NewTech Tooday

Thursday, 7 April 2016

THE NEXT 'STAR WARS' MOVIE TRAILER IS HERE, WITH SPACE VIOLENCE GALORE

Screenshot by author, from YouTube

AT-ATs Storm The Beach

"Incinerating Padawan Ryan", maybe

Hours, hours ago, in a galaxy that is this one, a new Star Wars trailer emerged to the hungry, space-starved masses. Fans still drunk off the successful revival of the franchise in Star Wars: The Force Awakens will have to wait until the end of 2017 to see the next chronological installment in the venerable space opera, but there’s another Star Wars film coming to the theaters this winter.Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is set for release this December, and the first teaser trailer was just released online. It centers, as so much of Star Wars does, around a Death Star.

Technically a prequel, Rogue One is set shortly before the events of 1977’sStar Wars: A New Hope, which launched the series on its wildly successful course. Much of A New Hope focuses on escaping and then destroying the Death Star. Rogue One, instead, is about finding out exactly what secret weapon the Galactic Empire is building. Our protagonist is Jyn Erso, a rogue one played by Felicity Jones and recruited by the Rebel Alliance. Here she meets with the roguishly handsome Diego Luna, a rebel pilot rumored to be playing Biggs Darklighter, Luke Skywalker’s childhood friend from Tatooine. They’re briefed by a rebel commander in all white, who appears to be Rebel Alliance leader Mon Mothma, last seen on screen in Return of the Jedi.

Why all the rogues? Star Wars may be defined by the overarching conflict between the light and dark side of the Force, but that world is only real thanks to the lovable scummy misfits that flesh out the story, from Han Solo to Lando Calrissian to, uhh, Han Solo. (There was also a popular series of novels set in the Star Wars universe called Rogue Squadron, about the X-Wing unit of the same name).

It isn’t all giant doomsday weapons, hotshot pilots, and space planes. TheRogue One trailer features some exciting combat on the ground, with some smaller but still-deadly weapons. Fan favorite AT-AT walkers, first seen in The Empire Strikes Back slogging through the ice of Hoth, here terrorize a tropical beach like it’s Iwo Jima.

There’s also a mysterious admiral in white robes, whose name has not yet been released. And there are Imperial troopers in black armor, perhaps the elite Shadow Stormtroopers seen in novels and comics and videogames but not yet on film.

There are 252 days until Rogue One’s release date, plenty of time for Disney to answer more of our very, very important questions about fictional space war. Watch the trailer below:

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Rhapsody's Listener Network makes finding new music easier

All of the big music services have pretty much the same catalog, high profile holdouts like Taylor Swift aside. At this point, most of the innovation happening in streaming music is around trying to surface songs from those massive catalogs that users haven't heard before. Apple Music has its curated editors playlists, Spotify has Discover Weekly, Google Play Music has its Songza-powered radio stations, and now Rhapsody (aka Napster) is ready to unveil its own solution. It's called the Listener Network, and it leverages all the info the company has about what music its users play to find new songs and albums you might enjoy.

That data is used to find you new music to listen to in a variety of ways, one of the most important of which is called Music Match. This looks at everything you've added to your library as well as everything you've favorited and compares that listening history with other users. So now, when you click on a user, you'll see a "match" percentage telling you how much your musical tastes overlap. Someone with a 15 percent match you probably won't be interested in following, but someone with a 75 percent match seems a lot more likely to surface music you'll care about. (I confirmed that someone with a 95 percent match probably won't have a lot new for you to discover; Rhapsody will use its algorithms to surface people who have high match ratings that still have some room for finding new songs.)

Naturally, you won't have to go hunting for users to follow. For starters, Rhapsody will offer a playlist specifically containing music from people with high Music Match scores, and all of the songs on it will be things you haven't yet played. When you click on songs in the playlist, you'll be able to drill down to the user that Rhapsody's algorithms pulled the song from. From there, you can start following that new user if you want to see more of their musical tendencies in your feeds. You can also get a similar playlist but only based on music trending from people you already follow, if you want to play it safe. When you're visiting the profile of any user that you have a good music match with, you can also listen to a "matched playlist" of songs based on your similar tastes.

These trending playlists feel like an answer to Spotify's aforementioned Discover Weekly feature, which surfaces a playlist of new songs you might be interested in every Monday. But while it's not entirely clear how Spotify pulls together that list for you, Rhapsody wants you to be able to see every listener using the service and how their tastes influence what you're hearing. And to one-up Spotify, those playlists are updated every single day, so there's always a fresh stream of songs coming in both from users you directly follow as well as users who you might not know with tastes that intersect.

Rhapsody gave me a preview build of the app for iOS, but unfortunately I haven't used the service enough for it to surface any meaningful recommendations or playlists. But, it seems like a smart and unique feature that most other music services in the market don't have. Spotify makes it easy to see exactly what everyone you follow is listening to at a given moment, but trying to get a holistic overview of what's trending amongst those friends is more of a challenge -- and it's also not that easy to find users who have similar tastes.

The notion of surfacing what's trending amongst your entire listener network actually feels a lot like a feature the dearly departed Rdio used to offer -- it was dead simple to start a station based on what was trending in your network, and Rdio was also very good at suggesting albums based on the listening habits of your friends. As someone who misses Rdio quite a bit, I could definitely see this feature being useful. Of course, for starters, you'll need to both build up a listening history and find some friends; I have no listening history on Rhapsody right now, and none of my Facebook friends use the service. But for the 3.5 million current Rhapsody subscribers out there, this has the potential to be a solid set of new discovery features. I plan to spend some time with Rhapsody to build up a listening history over the next few weeks and see just how good it can get at helping me on the never-ending quest for new tunes.

Google's self-driving cars to face their toughest test yet

One of Google's self-driving cars in Mountain View, California.

Google is taking its self-driving cars to a fourth city in an expansion of its ongoing development. The latest location for testing is Phoenix, Arizona, which is significantly more arid than any city previously used as a proving ground.

Speaking to Reuters, Jennifer Haroon, Google's head of business operations for the self-driving car project, noted that the desert conditions will further the company's understanding of "how our sensors and cars handle extreme temperatures and dust in the air." Modified Lexus SUVs have already begun to map the Phoenix area, checking for street layouts, lane markers, traffic signals and curb heights.

The move to Phoenix is the second new area for Google this year. In February, it began testing in Kirkland, Washington, which is significantly wetter than previous locations. Those previous locations were in California and Texas, though, so that's not saying much -- Kirkland is still dryer than the US average for inches of rainfall per year.

It's suggested that, in addition to providing a new set of environmental challenges for self-driving cars, Arizona is potentially more open to the testing than California. Google's home state recently proposed new rulesthat would require a wheel, pedals and a driver to be in self-driving cars -- all things that are not present in Google's current prototype.

Google puts money into cementing green energy standards in Asia

Plenty of big tech companies are looking to source green energy whenever they can for their substantial energy needs, and Google is the same. But it looks like it's hard to find the renewable energy you're looking for in Asia -- specifically China, which is why the company says it's offering seed funding to the Center for Resource Solutions. The non-profit is going to bring its experience in setting up and running renewable energy certification programs to Asia, starting in Taiwan. That's good, because that's right where Google needs green power for its data center.

While its parent company tries all kinds of things to chase renewable energy, its Google itself that is coaxing certification and standardization along here. However, it's not stating outright how much cash it's putting down: "The system for getting proper credentials for renewable energy sources is virtually nonexistent on the continent."

ICYMI: Pollution concrete, EV wireless charging and more

Today on In Case You Missed It: Scientists at UCLA have made concrete by first extracting greenhouse gases from power plant smokestacks. An EV prototype to wirelessly charge cars is making the rounds, and the group's big plan is to design a 50 kilowatt charger that can juice up cars as they drive. You could put that future charger inside your garage where a new opener comes with extra modules that can detect obstacles and about 10 other things.

Finally, we were tickled by the idea of a robot that can best you at Settlers of Catan, so please check that out. As always, please share any great tech or science videos you find by using the #ICYMI hashtag on Twitter for@mskerryd.

Algae's enzyme might hold the secret to mass producing biofuel

croscopic pond and lake alga named Botryococcus brauniimakes big amounts of liquid hydrocarbons that can be used to makebiofuel. Problem is, we can't use the organism itself as a source, because it grows very slowly. A group of scientists from Texas A&M AgriLife Research, however, is looking into what genes are responsible for producing its enzyme that initiates the production of oil. See, the group wants to replicate its ability to make big amounts of oil in other plants more suitable for mass production. And they think the key is to express the enzyme's associated genes in those other organisms, such as faster-growing algae.

The team's lead scientist, Dr. Tim Devarenne, said:

"One of the issues with Botryococcus is that it grows very slowly. You just don't get a lot of biomass and on an economic scale that means it would not work to use this alga. It takes about a week for one Botryococcus cell to double into two cells, whereas a faster growing algae -- but one that doesn't make a lot of oil -- can double in about six hours. Maybe if we can transfer the genetic information to make these oils into quicker growing organisms like other algae that grow a lot quicker or a land plant that can produce large amounts of biomass, we can have them produce oil for us."

Of course, solar and wind energy are much cleaner sources of energy. But if scientists can find a way to activate the genes in other algae that can grow more quickly, then biofuel sources wouldn't have to take up land that could be used to plant food instead. Devaranne and his team still has to look more closely into the process, though -- they're still "a ways away from making a commercial product" at this point in time.