The deal hasn’t been officially confirmed. We’ve asked Tesla for comment. However, it’s clear that something is afoot. DeepScale chief Forrest Iandola stated on LinkedIn that he joined Tesla’s Autopilot team “this week,” and that he was working on autonomous driving. CNBC sources said that Tesla bought DeepScale “outright.”
An acquisition would make sense. Elon Musk has stressed his belief that Tesla can rely on cameras for autonomy, rather than the bulky LiDAR units many others use. If that’s going to happen, Tesla will need self-driving AI that can recognize a wide variety of road objects in less-than-ideal conditions. A buyout like this could bring it one step closer to that reality.
Thee are a few perks. Built-in WiFi helps you check in on your charging and, eventually, adapt to power companies’ demand-based programs. It’s also outdoor-friendly if you have to mount it beyond your garage. And if you’d rather not ask someone to mount it in the first place, there’s a power plug to help you set it up quickly by yourself. Really, this is about getting no-fuss charging into the hands of as many EV owners as possible — and, of course, laying the groundwork for VW’s incoming wave of EVs.
After every match, you’ll have the chance to snag a blueprint, which explains upfront what item you’ll obtain if you buy it. You can pay for a blueprint (and item) immediately, or you can hang onto it in your inventory to purchase later. As with crates, painted, certified and special edition items will be available through blueprints. Psyonix also has a new item shop on its roadmap. It’ll feature older items that appeared in crates along with new ones.
Both blueprints and the item shop will arrive in December, along with credits, which are replacing keys as the game’s premium currency. You’ll also be able to use credits to buy Rocket Pass Premium too, but they won’t be valid for the esports shop — only esports tokens will be valid there. Psyonix will automatically convert keys into credits and remaining crates into blueprints once the overhauled system goes live. Until then, one final vindicator crate will be available from Thursday, which includes a battle-car and a goal explosion.
Meanwhile, changes are afoot for Rocket League trade-ins. When the new cosmetics system is up and running, you won’t be able to trade in paid-for items from blueprints, the item shop or older ones you got from crates. You’ll still be able to trade in items from free post-game drops.
Psyonix reckons blueprints will offer more transparency about the digital goods you’re buying. A major criticism of loot boxes is that you don’t really know what goodies they contain. Some jurisdictions and regulators believe they’re a form of gambling.
Some Smart Display owners have been able to successfully bypass the bug by resetting their device through the Google Home app and setting it up again with all the settings left to their defaults. Others have had luck by simply letting the Smart Display work through the update for a couple of days. For the most part, there doesn’t seem to be a workaround that’s guaranteed to succeed.
According to an Lenovo employee who posted in the company’s official support forums, Google has classified the issue as a “top priority” and is working on a fix. However, the employee didn’t say when to expect the new update. “For the time being the only course of action is to wait for the team to roll out a fix,” they added.
We’ve reached out to both Google and Lenovo for comment, as well to find out if they have a preliminary timeline to share. We’ll update this article when we hear back. In the meantime, if your Smart Display is stuck in an update loop, Lenovo recommends you keep it plugged in. That way you’ll get the bug fix as soon as it’s available.
Update 10/1/19 3:49PM ET: A Google spokesperson told Engadget that the bug has been fixed and that it was caused by a server issue. No additional steps are required to receive the software update that will remedy the problem. If your device was unplugged, simply resume the setup process like you normally would.
Deep Fusion takes an underexposed photo for sharpness, and blends that with three neutral pictures and a long high-exposure image on a per-pixel level to achieve a highly customized result. The machine learning system examines the context of the picture to understand where a pixel sits on the frequency spectrum. Pixels for clouds will be treated differently than those for skin, for example. After that, the technology grabs structure and tonality based on ratios.
There are some gotchas. You can’t use this with your phone’s ultra-wide angle lens, as hinted earlier, and bright telephoto shots will revert to Smart HDR to maintain better exposure. The capture process is quick, but it’ll take a second for your iPhone to process the image at full quality. And yes, you absolutely need a 2019 iPhone for this to work — it’s dependent on the A13 chip.
You’ll have to wait until the general release of iOS 13.2 if you’re not willing to experiment. Even so, this could represent a minor coup for Apple. The company has been accused of slipping on photography in the past, letting AI-centric phone cameras like Google’s pull ahead. Although the iPhone 11 series made strides in photo quality out of the box (particularly with its Night Mode), Deep Fusion gives Apple an AI-powered camera feature that boosts quality further and might provide an edge over rivals in key scenarios.
Twitter is continuing its streak of releasing features it teased in August. The internet giant is rolling out its previously-tested direct message search to iOS users. You only have to type in a search box to recall the restaurant you were supposed to visit. Keywords apply to user names, informal names and the content of messages, so it should be easy to narrow DMs to those from a close friend.
Flight Forward is the first company to claim the Part 135 Standard certification, and it’ll be able to operate an unlimited number of drones. The machines and their payloads can weigh more than 55 pounds and UPS can fly its drones at night.
Earlier this year, under the Transportation Department’s Unmanned Aircraft Systems Integration Pilot Program, Flight Forward started transporting medical lab samples and blood for transfusions around WakeMed’s healthcare campus in Raleigh, North Carolina. After it received the FAA certification, it launched a Matternet M2 quadcopter flight under a “beyond visual line of sight” (BVLOS) exemption, which it says was “a first in the US for a regular revenue-generating delivery.”
At first, UPS plans to expand drone deliveries to hospitals and medical campuses across the US. It’s also planning to carry out flights outside of the healthcare industry, “including the transport of special commodities and other regulated goods.”
It aims to build a centralized operations center, run regular BVLOS flights and work with manufacturers to build drones that can carry various capacities of cargo. UPS also plans to quickly build out ground-based, detect-and-avoid technologies for safety and to expand its service in the future.
“This is history in the making, and we aren’t done yet,” UPS CEO David Abney said in a statement. “Our technology is opening doors for UPS and solving problems in unique ways for our customers. We will soon announce other steps to build out our infrastructure, expand services for healthcare customers and put drones to new uses in the future.”
The first two months of the Xbox Game Pass subscription cost a dollar each. After that, the price will rise to the standard $15 per month. Once your six months of the free Spotify Premium are up, you can either cancel or roll over into the normal rate for the service of $10 per month. You’ll have to be a new Spotify customer to be eligible for the deal; if you’ve subscribed to any Spotify service or even just signed up for a free trial, you’re out of luck.
Spotify typically offers two- or three-month trials, so six months of free music streaming is a good deal. Per usual, the company says that the offer is only available for a limited time. You can sign up now, but don’t forget to mark your calendar for the trial’s end date in case you want to cancel.
While the feature isn’t available yet, the self-destructing messages could be useful for anyone sending sensitive info. Telegram launched with the ability to send disappearing messages, so in this case Facebook is playing catch-up.
WhatsApp has been ramping up its safety and privacy features. Encryption is now built in, and last year, WhatsApp extended the time users have to unsend a message to one hour, eight minutes and 16 seconds. That was an improvement over the seven minutes users had previously, but it fell short of the 48 hours that Telegram users have to delete their messages. Facebook gives users 10 minutes to unsend messages before they’re read.
There’s a good chance the disappearing message feature will change a bit before it’s publicly available to all WhatsApp users, and it’s hard to say when that will be. WhatsApp is also testing features to curb the spread of fake news. We’ll see if those changes are enough to get people to trust the messaging app, even with its ties to Facebook.
Block.one has agreed to pay the fine, but has neither admitted nor denied the SEC’s findings. The company has also been granted a waiver which means it won’t be subject to any ongoing restrictions that would usually apply to a settlement of this kind. It’s not the first such penalty to be levied by the SEC, however. Earlier this year it announced it was suing messaging service Kik for failing to register its ICO — part of its ongoing investigation into the way cryptocurrency companies conduct their fundraising activities.
