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Sony’s crowdfunding plans for a wearable ‘air conditioner’

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You wouldn’t have to be too picky about where you use 5G, either.
All of Apple’s 2020 iPhones may offer 5G

Sure, Apple isn’t the first major vendor out of the gate with a 5G smartphone, but it may have a comprehensive lineup when it’s ready. Historically accurate analyst Ming-Chi Kuo now expects all three 2020 iPhones to support 5G, not just the highest-end models.

Apple will be helped by falling 5G hardware costs (you could see limited 5G support on $250 Android phones, Kuo said), as well as more resources thanks to the Intel modem acquisition. At that stage, 5G may be treated as a given in the iPhone’s price class.

The best streaming services for cord-cutters on a budget
How to watch what you want without breaking the bank.

While offerings like YouTube TV and PlayStation Vue mimic traditional cable packages, providing more than 50 channels each through their basic plans, they cost more than $45 per month. If you’re trying to save money, that’s simply not going to work. Your best bet is to be mindful of what, exactly, you want to watch and when, and then pick and choose from a variety of services based on that.

The Reon Pocket helps you stealthily cope with heatwaves and cold winters.
Sony is crowdfunding a wearable ‘air conditioner’

Struggling to cope with the heat and all that pesky global warming? Sony might have a solution, if not as soon as you might like. The company’s First Flight crowdfunding platform has launched a wearable ‘air conditioner,’ the Reon Pocket. It slips into a pouch on custom-made clothes like tees and sits at the base of your neck, using the Peltier effect (where heat is absorbed or emitted when you pass an electrical current across a junction) to either lower your temperature by 23F or raise it by 14F, all without bulk or noise.

It won’t just be organized around the ‘Fortnite’ World Cup.
‘Fortnite’ gets a premier esports circuit in the Championship Series

The end to the Fortnite World Cup won’t mark the end to Epic’s esports plans for the year — not by a long shot. The developer has announced a Fortnite Championship Series that will have gamers playing across whole seasons. “Every single result matters,” Epic said, and there will be a leaderboard to keep tabs on results across the season. There will be “millions of dollars” on the line, too. It’s another big move to keep Fortnite at the forefront of esports.

But wait, there’s more…

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YouTubers are unionizing, and the site has 24 days to respond

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The YouTube Union was formed last year amid tensions between YouTube and the content creators who post videos to the platform, but as a community group rather than a true union it had little power to back up its position. The new joint initiative, called FairTube, aims to pressure the platform to be more transparent about its rules and decisions, especially in regard to monetization or demonetization of videos.

The YouTubers Union is headed by Jörg Sprave, a German content creator who makes videos of weird slingshots and has over 2 million subscribers. He got involved in activism after YouTube took down some of his videos as part of a crackdown on weapon-related content on the platform, even though they didn’t violate the site’s content guidelines.

Many YouTubers have had similar experiences of videos being taken down or demonetized without explanation. Some prominent creators have access to a YouTube Partner Manager who can answer queries, but smaller creators often find it impossible to contact any real human being at YouTube. With bots doing the majority of the moderation on the site, it’s easy for videos to be miscategorized and hard for creators to appeal these decisions.

With the support of IG Metall, the campaign intends to examine the legality of YouTube’s policies in the European Union. The announcement videos suggests legal strategies including questioning whether content creators should be considered employees of the site and using Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation law to force greater transparency over personal data. The campaign says it will begin this legal examination if the site does not respond to its demands by August 23rd.

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Oppo eliminates side bezels with its ‘waterfall screen’

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Oppo stopped short of sharing further details — no specs, no dates and, most importantly, no word on whether this would make phones more prone to drop damage. Also, perhaps to no surprise, a leaked glass piece suggests that Vivo is also working on a similar tech, possibly for its upcoming NEX 3 flagship. It’ll be interesting to see which of the two sibling companies will be the first to bring this feature to a mass-produced device.

Of course, many of us are still anticipating the arrival of foldable phones — something that Oppo is already openly working on. There’s also the under-screen camera to look forward to. Until then, we’ll happily settle with this new all-screen design, so long as Oppo can prove that we won’t have to worry too much about the glass sides.

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Google is phasing out the old Voice Search in favor of Assistant

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The familiar microphone icon in Google’s search bar might soon be a thing of the past, according to some recent changes spotted by 9 to 5 Google. On some phones, Google’s old-school “Voice Search,” with the prompt “Say ‘Hey Google,'” has been replaced by the four-dot Assistant logo and the term “Ask your Assistant.” As a reminder, that’s just like the one at the bottom of Google’s Pixel launcher. It still opens the same interface as before, but the search is now performed by Assistant and displays the results in a slide-up card.

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EU lending bank aims to cut funding for fossil fuel projects by 2020

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The European Union has some very long-term environmental goals, but it might not wait around to make some crucial changes. The Guardian has seen proposals from the EU's lender, the European Investment Bank, that would bar funding for any energy infr…

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Netflix forges multi-year animation deal with the team from ‘Big Mouth’

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If you can’t get enough of shows like Big Mouth, you’re in for a treat. Netflix has struck a deal with Brutus Pink, the new production house from Big Mouth creators Nick Kroll, Jennifer Flackett, Andrew Goldberg and Mark Levin. The multi-year arrangement will have the team producing animated movies and shows for Netflix, including three more seasons of Big Mouth beyond the third season already lined up for the fall.

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Waymo uses evolutionary competition to improve its self-driving cars

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The approach regularly has the networks compete against each other, with weaker examples being replaced by stronger “progeny” that are copies of the better-performing networks with slightly tweaked parameters (just as a child isn’t a perfect clone of its parent). This automatically gets rid of the poorer-performing networks while saving Waymo from having to retrain networks from scratch — they’ve already inherited know-how from their parents.

There is a risk that the method is focused too much on short-term improvements. To fight this, Waymo created “niches” where neural networks challenged each other in sub-groups to get strong results while preserving diversity that could be better-suited for real-world driving conditions.

The results were promising when applied to pedestrian detection. The PBT approach dropped false positives by 24 percent, even though it took half as much time. The experiment went so well that Waymo has even been using PBT across other models. That, in turn, promises self-driving cars that can better cope with the complexities of driving and avoid collisions.

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Amazon’s ‘Jack Ryan’ season 2 teaser includes explosions and intrigue

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Unfortunately, there’s no mention of a release date or even a vague availability window — the new season is just “coming soon.” It’s clearly getting closer, though, and it’s easy to understand why Amazon would dribble out a teaser. Jack Ryan is one of Prime Video’s cornerstone productions, and was promising enough that Amazon renewed it for a second season months before its premiere. It’s determined to build up hype early and ensure that the enthusiasm doesn’t wane.

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‘Fortnite’ gets a premier esports circuit in the Championship Series

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More details are forthcoming, but Epic will kick off the Championship Series in earnest when the tenth season of Fortnite starts sometime in the near future.

This is one of Epic’s first major moves in competitive Fortnite play after recruiting Overwatch League commissioner Nate Nanzer, and signals the company’s intentions. It wants official competitive play to persist year-round, not just in brief bursts. That could both get more esports players to take Fortnite seriously and keep Fortnite in the spotlight well after the World Cup is over.

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