Last month, North Carolina state auto dealerships kicked up a fit over Tesla‘s direct car sales approach to getting its Model S into consumer hands, spurring a legislative proposal that would ban such a retail method. New York followed soon after, and in both instances Tesla pushed back, saying that selling the Model S in
Rep. John Campbell (R-Calif.) announced Thursday that he will retire at the end of his current term.
“At the end of this term, I will have spent 14 years serving in full-time, elected politics.” Campbell said in a statement. “I am not nor did I ever intend to be a career politician. I am ready to begin a new chapter in my life.”
Campbell, who represents California’s 45th District, first made his announcement on the Hugh Hewitt radio show.
Wi-Fi can give us all Superman-like vision, according to boffins at MIT.
(Credit: Screenshot by Tim Hornyak/CNET)
Do you really wish you had X-ray vision? Sure, it would be fun to see what your neighbors are doing behind those walls — until you see something you wish you hadn’t.
Regardless, researchers at MIT have developed a sensing technology that uses low-power Wi-Fi to detect moving people. It follows other wall-penetrating sensor tech using radar and heavy equipment.
The Wi-Vi system by Dina Katabi and Fadel Adib sends out a low-power Wi-Fi signal and tracks its reflections to sense people moving around, even if they’re in closed rooms or behind walls.
Part of a Wi-Fi signal transmitted at a wall will penetrate it and reflect off people on the other side. The MIT system ignores all the other reflects, such as from objects, to focus on those from moving people only. It can determine the number of moving people in the room and their relative locations.
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According to the WSJ, Google is currently developing an Android-based video game console and an Android-based ‘smartwatch’. More Android in more places means more fun. Less interestingly though, Google is also supposedly developing a second version of the Nexus Q.
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Yesterday was the day Microsoft made Windows 8.1 available as a public download; today’s the day we ask “what’s next?” Here at the company’s annual Build developer conference, we sat down with Ted Dworkin, the man who oversees the Windows Store, to do a deeper dive on the store’s latest redesign. In particular, we were curious about that new Bing-powered recommendation engine, and how it might become smarter over time. What ensued was a Pandora’s box of a brainstorming session. Naturally, Dworkin wouldn’t make any promises about what we’ll see in future updates, but he did offer some compelling ideas about how Microsoft could take people’s usage patterns into account when recommending apps. For instance, while Windows already knows which applications you’ve downloaded, a future version of the store might also be aware of which apps you use most frequently, which ones you’ve uninstalled, which ones you’ve shared, which ones you’ve pinned, which ones you’ve unpinned, et cetera. On a privacy note, the recommendation engine is already optional, so there’s no reason why you couldn’t disable this kind of data collection too.
For starters, this an interesting idea for the developers attending Build this week — there are definitely people out there who download apps because they’re testing them (or reviewing them) and not because they plan on using them every day. Even more broadly, though, who among us hasn’t gone on a downloading spree, just to see what they liked? With usage patterns taken into account, you might get more useful picks, ones that ignore that random Twitter client or Angry Birds game you installed. Again, Dworkin wouldn’t say for sure if Microsoft plans on implementing any of this, but our vote would be “yes” if it leads to more recommendations we’d actually use.
Going to a remote location? You can volunteer to document the scenery using one of Google’s own Trekker backpacks, and your work will be added to Street View.
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Twitter is certainly making up for lost time on Android — just a few days after it upgraded Vine to address some early omissions, it’s back with another round of improvements for the Google-inclined. The just-posted Vine 1.2 update for Android brings front camera access for those inevitable selfie videos. It also brings an upload manager for backlogged clips, settings tweaks and a fresh wave of performance boosts. The new version may not lure back Android users who’ve switched allegiance to Instagram, but those who still prefer Twitter’s approach can grab Vine 1.2 at Google Play.
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile
Via: Vine (Twitter)
Source: Google Play
(Credit: Peugeot/Laurent Picard)
If a FlowRider Surf Machine is making an appearance at a car festival, Peugeot steps up to the plate. At this year’s Goodwood Festival of Speed in the U.K. (from July 11-14), the car manufacturer will debut the GTi Surfboard concept, based on its recent performance cars — the 208 GTi, in particular, as well as the RCZ R and the Onyx concept vehicle.
Carved into a coupe franche (“clean cut”) shape, the GTi board shows two distinct parts: the nose of the surfboard in wood, the original material for the craft before fiberglass and polyurethane came along. This wooden nose, Peugeot said, represents “emotion,” and is carved with the Peugeot GTi logo.
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You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours — all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
Filed under: Misc
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
