But a closer examination shows this isn’t what Waymo once promised eager would-be riders.
Basically, Waymo slapped a “launch” label to its already-existing early rider self-driving car service, started charging its select group of about 400 preexisting customers for rides, and is letting them talk about the experience and even bring a guest along for a ride.
A slick name for the service and a video showing all you can do with a computer in the driver’s seat gloss over an inconvenient detail: From a service standpoint, this is almost exactly what it was offering before. In its “how it works” post about the One app, Waymo writes it expects “to gradually roll out so even more people can ride with us.”
So instead of a truly public launch it’s only the invited early riders who get to ride the before-the-end-of-the-year service. And it’s only in the Phoenix area including the cities of Chandler, Tempe, Mesa, and Gilbert. And within those towns, only within geofenced areas.
The early riders were warned months ago that the service they were using for free would one day charge for schlepping them around town, and that day has come. Fair enough, but just because Waymo’s now accepting credit cards doesn’t mean this isn’t much more than a limited pilot.
The Waymo One app offers self-driving car rides for a fare.
Credit where it’s due: Waymo is the only company to have applied for a truly driverless testing permit in California and is also testing driverless rides in Arizona. It built its own Uber- or Lyft-like ride-hailing app, complete with a payment system. It’s tested more than 10 million real road miles in its vehicles. But these milestones don’t mean much for Wednesday’s announcement.
The list of “howevers” is just as long, though. Safety drivers are still in the cars and remote operators will be monitoring rides as well. The true “public” doesn’t have access to the service. And the first-ever Waymo app isn’t even available in the App Store or Google Play for anyone but Google’s handpicked customers.
At best, Waymo took an incremental step towards a self-driving service. At worst, the Google-created company is duping us all. Nothing substantive has changed compared to what the company has been doing since April 2017, geographically and demographically. It’s still the same Phoenix suburbs with its wide, sunny streets and same people who are used to and know what to expect from a Waymo ride. Regardless of how Waymo is framing this, those unflattering reports from The Information and Bloomberg that questioned whether a full launch would happen before 2019 now look validated.
Bottom line: Waymo still isn’t ready for prime time. The cars can be slow to turn, hesitant in certain situations, and overly cautious. Local Arizona reporters who recently followed Waymo minivans for three days found the cars use “extreme caution in maneuvers” and often frustrate other drivers on the road. It’s certainly impressive what Waymo has achieved, but those achievements may be incompatible with today’s roads, and least in some situations.
Because of these shortcomings, Waymo wants to keep the less-than-perfect rides within the early rider crew. These are the people who know that the Waymo car is bad at changing lanes or can’t always handle the chaos of a busy parking lot.
Even watching a promo video for the new Waymo One service, the wording (“this is where we’re going”) and visuals carefully focus on what the service will eventually become: driverless, accessible, and as easy to use as any other ride-hailing app.
Until then, however, Waymo One is just a new label for the same driverless promises, most of which are still a ways down the road.
The world’s largest mobile chipmaker held back on sharing extensive details during the first day of its annual Snapdragon Technology Summit in Maui, Hawaii on Monday. But now the curtain’s been fully lifted and we know exactly how the tiny little chip will push mobile forward.
TL;DR: Get ready for 5G, more AI, faster performance, improved gaming, and — what I’m personally most excited for — portrait mode-like 4K video recording where backgrounds are blurred out in real-time.
Some of you might be rolling your eyes and channeling your inner Ariana Grande with a “thank u, next” at the very news of a piece of silicon that’ll be embedded in a phone or tablet.
Yes, chipsets, like batteries and storage, aren’t exactly sexy tech topics. But they do matter — the innovations in the Snapdragon 855 directly affect what you’ll be able to do with a new device (assuming it’s not an iOS one).
1. First to access 5G data
Ready for 5G?
Get used to hearing 5G a lot this year because it’s going to be tossed around by companies big and small (tech or not) a lot.
The commercialization for consumer 5G has been years in the making and 2019 will be the year when this new high-speed network becomes accessible for some people in select places.
Accessing 5G requires the right hardware with a modem capable of connecting to the new network. The Snapdragon 855 is the first mobile chip that’ll work with Qualcomm’s X50 5G modem, which supports Sub-6 GHz and mmWave frequencies.
The what and what? Don’t worry about the jargon. All you need to know is that the modem’s technologies could speed up cellular connectivity by up to 20x, according to Qualcomm. The modem’s capable of download speeds of up to 5 Gbps.
5G isn’t just going to make download and upload speeds faster. The infrastructure will enable more devices to be connected together thanks to the increased bandwidth support. Additionally, the boost in data capacity will mean less latency and fewer dropped connections; services and experiences such as streaming 8K video and 4K video games and high-res mobile VR that currently require a wired connection will be possible wirelessly over 5G.
Several phone makers, including Samsung and OnePlus, have announced plans to release 5G phones later this year. Early adopters will no doubt run to get a device with the X50 5G modem to access 5G.
But the 855 chip is really just the beginning. 5G adoption isn’t expected to ramp up until 2020, and you know the iPhone will play a major part in mainstreaming 5G. Still, 5G’s finally within real reach and it’s already shaping up to be glorious.
2. Even faster 4G LTE and WiFi
Not all devices will come with the X50 5G modem, though — it’s an option, not the default modem for the 855 chip.
Even though 5G will be the new hotness, 4G LTE and WiFi aren’t going anywhere for the foreseeable future.
Image: FLICKR, CARL LENDER
Most 855-powered devices will ship with a Snapdragon X24 LTE modem that’ll offer faster 4G LTE download speeds with up to 2 Gbps theoretical downloads.
Meanwhile, WiFi 6 support using 8×8 antennas will provide up to 2x faster WiFi performance compared to existing 4×4 antennas. Qualcomm says the 855 chip is capable of achieving data speeds of up to 10Gbps WiFi speeds.
Though 5G is meant to essentially replace WiFi, it’ll still be limited to select launch cities, and as a result of this ongoing rollout, WiFi will still be necessary. It’ll still take a few years for the 5G infrastructure to go up in more places and likely won’t be ubiquitous for the better part of a decade if 3G and 4G infrastructure timelines are any indications.
3. Up to 45% faster CPU and 20% faster graphics
Faster and more realistic games on new phones? Yesss, please!
Image: ray white/mashable
No new chip is worth a damn if it doesn’t push performance higher and the 855 chip is no different. Qualcomm’s touting up to 45 percent faster processing performance from the 855 chip’s Kryo 485 CPU and up to 20 percent faster graphics performance with the Adreno 640 GPU compared to the Snapdragon 845 chip.
Android will of course run faster and smoother with the performance boosts, but game developers will get the most out of the new chip.
Qualcomm says developers will be able to create games with HDR for the first time, providing more color depth with over 1 billion shades of colors.
3D games can also look more detailed using “physically based rendering” to pull off more realistic textures and lighting effects, and better depth-of-field. These are all advanced features supported in the popular Unity 4 game engine.
Better graphics is always a plus for mobile gaming, but it’s not the only aspect that has room for improvement. With the 855 chip, Qualcomm’s created a “Snapdragon Elite Gaming” experience that ensures games measure up for things like lower latency and clearer and more responsive wireless listening.
4. Portrait mode-like 4K video
Three shots, one smaller file. That’s what the 855 chip will enable.
Image: zlata ivleva/mashable
Portrait shots — the style of phone photography designed to simulate the look of a DSLR photo with a sharp foreground and a blurred background — have become quite popular on phones and tablets.
Different phones use varying techniques (i.e. iPhones use dual lenses and the Pixels use machine learning) to segment the background and foreground, but until now it’s only been possible with still photos.
The Snapdragon 855’s built-in Spectra 380 ISP (image signal processor) has what Qualcomm calls the world’s first CV-ISP (Computer Vision Image Signal Processor) capable of advanced computational photography and video recording.
Using computer vision, the chip can isolate and blur out an object or subject for video, effectively simulating a camera lens with a larger aperture (i.e. f/1.8) — all rendered in real-time at 4K resolution in HDR shot at 60 fps.
Cameras are getting smarter.
It’s the first of its kind on a mobile device and sets the stage for more cinematic-quality video footage from handheld devices.
But won’t these files be massive? Not at all claims Qualcomm. Portrait photos and videos will be saved with the High Efficiency file format in HEIF and HEVC, respectively, first adopted by Apple’s iOS devices.
These greatly compressed files are up to 50 percent smaller than JPEGs and standard MP4 videos. These smaller files don’t come at the loss of quality, though. It’s the opposite, actually.
Qualcomm says the HEIF format stores all of the RAW data including HDR color, depth maps, animated GIFs, and collections of burst photos, and even multiple shots taken from phones with multiple cameras (i.e. wide angle, telephoto, and ultra-wide shots) all within a single file. Storing all of this data will give users more freedom to tweak and edit shots and videos after they’ve been shot.
5. Longer video binging and HDR10+
Who doesn’t wanna watch more video?
Image: raymond wong/mashable
Qualcomm was the first to push HDR onto mobile with the Snapdragon 835 and now it’s pushing the video format further with HDR10+ playback — a first for mobile. Of course, devices will need to have a display capable of HDR, but most premium ones do.
More valuable in my opinion is support for the new hardware-accelerated H.265 and VP9 video decoding that’s used by many video streaming services like Youtube, Netflix, Hulu, Youku, etc.
Qualcomm claims a whopping “up to 7x” power savings for streaming videos that are encoded with H.265 or VP9, which’ll let you watch more videos on a single charge — perfect for binging.
6. Richer and sharper AR and VR
All-in-one mobile VR headsets like the Oculus Go could get a big performance boost with the 855 chip.
Image: raymond wong/mashable
Whether you care or not, Qualcomm and friends are still innovating mobile VR. Qualcomm says the 855 chip supports mobile VR in 8K resolution at 120 fps.
Supporting headsets with more pixels will make virtual worlds look even more lifelike by eliminating undesirable traits such as the “screen-door effect.”
Augmented reality will also get a boost from the 855 chip. Qualcomm envisions more realistic-looking digital objects that can be overlaid on top of reality, allowing for AR shopping to finally become a feasible experience.
7. Smarter and more responsive voice assistants
Can you hear me now?
Image: ANDREJ SOKOLOW/PICTURE ALLIANCE VIA GETTY IMAGES
Another key pillar to the Snapdragon 855 is improved AI. The chip’s got a more powerful AI Engine capable of up to 3x the performance compared to the AI processing in the Snapdragon 845.
As more AI is sprinkled in phones, AI processing is ever more important, especially for voice assistants.
Nothing wrong with relying on the cloud to processing voice assistant requests, but increasing demands for privacy and responsiveness mean better on-device processing is necessary. The boosted AI processing in the 855 should allow for better noise suppression and echo cancellation, according to Qualcomm.
In other words, the Google Assistant or Alexa should be able to hear you better when you call on them. And if they can hear voice requests better, they can more accurately decode it and get you the information you need without additional prompts.
8. More room for new device components
That’s one tiny chip!
The tiny 855 chip is Qualcomm’s first 7-nanometer system-on-chip (SoC) and shrinks the silicon from the 845’s 10-nanometer architecture.
Why’s this important? A smaller chip means more room for other device components. Think more physical space for new features like additional cameras, in-display fingerprint sensors, larger batteries, bigger speakers… maybe even the return of the headphone jack (heh).
In, what is perhaps the cutest mishap ever, two dogs mistook their owner’s braid for a chew toy.
During a lively play session with their owner, pups Cooper and Murphy excitedly discovered their braid and began to enthusiastically play with it. And not to worry, the dogs were extremely gentle with the braid.
In complete fairness, the braid does look exactly like the many rope toys designed specifically for dogs, so who can blame Cooper and Murphy for being confused?
Perhaps sporting a different hairstyle whilst playing with the pups in the future is ideal.
The day we are born is the day we begin to die, and the same was true for the beloved but ill-fated app, Vine.
Mark Zuckerberg personally made the decision to revoke Vine’s ability to connect users to their Facebook friends, a recently published 2013 email shows. Zuckerberg’s role in the power play comes from a trove of internal Facebook documents, published Wednesday by UK lawmakers, that reveal Facebook’s inner dealings and approach to working with third party apps.
Specifically, Zuckerberg gave an employee the thumbs up to cut off Vine’s access to a Facebook feature that allowed Vine users to find and add their Facebook friends on the platform.
Zuckerberg made the decision in response to an email from an employee suggesting that action be taken. The email exchange occurred on the same day that the six-second video app launched in January 2013.
We already knew Facebook did this. At the time, Facebook was feuding with Twitter, which had recently made the same decision to cut off Facebook’s access to friend finding on Twitter.
We just didn’t know that Mark Zuckerberg himself OK’d it, in spectacularly cavalier fashion.
Vine shuttered for multiple reasons in October 2016. But The Verge cited that it “struggled to grow its user base” as one of the reasons for its death.
Finding Facebook friends on Vine would have helped users connect with their friends and enable their use of the platform. Mark Zuckerberg apparently hamstrung that growth effort right from the beginning, with the words “Yup, go for it.”
Vine co-founder Rus Yusupov has taken notice. Getting the feature taken away was apparently not an inconsequential move; nor was Instagram’s soon-to-follow launch of short-form video.
On Tuesday, Facebook announced changes to its app developer policy. All apps that were restricted from friend-finding access can now re-apply. What a coinky-dink.
The good news? Facebook says all those apps that got kicked off & lost access to friends’ data can now reapply. The bad news? Vine is dead. Too bad, Vine. You lost. Get over it. pic.twitter.com/Isdt4GRn6Y
Facebook didn’t kill Vine alone. Leadership issues, increased competition, and monetization struggles all contributed. But those four little words from Zuck certainly didn’t help.
RIP Vine, Long Live Vine, your time was brief but pure. Revenge upon your enemies, and may the six-second video reign forevermore.
Scientists have watched Greenland’s colossal ice sheet shrink at an accelerated rate for the last 20 years.
Now, researchers have solid proof that the current melting of Earth’s second-largest ice sheet — which is about 2.5 times the size of Texas — is quite abnormal compared to previous centuries. Researchers published their report Wednesday in the journal Nature.
“We see now that it’s melting faster than at any point in at least the last three and a half centuries, and likely the last seven or eight millennia,” Luke Trusel, a geologist at Rowan University and an author of the study, said in an interview.
In an unstable political environment where top U.S. government officials sow doubt about or flat-out deny globally-accepted climate science, Greenland’s historically unprecedented melting provides more clear evidence about how the planet is experiencing significant climate change.
Scientists removing an ice core drill amid inclement weather.
Image: Sarah Das / Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
“It’s one more nail in the coffin of climate denial,” NASA oceanographer and Greenland expert Josh Willis, who had no role in the research, said in an interview. “I don’t know how many more nails we need.”
To gauge Greenland’s melting, Rowan and his team journeyed to the great ice-clad island in 2015. They spent five weeks on the frigid central plains drilling into the ground to collect long, cylindrical tubes of ancient ice — which store a history of ice melting and freezing. Thicker, darker layers show periods that experienced more melting.
They found that the gradual melting started in the late 1800s, after large-scale coal burning began. Lately, the melting water — which drains into the ocean — has ramped up as Earth’s temperatures have risen at an accelerated rate.
“We can show that the recent increase in melt and runoff from Greenland over the past two decades, in response to warming temperatures, is exceptional and unprecedented (‘off the charts’),” Sarah Das, a study coauthor and geologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, said over email.
“It nails down the timing of when the melting starts to happen really quickly,” noted Willis. “It’s really in the last 20 or 30 years when it took off.”
But, critically, the melting is now happening faster than even the warming.
An ice canyon with ice melt flowing through.
Image: Sarah Das / Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
“We find that for every degree of warming, melting increases more and more — it outpaces the warming,” said Trusel.
This doesn’t bode well for the 3 billion humans living in coastal areas. Greenland holds bounties of ice — enough to raise global sea levels by 23 feet. No one is arguing that this is going to happen, yet. However, the reality is if warming trends continue, there will be bounties of ice available to melt into the sea.
At its current pace, NASA predicts sea levels will rise by over two feet by the end the century, an estimate they call “conservative.” It could be considerably more, depending on what Greenland and Antarctica — an even greater ice sheet — end up doing.
Greenland’s melting is consistent with what’s happening in the greater Arctic, a sprawling region warming over twice as fast as the rest of the planet. Here, once the bright, white sea ice melts, rather than reflecting sunlight, the darker waters absorb more sunlight, which then feeds more warming.
Dark meltwater on Greenland’s surface.
Image: Sarah Das / Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
The same thing is happening in the middle of Greenland’s ice. When the ice on the surface melts, it pools in darker water, which absorbs more sunlight and causes more melting, said Trusel. It’s a vicious cycle.
“Once it starts, it can keep going,” he said.
NASA’s Willis points out that the island is shedding bounties of ice near the shore, too. Here, the warming oceans are melting the edges of glaciers, which leave new land exposed.
“This study is not even the whole reason to be worried,” said Willis. “The melt at the edges only makes the problem worse than what’s depicted.
Robyn‘s excellent new album, Honey, has been out in the world since October 26, and you’ve presumably danced to it approximately every day since then. Its highs, like fizzy opener “Missing U,” are dazzling peaks, while its more experimental and gooey middle (“Send to Robin Immediately”) pumps some air into the moment, letting everything else breathe.
And then there’s the wonderful title track, whose four simple words – “come get your honey” — have become a bit of a rallying cry. There’s something very comforting about the song’s seemingly endless warmth, a key element that director Max Vitali preserved and even bottled for the music video, which dropped on Wednesday (December 5).
In it, Robyn and a crowd of dancers are artfully shot from a multitude of close angles, gradually panning out to reveal the full squad. It’s neat. It also perfectly captures the song’s underlying clubby pulse, its heartbeat and fulcrum, as Robyn’s jetting vocals fill the spaces.
“I want to say thank you to all of you who came from near and far and danced with me,” Robyn wrote on Instagram. “The video is for you and everyone who found a piece of heaven on the [dance floor].”
The clip reminds me most recently of Sam Smith and Calvin Harris together on “Promises” and Dua Lipa’s equally sweaty, equally ecstatic “Electricity” video with Silk City, though Robyn’s long career in dance music likely helped served as inspiration for those relative newcomers. It’s always nice to see how dance celebration takes new shapes.
Watch the delightful “Honey” video above. Let its coziness warm your frigid bones.
Now that the second season of The Handmaid’s Tale is available on Blu-Ray, there’s time to rewatch and consider what exactly the award-winning, prescient show means in today’s cultural and political climate — and what further seasons might have to say about Gilead and the world.
To that end, Mashable spoke to showrunner Bruce Miller about June’s journey, the capacity for hope, and what events he’d like to see in Gilead’s future.
Mashable: Margaret Atwood and Elizabeth Moss have both spoken highly of you as a showrunner in adapting what is a very woman-centric story. How often do you find yourself deferring to the women in your writers’ room when it comes to making decisions about characters and motivations? Did you find yourself in that position more often in Season 1 than in Season 2 because Season 2 was an “off book” season.
Bruce Miller: I don’t really think of it as an off-book season. It’s really Margaret’s world and we’re just playing with it and moving forward in that world with those characters. It’s really still tethered to that genesis, I didn’t think of it or see it as going off book and it didn’t feel like that.
I always defer to the women writers in my room, but that’s a different story because they’re all very good. I think over time we’ve learned not to defer to each other but to ask questions, so if you don’t understand or disagree with something that you actually ask the question, even if it’s embarrassing.
M: In earlier interviews you’ve said that you sketched out The Handmaid’s Tale for a ten-season run. After the events of Season 2 are you sticking to that number as an ideal for the show’s longevity?
BM: No. The ideal for the show’s longevity is that when it’s done there’s something kind of nice and perfect that you can put on the shelf next to the book as a companion piece.
However long that is, I certainly don’t want to overstay my welcome. I certainly don’t want to overstay people’s ability to get something from the show. I don’t want it to be something people have to endure to get to some kind of ending, you want it to be valuable and emotionally satisfying as you go along.
There is no number, and considering that seasons can get longer and shorter has made that even more meaningless. But as far as I’m concerned I want to see the “Nuremberg Trials” with Serena and the Commander so we can go on for a very long time.
M: A lot of the discussions around the end of Season 2 were about whether or not there’s any hope left for the characters. Do you think “hope” is a strong word to apply to the ending of Season 2? Is June as a character hopeful? Or just mad?
BM: [laughs] I would say probably both. I think she’s going to have hope regardless of what happens around her. She’s going to believe in the possibility of the impossible, the possibility of becoming free, the possibility of being free with her daughter, and you have to believe those things regardless. You have to hope even when there’s no hope.
We did a lot of research into narratives of people who were caught in situations like this, in a totalitarian state or a prison system — so how do you keep your hope alive when you’re a prisoner of the Taliban? And I think what you do is hope is going to be hope. It’s not going to grow and ebb.
At the end of Season 2 I think June is making her own decision to go back in. For the first time she’s doing it on purpose, so now she enters Gilead with a lot more agency. She’s picking the terms of the fight.
M: There are two featurettes on the Blu-Ray release. One is called “Season 2: Off Book” and the other is “Dressing Dystopia.” Are there any other elements of or teams on the show that you’d want to see get featurettes, potentially in future Blu-Ray releases?
BM: I’m fascinated by the work of the other departments, I think they’re all miracle workers and really the show is made by those people. The production design team is huge and works their tails off, the stunts team which works completely behind the scenes, everything that goes on in post.
I think the way television shows are made is so fascinating and is so elusive even to people who do what [writers] do. I think giving those people a voice to [talk about] what they thought about the show makes you realize how many artists’ missions go into a show like this. If it’s going to be good you want everybody to be an empowered artist and an empowered storyteller.
M:The Handmaid’s Tale has a massive cultural impact beyond the base message of the show. Do you have any thoughts on the Handmaid’s Tale–inspired protests, such as those at Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing or in Argentina?
BM: Mostly I’m flabbergasted. I don’t know how to feel, I mean should I be proud? I’d much rather live in a world where no one had to dress up like a handmaid as protest, that it could be completely meaningless or strange.
It’s terrible to live in a time where a show like this is relevant and prescient but having read Margaret’s book in 1986 and then a bunch of times over the years there wasn’t a time where I thought it wasn’t prescient. It’s a testament to the longstanding genius of Margaret’s imagination to say that it’s at the front of people’s minds no matter what the political situation.
In terms of the protests, I’m moved and flattered for the part I’ve taken for the people that attach themselves to something I’ve been a part of, that I wrote. Especially when people are at the moment fighting for their beliefs and their basic right using your show.
The Handmaid’s Tale Season 2 is available on Blu-Ray now.
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