March, 2018

• 13 March

  Skin Motion app turns my tattoo into sound waves

  

  I never thought I could turn my body into a loudspeaker.  Here at CNET, I’m the sound guy. After spending over 15 years working in media production I have a passion for not only music, but sound in general. A few years ago, I thought it would be cool to get a sleeve tattoo comprised …

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• 13 March

  AmazonBasics battery packs recalled due to fire risk

  

  Amazon is recalling about 260,000 AmazonBasics portable power banks due to a danger of fire and chemical burns, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commision. Amazon had received “53 reports of the power banks overheating in the U.S., including one report of chemical burns due to contact with battery acid and four reports of property damage, including fire and smoke …

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• 13 March

  LG G7 may launch in May with an $800

  

  LG’s flagship G7, which was MIA at MWC, might not launch until May, according to a report by Korea’s ETNews. That launch date would be 15 months after the company unveiled its G6 in February 2017, but would remain consistent with previous statements by the company that it wouldn’t stick to a strict yearly release cycle.  LG has steadily lost ground to stalwart Android rival Samsung, …

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• 13 March

  Galaxy S9 AR Emoji: What you need to know

  

  Samsung’s Galaxy S9 ($198 at eBay) and S9 Plus have a new feature called AR Emoji. The animated characters are similar to Apple’s animojis on the iPhone X ($285 at Amazon), only instead of using fancy face-scanning hardware, AR Emoji relies on the S9’s camera and augmented reality software developed by the startup Loom.ai. Samsung and Loom.ai have worked on bringing AR …

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• 13 March

  The Galaxy S9’s aperture blades go slice slice slice

  

  It’s mesmerizing, no? What you’re seeing here is how the twin aperture blades work in the Samsung Galaxy S9‘s brand-new dual-aperture camera.  They can open to let more light in, or close to let less light through. That way, they can create brighter pictures or ones with more of the scene in focus. (For more on how variable aperture cameras …

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• 13 March

  Is Facebook starting a News video section to stave off fake news?

  

  Facebook could be readying a News section on its Facebook Watch video service, in an apparent attempt to curb the spread of “fake news.”  That’s the word from Axios, which reports that Facebook is in talks with 10 publishers to launch the dedicated news section. The section will reportedly run for 12 months, with Facebook requiring publishers to submit videos of …

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• 13 March

  Walmart goes big into online grocery delivery, challenging Amazon

  

  Walmart is making a major push into online grocery delivery. After testing out grocery delivery over the past two years in six US markets, the largest retailer in the world said Wednesday it will bring the service to more than 100 metro areas in the US over the coming months. With all those new cities, the service will eventually reach …

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• 13 March

  YouTube will add Wikipedia snippets to conspiracy videos

  

  YouTube videos focusing on conspiracy theories will now link to a snippet of information on the topic from Wikipedia. YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki described the new feature during a session Tuesday at South by Southwest with Nicholas Thompson, editor-in-chief of Wired. “This has been a year of fake news and misinformation,” she said.  YouTube will determine what exactly qualifies as …

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• 13 March

  FCC accuses startup of launching tiny rogue satellites

  

  US regulators have accused a small Silicon Valley startup of launching satellites without permission. In December, the Federal Communications Commission denied Swarm Technologies, a stealthy startup headed by a former Google employee, permission to launch four of its tiny satellites. But the company apparently launched them anyway, according to a report from tech news site IEEE Spectrum. If confirmed, it …

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• 13 March

  Firefox 59 offers speed boosts and a business version

  

  With Firefox 59, the race is on. Previously, Mozilla’s browser would fetch website data from a cache stored on a PC’s hard drive or SSD. The new version of Firefox, released Tuesday, gets a bit of a speed boost by seeing if it can get that information faster from the network. The feature is part of project called Quantum to …

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