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Verizon expands its 5G network to Atlanta, Detroit, Indianapolis and DC

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As has been the case in Verizon’s other 5G cities to date, service is initially available in select areas, typically around public spaces like stadiums, parks and college campuses — though Verizon plans to expand to other parts of town soon. In Washington DC, for instance, coverage areas include landmarks such as the White House, George Washington University, the National Mall and Ronald Reagan National Airport.

The latest additions join Chicago, Minneapolis, Denver, Providence and St. Paul as cities in which Verizon’s 5G service is active. So far, five devices are compatible with the network: the Samsung Galaxy S10 5G, the LG V50 ThinQ 5G, the Inseego MiFi M1000 hotspot and the Moro Z3 and Z4 (when you attach the 5G Moto Mod).

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Simply the best true wireless earbuds

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The Headphones app will also allow you to change the Adaptive Sound Control settings, turn off that DSEE HX tech and change the function of the buttons on each earbud. However, your options are super limited there. You can choose between playback controls (play/pause and skipping tracks), Ambient Sound modes (on, off, noise-canceling) and Google Assistant. That’s it. I found it best to have playback controls on one side with the Ambient Sound options on the other. And no, there’s no option for onboard volume control. It’s my main gripe with the WF-1000XM3. Every time you want to change the volume, you have to grab your phone or reach for your laptop. There is, however, a “quick attention mode” that’s super handy. If you cover the left earbud with your hand, the music reduces to a low hum so you can hear what’s going on around you. This is also available on Sony’s XB900N headphones.

In addition to improved ANC and audio, Sony built a new Bluetooth chip for the WF-1000XM3. In addition to the usual connectivity improvements, sound is transmitted to both earbuds simultaneously, rather than beamed to one and then from that one to the other. Indeed, the Bluetooth is reliable, and I never experienced any dropouts. Ditto for video: not once did I encounter a time where the audio didn’t sync up with the visuals.

Sony WF-1000XM3 review

Battery life is another area Sony bests much, if not all, of the competition. The company claims the WF-1000XM3 will last six hours on a charge with ANC turned on, or eight hours with noise-canceling off. I had no problems hitting that mark, and the included charging case helps keep the buds topped off. The case is larger than a lot of the ones I’ve seen, and it won’t fit in your pocket most likely. Despite the added bulk, it does offer three additional charges or an extra 18 hours of total listening time. There’s also a quick-charge feature that will give you 90 minutes of listening after 10 minutes. Handy if you drain them at the office and need to block out your commute with a podcast.

But it’s worth noting, the design isn’t for everyone. The buds stick out of your ear quite a bit, and they’re larger than Sony’s previous true-wireless models — like the WF-SP700N. Unlike that sporty option, the company ditched the fin. Instead, there’s a hump right under the tip that helps them stay in place. Despite the extra heft on the outside, the WF-1000XM3 stays put for the most part, once you find the perfect-sized tips for your ears. Still, these look like you’re wearing two Bluetooth headsets — like you’re someone super important … from 2006. If you’re hoping to be discreet with your true-wireless earbud choice, these probably aren’t the best option.

Sony WF-1000XM3 review

In terms of alternatives, Sennheiser is probably the closest sound-wise, but I found the Momentum True Wireless frustrating to use, especially the onboard controls. Plus, it costs $300. I also really like the sound of Master & Dynamic’s MW07, but they’re still $299, and the battery life isn’t great. Honestly, with Sony coming in at $70 or less than a lot of “flagship” true-wireless earbuds, it’s hard to recommend any of the alternatives. But hey, they’re out there if you need to shop around. Sony has a super compelling package, and it’s better than the pricier options. The only reason to consider something else is if you want to take your buds to the gym. And in that case, the PowerBeats Pro are the best-sounding alternative that won’t buckle when they get sweaty.

With the WF-1000XM3, Sony has brought its true-wireless earbuds up to the level of its best-in-class headphones. Powerful noise-cancellation, improved Ambient Sound mode and incredible sound quality make these the best option under $300. And really, they’re probably your best bet at any price.

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Amazon is turning indie superhero movie ‘Fast Color’ into a series

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The women can telekinetically disintegrate and reassemble objects, as well as see moving colors. Ruth’s, however, became destructive in her childhood, causing her seizures to trigger supernatural earthquakes. It’s unclear if Mbatha-Raw will reprise her role, but Deadline says the series will follow her character’s story. The show will also be headed by the film’s original writers Jordan Horowitz and Julia Hart, who also served as its director.

Hart said in a statement:

“We couldn’t be more excited about the opportunity to continue living in this world, with these women, and can’t imagine better partners than Viola and Julius and Mickey [Liddell] and Pete [Shilaimon] and everyone at Amazon.”

Amazon signed a first look feature production deal with Davis and Tennon’s JuVee Productions in 2018 and landed Davis’ adaptation of Octavia Butler’s Wild Seed after that. Fast Color probably won’t be their last collaboration if things go well between the two camps. We’ll likely hear more about the series before it debuts. For now, you can watch the film’s trailer below to get an idea of what to expect:

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Google delivers a new look for Android Auto

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The idea is to make it safer to launch and use apps in the car.Google’s refreshed look for Android Auto is rolling out now

Now whenever you are in Android Auto and following a route, the information is shown along the lower portion of a car’s display — no more launching Spotify and wondering if you’re about to miss a turn while choosing a playlist. The weird, notification-style layout of the home screen is gone. Instead, Android Auto’s home screen now resembles a tablet with all your apps in one place.

Still $1,300.LG’s updated UltraFine 5K display works with your iPad Pro

The UltraFine 5K Display by LG has returned to Apple’s store after a months-long hiatus, with just one notable change. The updated version of the 27-inch monitor is compatible with the USB-C output from recent iPad Pros, making it a viable option if you need a large secondary screen for media previews or screen mirroring.

Wearables revenue grew by 50 percent.Apple’s wearables and services made up for weak iPhone sales

Apple — which can’t count on people splurging on pricey new iPhones the way they used to — is shifting to focus on its services business. It’s not hard to see why, either: in the last two quarters, iPhone sales have dipped significantly year-over-year while Apple’s service revenue continued to climb. Not coincidentally, CEO Tim Cook revealed that its Apple Card would launch in the US sometime in August.

Solid sales for Macs ($5.8 billion) and iPads ($5.02 billion) prove that diligent hardware upgrades do make a material impact on the bottom line. More importantly, Apple saw its wearables business — which includes the Apple Watch, AirPods, Beats and more — swell by nearly $2 billion since this time last year.

Q2 2019 profits dropped 56 percent from the same period last year.Samsung to fight falling profits with midrange phones, ‘mainstream’ 8K

So what does Samsung do when the money isn’t rolling in quite like it used to? The electronics giant still showed an operating profit of $5.6 billion over the last three months, but that’s less than half of its haul over the same period in 2018.

Besides the upcoming Galaxy Fold and Galaxy Note 10, Samsung said it’s going to focus on midrange devices like its all-screen Galaxy A80. For larger screens, it’s looking to make 8K ‘mainstream’ this fall.

Upgrade time.Back to School 2019: The best mobile devices

New school year, new gear. Maybe you’re due for an upgrade, or maybe you broke your phone over summer break, or maybe you just want a new toy. Either way, you might be looking to refresh your slate of devices before heading to campus. For the mobile section of our back-to-school guide, we considered the best phones you can get on a student-friendly budget. We also threw in our favorite smartwatches for both Android and iOS users.

The trade war could have a direct impact on gamers.Sony warns trade war could lead to PlayStation price hikes

Following the company’s financial results (almost 100 million PS4s sold!), Sony’s financial chief Hiroki Totoki warned that US plans for expanded tariffs on Chinese products could force a price hike on PlayStation consoles. Passing higher costs to consumers could be the result. It’s TBC whether or not widened tariffs will apply in the first place — that depends on the US administration’s negotiations with China.

The US raised tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese goods back in May, to 25 percent. A further tariff expansion would cover another $300 billion in products, including PlayStation systems — and consoles are typically sold at slim profit margins in the first place. And the Playstation 5 isn’t far away.

If it’s not a problem, then why is it secret?Amazon’s Ring service may already have 200 law enforcement agency partners

Amazon’s Ring security service is working with as many as 200 law enforcement agencies, according to an email obtained by Motherboard. A few days ago, the publication learned that Ring forged partnerships with a number of law enforcement agencies.

Some of those partners are reportedly required to advertise Ring home security cameras in exchange for free units and access to an anonymized portal that allows them to request security footage from users. A Ring spokesperson denied that the program was supposed to be a deep, dark secret, but the company never disclosed the number of partnerships it maintains.

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Facebook is inching closer to a think-to-type computer system

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Brain-computer interface systems already exist, but require users to mentally select a letter at a time on a virtual keyboard, a process that tends to be very slow. The UCSF researchers, however, tried to use context to help the machines translate entire words and phrases.

Researchers implanted electrical arrays on the surfaces of the brains of volunteer epilepsy patients. They were placed in regions of the brain associated with both speech and comprehension.

Subjects responded out loud to multiple choice questions, like “From zero to 10, how comfortable are you?” or “How is your room currently?” Using brain electrical activity only, the system would then guess when a question was being asked and what it was, and from that, determine the subject’s answer.

If it first figured out which question was being asked, it could winnow down the possible set of responses. As a result, it produced results that were 61 to 76 percent accurate, compared to 7 to 20 percent expected by guessing.

“Here we show the value of decoding both sides of a conversation — both the questions someone hears and what they say in response,” lead author Prof. Edward Chang said in a statement.

The experiment produced positive results, but showed the current limitations of the tech. The electrical arrays, while less intrusive than probes used for other brain-interface experiments, still needed to be implanted in subjects who were about to undergo epilepsy surgery. And rather than merely thinking the responses, they were saying them out loud.

To top it off, the range of nine question and 24 responses was very limited. All of that is a far cry from Facebook’s stated goal of 100 word-per-minute random speech translation using passive wearable devices.

Facebook believes that even the limited capacity could be powerful, though. “Being able to decode even just a handful of imagined words — like ‘select’ or ‘delete’ — would provide entirely new ways of interacting with today’s VR systems and tomorrow’s AR glasses,” said the company in a post.

Naturally, folks might be concerned about giving Facebook (of all companies) direct access to our brains. However, Reality Labs Rearcher Director Mark Chevillet tried to address such concerns in Facebook’s post on the subject.

“We can’t anticipate or solve all of the ethical issues associated with this technology on our own,” he said in a statement. “Neuroethical design is one of our program’s key pillars — we want to be transparent about what we’re working on so that people can tell us their concerns about this technology.” I’m sure you will, in the comments below.

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Remedy’s latest trailer for ‘Control’ digs into the supernatural shooter’s story

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That agency is the Federal Bureau of Control, and your character, Jesse Faden, has supernatural abilities of her own to rely on. Last year narrative director Anna Megill told Engadget “we’re trying to make something unexpected,” with a game that’s the studio’s least-linear experience yet, compared to games like Alan Wake or Max Payne, and with far fewer cutscenes than its last effort Quantum Break.

An NVIDIA RTX trailer from E3 2019 shows more of how the game plays, and its developers have posted streams with even more to share, but the recently-posted “Story” trailer is all about how nightmareish the game feels. Given how much Remedy titles deliver in terms of atmosphere, that may be all you need to determine if this is one to check out once it’s released.


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Jaybird’s Vista are a sleeker pair of wireless exercise earbuds

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Clearly, Jaybird learned a lot from the Run. Whereas those earbuds were a bit bulbous and large, the Vista are tiny and practically weightless at 6 grams (just a gram heavier than a sheet of paper). They fit comfortably, thanks to their ever-reliable wingtips and three bud sizes, and they feel sturdy enough to take a few hard tumbles. Jaybird also dumped its previous charging case, which was too large for most pockets and had a bad habit of popping open unexpectedly, and replaced it with something much more compact. It’s slightly larger than a pack of gum, and it also holds 10 hours of charge (on top of the six hours in the Vista themselves).

Based on my brief testing, the Vista feature a more stable wireless connection than the last models. You can also use each earbud independently, thanks to a much more efficient Bluetooth connection. With both Run models, your phone only paired with the right unit, while the left one basically piggy-backed on that connection. Typically, I traverse New York while listening to podcasts on a single earbud, so it’s nice to have the option of choosing either side.

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NASA will help SpaceX and Blue Origin develop future mission technology

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One of NASA’s chosen companies is SpaceX, which will work on advancing its technology to land large rockets vertically on the moon with the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Elon Musk’s company is also teaming up with NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland and Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama to refine its technology needed to transfer propellant in orbit, which is necessary for the development of its Starship vehicle.

Blue Origin, on the other hand, will be collaborating with NASA’s Johnson Space Center on a navigation and guidance system that will enable precise landing at various locations on the moon. It will also work with Glenn and Johnson on a fuel cell system for its Blue Moon lunar lander, which could provide the vehicle with power for two weeks. Finally, NASA will help Blue Origin develop high-temperature materials for liquid rocket engine nozzles that could be used on lunar landers.

The other projects NASA will help develop include a compact hydrogen generator for heat shields (by Anasphere from Montana) that could enable the agency to deliver larger payloads to Mars. It’s also helping Lockheed Martin create autonomous in-space plant growth systems, so future spacefarers can grow and harvest food in deep space.

In addition to revealing the new partnerships, NASA has also announced a call for more projects under its Commercial Lunar Payload Services program. For this round, it’s specifically looking for technologies that will allow lunar landers to carry heavier payloads to the surface of the moon. We need to carry a lot of instruments and supplies to Earth’s faithful companion, after all, if we’re to fully explore it.

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HBO Max orders Greek mythology series ‘Circe’

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The show will be written and executive-produced by Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver. The duo previously worked on Jurassic World and Planet of the Apes, and are currently working on the live-action remake of Disney’s Mulan and the upcoming Avatar sequels. Chernin Entertainment is producing in partnership with Endeavor Content.

The show is told from the perspective of the goddess as she transforms from a nymph to a formidable witch. “Circe tells an epic story of love, loss, tragedy and immortal conflict, all through the eyes of a fierce female lens,” Sarah Aubrey, head of originals at HBO Max, said Tuesday in a statement. “I’ve been a longtime fan of Rick and Amanda’s work and their ability to simultaneously build epic imaginative worlds while creating emotional dynamic characters. In partnership with Peter Chernin and Jenno Topping, we have the dream team to bring Circe to life.”

Odyssey nerds will have a bit of a wait. HBO Max, which is WarnerMedia’s upcoming streaming service that will serve as a mix of original programming and classic shows, is set to release in beta later this year. Original programming is expected to debut on the service sometime in 2020. Circe joins a promising lineup of shows that will include an animated Gremlins film and the female-centric Dune: The Sisterhood.

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Livestreamer caught using face filter to make herself look younger

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The incident occurred while Your Highness Qiao Biluo was on a joint-live stream with another user on Douyu, a popular Chinese livestream platform that has been likened to Twitch. As the Global Times reported, fans began urging Qiao Biluo to remove her filter and show her real face. The star demurred, countering that she would only do so if fans sent higher donations. “I can’t show my face until I receive gifts worth 100,000 yuan (or $11,950). After all, I’m a good-looking host,” she said. Donations began pouring in, with the largest gift reported to be upwards of $5,000 dollars. But at one point, the filter faded — and the man (or in this case, woman) behind the curtain was revealed. The streamer only noticed there was a problem when followers began exiting a paid VIP room in droves. Footage of the revealing moment has been uploaded to YouTube, which you can see below.

While the incident has gone viral on Chinese social media due to the surprising nature of the reveal, the act of using filters is a common practice in the country’s livestreaming community. A documentary by the South China Morning Post revealed popular livestreaming stars using makeup and filters to create entirely different faces; poreless, highlighted visages that bear a passing resemblance to the actual vlogger. Some vloggers even use heavy makeup to create fake collarbones and abs.

This type of AR-assisted grift among influential internet personalities is hardly unique to China. While cases of all-out deception such as Biluo’s are rare, the practice of using more subtle filters or airbrushing is widespread among influencers on YouTube and Instagram. American YouTube makeup artist Tati Westbrook was revealed to be using filters during her tutorial videos. A British makeup artist, Kadeeja Sel Khan, admitted to extensively editing her photos for Instagram. But as filters become more common and less easy to detect, so does the potential for backlash among fans. In an ironic twist, while Your Highness Qiao Biluo lost some followers after the initial revelation, the BBC reported that negative attention has lead to her gaining roughly 500,000 new followers and counting.

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