Month: October 2017

Enlarge (credit: TiVo)

TiVo announced today an update to its line of set-top boxes that makes voice a main feature. The new Bolt Vox and Mini Vox devices include all the features of the original TiVo Bolt and TiVo Mini. But now, the devices also have native voice functionality. That means the set-top boxes, using the new TiVo Vox Remote, can now search for, record, and play content across live TV, DVR, on-demand, and streaming services using voice commands.

Aside from a color change from white to black and the addition of voice functionality, the Bolt Vox and Mini Vox are exactly the same as the original devices. The TiVo Bolt has four integrated tuners for watching or recording between 75 and 150 hours of HD content (depending on storage capacity). The TiVo Bolt+, which came out at the end of last year, is now the most specced-out version of the TiVo Bolt Vox. It features six tuners and 3TB of storage space, which is good for up to 450 hours of content. However, that model doesn't include an antenna, so it can only be used with digital cable systems.

The Mini Vox pairs with an existing TiVo box and allows users to get the TiVo experience on other TVs in the house. By pairing a TiVo Mini Vox to a Bolt Vox device, you can use TiVo features like SkipMode and QuickMode, stream and watch live TV, access DVR content when connected via Ethernet or MoCA home network, and more. The new Mini Vox also supports streaming 4K content, a feature that the original did not have.

Enlarge / Slow zombies. (credit: George Romero)

In decades of films, the dead have risen from the grave to stalk the living. Classic zombies go slow (a literal plodding approach of death), while modern zombies are often swifter, sometimes speedy. Though science-fiction fans will endlessly debate which is better, a new neuroscience study on the closest thing we have to zombies in real life—those who rise from the dead of sleep—tend to be the snappy kind.

In a small study published Monday in Current Biology, researchers found that sleepwalkers tended to have better locomotor control and awareness than those who don’t wander while out cold. Specifically, researchers gave study participants (when they were awake) a movement test and a mental task to do at the same time. Even though the mental task was known to interfere with motor control, the sleepwalkers could still complete the movement test with the same accuracy and at their normal, brisk pace. But the extra brain work tripped up the non-sleepwalkers: they lurched through the movement task, even though they could perform it quickly when not mentally distracted.

The finding has two main takeaways, the authors argue. First, it hints that the brains of sleepwalkers may be better wired to automate locomotor control and awareness, freeing the body to move about without full consciousness. Secondly, it suggests that there may be waking behavioral tests that potential sleepwalkers could take to help determine if they have the sleep condition.

Enlarge / A balloon launches from Nevada on its way to Puerto Rico. (credit: X)

One of Puerto Ricans' most basic needs in the wake of Hurricane Maria is communication with the outside world. Cell phone companies on the island are still working to repair infrastructure after the hurricane took 95 percent of the island's cell phone towers out of service.

So X, Google's company devoted to technological "moonshots," is sending a fleet of balloons to serve as cell phone towers in the sky. "We are now collaborating with AT&T to deliver emergency Internet service to the hardest hit parts of the island," writes Alastair Westgarth, who leads the company's balloon-based Internet efforts.

The idea of providing Internet service via balloons sounds crazy—indeed it has sounded crazy since Google first announced the effort, dubbed Project Loon, in 2013. But Google—now X—is deadly serious about making balloon-powered Internet access a real thing.

Enlarge / Welcome to Engare. (credit: Mahdi Bahrami)

Your first-blush impression of new video game Engare, perhaps more than any other arty "indie" game in recent memory, will likely boil down to what you think about video games in general.

If you're looking for something to blow the industry's tropes out of the water, then Engare should skyrocket to the top of any list you're making. It's a clever, deceptively simple, and beautiful rumination on geometry and Islamic art-making traditions. Try attaching a generic, smoldering white-man box cover onto that concept.

If you're a well-versed "gamer," on the other hand, Engare may not strike you so intensely at first. At its core, it's a spirograph art game with a series of relatively simple puzzles, and it comes with a freeform art toy that unlocks its puzzles' tools to make whatever patterns you please. The puzzles and the art tools, separately, are straightforward.