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ICYMI: Charging lights with foot power
try{document.getElementById("aol-cms-player-1").style.display="none";}catch(e){}Today on In Case You Missed It: EnGoPlanet is testing streetlights powered by both kinetic footpads and solar panels, placed in a plaza in Las Vegas. Meanwhile, the Panther is a military-style drone that can both drive on the ground and fly through the air, while carrying up to 15 pounds of gear. The guys and girls of Engadget video are stoked about the Beauty and the Beast live-action movie reboot from Disney; the new trailer is here just fyi. The determined garbage kid is here and the AP video of stranded cows is here. As always, please share any interesting tech or science videos you find by using the #ICYMI hashtag on Twitter for mskerryd.
Lyft's Amp dashboard light signals your ride's arrival
Unlike stealing someone's cab, jumping into the wrong Lyft or Uber isn't a jerk move, it's usually just an embarrassing mistake for whoever does it. With that in mind, Lyft wants to make getting into the ride you hailed easier with a branded dashboard light called Amp. The device looks like a Bluetooth speaker along the lines of a Beats Pill: oblong and cylindrical, sitting on a base to keep it from sliding around a driver's dashboard. But instead of playing music, the gizmo's road-facing face will light up in one of six colors (teal, orange, silver, yellow or purple) while the rear can display blocky, personalized messages.
Las Vegas streetlights are powered by your footsteps
Las Vegas is famous for its lights, bright sunny days and copious pedestrian traffic. That no doubt made it the perfect place for clean tech startup EnGoPlanet to test new LED streetlights powered by both photovoltaic panels and kinetic footstep pads. Married with a battery, the setup not only lights up the Boulder Plaza in downtown Vegas, but also powers security cameras (yep), WiFi hotspots and portable charging stations.
Mandalay Bay installs America's biggest solar roof
The Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas, NV is now home to the largest roof-top solar array in America. The array consists of 26,000 individual panels and produces enough power to meet roughly 25 percent of the convention center's energy requirements. The two other largest casinos along the strip, presumably The Venetian and the Wynn, have also reportedly installed solar panels in efforts to reduce their electricity bills. The state of Nevada as a whole has set an ambitious goal of producing a quarter of its electricity from clean sources by 2025. That's no small feat given that the Bellagio and Mandalay Bay alone consume more electricity annually than all of Key West, FL, a city with a population of 25,000 but which hosts roughly 2.5 million visitors each year.
Nevada gives its first license to a daily fantasy sports game
Nevada's gaming board shut down daily fantasy games from DraftKings and FanDuel late last year for fairly obvious reasons: they're gambling, and they need a license to operate in the state. Now for the first time, the board has issued a license to a daily fantasy operator called USFantasy. Unsurprisingly, the Vegas-approved fantasy game is planning to operate through the race and sports books of casinos, and won't look much like other daily fantasy sports games.
VR porn to be offered as room service in Las Vegas
For decades, people have been renting naughty movies to watch in the privacy of their hotel rooms. Now, with virtual reality becoming more prevalent, one company is experimenting with a combination of the two -- VR porn room service. To realise this X-rated dream, porn studio VR Bangers has teamed up with AuraVisor, a British company that crowdfunded its first headset on Indiegogo and Kickstarter last year. The complete package will soon be trialled in Las Vegas hotels, cost $19.99 a pop, and offer a few different scenarios for people to choose from.
Watch the 2016 DICE Awards right here!
The invite list to what's essentially gaming's Oscars is pretty exclusive, but thanks to the magic of Twitch you won't need to call in any favors to watch the Academy of Interactive Arts and Science's annual award show from the DICE summit in Las Vegas tonight. Starting at 10:30 PM ET/ 7:30 PM PT, you can catch what some 22,000 members of the game development and publishing community thought were the best titles released last year.
ICYMI: Delivery drone for humans, VR gaming and more
#fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-809076{display:none;} .cke_show_borders #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-809076, #postcontentcontainer #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-809076{width:570px;display:block;} try{document.getElementById("fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-809076").style.display="none";}catch(e){}Today on In Case You Missed It: The Ehang 184 is a Personal Flying Vehicle (PFV) that promises to deliver human cargo to its commuting destination in a way that has us intrigued and also, of course, mildly terrified. It can hold one person and fly anywhere within a 23-minute flight time radius. The person inside will use a very simple interface to take off and land, and be able to sit back and chill. Now we jsut have to wait while the at least $200,000 (but, probably more like $300,000) drone gets built, with a goal of reaching production by next year.
ICYMI: Aging exoskeleton suit, the biometric bed and more
#fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-726881{display:none;} .cke_show_borders #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-726881, #postcontentcontainer #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-726881{width:570px;display:block;} Today on In Case You Missed It: Applied Minds built an exoskeleton suit for insurance company Genworth and took it on the road to CES to give conference goers a dose of empathy for the elderly. The suit reenacts the physical ailments people often suffer as they age, from vision loss to hearing problems.
What does it take to make a great show in Las Vegas?
Ever wonder what it takes to make a popular show on the Vegas strip? Tex Dike, general manager of The Axis at Planet Hollywood is familiar with the subject, as he oversees the venue where Britney Spears is currently in residency at Planet Hollywood. Tex stopped by the Engadget stage here at CES to fill us in and chat about the tech that makes the show so good.
Engadget is live from CES 2016!
As much as we may have wanted to spend the week after New Year's recovering from our bacchanalian excesses on the holiday, there is work to be done. The Engadget team has assembled in Las Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show 2016, the biggest event in the technology world's annual calendar. The show may not be as hot-to-trot as it has been in previous years, but it'll still turn up something worth checking out. For instance, it could reveal a new fork that teaches you to eat slower, or a device that'll revolutionize the way you watch tv. Alternatively, it could show us a lamp that looks like a disembodied hand grabbing a plastic bag full of lightbulbs, because that's a thing. We don't yet know what this year's show will bring, but the only way that any of us will know is if you keep your eyeballs pointed straight at this very website.
Las Vegas bets that SpaceX will make it to Mars before NASA
NASA may believe that it'll be the first to land humans on Mars, but don't tell that to Las Vegas betting houses. Popular Mechanics has asked Docsports' Raphael Esparza to set odds for the first organization to put people on Mars, and he believes that SpaceX stands a much better chance of reaching the Red Planet (5 to 1) than anyone else, including NASA (80 to 1). To put it bluntly, SpaceX has the money and the motivation that others don't -- NASA would be the favorite, but its budget cuts are holding it back.
Uber sets up shop in Las Vegas
Well that didn't take long. Less than a day after the Nevada Transportation Commission authorized Uber and Lyft to operate in the state, Uber announced on Tuesday that it is expanding its Uber X ride-hailing service into the greater Las Vegas area. Users will be able to travel anywhere between Summerlin, Nevada in the Southeast clear on up to Henderson in the Northwest (though that trip will cost an estimated $63-84). A trip from UNLV to Downtown, however, will only set you back around $15.
Uber and Lyft officially allowed to operate in Nevada
Nevada's Transportation Authority has granted both Uber and Lyft permits to operate in the state, a few days after approving new rules for ride-hailing services. Those include having to pay administrative fees and to stick decals onto cars that are part of the companies' fleets. That doesn't mean you can hail a ride from either app right now, though: neither company has a firm launch date yet. They still have to deal with Clark County officials who refuse to let the companies run their business until they have the proper license. Problem is, the county doesn't even have a licensing category for ride-sharing/hailing services yet.
Uber and Lyft are one step closer to operating in Las Vegas
The Nevada Transportation Authority approved new regulations for Uber, Lyft and other ride-hailing services today, but don't expect a flood of for-hire drivers on the Las Vegas Strip this weekend. These companies can't open shop in Nevada quite yet -- regulators approved new rules, including the imposition of an administrative fee and requiring decals on cars, but Uber and Lyft still don't have permission to operate in the state.
Mike Tyson's Bitcoin ATM is now a thing
Whenever someone brings up Bitcoin, the first thing that comes to everyone's mind is an image of Mike Tyson. After all, cryptographic currencies beloved by investment wonks, libertarians and drug kingpins go hand-in-hand with the controversial former heavyweight champion of the world. That's why it's no surprise to see Motherboard reporting that Bitcoin Direct has launched "The Mike Tyson Bitcoin ATM" in Las Vegas. Apparently, it's just a regular Lamassu machine with the boxer's picture stuck on the front, that enables you to buy in to the cryptocurrency but crucially, not withdraw.
Watch the world's biggest fighting game tournament right here
This weekend over 6,000 folks from 47 countries will descend into Las Vegas to kick the (virtual) snot out of each other. That's because the 13th annual Evolution fighting game tournament, otherwise known as Evo 2015, starts today with world warriors competing across nine games including Killer Instinct, Mortal Kombat X, Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and Ultra Street Fighter IV. They're battling for over $300,000 in prize money and in case you couldn't make it to Sin City for the show, we've got you covered. The competition starts at 12 pm Eastern / 9 am Pacific today and goes until the final street fighting man or woman is defeated Sunday night. As you might expect, the entire event's being broadcast via Twitch and you can park it right here on Engadget to watch the whole thing!
Cox continues rolling out its gigabit internet to US cities
Last May, Cox Communications announced that it would join Google and AT&T in offering residential customers gigabit-fast wired internet service to Phoenix, Las Vegas and Omaha. Today the service, dubbed "G1GABLAST", has finally arrived in Omaha and Las Vegas as well as parts of Orange County, California. "We started in Phoenix last fall, but we have not stopped there," Cox President Pat Esser said in a statement. "We are excited to have the choice of gigabit speeds available to more customers today, and we're adding new building projects every month." To that end, Cox has already increased the speeds of its High Speed Internet (HSI) Essential and HSI Starter plans over the past few months and intends to similarly boost its HSI Ultimate package later this year. The company also announced that communities in Arkansas, Louisiana, Rhode Island, Oklahoma and Virginia will be offered gigabit speeds by this summer with Cox's entire user base receiving the option by the end of 2016.
Nevada: Email that's sent in Vegas should stay in Vegas
It was just a few days ago that Edward Snowden told John Oliver how an email, sent from one New Yorker to another, could bounce across the world before reaching its destination. This decentralization is one of the internet's biggest strengths, but the system has gotten Nevada's politicians very worried about data security. That's why Paul Anderson and Mo Denis are sponsoring a bill that would see all of the state's government internet traffic remain within its own borders.
The trailer and beyond: Engadget at CES 2015
Team Engadget spent a long week running around Las Vegas during CES, whether it's the the many exhibits at the city's Convention Center, the umpteen meetings at hotels or all-important pitstops like the Peppermill. Want to get a glimpse of what it was like? Follow the journey of our editorial team (and its dear friends) through social media in the gallery below.
