Apple is reportedly working on its most significant software overhaul to watchOS in recent memory. According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, the company is redesigning the Apple Watch’s user interface to make widgets a “central part” of how you will interact with the wearable. In describing the new UI, Gurman says it brings back elements of the Glances system that was part of the original watchOS while borrowing the “style” of widgets Apple introduced alongside iOS 14 last year.
He adds the new interface will be “reminiscent” of the Siri watch face that the company introduced with watchOS 4 in 2017 but will function as an overlay for whatever watch face you wish to use. “It’s also similar to widget stacks,” Gurman adds, referencing the iOS feature that allows you to scroll through widgets you've placed on top of one another.
Simultaneously, Apple is reportedly testing a tweak to the Apple Watch’s physical buttons. With the interface redesign, pressing down on the digital crown could launch the operating system’s new widgets view instead of taking you to the home screen like the dial currently does with watchOS 9.
With the likelihood that the redesign will be jarring for some, Gurman speculates Apple plans to make the new interface optional at first. Additionally, he suggests the overhaul is an admission that an iPhone-like app experience “doesn’t always make sense on a watch – a place where you want as much information as possible with the least amount of poking around.” With WWDC 2023 a little more than a month away, it won’t be long before Apple shares more information about what Watch users can expect from its wearable’s next big software update.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://ift.tt/Rsnmv2O
from Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics https://ift.tt/Rsnmv2O
via IFTTT https://ift.tt/lOz1QbN
Assume that Meta, Google, Microsoft, and other big tech companies soon have their way, and neural interface devices replace keyboards and mice. In that likely future, a large segment of the population will routinely wear neural devices like NextSense’s bio-sensing EEG earbuds, which are designed to be worn twenty-four hours a day. With wide-scale adoption of wearable neurotechnology, adding our brain activity to nationwide identification systems is a near-term reality.
One of the most extraordinary discoveries of modern neuroscience is the uniqueness of each person’s functional brain connection (its physical wiring), especially in the brain areas devoted to thinking or remembering something. Because of this, algorithms can be used to analyze our brain activity and extract features that are both unique to each person and stable over time. How your brain responds to a song or an image, for example, is highly dependent upon your prior experiences. The unique brain patterns you generate could be used to authenticate your identity.
Nationwide identification systems vary by country but generally involve the assignment of unique identification numbers, which can be used for border checks, employment screenings, health-care delivery, or to interact with security systems. These ID numbers are stored in centralized government databases along with other significant personal data, including birth date and place, height, weight, eye color, address, and other information. Most identification systems have long included at least one piece of biometric data, the static photo used in passports and driver’s licenses. But governments are quickly moving toward more expansive biometric features that include the brain.
Biometric characteristics are special because they are highly distinctive and have little to no overlap between individuals. As the artificial intelligence algorithms powering biometric systems have become more powerful, they can identify unique features in the eyes and the face, or even in a person’s behavior. Brain-based biometric authentication has security advantages over other biometric data because it is concealed, dynamic, non-stationary, and incredibly complex.
The promise of greater security has led countries to invest heavily in biometric authentication. China has an extensive nationwide biometric database that includes DNA samples, and it also makes widespread use of facial recognition technology. Chinese authorities in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region have conducted mass collections of biometric data from the Uyghur people and used it for targeted discrimination.
The United States has also massively expanded its collection of biometric data. A recent report by the US Government Accountability Office detailed at least eighteen different federal agencies that have some kind of facial recognition program in place. US Customs and Border Protection includes facial recognition as part of its pre-boarding screening process, and an executive order signed by President Trump in 2017 required the United States’ top twenty airports to implement biometric screening on incoming international passengers.
Increasingly, governments are investing in developing brain biometric measurements. The US Department of Defense recently funded SPARK Neuro, a New York–based company that has been working on a biometric system that combines EEG brain wave data, changes in sweat gland activity, facial recognition, eye-tracking, and even functional near-infrared spectrometry brain imaging (fNIRS), a particularly promising (if expensive) technology for brain authentication, since it is wearable, can be used to monitor individuals over time, can be used indoors or outdoors while a person is moving or at rest, and can be used on infants and children. China has been funneling substantial investments into EEG and fNIRS as well.
For biometric features to be successfully used for authentication, they must have universality, permanence, uniqueness, and be secure against fraud. Over time, static biometrics like facial IDs and fingerprints have become prone to spoofing. Functional biometrics, such as brain activity, are less prone to attack. That feature has motivated researchers like Jinani Sooriyaarachchi and her colleagues in Australia to develop scalable brain-based authentication systems. In one of their most recent studies, they recruited twenty volunteers and asked them to listen to both a popular English song and their own favorite song while their brain wave activity was recorded with a four-channel (an electrode capturing brain wave activity is called a channel) Muse headset. Afterward, the researchers analyzed their recorded brain wave activity using an artificial-intelligence classifier algorithm. Remarkably, they achieved 98.39 percent accuracy in identifying the correct participant when they listened to the familiar song, and a 99.46 percent accuracy when they listened to their favorite song. Using an eight-channel EEG headset on thirty research subjects, another group achieved a similar 98 percent accuracy in authenticating participants by their brain wave data after they’d looked at novel images. It might not even take eight or even four electrodes to achieve the same result. Even with just a single-channel EEG headset, researchers have achieved 99 percent accuracy in distinguishing between participants when they performed the same mental tasks. Most of these studies had a small number of participants; it is not yet clear if neural signatures will be as accurate at scale, when billions rather than dozens of people must be authenticated. EEG is inherently noisy—meaning the signals the electrodes pick up can come from eye-blinking or other movement, which can make it hard to tell the difference between brain activity or interference. But researchers have made substantial progress in developing pattern classifiers that filter noise, allowing them to discriminate between individuals based on their resting-state EEG brain wave activity and when performing tasks. As noted previously, EEG devices have been used to recover sensitive information from a person’s brain, such as their PIN codes, and their political and religious ideologies. Obviously, this poses clear risks to our digital and physical security.
Governments can already tap our phone conversations and snoop on us digitally. Will they similarly tap our brain activity data without our knowledge or consent? Will they deploy AI programs to search our brains for terrorist plots? Will they gather neural data to make inferences about individuals’ political beliefs to predict and prevent peaceful protests? China is reportedly already doing so.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://ift.tt/SD5HqLx
from Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics https://ift.tt/SD5HqLx
via IFTTT https://ift.tt/VGyWrse
Social media can be mentally draining. And when mentally drained, you are more likely to be influenced by a high number of likes on posts – even to the point of clicking on ads for products you don’t need or want – according to our recent experiments on how social media affects behavior.
On November 30 2022, OpenAI launched the AI chatbot ChatGPT, making the latest generation of AI technologies widely available. In the few months since then, we have seen Italy ban ChatGTP over privacy concerns, leading technology luminaries calling for a pause on AI systems development, and even prominent researchers…
After more than three years of litigation, Apple has quietly dropped its lawsuit against Gerard Williams III, the former chip executive the company accused of poaching employees. Williams spent nearly a decade working for Apple, leading development on some of its most important chips – including the A7, the first 64-bit processor for mobile devices.
In 2019, Williams left Apple to co-found Nuvia, a chip design firm later acquired by Qualcomm in 2021. When the tech giant first sued Williams, it accused him of “secretly” starting Nuvia and recruiting talent for his startup while he was still an Apple employee. Williams disputed Apple’s claims and accused the company of spying on his text messages.
As reported by Bloomberg, Apple filed a request to dismiss the suit against Williams earlier this week. The document does not state the company’s reason for dropping the case. However, it does say Apple did so “with prejudice,” meaning it cannot file the same claim against Williams again. It also suggests the two sides came to a settlement. Apple did not immediately respond to Engadget’s comment request.
In the weeks leading up to Wednesday’s dismissal request, court documents show Apple sought the recusal of Judge Sunil Kulkarni. Around March 17th, 2023, the company added two lawyers from the legal firm Morrison and Foerster to the team litigating its case against Williams. On March 28th, Judge Sunil Kulkarni filed a brief disclosing that he had worked at Morrison and Foerster for approximately 13 years and had kept in contact “over the years” with Bryan Wilson and Ken Kuwayti, the two “MoFo” attorneys Apple hired on as counsel earlier in the month.
“I have occasional social interactions with them (e.g., bimonthly lunches, seeing them at parties of mutual friends, and so on),” Judge Kulkarni wrote. “I believe I have recused myself from past cases involving Mr. Wilson and/or Mr. Kuwayti, but solely as a prophylactic measure.” After learning of the involvement of his former colleagues, Judge Kulkarni held an “informal” meeting with the two sides where he said he was “leaning toward recusal” if Apple retained the counsel of either Wilson or Kuwayti. In that same meeting, Kulkarni says he told Apple and Williams his recusal from the case would likely mean a delay in the case going to trial. Before the meeting, the case was scheduled to go to trial on October 2nd, 2023.
In a brief filed on April 6th, Williams and his legal team came out strongly against the idea of Judge Kulkarni removing himself from the case, arguing Apple’s position on the subject “should not matter” and that the move had the potential to be “prejudicial” against the former exec.
“Given that this case has been pending for over three years – with a fast-approaching discovery deadline and trial date – and given the Court’s familiarity with the parties, the case history, and the applicable law, the Court’s recusal decision has the potential to be prejudicial and disruptive,” the brief states. It then argues it was Apple that introduced a potential conflict of interest to the case.
“Even if a conflict existed that might warrant recusal, the procedure imposed by the Court – allowing the party that introduced the ‘conflict’ and would theoretically stand to benefit from it – to decide whether to waive it is inconsistent with basic rules of fairness and due process,” the brief concludes. “Such a procedure would set a dangerous precedent for judge shopping in the middle of a case: any part, at any time, could recruit former colleagues of a sitting judge and then force his or her recusal.”
Putting together what happened after that point is more difficult. However, after the 6th, the court in Santa Clara held multiple hearings where no one from either side appeared. Apple then filed to dismiss the case on April 26th. Qualcomm, Williams' current employer, did not immediately respond to Engadget's request for comment.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://ift.tt/He4q1W6
from Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics https://ift.tt/He4q1W6
via IFTTT https://ift.tt/lOz1QbN
All the way back in 2019, Marvel Studios announced that it was working on a new solo movie for its famous vampire hunterBlade, with Mahershala Ali stepping into the shades once inhabited by Wesley Snipes. Since then, it’s been a bit of an ordeal trying to get the movie made. Now, as the film’s started to build out…
Star Wars is a famously inconsistent franchise with high highs and low lows, a trend that continues to this day. Last year’s Andor served as one of the bright spots of the entire enterprise, garnering not just critical acclaim, but some ardent fans and award nominations for its 12-episode debut season. The show seemed…
With Google I/O less than two weeks away, the Pixel leaks are starting to come hard and fast. On Friday, leaker (and former Engadget editor) Evan Blass shared (via The Verge) two 4K renders of the Pixel Fold. The images almost certainly originally came from Google, so they offer our best look at the device yet.
Unfortunately, Blass didn’t post an image of the front of the foldable, so, for at least the time being, we can’t compare the renders against the alleged video of the Pixel Fold that leaker Kuba Wojciechowski uploaded on April 21st. What’s more, the one render of the Fold’s back cover doesn’t give a sense of how pronounced the camera bump is. However, they do show a device that looks sleeker than the one we’ve seen leak before.
Evan Blass
The Pixel Fold will reportedly cost $1,700 when it arrives later this year. According to a recent CNBC report, the device will feature a 7.6-inch foldable display and a 5.8-inch external screen. It will also supposedly sport the “most durable hinge” on any foldable device to date. Judging from the images Blass shared, there may be some merit to that claim.
Separately, Blass shared an image of the Pixel 7a in a striking coral colorway. Google is expected to offer its next midrange device in three other colors — blue, black and white — and the device could cost $50 more than its predecessor. With Google I/O set for May 10th, expect to learn more about the Pixel Fold and Pixel 7a soon.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://ift.tt/XgrUQ7e
from Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics https://ift.tt/XgrUQ7e
via IFTTT https://ift.tt/1rfQkTY
In a little over a month, Capcom will have everyone’s attention with the release of Street Fighter 6. The game has spoken for itself since its grand reveal last year, and it’s looking more and more like Capcom’s got another hit on its hands between that and the Resident Evil 4 remake. But the fight doesn’t end there,…
Like me, you might have been seeing and hearing Jack Black-as-Bowser’s “Peaches” song fromThe Super Mario Bros. Movie all over the place. There are more than 500,000 videos using the official song on TikTok alone, and that’s not counting the folks who have adapted the song to express their devotion to the other…
Twitter became less useful on Thursday after New York City’s transit operator said it would stop tweeting about service outages because “the reliability of the platform can no longer be guaranteed.” It’s the latest in a growing number of government agencies ditching Elon Musk’s social network.
Do you miss the pre-streaming days of clicking through a TV guide? What about stumbling upon three-quarters of an action flick or the last 15 minutes of My Cousin Vinny in a delightful channel-browsing haze? Well Google TV has a remedy for your nostalgia. The smart TV operating system is moving forward into the…
There’s always time for more TV, and new data published by Bloomberg earlier this week revealed that we watched a lot of it. A new report helps characterize the blackbox that is streaming shows to audiences—which is especially important in a world where Netflix has a reputation for cancelling your favorite show (I’m…
Since smartphones obliterated the casual photography market, camera manufacturers are focusing on building models designed for very specific uses. Mirrorless cameras continue to improve in autofocus, video and more, while lens ranges expand year on year. Action cams provide sharp, fluid video, compact cameras target both tourists and vloggers and DSLRs are available at some of the best prices we’ve seen. We walk you through 2023’s highlights so far, including full-frame marvels, like Sony's ZV-E1, the Canon EOS R6 II and the Panasonic S5 II. (I am on the precipice of ordering the ZV-E1, myself.)
If you’re considering a camera upgrade, this is a very good time to do so. Engadget’s Steve Dent walks you through the options.
– Mat Smith
The Morning After isn’t just anewsletter– it’s also a daily podcast. Get our daily audio briefings, Monday through Friday, bysubscribing right here.
Ayaneo has confirmed its upcoming Ayaneo 2S Steam Deck-like handheld console will be powered by an AMD chip identical to the one in the ASUS ROG Ally. The AMD Ryzen 7000 chip is likely the Ryzen 7 7840U, a chip supposed to be nigh on the same as the Ally’s AMD Z1 Extreme. The Ayaneo 2S will also come with a three-pipe cooler and other improvements. The Ayaneo 2S looks identical to the Ayaneo 2 we reviewed earlier this year but has improvements that address some of our key complaints. Namely, the new 7000 series processor with Radeon 780M graphics offers "substantial performance gains.”
It has a detachable visor that stretches across your face.
If Zyou hate breathing in pollutants and don't mind being stared at, then your time might have come: The Dyson Zone headphones are finally available to buy in the US. They're available on Dyson Direct in prussian blue and bright copper, with case, soft pouch, two filters and an in-flight adapter kit, all for the low, low price at $949. Here’s what we thought of the Zone.
Teenage Engineering has long made music gadgets with slick design and features, and now it’s dabbling in microphones. The CM-15 is described as the world’s “first all-in-1 mic offering.” There is a built-in battery that gets ten hours of use per charge, or you can plug it into any USB-C port to get some juice. As for connections, there’s a 3.5mm line output, a mini XLR and the aforementioned USB-C port. The microphone includes a built-in preamp, too. However, it’ll cost over $1,200 to bring this stylish microphone home. It starts shipping in June.
It’s been exclusive to the Direct sales platform since launch.
The well-reviewed yet pricey PlayStation VR2 headset is making its way to retailers after a two-month stint of exclusivity at Sony’s own website. The company shared the news on Twitter but has not set an official date or even announced what lucky retailers would get their mitts on the PS5-adjacent headset. Sony tells customers to check with local retailers for availability information.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://ift.tt/U2PiNLG
from Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics https://ift.tt/U2PiNLG
via IFTTT https://ift.tt/VD7W4AO
Members of the House Judiciary Committee kicked off what could be months of fiery debates over one of the US’s most controversial warrantless surveillance programs this week. In the hearing Thursday titled, “FIX FISA,” lawmakers from both sides of the political aisle voiced concerns over the scale of US citizen data…
Everyone loves a good to-do list, and now they're spreading into PC games. Along with a slew of other new features, Steam's latest update includes an integrated Notes app as part of a re-vamped in-game overlay tool. It lets you write thoughts and tasks down about the game you're playing then runs on top of the game while you play, which you can access across any PC you log into and when playing offline.
Valve
At any time you can pin the to-do list right to your gaming screen, adjusting its opacity based on your preferences. Guides, discussions and whatever is on your browser (even the show you're watching) can also be clipped to the game.
Steam's other updates to the in-game overlay include a revamped toolbar and overview. The new toolbar has everything from chat to guides, customizable depending on fields you want to see and in either icon or list mode. The game overview will fill you in on information like accomplishment progress, friends' game play and news about that title.
Notifications have also cleaned up a bit with less interruptions of things unrelated to you. The tray will only display newest notifications, but you can still view all if you want. The last in-game Steam update is for screenshots, allowing you to choose between large and small thumbnails, while also sorting screenshots by most recent, instead of per game.
These features are only available through the Steam Client Beta at the moment, but if you’ve never opted into the Beta version before, it’s pretty simple. All you need to do is go to settings (it will be called preferences if you're on a Mac), click the change button where it says Beta Participation in the Accounts tab and choose Steam Beta Update. Once you restart Steam, the Beta features will become visible.
Valve asserts that a lot of its recent work has gone towards improving code sharing between Steam Desktop Client, Deck and Big Picture mode. The company claims this should allow future features to roll out quicker across the different platforms.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://ift.tt/Jtj7ID6
from Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics https://ift.tt/Jtj7ID6
via IFTTT https://ift.tt/JQjrqzh
One of the most anticipated games of the year is almost here. Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom may seem to feature the same basic graphics, map layout and general mechanics as its predecessor, Breath of the Wild, but it breaks new ground with Link’s new skills – Ascend (shooting to the ceiling), Recall (rewinding time for an item), Fuse (combining items and weapons for countless effects) and Ultrahand (building machines). These can seemingly help fight enemies or get you from A to B. I’m now pretty excited for May 12th. Check out all of our impressions from a 75-minute playthrough.
What are Nothing Ear 1s? Beats might release its next-gen Studio Buds model on May 18th. MacRumors spotted an Amazon listing that showed images and details for Apple's Beats Studio Buds+. The earbuds, listed for $170 or $20 more than the current model, will have a transparent option that puts their internal components on display, similar to Nothing's design. The Studio Buds+ microphones are three times larger than the current model's and have a more powerful processor. Those components enable 1.6 more active-noise canceling power and a transparency mode.
The technology used old LucasFilm footage of Ford for accuracy.
The news that LucasFilm's Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny would feature a de-aged Ford came at the end of last year, but an interview with director James Mangold in Total Film just revealed it will be for almost a fifth of the film's running time. The news of Ford's extended return to his 30s comes a few months after Disney, which produced the movie alongside LucasFilm, announced it had built an AI that could make an actor appear older or younger with relative ease at the end of last year. The researchers behind the AI noted it would only work with real people if there were images available of the person in those poses and lighting at a younger age.
Regulators say it'll hand Microsoft too much power.
The UK’s antitrust regulator, the Competition and Markets Authority, has announced it will block Microsoft’s purchase of Activision Blizzard. The CMA said the deal risks creating a monopoly player in cloud gaming. It added that, if the deal concluded, Microsoft would have a market share of between 60 and 70 percent, an “incentive to withhold [Activision Blizzard] games from competitors and substantially weaken competition in this important growing market.”
The $40 Tile for Cats tracker from Life360 is a modified version of the Tile Sticker with a silicon collar attachment and 250-foot Bluetooth range. The idea is to give you peace of mind that your cat is somewhere in the house, and then help you figure out exactly where the sneaky floof is hiding. The attachment can stretch up to 1.7 times without breaking and is water resistant, so it'll continue to function even if hit with a few drops.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://ift.tt/MgwriqG
from Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics https://ift.tt/MgwriqG
via IFTTT https://ift.tt/xAZW9r6
House lawmakers are holding a hearing today that foreshadows months of fierce debate over one of the country’s most controversial warrantless surveillance programs.
Telegram might soon disappear from Brazilian app stores after a federal court in the country has issued a temporary ban against the messaging service. Judge Wellington Lopes da Silva has ordered Google and Apple to remove the app from their stores and for mobile carriers to block access to it for failing to hand over complete user data from two neo-Nazi group chats. Telegram will also have to pay a fine worth almost $200,000 a day until it's able to give authorities data from the groups believed to have been used to incite attacks on schools in Brazil.
According to The New York Times, the group chats were found on the phone of a teenager accused of committing two school shootings in November, which left three dead and 13 people injured. Authorities said they saw murder tutorials, bomb-manufacturing instructions and violent videos in those group chats, in addition to Nazi content. Brazilian justice minister Flavio Dino said: "The so-called antisemitic movement is acting in these networks. And we know that this is at the base of violence against our children, our teens."
Judge da Silva explained that Telegram only handed over information on the administrator of a channel named the "Brazilian Anti-Semitic Movement." It failed to give authorities information on members of that group and any data from another channel called "Anti-Semitic Front." The service reportedly said that the groups had been deleted and that it couldn't recover any information, but that wasn't enough to justify not complying with the court's subpoena to the judge
The Brazilian Supreme Court previously banned Telegram for failing to freeze accounts spreading disinformation ahead of last year's presidential elections. However, the ban was reversed in just a couple of days, and Telegram blamed its noncompliance to lost emails.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://ift.tt/4bsl9yF
from Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics https://ift.tt/4bsl9yF
via IFTTT https://ift.tt/vQP3YRn
When Spencre McGowan, an herbalist and a cookbook writer in Butte, Montana, started posting on TikTok to help pull herself out of a “depressive funk” in 2021, she could have never imagined her quick, rustic videos of comforting food recipes and outdoor wanderings would net her an audience of 110,000 committed followers
There are a lot of factors that contribute to a good day on the slopes. Weather, terrain, and ability level are all important, but having the right equipment can mean the difference between having a comfortable, safe, and thrilling day, and tumbling down a mountain while freezing your ass off. Here then, are my picks…
Can you truly have an alt account if everyone in the world knows about it? The best answer may come from Twitter CEO Elon Musk, whose second alt account was revealed on Tuesday.
Following President Joe Biden’s announcement that he’s running for re-election, the Republican National Committee (RNC) was primed with a new attack ad. However, new for 2023, the ad uses AI-generated imagery to create almost-realistic visions of what might happen. This includes hypothetical domestic and international incidents the RNC suggests might happen if Biden wins again: "This morning, an emboldened China invades Taiwan," a fake news announcer says.
The RNC told Axios it was the first time it had used a video made entirely with AI. The ad features a faint disclaimer in the top-left corner noting the ad was "built entirely with AI imagery." Given I thought the Pope in a puffer jacket was real, this is, unfortunately, probably just the start.
– Mat Smith
The Morning After isn’t just anewsletter– it’s also a daily podcast. Get our daily audio briefings, Monday through Friday, bysubscribing right here.
On an earnings call with investors, General Motors CEO Mary Barra said the company plans to cease production of the Chevy Bolt EV and EUV by the end of 2023. Between them, the models account for most of GM's EV sales. However, the Bolt's battery cells are based on an older design, and GM is transitioning to its Ultium system. According to Barra, GM will modify a Detroit-area plant where it makes the Chevy Bolts, so it can produce the electric Chevy Silverado and GMC Sierra there starting in 2024.
Valve released the Steam Deck over a year ago. Now it’s finally time for some true competition. Thanks to potent specs, a speedy screen and a slick design, this might be the most powerful PC gaming handheld yet. Not only does it feature a new Ryzen Z1 chip – which is a customized Zen 4/RDNA 3 APU designed specifically for handheld gaming PCs – it also has a 7-inch 1080p screen with 500 nits of brightness and a 120Hz refresh rate. That alone represents some very premium upgrades compared to the Steam Deck. But we still don’t know when the Ally will land – or how much it’ll cost. Still, you can read about it.
The new 70mm equivalent camera gives a portrait-like view of subjects.
DJI has unveiled its new flagship consumer drone, the Mavic 3 Pro, with a triple-camera setup that includes a new 70mm lens designed for "powerful subject framing." It also includes a new 10-bit D-Log M color mode, improvements in the tele cameras and ProRes capture on the Mavic 3 Pro Cine option. As for the price, the Mavic 3 Pro is only a bit more expensive than the Mavic 3's current $2,049 starting price. The Mavic 3 Pro with a DJI remote control starts at $2,199, while the Fly More combo with the DJI RC, three intelligent flight batteries, a charging hub, carrying bag and one ND filter set is $2,999. It’s set to go on sale next month.
The early access version of Opera's redesigned browser coming out later this year.
Opera has released the early access version of its completely redesigned browser, Opera One. It can automatically and intuitively group websites people open based on their content. It will open all pages with menus and restaurant details in one island, for instance, and all tabs with Google Docs in another. Opera One also comes with ChatGPT, ChatSonic and AI Prompts enabled by default. If you recall, the company introduced sidebar integration for the AI chatbots back in March, allowing users to quickly launch them in a separate window in the browser.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://ift.tt/9MDTpaw
from Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics https://ift.tt/9MDTpaw
via IFTTT https://ift.tt/jNnhSHP
ispace's Hakuto-R Mission 1 was poised to make history. It was going to be the first successful moon landing by a private company and the first Japanese lunar landing overall. But shortly before the spacecraft was supposed to touch down on the lunar surface, ispace lost contact with it. Now, the Japanese company has announced that there was a "high probability that the lander eventually made a hard landing on the moon's surface." It didn't use the word "crash," but the spacecraft is clearly not in a condition that would allow the company to proceed with the mission.
The spacecraft was scheduled to land on the moon on April 26th at 1:40 AM Japan time (April 25th, 12:40PM Eastern time). ispace said it was able to confirm that the lander was in vertical position as it approached the surface and that its descent speed rapidly increased by the time its propellant was almost gone.
By 8AM Japan time, ispace has determined that "Success 9" of Hakuto-R's mission milestones, which is the completion of its lunar landing, was no longer achievable. The company has yet to detail what happened to the spacecraft and what the root cause of the failure was, but it's currently analyzing the telemetry data it had acquired and will announce its findings once it's done.
Hakuto-R launched on top of a SpaceX rocket around 100 days ago, carrying payloads from NASA, JAXA, as well as the UAE's first lunar rover called Rashid. While the mission failed to reach its ultimate goal, ispace said it was "able to acquire valuable data and know-how from the beginning to nearly the end of the landing sequence" and that it will use what it has learned from this event to enable a "future successful lunar landing mission." The company still intends to push through with Mission 2 scheduled for launch in 2024 and Mission 3 for 2025.
ispace will continue to make the most of the data and know-how acquired during the operation through Success 8, and landing sequence, including aspects of Success 9, aiming to dramatically improve the technological maturity of Mission 2 in 2024 and Mission 3 in 2025. (2/3)
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://ift.tt/EqJMcGI
from Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics https://ift.tt/EqJMcGI
via IFTTT https://ift.tt/jh1Zdu0
Tile, best known for its AirTag-like trackers that help you locate lost objects, can now find something that can get lost on purpose — your cat. The $40 Tile for Cats tracker from Life360 is a modified version of the Tile Sticker with a silicon collar attachment and 250 foot Bluetooth range. The idea is to give you peace of mind that your cat is somewhere in the house, and then help you figure out exactly where that sneaky floof is hiding.
The battery on the Tile for Cats lasts a generous three years, and you can easily replace the sticker. It even offers AI assistant integration with Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant, so you can locate Sir Fluffybutt with a voice command.
For the $40 price tag, you get a Tile sticker and attachment that's compatible with most cat collars, including breakaway collars. The attachment can stretch up to 1.7 times without breaking and is water resistant, so it'll continue to function even if hit with a few drops.
Tile for Cats is Life360's first pet tracker, though the company was already marketing its regular Tile Trackers for the same purpose. It's designed for indoor use only, though, due to the limited range. If you're worried about your pet getting lost outside, you'd be better off with a dedicated pet tracker, typically costing around $100 plus a subscription fee.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://ift.tt/gzVpaiL
from Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics https://ift.tt/gzVpaiL
via IFTTT https://ift.tt/jh1Zdu0
DJI has unveiled its new flagship consumer drone, the Mavic 3 Pro, with a triple-camera setup that includes a new 70mm lens designed for "powerful subject framing." It also includes a new 10-bit D-Log M color mode, improvements in the tele cameras, and ProRes capture on the Mavic 3 Pro Cine option. It's the company's fourth Mavic 3 drone, joining the Mavic 3, the Mavic 3 Classic and the Mavic 3 Enterprise models.
Like the Mavic 3, it's available in regular and Cine models, with the latter having advanced features for filmmakers like Apple ProRes capture (ProRes 422 HQ, ProRes 422, and ProRes 422 LT), a 1TB SSD drive and a 10Gbps lightspeed data cable. However, you'll pay a premium of nearly $1,000 to get those.
DJI
The new 70mm camera has a 1/1.3-inch sensor that's the same size as on the Mini 3 Pro. Though considerably smaller than the 4/3 chip on the main Hasselblad camera, DJI says the camera is designed for a "range of different scenarios from framing intriguing buildings to cars in commercial shoots." That comment indicates that the quality should be better than the 7x tele camera. It can handle 48-megapixel (MP) high-res or 12MP low light photos, along with 4K/60fps video.
Like the main camera, it supports a new log format called D-log M along with DJI's original D-Log. D-Log M is designed to deliver "natural color gradations with delicate details" even in high-contrast situations like sunsets, the company says. At the same time, it's easier to grade than typical log footage, according to DJI. It can shoot up to 10-bit 4:2:2 ProRes video on the Mavic 3 Pro Cine model and 10-bit 4:2:0 (H.264/H.265) on the regular model.
DJI
DJI has also improved the 7x (166mm equivalent) tele camera, boosting the aperture from f4.4 to f3.4, which should make it considerably better in low light. It also offers boosted video specs, up from 4K at 30p on the Mavic 3 to 4K/60fps.
Aside from those improvements, it's much the same as the Mavic 3. The main 4/3 Hasselblad camera can shoot video at up to 5.1K at 50fps or DCI 4K at 120fps, with the new D-Log M mode, along with D-Log and HLG options. As before, it can capture 10-bit 4:2:2 ProRes (Mavic 3 Pro Cine) and 10-bit 4:2:0 H.264/H.265 video on the Mavic 3 Pro.
DJI
It allows up to 43 minutes of flight time, roughly the same as before. You'll also get DJI's omnidirectional sensing and APAS 5.0 obstacle protection, with eight wide-angle vision sensors and a high-performance vision computing to engine "to precisely sense obstacles in all directions and plan a safe flight to avoid them," DJI says. Its DJI O3+ transmission system can transmit a 1080p/60fps HD live feed at high frame rates at a distance of up to 15 km (10 miles), though considerably less in Europe.
The Mavic 3 Pro also offers key AI features seen on the Mavic 3 and other models. Among those is ActiveTrack 5.0 designed to track a subject while avoiding obstacles, Spotlight (moving the drone around the subject), and Point of Interest (allows the drone to circle around the subject while keeping it centered in the frame).
DJI
In addition, it includes features designed for creators like MasterShots 4, QuickShots 5 with diverse camera movements like Dronie, Rocket, Circle and Helix, and Panorama 6, designed to take a 100 MP photo. It also comes with a time lapse mode.
As for the price, the Mavic 3 Pro is only a bit more expensive than the Mavic 3's current $2,049 starting price. The Mavic 3 Pro with a DJI RC starts at $2,199, while the Fly More combo with the DJI RC, three intelligent flight batteries, a charging hub, carrying bag and one ND filter set is $2,999. The same thing with the DJI RC Pro remote (the high-end one with a screen) is $3,889, and the Mavic 3 Pro Cine Premium Combo (with the latter accessories) is $4,799. It's now available to order with shipping starting in May.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://ift.tt/RnSLfzA
from Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics https://ift.tt/RnSLfzA
via IFTTT https://ift.tt/oc8RiJ1
Originally debuting back in late 2021, the DJI Mavic 3 got a new lease on life a year later with the Mavic 3 Classic which was $450 cheaper but sacrificed one of its dual cameras for the price cut. With the new Mavic 3 Pro, DJI is going the other way by upgrading the Mavic 3 drone with a third camera, offering more…
Yelp has announced a bunch of updates across its site and apps, including a light lean into the AI trend. New features include providing a consumer guarantee, expanded review options and password-free logins.
Yelp is utilizing AI and natural language models to further improve its search features. When you search for a specific place, like a tennis court, Yelp will suggest options and add a review with helpful information about going there — such as being able to book in advance. Further updates include showing you relevant businesses across the country and clickable tags like "Breakfast and Brunch."
If you're unsure what you're craving, their new "Surprise Me" button will suggest a well-rated restaurant in your area. It's available right on your search page and you can keep clicking it until something gets your taste buds excited.
Yelp Guaranteed is a new protection available for people looking to hire anyone from a plumber to a contractor. Customers who use Yelp's Request A Quote service can find businesses that are "Backed by Yelp Guaranteed" — it will display it right on their information page. If anything goes wrong after you hire one of them, Yelp says it will reimburse you up to to $2,500.
Currently, it's only available in select major cities like San Francisco, Chicago and Seattle, with just iOS users able to filter for it. According to Yelp, it should roll out nationwide and extend to Android and web users this summer.
Yelp
Yelp is encouraging users to cover food, service and ambiance in their reviews, with each topic appearing at the top of the page. If you mention anything in one of the categories, it will light up green and have a checkmark next to it. You can also now add videos up to 12 seconds along with your review.
The final set of Yelp's updates focus on the site's look and logistics. Just like with reviews, Yelp Connect — the paid option for business owners to share updates — now offers a video option. Yelp's home and navigation pages have also been refreshed to include easier access to restaurants' menus and ratings.
This should all be a little quicker to access with Yelp finally offering automatic logins. You'll be sent a secure email the next time you sign in and, from then on, you don't have to worry about remembering your password. A lot of these are small changes but, overall, could make Yelp a bit more comprehensive moving forward.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://ift.tt/bmpFkC9
from Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics https://ift.tt/bmpFkC9
via IFTTT https://ift.tt/CYQpBGb
The UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has introduced a new bill that would give it the power slap the biggest tech companies with a fine worth billions if they don't comply with its rules. It's a multi-faceted bill that's aimed at protecting consumers and encouraging competition, and it will allow the CMA to directly enforce the law instead of having to go through the court.
If the bill passes, the agency's Digital Markets Unit (DMU) will be able to enforce a set of rules on how companies it deems to have "strategic market status" in key digital services have to operate. The CMA didn't name any specific company in its announcement, but the DMU will most likely identify Google, Apple and Amazon as organizations with strategic market status.
The DMU could require them to be more transparent on how their app store review systems work or to open up their data to rivals — in Google's case, it could be a rival search engine. If these companies fail to abide by the new rules, the DMU could fine them up to 10 percent of their global turnover. Apple, for example, earned around $283 billion in revenue for 2022, so that could translate to a massive fine worth $28.3 billion.
In addition to giving CMA the ability to set rules for tech giants, the new bill will also address the problem with "subscription traps," which is costing UK consumers £1.6 billion (US$2 billion) a year. Its new rules will require businesses, not just the biggest tech companies, to provide customers with clearer information before they start a subscription. Companies will also be required to send customers notifications if their free or low-cost trial is coming to an end and before their subscription auto-renews. Plus, companies will have to provide customers an easy way to unsubscribe. In the US, the Federal Trade Commission proposed a similar rule back in March that would make it as easy to cancel subscriptions as it is to sign up. The proposal is also still waiting for approval before it can be implemented.
Another concern the bill will address is fake reviews. The new rules are expected to prohibit companies from commissioning the composition and submission of fake reviews and from posting reviews without taking steps to ensure that they're genuine. Further, the rules would make it illegal to offer or to advertise submitting, commissioning and facilitating fake reviews.
Sarah Cardell, Chief Executive of the CMA, said in a statement:
"The new powers in this bill help the CMA take swift, decisive action to tackle rip offs, protecting consumers whether they are shopping online or on the high street. The new fining powers will provide an important deterrent to businesses seeking to take advantage of people while also ensuring fair dealing businesses can thrive.
The bill will also strengthen the Digital Markets Unit, helping to ensure digital markets remain competitive and continue to benefit people, business, and the UK economy. We welcome its introduction to parliament and look forward to it progressing."
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://ift.tt/3lUqspf
from Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics https://ift.tt/3lUqspf
via IFTTT https://ift.tt/Yzp7aVF
Those who are perhaps a little tired of playing Ticket to Ride or Settlers of Catan at Thanksgiving will have a new way to get mad at their extended family members starting next year. That's because Call of Duty: The Board Game is on the way. Pre-orders will start this fall on Kickstarter.
Activision teamed up with board game publisher Arcane Wonders, along with Genuine Entertainment and Evolution to make the game. Call of Duty: The Board Game is said to be a fast-paced blend of combat, strategy and tactical planning. However, an announcement video that brings to mind the Marvel Studios production logo doesn't shed more light on how the game actually works.
What we do know for now is that, as you may have guessed, you and your companions will take on the guise of soldiers. You'll battle your opponents with combat skills and a variety of weapons. Arcane Wonders says there are a number of scenarios and gameplay modes to choose from, while the action takes place across several maps from the Call of Duty games.
There’s no word yet on whether you’ll be able to set off a nuclear bomb in your living room if you reach a high enough kill streak to wipe out everyone and somehow still win the game. More Call of Duty: The Board Game details will be revealed in the coming months.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://ift.tt/Q7vufJK
from Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics https://ift.tt/Q7vufJK
via IFTTT https://ift.tt/D5PAXhd
Welcome back to Toy Aisle, io9's regular round-up of the coolest toy news. This week’s toys include Lego continuing to drop more Disney 100 treats, Hot Toys flexing for The Dark Knight movies, and a colossal Jurassic World dino. Check it out!
Twitter owner Elon Musk has tried foisting checkmarks upon celebrity accounts in a bid to popularize his paid-for verification scheme. In this way, Musk and Twitter may have been going a little too fast with its push for Twitter Blue subscriptions, and it may have pissed off the indomitable House of Mouse in the…
So it’s not like I’m always out here talking about Virtual Private Networks; I’m not a YouTube ad read. But the few times I bring them up in polite company, the conversation screeches to a halt as I slowly realize that nobody knows what I’m talking about. Thankfully, that’s changing as VPNs become more of a known…
Fans of Sam Raimi different parts of his filmography the like, but the Evil Dead series is often one of the most talked about. While the Ash vs. Evil Dead TVshow from 2015 and last year’s video game have helped keep the franchise alive in pop culture, alongside the series’ longtime fans, Fede Alvarez’s 2013 reboot…
Disney hopes that those who attend Disneyland leave the theme parks with fun experiences and memories that stick with attendees for. And that’s... technically what happened last night at Disneyland Park, because the Maleficent dragon animatronic quite literally went up in flames. And the culprit was none other than…
The gargantuan artificial construct enveloping your local star is going to be rather difficult to miss, even from a few light years away. And given the literally astronomical costs of resources needed to construct such a device — the still-theoretical-for-humans Dyson Sphere — having one in your solar system will also serve as a stark warning of your technological capacity to ETs that comes sniffing around.
Or at least that's how 20th century astronomers like Nikolai Kardashev and Carl Sagan envisioned our potential Sol-spanning distant future going. Turns out, a whole lot of how we predict intelligences from outside our planet will behave is heavily influenced by humanity's own cultural and historical biases. In The Possibility of Life, science journalist Jaime Green examines humanity's intriguing history of looking to the stars and finding ourselves reflected in them.
The way we imagine human progress — technology, advancement — seems inextricable from human culture. Superiority is marked by fast ships, colonial spread, or the acquisition of knowledge that fuels mastery of the physical world. Even in Star Trek, the post-poverty, post-conflict Earth is rarely the setting. Instead we spend our time on a ship speeding faster than light, sometimes solving philosophical quandaries, but often enough defeating foes. The future is bigger, faster, stronger — and in space.
Astronomer Nikolai Kardashev led the USSR’s first SETI initiatives in the early 1960s, and he believed that the galaxy might be home to civilizations billions of years more advanced than ours. Imagining these civilizations was part of the project of searching for them. So in 1964, Kardashev came up with a system for classifying a civilization’s level of technological advancement.
The Kardashev scale, as it’s called, is pretty simple: a Type I civilization makes use of all the energy available on or from its planet. A Type II civilization uses all the energy from its star. A Type III civilization harnesses the energy of its entire galaxy.
What’s less simple is how a civilization gets to any of those milestones. These leaps, in case it’s not clear, are massive. On Earth we’re currently grappling with how dangerous it is to try to use all the energy sources on our planet, especially those that burn. (So we’re not even a Type I civilization, more like a Type Three-quarters.) A careful journey toward Type I would involve taking advantage of all the sunlight falling on a planet from its star, but that’s just one billionth or so of a star’s total energy output. A Type II civilization would be harnessing all of it.
It’s not just that a Type II civilization would have to be massive enough to make use of all that energy, they’d also have to figure out how to capture it. The most common imagining for this is called a Dyson sphere, a massive shell or swarm of satellites surrounding the star to capture and convert all its energy. If you wanted enough material to build such a thing, you’d essentially have to disassemble a planet, and not just a small one — more like Jupiter. And then a Type III civilization would be doing that, too, but for all the stars in its galaxy (and maybe doing some fancy stuff to suck energy off the black hole at the galaxy’s core).
On the one hand, these imaginings are about as close to culturally agnostic as we can get: they require no alien personalities, no sociology, just the consumption of progressively more power, to be put to use however the aliens might like. But the Kardashev scale still rests on assumptions that are baked into so many of our visions of advanced aliens (and Earth’s own future as well). This view conflates advancement not only with technology but with growth, with always needing more power and more space, just the churning and churning of engines. Astrophysicist Adam Frank identifies the Kardashev scale as a product of the midcentury “techno-utopian vision of the future.” At the point when Kardashev was writing, humanity hadn’t yet been forced to face the sensitive feedback systems our energy consumption triggers. “Planets, stars, and galaxies,” Frank writes, “would all simply be brought to heel.”
Even in the Western scientific tradition, alternatives to Kardashev’s scale have been offered. Aerospace engineer Robert Zubrin proposed one scale that measures planetary mastery and another that measured colonizing spread. Carl Sagan offered one that accounts for the information available to a civilization. Cosmologist John D. Barrow proposed microscopic manipulation, going from Type I–minus, where people can manipulate objects of their own scale, down through the parts of living things, molecules, atoms, atomic nuclei, subatomic particles, to the very fabric of space and time. Frank proposed looking not at energy consumption but transformation, noting that a sophisticated civilization does more than bring a planet to heel, it must learn to find balance between resource use and long-term survival.
Of these — again, all white American or European men — only Sagan offers a measure of advancement that isn’t necessarily acquisitive. Even the manipulation of atoms, which may seem so small and delicate, requires massive amounts of energy in the form of particle accelerators, not to mention that this kind of tinkering has also unleashed humanity’s greatest destructive force. But Sagan’s super-advanced civilization could be nothing more than a massive, massive library, filled with scholars and philosophers, expanding and exploring mentally but with no dominion over their planet or star. (Yet, one has to ask: What is powering those libraries? The internet is ephemeral, but it is not free.)
Implicit in any vision of vast progress is not just longevity but continuity. The assumption of the ever upward-sloping line is bold to say the least. In the novella A Man of the People, Ursula K. Le Guin writes of one world, Hain, where civilization has existed for three million years. But just as the last few thousand years on Earth have seen empires rise and fall, and cultures collapse and displace one another, so it is on Hain at larger scale. Le Guin writes, “There had been…billions of lives lived in millions of countries…infinite wars and times of peace, incessant discoveries and forgettings…an endless repetition of unceasing novelty.” To hope for more than that is perhaps more optimistic than to imagine we might domesticate a star. Perhaps it’s also shortsighted, extrapolating out eons of future from just the last few centuries of life on two continents, rather than a wider view of many millennia on our whole world.
All of these scales of progress are built on human assumptions, specifically the colonizing, dominating, fossil-fuel-burning history of Europe and the United States. But scientists don’t see much use in thinking about the super-advanced alien philosophers and artists and dolphins, brilliant as they might be, because it would be basically impossible for us to find them.
The scientific quest for advanced aliens is about trying to imagine not just who might be out there but how we might find them. Which is how we end up at Dyson spheres.
Dyson spheres are named for Freeman Dyson, the physicist, mathematician, and general polymath. While most SETI scientists in the early 1960s were looking for extraterrestrial beacons, Dyson thought “one ought to be looking at the uncooperative society.” Not obstinate, just not actively trying to help us. “The idea of searching for radio signals was a fine idea,” he said in a 1981 interview, “but it only works if you have some cooperation at the other end. So I was always thinking about what to do if you were looking just for evidence of intelligent activities without anything in the nature of a message.” And you might as well start with the easiest technology to detect — the biggest or brightest. So the massive spheres Dyson popularized in his 1960 paper were the result of him asking What is the largest feasible technology?
In the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Relics,” the Enterprise finds itself caught in a massive gravitational field, even though there are no stars nearby. The source, on the view screen, is a matte, dark gray sphere. Riker says its diameter is almost as wide as the Earth’s orbit.
Picard asks, with hushed wonder, “Mr. Data, could this be a Dyson sphere?”
Data replies, “The object does fit the parameters of Dyson’s theory.”
Commander Riker isn’t familiar with the concept, but Picard doesn’t give him any trouble for that. “It’s a very old theory, Number One. I’m not surprised that you haven’t heard of it.” He tells him that a twentieth century physicist, Freeman Dyson, had proposed that a massive, hollow sphere built around a star could capture all the star’s radiating energy for use. “A population living on the interior surface would have virtually inexhaustible sources of power.”
Riker asks, with some skepticism, if Picard thinks there are people living in the sphere.
“Possibly a great number of people, Commander,” Data says. “The interior surface area of a sphere this size is the equivalent of more than two hundred and fifty million Class M [Earthlike] planets.”
In Dyson’s thinking, the goal wasn’t living space but energy — how would a civilization reach Type II? And Dyson’s writing was clearly speculative. In the paper, he wrote, “I do not argue that this is what will happen in our system; I only say that this is what may have happened in other systems.” Decades later, astrophysicist Jason Wright took up the search.
One of the great benefits to this approach, Wright told me, is that “nature doesn’t make Dyson spheres.” Wright is a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State, where he is director of the Penn State Extraterrestrial Intelligence Center. But while the best known version of SETI is listening for radio signals (more on that in the next chapter), Wright focuses on looking for technosignatures — evidence of technology out among the stars. Technosignatures allow you to find those uncooperative aliens Dyson thought would make the best targets. We don’t even need to find the aliens, in this case, just proof they once existed. That could be a stargate, or a distant planet covered in elemental silicon (geologically unlikely, but technologically great for solar panels), or it could be a Dyson sphere.
Wright’s first big search for Dyson spheres was called Glimpsing Heat from Alien Technologies, or G-HAT. Or, even better, Gˆ (because that’s a G with a little hat on it). The premise was simple: Dyson spheres don’t just absorb energy, they transform it, inevitably radiating some waste as heat which we can see as infrared radiation. So, from 2012 to 2015, Wright and his team looked at about a million galaxies, searching for a Type II civilization on its way to Type III, having ensconced enough of a galaxy’s stars in Dyson spheres that the galaxy might glow unusually bright in infrared. (They surveyed galaxies rather than individual stars because, as Wright writes, “A technological species that could build a Dyson sphere could also presumably spread to nearby star systems,” so it’s fair to think a galaxy with one Dyson sphere may have several, and several would be easier to find than just one. Might as well start there.) None were found, but you know that because you would’ve surely heard about it if Wright’s search had succeeded.
Wright prides himself on the agnosticism of this approach. He doesn’t need aliens to be looking for us or to have any certain sociological impulses. They just need technology. “Technology uses energy,” he told me. “That’s kind of what makes it technology. Just like life uses energy.” That view makes demolishing a Jupiter-sized planet to build a star-encompassing megastructure seem almost comically simple, but Wright doesn’t even see the existence of a Dyson sphere as requiring massive coordination or forethought on the aliens’ part. It is truly, in his view, a low-intensity ask. He compared it to Manhattan, a fair example of a human “megastructure,” a massive, interconnected, artificial system. “It was planned to some degree, but no one was ever like, ‘Hey, let’s build a huge city here.’ It’s just every generation made it a little bigger.” He thinks a Dyson sphere or swarm could accumulate in a similar manner. “If the energy is out there to take and it’s just gonna fly away to space anyway, then why wouldn’t someone take it?”
Wright knows the objections: that this imagines a capitalist orientation, a drive to “dominate nature” that is by no means universal, not even among human societies. But for his research to work, this drive doesn’t need to be universal among the stars. It just has to have happened sometimes, enough for us to see the results. As he put it, “There’s nothing that drives all life on Earth to be large. In fact, most life is small. But some life is large.” And if an alien were to come to Earth, they wouldn’t need to see all the small life to know the planet was inhabited. A single elephant would do the trick.
Some hypothetical alien technosignatures might be less definitive. In 2017, astronomers detected a roughly quarter-mile-long rocky object slingshotting through the solar system. They realized that this object, called ‘Oumuamua, came from outside the system — because of its speed and the path it took. It was the first interstellar object ever detected in our system. While hopes or fears that it was an alien probe were not realized, it was a reminder that alien technology could be found closer to home, lurking around our own sun.
“We don’t know that there’s not technology here because we’ve never really checked,” Wright said. “I mean, I guess if they had cities on Mars, we would notice—if they were on the surface, anyway.” But, he pointed out, much of the Earth’s surface doesn’t have active, visible technology. The same could go for the solar system beyond Earth, too. There could be alien probes or debris, like ‘Oumuamua but constructed, moving so fast or so dark that we don’t see them. Maybe there’s an alien base on the dwarf planet Ceres, or buried under the surface of Mars. The lunar monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey, Wright reminded me, was buried just under the surface of the moon. All those ancient interstellar gates sci-fi is fond of have to be found before they can be used. Don’t forget, until 2015, our best image of Pluto was a blurry blob. So much of what we know about even our own solar system is inference and assumption.
Skeptics love to ask Okay, so where is everyone? But we don’t know for sure that they aren’t — or haven’t been — here.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://ift.tt/oDMs4QL
from Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics https://ift.tt/oDMs4QL
via IFTTT https://ift.tt/j0E2KIW
