Technology - Google News

The Morning After: Galaxy S10 leaks and Amazon's robot safety vest - Engadget
Watch builders construct a life-size Chevy truck with 300,000 LEGO bricks - TechCrunch
Sonos Beam is $50 off in time for the Super Bowl - The Verge

The Morning After: Galaxy S10 leaks and Amazon's robot safety vest - Engadget

Posted: 19 Jan 2019 06:45 AM PST

Hey, good morning! You look fabulous.

Welcome to your weekend! This week included Nike's real self-tightening basketball shoes, a Model 3 road trip assisted by AutoPilot and Google's big smartwatch purchase. Also, we might have gotten an early look at Samsung's Galaxy S10.

Here we go again.Galaxy S10 leak suggests a lineup with three variants

Prolific phone leaker Evan Blass tweeted a family Galaxy S10 photograph that's supposedly showing off three versions wrapped in cases. Left to right, you're apparently looking at the S10E, S10 and S10+. The Plus seems to have a double-hole punch up front, while the rear cameras have a different multiple-lens alignment and count than the quad-camera Galaxy A9 that Samsung released last year. All should be revealed February 20th, one way or another.

Must protect squishy organics.Amazon made a vest to keep robots from pummeling humans

TechCrunch reports that this Robotic Tech Vest signals to robots that a human is entering a space to avoid any sort of collision. Amazon is rolling out the device to improve safety as it increases the use of automated systems in its warehouses.

Wear OS could certainly use the help.What does Google get out of buying Fossil's smartwatch tech?

Google has long believed in creating "a diverse set of devices" for its smartwatch platform. Fossil's ability to churn out model after model of what was essentially the same device except with different designer clothes makes it a great match for that vision.

The perfect fit.A closer look at Nike's Adapt BB auto-lacing basketball shoes

So why would anyone need shoes that tighten themselves? Edgar Alvarez put on the $350 Adapt BB to find out, testing not only the automatic tightening but also the shoe's manual controls and ability to set a fit via smartphone app.

Right now they're set up for basketball players who might need to change tightness as their feet swell during a game, but the FitAdapt tech could also make life easier for people who are unable to tie their own shoes. For now, though, they measure up by being much more comfortable than last year's HyperAdapt 1.0.

But wait, there's more...

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Watch builders construct a life-size Chevy truck with 300,000 LEGO bricks - TechCrunch

Posted: 19 Jan 2019 05:31 AM PST

Behold, the LEGO Chevrolet Silverado. The full-size truck is basically a giant ad for Chevy and the new LEGO Movie, which is due out in February. Apparently they have to fight Duplo blocks from outer space. No, seriously, that’s the plot.

Anyway, the 2019 Silverado is six-feet tall, weighs 3,307 pounds and took 18 builders 2,000 hours to assemble the 334,544 pieces at a LEGO Master Builders shop in Connecticut. Chevy says it’s the first of its vehicles to be built full-scale in this manner.

The video is just over half-a-minute, but offers some interesting insight into how a team of people who get paid to build stuff with LEGO utilize computer models to complete the task.

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Sonos Beam is $50 off in time for the Super Bowl - The Verge

Posted: 19 Jan 2019 04:34 AM PST

If you want to improve on your television's built-in speakers, which are likely to be terrible, there are a lot of ways to do it. The Sonos Beam soundbar is one of them, and starting today (until February 3rd), Amazon is reducing its cost to $349 for a savings of $50.

The Beam is Sonos' most affordable soundbar by a long shot, and it's made just a bit cheaper by this deal. Its good looks and a few unique features make it worth considering over cheaper soundbars. First, it's a smart speaker and soundbar rolled up into one that supports Alexa voice commands, and Google Assistant is slowly but surely on its way. Once it's plugged into your television's HDMI ARC port (most, but not all, recent TVs have one), Alexa can power your TV on and off, and you can easily control the volume of your TV right through this Sonos soundbar.

The Sonos Beam also supports AirPlay 2, Apple's Google Cast equivalent that allows PC and macOS computers and devices with iOS 11 (and newer) to stream music from most music streaming apps without turning the TV on. Though, as Nilay Patel stated in the review, this soundbar is better at piping out TV audio than it is at music playback. Here's a bit more from Nilay:

Once you've got everything set up, the Beam sounds very good for its size. In two smaller living room spaces, the Beam more than filled the room, with excellent stereo separation and a surprising presence. Sonos doesn't claim the Beam is designed for anything larger than a medium-sized room, but it also did a fine job with general TV audio and music in a large open-plan living room.

Given that this is a Sonos product, you can add other Sonos speakers to your setup for a more complete sound or for multiroom audio.

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