Samsung has unveiled the Galaxy S8 and S8, the company's first flagship phones since the Note 7 debacle in 2016 threatened to sink its brand in the eyes of the public. The new phones' most eye-catching feature is an almost completely bezel-free display, running the full width of the device, even curving around the edge (akin to the screen on Samsung's Galaxy S7 Edge), and shrinking the chin and forehead of the front screen to tiny slivers. Samsung's calls this the "infinity display", and even the home button has been removed, replaced with a pressure-sensitive section at the bottom of the screen. Launching on 28 April (though pre-order customers will receive theirs a week early), the Galaxy S8 will retail at £689 and the S8 at £779. Those prices are £10 and £40 cheaper than the respective iPhone models Samsung is competing with, but leave the S8 £120 more than the S7 and the S8 £140 more expensive than the S7 Edge. Two colours will hit Britain, "Midnight Black" and "Orchid Grey", and Samsung is still decided whether to launch a third colour, "Arctic Silver".

Mobile chip maker Qualcomm wants your gadgets to look out for you. The company is working on a technology that packages together a lens, an image sensor, and a low-power processor that runs computer-vision algorithms. The module, which Qualcomm calls Glance, would be cheaper than a camera and use far less energy, but it could detect humans, determine if they are taking certain actions (such as jumping or walking toward or away from the sensor), and even identify certain hand or arm gestures. Every computing company is trying to add some form of computer vision to its products, whether for self-driving cars or automated shipping facilities. Though Glance is still taking shape in Qualcomm's R&D division, it gives the company an opportunity to leverage its expertise in low-power computing and jump into this fast-growing market.

In order to distribute the best arm identification task as close as possible to the user's devices, on the edge of the Radio Access Network, we propose a new problem setting, where distributed players collaborate to find the best arm. This architecture guarantees privacy to end-users since no events are stored. The only thing that can be observed by an adversary through the core network is aggregated information across users. We provide a first algorithm, Distributed Median Elimination, which is optimal in term of number of transmitted bits and near optimal in term of speed-up factor with respect to an optimal algorithm run independently on each player. In practice, this first algorithm cannot handle the trade-off between the communication cost and the speed-up factor, and requires some knowledge about the distribution of players. Extended Distributed Median Elimination overcomes these limitations, by playing in parallel different instances of Distributed Median Elimination and selecting the best one. Experiments illustrate and complete the analysis. According to the analysis, in comparison to Median Elimination performed on each player, the proposed algorithm shows significant practical improvements.

Samsung's Unpacked 2017 event in New York City is set to kick off tomorrow and it's no mystery at this point that the big unveil will be Samsung's "next Galaxy," the Galaxy S8 and potentially the Galaxy S8 Plus. So much has leaked about the device(s) that much may be already known about Samsung's next flagship Android handset that is poised to take on the iPhone for smartphone domination. We've heard about display sizes, with the Galaxy S8 standard device measuring in at 5.7-inches (or maybe 5.8) and the Galaxy S8 offering gargantuan phablet proportions at 6.2-inches. However, those displays also come with very minimal bezel, as Samsung reportedly is going to take a page from Dell with something called an "Infinity Display" that will surely keep the two new Galaxy's footprints down significantly, similar to what LG delivered with the wonderfully-designed G6. Regardless, even with all these design updates -- and Samsung's new Bixby AI virtual assistant that claims to learn the human, rather than requiring the human to learn it – there's still one more unconfirmed major advancement I expect with Samsung's new pocket super computers and it lies under the hood.

SoftBank Group Corp. has approached China's Didi Chuxing Technology Co. about investing roughly $6 billion to help the ride-hailing firm expand in self-driving car technologies, two people familiar with the matter said. The bulk of the investment would likely come from SoftBank's planned $100 billion Vision Fund, in hopes of unlocking new value in China's expanding ride-hailing market, one of the people said. The technology fund, originally slated to launch in January, has been delayed as SoftBank weighs different...

Don't be alarmed if you happen to see someone using a Galaxy Note7 over the summer. Ahead of this week's Galaxy S8 unveiling, Samsung has announced a three-point program for recycling of its failed phablets, and some of them will eventually make…

Starship Technologies' delivery robots, which can be found traveling the sidewalks of Washington, D.C., get smarter the more they drive -- learning about sidewalk and traffic patterns with every trip they take. Starship Technologies' delivery robots, which can be found traveling the sidewalks of Washington, D.C., get smarter the more they drive -- learning about sidewalk and traffic patterns with every trip they take. Here's a classic big city dilemma (sorry suburban folks): It's late at night, the weather is bad, and you're hungry. Your favorite restaurant is less than a mile away, but you don't want to leave the house, and you don't want to pay a $5 delivery fee -- plus tip -- for a $10 meal. Back in the old days, you would have braved the elements -- or learned to plan ahead. But those days are coming to an end, at least in Washington, D.C.

As reported by Variety, Verizon stated that "Once we were notified that our ads were appearing on non-sanctioned websites, we took immediate action to suspend this type of ad placement and launched an investigation." Its action followed AT&T, which named Google specifically, in a statement that "We are deeply concerned that our ads may have appeared alongside YouTube content promoting terrorism and hate. Until Google can ensure that this won't happen again, we are removing our ads from Google's non-search platforms." As much as we talk about projects like Android, self-driving cars and AI, Google is still largely an advertising company (in January it reported that of $26 billion in revenue overall for Q4, $22.04 billion came from advertising across various platforms). As such, even a temporary loss of business from two of the largest advertisers in the US is the kind of painful prompt that may speed up its action.

T-Mobile is now offering the LG G6 for pre-order, ahead of its April 7 release date. The smartphone will sell for $650 or $26 down and $26 per month for 24 months as per the T-Mobile's equipment installment plan. The carrier is also offering a free Google Home AI assistant to those who purchase the LG G6 before April 30. Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint have already opened pre-order for the LG G6 and will release the device March 30. U.S. Cellular preorders begin March 24. All carriers have their own deals associated with the LG G6 release date.

Thanks to Vodafone, the Taurus-Littrow Valley will get its first mobile phone base station next year. It hasn't needed one up to now, as the last visitors drove through in 1972, the year before the mobile phone was invented. Next year, though, it will get the very latest in 4G LTE coverage, when it receives a visit from two very special self-driving vehicles. Taurus-Littrow is the landing site of Apollo 17, where humans last walked on the moon. Next year, an international group based in Berlin plans to send a mission carrying two lunar rovers to explore the site.