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9 great reads from CNET this week: COP26, Star Wars, Mars moon and more
9 great reads from CNET this week: COP26, Star Wars, Mars moon and more
There's been a lot of talk about the climate crisis this week, pegged to the UN's COP26 summit of world leaders in Glasgow, Scotland. It's brought together a who's who of luminaries, from Jeff Bezos to Joe Biden to David Attenborough, all emphasizing the need to act now and act smartly to steer us away from worst-case scenarios.
CNET's Katie Collins has been in Glasgow reporting from COP26, and we've also published a range of articles about efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Beyond that, the CNET Money team has mustered up some practicalguidelines about how each of us can navigate the world with climate change in mind.
Those stories are among the many in-depth features and thought-provoking commentaries that appeared on CNET this week. So here you go. These are the stories you don't want to miss.
Researchers look to formidable new allies to rein in methane emissions from agriculture.
Getty/Bloomberg
Here's how to channel those negative feelings into something good.
Westend61/Getty
Injecting reflective particles into the atmosphere could turn down the heat on Earth, but research has been controversial.
Getty
Activists are fighting for it, world leaders agree we need it, but climate justice is still being made to sit on the sidelines at the UN climate summit.
Katie Collins/CNET
Commentary: "She said stop, and he didn't stop."
Disney/Lucasfilm
Japan's space agency plans to find out if the potato-shaped curiosity holds remnants of long-dead microbes.
Realizm
The company is one of many competing to ease your supply chain woes.
Getty Images
Some of the apps are limited to buying and selling and don't let you move cryptocurrency to a wallet. But they might entice beginners to try crypto.
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EVs are great for many things -- but towing? Let's see how our long-term Tesla managed with its tow hitch occupied.
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Philips Hue's new TV gadget matches colored lights to whatever you watch or play
Philips Hue's new TV gadget matches colored lights to whatever you watch or play
The folks behind Philips Hue have already released a lot of new smart lights this year. Now, the brand's newest product wants to help you sync those color-changing smart lights with whatever's playing on your TV screen. It's called the Philips Hue Play HDMI Sync Box, and it's a significant upgrade for the brand's Hue Entertainment feature -- but at a preorder asking price of $230, it won't come cheap.
Like the name suggests, Hue's new sync box is an HDMI pass-through device similar to the one we tested out with the DreamScreen 4K TV lighting kit. You'll connect it to your TV, then take your media streamers, game consoles, set-top boxes and anything else that connects to your TV via HDMI and connect them to the Hue Play Box instead. From there, Hue reads the incoming video signal of whatever you're watching or playing and uses that data to quarterback color-matching smart lighting effects in real time, with virtually no lag.
Now that's Entertainment
The original Hue Entertainment pitch forced you to connect your laptop to your TV in order to enjoy effects like this. Now, you can sync your lights up with any device that connects to your TV via HDMI cable.
Ry Crist/CNET
All of that is a big step up from the original Hue Entertainment pitch, which didn't include the pass-through approach at all. Instead, users had to download Hue Sync software to their computer to match the lights with whatever was playing on their monitor or laptop screen. That's fine for PC gaming, but it forced you to connect your computer to your TV in order to enjoy the feature on a full-size screen from the comfort of your preferred spot on the living room couch, and it left things like gaming consoles out of the mix altogether.
The arrival of a new, dedicated Hue Sync app marks another point of progress for Hue Entertainment. Before, you'd set the feature up in the original Hue app, with somewhat limited controls for things like brightness and the position of your lights in relation to the screen. Philips Hue parent company Signify says that you'll be able to adjust the brightness and the speed and intensity of the lighting effects, as well as your default preferences for each HDMI input.
Apart from the HDMI output that connects the device to your TV, each Hue Play box includes four HDMI inputs to sync it up with your streaming devices, gaming consoles, Blu-ray players and DVR boxes.
Andrew Hoyle/CNET
By the way, there are four of those HDMI inputs on the back of the Hue Play box, which means you can sync your lights with up to four separate devices. From there, it'll automatically switch between those devices as you use them, with full support for 4K resolution and HDR10. Signify says that the box doesn't store any information about what you watch, and adds that the Hue Play box supports simultaneous color-matching with up to 10 Hue lights at once.
You can use any of Hue's color-changing lights with the feature, but the best bets are TV-friendly accent lights like the Philips Hue Light Strip. Fixtures you can hide behind or beside the TV are a good fit, too -- most notably, the Philips Hue Play light bars, which can stand on their own or mount directly on the back of your TV.
It's no coincidence that those Hue Play lights share a name with the new Hue Play HDMI box. Signify tells me that the HDMI box is compatible with the same plug-in power supply as those Hue Play bars, with a plug that's designed to power up to three devices at once. That means that you could use a single Hue Play plug to power an entry-level Hue Entertainment setup with two lights and the HDMI box.
That's a nice approach that might help free up some of the cord clutter behind your entertainment center. I also wonder if Signify won't ultimately start selling Hue Entertainment starter kits that package the HDMI box with those Hue Play lights at a discount.
The Hue Play HDMI Box seems like an especially good fit with the color-changing Philips Hue Play light bars, seen here on either side of the TV.
Philips
An expensive outlook
That Hue Play approach is also the setup we'll probably use when we test the Hue Play HDMI Sync Box for ourselves at the CNET Smart Home. It might make for a contentious movie night, though, as our team is somewhat split on the feature. Some find it fun and immersive, some find it too distracting and others land in a meh middleground. Let us know where you land in the comments -- and feel free to toss out movie or game suggestions you'd like to see us test.
Personally, I'm excited to finally try Hue Entertainment with console gaming, especially with games that already put a lot of emphasis on immersion. I can just imagine oohing and aahing while landing on a colorful new planet in No Man's Sky, for instance. Minecraft and Super Mario Maker 2 jump to mind as other good fits with distinctive color schemes that vary from setting to setting as you play. At any rate, your experience will definitely vary depending on what you're watching or playing, so experimenting with different titles and different settings in the Hue app will likely be key.
And, apart from convincing people that this is more smart lighting game changer than smart lighting gimmick, Hue's biggest hurdle here is obviously the price. $230 gets you an HDMI box -- and remember, the PC software that came before it was free. That's expensive enough on its own -- but you'll need Hue lights, too. A two-pack of those Hue Play light bars with the power supply costs $130, which brings the total to $360 if you're building a setup from scratch.
And you're still not done. Despite the fact that Hue's newest lights include Bluetooth radios that let you connect direct with your phone for basic control, you'll still need a Hue Bridge plugged into your router in order to try out advanced features like Hue Entertainment. It's currently available for $50 on Amazon, which would bring your total buy-in to $410.
The research firm IHS Markit predicts that the global smart lighting market will grow to $2.8 billion by 2023.
IHS Markit
I'm skeptical that many outside of the true Hue die-hards will adopt the feature at that price, but time will tell. Signify is banking on the accuracy of rosy smart lighting forecasts from research firms like IHS Markit, which predicts that the global smart lighting market will grow from $241.6 million in 2017 to $2.8 billion in 2023. That's more than a tenfold increase.
IHS Markit analyst Blake Kozak suggests that Signify has an opportunity to take the category "to the next level by adding 'immersion' as a descriptor of smart-home lighting."
Kozak says, "Although its newest smart plugs and filament lighting solutions will be far more popular and mainstream, colored lighting now has a new use case and interest and growth could be strengthened globally, especially in North America."
With preorders open now with an expected ship date of Oct. 15, I also wouldn't be surprised to see the Hue Play box packaged with one of Hue's smart light starter kits as a Black Friday special this November. We'll have a better sense of whether a deal like that would be worth pouncing on after we try the new device out for ourselves, so stay tuned.
Originally published Sept. 17, 9 a.m. ET. Update, 11:25 a.m.: Adds information about Hue Play support for 4K and HDR10 and comment from IHS Markit.
Facebook, now Meta, shows off new neural interface tech during Connect conference
Facebook, now Meta, shows off new neural interface tech during Connect conference
In Facebook's original presentation of its Project Aria augmented reality camera experiment, the company showed off a thumb clicker for driving the prototype specs. On Thursday, Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, revealed a wrist-based neural interface to free your hands from this task.
Neural interfaces are one of many ways Meta wants to approach how people control augmented reality headsets. The company revealed a prototype bracelet during its Facebook Connect conference to show a possible future where your wrist movements are all that's required to navigate an interface in the headset.
CNET
As in the image Facebook originally teased back in March, the wristband for Project Aria glasses looks an awful lot like the 2015-era Myo Armband from Thalmic Labs, which became the company North before Google acquired it in June 2020. This wristband reads neural signals via EMG sensors, and translates them into commands for the Aria. The example given Thursday was being able to move your wrist and select things on a virtual screen, or pinch your fingers together to click on something you see in some future set of glasses.
Coupled with this demonstration was a look at how Project Aria will use onboard cameras to identify real-world household items and make them virtual. A coffee table, couch, television and more can be brought from your real living room into a virtual space, allowing you to either reach out and touch real things while in a VR headset or to better display AR projections on your physical surfaces.
Like Project Aria itself, this wristband is nowhere near being ready for public use. These are all a part of Meta's long-term strategy to continue building VR and AR hardware as it plans a larger metaverse strategy. But in this same presentation, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged that the plans are at least a year away from their next step of readiness. For now, though, it's a clear look at where Meta thinks the future of VR and AR will be, and a good indication of what future products could be capable of.
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Stellar cosplay warps into Star Trek anniversary convention (pictures)
Stellar cosplay warps into Star Trek anniversary convention (pictures)
1 of 45 Amanda Kooser/CNET
Nero stalks the convention
Editors' note: this gallery is being updated throughout the convention.
The Star Trek 50th anniversary convention in Las Vegas attracts an out-of-this-world cosplay display. There are plenty of fans in Starfleet uniforms, but clever costumes also include an Orion slave girl, Santa Gorn and a strange Elvis-Trek mashup.
This spectacular Nero costume pays tribute to the villain of the first Star Trek reboot movie, from 2009. The makeup is spot on.
2 of 45 Amanda Kooser/CNET
Red-shirt dog
This service dog got into the spirit of the Star Trek 50th anniversary convention with an original-series red-shirt outfit, complete with a tiny phaser. Here, the pup posed with a collection of tribbles.
3 of 45 Amanda Kooser/CNET
Star Trek Elvis
One of the more creative cosplayers roaming the halls of the 50th anniversary Star Trek convention in Las Vegas is this very-Vegas Elvis. It's not just a '70s Elvis jumpsuit. A lot of thought went into this elaborate costume, which also features Starfleet and Klingon logos.
4 of 45 Amanda Kooser/CNET
Behind Trek-Elvis
A huge, blinged-out gold Starfleet logo adorns the back of this Elvis Presley-Star Trek mashup costume seen at the show's 50th anniversary convention.
5 of 45 Amanda Kooser/CNET
Klingons
The Star Trek universe isn't complete without Klingons. These cosplayers represent both original-series and movie versions of the famously cantankerous aliens.
6 of 45 Amanda Kooser/CNET
Santa Gorn
Is this Santa Gorn or Gorn Claus? This costume represents an unusual mix between Christmas spirit and the Gorn alien that tried to kill Capt. Kirk.
7 of 45 Amanda Kooser/CNET
Bajorans
Bajorans played a large role in "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine." These cosplayers pull off the stern look of Bajoran spiritual leaders. They even have the correct nose-bumps.
8 of 45 Amanda Kooser/CNET
Abraham Lincoln
If you're not sure why Abraham Lincoln is in attendance at the 50th anniversary Star Trek convention in Las Vegas, then you need to go back and rewatch the original series. The US president appears in an episode titled "The Savage Curtain."
9 of 45 Amanda Kooser/CNET
Royalty Trek
A group of cosplayers roam the convention floor in prince and princess-Star Trek mashup costumes.
10 of 45 Amanda Kooser/CNET
MACO troops
These cosplayers pay tribute to prequel series "Enterprise" by dressing up as Military Assault Command Operations troops.
11 of 45 Amanda Kooser/CNET
Trouble with a tribble
This original-series gold command costume is enhanced with a pesky tribble on the shoulder.
12 of 45 Amanda Kooser/CNET
'60s Trek
An impressive beehive tops this costume that pays tribute to Janice Rand. Both of these outfits are straight out of the 1960s aesthetic of early Star Trek.
13 of 45 Amanda Kooser/CNET
Longtime fans
These longtime Star Trek fans are dressed to the nines for the 50th anniversary convention in Las Vegas.
14 of 45 Amanda Kooser/CNET
The Next Generation
The Trois pose for a photo op while showing off their Betazoid sides at the Star Trek convention in Las Vegas.
15 of 45 Amanda Kooser/CNET
Glommer and a tribble
The Star Trek fan on the right is dressed in an ingenious tribble costume. The fluffy alien critters are famous for eating a lot and being cute. The creature on the left is less well-known. It's a glommer, a predator bred by Klingons to hunt and destroy tribbles. Klingons and tribbles don't get along.
16 of 45 Amanda Kooser/CNET
Taking flight
Star Trek fans show off some unusual costumes at the convention.
17 of 45 Amanda Kooser/CNET
A red shirt with a message
Red-shirt-wearing crew members don't always survive their Starfleet missions. This shirt reads "Don't pick me for an away mission. Pick him -->."
18 of 45 Amanda Kooser/CNET
Mirror universe
Step into the original "Star Trek" series mirror universe with these cosplayers at the 50th anniversary convention.
19 of 45 Amanda Kooser/CNET
Two Guinans
These two Star Trek fans were called up on stage with Whoopi Goldberg during the 50th anniversary convention in Las Vegas. They are both dressed as Guinan, Goldberg's wise and enigmatic character from "Star Trek: The Next Generation."
20 of 45 Amanda Kooser/CNET
Data
MAC Cosmetics has a big presence at the Star Trek 50th anniversary convention. This model was made up by professional artists to look like Data from "The Next Generation."
21 of 45 Amanda Kooser/CNET
Worf wields a bat'leth
This elaborate Worf cosplay even includes an accurate-looking Klingon weapon.
22 of 45 Amanda Kooser/CNET
Welcome to the Enterprise
An entire crew of "Enterprise" cosplayers share their love of the uniforms from the prequel series.
23 of 45 Amanda Kooser/CNET
Doctor Who?
A Time Lord can go anywhere he wants, even to a Star Trek convention. This well-dressed Tom Baker "Doctor Who" fan wore a small Starfleet pin on his jacket.
24 of 45 Amanda Kooser/CNET
Pooch and science officer
This fluffy puppy wore a science uniform to the 50th anniversary Star Trek convention in Las Vegas.
25 of 45 Amanda Kooser/CNET
Khaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan
It takes a lot of bravery to take on the famous Ricardo Montalban costume from "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan." This Khan really pulls off the look.
26 of 45 Amanda Kooser/CNET
Cosplaying a shuttlecraft
This Starfleet shuttlecraft cosplay is a loving tribute to the workhorse vessels that get personnel around through space.
27 of 45 Amanda Kooser/CNET
Neelix
The likable Neelix from "Voyager" gets an elaborate costume tribute.
28 of 45 Amanda Kooser/CNET
Spock lookalike
This Spock cosplayer really has the look down. He wears a uniform that matches the ones from the original-series movies.
29 of 45 Amanda Kooser/CNET
Andorian
Blue makeup sells this Andorian costume, complete with antennae.
30 of 45 Amanda Kooser/CNET
Borg-dog
The same service dog that wore a red-shirt costume earlier during the convention showed up in this Borg outfit the next day. There's no resisting its cuteness.
31 of 45 Amanda Kooser/CNET
Scotty
A Scotty lookalike cosplays as the movie-version of Montgomery Scott, the engineer who was also quite good at beaming people up.
32 of 45 Amanda Kooser/CNET
Apollo and Mudd
You might be wondering what a Greek god is doing at a Star Trek convention. This particular god is Apollo from the original-series episode "Who Mourns for Adonais?" Beside him is Falstaffian original-series troublemaker Harry Mudd.
33 of 45 Amanda Kooser/CNET
Captain Pike
Before there was Captain Kirk, there was Captain Christopher Pike. This clever cosplay rolls around and depicts Pike as seen in the original-series two-part episode "The Menagerie."
34 of 45 Amanda Kooser/CNET
Borg Vader
Star Trek and Star Wars fandoms come together in a costume that imagine what would happen if Darth Vader was assimilated by the Borg. It looks like the poor Sith Lord wasn't able to resist.
35 of 45 Amanda Kooser/CNET
Ferengi
The Ferengi starred on "Deep Space Nine." The particular Ferengi is probably thinking about the Rules of Acquisition.
36 of 45 Amanda Kooser/CNET
Borg Queen
Captain Picard and Data both had very close-up dealings with the Borg Queen. The costume on display here was one of the honorable mentions in the Star Trek 50th anniversary convention costume contest in Las Vegas.
37 of 45 Amanda Kooser/CNET
Costume contest winners
Here's betting you don't recognize these Star Trek creatures. They're the shrimp-like aliens that appeared for only a few seconds in the merely so-so original-series episode "Catspaw."
38 of 45 Amanda Kooser/CNET
The Crushers
Young Wesley Crusher and his mom Doctor Beverly Crusher take the stage during a Star Trek costume contest.
39 of 45 Amanda Kooser/CNET
Crystalline Entity
A mind-boggling amount of work went into this Crystalline Entity costume. The deadly planet-chewing entity appearing in "Star Trek: The Next Generation." Guest judge Terry Farrell (Jadzia Dax from "Deep Space Nine") admires the cosplayer's ingenuity.
40 of 45 Amanda Kooser/CNET
IDIC
The ancient Vulcan symbol of the IDIC stands for "Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations." A Star Trek costume contestant took that idea and rendered in a full person-sized costume.
41 of 45 Amanda Kooser/CNET
Jaylah
Jaylah appears as a main guest character in the latest Star Trek film, "Star Trek Beyond." This cosplayer had only seen the movie once, but it inspired her to make a Jaylah outfit and don the fancy makeup.
42 of 45 Amanda Kooser/CNET
Khan as a woman
A Khan gender-swap cosplayer roamed the vendors room at the 50th anniversary Star Trek convention in Las Vegas.
43 of 45 Amanda Kooser/CNET
Star Trek Minions
Adorable Klingon and Captain Kirk Minions posed for photographs at the Las Vegas Star Trek convention.
44 of 45 Amanda Kooser/CNET
'First Contact' space suits
There's a dramatic scene in "Star Trek: First Contact" that involves spacesuit-wearing heroes venturing outside of the Enterprise. These DIY costumes replicated those suits in spectacular fashion.
45 of 45 Amanda Kooser/CNET
Tholian
As the name suggests, Tholians are from the planet Tholia. The unusual orange aliens starred in the original-series episode "The Tholian Web." The cosplayer inside this massive outfit uses a video screen and camera to navigate.
