Kalakshar US

Amazon might be planning to offer Prime subscribers a pretty significant perk: free cell phone service. According to Bloomberg, the company is talking with multiple US-based carriers about offering cheap — around $10 a month — or even free phone service to Prime customers. Right now, Amazon is supposedly negotiating with the three major US carriers (Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile) as well as the Dish Network, though it sounds like talks with AT&T have fallen off in recent weeks. 

It’ll likely be a while before this potential offering launched, as Bloomberg says that talks have only been ongoing for about six to eight weeks and they could still be scrapped. But given how expensive mobile plans can get, this could be a potentially interesting offer for Amazon customers. Of course, that would require a further commitment to Amazon, which already has its fingers in a frankly absurd number of different businesses. 

So far, there’s no details on what Amazon’s service might look like — whether it would offer the same level of service as you’d get going directly through Verizon, T-Mobile or AT&T. Specifically, carriers tend to offer more data at 5G speeds depending on what plan its users choose; there are also a ton of perks that carriers tend to include these days like Netflix from T-Moble or Apple Music or Disney+ on Verizon. 

But it’s not hard to imagine that a lot of customers would trade some of those perks or even less high-speed data to get mobile service for free. That’s assuming they’re OK tying yet another part of their digital lives to Amazon — but if you’re already hooked on Prime, this could make for a compelling new part of Amazon’s subscription plan. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/amazon-is-reportedly-trying-to-offer-prime-subscribers-free-cell-phone-service-140026387.html?src=rss 

The idea of solar energy being transmitted from space is not a new one. In 1968, a NASA engineer named Peter Glaser produced the first concept design for a solar-powered satellite. But only now, 55 years later, does it appear scientists have actually carried out a successful experiment. A team of researchers from Caltech announced on Thursday that their space-borne prototype, called the Space Solar Power Demonstrator (SSPD-1), had collected sunlight, converted it into electricity and beamed it to microwave receivers installed on a rooftop on Caltech’s Pasadena campus. The experiment also proves that the setup, which launched on January 3, is capable of surviving the trip to space, along with the harsh environment of space itself. 

“To the best of our knowledge, no one has ever demonstrated wireless energy transfer in space even with expensive rigid structures. We are doing it with flexible lightweight structures and with our own integrated circuits. This is a first,” said Ali Hajimiri, professor of electrical engineering and medical engineering and co-director of Caltech’s Space Solar Power Project (SSPP), in a press release published on Thursday. 

The experiment — known in full as Microwave Array for Power-transfer Low-orbit Experiment (or MAPLE for short) — is one of three research projects being carried out aboard the SSPD-1. The effort involved two separate receiver arrays and lightweight microwave transmitters with custom chips, according to Caltech. In its press release, the team added that the transmission setup was designed to minimize the amount of fuel needed to send them to space, and that the design also needed to be flexible enough so that the transmitters could be folded up onto a rocket.

Space-based solar power has long been something of a holy grail in the scientific community. Although expensive in its current form, the technology carries the promise of potentially unlimited renewable energy, with solar panels in space able to collect sunlight regardless of the time of day. The use of microwaves to transmit power would also mean that cloud cover wouldn’t pose an interference, as Nikkeinotes.

Caltech’s Space Solar Power Project (SSSP) is hardly the only team that has been attempting to make space-based solar power a reality. Late last month, a few days before Caltech’s announcement, Japan’s space agency, JAXA, announced a public-private partnership that aims to send solar power from space by 2025. The leader of that project, a Kyoto University professor, has been working on space-based solar power since 2009. Japan also had a breakthrough of its own nearly a decade ago in 2015, when JAXA scientists transmitted 1.8 kilowatts of power — about enough energy to power an electric kettle — more than 50 meters to a wireless receiver. 

The Space Solar Power Project was founded back in 2011. In addition to MAPLE, the SSPD-1 is being used to assess what types of cells are the most effective in surviving the conditions of space. The third experiment is known as DOLCE (Deployable on-Orbit ultraLight Composite Experiment), a structure measuring six-by-six feet that “demonstrates the architecture, packaging scheme, and deployment mechanisms of the modular spacecraft,” according to Caltech. It has not yet been deployed.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/space-based-solar-power-first-successful-experiment-caltech-000046036.html?src=rss 

Nintendo is launching a sequel to 1-2 Switch, its party title that features a robust collection of mini-games, on June 30th. It’s called Everybody 1-2-Switch!, because you don’t even need to use Joy-Cons to participate in some of its games — you can join in, as long as you’re using a compatible smartphone. The original 1-2 Switch launched with 28 mini-games meant to get people playing and to liven up get-togethers. Some of them were odd, such as the game where you have to get a crying baby to sleep, but some were oddly fun. There’s a mini-game where you have to pretend to be sashaying down the runway like a supermodel, and another where you have to milk a cow. 

According to a report by Fanbyte last year, Nintendo has been working on the sequel for quite some time. However, testing groups reportedly excoriated the game, and families with kids, which are Nintendo’s prime reason for enabling matches with more than two participants, apparently found the mini-games boring. People were calling the sequel “Horseshit,” the publication wrote, because the host is a person wearing a horse mask. Was Nintendo able to fix its issues and create mini-games entertaining enough to change the testers’ minds? It’s not quite clear. In fact, the official product page for Everybody 1-2-Switch! is pretty bare and mostly just mentions the game’s multi-player capability. It also says that the title will “feature everything from balloons to aliens.” 

The title will set you back $30 when it arrives. That’s much less than its predecessor’s $50 launch price, and, at this point, your guess is as good as ours on whether that’s a good sign or a bad sign. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/nintendos-1-2-switch-party-game-is-getting-a-sequel-204206474.html?src=rss