New self-driving car by Google

You are looking at Google’s very own, built-from-scratch-in-Detroit self-driving car. The battery-powered electric vehicle has as a stop-go button, but no steering wheel or pedals. The plan is to build around 200 of the mostly-plastic cars over the next year, with road testing probably restricted to California for the next year or two. Compared to the fairly aggressive stance of other notable EVs, like the Tesla Model S or Toyota Prius, Google’s new self-driving car is incredibly cutesy, closely resembling a Little Tikes plastic car — there’s even the same damn smiley face on the front. The cutesy appearance is undoubtedly a clever move to reduce apprehension towards the safety or long-term effects of autonomous vehicles — “Aw, how can something so cute be dangerous?”

For the last three years, Google has been retrofitting the Toyota Prius, Audi TT, and Lexus RS450h with the necessary software and hardware to perform autonomous driving. Now, Google has taken everything it has learnt about driverless cars, and built its own prototype from the ground up. Early versions of the prototype (which doesn’t appear to have a name) will still have manual controls for safety, but the eventual plan is to produce a fleet of some 200 completely driverless cars that can nip around California.

Disappointingly, Google’s new car still has a ton of expensive hardware — radar, lidar, 360-degree cameras — sitting on a tripod on the roof. This is to ensure good sightlines around the vehicle, but it’s a shame that Google hasn’t yet worked out how to build the hardware into the car itself, like other car makers that are toying with self-driving-like functionality. (Or maybe it has, but doesn’t want to invest additional money and engineering time until it’s time to commercialize the car.) In the concept art below, you can see that the eventual goal might be to build the computer vision and ranging hardware into a slightly less ugly rooftop beacon.

These first prototypes are mostly of plastic construction, with battery/electric propulsion limited to a max speed of 25 mph (40 kph). Instead of an engine or “frunk,” there’s a foam bulkhead at the front of the car to protect the passengers. Internally, there’s just a couple of seats, and some great big windows so you can enjoy the views (which must surely be one of the best perks of riding in a self-driving car).

Google’s stated goal in the blog post introducing the new car is “improving road safety and transforming mobility for millions of people.” Driverless cars could definitely revolutionize travel for people who can’t drive. Improving road safety is a little more nebulous, though. While it’s generally agreed that if all cars on the road were autonomous, there could be some massive gains in safety and efficiency (both in terms of fuel usage and squeezing more cars onto the roads). In the lead-up to that utopian scenario, though, there are all sorts of questions about how to effectively integrate a range of manual, semi- and fully self-driving vehicles on the same roadways.

Removing everything except for a stop-go button might sound like a good idea, but it’s naive. How do you move the car a few feet, so someone can get out, or for backing up to a trailer? Will Google’s software allow for temporary double parking, or off-road for a concert or party? Can you choose which parking spot the car will use, to leave the better/closer parking spots for your doddery grandfather? How will these cars handle the very “human” problems of giving way for other cars and pedestrians? Can you program the car to give way to a hot girl, but not an angry-looking trucker?

Plus, is it even sensible to promote a system that will eventually make it easier to cram more cars onto the road? Shouldn’t we be moving towards better, more efficient public transportation? At least until we move away from coal and gas towards cleaner power sources, like nuclear, solar, and fusion.

Google is now safety testing some early units, and will hopefully scale up production to around 200 cars that could be on the road “within the year.”

UK military creates quantum compass that could be the successor to GPS

A quantum compass takes advantage of the 1997 Nobel-winning discovery that lasers can be used to cool atoms to within fractions of a degree of absolute zero. Atoms in this frozen state are extremely sensitive to the magnetic and gravitational field of the Earth. Thus, they can be used to track movement with amazing accuracy. To be clear, this is still a type of inertial “dead reckoning” navigation. The difference is that after getting a solid GPS lock, a sub could go underwater and be exactly on target when it surfaces days or even weeks later.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

 GPS began its life as a military technology in the 1970s, then everything changed in the late 80s when the US government decided to allow civilian use of the satellite network. Virtually every mobile device on the planet has a GPS chip built-in that lets you find your way around, but GPS is getting old and doesn’t work well in all situations. The British Ministry of Defence is hard at work developing a so-called “quantum compass” that could become the successor to GPS, and just like GPS, it might land in your pocket one day.

The UK military is investing millions of pounds in the quantum compass mainly for use in submarines. GPS systems require a view of the sky, or at least very little obstruction to get a location fix. A tube of metal sliding through the water 100 meters beneath the waves can’t really get a GPS lock. Subs currently use a type of inertial location system based on accelerometers. Each twist and turn a submarine makes is recorded and used to calculate its position based on the last known coordinates. This is called dead reckoning navigation.

Sandia Labs Is Stepping Up Its Neuro-Inspired Computer Chip Research

 Human ingenuity has given birth to incredibly powerful computers that can plow through more calculations in a second than most people could in their entire lives, but computers still aren’t terribly adaptable. The human brain is a very different kind of computer — a massively parallel processor that has been shaped by millions neuromorphic, computer systems.

of years of evolution to recognize patterns and adjust to changing situations. This is the kind of capability computer science researchers are now trying to unlock, and scientists at Sandia National Laboratories are stepping up their game to design neuro-inspired, or

Sandia isn’t just attracted to the idea of computers designed like brains because of the capabilities, but the human brain is also incredibly efficient. A computer has trouble telling the difference between a picture of a dog and a cat, but it eats up hundreds of watts of power simply trying. A brain, by contrast, operates continuously for decades and only consumes roughly the same power as a 20-watt light bulb.A modern computer is essentially a very powerful calculator — linear and much faster than humans at running the numbers. Scandia is spinning up this long term project to work on the hardware and software that could make a computer more like a biological brain. The first step in doing so, according to Sandia, is to look at the physical architecture of transistors.

A single neuron, like the ones seen above, can be connected to as many as 10,000 other neurons. Then each of those neurons could be connected to 10,000 more, and so on until you’ve got the bundle of nerve tissue between your ears that makes you who you are. Researchers believe this parallel system is what makes the brain so flexible, or plastic inneurology lingo. Most conventional transistors only have connections to four other transistors, but making a computer more interconnected is just the first step.

Sandia isn’t embarking on a quest to crank out an artificial intelligence platform right away, which is actually the approach many researchers take. A neuro-inspired parallel computer isn’t one and the same with AI, but they are closely linked. At Sandia National Labs, scientists are going to work on improved hardware and processing algorithms, and see if artificial intelligence can be developed as a consequence of that.Computers designed from the ground up like a brain could have important applications in robotics and remote sensors. These devices could benefit from the common sense and adaptability the brain imbues us with. They could learn from data and experiences to make predictions about what a human is going to want to know or do without being explicitly programmed for it. This is a bit like taking baby steps toward true AI.

Right now, your computer, phone, and everything else with a microchip works a certain way. There is very little room for error — either you enter commands correctly, and click on the right things, or you don’t. Regular computer systems are beginning to show a little flexibility, for example Google Now can often figure out what data you might want to see. It’s really cool when it works, but that’s because we’re still at the point where a computer guessing anything right is amazing. Sandia researchers want to make that common place.

A Simple Explanation on Why Apple Bought Dr. Dre's Beats for $3.2 Billion

  

On Thursday night, Apple announced its intentions to buy Dr. Dre's Beats Electronics for $3.2 billion, which would be Apple's biggest acquisition ever. The deal will make Dr. Dre a lot of money, though he won't become, as many have theorized, hip-hop's first billionaire. 

Of course, considering the deal involved Apple (one of the biggest names in personal computing), Beats (one of the biggest names in headphones) and $3.2 billion (well, that's just a lot of money), a lot of people took notice and started to wonder why Apple would spend so much money on headphones. Well, it turns out there's probably a fairly simple explanation, and it doesn't make Apple look too good.          

   Apple is completely out of ideas and unable to inovate   

   Well, that seems to be the most likely explanation at least, considering every other explanation doesn't really make sense. A lot of theories have already been circulating, including the ideas that Apple wants to add a high-profit margin device to its repertoire, that Apple just wants to be cool again, that Apple wanted to acqui-hire Jimmy Iovine, Beats' co-founder with many connections in the industry.

These all have some weight behind them, but for a $3.2 billion price tag, none of them are really reconcilable considering what Apple would be getting. Apple is pretty cool and just as recognizable of a brand as Beats, and Apple could probably find other ways to work with Iovine, or just find someone else like him, for a lot less money. 

"We are struggling to see the rationale behind this move," Gene Munster, an analyst with the firm Piper Jaffray, wrote in a note to investors. "Beats would of course bring a world-class brand in music to Apple, but Apple already has a world-class brand and has never acquired a brand for a brand's sake."      

 So what about buying the headphones themselves and the Beats streaming service?    

   Well, there may be some weight to that. In January, iTunes saw its digital music sales plummet for the first time since its store opened. Plus, Beats are pretty cool and have a proven record of success and sales. However

Will The Surface Pro 3 Really Replace Your Laptop??? With A stylus???

       

Watching the Surface Pro 3 event yesterday, I wryly smiled as Panos Panay finally revealed Microsoft’s vision for the future of mobile computing: The stylus. Snap-in keyboards, friction hinges, and high-resolution displays are still there, of course, but it is the humble stylus that will elevate Microsoft from tablet also-ran to mobile computing greatness. Apparently.

If you haven’t been following Microsoft for as long as I have, let me remind you that the company has been trying to push pen computing since the 1992 release of Windows 3.1 for Pen Computing. Then, in 2000, when Bill Gates was still considered a visionary by the tech press, the company unveiled the Tablet PC — a prototype device that never made it to market, but did set the stage for the Windows XP Tablet PCs released in 2003. A long lull followed after that, punctuated by rumors of the fabled stylus-oriented Courier tablet, and the eventual release (and massive success) of the iPad in 2010. Microsoft provided a stylus with the original Surface Pro and Pro 2, but they were never key, product-defining features. Yesterday, more than half of the 50-minute Surface Pro 3 presentation was dedicated to the stylus and pen computing.

It would seem, after two years of trying and unanimously failing to woo us with masterfully engineered hinges and magnets and dancing school girls, Microsoft has finally got the hint that the success of the Surface Pro 3 will actually hinge on functionality, not form. No one ever argued that the Surface Pro or Pro 2 weren’t terribly impressive hardware-wise. Most reviews praised Microsoft for cramming so much tech into a form factor that small. But beautiful construction and performance were never Microsoft’s problem: The reason no one buys the Surface is because there’s no good reason to.

"This tablet can replace your laptop"

Ever since the arrival of mobile computing dismantled its monopolistic grip on the computing market, Microsoft has really struggled to make its products commercially compelling. Without the Windows-Office-Server triumvirate linchpin, there is very little reason to buy a mobile product powered by Windows, rather than iOS or Android.

As you’re probably aware, Microsoft first tried to pitch the Surface line of tablets as the perfect amalgam of laptop and tablet. Microsoft correctly identified a few years ago that most tablet owners still own a laptop (for, you know, real work) — and so why not sell a single device that’s a laptop when you need to do real work, and a tablet when you want to consume content? It wasn’t a bad idea per se, but it turns out that it’s hard to make a tablet device that is small and light enough to use as a tablet, but still capable of sitting stably on your lap like a laptop.

With the Surface Pro 3, Microsoft is taking a slightly different tack. Instead of being both a laptop and a tablet, the Pro 3 is being branded as a tablet that’s so damn functional and awesome that it replaces any need for a laptop. To this end, it has a new keyboard cover that creases in a special way to provide more “lapability” (hands-on reports say it’s actually quite stable your lap), and the kickstand can now go all the way down to 150 degrees (almost flat). And, of course, the cherry on top — the feature that will ensure that you never long for a real keyboard or all-day battery life — is… a stylus.

Now, to be fair, Microsoft did show off some neat pen computing scenarios — but really, should we really be trumpeting handwriting-to-digital-text recognition in 2014? Bringing the Pro 3 out of standby and directly into OneNote using the button on the stylus was admittedly pretty cool — but really, how often are you going to casually hold an 800-gram (1.76 lbs) tablet by your side, like a pad of paper, waiting to take notes? It seems like a lot of good work has been done to reduce the parallax (distance between the stylus and the screen), the latency (which many people find to be an issue when writing or drawing), and with palm blocking — but it should be pointed out that most of those advances are thanks to N-trig’s DuoSense Active Pen technology, rather than amazing engineering on Microsoft’s part.

Is pen computing the future

I mean, I’m sure the Surface Pro 3 will make a fantastic note-taking or sketching device — and it’s a lot cheaper than the equivalent Wacom Cintiq — but I think it’s a very large logical leap to go from that, to laptop killer. Samsung’s series of Note tablets have been reasonably successful, but even at a much lower price point they haven’t exactly redefined mobile computing (plus we still don’t know how many people are actually buying a Note for the stylus, rather than its larger screen).

But who knows? Maybe pen computing really is the future of mobile computing. With fast, accurate, and pleasant stylus interaction, maybe you really won’t need the dedicated keyboard and increased stability offered by a laptop’s clamshell design. Maybe, for prospective buyers trying to choose between the MacBook Air and Surface Pro 3, the latter’s ability to be used as a tablet will beat out the former’s battery life.

Personally, I just don’t see it happening. The Surface Pro 3 is better and faster and lighter than its predecessors, but it’s still predicated on a deeply flawed premise: That consumers want to compromise with a device that’s a jack of all trades, but master of none. At 12 inches, 9.1mm, and 800 grams, you are not going to use the Surface Pro 3 for hours on end as a tablet — and without a dedicated keyboard and all-day battery life, you won’t be using it as a workhorse either. In my mind, at least for the foreseeable future, the current state of the art for technology and materials science strongly favors divergent form factors that are dedicated to content consumption or content creation. While there is a 150-gram smartphone or 300-gram tablet that lets you surf the web or watch movies for 12+ hours, I simply don’t see a happy future for Microsoft’s 800-gram, twice-the-price Surface Pro 3.

Sony Xperia Z2 Tablet Review: A Masterclass of Engineering

Sony has never really been a tablet forerunner. The company has offered some decent slates in the past, but nothing you’d urgently recommend to a friend. The Tablet Z was good—but nobody remembers you for being mediocre. Example: we recognize the Kindle Fire HDX because it offers a solid experience highlighted by a unique service in Mayday; the Nexus 7, meanwhile, is important because of its affordability and powerful specs. The iPad is the obvious tablet emperor, but even that crown has lost some of its sheen, giving way to a relentless Android invasion. That said, can Sony’s latest tablet step up and finally cement its status as a bonafide competitor?

From a hardware perspective, this is absolutely one of the better devices you’re liable to find. It’s elegant, thin, and full of some truly impressive technology. It’s difficult to comprehend the engineering behind Sony’s new darling; it defies logic, and almost doesn’t seem real. But then you start digging through the software, and in one fell swoop it all comes unraveled.

You want fast and smooth? Look elsewhere. Even with today’s super specs, the software is no faster than something from two or three years ago. Such good hardware held back by a sub-par software experience.

HARDWARE

The Sony Xperia Z2 Tablet is an immaculate specimen of engineering that’s rare outside of the Apple camp. Other tablets are sufficiently designed, sure. But this: you pick it up and your mind struggles to comprehend how so much technology can be stuffed into such a small chassis. The thinness, the lightness; it almost feels like Sony forgot to add the internal components, as though you’re holding an early prototype that got plucked from the factory. It’s not flashy, but the minimal approach works to perfection, giving users an incredible vehicle to consume content.

Sony has always produced very capable hardware, and we’ve recognized this fact in the past. I’ve been using this particular device for the past several days and every time I pick it up I’m still genuinely impressed. At just 15.5 ounces and 6.4mm thick, the Z2 Tablet is light and durable, weightless and impressively built. And the whole thing is rated IP58, which means you’ll be able to lug this thing to the river (and into the water) without doing any damage. (The precise rating says five feet of freshwater for up to half an hour.)

Compared to its predecessor, the Z2 Tablet largely looks the same. That is: this is a black rectangle with rounded corners and flat edges, which is all kept together by an aluminum border and tempered glass on the front. The backside is a nice matted soft touch that’s not slippery, though greasy fingertips will definitely smudge the heck out of it. And good luck wiping those little splotches away completely; they will refuse to go away. Not a huge deal, just something to take note of.

On the tablet’s left side is a lovely chrome power button, which is a signature of Sony’s mobile products. Below that is a rather forgettable volume rocker—and that’s about it as far as physical buttons go. There’s a headphone jack on the tablet’s bottom left side, and the microUSB and microSD slots sit on the tablet’s head, both of which are covered by flaps. On the back there’s an 8-megapixel camera, and a Sony connection on the bottom for accessories if you’re into that kind of thing. Additionally there’s an IR blaster up top for controlling your TV, which is actually pretty handy on such a wide canvas.

Up front the device frames a 10.1-inch Full HD (1920×1200) TRILUMINOS display with Live Color LED and X-Reality for mobile, ensuring the sharpest possible image. The screen looks fairly nice; colors are relatively vibrant, though the blacks could definitely be deeper. It lags behind an AMOLED screen, that’s for sure, but by no means is the Z2’s display awful. Pictures look wonderful, movies are crisp, and Web browsing is enjoyable. Out in the bright sun you can mostly see what you’re reading, but you might struggle to work your way through a lengthy article or book. Best leave this one for indoor viewing.

Finally, and really important for a tablet: Sony equipped the device with S-Force Front Surround, which is basically a fancy way of saying the Z2 Tablet now has front-facing speakers. That means you won’t be muffling the audio when you grip the device with both hands, which tends to happen when the speakers are placed around back. (If you look real hard, you’ll see the two surround sound speakers on the left and right side, near the bottom corners when the tablet is in landscape; also, don’t hold a widescreen tablet of this size in portrait, because that’s just silly).

One last thing, and I can’t believe I’m saying this, but the 8-megapixel actually takes some decent shots. I see people taking pictures with their tablets all the time. Seriously, now that I think about it, I see people holding up huge tablets all the time. Like, pretty much every time I go out into a busy public space. Which also makes me think: why are so many people taking their tablets out into public? I guess, take the fact that the Z2 Tablet can take some nice shots into consideration if you’re serious about purchasing this device.

BOGGED DOWN

With Android 4.4 onboard, you’d expect this thing to fly. Android has evolved into a silky smooth experience that’s both efficient and virtually lag free. It still doesn’t quite have the pizzaz of iOS, but pretty darn close. And when you have the specs the Z2 Tablet does, things should purr along like a luxury automobile. Unfortunately, Sony has somehow managed to make the impossible possible. Well, I suppose not impossible. But the software is often sluggish, hampering what had the potential to be the best Android tablet out there.

It’s not that Sony’s skin looks bad, because it doesn’t at all. In fact, it’s one of the more preferable skins out there. But it lacks a smoothness you’d find in an iPad or even a Nexus 7. You know there’s a problem when you’re swiping between homescreens and there’s a perceptible stutter, like it’s hesitating before saying, Yeah, ok, I’ll switch to the next screen now. For hardware that’s so finely tuned, seeing this kind of performance is a disappointment. There’s some sort of disconnect between the hardware and software, a kind of synthesis you’d see in a vanilla version of Android. I did notice a slight bump, however, when I changed the stock wallpaper, so perhaps that’s the main culprit, though it shouldn’t be.

Once things get going, such as playing a game or movie, the device is fast enough, and you won’t really notice any sort of problem. But it’s just in launching applications and scrolling through the OS overall seems to present the problem. For how good of an impression the hardware leaves, the software gives you a nice, swift kick to the shin. Luckily this is Android we’re talking about, and thankfully there are other launchers in Google Play, such as the ever-popular Nova. Just slap that bad boy on and you’ll be good to go; the nightmare will be over. You’ll never have to deal with stutter or lag again. It’s unacceptable you’d have to perform a quick surgery to iron out the kinks. But the hardware makes it worth the effort.

If you were to purchase a Sony device, you’d already know going in that there will be plenty of pre-installed Sony apps, just like you’d find on any other device. However, it does become a bit overbearing. Immediately after setup, you’ll have apps such as McAfee Security, Pixlr Express, OfficeSuite, File Commander, Sketch, Socialife, and many other apps that you probably won’t ever use. Unless you’re very committed to using Sony apps (WALKMAN, Xperia Lounge, Video Unlimited, etc.), you’ll be stuck with plenty of apps just filling up your device.

One of the apps, PlayStation, is pretty handy if you have an active circle of friends and want to keep track of your trophies, but otherwise it isn’t much of a draw and it’s not an exclsuive. If you do actually use the app, pretty much anything you click on will bounce you over to the Web, so you wind up not wanting to use the PlayStation app in the first place. I pretty much stayed away from anything that came pre-installed, though if you’re a big Sony user they’ll more than do the trick. As an added bonus, you can use a DualShock 3 controller to play some games on the Z2 Tablet because of its PlayStation certification, which is a neat little perk.

One great thing about the Z2 Tablet is that Sony makes it easy to hit the ground running. That is to say the company entices users to stay within the confines of Sony’s own ecosystem. So, for example, Sony gives customers access to six free movies, including Captain Phillips and American Hustle, while folks also get a 30-day free trial of Music Unlimited. Finally, Sony offers customers eight PlayStation mobile games, making the task of building up a library of content less painful than it should be.

Overall, the experience of the Z2 Tablet is hit and miss. The skin over Android 4.4 could definitely be zippier, though it certainly isn’t half bad in terms of usability. It isn’t too complicated, and for the most part everything is pretty straight forward: swipe down to see the notification tray, add widgets by long-pressing, etc. I actually like how you add apps, widgets and change wallpapers, and when you’re inside the app drawer, you can swipe from left to right to reveal a little pane to organize your apps and whatnot. It’s a nice little touch. If only things moved at a quicker pace.

Benefit Of a Curved Screen

Curved-screen technology started in movie theaters, and the rationale is simple. When you throw an image onto a flat screen from a projector, the light has to travel farther to reach the edges of the screen than it does to reach its center. This creates a distortion known as the pincushion effect—the picture appears bowed inward, toward the center. Incorporating curvature counteracts this deformity, bringing the edges of the screen closer to the projector to produce an image that the audience perceives as flat. What’s more, people discovered that when they sat in the theater sweet spot—in the central section of the row of seats level with the middle of the screen—they benefited from a more expansive field of view. 

Television manufacturers claim that putting curves on TV displays replicates this field-of-view widening effect in the living room, giving spectators an immersive IMAX-like perspective. The problem is, your living room’s sweet spot is much smaller than a large movie ­theater’s. Only people sitting on your couch directly in front of the TV, with the middle of the screen at eye height, perceive a widened field of view. People sitting off to the sides won’t benefit from the curve—in fact, they’ll actually get a distorted picture. And if you sit beyond a certain point at a wide enough angle, the image cuts off completely at one edge. 

Besides all that, TVs simply don’t need the curvature that theaters do, because they emit their own light. Curvature does accomplish one other thing, though: curtailing ambient light reflection. When living room lighting hits a curved screen, it’s reflected away from viewers instead of bouncing straight back at them. The same advantage exists in a curved smartphone display. If you turn your cellphone screen off and look at that glass display, you’ll see a lot of reflected light. That light washes out the digital image your phone produces, making you enhance screen brightness and drain your battery quicker. 

So, no, curved screens aren’t just a gimmick. But with the cheapest curved TV costing $3000 (­Sony’s 65-inch LED TV), and LG's G Flex smartphone selling for $300 with a carrier contract (the Galaxy Round, from Samsung, is even more expensive), the value manufacturers have assigned to curves may be too high for consumers, at least for now.