretical modeling and experimental data, they determined that 220 to 300 hertz is perfect for aerial travel, while 9 to 13 hertz is the perfect speed in the water.

Once that was done, they had to figure out how the machine can break surface tension to be able to get out of the water. They came up with a two-step system: First, the machine collects water into a buoyancy chamber as it swims to the surface. An electrolytic plate inside the chamber converts the water into oxyhydrogen, which provides enough extra buoyancy for the robot’s wings to pop out of the water. A sparker in the chamber then ignites the combustible oxyhydrogen, turning it into fuel that gives RoboBee the boost it needs to be able to get back into the air.

In the future, microrobots can be used for search missions, deployed to far-off places for surveillance before sending in bigger machines to rescue people. The RoboBee team hopes their work "investigating tradeoffs like weight and surface tension can inspire future multi-functional microrobots — ones that can move on complex terrains and perform a variety of tasks."

Via: Boston Globe

Source: Harvard Wyss Institute

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‘Bury Me, My Love’ brings a Syrian refugee’s tale to your phone

After creating a big buzz within the indie gaming community, interactive dialogue-driven game Bury Me, My Love launches today on iOS and Android. Based on real life stories, the game tells the tale of Nour and her husband Majid, both caught up in the violent and dangerous Syrian conflict. Nour has decided to flee their war-torn country while Majid stays behind to care for elderly relatives. With only a smartphone to communicate with her husband, she begins her perilous journey, telling Majid a Syrian farewell saying: "Bury me, my love" (which means, in essence, "don’t die before me").

Now, taking the role of Majid, it’s your responsibility to help guide and support Nour during her journey. She’ll ask you for advice on the many (often upsetting) decisions she’ll have to make along the way, and responds in pseudo-real time, which means you’ll often be left wondering if Nour is alright, and if not, if your suggestions are to blame. In this game, as in life faced by real refugees, every decision has consequences.

The game was a highlight of this year’s IndieCade, IDFA and A AMAZE independent game festivals, with developers hoping that the gamification of the humanitarian disaster will bring more awareness to the still ongoing issue. Producer Florent Maurin, from the game’s studio The Pixel Hunt, said, "Games do not have to be fun and trivial. Like every medium, games can tackle any topic. Making this game changed the way I think about migrants. I hope it might have a similar effect on players." It’s available from the App Store and Google Play now for $3/£3.

Source: Bury me, my Love

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‘Find It On eBay’ searches with pictures instead of words

Finding stuff you actually want to buy on eBay is getting a whole lot easier thanks to the online shopping site’s new Image Search function. Instead of trying every possible search term combination to come up with the exact thing you want, you can now simply upload a photo (Image Search) or click "Find It On eBay" when browsing another website, and the eBay app will surface relevant listings. Find It On eBay is now live on Android, while Image Search is live on both Android and iOS.

The feature uses a deep learning model called a convolutional neural network, which sorts through eBay’s billion+ listings to find items based on visual similarity. And as shoppers continue to search with pictures, it gets smarter, improving the results it returns, meaning you’ll no longer have to ask strangers where they got their shoes from — you can just snap a covert picture instead.

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Verizon creates new $10 monthly charge to remove video throttling


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Verizon Wireless customers will soon regain the ability to stream mobile video at the highest resolution, but it’s going to cost extra. Starting November 3, Verizon Wireless customers will have the option of paying another $10 a month to remove the cap on video resolution.

This is the latest in a series of changes at Verizon related to unlimited data plans and video quality. In February, Verizon offered unlimited data plans for the first time in years, boasting that it would not impose limits on video quality (unlike some other carriers).

But that changed in August when Verizon imposed video limits on both unlimited data plans and plans with monthly data caps. This resulted in a somewhat confusing array of options.

Since then, smartphones on limited data plans have received video resolution of up to 720p. The “Go Unlimited” data plan ($75 a month for a single line) removes the monthly data cap but throttles video to 480p on phones. To get video of up to 720p and unlimited data on the same plan, Verizon customers have to pay $85 a month for the “Beyond Unlimited” package, which includes the 720p video on phones and 15GB worth of high-speed tethering a month.

Starting next week, the option to pay $10 extra for better-than-720p video will be available for plans with data caps and the Beyond Unlimited plan, but not for the Go Unlimited plan, which remains stuck at 480p.

“The $10 for premium streaming is available per smartphone line on any plan except for Go Unlimited and prepaid,” a Verizon spokesperson told Ars. “This includes Beyond Unlimited as well as all of our Verizon Plans (S, M, L, etc.).”

The video limits are imposed on cellular data, including when you share your phone’s Internet connection with another device. That means if you have a 480p or 720p limit on your phone, a tethered laptop would also get just 480p or 720p video.

Verizon was recently accused of violating net neutrality rules by advocacy group Free Press, but Verizon says it can place a cap on video in a “non-discriminatory” fashion under the rules’ exception for reasonable network management. The net neutrality rules were imposed during the Obama presidency, but the FCC’s current Republican majority has proposed eliminating the rules.

Paying extra for what used to be standard

Paying the new $10 fee will essentially make your plan work the way it did before August—video will be passed along to your phone at its original quality, whether that be 1080p, 4K, or something else.

“Video is delivered in its original definition, up to 4K, and what you see will depend on your phone’s capabilities. To add this feature, simply stop by a store or give us a call,” Verizon said.

If you have a family plan, it would be an extra $10 for each line that gets un-capped video. For a single line, the new $10 charge for higher-resolution video would raise the Beyond Unlimited price to $95 a month before taxes and fees.

Despite the 720p limit on smartphones, Verizon was already allowing video streaming of up to 1080p on tablets. Tablet data service is priced as an add-on to smartphone plans and costs $20 a month.

Verizon told Gizmodo that the new options will allow higher quality streaming on tablets, pushing them above 1080p. It’s not clear whether that would raise the tablet data price from $20 to $30 a month; we’ve asked Verizon and will update this story if we get an answer.

There’s apparently no change to Verizon’s policy that sometimes imposes speed limits on customers who use more than 22GB a month. If you pass the 22GB threshold in any given month and then try to use your phone in a congested network area, you’ll get slower speeds than other customers connecting to the same cell tower. If you’re not in a congested network area, there are no speed restrictions even if you’ve gone above 22GB.

With all these limits, the one thing that is unlimited on Verizon’s unlimited data plans is the amount of data you can use on a smartphone each month. You might run into video restrictions or slower speeds in congested areas, but you can keep using data without paying any monthly overage fees.

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Ryzen Mobile is Launched: AMD APUs for Laptops, with Vega and Updated Zen

The final piece of AMD’s return to high-performance computing is in laptops. While Ryzen, Threadripper, and EPYC have used the 8-core Zeppelin building block for their products, the laptop side of the equation will combine the new high-performance Zen core with the latest Vega graphics in a single piece of silicon. AMD is now set to release the results of their efforts: a single silicon chip offering four Zen cores, up to 10 Vega compute units, and a unified power delivery system all in under 15W, with AMD touting +200% CPU performance and +128% GPU performance over its previous generation of laptop processors. HP, Lenovo and Acer are releasing laptops based on the Ryzen Mobile hardware today (or soon), and we expect to see more OEMs at CES in January with their offerings.

Two APUs Now, More Later

To start, AMD is launching a pair of low-power processors for the laptop market: the Ryzen 7 2700U and the Ryzen 5 2500U. Both of these processors combine four of AMD’s latest Zen cores, with some minor improvements, with AMD’s latest Vega graphics, into a single piece of silicon. These are both 15W processors, using the U-suffixed nomenclature that Intel has popularized for its 15W parts. By developing around a 15W TDP, AMD is aiming for the same range of thin and light notebooks that are currently almost entirely Intel-powered, while also using the Vega graphics architecture as a significant selling point in gaming and enthusiast workload acceleration. AMD has also gone into detail about a number of power-saving technologies that is has developed and implemented to provide better battery life.

AMD Ryzen Mobile APUs
  Ryzen 7 2700U
with Vega 10		 Ryzen 5 2500U
with Vega 8		 FX-9800P
(2015)
CPU Quad-Core with SMT
2.2 GHz Base
3.8 GHz Turbo
Zen Cores, 14nm		 Quad-Core with SMT
2.0 GHz Base
3.8 GHz Turbo
Zen Cores, 14nm		 Dual Module
2.7 GHz Base
3.6 GHz Turbo
Excavator, 28nm
GPU Vega 10
10 CUs (640 SPs)
Up to 1300 MHz		 Vega 8
8 CUs (512 SPs)
Up to 1100 MHz		 GCN 1.2
8 CUs (512 SPs)
Up to 758 MHz
TDP 15W 15W 15W
DRAM Up to DDR4-2400 Up to DDR4-2400 Up to DDR4-1866
L2 Cache 512 KB/core 512 KB/core 1 MB/module
L3 Cache 1 MB/core 1 MB/core –
PCIe Lanes ? ? 8 x PCIe 3.0
Die Size ? ? 250.4 mm2
Transistors ? ? 3.1 billion
Launch October 2017 October 2017 May 2016

Both APUs will have four CPU cores and simultaneous multi-threading, giving eight threads total. The rated base clock for the processors will be in the 2.0 GHz range, although AMD states that the typical all-core turbo will be much higher than this (more about it later). CPU boost frequencies are 3.8 GHz for the Ryzen 7 2700U and 3.6 GHz for the Ryzen 5 2500U, which sound very high for 15W processors but AMD has stated that this frequency combination is more in the efficiency sweet spot for the processor design. Like its competitor, OEMs can use these processors in configurable TDP modes, which AMD states are from 9W to 25W. We are under the impression that these power modes do not change the frequencies, but merely affect the turbo profile which we’ll discuss later.

The four cores will be in a single core complex (CCX), which AMD states will alleviate some of the questions about CCX-to-CCX latency that were present in the dual CCX design for the desktop processors. There is another cutback compared to the desktop: there is only 1MB of L3 cache per core rather than 2MB, giving a total of 4MB of L3 cache. AMD’s Zen cores use L3 victim caches, which for most CPU-based workloads have little effect; however the speed of this L3 will be important when it comes to using the integrated graphics.

The single silicon design has 11 Vega compute units onboard, of which the Ryzen 7 2700U will be able to use 10 of them, and the Ryzen 5 2500U will be able to use 8. These will be called ‘Vega 10’ and ‘Vega 8’ graphics respectively. AMD does not provide the base frequencies for the graphics, but does state that the maximum frequencies for the parts will be 1300 MHz and 1100 MHz respectively. One of AMD’s key discussion points in our briefings was around the ability to shift power between the CPU and the GPU to keep the maximum performance at all times.

Memory support for both processors is up to dual-channel DDR4-2400; although AMD stated that it will be up to the laptop OEMs to decide whether to sell the devices with two memory modules. Some of the feedback the OEMs get is the requirement to ‘potentially’ upgrade the memory inside at a later date, which necessitates shipping single channel devices and leaving a memory slot free, rather than replacing two memory modules at once. The new Ryzen Mobile processors use AMD’s Infinity Fabric interconnect between the CPU and GPU segments, which runs at half the clock rate of the memory, and AMD states it offers better bandwidth and lower latency than PCIe.

Ryzen Mobile-based Laptops Coming to Shelves

When we get the final press releases in hand there will be specific news stories for each of the laptops coming to market, but AMD shared some information ahead of time about how AMD is returning to thin and light notebooks that actually have a proper design ID. As we stated back in our analysis of the Carrizo platform, there were plenty of users who were interested in AMD APUs but in an Envy or a Swift-like chassis, rather than the bulky plastic reduced price parts that vendors were putting out instead. So the big plus here is that we get an HP Envy x360, an Acer Swift 3, and a Lenovo Ideapad 720S with Ryzen Mobile.

Read our news post on the HP Envy X360 with Ryzen Mobile here

The HP Envy is actually the biggest notebook of the three, offering a 15.6-inch 1080p IPS screen and dual-channel DDR4-2400, with a 55.8 Wh battery. Storage will be offered with SSDs up to 512 GB and HDDs up to 1TB, although we are waiting to know if that SSD storage is SATA or PCIe. At just under 5 lbs it is going to be a bit heavy, but the x360 part of the name means it has a rotating hinge, allowing for it to be used as a tablet or a tent, with a touchscreen as well. Power is provided over USB Type-C, which also supports the DisplayPort alt-mode. Pricing will start at $699 and it will be shipping from November.

The Lenovo system is the smaller one, coming in at 2.5 lbs, and offering either a 1080p IPS screen or a 4K (UHD) IPS screen. We were told that this design uses a repurposed chassis from an Intel version, but will be offered with both the Ryzen 7 2700U and the Ryzen 5 2500U processors. As with most popular notebooks, the Ideapad 720S will taper to a point at the edge, but at its thickest point it will be around half-an-inch – it has been a while since we saw an AMD notebook at that size. Lenovo will support a 48 Wh battery and Type-C charging with a DisplayPort alt-mode, with storage up to 1TB of SSD (again, no mention of SATA or PCIe). The downside is perhaps the memory support, at DDR4-2133 and only single channel with no room to upgrade to dual channel. Ultimately Lenovo is going to promote this for productivity that is not memory bandwidth limited over gaming.

The Swift 3 is a little different than the others – we were told that Acer has built this chassis to dissipate 25W of processor power rather than 15W, meaning that Acer is going to be taking advantage of longer turbo modes and better performance numbers than other Ryzen Mobile parts. It will come with a 15-inch 1080p display, although it will not be offered in touch screen, and storage will be up to 256GB of SSD (again, no mention of SATA or PCIe). Memory will be dual channel, although the system will only support 8GB of DDR4-2133, and there is no mention of potential upgradability there – we’ll wait for the final press release.

What Is New with Ryzen Mobile

Aside from the on sheet specifications and upcoming devices that will be using these parts, AMD also provided some performance metrics, some updates to the SenseMI technologies for Ryzen Mobile, as well as a look into the new power regulation system developed for these parts, a lot of which are upgrades to the basic AMD Zen design that will be featured in the next generation of desktop processors. We will cover these in the next few pages.

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NAACP Issues Travel Advisory For American Airlines; Company Agrees To Meeting

An American Airlines airplane takes off from Ronald Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C., last month.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images


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An American Airlines airplane takes off from Ronald Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C., last month.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

The NAACP, the nation’s oldest civil rights organization, has issued an advisory warning black travelers to be cautious about flying on American Airlines. The airline’s chairman, in response, says the company does not “and will not tolerate discrimination of any kind.”

The advisory was issued on Tuesday, and American Airlines responded on Wednesday.

The NAACP described “a pattern of disturbing incidents reported by African-American passengers, specific to American Airlines.” They cited four incidents in particular as examples that “suggest a corporate culture of racial insensitivity and possible racial bias on the part of American Airlines.”

“An African-American man was required to relinquish his purchased seats aboard a flight from Washington, D.C. to Raleigh-Durham, merely because he responded to disrespectful and discriminatory comments directed toward him by two unruly white passengers,” the NAACP said of one incident.

In another case, a black woman with first-class tickets was switched to coach while her white companion remained in first class; two other incidents involved black women removed from flights after making routine complaints or requests.

The “growing list” of such incidents “reflects an unacceptable corporate culture and involves behavior that cannot be dismissed as normal or random,” said Derrick Johnson, president and CEO of the NAACP.

“We are aware of these incidents only because the passengers involved knew their rights, knew to speak up and exercised the courage to do so promptly,” the NAACP writes in the advisory. “We are concerned today that the examples cited herein may represent only the ‘tip of the iceberg’ when it comes to American Airlines’ documented mistreatment of African-American customers.” The organization called for an “audience” with the airline.

In a letter to employees, American Airlines chairman and CEO Doug Parker strongly defended the company’s record of professionalism, safety and inclusivity.

“The mission statement of the NAACP states that it ‘seeks to remove all barriers of racial discrimination.’ That’s a mission that the people of American Airlines endorse and facilitate every day – we do not and will not tolerate discrimination of any kind,” Parker wrote.

“We have reached out to the NAACP and are eager to meet with them to listen to their issues and concerns,” Parker said.

The NAACP issued a travel advisory for the state of Missouri this summer, citing the state’s record of racial bias in traffic stops, among other things. It was the first such alert the NAACP had ever issued for a single state.

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