Amazon’s rumored hand recognition payment tech might be useful beyond paying for produce at Whole Foods. Wall Street Journal sources say the company is developing hand-based checkout terminals that it would sell to “coffee shops, fast-food restaurants” and other stores that tend to have repeat customers, not just Whole Foods.
Continue reading Amazon may offer hand recognition payments to other stores
Sony’s next-generation console isn’t due to launch anytime this year, but the tech giant has been surprisingly generous with details. During a corporate strategy presentation, the company has listed all the information it has revealed so far, confirming yet again that the PS5 will have backwards compatibility. Since it has a similar architecture to the PS4, it will be able to play games designed for the current-gen console and will also be compatible with the current version of PlayStation VR.
Continue reading Sony just laid out everything there is to know about the PS5
In case it wasn’t clear already, Nintendo has completely turned things around from the failure that was the Wii U. According to data from the reliable NPD Group, Nintendo sold more than 8.7 million Switch consoles in the US from its launch in March 2017 through November of 2018, putting it on a faster pace than the other “current generation” consoles from Microsoft and Sony after the same amount of time following their releases. It’s a bit of a convoluted measure, and in pure numbers there are certainly more Xbox One and PS4 consoles (both of which launched in the fall 2013) out in the wild, but there’s no doubt that Nintendo is in a better spot than they were before the Switch arrived.
Continue reading Nintendo Switch is America’s fastest-selling console
You might have a hard time finding flavored e-cigs outside of vape shops in the future. According to The Washington Post, the Food and Drug Administration plans to announce a ban on the sales of most pod-based flavored e-cigarettes in convenience stores and gas stations across the country. It’s reportedly part of the agency’s efforts to curb sales of e-cigs to minors, since studies show that flavors tend to attract underage buyers. The FDA says that there’s been a 77 percent increase in the use of e-cigarettes among high school students in 2018 — Juul has been particularly popular among teens to the point that vaping with Juul is now commonly known as “juuling.”
Continue reading FDA to ban flavored e-cigarette sales in convenience stores
Magic Leap is known for its secrecy. The company kept its One headsetunder wraps for years, teasing out details with ambiguous conference speeches and restrictive press opportunities. It should come as no surprise, then, to hear that developer units are being shipped out with an unusual caveat: while not in use, they have to be kept in locked safes. The detail comes from Bloomberg alongside confirmation of a “limited” developer roll out (a larger batch of units will be sent out later this year.) It’s safe to assume that the company wants to avoid the fabled iPhone 4 incident.
Continue reading Magic Leap developer units must be kept in locked safes
The first smartphone to boast a pair of rear-facing cameras for non-3D photography was the HTC M8 in 2014 It was Apple’s iPhone 7 Plus, however, that made the double-cam setup standard on flagship phones. Now, Huawei’s new P20 Pro phone packs a trio of rear-facing cameras, and things will likely only escalate from here. And while it may sound like a novelty, multiple imaging devices feed lots of photo and video data to increasingly powerful processors. This creates computational cameras with some real advantages over their cyclopean competition.
Here’s what each camera does. Continue reading Huawei’s P20 Pro smartphone has three rear-facing cameras—here’s what each one does
On Wednesday, Nintendo announced a new line of peripherals that use, wait for it, cardboard to supplement the Switch experience. Launching April 20, Nintendo Labo transforms the Switch into new devices, including a piano, miniature house, and fishing rod. Players order cardboard modules, build, then insert the Switch’s Joy Con controllers. Using sensors, the controllers adapt to what’s been built.
The Fat Cat Collective 