I spent the last few months with nearly every room in my home lit up by Monster’s gorgeous IlluminEssence lighting. As a result, I have no further use for ordinary bulbs. These aren’t the first LED lights I’ve tested out, but they managed to find the perfect mixture of quality, brightness, ease-of-use, and cost. Plus, Monster’s managed to put together several different kits that make the IlluminEssence line up incredibly easy to navigate.
Alienware’s m15 is a shocking new take on the humongous laptop: it’s not humongous. It’s still a powerhouse that handles 1080pgaming with apparent ease. But now it fits in a backpack. I’ve only spent a couple of days with the m15, but my experience so far has given me a few early impressions. Alienware is here to take some risks with the new m15, and chief among them is the aesthetic. This includes less lighting, a smaller body, and new color schemes. The m15 comes in two finish options: Epic Silver and Nebula Red. The silver is elegant, classy, and wouldn’t look out of place on your office desk.
With the entire world seemingly up in arms over “fake news,” you’d think it would have been wiped out by now. Yet low-credibility content continues to thrive on social media thanks to the disproportionately influential effect that social media bots have on humans. A team of researchers from Indiana University at Bloomington recently conducted a ground-breaking study to determine how low-quality news sites manage to reach so many people with dubious articles. And, as you might guess, the answer is bots. The problem Do you like good gadgets? Those sweet cool gadgets? Oh, yeah TNW spoke with Filippo Menczer, the professor who led the research.
Over 1.1 billion people have no access to electricity worldwide. Instead, they rely on kerosene lamps, candles, and inefficient cookstoves, which by themselves cause health and environmental problems. In Africa, alone, around 600 million people are left in the dark. Yet, for many people where basic amenities are hard to come by, how can services reach them to provide the electricity they need? Thankfully, Africa has an abundant resource that can be taken advantage of: sunlight. As a result, companies are stepping up to give millions of people something that so many of us take for granted.
Google is rolling out a new visual overlay for Assistant that provides a snapshot of your day. It’ll proactively feed you information relevant to your schedule, location, habits, and more. It’s like a personal search engine that answers questions before you ask them. Back in May, at its I/O conference, Google previewed a number of upcoming features for its AI-powered personal assistant. You may not have heard about the visual overlay update, it kind of got lost in the wake of the announcement John Legend was lending his voice to Assistant and the jaw-dropping Duplex demo. But, despite the sexy nature of the two big announcements, I’ve been more excited for this visual overlay than either of those.
The Moorebot Zeus fighting robot is a pint-sized mechanical pugilist made for serious robotics enthusiasts. We wrote about it in January, during our CES coverage, but now I’ve finally gotten my hands on one. And I’m happy to report it was worth the wait. Credit: Nicole Gray As far as ‘fighting robots’ go, this isn’t the kind made famous by the BattleBots TV show. This one is built in a similar vein to the Super Anthony robot we reviewed a couple of weeks ago. It’s a fully articulated 35.5cm (14 in) tall biped that you control with a video game controller.
Facebook and Twitter have, within a few hours of each other, revealed new ad transparency measures this week. In both cases, the company in question reveals more details about what ads each account or page is running. It’s also offering further insights on political ads. Trouble is, it all depends on how much effort the users are willing to put into doing the research. Twitter opened its Ad Transparency Center, which allows anyone to look up a particular Twitter handle to see which ads the account has run in a massive public archive. You don’t need to be logged into Twitter or even have an account in order to use it.
It was just a few weeks ago we got a look at a supposed Pixel 3 prototype, but new CAD renders courtesy of @OnLeaks and MySmartPrice provide what appear to be our clearest look at the device yet. The leaks show off the device from pretty much every angle and reinforce much of what we’ve seen already: glass backs, one camera on the back, and two cameras on the front. The XL has a chunky chin and notch, while the smaller model sticks to bezels on both sides, albeit far smaller than those on its predecessor.
Super Anthony is a little fighting robot with the punching power of a full-grown person. It’s a premium-grade gadget that’s meant for serious enthusiasts. I got my hands on one to determine if it was a contender or pretender. It’s a bit difficult to figure out exactly what Super Anthony is all about at first. The 38 cm (14.9 in) tall machine is billed as a fighting robot and comes programmed with punches, kicks, and combat roll maneuvers. It weighs in at a diminuitive 2.1 kg (4.6 lbs) but manages a 45 kg (99 lb) punch thanks to its powerful servos.
