Light Start – LG Stylus 2 Plus, Xiaomi Mi Band 2, machine-made music, and automatic folding

LG have made a Note and are improving on the Stylus 2 Plus ahead of launch

Spies. A woman in a red dress. Murder. Those are the themes LG has chosen to explore in the official product video for the LG Stylus 2 Plus smartphone, the company’s take on Samsung’s Note series. You can watch it, with its strangely upbeat music, above but it’s the revised specifications for the Stylus 2 Plus that have our attention. LG have chosen to make the upcoming handset more powerful in the screen and processor department, upping matters from 720p to 1080p for the 5.7-inch display and replacing the first handset’s 1.2GHz quad with a 1.4GHz octa-core processor. Welcome additions, to be sure, but we’re pretty certain that it’s not going to make a dent in the Galaxy Note powerhouse. Other specs coming for LG’s phone include a 16MP camera (rear), 8MP camera (front), 3,000mAh battery, fingerprint reader, and 2GB or 3GB of RAM – region-dependent on that last. Oh, and the stylus, with a new ‘nano-coating’ which will apparently make it feel quite pen-and-paperish while using it. The Stylus 2 Plus doesn’t have a launch date here in SA as yet.

Source: LG (YouTube)

Xiaomi’s Mi Band 2 is coming – here are the specs in the meantime

We’ve known that Xiaomi’s Mi Band 2 was due for a refresh for a while now – we’d even seen it before. But now it’s official, launching in China next week, and carrying some impressive specs and features. So how about we go over a few of those? Xiaomi are giving their Mi Band refresh an OLED display, heart-rate sensor, all of the usual tracking functions (steps, sleep, calories) and they’re sticking that into a silicon band that is rated IP67 so you won’t have to take it off in the shower. They’re also claiming a 20-day battery life for the Mi Band 2, though we’re going to have to see that to believe it. Xiaomi’s band will also be able to unlock your (also Xiaomi) smartphone – we’re not sure why – and it will display notifications from your handset to boot. The latter might be a useful feature on its own. And what will all of this cost you? Well, there’s no official pricing for South Africa but it’s set to cost around $23 (R360) internationally. So… yeah, we might be getting one. Or two.

Source: The Verge

Google’s letting machines make music and now we know what that sounds like

So it’s come to this. Google is letting machines do all sorts of things normally reserved for humans and the machines… are actually doing them. The latest is machine-made music. And we’re not talking about Skrillex. This time an actual machine, called Project Magenta, created an actual song from scratch. There are no bass drops or intricate sequences, it’s just a basic melody tickled out on a (virtual) keyboard with a backing drum track. Hardly the most technically-complex thing you’ll ever hear but the track is an actual song. It’s complete, is what we’re saying, even if it’s not terribly good. If you want to hear the track for yourself then hit up the link below, where Magenta’s track is embedded.

Source: via The Next Web

Having a laundry-folding machine isn’t as brilliant an idea as you might think

We’ve all folded a lot of clothing. Unless you’re rich enough to pay people to do that for you. But most people know that, if you want clothing to be neatly folded and packed away, you don’t involve small children in the process and if you do, you don’t let them behave like unattended children left at the Spur (an act which should be outlawed by the Geneva Convention). Someone should have pointed out that fact to the guys and girls who made the above promo video for the Foldimate, a clothes-folding machine. Which, on the surface, seems like a good idea. But then ask yourself: Do I really need this piece of equipment? And the answer is probably ‘No’. For starters, pre-orders will only open next year and it’ll cost (at most, apparently) over R13,000 to get one of these. And, based on the video above, all the Foldimate does is fold shirts and you kinda have to do some of the work for it by hanging the shirts just so. At that point, take the extra 3.2 seconds and just finish folding it, right? Right? Okay, fine, you can have one.

Source: Foldimate