Month: October 2021

Juno reveals deep 3D structure of Jupiter’s massive storms

Juno has opened a new window onto the dark, deep atmosphere of Jupiter.

This view of Jupiter’s turbulent atmosphere from NASA’s Juno spacecraft includes several of the planet’s southern jet streams.

Enlarge / This view of Jupiter’s turbulent atmosphere from NASA’s Juno spacecraft includes several of the planet’s southern jet streams. (credit: NASA)

Nasa’s Juno mission, the solar-powered robotic explorer of Jupiter, has completed its five-year prime mission to reveal the inner workings of the Solar System’s biggest planet. Since 2016, the spacecraft has flown within a few thousand kilometers of Jupiter’s colorful cloud tops every 53 days, using a carefully selected array of instruments to peer deeper into the planet than ever before.

The most recent findings from these measurements have now been published in a series of papers, revealing the three-dimensional structure of Jupiter’s weather systems—including of its famous Great Red Spot, a centuries-old storm big enough to swallow the Earth whole.

Before Juno, decades of observations had revealed the famous striped appearance of Jupiter’s atmosphere, with white bands known as zones, and red-brown bands known as belts. The bands are separated by powerful winds zipping east and west, known as the jet streams, and are punctuated by gigantic vortices, such as the red spot.

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Expanded Windows 11 app store comes to Windows 10 “soon,” available to testers now

New Microsoft Store has a new design, but more importantly, more popular apps.

The new Microsoft Store running on Windows 10.

Enlarge / The new Microsoft Store running on Windows 10. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

If you don't want to (or can't) run Windows 11 on your PC, the good news is that Microsoft will be providing at least a few app updates to Windows 10 to keep it feeling useful. One of those app updates is Windows 11's revamped Microsoft Store, which is now available to Windows 10 users in the Release Preview Insider channel.

The new Microsoft Store isn't dramatically different from the old one in its design, though a few of the changes are clear improvements—viewing your app library and grabbing updates for the apps you already have installed happens on the same screen now, which is handy. But the real reason to install it is its dramatically improved app selection. Microsoft has loosened the rules for the kinds of apps that can be submitted to and downloaded from the store, and apps like Zoom, Discord, the VLC Player, Adobe Reader, the LibreOffice suite, and even the Epic Games Store are all available to download through the store. Once installed, the apps look and work the same way as the standalone versions.

Not everything in Windows 11's app store will make it to Windows 10. The store version of the Windows Subsystem for Linux isn't available in Windows 10, nor is the Amazon Appstore or its underlying Windows Subsystem for Android. But for regular users, the expanded selection of actually useful apps can make setting up a new PC a bit easier and may help people avoid paying for scammy third-party app clients that have stepped in to fill the vacuum left by the absence of official apps.

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Google Fi is getting end-to-end encrypted phone calls

Android Fi-to-Fi calls will be encrypted by default through the normal phone app.

Google Fi is getting end-to-end encrypted phone calls

Enlarge

Google's MVNO cell phone service, Google Fi, is getting a surprise new feature: encrypted phone calls. Encrypted voice chats via messaging apps have been available for a while, but this is the first time we've seen a company hijack the regular phone system for end-to-end encrypted calls. Open the phone app, dial a number, and your call can be encrypted.

End-to-end encryption is not a normal phone standard, so both parties on the call will need to be firmly in the Google Fi ecosystem for the feature to work. Google's description says that "calls between two Android phones on Fi will be secured with end-to-end encryption by default." Google Fi works on the iPhone, too, but given that Google would have to use Apple's default phone app, it can't add encryption.

For encrypted Fi-to-Fi calls, Google will show a new "Encrypted by Google Fi" message in both users' phone apps, along with the ubiquitous lock icon. The company says there will be "unique audio cues" as well.

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Meta removing Facebook login requirement for Quest headsets by next year

But the devil’s in the still-unknown details.

By next year, you won't need a Facebook account to log in to your Quest headset.

Enlarge / By next year, you won't need a Facebook account to log in to your Quest headset.

Last year, Facebook started requiring that new Oculus Quest users log in with their personal Facebook accounts rather than a separate Oculus account. Now, in the face of customer backlash and amid Facebook's metaverse-focused rebranding as Meta, the company says it is "working on" options for Quest users to avoid that login requirement starting next year.

"As we’ve focused more on work, and as we’ve heard feedback from the VR community more broadly, we’re working on new ways to log in to Quest that won’t require a Facebook account, landing sometime next year," Andrew Bosworth wrote in a Facebook post following yesterday's Connect keynote. "This is one of our highest priority areas of work internally."

"I know this is a big deal for a lot of people," CEO Mark Zuckerberg said during yesterday's Connect keynote when talking about the coming login change. "Not everyone wants their social media profile linked to all these other experiences. I get that, especially as the metaverse expands. I’ll share more about that later."

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JioPhone Next is an $87 smartphone with HDR photography, Google feature drops

The JioPhone Next is a low-cost smartphone for the Indian market developed by Reliance Jio and Google. First announced earlier this year, the phone goes on sale in India next week for 6,499 Rupees, or about $87. For the most part the phone has the sort of specs you’d expect from a budget device. But […]

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The JioPhone Next is a low-cost smartphone for the Indian market developed by Reliance Jio and Google. First announced earlier this year, the phone goes on sale in India next week for 6,499 Rupees, or about $87.

For the most part the phone has the sort of specs you’d expect from a budget device. But Google’s involvement means it will receive some extra features including support for reading text aloud, translating languages for on-screen text, and better photography features than you’d expect from a phone in this price range. Google is also promising to deliver new capabilities regularly through feature drops as well as security updates.

The JioPhone Next has a 5.45 inch, 1440 x 720 pixel display, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 215 processor, 2GB of RAM, 32GB of storage, a microSD card reader, headphone jack, and a 3,500 mAh battery, dual SIM support, and 13MP rear and 8MP front-facing cameras.

The camera works with Google’s Camera Go software and has support for snapping HDR photos for better low-light photography, among other things. Google says it’s also partnered with Snap to offer some Indian-specific Snapchat Lenses in the Camera Go app.

While you’d think that the inclusion of “Go” apps would indicate that the phone would ship with Google’s Android Go software, which is optimized for low-cost devices with limited specs, the JioPhone Next will actually ship with a customized version of Android called Pragati OS.

But aside from the fact that the phone comes with some Jio apps pre-installed as well as bonus features like Read Aloud and Translate Now with support 10 different Indian languages, it seems like Pragati and Android Go are pretty similar.

The JioPhone Next will be available exclusively in India, but it’s an interesting example of what a partnership between Google and a regional phone carrier looks like when designing a smartphone experience that balances a low price tag with a robust set of features.

via @reliancejio, Google, TechCrunch and MySmartPrice

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Meta (formerly Facebook) may be making a smartwatch with a front-facing camera

Smartwatches have been a thing for nearly a decade at this point, letting users view notifications, control media playback, and occasionally even make phone calls Dick Tracy-style from their wrist. But one thing that hasn’t really taken off, despite the occasional attempt from one watch maker or another? Smartwatches with cameras. Now it looks like […]

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Smartwatches have been a thing for nearly a decade at this point, letting users view notifications, control media playback, and occasionally even make phone calls Dick Tracy-style from their wrist. But one thing that hasn’t really taken off, despite the occasional attempt from one watch maker or another? Smartwatches with cameras.

Now it looks like Meta (the company known as Facebook until yesterday) may want to give camera-equipped smartwatches another try.

According to a report from Bloomberg, a picture of an unannounced watch with a front-facing camera was found in the company’s iPhone app designed to work with the recently launched Ray-Ban Stories smart glasses.

The picture shows a watch with a squarish screen featuring rounded edges, a control button on the right side, and a camera embedded in the center bottom portion of the screen.

While there are no details about what the camera would be used for, it seems like Facebook Messenger and other communication apps including Meta-owned WhatsApp would be a safe bet. The company’s existing Portal line of smart displays are basically just Amazon Alexa-enabled devices that also work with Facebook Messenger. It’s easy to imagine that this watch would bring the same feature to your wrist.

Whether video calls on a wristwatch is a thing people actually want remains to be seen.

Bloomberg reports that Meta (Facebook) had been considering launching a watch as early as 2022, but no decision has been finalized yet. It’s also possible that the version shown in the leaked image may never see the light of day, but Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman seems pretty certain that the company will release some version of a smartwatch at some point.

via Bloomberg and Steve Moser

 

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Google brings grammar correction to Gboard keyboard for the Pixel 6

Grammarly recently announced a partnership with Samsung to bring grammar, punctuation, and vocabulary suggestions to the Samsung Keyboard app for Galaxy phones. Now Google says it’s bringing at least one of those features to the Gboard keyboard for Pixel 6 smartphones: grammar correction. According to Google, its new Gboard grammar correction will check for spelling […]

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Grammarly recently announced a partnership with Samsung to bring grammar, punctuation, and vocabulary suggestions to the Samsung Keyboard app for Galaxy phones.

Now Google says it’s bringing at least one of those features to the Gboard keyboard for Pixel 6 smartphones: grammar correction.

According to Google, its new Gboard grammar correction will check for spelling and grammar mistakes while you type, and offer suggested changes.

Google says it developed a mobile-friendly AI model that can provide grammar correction using just 20MB of storage and taking about 22ms to process 60 input characters. All the processing happens on your device without the need to rely on the cloud for processing.

Google says Gboard’s grammar detection kicks in any time a user types more than three words, whether that’s a complete sentence or not. Possible grammar mistakes will be underlined, while possible replacements will show up above the keyboard.

While Gboard grammar correction is rolling out as a Pixel 6 exclusive feature at launch with support for English language sentences only, Google says there are plans to add support for additional languages in the future.

As for whether grammar correction will come to other smartphones or tablets, Google isn’t saying. On the one hand, I think the implication of launching this as a Pixel 6-only feature is that the phone’s Tensor processor has the the AI chops to handle the feature quickly and efficiently… but that was also Google’s justification for making the Google Photos “Magic Eraser” a Pixel 6-only feature, and we’ve already seen evidence that it works just fine on other phones with some simple modifications.

Anyway, given the level of hate some of y’all have expressed for Grammarly’s aggressive advertising, maybe Gboard’s built-in solution could be an alternative. Or maybe we could just try to type gooder sentences on our owns.

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