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Google will shut down its Inbox app on April 2nd

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Image: jdayellow @ Reddit

The notification includes a link to open the Gmail app as an attempt to ensure that current users continue to use Google products. Gmail for mobile already has some of Inbox’s most useful features, such as Smart Reply, Smart Compose and Follow-ups — it also recently went through an all-white redesign that made it look and feel more like Inbox. Unfortunately, fans will have to give up Inbox’s bundling and other features that have yet to make their way to Gmail until Google decides to bring them over.

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Google wants Tasks to handle all your reminders

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When the time you indicated for a specific entry comes up, it’ll trigger a Calendar notification on desktop. You’ll also get a notification on your Android or iOS device via the Tasks application. And in case you forget to mark the entry as completed, you’ll get a second notification at 9AM the next day.

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In addition, you can now import reminders from Inbox or Gmail, Calendar and Assistant. The Tasks mobile app will show you a prompt asking if you’d like to import existing reminders when you fire it up, but you can also do it manually. Simply access the overflow menu within the Tasks option in Calendar and choose “Copy reminders to Tasks.” Just take note that it’s a one-time import, and those entries won’t be syncing with their counterparts in other G Suite programs when you edit them — after all, Google is rolling out these changes to encourage you to use Tasks for all your reminders.

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Rep. Devin Nunes sues Twitter for $250 million over ‘@DevinNunesMom’

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Devin Nunes Mom

His targets, beyond twitter itself, are Liz Mair, a former RNC Online comms director and political strategist, as well as the @DevinNunesMom and @DevinCow accounts. Other accounts that he took issue with, but are not named as defendants in the suit, include “Devin Nunes Grapes” (@DevinGrapes) and @FireDevinNunes.

Nunes claims that Twitter should be liable for reasons including a failure to enforce its own content rules. While one could make that argument about the site, Nunes is upset about the use of memes to allege crimes for which he has not been charged or convicted, or that portray him as a prisoner, while Mother Jones reports that an “alternative news site” paid for by his campaign committee employed hashtags like #LockHerUp. Last year, Nunes cosponsored the “Discouraging Frivolous Lawsuits” bill. Twitter has not commented on the lawsuit.



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Scientists can turn regular seawater into hydrogen fuel

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Unfortunately, purified water is in itself a scarce resource. Which is why Stanford chemistry professor Hongjie Dai and her team sought out to discover a way to keep salt water from breaking down devices used for water-splitting. “We barely have enough water for our current needs in California,” said Dai in a press release.

The Stanford team layered nickel-iron hydroxide and nickel sulfide on top of a nickel foam core, essentially creating a barrier that would slow down the decay of the underlying metal. By acting as a conductor, the nickel foam transports energy from the power source and the nickel-iron hydroxide sparks the electrolysis. What happens without the nickel coating? The water-splitting device lasts roughly 12 hours, unable to withstand seawater corrosion. But with the nickel layer, the device can keep going for more than a thousand hours.

We’re still far away from harnessing ocean water as a new renewable energy source. The new discovery hasn’t been attempted outside of Stanford’s research labs. But scientists are hoping it will pave the way for increased use of hydrogen fuel.

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Microsoft’s latest preview program lets you test ‘Halo’ PC releases

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The 343 crew didn’t say just when it would release the first preview, although Halo: Reach is a strong candidate for that preview when it’s the lead title for the MCC PC introduction. Both Xbox and PC players will be asked to fill out occasional surveys. If you’re an Xbox fan, you can also use the Xbox Insider Program’s “report issue” tool to provide input.

There’s no secret motivation behind the new program — 343 knows the original MCC release had plenty of teething troubles, and it wants to avoid a repeat. This initiative increases the chances of a smooth launch, and might just rejuvenate overall interest in Halo.

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Warren Spector previews ‘System Shock 3’

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Tonight at the Game Developers Conference, Warren Spector showed off a “pre-alpha” glimpse of System Shock 3 that’s being developed using the Unity engine. Naturally, the SHODAN AI is back and up to no good, but there’s very little else to go on in terms of detail.

Spector spoke during the Unity press conference and discussed how its technology helped the team create a world full of “robots, mutants and the dead” that impresses feelings of fear, horror and dread upon the player. It’s carefully using “intense, focused light” to help achieve the right look, press play and see if they’ve got it right so far.

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Mobile’ beta opens soon with classic maps and gameplay

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Late last year Tencent and Activision started testing an Android mobile version of Call of Duty, and today at GDC, announced that the game will start a beta test soon that’s available in regions including Europe as well as North and South America. Call of Duty: Mobile maintains the look and feel of the game’s performance on at least Xbox 360 and PS3-era hardware, plus it promises familiar maps from previous entries like Black Ops and Modern Warfare.

The mobile version is a free-to-play title focused on competitive multiplayer matches in modes like Search-and-Destroy, Team Deathmatch and free for all. There’s no word on exactly when the beta test will start on both iOS and Android, but interested players can sign up for access on the official site here, and check out a brief trailer below.

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Xiaomi’s Black Shark 2 gaming phone packs a pressure-sensitive display

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The pressure-sensitive feature isn’t the only thing this display has going for it. The 6.39-inch AMOLED display is designed to reduce screen flicker at low brightness, improve color accuracy and reduce touch latency. While adding buttons to your screen might slow you down in some games, that shouldn’t be too much of a problem thanks to the Snapdragon 855 processor. And like its predecessor Helo, Black Shark 2 has a vapor cooling chamber for smoother gameplay.

As far as other specs gamers might appreciate, the phone’s 4,000 mAh battery can support 27W fast charging, and the entry level model comes with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of internal storage — or you can opt for up to 12GB of RAM and 256GB of internal storage. It has two rear-facing cameras with 48 megapixels and 12 megapixels, respectively. The front-facing camera has 20 megapixels.

This is already Xiaomi’s third gaming phone. It released the original Black Hawk in April 2018 and its Helo model in October 2018. By now, it’s on track to compete with the likes of Razer and ASUS. As of today, Black Shark 2 is on sale in China for about $480, but there’s no word yet when it will make its way to the US.

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Atari VCS gets a spec boost and another delay

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The team acknowledged that this isn’t great news for Indiegogo backers who’ve already been waiting several months for the VCS, but maintained that it should lead to “better overall performance” and a “cooler and quieter” machine without significant disruptions to manufacturing.

While this suggests you won’t be complaining too loudly about performance, it could still leave you frustrated. The team first vowed to ship a system in 2018, but it won’t show up until a year later. And however capable the hardware might be, the VCS will still depend heavily on software support. Developers will have to produce compelling titles optimized for the VCS, and you won’t know how that shakes out until sometime in the months ahead — assuming there isn’t another delay.

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Toyota will be first to use NVIDIA’s self-driving simulator

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Toyota’s Research Institute-Advanced Development (TRI-AD) will be the first customer for Drive Constellation. The automaker is already using the NVIDIA Drive AGX Xavier computer (below) to power self-driving vehicle testing in the real world, and will assist NVIDIA in developing its simulation and self-driving tech.

The system consists of two distinct cloud-powered solutions. The “Constellation Simulator” server uses NVIDIA’s GPUs to run software called Drive Sim that generates a realistic virtual world to be fed into a virtual car’s sensors. The second server, “Constellation Vehicle,” powered by the Drive AGX in-car computer, then processes the simulated sensor data.

“The driving decisions from Constellation vehicle are fed back into Constellation Simulator, aiming to realize bit-accurate, timing-accurate hardware-in-the-loop testing,” said NVIDIA. The aim, of course, is to help Toyota and other manufacturers develop and market self-driving cars that will work safely in the real world.

To aid in that process, NVIDIA also unveiled an open platform that works with any driving software called “Safety Force Field” (SFF). It uses sensor data to predict what will happen on roads and take actions to protect the vehicle and other users. “The SFF framework ensures these actions will never create, escalate or contribute to an unsafe situation and includes actions necessary to mitigate potential danger,” said NVIDIA.

Rather than trying to model highly complex real-world scenarios, SFF “follows one core principle of collision avoidance as opposed to a large set of rules and expectations.” NVIDIA said. It takes into account both braking and steering constraints and has been tested in highway and city simulations that would be too dangerous for the real world. “SFF is mathematically designed such that autonomous vehicles equipped with SFF will, like magnets that repel each other, keep themselves out of harm’s way and not contribute to unsafe situations,” said NVIDIA Autonomous Driving VP David Nister.

NVIDIA first announced Drive Constellation a year ago, just after a self-driving Uber vehicle — equipped with NVIDIA’s tech — struck and killed a pedestrian. After the accident, CEO Jensen Huang said the company would rededicate itself to what is “probably the hardest computing technology we’ve ever encountered.”

Drive Constellation will be available to any developer, said CEO Jensen Huang said at this year’s NVIDIA’s GTC developer conference. Companies working on self-driving tech will be able submit their own simulation scenarios, and then see the results on their own computers. “This large-scale validation capability is comparable to operating an entire fleet of test vehicles, however, it is able to accomplish years of testing in a fraction of the time,” the company said in a statement.

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