Gadgets & Tech – Spoken Edition

Several cellphone towers across the UK went up in flames this week after a bogus conspiracy theory linking the pandemic to the rollout of 5G began to pick up traction online. This string of arsons, as well as widespread reports of related physical and verbal threats directed at broadband engineers, has authorities calling for talks with some of the biggest names in social media to stop this fearmongering in its tracks.

According to a weekend Guardian report, UK Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden will hold talks with Facebook, WhatsApp, YouTube, Twitter, and other social media platforms “to hammer this message home” that these rumors are just that—baseless rumors.

There’s no scientific evidence to support that radiation from 5G cellphone towers somehow can lead to negative health effects, as one theory claims. Upon further investigation, UK regulators also found that the electromagnetic radiation levels given off by these 5G towers fell well below international guidelines.

National Health Service Medical Director Stephen Powis called this hoax “the worst kind of fake news,” per the report. “It is absolute, utter rubbish and I can’t condemn it in terms stronger than that.”

“The reality is that the mobile phone networks are absolutely critical to all of us, particularly in a time when we are asking people to stay at home and not see relatives and friends,” Powis continued. “But, in particular, those are also the phone networks used by our emergency services and our health workers and I am absolutely outraged, absolutely disgusted, that people would be taking action against the very infrastructure that we need to respond to this health emergency.”

YouTube vowed Sunday to curb the spread of these conspiracy theories on its platform, the Guardian reported. Its policies already ban videos that promote “medically unsubstantiated” treatments or prevention methods for covid-19, the respiratory illness caused by the novel coronavirus. Moving forward, any video linking 5G to the outbreak will also be classified as “borderline content”—which can suppress its appearance in search results and cut possible advertising revenue.

Several social media platforms have been scrambling to keep potentially dangerous misinformation about the novel coronavirus outbreak from circulating, but this particular hoax has been championed online by several celebrities, thus adding exponentially more fuel to the fire and generating increasing concern among government officials.

In what promises to be an excellent way to kill a solid 10 minutes, the Google Arts & Culture app has been updated with a new Art Transfer feature that will apply the look of countless famous paintings and artists to your own photos using machine learning techniques.

The last time you opened the Google Arts & Culture app (available for iOS and Android), which allows users to explore iconic pieces and notable artists through various interactive experiences, was probably a couple of years ago when Google added the Art Selfie feature that used AI-powered image matching to automatically find portraits that best matched a user’s selfie.

The latest update also works with users’ selfies, or any photo on their smartphone, but instead of scouring a database for a match, it recreates the image as if famous painters like Edvard Munch, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Andy Warhol, Vincent van Gogh, Keith Haring, Frida Kahlo, and Leonardo Da Vinci had created some of their most famous artworks using the photo as inspiration.

It’s not just a color filter with some overlaid simulated brush strokes either; Art Transfer uses an algorithmic model born from Google’s Artificial Intelligence team. Based on the artist you choose, your image could be radically altered with bolder colors, added textures, or even completely chopped up and re-assembled, making it barely recognizable any more.

All of the image processing happens locally in the Arts & Culture app itself, so you don’t need an internet connection to turn a selfie into a gallery-worthy masterpiece, and you can choose to process the entire image or a specific part using a painting tool that lets you quickly highlight just part of a photo. The results can also be easily shared as stills or GIFs to your social media app of choice, so expect to see Instagram and Twitter flooded with your friends doing their best Mona Lisa impersonations.

Apple has seemingly foiled its characteristically tight-lipped approach to new product launches by evidently mistakenly confirming one in an unrelated YouTube tutorial on its support channel. The apparent mistake was first spotted by the blog Appleosophy, which noticed the feature tucked into a Settings screen midway through a tutorial about erasing iPhone data.

Well, that was fast. Google has made Stadia free for the next two months. No charges—just a handful of games, including Destiny 2, absolutely free to anyone with a Gmail account and a supported web browser or phone.

Technically, Stadia has been kind of free up until this point. Anyone can download the Stadia app or log on at Stadia.com, buy a game for $10 to $60 and start playing that game at 1080p resolution. But the good version of Stadia, Stadia Pro, is $10 a month. Stadia Pro gets you lots of games (no purchase necessary), 5.1 surround sound, and up to 4K resolution.

Stadia Pro is the version you want if you’re shy about investing in a gaming ecosystem that could evaporate like so many Google projects before it. It’s also the version you want if you really value higher-quality streams.

In a press release, Google cited the current need for everyone to stay indoors for public health as the reason behind its decision to make Stadia free for the next two months. It also noted that anyone currently paying for Stadia Pro will get the next two months free.

Stadia has had a sluggish start, with poor performance early on, and reports of latency issues. At launch, the Stadia controller was required to play, and the service only worked via the browser, on select Pixel phones, and with the Chromecast Ultra.

Google has since expanded support to a larger selection of phones and made it possible to play with any controller connected to a phone or computer via Bluetooth. With a handful of games, including Destiny 2, Grid, and Thumper, now free to play, now is the time to check out the video game streaming service that Microsoft is actually worried about competing against.

But one important note: You’ll still need good internet to fully take advantage of Stadia. Google says that Stadia will launch at 1080p quality and you’ll have to manually adjust the settings to get 4K. A number of counties have started throttling streaming services as everyone hunkers down at home and saturates the internet pipes. Heck, Google even lowered quality on the much more popular YouTube to better handle the increased load of worldwide internet traffic.

So if you have a Gmail account and a controller, feel free to enjoy some free games. But don’t be surprised if they stutter when everyone else in your neighborhood hops onto a Zoom happy hour.

Compared to the audio quality of digital files and CDs, analog cassette tape was kind of awful. And as YouTube’s Kris Slyka discovered, it’s an even worse medium for recording and playing back video, but quality issues don’t make Slyka’s clever hack of an old cassette recorder any less impressive.

Devices with Wi-Fi 6 started rolling out at the end of 2019, but now, a new vote proposed by the FCC could open up the 6Ghz band to unlicensed wifi and add a massive speed boost to wireless gadgets.

Backed by Chairman Pai, the FCC vote is scheduled to take place on April 23rd, and if passed would add 1200MHz of available bandwidth to the usable wifi spectrum which the FCC says would “effectively increase the amount of spectrum available for Wi-Fi almost by a factor of five.”

Not only would this improve things like latency and download and uploads speeds, because the 6Ghz band was previously mostly used to support things like wireless backhaul, microwave services, and a limited number of public safety services, new 6GHz wifi devices wouldn’t really have to compete with other gadgets for spectrum, unlike the existing 2.4Ghz wifi band which often suffers from interference caused by household appliances.

In addition to backing from the FCC, the move to allow the use of the 6GHz band for wifi is also seeing widespread industry support from a number of groups including the Wi-Fi Alliance, which earlier this year announced the creation of the Wi-Fi 6E which incorporates the 6Ghz band into current wireless standards.

On top of that, a number of tech companies and device makers have also weighed in with their approval including Qualcomm, Intel, Facebook, Cisco and many more. Apple even released a statement saying “We applaud the FCC’s decision to open up the 6 GHz band for Wi-Fi and other uses,” and that “It sets the course for the next generation of Wi-Fi networks and will help us to create innovative, new product experiences for our customers.”

That said, while the vote to approve the new measure is set to take place at the end of April, we probably won’t see devices with support for Wi-Fi 6E until the end of 2020. Also, in order to truly take advantage of the new spectrum and fast wifi speeds, normal folk will need to upgrade their devices and wi-fi routers, while also making sure their internet provider can provide the level of service that can live up to those new wifi speeds.

Martin Shkreli, the pharmaceutical executive and possible goblin-kobold hybrid best known for acquiring the rights to and jacking up the price of HIV drug Daraprim before scoring seven years in a cell for securities fraud, is trying to get out of prison by claiming he might be of use in the fight against the novel coronavirus.

Even after singing all six minutes of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody, I’m still anxious that I haven’t washed my hands long enough to ensure they’re properly clean. So I like the idea behind this clever hand stamp for kids that forces them to thoroughly scrub for at least 30 seconds before it completely disappears.

Made from nothing but the same food coloring used in kitchens around the world, the Otetepon Push Stamp, from a Japanese company called Shachihata, leaves behind a cartoonish image of an angry germ that can only be scrubbed away with at least half a minute of solid sudsy scrubbing. It’s primarily designed as a hygiene training tool for little ones, but it seems like it would provide some much needed peace of mind to adults worried about properly hand sanitizing too.

It’s important to keep in mind that the Otetepon Push Stamp should be used as part of a more involved and thorough hand-washing routine. If you stamp the back of a kid’s hand, there’s a good chance that’s where they’re going to focus the bulk of their scrubbing efforts, which is less effective. You could always put the stamps all over their hands (each bottle is good for about 1,000 applications) forcing them to do a thorough job all over, but it’s a more effective tool when used alongside videos or graphics that outline proper scrubbing techniques.

You can grab the Otetepon push stamp, available in blue or pink with matching ink, from the Japan Trend Shop for $26, but that includes a hefty markup for importing it from Japan. If you’ve got a friend overseas, asking them to buy and ship a couple your away might be a cheaper solution.

On Monday, a Dutch museum announced that a painting by Vincent Van Gogh was missing after thieves broke into the building in an early-morning raid. Lentetuin, painted by Van Gogh in the spring of 1884, was on loan to the Singer Laren museum, which closed its doors earlier this month due to the risks of covid-19. “I’m shocked and incredibly pissed off,” said museum director Jan Rudolph de Lorm in a livestreamed press statement.

Beating Lego to the punch, a clever inventor wants to turn breakfast into not only the most important meal of the day, but the most entertaining one as well with a waffle maker that makes fluffy, edible interlocking blocks for building syrup-soaked structures.