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Google Chromecast finally gets a menu and remote with Google TV launch
Google has launched a new version of its Chromecast, finally adding a menu and a remote.A new service called Google TV will allow the set-top box not just to work as an accessory for the phone but on its own, too.Google TV looks to unite a variety of different apps, allowing users to see films and TV shows from a host of apps – not just YouTube but Netflix and more traditional channels too – all in one bunch on their home screen.Google has launched a variety of Chromecasts, regularly updating them, but al of them have had the same basic idea. The puck connects to the television and also connects to a phone, allowing people to send video from their device to their television.That is still available on the new Chromecast. But the new tool can be used without a phone at all, with users also able to navigate using a remote.Read moreAs well as being the first debut of the Google TV menu, it is also the first time that the Chromecast has come with a remote.The new Chromecast costs $49 or £59 in the UK and is available to pre-order from the Google Store in the US and UK now. It will be released on 15 October.It will come to other countries later in the year, Google said during its live launch event.It will come in three colours, which Google refers to as Snow, Sky and Sunrise but which might also be called white, light blue and light pink.
Google launches Nest Audio, a new smart speaker focused on sound
Google has revealed its Nest Audio, a smart speaker for the home.The speaker replaces the Google Home, which first arrived in 2016. It has gone through a number of revisions since then, but the update brings a complete redesign and puts in a new shape.The new Nest Audio will sit alongside the much smaller Home Mini, the much larger Home Max, and the Nest Hub and Nest Hub Max, which both have screens.Google’s introduction of the Nest Audio focused on its music quality, and the company claimed that it has “top-of-the-range sound quality”.It also comes wrapped in a soft material, unlike the plastic of the Google Home it replaces. Google said it is made of 70 per cent recycled materials.Read moreThe Nest Audio costs £89 and will be available from 15 October. Unlike other products announced during Google’s “Launch Night In” event, it will not be available for pre-order.It comes in two colours: Chalk and Charcoal, or light and dark grey.Google unveiled the new phones at its “Launch Night In” event, where it also showed a reimagined new Chromecast and its first 5G phones.
Google launches Pixel 5 and Pixel 4a with 5G, its first phones with new network technology
Google has launched new phones, its first ever with 5G.The Pixel 4a with 5G and the more expensive Pixel 5 with 5G both add the faster internet speeds as well as a range of other new upgrades and features.The Pixel 5 starts at £599 and comes in black and “Sorta Sage”. The Pixel 4a with 5G starts at £499 and only comes in black.Both phones open for pre-orders today and will go on sale on 15 October. That is the same as the other devices – a new Nest Audio smart speaker and an updated and reimagined Chromecast – which were launched at the same event.In its introduction to the new phones, Google stressed that while the extra speed of 5G is helpful, the company focused on how that could provide extra features to users.Read moreThose included better performance in its Stadia streaming gaming service, the ability to share screens and watch videos together using its Google Duo video calling service, and a smart downloads tool that will queue up YouTube videos in the background so that they can be watched even when there is no service.But the company did add new upgrades for the Pixel 5, including water resistance, 8GB of RAM and a reverse wireless charging feature that means it can charge up other phones or accessories such as the Pixel Buds.It takes largely the same design as the existing Pixel 4 but puts it in a new aluminium body. It also gets rid of the “forehead” that housed the camera at the top of the display, and instead swaps it for a “holepunch” where only the camera’s lens intrudes into the screen.That display is a 6-inch OLED screen, which comes at full HD resolution.The Pixel 5 and 5G Pixel 4a have the same camera systems. Both get a new ultra-wide lens in the back, like the top-end iPhones, and add extra software features for photos such as the ability to combine its Night Sight mode for seeing in the dark with the portrait mode.During the announcement, Google also announced new software features called “Extreme Battery Saver” and “Hold For Me”. The former allows a user to choose which apps should stay open to keep the battery alive, and Google claimed it can add an extra 48 hours of charge; the latter uses artificial intelligence to stay on hold and alert its owner when someone comes to the phone.Both of those features will come to older Pixel phones soon, Google said.
Some users of NHS tracing app incorrectly given COVID-19 exposure alerts
Some users of the new NHS contact-tracing app have received notifications saying they’d been near someone with coronavirus, only to discover the alerts were system checks sent by Google and Apple.
People who downloaded the COVID-19 app in England and Wales told Sky News they had received a notification which said: “Someone you were near reported having COVID-19.”
Yet, when they clicked on the message, they found no information explaining whether they should self-isolate.
Image: The correct NHS app message sent if you need to self-isolate
The Department of Health and Social Care said the notification was a “default message” sent by Google and Apple – the makers of the app’s technology – and should be ignored.
But the false alarms – which appeared to be only in England and Wales, despite the widespread use of contact tracing technology in countries across the world – had already caused confusion, forcing at least one user into avoidable self-isolation.
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“I’m now self-isolating, just to be on the safe side… I don’t know whether it’s correct or not,” Maurice Leaver said. He received the message on Sunday, the day after downloading the app, and had been unable to clarify the situation with contact tracers.
Kathryn Sian, a biomedical scientist in an NHS lab, received the same notification, but went into work after reading about it online.
More from Covid-19
She said the “very stressful” message gave her “no confidence in this app at all”, adding: “I’ve turned off the contact tracing for now, only using it to check in at venues.”
Both Mr Leaver and Ms Sian described how the default messages “disappeared”. Although clicking on it took them to the homepage of the app, there was no sign it had ever been sent.
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson confirmed that default messages from Google and Apple would disappear or not be able to be clicked on. An official Test and Trace instruction to self-isolate would produce a message inside the app which said: “Please stay at home and self-isolate to keep yourself and others safe.”
Image: The track and trace message sent if you test negative
Apple or Google notifications, the spokesperson said, could be called “COVID-19 EXPOSURE LOGGING” or “COVID-19 Exposure Notifications”. According to the spokesperson, it is not currently possible to turn off the notifications.
Despite the Department of Health and Social Care’s insistence that the notifications were “default messages”, it emerged that several other countries using the same contact tracing technology were not experiencing this issue.
NearForm, the developer behind the contact tracing apps in Scotland, the Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland and Gibralter, told Sky News it did not recognise the problem, even though these apps are based on Google and Apple’s technology.
It is not known how many false alarms have been sent in England and Wales, but dozens of people reported receiving them on social media, sometimes multiple times a day.
One asked: “Have I been ‘traced’?” Another said: “I got a notification that [someone] near me had tested positive… No information of it whatsoever in the app. What’s the point?”
Andrew Gwynne, MP for Denton and Reddish in Greater Manchester, an area currently under local lockdown, tweeted that he had “three messages this evening. I’ve not even been out of the house today. Mrs G got several yesterday.”
App users who had received a disappearing notification criticised the lack of guidance available online and from the NHS 111 telephone hotline.
Jonny Easton told Sky News that when he called NHS 111 for more information after getting the alert, the call handler told him they’d never heard of the notification, but that they believed it should be ignored.
“One would have thought when the app was released one of the first things you would have done would be to conduct extensive training with the 111 members of staff, that told them, when you get this message you do this,” he said.
“It has damaged confidence because it seems it hasn’t really occurred in this situation.”
How testing is going in other European countries
This confusion is the latest in a series of issues raised since the app launched. On the weekend, it was revealed that tests conducted in hospitals or NHS labs could not be put into the app, leaving nearly a third of tests unlogged.
Users also questioned why it was not possible to register negative test results on the app, as these might release someone from self-isolation.
The Department of Health and Social Care said it had fixed this issue by allowing users to ask for a code from NHS Test and Trace, and screenshots seen by Sky News show that it is now possible to add negative test results on the app using the same system.
But one user who had registered a negative test questioned whether the message on the app made it clear that people who have been given a negative test might still have to self-isolate: for instance, if other people in their household or bubble continued to have symptoms. This only became clear, the user said, after clicking on a link in the app.
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Professor Lillian Edwards, who sat on the Ethics Board for the first app, which was discarded by the government in June, said the issues raised questions about the app’s strategy.
“There was a choice to be made about putting out something very simple and very clear that gets it right the first time and therefore builds a lot of trust and confidence, or what the English app has gone for, which is putting in a lot of different functionalities,” she told Sky News.
“I think that is causing confusion which may lead to loss of trust.”
The issues come as the Westminster government revealed that the app had received 14 million downloads, or nearly 25% of the population of England and Wales.
Analysis by University of Oxford Professor Johannes Abeler comparing early adoption of contact-tracing apps in four different countries showed that the English and Welsh app was on track for record growth, with a larger proportion of the population downloading over its first weeks than in Scotland, Germany and Singapore.
Professor Abeler said: “The strong and widespread uptake of the app in England and Wales is very good news. This success is possibly due to people being asked about the app whenever they enter a pub or a restaurant. Prompting people about the app is likely to drive adoption. The extensive marketing campaign was surely also helpful.”
Commenting on the confusion caused by the Google and Apple notifications, a Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “NHS Covid-19 app users only need to self-isolate if they get a notification directly from the app advising them to do so.”
Sky News has contacted Google, Apple and NHS England for comment.
Physicists prove time travel is ‘mathematically possible’
Scientists in Australia claim to have proved that time travel is theoretically possible after solving a logical paradox.Physicists from the University of Queensland used mathematical modelling to reconcile Einstein’s theory of general relativity with classical dynamics. The clash between these two systems is behind a famous flaw with time travel, known as the grandfather paradox.Einstein’s theory allows for the possibility of a person using a time loop to travel back in time in order to kill their grandfather. However, classical dynamics dictates that the sequence of events following the grandfather’s death would culminate in the time traveller not existing in the first place. “As physicists, we want to understand the universe’s most basic, underlying laws and for years I’ve puzzled on how the science of dynamics can square with Einstein’s predictions,” said Germain Tobar, who led the research. “Is time travel mathematically possible?”For their calculations, Mr Tobar and Dr Costa used the coronavirus pandemic as a model for working out whether the two theories could co-exist.Read moreThey imagined a time traveller attempting to go back and prevent patient zero from being infected with Covid-19.Einstein’s theory allows for the possibility of time travel but the science of dynamics would mean that the fundamental sequence of events could not be interfered with.This is because if the time traveller succeeded in preventing the virus from spreading, then it would eliminate their initial motivation for them to travel back in time.“In the coronavirus patient zero example, you might try and stop patient zero from becoming infected, but in doing so you would catch the virus and become patient zero, or someone else would,” Mr Tobar said.”No matter what you did, the salient events would just recalibrate around you. This would mean that – no matter your actions – the pandemic would occur, giving your younger self the motivation to go back and stop it. Try as you might to create a paradox, the events will always adjust themselves to avoid any inconsistency.“The range of mathematical processes we discovered show that time travel with free will is logically possible in our universe without any paradox.”University of Queensland physicist Dr Fabio Costa, who supervised the research, added: “The maths checks out – and the results are the stuff of science fiction.”A paper detailing the research was published in the journal Classical and Quantum Gravity.
Apple considers lasers for future iPhones to detect contaminated air
Apple is working on a new type of phone sensor that uses lasers to monitor dangerous particulates in the air, according to a patent filing.The ‘Particulate matter sensors for portable electronic devices’ patent describes how an array of lasers could detect the presence of poisonous gas, pollen and other potentially harmful elements in the air surrounding a device.The technology could potentially find its way into next-generation iPhones or a future Apple Watch, though the Cupertino company does not comment on unreleased products.The patent describes how a three-laser set up would be able to determine the speed and direction of air flow without the need for bulky fans that are typically used in these types of sensors.“These three beams can converge at a measurement location or, in some embodiments, can converge at different locations to perform independent measurements of particulate matter flowing with the gas,” the patent states.Watch moreWhile the primary use case for the sensor is with smartphones and smart watches, the patent also mentions that it could work with a variety of other computers and wearables.In other implementations, [the] electronic device may be a laptop computer, a tablet computer, a somewhat smaller portable device such as a wristwatch device, pendant device, or other wearable or miniature device, a media player, a gaming device, a navigation device, a fitness device, or other electronic equipment,” according to the patent, which was filed with the US Patent and Trademark Office in July but only published on Tuesday.A companion app would then be able to update the user with air quality reports and alert them if there is cause for concern.
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