Gadgets & Tech – Spoken Edition

While the Galaxy S20 Ultra that’s on sale in the U.S. uses a Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 chip, overseas in regions where the Galaxy S20 Ultra features an Exynos chip, users are complaining that they’ve encountered a number of big problems with Samsung’s $1,400 super-premium flagship phone.

As the world struggles to deal with mandatory quarantines and isolation, the maker community is thriving and doing what it does best: churning out incredible, innovative, clever, and, sometimes, utterly terrifying creations.

Despite everything that’s going on, the consumer tech industry continues to chug along, with plenty of new products to look forward to as we slowly return to a somewhat-normal life in the months ahead. But those are products designed to appeal to the masses; what’s great about the inventions coming out of the maker community is that they’ve been designed and engineered to meet the very specific needs of the person who created them. More often than not, they’re also a fascinating peek into their creator’s brain, although it’s hard to imagine what’s going on inside the head of the person behind this skin-wrapped oversized dice with an animatronic blinking eye where the single pip should be.

The die was created by Japanese artist and DJ Shishido Mazafaka, aka Doooo, whose unsettling creations you’ve probably seen shared online many times before. Do you remember this eerily lifelike coin purse made from silicone featuring a mouth full of teeth that opens to gain access to the money stored inside? That was another one of Mazafaka’s nightmarish creations.

What drives Mazafaka to work in the medium of faux human skin is unknown, but that’s another reason why making for the sake of making can be such a joyful experience. You don’t really need a reason to create something new, just the urge to be creative, or to learn a new skill, or to answer the age-old question of what a cyclops baby born in the shape of a die would look like. Unfortunately, we now know.

I fondly remember the days when Apple events were packed with surprises (and “one more thing”), but those are long, long gone. The leaks are now rolling out earlier—and with more detail—then ever before, with a slate of new products reportedly on deck for this fall. The newest leaks come courtesy of a duo with a relatively short, but accurate, track record.

The healthcare system in the U.S. has buckled under the current coronavirus pandemic, with overloaded hospitals struggling to keep up. But should a second wave of the outbreak occur simultaneously during the next flu season, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield says, things could get even worse.

Speaking with the Washington Post on Tuesday, Redfield said that should the outbreak of these two illnesses happen at once, there is “a possibility that the assault of the virus on our nation next winter will actually be even more difficult than the one we just went through.” Redfield told the paper that officials at both the state and federal levels should be preparing for the coming months and continue encouraging social distancing protocols even as regions begin reopening.

In addition, Redfield told the Post that people in the U.S. will need to be diligent about getting their flu shots. In a comment that underscores the stress an epidemic can cause to our healthcare system and its workers, Redfield told the paper that opting for the shot “may allow there to be a hospital bed available for your mother or grandmother that may get coronavirus.”

The flu is most common during the fall and winter, and typically begins to ramp up in October, according to the CDC. During the October 2019 to April 2020 flu season, the CDC estimates that there were between 39 million and 56 million flu illnesses, and between 410,000 and 740,000 hospitalizations. There were between 24,000 and 62,000 flu-related deaths this last flu season. While the health agency does not know the exact number of cases of covid-19 in the U.S., it estimates there are more than 802,000 cases and over 44,000 deaths.

According to data from the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, there have been more than 182,000 deaths globally from covid-19. But the total number of deaths by country, county, and city can vary significantly by day as officials work to tally known covid-19-related fatalities, a task made more difficult by limited testing. According to an investigation from the New York Times, there have been “at least” 28,000 more deaths during last month the pandemic than official death reports account for.

All of this is reason enough to stress that in addition to continuing to practice social distancing and precautionary measures like diligent hand-washing, you should get the damn flu shot. Unfortunately, reopening the economy does not mean we’re in the clear just yet, and now’s the time to be preparing for a situation that could get much, much worse before it gets better.

Apple’s no stranger to the audio space, but it would appear the company is now gearing up to go toe-to-toe with the likes of Bose and Sony. The next headphones from the company, according to a Bloomberg report, might be some fancy over-ear wireless headphones featuring swappable parts. Citing unnamed sources, Bloomberg’s report notes that the modular headphones have been in the works since at least 2018 but have faced multiple delays.

Doctors say a woman’s silicone breast implants deflected what could have been a fatal bullet, stopping it from reaching her heart. Amazingly, this is not the first time such a thing has been reported in the medical literature. The miraculous bullet deflection was detailed earlier this month in a report published in the journal Plastic Surgery Case Studies, written by doctors in Canada.

Apple’s efforts to reposition the iPad as a laptop alternative continue with its new Magic Keyboard accessory that includes a touchpad. Yet it’s only designed to work with the pricey iPad Pro models. However, iPadOS cursor support extends to cheaper tablets so Logitech has stepped up with its own trackpad-equipped keyboard case that also happens to be much cheaper.

Apple’s Magic Keyboard is only available for the 11 and 12.9-inch iPad Pros, and is priced at either $300, or $350 for the larger model. That’s an expensive accessory for an already expensive device. Logitech’s new Combo Touch Keyboard Case with Trackpad is designed for those who still see the iPad as a secondary device to their laptops, with the tablet only occasionally stepping in to handle light computer work like emails or casual web browsing. The Combo Touch is available in two versions for either the 3rd Generation iPad Air, or the 7th Generation non-pro iPad, and both can be found on Apple’s website now for $150.

The Logitech Combo Touch Keyboard Case with Trackpad includes full-sized backlit keys (it draws power from the iPad itself) and supports all of iPadOS’s multi-finger gestures without having to touch the screen. A built-in kickstand can prop the iPad up at multiple angles for various tasks (typing vs. sketching) while a row of shortcut keys gives quick access to the iPad’s home screen, Siri, and even media playback. There’s even a loop for holding the 1st Generation Apple Pencil or the Logitech Crayon, and the keyboard section can be temporarily removed, leaving the iPad still safeguarded from accidents in a protective case.

Weeks before the first documented U.S. death from covid-19, at least two people in California likely died from the virus. On Tuesday, health officials in Santa Clara, California announced that the deaths of two residents in early and mid-February are now believed to be related to the novel coronavirus.

According to the Santa Clara Medical Examiner-Coroner’s office, the two deaths occurred on February 6 and 17. A third death in the county on March 6 was also reclassified as related to covid-19.

At the time of these deaths, officials said, testing for the coronavirus was limited and only available through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which had placed strict criteria on who could be tested. These criteria included a recent history of travel to countries where the virus was known to be spreading widely. But tissue samples from these deaths were nonetheless sent to the CDC, and on Tuesday, the medical examiner’s office received confirmation that they had tested positive for the virus.

The newly confirmed deaths predate the first known covid-19-related death in the U.S., which was reported in Washington State on February 29. They’re also earlier than the first known death in Santa Clara, which occurred on March 9. These reclassified deaths aren’t exactly a surprise, though.

Other research has suggested that the virus was circulating in parts of the U.S. far earlier than testing at the time confirmed. Genetic analysis of viral strains taken from cases in Washington State, for instance, indicated that the virus had been spreading locally as far back as mid-January. That time period would line up well with the timeline of these deaths in nearby California, given that deaths from the virus often lag behind the onset of symptoms by several weeks.

Though testing has become more readily available, experts generally still agree that many deaths related to the virus are going uncounted. A recent analysis from the New York Times, for instance, estimated that at least 25,000 deaths due to covid-19 had been unreported in 10 countries and New York City between early March to mid-April. According to the World Health Organization, there have been 162,000 deaths reported officially as of April 21.

New York has started to include data on probable covid-19 deaths not confirmed by lab testing, while the CDC has also said that it will collect and present data on confirmed and probable deaths from states. But it’s not clear whether all states have followed suit. Santa Clara officials expect that more deaths will be retroactively linked to covid-19.

“As the Medical Examiner-Coroner continues to carefully investigate deaths throughout the county, we anticipate additional deaths from COVID-19 will be identified,” the office said in a statement.

Scientists think that they’ve spotted a black hole’s gravity bending light emitted from the disk of matter around it right back toward the black hole, according to a new paper.

Black holes are extremely compact objects whose immense gravity warps space such that, beyond a point of no return called the event horizon, light can’t escape. We know that black holes can change the path that light travels, but this observation is the first known detection of its kind. Led by Riley Connors at CalTech, a team of scientists spotted light emitted from the disk of torn-up gas and dust surrounding a black hole bending back into it.

“We haven’t seen that before,” study author Victoria Grinberg from the University of Tübingen in Germany told Gizmodo. “We know it should happen. But prediction is one thing and actually seeing it is a different animal altogether.”

The researchers focused on a binary black hole system called XTE J1550-564, which has a mass around nine times that of the Sun and is approximately 14,350 light-years away. An X-ray telescope called the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) first spotted the object in 1998, and the black hole has experienced several bright outbursts since then.

But this paper isn’t reliant on new observations. Instead, the scientists attempted to recreate the observations already recorded using various models. They focused on the x-ray spectra, particularly on x-ray light absorbed by iron atoms in the black hole’s disk. They found subtle features in the light’s properties that could only be explained if photons emitted by the matter in the disk were bending back from the effects of the black hole’s gravity, then being re-absorbed and re-irradiated by the disk. The team published their work recently in The Astrophysical Journal.

It’s a challenging scenario to model, Grinberg explained to Gizmodo. Not only does the team need to understand the complex physics around the disk, combining atomic physics and general relativity, but they also need to fully understand all of the quirks of the RXTE telescope.

This is an early step, and as the adage goes, all models are wrong, but some are useful. Every scientist-built model relies on inherent assumptions that may lead to different results than what’s actually happening. The team behind this new model is aware of that, and they are working to further develop their model in order to include more details. Perhaps even more importantly, they must identify more objects like XTE J1550-564 and re-run their analysis.

But if the work holds, it would be an amazing discovery: concrete proof that what we’ve always thought happens around black holes is truly occurring.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued a warning to InfoWars founder and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones over several products being sold on his website that are presented falsely as being curative in connection with the coronavirus, including toothpaste and something Jones calls “immune gargle.