For everything from family to computers…
Make your own hands-free assistant with a Raspberry Pi and the updated Alexa voice service
The post Go Hands-Free with Alexa Voice Service and Raspberry Pi appeared first on Make: DIY Projects and Ideas for Makers.
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It’s on. The Engadget video series Game Fnatic follows four amateur and semi-pro League of Legends players as they attempt to win a spot on Fnatic, one of the world’s most successful and famous teams. The first five episodes are live right now, right here. Even if you’re unfamiliar with League of Legends, the debut episodes break down the basics and introduce the four competitors, each of whom brings a unique skill — and personality — to the series.
Game Fnatic is a behind-the-scenes look at Fnatic’s League of Legends philosophy and what its star players look for in a teammate. The competitors not only have to learn how to train like a pro, which includes physical activity and hours upon hours of game time, but they have to prove they can play well with Fnatic’s superstar lineup, which features Martin "Rekkles" Larsson, Fabian "Febiven" Diepstraten and Bora "YellOwStaR" Kim, all of whom have competed at the League of Legends World Championships. The 2016 Worlds tournament is live through October 29th, so now is a great time to get a closer look at what it takes to be a professional League of Legends player.
Game Fnatic is a 10-part series, so once you’re done devouring the first five episodes, keep an eye out for the second half in the coming weeks. You know where to find us.
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Google’s ad blitz for its new Pixel phones has much greater reach than any other product ad campaign of theirs I can recall. We are seeing non-stop TV ads, carefully placed billboards in major cities, and even full four-page ads in newspapers like USA Today. But one thing I keep seeing accompany these ads needs some clarification.Â
In almost all current Pixel ads, there is a note about them being “only on Verizon.†That, of course, isn’t actually true in a couple of ways. Sure, Verizon is the only carrier selling the phone in its stores, but you can buy the phone at Google’s own store and Best Buy in an unlocked state that will work on every single carrier.
That’s right, the Pixel and Pixel XL work on all major US carriers, including the prepaid guys, Google’s Project Fi, and smaller MVNOs. The Pixel phones were built to be universally unlocked and connect without issue on AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, and yes, Verizon. Here, take a look at this Pixel supported networks list.
Even Google’s own store listing says the following:
See? So in case you had questions about all of that or your friends and family mention the Pixel, but suggest they can’t buy one because they aren’t on Verizon, remind them that those ads aren’t exactly correct.
Reminder: Google’s Pixel Phones Aren’t “Only on Verizon†is a post from: Droid Life
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Authorities in the western Indian city of Thane said they were investigating another 630 people suspected of being involved in the extortion scam.
Workers at nine call centers allegedly impersonated IRS agents during calls to the U.S., according to local police commissioner Param Bir Singh. The victims were told they owed back taxes and would risk arrest if they hung up.
Singh told CNN the call center workers had been trained to speak with an American accent.
The call centers were making $150,000 a day for up to a year before being discovered. Money would be transferred by victims of the scheme to U.S. bank accounts before being sent to India.
Singh said the police had a mole inside the organization before the arrests were made, but he said the call center owners had escaped. He suspects that the fraudsters had accomplices in the U.S., but he has not yet made contact with American law enforcement officials.
Related: IRS scam costing victims $15 million
The mechanics of the operation appear very similar to those of an IRS impersonation scam that U.S. authorities say swindled victims out of more than $15 million between 2013 and 2015.
In that case, investigators suspected the bogus calls were coming from India. The culprits stole identities to make it appear they were IRS agents in Washington.
“They have information that only the Internal Revenue Service would know about you,” Timothy Camus, deputy inspector general for investigations with the Treasury Department, told CNN last year. “It’s a byproduct of today’s society. There’s so much information available on individuals.”
More recently, Treasury Department investigators filed criminal complaints in the U.S. against five individuals in three states, accusing them of fleecing nearly $2 million from more than 1,500 victims as part of a scheme to impersonate IRS agents.
— Sara Ganim and David Fitzpatrick contributed reporting.
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Wow. After spending the last few days telling us that its New Shepard rocket was almost certainly going to be destroyed in today’s in-flight launch escape test, Blue Origin surprised everybody—even itself—with a clean landing of both booster and crew capsule.
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The Curiosity and NASA’s other Mars rovers had to look for wide-open and flat landing locations to be on the safe side. Mars 2020, however, will have a camera-based navigation system capable of assessing terrains and reacting to potential hazards on the fly, allowing the rover to touch down on complex surfaces its predecessors have yet to explore. That camera is officially called Lander Vision System (LVS), and NASA has recently begun testing its capabilities. The space agency placed it aboard the flight test of an experimental rocket built by Masten Space Systems, a California-based aerospace startup. To be precise, LVS flew as part of a landing technology dubbed the Autonomous Descent and Ascent Powered-flight Testbed.
LVS guides a spacecraft’s landing by taking pictures of what’s directly below it as it descends. It then compares what it sees to its onboard map, detecting its precise location and determining whether it’s in danger of, say, smashing against a boulder or landing too close to a cliff. If it detects anything that could jeopardize the rover’s safety, the system steers it towards somewhere that’s safer to land.
By the end of the test flight, LVS was successfully able to guide Masten’s rocket back to the ground. Andrew Johnson, who serves as the project’s principal investigator, said they were able to "show a closed loop pinpoint landing demo that eliminated any technical concerns with flying the Lander Vision System on Mars 2020" during the test. By starting its journey from locations its older siblings weren’t able to go to, Mars 2020 would be able to beam back new data and photos of the red planet more interesting than what we’re used to seeing today.
Source: NASA
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Amazon keeps piling on the Prime perks: on the heels of adding gaming bonuses via Twitch Prime recently, the company has launched a new benefit for readers called Amazon Prime Reading. The service for US Prime members will give them unlimited access to over a thousand Kindle books, magazines, comics, and other reading material at no extra cost.
Some of the included titles are The Hobbit, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, When I’m Gone, The Complete Peanuts Collection Vol. 1, and Transformers: Robots in Disguise Vol. 1. Members can also flip through current issues of magazines including National Geographic Traveler, People, and Sports Illustrated without having subscriptions to those publications.
Current Prime members now have Prime Reading included in their $99 yearly membership, and all new members who sign up will get access to it too. Also, you don’t need a Kindle or Amazon Fire device to make use of Prime Reading: all included titles are available via the Android and iOS Kindle apps. Prime Reading adds to Amazon’s list of book perks for Prime members, which includes Kindle Unlimited, the $10 per month subscription service that provides access to over one million titles, and the Kindle Owner’s Lending Library, which lets members borrow one e-book a month from a wider pool of books.
It appears the Prime Reading library is smaller and different than that of Kindle Unlimited, so it may end up being a good way for Prime users to test out Amazon’s extra reading services. It’s possible that some customers may be encouraged to sign up for Kindle Unlimited after checking out Prime Reading—but on the flip side, current Kindle Unlimited customers may stop paying the extra $10 per month if they prefer Prime Reading’s selection.
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