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Video: Don Moen-He Never Sleeps Live Worship Sessions
Worship with Don Moen and his full band as he sings “He Never Sleeps” in this DonMoenTV Live Worship Session accompanied by special guest Lenny LeBlanc!
My top 10 most anticipated sci-fi/ fantasy movies of 2017
Here is a list of my most awaiting science-fiction or fantasy movies that are set to release in 2017. Most of these movies are sequels or spin-offs from their superhero movies. The order of the movies is based on their initial release dates. Click on the link below to watch the official trailers.
Next time you feel frustrated while trying to connect to a wifi network, take solace in the fact that you aren’t alone: millions of others have the same problem.
Connection setup failures and large connection setup time costs are common in today’s wifi use, they say, with as many as 45% of the users suffering some level of connection setup failures.
Some of the reasons for failed connections can charitably be put down to user error: an incorrect password was to blame for 8% of dropped connections, while another 8% failed when the user switched to another network – presumably a large number of them the result of them realising they were about to join the wrong network.
But many more of the failed connections come down to something going wrong with the network: 15% of connections timed out, and 9% of them suffer a DHCP failure, resulting in an IP address not being allocated to the device.
Using a data set collected from an iOS/Android wifi manager app, the researchers analysed the connections of 5 million mobile users from four cities, eventually gathering information about 7 million mobile access points and 400 million wifi sessions.
Breaking the connection down into four phases – scanning for the network, associating with it, authenticating with it, and obtaining an IP address – the researchers find that the first phase is responsible for the plurality of long delays. Scanning for a network involves listening for packets from wireless networks to find which are available, and then replying to them asking things like their data rates. If the answers are satisfactory, the access point gets added to the list of compatible wifi networks.
For connection delays longer than 15 seconds, 40% of them also feature a scan time of 11.6 seconds or longer. The potential reason, according to the paper, is that the response packets from the wireless network aren’t heard by the phone, which forces the entire process to restart from the top. In a particularly noisy environment, that can cycle multiple times, lengthening the connection time greatly.
The authors argue that the issue is potentially solvable: by intelligently sorting access points before the user picks which they connect to, devices could push users to ones which are likely to be faster. Doing so, in their tests, pushed the proportion of failed connections down to just under 4%.
The downside, of course, is that a chunk of wifi networks will be categorised as “slow” and rendered unavailable for connection. In the long run, whether such an approach would work depends on how you deal with wifi networks: if you connect to open networks regularly, looking for a better or cheaper connection than your mobile data, it would help you pick which to join. But if you’re a more security-conscious user, who only connects to a small number of known networks, your better bet is to try and fix those networks themselves. Get a new router, move closer to the aerials, or maybe just find a new coffee shop.
Samsung’s Galaxy S8 will come in two sizes, have an almost bezel-less, edge-to-edge “infinity” display and an iris scanner, the Guardian has learned.
The Galaxy S8 will be announced in late March and go on sale on or around 21 April, later than the originally planned launch at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February due to knock-on effects of the Note 7 fiasco.
The two variants will have screens in the 5in to 6in region, with the devices having the same or smaller proportions of previous versions of Samsung’s flagship smartphone but with larger displays, according to several well placed sources talking to the Guardian. The S7 was available with either a 5.1in and 5.5in screen.
The two smartphones are codenamed Dream and Dream 2, representing the smaller and larger Galaxy S8 respectively, according to two sources. Both versions will have screens that curve down at the left and right sides of the device similar to the Galaxy S7 Edge, two sources have said.
The so-called “infinity display” will cover the majority of the front of the device, with very little body on the top and bottom of the screen not dedicated to the display. Two sources said there wasn’t even room to put a logo or brand name on the front of the device. Samsung has moved the fingerprint scanner to the back of the device, multiple sources said. The Galaxy S8 will have a traditional 3.5mm headphone socket, according to several sources.
Several sources also confirmed that the iris scanning biometric technology launched in the ill-fated Samsung Galaxy Note 7 will be available on the Galaxy S8, allowing users to unlock and their smartphones and authenticate purchases with their eyes.
People walk past a signboard of Samsung Galaxy S7 at a Samsung showroom in Seoul on 6 January, 2017.Photograph: Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Images
The Galaxy S8 will have a similar “duo pixel” camera to last year’s Galaxy S7, situated on the back of the device according to two sources, with incremental improvements to image quality, low-light performance and speed. The camera will also feature built-in object recognition, similar to Google Goggles, according to several sources.
The Galaxy S8 will have a new processor, this time built on the company’s 10nm technology making it one of the first to do so, said two sources. Chipmaker Qualcomm recently announced the Snapdragon 835, which is being built using Samsung’s new 10nm processes.
According to two sources, the new device will also come with 64GB of storage built in, as well as expandable storage via microSD card, with support for cards up to 256GB in capacity. The phone will also have USB-C and a new version of Samsung’s Gear VR headset and Gear 360 camera.
The Galaxy S8 will also come with an artificial intelligence assistant, which can perform tasks such as object recognition, using the smartphone’s camera similar to Google Goggles. Two sources also said that Samsung was partnering with others to include data sources for the AI assistant. Other information leaks have suggested that it could be called Bixby, based on the technology gained by the South Korean company in its acquisition of startup Viv Labs in October, but none of the sources talking to the Guardian could confirm the name. Whether the Galaxy S8 will also come with Google’s Assistant as well or instead in some markets was unclear.
Samsung also plans a range of new accessories for the Galaxy S8. Two sources said a new dock and service that turns the Galaxy S8 into an Android desktop computer, connecting to a monitor, keyboard and other peripherals called DeX (desktop extension) will be available. DeX has been likened to Microsoft’s Continuum, which connects Windows smartphones to a desktop extension to allow them to be used as Windows PCs, but only with Windows Store applications.
The below picture of a front glass plate is a good representation of what the Galaxy S8 will look like, according to two sources.
Android has had the capability to act more like a traditional desktop computer, with some devices including Remix OS-based desktops taking advantage, but none of the big players including Motorola have had much success pushing the idea of using the smartphone as desktop replacement. Whether Samsung will be different with Dex remains to be seen, but the company has attempted to bring greater synergy between its Windows PCs and Android smartphones, using connectivity services that sync data and allow control of Samsung Android smartphones through Windows apps.
The sources spoke to the Guardian on condition of anonymity due to their relationships with Samsung. The Guardian believes their information to be correct at the time of publication and has double sourced all claims, but as is the nature of product development before the release of a smartphone or device, Samsung’s plans may change.
Following the high-profile failure of the Note 7 due to two separate battery faults that caused explosive failures of the phone’s integrity, Samsung needs a hit on its hands to continue the momentum it built with the design shift to metal bodies and curved screens started with 2015’s Galaxy S6 series.
Samsung is locked in a war over the so-called floating voter – the 20% of people likely to switch mobile operating systems – with Apple, but is also now fighting on a new front with Google and its own-brand Pixel smartphones.
Since the launch of the Pixel and Pixel XL there have been two high-profile, advertising-backed top-end Android smartphone manufacturers trying to convince existing users to upgrade. At the same time China’s Huawei has been gaining marketshare by offering both premium and well-made budget devices that are undercutting Samsung’s market, placing Huawei as third largest smartphone manufacturer as ranked by analysts firms IDC and Gartner.
A Samsung spokesman confirmed that the Galaxy S8 would not be unveiled at Mobile World Congress per its president of mobile communications DJ Koh’s comments on Monday. They added that Samsung does not comment on rumour and speculation.
Are you still clicking on apps on your phone? That’s so 2016. Notifications are the new apps, bots are the new notifications, and the way you use your smartphone is likely to change as much over the next five years as it has over that past five.
That’s the outcome of changes to iOS and Android which make it easier than ever to have complex interactions with your phone even when the screen is locked. Now app developers are catching on.
Nic Newman, of the University of Oxford, says that the changes have sparked a “battle for the lock screen”, with apps, particularly those from media companies, fighting to live in your notifications in the same way they once competed for limited space on the phone’s homescreen.
The key driver of the change was the launch of iOS 9, back in 2015. This gave iPhones the ability to, say, mark an email as read, or reply to a text, from the lock screen, without having to open the app itself – something Android users were already familiar with.
In Britain today, around a quarter of smartphone users get news alerts through their phones, according to Newman’s study. But in other nations, that figure is larger: 40% of Taiwanese users have news alerts on their phones, and 33% of US users do.
Just as the battle for the lock screen was started by the update to iOS 9 and the new tools it offered developers, so too will last September’s iOS 10 have ramifications for how you use your phone that we are only just starting to see today. Notifications in iOS 10 can contain rich media, such as audio and even video, sent straight to the lock screen. Information is no longer just available at the touch of a button, but can be absorbed at the glance of a smartphone screen.
But not everyone wants to play ball. Companies such as Facebook and China’s WeChat are fighting to create their own ecosystems, free from the control – and revenue cuts – of Apple and Google, the company that makes Android. They are moving ahead with their own version of the future, one which pumps all notifications through their messaging services in the form of simple (and increasingly not simple, but conversational) chatbots.
Chinese WeChat users can now do almost everything they would have once done online through the messaging app instead – turning their WeChat inbox into a new hybrid of the notifications screen, app home screen, and inbox. They can send money to friends, watch films and order pizzas, all without leaving the app. Facebook has seen what they are doing, and is trying to bring the same model to the west.
The battle for the lock screen has barely begun, but brace yourself for the battle of the bots.
President Donald Trump is opening what his team has dubbed “Day One” of his presidency by meeting with business leaders in the White House. Trump said Monday there will “be advantages” to companies that make their products in the United States and suggested he will impose a “substantial border tax” on foreign goods entering the country.
A plan to rely on biometric recognition to further automate airport border processing raises privacy and ethical concerns about data security, according to an expert.
But another information security analyst says the plan – which would involve 90% of passengers being processed through Australian airport immigration without human involvement – would not present any more privacy concerns than current border control regimes.
The Department of Immigration and Border Protection is tendering for a company to provide it with an “automated processing solution” to support its “seamless traveller” plan, which would allow for the automated processing of passengers using biometric identification.
Tender documents say 90% of passengers would go through through automated processing points, which would rely on biometric capturing “including but not limited to facial, iris and fingerprints”.
The department said it was expecting incoming air passengers to Australia to increase dramatically in coming years, and wanted to ensure they could move seamlessly through airports without compromising border security.
However, University of Wollongong tech and biometrics expert Prof Katina Michael said such technology had not been proven to have improved security or airport efficiency.
Michael said the plan posed a risk to individual privacy and raised ethical dilemmas that had not been properly explained to the public.
“We are steam-training right through all of these technological transitions and we’re not really thinking about the ramifications,” she said. “Even if the system works, is that ethical to impose this system on the entire populace, without even asking them? I see the perceived benefit, but what I do know is that there will be real costs, human costs, not only through the loss of staff through automation, but also through discrimination of people who may appear different.”
Michael said recent threats to the security of government-held data such as the census failure should raise real concerns about the storage of biometric data en masse.
“I am worried about theft, I don’t buy the story that your data is safe. I think we’ve become almost complacent ‘oh there’s been another data breach. Oh they hacked in and stole the data’,” she said. “Is the next phase of rollout going to be ‘oh my e-health records were taken’, ‘oh my biometrics at border control were taken’?”
But others have played down concerns about the government’s plan. Information security expert and reporter Patrick Gray said airport passengers were already the subject of heavy surveillance and biometric testing.
Gray said the government’s plan appeared to simply make the recognition process less clunky than the current SmartGate systems used in Australian airports.
“Airports are already among the most surveilled places on the planet. The time to be worrying about this is when someone seriously proposes running live facial recognition against CCTV in public places like city streets and train stations with insufficient oversight on use. Then we’ve got a problem,” he said.
“Better, highly-automated facial recognition is going to be a massive privacy issue one day, but the technology at least makes sense in airports.”
According to tender documents, the government wants to replace the incoming passenger card, eliminate the need for physical tickets at border control, and allow some passengers to travel using contactless technology, which would remove the need to present a passport.
Manual marshall points for triaging passengers would be removed, and replaced with more automated processes. The technology would be trialled at Canberra airport, and later deployed at nine Australian airports.
Samsung has blamed lithium-ion batteries for causing its Galaxy Note 7 mobile phones to overheat and catch fire, a fault that led to the global recall of millions of devices and damaged consumer confidence in the world’s biggest maker of smartphones.
At a press conference on Monday, Samsung officials said exhaustive tests on tens of thousands of devices and batteries had ruled out any problems with the device’s hardware or software.
But, it added, internal and independent investigations had “concluded that batteries were found to be the cause of the Note 7 incidents”.
In the case of the original battery, the casing was too small, causing it to short-circuit and ignite. It was replaced with a battery that had a manufacturing defect that led to the same result.
Koh Dong-jin, the head of Samsung’s mobile business, told reporters in Seoul: “We sincerely apologise for the discomfort and concern we have caused to our customers.”
The company said there would be no fire risk involving future devices, including its forthcoming S8 smartphone.
“We are taking responsibility for our failure to ultimately identify and verify the issues arising out of battery design and manufacturing,” it said in a statement. “We have taken several corrective actions to ensure this never happens again.”
The South Korean conglomerate promised to reform its production and quality controls to prevent a repeat of the incident: “We look forward to moving ahead with a renewed commitment to safety. The lessons of the past several months are now deeply reflected in our processes and in our culture.”
Samsung was forced to recall more than 2.5m Note 7s in September after reports that they were overheating and catching fire. The crisis deepened when it emerged that replacement phones equipped with batteries from a different supplier were experiencing similar problems.
The company permanently ended production of its flagship smartphone in October – a move that is expected to cost the company an estimated $5.3bn in lost profits.
Samsung said it had spent several months investing “all of our efforts and substantial resources” into determining the cause of the incidents.
“Our investigation examined every aspect of the Galaxy Note7 including hardware and software, and related processes, such as assembly, quality assurance testing, and logistics,” it added.
According to the firm, 700 engineers and researchers conducted tests on more than 20,000 fully-assembled Galaxy Note 7s and more than 300,000 batteries.
The problem with the lithium-ion battery used in the original batch of Note 7s was traced to its internal structure, which comprises layers of positive and negative electrodes.
In some cases, the battery was squashed in one corner, forcing the tips of the layer of negative electrodes to curve over, Samsung said.
In the replacement batteries, which came from a different supplier, the fires were caused by punctures in a super-thin component that separates the positive and negative electrodes, and faulty insulation.
Despite the Note 7 safety scare, Samsung is expecting its fourth-quarter operating profits to reach their highest level in almost three years thanks to healthy microchip sales.
Analysts said consumers would only be convinced by a conclusive explanation of the cause of the fires, as Samsung prepares to release the S8 this spring.
“Consumers will not be reluctant to buy the S8 … only if Samsung clearly finds out what caused the fires,” Hi Investment analyst Song Myung-sup told Reuters.
It’s the most famous military installation in the world, yet it doesn’t officially exist. The secrets of Area 51 are out as insiders prove the truth behind some of the wildest speculation.
President Donald Trump opened his first full day as president Saturday at a national prayer service, the final piece of transition business for the nation’s new chief executive before a promised full-on shift into governing. Trump and his wife, Melania, and Vice President Mike Pence and his wife, Karen, sat in a front pew at Washington National Cathedral for the morning service after a day of pomp, pageantry and protests that accompanied his Friday inauguration.
Watch below the full video
Video: President Donald Trump Attends Prayer Service at National Cathedral
Donald Trump was sworn in as the 45th President of the United States on Friday (Jan. 20). Following the daytime festivities in Washington, D.C., the families of the new president and vice president made their way to a trio of official inaugural balls around town.
Watch the full video below.
Video: Donald Trump Presidential Inauguration, Inaugural Balls
Shortly after he was sworn in as President of the United States, Donald Trump rounded up lawmakers and members of his family in a room near the Senate floor to watch him take his first presidential actions—signing some paperwork.
Watch the full video ot that moment.
President Donald J. Trump Signs First Official Documents
Remember the time (actually only last April) when Mark Zuckerberg launched Facebook Live and paid 140 or so media companies around the world some $50m to provide video coverage that made Live live. Ah! welcome to the surging, dominant video age. Except that now the major news analytics player, parse.ly, has just concluded that audiences spent 30% less time engaging with online video, on average, then they did with short, medium and lengthy text posts. And engagement, of course, is supposedly the crucial thing, the gold standard measure of involvement and commitment.
Facebook (the Poynter Institute reports) isn’t renewing those media contracts. Facebook is thinking more about “longer premium video content”. And so the wheel turns again: continuing proof that, digitally, last year’s amazing breakthrough can be this year’s febrile bust.
Amazon and Google always thrive in the fourth quarter as people get out their wallets for Christmas. Both companies – or in Google’s case, its parent group, Alphabet – are therefore expected to announce booming revenues in their fourth-quarter results over the next fortnight, with Alphabet going first on Thursday and Amazon the following week. But analysts are already looking beyond the simple question of how many cardboard boxes Amazon filled and how many searches Google answered. They’re wondering which company will win the battle to control your home.
That battle is being fought by two carafe-sized cylinders from the respective companies. One is Amazon’s Echo, with its voice-operated “personal assistant”, Alexa; the other is Google Home, which responds to the phrase “OK Google”. Both are internet-connected, home-based devices which can be command to do things: give the weather forecast; play music; read out news headlines; update shopping lists; and control “smart” devices in the home such as light bulbs or power points. In theory, if a device can be linked to it, the Echo can control or monitor it, and keep you informed. And simply by saying “Alexa, add sugar to the shopping list”, users can keep up to date on house supplies and even purchase them directly.
Amazon is in the lead, having launched the Echo in November 2014, two years before Google Home came out. Though Amazon has not – and does not – release sales figures for any individual item, investment bank Morgan Stanley estimates that 11m Echos had been sold by the end of November 2016; other estimates suggest a further 7m have been sold since. About 700,000 were estimated to have been sold in the UK and Germany, the only countries outside the US where it is available.
The Morgan Stanley estimate would put an Echo in more than 8% of US households. This is a significant figure, especially compared with the best estimates for Google Home, which put its sales at less than a million since its launch in October 2016.
Why should Google care about Amazon? Because voice is seen as the next big field for computer interaction, and the home is a far better environment for voice detection than the great outdoors. Research company Gartner reckons that by 2018, 30% of all interactions with devices will be voice-based, because people can speak up to four times faster than they can type, and the technology behind voice interaction is improving all the time.
The risk to Google is that at the moment, almost everyone starting a general search at home begins at Google’s home page on a PC or phone. That leads to a results page topped by text adverts – which help generate about 90% of Google’s revenue, and probably more of its profits. But if people begin searching or ordering goods via an Echo, bypassing Google, that ad revenue will fall.
And Google has cause to be uncomfortable. The shift from desktop to mobile saw the average number of searches per person fall as people moved to dedicated apps; Google responded by adding more ads to both desktop and search pages, juicing revenues. A shift that cut out the desktop in favour of voice-oriented search, or no search at all, would imperil its lucrative revenue stream.
Amazon is copying one feature of Google’s success in smartphones: it is offering methods to connect and control smart devices via the Echo for free, rather as Google’s Android software was offered as a free platform for smartphones. There are signs it is paying off: Wynn hotels in Las Vegas announced in December that it would be adding Echos to all 5,000 rooms, for functions such as playing music and controlling curtains and blinds. That gained some notice, as much as anything because the life cycle of such hotels implies they will be there for a decade or so.
Amazon’s Echo: providing a handy link to the firm’s shopping services.Photograph: Mikael Buck/Rex
Similarly, at January’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES), also in Las Vegas, commentators were struck by how many devices incorporated Alexa. And Amazon is even stealing into Google’s territory: some phones sold in the US from China’s Huawei, which uses Android, will incorporate Alexa rather than Google’s Assistant programme.
Google’s natural reaction is to have its own voice-driven home system, in Home. But that poses a difficulty, illustrated by the problems it claims to solve. At the device’s launch, one presenter from the company explained how it could speak the answer to questions such as “how do you get wine stains out of a rug?” Most people would pose that question on a PC or mobile, and the results page would offer a series of paid-for ads. On Home, you just get the answer – without ads.
What analysts wonder is: how can Home bridge that revenue gap? So far, Google hasn’t explained. Even if it can fend off the Echo, it may not be able to defend its core business.
By contrast, the Echo’s benefit to Amazon is much clearer: it can make online shopping (at Amazon) a breeze, play music from Amazon’s paid-for subscription service, and generally act as a passive block on your using rival shopping sites – rather as Google cemented its dominance by being the default search engine on multiple browsers in the mid-2000s.
Richard Windsor of Edison Investment Research suggests that time is running out for Google: “It has to act quickly, as Amazon is on the brink of becoming the industry standard for controlling smart home devices.
“At CES, everyone was integrating with Echo, with Google Home and Apple HomeKit barely present.”
Indeed, where are Apple and Microsoft, which also have their own voice-driven assistants in the form of Siri and Cortana? Although both can be used in the home – Siri on the iPhone or iPad, and to play content on the Apple TV set-top box, and Cortana on the Xbox games console – neither seems to be intent on the “home assistant” market.
Phil Schiller, Apple’s vice-president of marketing, seemed to suggest recently that Apple wouldn’t follow Amazon and Google into offering a voice-only device: “Having my iPhone with me as the thing I speak to is better than something stuck in my kitchen or on a wall somewhere.” He also emphasised the importance of a visual display: “We still like to take pictures and we need to look at them, and a disembodied voice is not going to show me what the picture is.”
Even so, there are persistent rumours that Apple has prototyped an Echo-like device in secret but is undecided on whether to release it. The company hasn’t commented. It could be ready to unveil something – or may never do so. Microsoft, meanwhile, is in more homes than the Echo via the Xbox, but isn’t trying to make itself a listening device linked to a shop.
So, will we all be burbling away to thin air in a few years, asking how long our commute will take while our smartphones sit unused in the kitchen? Perhaps – though Ken Sena, a senior analyst at investment bank Evercore ISI, suggests that home-based voice assistants will never be used as widely as smartphones. According to Sena, they are not such a must-have.
Yet, they were a hot Christmas present – and voice interaction is still in its early days, perhaps comparable to the smartphone market in 2005, when BlackBerry, Palm and Microsoft dominated. Or, it could be like the smartphone market now, effectively dominated by Google and Apple. But which?
Donald Trump was sworn in as the 45th president of the United States Friday pledging to empower America’s “forgotten men and women,”, taking command of a deeply divided nation and ushering in an unpredictable era in Washington. His victory gives Republicans control of the White House for the first time in eight years.
Watch the full video of the Presidential Inauguration January 20, 2017.
Video: Donald Trump Presidential Inauguration January 20, 2017
Price: from £23,140 Top speed: 127mph 0-62mph: 8.7 seconds MPG: 58.9 CO2: 125g/km
You wouldn’t win any prizes for guessing that of the 12 models VW offers in the UK, the two bestselling vehicles are the Golf and the Polo. But which is in third place? It’s the Tiguan, of course! Ahhhh, you ponder, theTiguan. But do you even know which the Tiguan is? There’s also the Touran and the Touareg and the Toucan… Well, not the last one, but you get the point. They’re all very sensible, very durable, very VW. You could count on them to drive you from South Africa to Finland, to serve you without complaint for decades… but you probably couldn’t pick any of them out in the car park.
To give its sturdy little offspring a colourful backstory, VW says Tiguan is a blending of the words tiger and iguana. Eh? What a freakish hybrid that would be: a sort of furry, stripy dragony thing with teeth. The original tagline for the car when it was launched in 2009 was: “The people want to play, but they want to play nice.” It sounds banal, unless you say it with a strong German accent and then it sounds quite naughty.
Inside story: the Tiguan’s smart interior, including its adaptable digital dashboard
This second generation Tiguan is refreshed, redesigned and revitalised. In essence it’s a Golf with a higher roof, bigger boot and a decent 4WD system down its trousers. If you think of a Golf as being a pot-bound shrub, the Tiguan is what happens when you replant it in the garden. It sprawls a bit and thickens up to become a tougher country cousin to its waspish cosmopolitan relation.
In DNA terms it hasn’t fallen very far from the all-conquering Golf. Engines range from a saintly 2-litre 115bhp to a more sinful 240bhp. There’s also a 218bhp plug-in hybrid version on the horizon. Inside, the near vertical sides mean when you flatten the back seats you get a huge storage area. It’s Bunter-esque in terms of what it can swallow. In theory this could be for camping gear or wake boards and rock climbing equipmant, but in reality it’ll be for Ikea flatpacks and vast family shops when you’ve blagged a Makro cash-and-carry card.
The long and winding road: VW’s new Tiguan can be driven as a 2WD or 4WD
The interior is noticeably posher than the Tiguan Mk1. Have you noticed how Volkswagen conjures up its own unique version of luxury? Its leathers are premium, the rubbers tactile, the plastics expensive… but somehow it never feels indulgent or excessive. You never feel spoilt. The same kit in a Mercedes or a Jaguar, even in a Peugeot or a Citroën, would make you feel pampered, but in a VW it just seems like good, sensible, solution-based practice. I can’t decide if that’s a good or bad thing.
A couple of things do, however, feel very swanky. The fully digital dashboard has been pinched from Audi’s TT and can now be configured exactly as your heart desires. There are also a host of clever driver and safety aids to make your time at the wheel less onerous and more secure: pedestrian warning front braking, driver alert and emergency stop, lane departure and side view, 360-degree parking cameras, self-parking with trailer assist… The list is endless. However the one that deserves a shout-out is the “active bonnet”. This is a first for VW. In the awful situation when contact is made with a pedestrian or cyclist, a sensor strip boosts the bonnet upwards by triggering a “pyrotechnic actuator”. This increases the distance between the relatively flexible bonnet and the deathly hard engine, so increasing their chance of survival. Like an iguana leaping to shield you from a tiger attack…
I had the Vauxhall Mokka during an ad campaign for the car, and driving past the billboards (all shiny, mustard-coloured bulk) in the actual car (a cheery, school-run blue, a rounded, friendly nose) was like seeing Myleene Klass in an M&S ad for your bra. “Mmmm…” I thought. “It’s not exactly like that in real life.” It is sturdy and handsome, without being glamorous, as befits its bid for the crossover crown, vying with the Nissan Juke and the Skoda Yeti. There’s a diesel option; I had the 1.4 petrol, all-wheel drive, which acquits itself pretty neatly. If you imagine these three cars as interns, the Mokka would uncomplainingly get you a coffee, just as you’d ordered it; the Juke wouldn’t be served in a coffee shop because of its piercings and intimidating makeup; and the Yeti would get a coffee and a sandwich you didn’t really want, leaving you feeling obscurely guilty and annoyed. So far, the Mokka has the job, right? (I don’t, incidentally, believe in unpaid internships. All of these cars deserve the minimum wage.)
Despite its versatility, I was happiest in town: the fuel economy isn’t the best, but the eco alerts on the dash, even though I never really understand them, make me feel as if I’m driving responsibly. It’s an automatic and shifted gears smoothly, without complaint. The steering was biddable. If it were still an intern, you’d be wondering whether it was a little too obedient, short on initiative, a rule-taker. To resolve this, you need to get to a motorway. I was impressed by a number of things: the acceleration is sharper and more aggressive than you expect; the drive is swift and grippy. The cabin looks functional at first, designed for the kind of people who spill (wait, that’s me – this car was designed for me!), but after driving for an hour or so, I’d happily do the same again. I’ve sat in far pricier seats bellyaching about the posture and fabricating reasons to stop. Functional, user-friendly satnav and USB connections are so much the norm now that it seems faint praise, like saying “she has A-levels” or “good personal hygiene”. But there’s lots of entry-level celebrity detail, electrically controlled wing mirrors, tinted windows.
It’s not cheap enough to count as a budget crossover option, nor fancy enough to be a dream come true. However, plenty of people – it might even be most of us – want a car that rises to a broad sweep of occasions, with enough boot space to use it as storage when the recycling guys are on holiday. This is that car.
Vauxhall Mokka: in numbers
Price £26,575 Top speed 120mph Acceleration 0-60mph in 9.4 seconds Combined fuel consumption 43.5mpg CO2 emissions 150g/km Eco rating 7/10 Cool rating 6/10
Skywriters wrote “Trump” over Sydney on Saturday, above a protest where 5,000 people marched in support of womens rights, following Donald Trump’s inauguration as US president.
Two messages simply saying “Trump” appeared about midday, and many images of the signs were posted on social media.
Rob Vance from Skywriting Australia said his company did the skywriting at a total cost of $4,000 to the customers, who wanted the messages to coincide with the Women’s March.
He said the customers were a group of Australian Trump supporters, but they wanted to remain anonymous.
Some Twitter users were angry at the signs, and complained about it.
The march in Sydney was one of the first of more than 600 protests planned around the world, on the first day after Trump was inaugurated as president of the US.
The event’s organisers said the protests were not just about Trump, but were to be viewed as anti-hatred, anti-bigotry and anti-misogyny, and intended to empower marginalised groups.
Tune in for an amazing, Inauguration concert with artists Toby Keith, 3 Doors Down, The Piano Guys, Lee Greenwood, RaviDrums, and The Frontment of Country. Enjoy!
Live: ‘Make America Great Again!’ Inauguration Concert
A US company has secured funding to become the first private entity to travel to the moon, with a planned 2017 voyage that will be an international milestone in space exploration.
Moon Express, a Florida-based firm, said it had raised $20m in financing, which will allow it to send a robotic spacecraft to the moon’s surface later this year.
The funding is a major step in the company’s efforts to become the world’s first private enterprise to travel outside the Earth’s orbit.
Last year, Moon Express gained historic approvals from the US government after submitting a request for its voyage to the Federal Aviation Administration. An outer space treaty, which was adopted by the United Nations and regulates exploration of the celestial world, requires governments to authorize and supervise “non-governmental entities” seeking to travel in outer space.
“We now have all the resources in place to shoot for the Moon,” Bob Richards, Moon Express’s CEO, said in a statement announcing the funding achievements. “Our goal is to expand Earth’s social and economic sphere to the Moon, our largely unexplored eighth continent, and enable a new era of low cost lunar exploration and development for students, scientists, space agencies and commercial interests.”
Moon Express has said it aims to mine the moon for minerals, and the tech entrepreneur Naveen Jain, its co-founder and chairman, has said he hopes to lower the costs of space travel and help pave the way for the colonization of the moon, and eventually of Mars.
“The sky is not the limit for Moon Express – it is the launchpad,” Jain said in an earlier statement after his firm gained federal approvals. “This breakthrough ruling is another giant leap for humanity. Space travel is our only path forward to ensure our survival and create a limitless future for our children.”
The more immediate goal of the company, which formed in 2010, is to bring resources, metals and moon rocks back to Earth, Jain said. He also stated that in 15 years, he believes the moon will be an important part of the Earth’s economy and “potentially our second home”.
The company has said it believes the moon can “produce resources essential to humanity’s future on Earth and in space”.
Moon Express is one of 16 teams that have competed for funding as part of Google’s Lunar X Prize initiative, which launched in 2007 to incentivize private firms to develop technology and plans for planetary exploration.
Moon Express, which said it has raised a total of more than $45m from individuals and venture funds, is one of numerous companies that has specific plans in the works for exploration.
Last year, the US government advanced the process to establish rules for space launches in compliance with international treaties after Luxembourg and the United Arab Emirates pushed forward with similar efforts.
Amazon is working on self-driving cars, according to a new patent that deals with the complex task of navigating reversible lanes.
The patent, filed in November 2015 and granted on Tuesday, covers the problem of how to deal with reversible lanes, which change direction depending on the bulk of the traffic flow. This type of lane is typically used to manage commuter traffic into and out of cities, particularly in the US.
Autonomous vehicles, the patent warns, “may not have information about reversible lanes when approaching a portion of a roadway that has reversible lane”, leading to a worst-case scenario of them driving headfirst into oncoming traffic.
More generally, the inability to plan for reversible lanes means cars and trucks can’t optimise their routes by getting into the correct lane well in advance, something that could otherwise prove to be one of the benefits of self-driving cars.
Amazon’s solution to the problem could have much larger ramifications than simply dealing with highway traffic in large cities. The patent proposes a centralised roadway management system that can communicate with multiple self-driving cars to exchange information and coordinate vehicle movement at a large scale.
Autonomous cars and trucks could prove to be a key part of Amazon’s in-house logistics division in the future. The patent doesn’t give much away about Amazon’s strategic goals in the self-driving sector, however, but the company has long been rumoured to be working on technology that can augment, or replace, its human drivers. Oddly, the division of Amazon leading its research into the area is its autonomous drone project, Prime Air: according to Recode, one of its co-inventors, Jim Curlander, is the technical adviser at Amazon’s Prime Air.
Amazon has slowly been taking more direct control of its delivery network over recent years, starting with the creation of Amazon Logistics in 2012 to handle local deliveries in the UK. That has expanded to a worldwide service, and has come to include a fleet of 40 planes, and goals for a cargo shipping network of similar size.
Self-driving trucks and vans would be a natural progression for the company, which is already working on automating its distribution centres thanks to its purchase of robotics firm Kiva Systems in 2012.
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