In addition to announcing new flagship phones today, Google took the wraps off a new premium tablet called the Pixel Slate. It's a Chrome OS-powered slate with a 12.3-inch display that's supposed to be the sharpest in its class. Google claims this isn't just a laptop pretending to be a tablet or a phone pretending to be a computer. From a report: It has a resolution of 3,000 x 2,000 -- i.e., a pixel density of 293 ppi, which Google says is the highest for a premium 12-inch tablet. For reference, the Surface Pro 6 and iPad Pro (12.9 inch) come in at 267 ppi and 264 ppi, respectively. Google was able to make the screen so sharp because of an energy-efficient LCD technology called Low Temperature PolySilicon (LTPS), which let the company pack in more pixels without sacrificing size or battery. In fact, the Pixel Slate is supposed to last up to 12 hours on a charge, which is impressive for its skinny 7mm profile. [...] What stands out about the Pixel Slate is the version of Chrome OS it runs. When docked to a mouse or a keyboard accessory with a trackpad, it runs the regular desktop interface most people are familiar with by now. Disconnect peripherals, though, and it switches automatically to tablet mode, which is optimized for touch. In this profile, the home screen features icons for installed apps, much like the app drawer on Android phones. You can split the screen between up to two apps or drag and drop browser tabs to place them side by side. The Pixel Slate will be available with an Intel Celeron or Core M3, i5 or i7 processor, and 4GB to 16GB of RAM at a starting price of $599. The keyboard will cost an additional $200, should you wish to buy one, and the pen accessory will similarly cost $99.

Google on Tuesday unveiled the Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL, its latest flagship Android smartphones. "For life on the go, we designed the world's best camera and put it in the world's most helpful phone," said Google's hardware chief Rick Osterloh. From a report: The Pixel 3 starts at $799 for 64GB, with the 3 XL costing $899. Add $100 to either for the 128GB storage option. Core specs for both include a Snapdragon 845, 4GB RAM (there's no option for more), Bluetooth 5.0, and front-facing stereo speakers. Also inside is a new Titan M security chip, which Google says provides "on-device protection for login credentials, disk encryption, app data, and the integrity of the operating system." Preorders for both phones begin today, and buyers will get six months of free YouTube Music service.

The Pixel 3 and 3 XL both feature larger screens than last year's models thanks to slimmed down bezels -- and the controversial notch in the case of the bigger phone. The 3 XL has a 6.3-inch display (up from six inches on the 2 XL), while the regular 3 has a 5.5-inch screen (up from five inches). Overall, though, the actual phones are very similar in size and handling to their direct predecessors. Google has stuck with a single rear 12.2-megapixel camera on both phones, continuing to resist the dual-camera industry trend. But it's a different story up front. Both the Pixel 3 and 3 XL have two front-facing cameras; one of them offers a wider field of view for getting more people or a greater sense of your surroundings into a selfie. [...] A new Top Shot option will select the best image from a burst series of shots. Like Samsung's Galaxy Note 9, it will weed out pictures that are blurry or snaps where someone blinked. Super Res Zoom uses multiple frames and AI to deliver a sharper final photo even without optical zoom. There's another interesting feature on the new Pixel handsets: To help you avoid calls from scammers, Google is adding Call Screen to the Pixel, a new option that appears when you receive a phone call. Whenever someone calls you, you can tap a "Screen call" button, and a robot voice will pick up. "The person you're calling is using a screening service, and will get a copy of this conversation. Go ahead and say your name, and why you're calling," the Google bot will say. As the caller responds, the digital assistant will transcribe the caller's message for you. If you need more information, you can use one of the feature's canned responses, which include, "Tell me more," and "Who is this?" There is an accept and reject call button that's on-screen, so you can hang up or take the call at any time.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Think of how ice skaters extend their arms and legs to slow down rotation coming out of jumps or spins. It's the same principle: conservation of angular momentum. Once the bottle is set in motion, its angular momentum remains constant. But shifting how the mass inside (the water) is distributed increases the bottle's rotational inertia (how much force is required to start or keep it moving). This slows down the bottle's rotational speed. Physicists from the University of Twente in the Netherlands decided to analyze the underlying physics [of flipping a half-full bottle of water so it lands upright] more thoroughly in a series of rigorous experiments and develop a theoretical model. For the first version of the experiment, they used a partially filled water bottle. For the second version, they reduced the variables from the large number of water molecules in the bottle to just two tennis balls in a cylindrical container. In both cases, their measurements clearly showed the dramatic decrease of the container's rotational speed, resulting in a nearly vertical descent, so the bottle landed neatly and upright. Tracking the sloshing of the liquid and the changing positions of the tennis balls demonstrated the redistribution of mass, shifting the moment of inertia.

Sony's president has confirmed that the company is working on the next PlayStation, but stopped short of calling it "PlayStation 5." From a report: "At this point, what I can say is it's necessary to have a next-generation hardware," Kenichiro Yoshida told the Financial Times on Monday. He didn't give a sense of the form the next PlayStation might take, but FT sources suggested that it wouldn't be a major departure from the PS4 and that its fundamental architecture would be pretty similar. The report suggests Sony isn't quite ready to jump from consoles to cloud-based gaming, even as direct competitors such as Microsoft and potential ones like Google reveal game streaming services.

On Monday, Intel unveiled the 9th Gen Core i9-9900K, which will rival AMD's Ryzen 2700X when it goes on sale in two weeks. We will soon be reading reviews of the 9th Gen Core i9-9900K, which Intel claims is the "world's best gaming processor," to see how exactly it fares against its AMD counterpart. But as reviewers test the new CPU and comply with an NDA/embargo (non-disclosure agreement) with Intel, which requires them to not share performance data of Intel's new CPU for another few days, surprisingly, one publication has already made a bold claim. In a story published this week, news outlet PCGamesN said, "Intel's Core i9 9900K is up to 50% faster than AMD's Ryzen 7 2700X in games." The publication cites data from an Intel-commissioned report [PDF] by third-party firm Principle Technologies to make the claim. TechSpot explains the issues with this: So Intel can go and publish their own "testing" done suspiciously through a third party ten days before reviews, while reviewers are prohibited from refuting the claims due to the NDA. First bad sign. Scrolling down PCGamesN says the following when looking over Intel's commissioned benchmarks. "But the real point of all this is for Intel to be able to hold out the 9900K as hands down the best gaming processor compared with the AMD competition, and in that it seems to have excelled. On some games, such as Civ 6 and PUBG, the performance delta isn't necessarily that great, but for the most part you're looking at between 30 and 50% higher frame rates from the 9900K versus the 2700X."

Right away many of the results looked very suspect to me, having spent countless hours benchmarking both the 2700X and 8700K, I have a good idea of how they compare in a wide range of titles and these results looked very off. Having spotted a few dodgy looking results my next thought was, why is PCGamesN publishing this misleading data and why aren't they not tearing the paid benchmark report apart? Do they simply not know better?

Over at the Principled Technologies website you can find the full report which states how they tested and the hardware used. Official memory speeds were used which isn't a particularly big deal, though they have gone out of their way to handicap Ryzen, or at the very least expose its weaknesses. Ryzen doesn't perform that well with fully populated memory DIMMs, two modules is optimal. However timings are also important and they used Corsair Vengeance memory without loading the extreme memory profile or XMP setting, instead they just set the memory frequency to 2933 and left the ridiculously loose default memory timings in place. These loose timings ensure compatibility so systems will boot up, but after that point you need to enable the memory profile. It's misleading to conduct benchmarks without executing this crucial step.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Millions of Atlantic salmon could have their faces stored in digital databases to track their health and single out those posing threats to their marine surroundings. And before you ask if fish have faces, they do: A company in Norway has developed a 3D scanner that can tell salmon apart based on the distinct pattern of spots around their eyes, mouth and gills. Fish-farming giant Cermaq Group AS wants to roll out the technology at salmon pens along Norway's fjord-etched coastline, betting it can prevent the spread of epidemics like sea lice that infect hundreds of millions of farmed fish and cost the global industry upwards of $1 billion each year.

Cargill wants to apply facial recognition to aqua farms, and Cermaq, operator of over 200 salmon and trout farms in Norway, Canada and Chile, is already doing tests on the iFarm design with its Norwegian technology partner BioSort AS. It'll look a lot like existing fish farms, with networks of 160-meter (525-foot) circular nets that are typically 35 meters deep and home to up to 200,000 salmon. The difference is that iFarms would be equipped with camera scanners at the water surface. On any given day, about 40,000 salmon in each pen will rise to above water for a gulp of air, something their bladders need to regulate buoyancy. Each time a salmon does this, typically every four days, it would go through a funnel fitted with sensors that would screen its face and body so records can be kept on each fish. If the machines pick up on abnormalities like lice or skin ulcers, the infected fish can be quarantined for medical treatment.

In a blog post on Monday, Tesla said that the Model 3 has been deemed to have the lowest probability of occupant injury than any vehicle ever tested by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). The Drive reports: Since 1979, the regulatory body has implemented the New Car Assessment Program (NCAP) which, through a series of tests, ultimately produces a rating for a new-to-market vehicle based on how well it performs in a variety of safety-related tests. Over time the test has evolved to assess the injury to occupants based on data gathered for front, side, and rollover crashes. During the NHTSA's previous tests of Tesla vehicles, the Model S and Model X, respectively, became the two vehicles with the lowest probability for injury, outpacing all other automakers. The Model 3 has now widened that gap as it takes the new number-one position on the leaderboard for the safest overall vehicle for occupants.

The California-based auto manufacturer acknowledges the car's low center of gravity as a major factor in its gracious performance in rollover tests. Similar to The Model 3 places its heaviest component, the battery pack, into the floor, so this helps improve the overall stability and rigidity of the car, making it perform excellently in rollover crashes. Additionally, the automaker gives a subtle nod to its engineering team for their design of the vehicle's crumple zones. Working in conjunction with airbags placed in the front of the vehicle and at the occupant's knees, the Model 3 was able to safely control the deceleration of passengers in frontal crash tests. The NHTSA's assessment involved the Model 3 Long Range Rear-Wheel Drive variant, however, Tesla states that it believes other trims will receive similar results when tested.

Apple has released iOS 12.0.1, the first official update to the iOS 12 OS that brings a number of fixes, including a fix to the charging issue that was affecting some iPhone XS owners. Mac Rumors reports: Today's update fixes several high profile bugs that have been plaguing iOS 12 users. It resolves an issue that could cause some iPhone XS devices not to charge when connected to a Lightning cable, an issue that was discovered shortly after iOS 12 was released. Reports suggested multiple iOS 12 devices were affected rather than just the iPhone XS, and it's likely that if other devices are impacted, the new update solves the problem.

https://www.macrumors.com/2018/10/08/apple-releases-ios-12-0-1-update/ iOS 12.0.1 also fixes a major Wi-Fi bug that could cause some iPhone XS devices to prefer to join a 2.4GHz Wi-Fi network rather than a 5GHz Wi-Fi network, resulting in perceived slower Wi-Fi connection speeds. After this update, many users who were stuck with their phones connecting to a 2.4GHz network should see much faster Wi-Fi connection speeds as the devices once again prefer a 5GHz network. Other bug fixes in this update include a reorientation of the "123" number key on the iPad, which was moved in the iOS 12 update and swapped with the emoji/language key, a fix for a problem that could cause subtitles not to appear in some video apps, and an issue where Bluetooth could become unavailable.

Economist Paul Romer, a co-winner of the 2018 Nobel Prize in economics, uses the programming language Python for his research, according to Quartz. Romer reportedly tried using Wolfram Mathematica to make his work transparent, but it didn't work so he converted to a Jupyter notebook instead. From the report: Romer believes in making research transparent. He argues that openness and clarity about methodology is important for scientific research to gain trust. As Romer explained in an April 2018 blog post, in an effort to make his own work transparent, he tried to use Mathematica to share one of his studies in a way that anyone could explore every detail of his data and methods. It didn't work. He says that Mathematica's owner, Wolfram Research, made it too difficult to share his work in a way that didn't require other people to use the proprietary software, too. Readers also could not see all of the code he used for his equations.

Instead of using Mathematica, Romer discovered that he could use a Jupyter notebook for sharing his research. Jupyter notebooks are web applications that allow programmers and researchers to share documents that include code, charts, equations, and data. Jupyter notebooks allow for code written in dozens of programming languages. For his research, Romer used Python -- the most popular language for data science and statistics. Importantly, unlike notebooks made from Mathematica, Jupyter notebooks are open source, which means that anyone can look at all of the code that created them. This allows for truly transparent research. In a compelling story for The Atlantic, James Somers argued that Jupyter notebooks may replace the traditional research paper typically shared as a PDF.

When Chrome 70 arrives on October 16th, it will drop trust for a major HTTPS certificate provider, putting hundreds of popular websites at risk of breaking. "Chrome 70 is expected to be released on or around October 16, when the browser will start blocking sites that run older Symantec certificates issued before June 2016, including legacy branded Thawte, VeriSign, Equifax, GeoTrust and RapidSSL certificates," reports TechCrunch. From the report: [D]espite more than a year to prepare, many popular sites are not ready. Security researcher Scott Helme found 1,139 sites in the top one million sites ranked by Alexa, including Citrus, SSRN, the Federal Bank of India, Pantone, the Tel-Aviv city government, Squatty Potty and Penn State Federal to name just a few. Ferrari, One Identity and Solidworks were named on the list but recently switched to new certificates, escaping any future outages.

HTTPS certificates encrypt the data between your computer and the website or app you're using, making it near-impossible for anyone -- even on your public Wi-Fi hotspot -- to intercept your data. Not only that, HTTPS certificates prove the integrity of the the site you're visiting by ensuring the pages haven't been modified in some way by an attacker. Most websites obtain their HTTPS certificates from a certificate authority, which abide by certain rules and procedures that over time become trusted by web browsers. If you screw that up and lose their trust, the browsers can pull the plug on all of the certificates from that authority. For these reasons, Google stopped supporting Symantec certificates last year after it was found to be issuing misleading and wrong certificates, as well as allowing non-trusted organizations to issue certificates without the proper oversight.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: The High Court has blocked a bid to sue Google for allegedly unlawfully taking data from 4.4 million UK iPhone users. The legal case was mounted by a group called Google You Owe Us, led by former Which director Richard Lloyd. It sought compensation for people whose handsets were tracked by Google for several months in 2011 and 2012. Mr Lloyd said he was "disappointed" by the ruling and his group would appeal, but Google said it was "pleased" and thought the case was "without merit."

Mr Justice Warby who oversaw the case explained that it was blocked because the claims that people suffered damage were not supported by the facts advanced by the campaign group. Another reason for blocking it, he said, was the impossibility of reliably calculating the number of iPhone users affected by the alleged privacy breach. The complaint made by Google You Owe Us alleged that the cookies were used by Google to track people and get around settings on Apple's Safari browser that blocked such monitoring. Ads were sold on the basis of the personal information gathered by Google's cookies. The Safari workaround was used by Google on lots of different devices but the UK case centered on iPhone users. The group hoped to win $1.3 billion in compensation for affected users.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Gene editing to correct faulty DNA in human embryos has taken a step closer to becoming a reality, with scientists showing it is possible to correct genetic problems in mice before they are born. Researchers used a form of the gene-editing tool Crispr-Cas9 to introduce a mutation into a gene that would otherwise cause lethal liver failure in mice. While the approach has previously been shown to work in mice after birth, the latest study showed it was also possible to make the all-important tweak before they were born. Writing in the journal Nature Medicine, a team of researchers in the US report how they conducted a series of experiments to explore the use of gene editing in mouse fetuses using a modified form of Crispr that can alter single "base pairs" -- the molecules that couple up to form the rungs of the DNA double helix -- but only cuts one strand of DNA when making a change.

After showing it was possible to make a change at a particular spot in the DNA of liver cells in mouse fetuses, the team focused on a condition known as hereditary tyrosinemia type 1. This is a genetic disease that prevents the body from breaking down an amino acid called tyrosine as it should, and can cause death if left untreated. The team took mice with a genetic mutation that produced a similar condition to hereditary tyrosinemia type 1 and bred them, with the mothers kept on a drug called nitisione. The team then injected 26 of the fetuses with a virus carrying the genetic instructions for making the gene-editing tool, and 27 of them with the same virus but without information for the tool. After birth the baby mice no longer received the drug, and the team watched what happened. "In the non-treated mice, they all died by 21 days of life," said Dr William Peranteau, a pediatric and fetal surgeon at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia who co-led the study. "However, those that had been treated were able to survive until the end of the study at three months, and looked very similar to another group that had not been injected with anything and were kept on the drug. No gene editing was seen in the mothers who had given birth to the mice.

Hackaday's Tom Nardi writes about the Federal Aviation Administration's push to repeal Section 336, which states that small remote-controlled aircraft as used for hobby and educational purposes aren't under FAA jurisdiction. "Despite assurances that the FAA will work towards implementing waivers for hobbyists, critics worry that in the worst case the repeal of Section 336 might mean that remote control pilots and their craft may be held to the same standards as their human-carrying counterparts," writes Nardi. From the report: Section 336 has already been used to shoot down the FAA's ill-conceived attempt to get RC pilots to register themselves and their craft, so it's little surprise they're eager to get rid of it. But they aren't alone. The Commercial Drone Alliance, a non-profit association dedicated to supporting enterprise use of Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS), expressed their support for repealing Section 336 in a June press release: "Basic 'rules of the road' are needed to manage all this new air traffic. That is why the Commercial Drone Alliance is today calling on Congress to repeal Section 336 of the FAA Modernization and Reform Act of 2012, and include new language in the 2018 FAA Reauthorization Act to enable the FAA to regulate UAS and the National Airspace in a common sense way."

The 2018 FAA Reauthorization Act does not simply repeal Section 336, it also details the new rules the agency would impose on unmanned aircraft and their operators. Under these proposed rules, all unmanned aircraft would be limited to an altitude of 400 feet unless they have specific authorization to exceed that ceiling. They must also be operated within line of sight at all times, effectively ending long-range First Person View (FPV) flying. There's also language in the Reauthorization Act about studying the effects of flying unmanned aircraft at night, or over groups of people. It also states that drones, just like traditional aircraft, must be registered and marked. It even authorizes the FAA to investigate methods of remote identification for drones and their operators, meaning it's not unreasonable to conclude that RC aircraft may be required to carry transponders at some point in the future. To many in the hobby this seems like an unreasonable burden, especially in the absence of clear limits on what type of small aircraft would be excluded (if any). The report also notes that the 2018 FAA Reauthorization Act will require drone operators to have to pass an "aeronautical knowledge and safety test," and to show proof of their passing to any law enforcement if questioned. Also with the repeal of Section 336, "young people might actually be excluded from flying remote-controlled aircraft," Nardi writes. "While many RC planes and quadcopters are marketed as children's toys, in the absence of Section 336, it's not clear that a child could legally operate one. The FAA requires a person to be 16 years of age to obtain a pilot's license, and if unmanned aircraft are truly expected to obey the same 'rules of the road,' it's not unreasonable to assume that age requirement will remain in effect."

Citing corporate values, Google has decided not to compete for the Pentagon's $10 billion cloud-computing contract. Bloomberg reports: The project, known as the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure cloud, or JEDI, involves transitioning massive amounts of Defense Department data to a commercially operated cloud system. Companies are due to submit bids for the contract, which could last as long as 10 years, on October 12th. Google's announcement on Monday came just months after the company decided not to renew its contract with a Pentagon artificial intelligence program, after extensive protests from employees of the internet giant about working with the military. The company then released a set of principles designed to evaluate what kind of artificial intelligence projects it would pursue. "We are not bidding on the JEDI contract because first, we couldn't be assured that it would align with our AI Principles," a Google spokesman said in a statement. "And second, we determined that there were portions of the contract that were out of scope with our current government certifications."

The spokesman added that Google is "working to support the U.S. government with our cloud in many ways." "Had the JEDI contract been open to multiple vendors, we would have submitted a compelling solution for portions of it," they said. "Google Cloud believes that a multi-cloud approach is in the best interest of government agencies, because it allows them to choose the right cloud for the right workload."

Microsoft has unveiled "Project xCloud," its new game streaming service designed to work across consoles, PCs, and mobile devices. "Scaling and building out Project xCloud is a multi-year journey for us," explains Microsoft's cloud gaming chief Kareem Choudhry in a blog post. "We'll begin public trials in 2019 so we can learn and scale with different volumes and locations." The Verge reports: Microsoft has built custom hardware for its datacenters, as The Verge previously exclusively reported, so that existing and future Xbox games will be compatible with the services. Games will be streamed to devices, and Microsoft has been testing the xCloud service with Xbox wireless controllers connected to consoles, mobile devices, and PCs. Microsoft says its research teams are "creating ways to combat latency" via advanced network techniques combined with video encoding and decoding. This should make game streaming viable on 4G networks, too.