A group of angry Galaxy S8 owners has taken to Reddit to complain that Samsung has purportedly come up with an annoyingly unconventional approach to bombard users with ads: Push notifications. Numerous users are reporting that over the past couple of weeks the South Korean titan has begun displaying ads via push notifications. According to the complaints, the culprit seems to be Samsung’s infamous Game Optimizing Service bloatware. Preinstalled on most Samsung phones, the app traditionally serves to improve performance and curb battery drain during gaming sessions. However, it has also been defaulted to “receive marketing information” for better-tailored ad experience – which is why some users are now receiving ad notifications.
Thanks to the wonders of microcomputing, you can now turn your rusty vintage television set into a full-fledged retro gaming system – courtesy of Raspberry Pi. Recreational inventor and single-board computer enthusiast Finn Anderson took to Reddit to demonstrate how he repurposed an old-school TV set he found on the street into a legitimate custom-built retro gaming console. “We're hunting for awesome startups” Run an early-stage company? We're inviting 250 to exhibit at TNW Conference and pitch on stage! CHECK IT OUT To put together the whole setup, Anderson removed most of the old parts and packed the emptied TV box with a brand new HDMI-supported 12-inch screen that he copped from eBay and a Raspberry Pi 3 computer.
While we’ve previously seen researchers train artificial intelligence algorithms to transform your crappy doodles into atrocious cat monsters, this hardly shows the true potential of the technology – though it certainly is a fun way to get people interested. But now the researchers behind the AI model powering the doodle-to-cat-monster tool are back with another impressive image manipulation implementation that lets you turn horses into zebras, apples into oranges, winters into summers and so much more. Win a trip to Amsterdam! We've teamed up with Product Hunt to offer you the chance to win an all expense paid trip to
We all want to be Iron Man. Zipping through clouds using jet propulsion and an exoskeleton made of a hardened nickel-titanium alloy seems futuristic, but not outside the realm of possibility. Tony Stark did it, after all, but fictional billionaires-turned-genius-inventors don’t get us any closer to the goal of human flight. Entrepreneur and inventor Richard Browning isn’t Tony Stark, although the parallels are there. Browning, much like Stark, invented his own flight suit complete with six jet engines, a heads-up display, and WiFi-enabled monitoring. It’s not a Jarvis-equipped nearly-indestructible suit, but if it’s flying you want, Browning has you covered. Ever been to a tech festival?
Fitbit updated the Alta a few weeks ago with a heart rate sensor, creating what it called the slimmest wrist-worn tracker of its kind. I’ve had the chance to play with the Alta HR for about a week, and yeah, it’s tiny. So much so that you wouldn’t look totally awkward wearing the Alta on one wrist and a traditional wristwatch on the other. Using it has been an overall pleasant experience. That it has a week of battery life is an impressive bit of engineering. In my testing, heart rate, steps, and sleep tracking were pretty much identical to the Charge 2.
Today, prosumer audio gear manufacturer Plantronics announced the BackBeat 500 Series, which is the Californian firm’s latest stab at the middle-range of the headphones market. The wireless headphones offer a lightweight design and a battery that promises to endure, with up to 18 hours of listening and talk time on a single charge. It also includes a hibernation mode that’ll extend the battery life of the headphones to six months when the headphones are out of range of your device, or simply left on. To me, that’s hugely helpful. There has been plenty of times when I’ve boarded a long flight, only to be by my cans that they need to be recharged.
Quite often the best insights about technology companies aren’t found on the hallowed pages of technology-exclusive publications, but rather on finance websites and blogs. Indeed, in the run up to the iPhone 7’s launch, we learned much about the Apple’s upcoming flagship phone from insights gleaned from industry analysts working for banks and funds. I’ve made it my goal for 2017 to read more finance news. The problem is knowing where to look. There are hundreds (if not thousands) of money-oriented blogs, websites, and twitter feeds, with some more reliable than others.
Companies that exclusively manufacture Linux computers are few and far between. The few that exist tend to focus on the “prosumer” or developer market niche. Endless, however, has tread a different path. The San Francisco-based manufacturer is known for its quirky line of affordable machines, all running its own bespoke Linux-based operating system, Endless OS. Announced at CES earlier this year, the Endless Mission One is the latest in the company’s burgeoning stable of computers. And compared to the rest of Endless’ lineup, it’s a bit of an aberration.
Samsung might finally have a release date for the much-anticipated Galaxy S8, but the leaks keep rolling in. Dedicated leak portal Slashleaks has obtained footage that gives us a close look at Samsung’s upcoming flagship handset. The video comes from a Weibo user and appears to show both the standard S8 as well as the bigger-sized S8+ device. “This event was off the charts” Gary Vaynerchuk was so impressed with TNW Conference 2016 he paused mid-talk to applaud us. FIND OUT WHY The footage seems to have been recorded in a rush and you can still hear sounds from industrial machines in the background.
