The Galaxy Note 9 touts a slightly larger 6.4-inch end-to-end screen, a 4,000mAh battery that promises "all-day" use, and a minimum 128GB of storage -- there's also a 512GB version that, with 512GB microSD cards, can give you a full terabyte of space. It runs Android 8.1 Oreo -- not Android Pie, which Google and Essential rolled out to some of their devices earlier this month. Engadget: Samsung is also bringing over welcome improvements from the Galaxy S9 family, including stereo speakers and the variable aperture f/1.5-2.4 primary camera (there's a second camera on the back, of course). This year, though, the most conspicuous change revolves around the S Pen. This is Samsung's first S Pen to incorporate Bluetooth, and that lets you do a whole lot more than doodle on the screen. You can use it as a remote control for selfies and presentations, and Samsung is providing a toolkit to let app developers use the pen for their own purposes. And no, you don't need to load it with batteries or plug it into a charger -- it'll top up just by staying in your phone. The base model of the Note 9, featuring 128GB of storage and 6GB of RAM, is priced at $999. The other variant will set you back by $1,250. Preorders begin on August 10th, and the phone will be available on August 24th at all major carriers or direct (and unlocked) from Samsung. CNET writes about the camera sensors on the new handset: The Galaxy Note 9 keeps the same hardware setup as the Galaxy S9 Plus. That is, dual 12-megapixel cameras on the back, one of them that automatically changes aperture when it detects the need for a low-light shot. (Samsung calls this dual aperture, and it's also on both S9 phones.) There's also an 8-megapixel front-facing camera for your selfies. What's different is AI software that analyzes the scene and quickly detects if you're shooting a flower, food, a dog, a person. There are 20 options the Note 9's been trained on, including snowflakes, cityscapes, fire, you get it. Then, the camera optimizes white balance, saturation and contrast to make photos pop.

harrymcc writes: Toymaker Anki, whose Cozmo robot has been a hit, has announced its next bot: Vector. Though it looks a lot like Cozmo, it packs far more computational power -- Cozmo relied on a phone app for smarts -- and utilizes deep-learning tech in the interest of giving Vector a subtler, more engaging personality. Over at Fast Company, Sean Captain has a deep dive into the software engineering that went into the effort. Vector is being powered by a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 212 chip, and has cartoon eyes displayed on a 184 x 96-pixel screen. The robot actually scans its environment via a single 720p wide-angle camera mounted below the screen. "Cozmo springs to attention when you call its name, making twittering sounds, and lifting its bulldozer-like arms up and down," writes Captain. "If you ignore Cozmo, the bot gets more in your face, or makes loud, obnoxious snoring sounds."

While Vector can connect to the internet and display weather information, set timers, and speak answers to various questions, it's the social and visual intelligence that people may fall in love with the most. Vector is able to detect people and interact with them, even when faces aren't visible. Computer vision technical director Andrew Stein and his team "trained a convolutional neural network (CNN) -- a popular deep-learning AI technology that mimics the brains visual cortex," reports Captain. "Using the often blurry and distorted footage that Vector's camera captures as he moves around, Stein has been teaching the CNN to detect people from the back or the side, for instance, up to about 10 feet away."

After earning the moniker "tech's most secretive startup" from Wired and telling Forbes in 2016 it was going to ship its system "soon-ish," the company is finally releasing the $2,295 Magic Leap One. For now, it will be available for purchase in limit U.S. markets. CNET: It includes a high-powered, moon pie-shaped computer called the Lightpack, a handheld remote called Control and a steampunk-inspired headset with round lenses and patented optics. That's called Lightwear. There's just one thing: Regular folks like us aren't the intended audience. At least not yet. This "Creator Edition," says CEO Abovitz, is part of a "controlled market release" in just a handful of cities in the United States for the developers and creative types Magic Leap will woo this year and next. The goal: for those makers to dream up the experiences (aka content) it needs to convince us to become Leapers. The company is already showing investors and partners prototypes of its smaller (and hopefully less expensive) Magic Leap Two and Magic Leap Three, but won't say when they'll be released. Magic Leap, valued at $6.3 billion as of two months ago, counts Google, Alibaba, Warner Bros, AT&T, and several top Silicon Valley venture capital firms and about a dozen other big names as its investors. More about the product going on sale here.

The processor that makes your laptop or cell phone work was fabricated using quartz from this obscure Appalachian backwater. From a report: Alex Glover is a recently retired geologist who has spent decades hunting for valuable minerals in the hillsides and hollows of the Appalachian Mountains that surround Spruce Pine, North Carolina. Spruce Pine is not a wealthy place. Its downtown consists of a somnambulant train station across the street from a couple of blocks of two-story brick buildings, including a long-closed movie theater and several empty storefronts. The wooded mountains surrounding it, though, are rich in all kinds of desirable rocks, some valued for their industrial uses, some for their pure prettiness. But it's the mineral in Glover's bag -- snowy white grains, soft as powdered sugar -- that is by far the most important these days. It's quartz, but not just any quartz. Spruce Pine, it turns out, is the source of the purest natural quartz -- a species of pristine sand -- ever found on Earth.

This ultra-elite deposit of silicon dioxide particles plays a key role in manufacturing the silicon used to make computer chips. In fact, there's an excellent chance the chip that makes your laptop or cell phone work was made using sand from this obscure Appalachian backwater. "It's a billion-dollar industry here," Glover says with a hooting laugh. "Can't tell by driving through here. You'd never know it." In the 21st century, sand has become more important than ever, and in more ways than ever. Most of the world's sand grains are composed of quartz, which is a form of silicon dioxide, also known as silica. High-purity silicon dioxide particles are the essential raw materials from which we make computer chips, fiber-optic cables, and other high-tech hardware -- the physical components on which the virtual world runs.

EU regulators plan to study whether there is a need for action in the push for a common mobile phone charger following a lack of progress by phone makers towards this goal, EU competition chief Margrethe Vestager said. From a report: The European Commission has been pushing for a common charger for nearly a decade as it cited the more than 51,000 tons of electronic waste yearly from old chargers as well as the inconvenience to consumers. iPhone and Android users have long complained about using different chargers for their phones.

Critics scoffed Apple when the company priced the iPhone X at $1,000. But the way the market has responded to it, there is a good chance that the upcoming flagship smartphones from Apple and those of its rivals -- Samsung, Google, and HTC -- will be pricier. From a column: The critics were wrong. Apple CEO Tim Cook said in July that the iPhone X had outsold every other Apple device in each week since it went on sale Nov. 3, 2017. With strong iPhone X sales, Apple proved that mainstream buyers are willing to pay almost as much, if not more, for their cell phones as they would for a powerful laptop. And with rumors of an even pricier 2018 iPhone X Plus-style phone coming down the pike this September, Apple's moves to usher in the era of the $1,000 phone may just be getting underway. Apple isn't alone in boosting mobile phone prices ever higher. Creeping prices on high-end handsets from Samsung, Huawei and even "value" darling OnePlus signal that price hikes are here to stay. In just two years, the cost of Samsung's Galaxy phone for US buyers has spiked 15.1 percent from the Galaxy S7 in 2016 to this year's Galaxy S9, while the Huawei P series has climbed 33 percent since 2016 -- and that doesn't even account for the existence of a "Pro" model. [...] The trend of increasingly costly handsets in the top tier underscores the cell phone's importance as an everything-device for communication, work, photography and entertainment. And as processing power, camera technology, battery life and internet data speeds improve generation after generation, the value people attach to a phone is sure to swell.

An anonymous reader quotes Fast Company: In seven years, the island nation of Samoa plans to run on 100% renewable electricity. Over the last year, the local utility has worked with Tesla to install a key piece of that plan -- battery storage, and also a software system that can control Samoa's entire electricity supply. In the past, like many islands, the country ran mostly on imported, expensive, and polluting diesel power. As recently as 2012, the country brought in 95 million liters of diesel. Spurred by the cost and the threat of climate change -- Samoa is at particular risk from sea level rise and new outbreaks of climate-related diseases -- the country has been ramping up the use of renewables, with five large solar plants, a wind farm, and hydropower plants. But as renewable energy grew, the grid struggled with reliability.

"It had gotten to the point where just the solar, combined, could provide over half of the entire peak demand for the island, but they were having quite a few challenges managing that efficiently," says JB Straubel, Tesla's chief technical officer.... Tesla installed two of its "Powerpack" battery systems, and also developed and implemented island grid controller software that can control both the batteries and all of the power plants. "If a big cloud comes over the island and the solar drops very quickly, we can control the battery to make up the difference so we don't have to start a generator immediately, and we don't have to keep a generator running even when it might not be needed," says Straubel.

Apple will reportedly ditch the 3.5mm to Lightning port headphone dongle with this year's iPhone models. Apple notoriously dropped the headphone jack from the iPhone 7 in 2016. It has included a headphone adapter with every iPhone since to help curb public unease. The Verge reports: The research note claims that Cirrus Logic, a supplier for the dongle has "confirmed" that it won't be included in the box alongside the new iPhones. Apple has been trying to transition away from wired headphones entirely with its AirPods and lineup of wireless Beats headphones, so the move isn't entirely surprising. The dongle was always meant as a stopgap while customers adjusted to the new, headphone jack-less reality that Apple imposed on the world. Apple will almost certainly continue to sell the dongle -- which costs $9 -- separately for users who still want it. But if the report is true (which, again, remains to be seen), it's hard to imagine that customers will take the news well. The Barclays research note was first spotted by Mac Rumors.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TheStreet: General Electric stock was little changed on Friday, August 3, as a GE engineer with ties to China who has been accused of stealing proprietary power-turbine technology has been released on bond. Xiaoqing Zheng, 56, has been in custody since Wednesday when the FBI raided his home in Niskayuna, New York, near Albany. A federal judge on Thursday set a $100,000 bond; Zheng offered his family's home as collateral and was released on Friday. He was ordered to wear an electronic monitoring device and limit his travel, according to multiple media reports.

Zheng, who is a U.S. citizen, was hired by GE in 2008 to work as a principal engineer for the company's power division, according to an affidavit by an FBI agent filed in federal court in Albany. Zheng is "suspected of taking/stealing, on multiple occasions via sophisticated means, data files from GE's laboratories that contain GE's trade secret information involving turbine technology," the FBI said in its affidavit. He also took "elaborate means" to conceal the removal of GE data files. "The primary focus of this affidavit is Zheng's action in 2018 in which he encrypted GE data files containing trade secret information, and thereafter sent the trade secret information from his GE work computer to Zheng's personal e-mail address hidden in the binary code of a digital photograph via a process known as steganography," the FBI said. "Additionally, the secondary focus of this affidavit is Zheng's actions in 2014 in which he downloaded more than 19,000 files from GE's computer network onto an external storage device, believed by GE investigators to have been a personal thumb drive."

Zheng's attorney disputed the allegations, saying Zheng "transmitted information on his own patents to himself and to no one else."

An anonymous reader shares a report: AMD has cornered the x86 console market with its handy semi-custom mix of processors and graphics. While we slowly await the next generation of consoles from Microsoft and Sony, today AMD and Zhongshan Subor announced that a custom chip has been made for a new gaming PC and an upcoming console for the Chinese market.

The announcement states that a custom chip has been created for Subor that is based on four Zen cores running at 3.0 GHz and 24 compute units of Vega running at 1.3 GHz. The chip is supported by 8GB of GDDR5 memory, which the press release states is also embedded onto the chip, however it is likely to actually be on the package instead. [...] Assuming that this custom chip is a single chip design, with CPU and GPU, this means that AMD is handily gaining custom contracts and designing custom chip designs for its customers, even for consoles that won't have the mass western appeal such as the Xbox or Playstation.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: [A] recent experiment by German researchers demonstrates that people will refuse to turn a robot off if it begs for its life. In the study, published in the open access journal PLOS One, 89 volunteers were recruited to complete a pair of tasks with the help of Nao, a small humanoid robot. The participants were told that the tasks (which involved answering a series of either / or questions, like "Do you prefer pasta or pizza?"; and organizing a weekly schedule) were to improve Nao's learning algorithms. But this was just a cover story, and the real test came after these tasks were completed, and scientists asked participants to turn off the robot. In roughly half of experiments, the robot protested, telling participants it was afraid of the dark and even begging: "No! Please do not switch me off!" When this happened, the human volunteers were likely to refuse to turn the bot off. Of the 43 volunteers who heard Nao's pleas, 13 refused. And the remaining 30 took, on average, twice as long to comply compared to those who did not not hear the desperate cries at all.

Motorola unveiled their new flagship Moto Z3 smartphone today that's upgradeable to 5G. Like other Moto Z phones, the Z3 includes support for Moto Mods, including a new 5G Moto Mod that will let you use Verizon's mobile 5G network when it launches in 2019. The new Mod contains a Snapdragon X50 modem and 2,000mAh battery to help you stay connected to the 5G network. PhoneDog reports: The Moto Z3 is a Motorola phone that's exclusive to Verizon in the U.S. Specs for this Android 8.1-powered smartphone include a 6.01-inch 2160x1080 Super AMOLED screen and 8MP wide angle front-facing camera with f/2.0 aperture. Around back there's a dual rear camera setup with two 12MP cameras, one RGB and one monochrome, along with laser autofocus and portrait mode support. Inside the Moto Z3 lives an octa-core Snapdragon 835 processor along with 4GB of RAM, 64GB of built-in storage, and a microSD card slot. There's a 3000mAh battery and a USB-C port for recharging that battery, as well as support for Motorola's TurboPower solution to recharge in a hurry. Unfortunately, there's no 3.5mm headphone jack to be found here. All of those features are crammed into a body with a water repellent coating. Rounding things out is a side-mounted fingerprint reader and support for face unlock.

ted_pikul shares a report from Motherboard: Access to cheap electricity can make or break a cryptocurrency mining operation. The latest move in the quest for bargain-basement power rates: building out local power grids. Canadian company DMG Blockchain is building what it hopes will be a fully-functioning substation in Southern British Columbia, which is electrified by hydro power. Building the substation is costing millions of dollars and required building an access road to haul equipment. "[...] the utility will test everything as a completed substation and make sure that the town doesn't blow up when we flip the switch," Steven Eliscu of DMG Blockchain said.

The reviews for Microsoft's Surface Go tablet are in, and they're all over the place. While the press generally agrees that the processor is slow and can only handle light tasks, such as browsing and mail, there are mixed conclusions as to whether or not the 10-inch, $399 tablet is worth buying. Ars Technica's Peter Bright summarizes: So, should you buy one? That's hard to say. Mashable was a fairly unequivocal "no:" for light productivity, a Chromebook or iPad does the job for less money, and the performance is too problematic for anything much beyond that. On the other side of the coin, Windows Central reckoned that "as a mini-PC [Surface Go] is about as good as you can get," and Ed Bott said, "It's the best cheap PC I've ever used." Gizmodo called it the "perfect representation of what laptops at this price should be." For everyone else, it depends. TechCrunch says that it's worth a look, but there's no shortage of competition around this price point. Acer and Lenovo, among others, offer decent systems that are a bit cheaper. PCWorld concludes that, if you want a tablet, get an honest-to-god tablet (which is to say, an iPad) rather than a system with Windows 10. But if you want something small and light and might just need the full flexibility of a PC, Go is the system to go for. Engadget acknowledged that the Go is "full of compromises" but that, as a "secondary device," the keyboard and software compatibility give it the edge over other tablets. The Verge concludes similarly: it's "probably not the right thing to be your only computer," but it could have a "real place" as a secondary machine. And VentureBeat took a similar line: if you really want the flexibility of a two-in-one, "you're unlikely to find anything better," but if you want either a laptop or a tablet, "you'll find better options for less." As a refresher, the Surface Go features a 10-inch touchscreen display with a 1800x1200 (217 PPI) resolution and 3:2 aspect ratio, an Intel Pentium Gold 4415Y Kaby Lake processor with up to 8GB of RAM and 128GB storage via a SSD (the 64GB eMMC variant features 4GB of RAM), integrated Intel HD Graphics 615, and "up to 9 hours" of battery life. The base model is just $399, compared to the $549 model with 128GB/8GB RAM.

Yesterday, during his quarterly earnings call, Tesla CEO Elon Musk revealed a new piece of hardware that the company is working on to perform all the calculations required to advance the self-driving capabilities of its vehicles. The specialized chip, known as "Hardware 3," will be "swapped into the Model S, X, and 3," reports TechCrunch. From the report: Tesla has thus far relied on Nvidia's Drive platform. So why switch now? By building things in-house, Tesla say it's able to focus on its own needs for the sake of efficiency. "We had the benefit [...] of knowing what our neural networks look like, and what they'll look like in the future," said Pete Bannon, director of the Hardware 3 project. Bannon also noted that the hardware upgrade should start rolling out next year. "The key," adds Elon "is to be able to run the neural network at a fundamental, bare metal level. You have to do these calculations in the circuit itself, not in some sort of emulation mode, which is how a GPU or CPU would operate. You want to do a massive amount of [calculations] with the memory right there." The final outcome, according to Elon, is pretty dramatic: He says that whereas Tesla's computer vision software running on Nvidia's hardware was handling about 200 frames per second, its specialized chip is able to crunch out 2,000 frames per second "with full redundancy and failover." Plus, as AI analyst James Wang points out, it gives Tesla more control over its own future.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from VentureBeat: For the first time in seven years, Samsung and Apple have not taken the top two positions in the worldwide smartphone market. All hail Huawei. Although Samsung held onto first place -- the South Korean giant typically dominates the first three quarters of the year, with the American company winning the fourth quarter -- Huawei passed Apple for second place this part quarter. The Q2 2018 figures come from IDC (though Canalys and Strategy Analytics both agree that Huawei passed Apple in the quarter).

U.S. District Judge Robert Lasnik issued a temporary restraining order Tuesday to stop the release of blueprints to make untraceable and undetectable 3D-printed plastic guns, saying they could end up in the wrong hands. Defense Distributed reached a settlement with the federal government in late June allowing them to freely publish the 3D files. NBC News reports: "There is a possibility of irreparable harm because of the way these guns can be made," he said. Congressional Democrats have urged President Donald Trump to reverse the decision to let Defense Distributed publish the plans. Trump said Tuesday that he's "looking into" the idea, saying making 3D plastic guns available to the public "doesn't seem to make much sense!" Eight Democratic attorneys general had filed a lawsuit Monday seeking to block the federal government's settlement with Defense Distributed. They also sought the restraining order, arguing the 3D guns would be a safety risk. Earlier today, Senate Democrats introduced two bills addressing 3D-printed guns. The first bill would make it illegal to publish 3D-printed gun blueprints. The second bill would require weapons to include at least one metal component with a serial number to make them traceable. Downloads of the 3D-printed gun blueprints have been suspended until Cody Wilson [the owner of Defense Distributed] reviews Lasnik's order. It is unclear how many times the blueprints were downloaded, but some news outlets say the online manuals have been downloaded thousands of times and posted elsewhere online.

MojoKid writes from a report via Hot Hardware: Although it has been over three decades since the first Commodore Amigas were originally released, a fan base for the beloved systems is still going strong. In fact, today's Amiga community seems to be more active now that it has been in years, and a number of exciting new hardware projects have cropped up in recent weeks. Two relatively new projects, led by popular members of the Amiga community Paul Rezendes and John "Chucky" Hertell, are designed to breathe new life into the Amiga 4000 and Amiga 1200.

Both men set out to reverse engineer the motherboards for these systems, not only to continue the possibility of repairing existing machines that are prone to serious damage from leaky batteries and electrolytic capacitors, but to potentially spur additional customizations for the platform in the future. Though Paul and John have only made minor modifications to the Amiga 4000 and Amiga 1200 motherboard PCBs to this point, the possibility now also exists for all new variants to arrive at some point in the future for these machines as well. The first actual working motherboards populated with components based on the Amiga 4000 Replica project or Re-Amiga 1200 haven't been shown off just yet, and they may require additional revisions to work out any kinks. However, both projects are good examples of the passion that still remains for the beloved Amiga from computing glory days gone by.

hyperclocker shares a report: HP hopes to entice researchers with a $10,000 reward for finding vulnerabilities in printers. The tech giant revealed the new bug bounty program on Tuesday. The scheme, which is launching as a private bug bounty, is tailored specifically for HP printer hardware. While many of us use home printers simply for printing the occasional document or photo, in the enterprise, these devices are often found in a network. If there is a weak link in business networks, a single device -- whether it be a printer or smart air conditioning system -- can be exploited to compromise a wider network system.

Printers, especially if they are overlooked when it comes to firmware updates or upgrades, can become such avenues to exploit. According to research undertaken by Bugcrowd, "2018 State of Bug Bounty Report," endpoint devices are becoming a tantalizing target for threat actors, with a 21 percent increase in total endpoint bugs reported over the past 12 months. In partnership with bug bounty platform Bugcrowd, HP says it is the "only vendor" to launch a printer-only vulnerability disclosure scheme. Under the terms of the program, researchers can earn between $500 and $10,000 per legitimate find.

Kevin C. Tofel, writing for About Chromebooks: Having worked for a Google Chrome Marketing team over an 18 month period, I never saw a project that aggressively goes after Windows and Mac computers like the one that was published today [Editor's note: the video is unlisted, but accessible]. [...] As someone who has used (and often still does use) other platforms, I can't really disagree with the point of this video. For too long, computer users have had to deal with cryptic errors, updates that can take hours to install and the dreaded blue screen of death / spinning beach ball.

Granted, some of my personal experience with those issues was when I was in corporate IT for 15 years; that career ended for me (by choice) back in 2007. And clearly, all desktop / laptop platforms have improved since then. Even so, Google is highlighting the modern approach of Chromebooks with this short video and that's an important point.