Talk to any fast food aficionado about their favorite hamburger and they'll likely name Shake Shack or In-N-Out Burger at the top of their list. So during a trip to Las Vegas, one of the few cities where you can find both of the burger chains, we decided to try a side-by-side comparison to see which burger triumphed.
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Ask yourself: why do you like technology?
Is it purely a utilitarian, transactional relationship where you are master and it is servant?
Or is there some deeper, subconscious appeal that keeps you coming back?
What is the emotional draw of a carbon fiber lattice?
Why does a precisely handcrafted instrument feel so precious?
My answer: we value technology, because technology is an expression of humanity.
Technology is the fruit of human ingenuity.
Photography by James Bareham
Machines in the front, hominids in the back.
The promise of Amazon’s new futuristic convenience store is no line, no wait and, frankly, little to no human interaction. But for now, the machines still need some help from our species.
Recode has learned that Amazon has staff on call behind the scenes to assist the computer vision system that is supposed to detect which items a shopper pulls off a shelf and carries out of the store.
An Amazon spokesperson confirmed the setup and said that Amazon staff is asked to help out when the system used in the new Amazon Go store can’t make a determination.
“[W]hen the machine vision system isn’t sure, it asks a human for confirmation,” she said. “It happens a small fraction of the time.”
The spokesperson said that the review work is being done “in house” and not through Mechanical Turk, the Amazon-owned website that pays out pennies per item for tasks similar to this one. She did not immediately provide answers to several follow-up questions, including queries about the frequency of the human intervention, who exactly is doing the work and whether they are reviewing still images, video footage or something else.
Amazon announced its first Amazon Go store last month in Seattle, though it is currently only open to company employees. The store’s technology allows customers to take items like sandwiches and drinks from shelves and leave without checking out; items are charged to the payment card a customer has on file with Amazon. The company has dubbed its system “Just Walk Out Technology.”
While Amazon wouldn’t describe it this way, customers are essentially being tracked by cameras inside, which help identify which products are removed and by whom. An Amazon patent application unearthed by Recode in 2015 suggested that such a store may also include microphones to locate someone and track their movements. (Update: A spokeswoman said the store does not contain microphones.) The company has said that sensors also play a role.
It is not unusual for humans to help train computer vision algorithms, and the Amazon spokeswoman said fewer manual reviews will be necessary over time as the technology gets smarter.
But knowing there are people working behind the scenes does makes Amazon’s announcement video seem a little less picture-perfect.
T-Mobile US CEO John Legere wrapped his 2017 CES presentation Thursday with a round of predictions, complete with crystal ball.
His predictions for the year include Google entering the wireless industry to compete with the big four carriers — Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint — and Verizon considering a merger with cable giant Comcast.
Here's what Legere is betting is on the horizon.
Legere thinks big cable companies like Comcast Cable and Charter Communications will get into the industry through mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) deals — an MVNO provides to customers the wireless service it buys in bulk from the big four carriers.
Legere promised that if this is the case, T-Mobile won't participate in any of these deals, and that by CES 2018 Big Cable will have realized its moves were losses and be in "full retreat."
"The future is mobile," Legere said, explaining that it only makes sense a massive tech company like Facebook, Amazon, or, most likely, Google, will join the fray to take on the big four. "We'll clean their clocks, too," Legere added.
"TV isn't dead," Legere said. It's just being streamed across devices. Legere is betting that more than half of all television shows will be viewed on mobile by the end of the year.
Legere thinks the satellite service provider missed its window to enter the wireless industry and will cease to be a standalone company. "Dealer, next hand of cards, please," Legere said. "Thanks for playing, Charlie!"
Legere said he is convinced T-Mobile will beat AT&T and Verizon in offering customers Gigabit LTE service — think of it as a step above current 4G LTE but not quite the next big leap: 5G.
Legere proclaimed that his "Slow Cooker Sunday" Facebook Live segments, where he prepares a Sunday dinner in his pressure cooker ("Most of them suck!" he said) will take on channels like MTV, Comedy Central, and the Food Network, and go from around 500,000 to 1 million viewers.
To be clear, a view on Facebook counts as three seconds or more, and some T-Mobile sponsored videos surpass 1 million views on Facebook already. Legere acknowledged this one was goofy, but suggested his carrier's impressive social influence would grow stronger.
There will be a CEO shuffle, where the CEOs of three of the four major wireless carriers will be replaced, Legere said, suggesting, without explicitly saying, he's not going to be one of them. "I'll leave it at that!" Legere said.
Legere has criticized Verizon's decisions to buy AOL and Yahoo, and thinks that Verizon will consider another choice he sees as disastrous: merging with Comcast. "The future looks a little rough for these two megacorps as their legacy businesses erode," he said, adding that it would make both of their respective services even worse for their customers. The resulting fused company would be "the ultimate evil corporation of all time."
In a Q&A following his predictions, Legere told Verge reporter Chris Welch that under the Trump administration and new FCC leadership, a merger with Japanese wireless provider SoftBank through its majority ownership in Sprint may be a possibility once again.
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NOW WATCH: MICHAEL LEWIS: The biggest way Wall Street culture has changed since 'Liar's Poker'
By The Associated Press
T-Mobile said unlimited plans will be the only option for new customers even though they are more expensive than some of its old, limited plans.
The company had said in August that it was phasing out its other plans in favor of unlimited. On Thursday, T-Mobile said those limited plans won’t be sold anymore starting Jan. 22. Existing customers can keep their current plans.
While some existing customers could switch to the $70-a-month unlimited plan and save money, others would pay more, according to prices on T-Mobile’s website.
Most customers who just pay for one or two lines or who have a lower-data plan — two gigabytes per line — would save money by sticking to what they have. For example, a family of four getting two gigabytes per line was paying $100 a month; with the unlimited plan, that costs $160.
T-Mobile is still trying to lure users who don’t use much data by offering them a $10 credit if they use two gigabytes or less per line. A smaller rival, Google’s “Project Fi,” already credits customers for data they don’t use.
And T-Mobile’s unlimited plan isn’t exactly unlimited. If the network is busy, T-Mobile may slow speeds on customers that used more than 28 gigabytes.
T-Mobile also said that wireless bills will no longer come with taxes and fees on top of advertised prices. T-Mobile said it isn’t raising prices to factor in the fees.
T-Mobile announced the new policies at the CES gadget show in Las Vegas. The show runs through Sunday.
A year ago, Ford teased a possible integration with the Amazon Echo smart home device, so car owners could turn on their home lights or browse their music libraries from the comfort of their Fusions or F-150s. Or they can switch it up and ask Alexa to start their car from inside their homes. Now the integration between Ford and Amazon is official and will be rolling out in the weeks to come, the companies announced at CES today.
Ford claims it will be the first automaker to offer real-world integration with Amazon’s popular smart home device. Other car companies have also working to get Alexa in their vehicles, but it looks like Ford may have won the sprint to get there first.
As soon as its available, Ford owners will...
It's 2017, and the iPhone 7 still has no headphone jack. In the intervening months, we've seen a variety of solutions from companies big and small to restore the missing jack, from dongles to battery cases that include a 3.5mm headphone port.
Now, Incipio, one of the biggest case manufacturers in the world, is getting in on the game at CES 2017 with its new OX case, which brings back the ability to listen to music and charge your phone at the same time. The OX case looks similar to most plastic iPhone 7 cases, but an added protrusion on the bottom similar to Apple's official battery pack provides space for the extra ports. But instead of adding extra battery life, the OX offers a 3.5mm jack for music, along with a Lightning port for...
The dream of a Linux computer for normal humans is relatively dead. Sure, Google put Linux in billions of hands and homes with Android and Chrome OS, but neither OS is very much like the desktop Linux flavors well-meaning open-source developers have been crafting for decades.
A company called Endless has marked a third route, a stripped-down Linux operating system without many of the complications and difficulties (and features) of a typical Linux distro, but more apps and offline capabilities than Chrome OS. The OS is available for free download, but it also ships on the quirky Endless Mini and Endless One desktops Endless sells.
Now Endless is making a push for the US market with the new (and less quirky) Mission Mini...
We first saw the URB-E electric vehicle three years ago, when the company debuted a prototype at CES 2014. We got a chance to take the first production model for a spin in December of 2015, and came away impressed. Today the company is unveiling four new units and a range of accessories that extend its capabilities beyond simple transportation.
The most interesting of these new vehicles is the URB-E Sport. It costs $899, including shipping, which means its about 40 percent cheaper than the model we reviewed, which retailed for $1,500. The URB-E sport is also 15 percent lighter, weighing in at 30 pounds instead of 35. It has given up a little range and speed, dropping to 16 miles of range on a single charge, and a top speed of 14 miles...
Amazon isn’t at CES in any formal capacity, but once again, it seems to be everywhere thanks to Alexa. Since opening up its voice assistant to other companies’ products, we’ve seen it put in all types of gadgets and gain some strange integrations. And at CES this week, the continuation of that is one of the biggest trends we’ve seen.
Here are the highlights:
These products include a microphone and speakers, so you can talk directly to them to interact with Alexa — no Echo required.
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission is scheduled to announce Wednesday a "prize competition" for a tool that can be used against security vulnerabilities in internet of things systems.
The prize pot is up to $25,000, with $3,000 available for each honorable mention. The winners will be announced in July. The announcement is scheduled to be published Wednesday in the Federal Register.
The tool, at a minimum, will "help protect consumers from security vulnerabilities caused by out-of-date software," said the FTC.
The government's call for help cites the use of internet-enabled cameras as a platform for a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack last October. Weak default passwords were blamed.
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Bitcoin is going bananas.
The cryptocurrency was 10.1% higher at $1,127.48 per coin just after noon in New York on Wednesday, bringing its 2017 gain to 17.8%.
On its first trading day of the new year, bitcoin crossed above the $1,000 mark for the first time since 2013.
Bitcoin is up 95% since the beginning of September, and it gained 123% in 2016, making it the top performing currency for the second year in a row.
Bitcoin's gains have been buoyed by renewed interest from China, where money is rushing out of the country as its currency, the yuan, continues to weaken. China's foreign-exchange reserves shrank by about 8% in 2016 to $3.05 trillion as of November. The outflows have pushed the yuan to its weakest levels against the dollar since 2008.
According to a recent Business Insider Intelligence briefing, citing data from Cryptocompare: "In the first 24 hours of the new year, over 5 million bitcoins were bought in Chinese yuan, equating to $3.8 billion. In contrast, just 53,000 bitcoins were bought in US dollars."
The situation is unlikely to improve anytime soon unless China takes action to stop the bleeding amid the US Federal Reserve ratcheting up its 2017 interest-rate hike expectations to three from two. If those rate hikes happen, an even weaker yuan is most likely in the cards, creating an even more beneficial scenario for bitcoin.
SEE ALSO: China is behind the latest bitcoin craze
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NOW WATCH: Watch Yellen explain why the Federal Reserve decides to raise rates
In a vote along party lines, House Republicans approved new rules last night that impose fines for live-streaming from the floor of the House, after lawmakers used apps like Periscope as a form of protest earlier this year.
Offenders can be fined $2,500
Lawmakers can now be fined $500 for a first offense and as much as $2,500 for subsequent offenses under the new rules, which also include fines for still photography. Politico reports that the rules were slightly tweaked from an earlier form to include an appeal process.
Democrats staged a sit-in protest at the House in June after lawmakers failed to vote on gun control legislation. As the House left for recess, cameras were shut down, but Democrats — and C-SPAN — turned to live-streaming...
Tony Shakib is one of several leaders who left following Cisco’s latest engineering shuffle.
Apple's most vocal critics at the moment tend to be professional Mac users — those who edit videos, program, and do other heavy-duty tasks on their Macs.
Some of these users — a loud contingent — are complaining that they're essentially being forced to buy the Mac Pro, a computer that hasn't been updated since 2013, because it's the only Apple desktop that fits their needs.
One recent example: Chris Adamson, who writes books and guides on how to write apps for Apple devices. He wrote a blog post on Tuesday, titled "Capitulation," discussing his decision to pay thousands of dollars for the thousand-day-old Mac Pro.
And Apple defenders like John Gruber think Adamson made a reasonable decision.
In 2013, Apple launched a high-end, $3,000 Mac Pro. It replaced an older tower model to which users could add more RAM, newer video cards, and better components. The 2013 Mac Pro turned heads with a sleek, curvy design, but the good looks came at the expense of customization — unlike earlier models, the 2013 Mac Pro does not allow users to upgrade the system by swapping in newer components, other than extra memory.
To make matter worse, Apple hasn't updated the model since 2013, leaving Mac Pro users in a tough spot.
They need the expensive "pro" model for performance, but the only version of the machine that Apple currently offers is running 4-year-old chips.
"I think my needs, for development and especially for video work (Motion and Wirecast, mainly) are best served by the Mac Pro. Even the pathetic, 3-year-old Mac Pro, because what I want is lots of cores, silent operation, and expandability of RAM and storage, something the iMac and MacBook Pro can't offer.
"I'd been catching up financially for a while, and finally had a $4,000-$5,000 budget to work with. What made finally pull the trigger, ironically, was [Apple CEO] Tim Cook's ham-fisted, half-assed claim that desktop Macs remain strategically important to Apple."
He's not the only computing professional suddenly faced with the undesirable choice of purchasing an essentially obsolete desktop or an Apple all-in-one that doesn't meet their needs.
When Apple launched the Mac Pro in 2013, Apple's head of marketing, Phil Schiller, famously introduced the computer with the line "can't innovate anymore, my ass."
But since then, the model, lovingly nicknamed the "Trash Can," has not received a single revision — even just to update the chips inside it to keep it current.
"'What the hell happened with the Mac Pro?' is the most interesting question about Apple today," Gruber wrote on Tuesday in response to a different Apple fan's complaint.
Gruber, one of the most tapped-in Apple bloggers, writes about the Mac Pro:
"Something clearly went way wrong with this product. I'm not convinced the basic idea for the design is unsound — the idea is that expansion would come in the form of external peripherals, rather than things you install inside the box. I still think that's probably the future of 'expandable' computing.
"If Apple had updated the Mac Pro on a roughly annual basis, we wouldn't be calling this a disaster. I'm sure there would still be people who would wish that Apple had stuck with the traditional tower form factor, but we wouldn't all be saying 'What the f---?'"
According to Gruber, Apple seems poised to redesign the pro-level computer because it hasn't updated it and because the price is the same as it was in 2013 — starting at $3,000 — suggesting Apple hasn't yet abandoned the line.
But regardless, Apple's strategy is putting pro users in a tough spot.
"Whatever the explanation is, this situation is an unmitigated disaster," Gruber wrote.
The Mac Pro is one of Apple's lowest-volume products, but it remains strategically important, especially for the armies of Apple developers who want professional workstations to develop apps for iPhones and iPads. Apple requires software for its smartphones to be built on its laptops and desktops.
The Mac Pro is assembled in Texas, a decision that was made as a way to score political points. But Bloomberg reported in December that discussions inside Apple about the next-generation Mac Pro included some employees suggesting moving production back to Asia.
Regardless of what Apple does with its pro lineup — some suggest Cook's recent leaked comments mean the new highest-end Mac is the iMac — some of Apple's longest and most dedicated evangelists are becoming unhappy.
Those evangelists are likely to slowly simmer until Apple launches new Mac desktops. What Apple eventually launches will determine whether their anger boils over.
SEE ALSO: Apple's newest MacBook Pro is the first MacBook not recommended by Consumer Reports
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I don't know what this thing actually is. I mean, you plug it into your TV maybe and then... something happens. What I'd really like to do is share a few choice quotes from Klaxoon's bizarre press release for its new Loupe product, and you can draw your own conclusions.
What is it?
Loupe, a tool to entertain collective intelligence.
What does it do?
An intuitive connected device that turns any screen into a new occasion to learn and share.
But, like, how?
With the Loupe, teams find the way to stay in the loop.
What do you mean?
The Future of Work, today.
Seriously what is happening here?
Instantly participate in brainstorming, word clouds, surveys, etc.
And this is a good thing to do?
Klaxoon maximizes and magnifies...
As consumers watch another wave of home IoT devices emerge from CES this week, they’ll still be waiting for one technology that can make all those products work together.
The ZigBee Alliance, a group of more than 400 companies that make things with the ZigBee wireless protocol, made a bid to provide that unifying technology right before the annual consumer electronics gathering kicks off.
On Tuesday, ZigBee announced Dotdot, which it calls a universal language for IoT. Even though ZigBee is best known as an open wireless communications protocol used in many home IoT products, Dotdot is intended for use with any wireless technology. It defines things like how devices tell each other what they are and what they can do, which is important for making different objects around a home do things together.
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Nothing’s better than a warm shower to start your morning or end the day (your life, you do you) but many times we find ourselves sitting cold in the bathroom while waiting for the water to heat up. Moen’s new smart shower system wants to fix this by adding the ability to remotely start the shower from a smartphone so you can pre-heat the water temperature.
The U shower system lets you connect up to four water outlets (regular shower head, body spray, tub faucet, or overhead rain shower) and comes with a digital control panel. It connects to an app via Wi-Fi and lets you program up to 12 settings, such as a cold shower for post-workouts or a warm one for wintry nights. You can get really specific, too: the water temperature can be set...
To represent the New Year and the sharpened focus companies should have on technology, CIO Dive gathered seven trends certain to impact enterprise technology in 2017.
A tragic consequence of global warming is evident in the Great Barrier Reef where much of its beautiful coral is dying off. Scientists have wondered how exactly coral bleaching happens. One researcher, Brett Lewis of Queensland University of Technology was able to capture coral bleaching in unprecedented detail and published what the results in Coral Reefs. The resulting time-lapse video is an amazing reminder of how pressing this issue is.
You can watch more of Lewis's team's work on this YouTube channel.
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Whirlpool is showcasing new washers, dryers, refrigerators, and ovens at CES this week, and their most interesting feature is the ability to be controlled by Amazon’s Alexa.
Through the Echo, Echo Dot, or other Alexa-enabled devices, owners will be able to control some of the core functions of these new appliances. The most useful commands are for Whirlpool’s ovens, which will let owners set cooking times and temperatures by voice and ask for updates on how much time is remaining.
Whirlpool’s new washers and dryers will also be able to provide info on time remaining through Alexa, as well as let owners enable a quiet mode. Its fridges will also let you quickly adjust temperatures, in case that’s a thing you enjoy doing on a regular...
Legal weed is big business.
The North American marijuana market posted $6.7 billion in revenue in 2016, up 30% from the year before, according to a new report from Arcview Market Research, a leading publisher of cannabis market research.
The so-called green rush shows no sign of slowing down.
Arcview projects sales will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 25% through 2021, when the North American market is expected to top $20.2 billion.
"The only consumer industry categories I've seen reach $5 billion in annual spending and then post anything like 25% compound annual growth in the next five years are cable television (19%) in the 1990s and the broadband internet (29%) in the 2000s," Tom Adams, editor in chief of Arcview Market Research, said in a statement.
Adams, who recently joined Arcview after a long stint as a market researcher, says the booming cannabis industry reminds him of a time when dial-up internet gave way to broadband, which delivered faster, "always on" internet access.
The number of Americans with broadband internet access jumped from 3% in 2000 — when about half of US adults were online — to 70% in 2013, according to the Pew Research Center.
"What broadband changed for the internet was a kind of remarkable parallel to legalization for cannabis," Adams told Business Insider. "We saw what had been a $5 billion industry — like this one — in North America take off at that point on new growth spurts."
In the case of the cannabis boom, Arcview CEO Troy Dayton credits legalization with reeling in the stigma against the plant and bringing new users to the market.
In Colorado, Washington, and Oregon, where recreational use was legal before 2016, consumer spending on cannabis was up 62% between 2015 and September 2016, according to Arcview.
2016 was a big year for legalizing weed. Seven US states legalized cannabis in some form on Election Day. California, the sixth-largest economy in the world, became the biggest domino to fall with the passage of Proposition 64. Much of the West Coast is now a legal enclave for recreational pot.
Dayton says the sudden popularity of alternative ingestion methods — such as weed-laced topicals, sprays, and edibles — also fueled growth. Consumers who would never smoke a joint are finding relief in other products, which offer a wide array of tastes, strengths, and experiences.
"It's one of the major reasons that people are going to leave the underground market to go to the aboveground market. It's about variety," Dayton told Business Insider. "You just can't get these products on the underground market."
While the green business could achieve 25% growth year-over-year through 2021 as new recreational markets come online, Adams says legal weed is never going to be as big as the multibillion-dollar internet access market. But their sustained growth rates are comparable.
Adams and Dayton predict a great number of countries will legalize pot in the next 10 to 15 years.
"So when you look at the global market, the world has never seen something that will have such consistent growth over such a long period of time as the cannabis industry," Dayton said.
SEE ALSO: Marijuana can be covered in pesticides, fungi, and mold — even if it's legal
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NOW WATCH: This is how long drugs actually stay in your system
An add-on adapter on Kickstarter is promising to fix the new MacBook's biggest problem.
Apple's lastest MacBook Pro only has one kind of port, which uses the new USB-C connector, as opposed to older MacBook Pros, which had options to plug in HDMI cables, SD cards, and other useful attachments.
Now companies are selling adapters that add back all the ports that some Apple users think the company should've included in the first place. Some are really popular — a Kickstarter advertising a MacBook Pro adapter has sold over 11,000 of its adapter, raising nearly $1,000,000. HyperDrive backers will receive their dongle in March, starting at $69.
Here it is:
Hyperdrive isn't the only company making an adapter or dock to add ports back to the MacBook Pro — people who received a new Apple laptop for the holidays have several various USB-C dock options, some as inexpensive as $25 and some selling for over $200.
But HyperDrive has some nice touches that could make it a good choice — it uses both USB-C ports for more bandwidth, includes an HDMI port to make it easy to hook your laptop up to a TV, and uses an aluminum finish that matches your new MacBook.
The premium laptop accessory even fits in your pocket:
And it seems like 1000s of new MacBook owners believe it's a necessary accessory.
SEE ALSO: Apple's newest MacBook Pro is the first MacBook not recommended by Consumer Reports
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Asus announced the Chromebook Flip C302 at CES today, and like most major laptops this year, it’s going all in on USB-C, completely removing USB 3.0 ports in favor of the newer standard. Asus also is highlighting the Flip C302’s 360-degree hinge, allowing the Chromebook to convert over to a tablet form factor.
Hardware wise, the specs more or less match up with the leak from last week. The Chromebook Flip C302 comes with a 12.5-inch 1080p display, a sixth-generation Intel Core m3 processor, 128GB of storage, and 4GB of RAM (upgradable to 8GB). And in addition to the two USB-C ports, there’s also a 3.5mm headphone jack and a microSD card reader.
On the pricier side of the Chromebook spectrum
The Chromebook Flip C302 is available today...
Lenovo just showed us its first VR headset, a prototype device that works with Microsoft’s Windows Holographic platform. Next to other tethered PC headsets like the Oculus Rift or the HTC Vive, it’s noticeably smaller and lighter — Lenovo says it’s targeting around 350g for the final product’s weight versus the Vive’s 555g. The design is also pretty comfortable, taking heavy inspiration from PlayStation VR’s approach and suspending the lenses in front of the user’s eyes rather than securing them in place with a strap.
The headset uses two 1440 x 1440 OLED panels for its display, making it higher resolution than both the Rift and the Vive. Unfortunately the prototype isn’t functional just yet, so we can’t comment on how this works out in...
Every company tries to be the first with the biggest CES announcement, but Asus has been preempted today by hardware partner Qualcomm, which has revealed the upcoming ZenFone AR smartphone with Google Tango support. At the same, prolific leaker @evleaks has provided an image of both the front and back of the new phone.
Spotted by GSM Arena and others, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Blog today disclosed the news about the Asus ZenFone AR, which will follow in the footsteps of the Lenovo Phab 2 Pro, the first phone with Google Tango. Tango is a souped-up version of augmented reality from Google that holds a lot of promise, but still needs work.
The ZenFone AR will be powered by a Snapdragon 821 processor, same class of chip as in the Google Pixel...
From off-the-grid pods to tiny houses that can be taken apart move with their owners, innovative home design blossomed in 2016.
Although there was no shortage of out-there ideas, a few trends took shape. Architects emphasized designs that made for low-cost and fast construction, minimalist aesthetics, increased mobility, and the use of more renewable power sources.
Check out our favorites below.
SEE ALSO: This 33-foot-long tiny home with a chandelier costs $150,000
In October 2016, the Estonia-based design firm Kodasema unveiled its design for the Koda house. The 269-square-foot cube can be assembled by a construction crew in less than seven hours and disassembled in four hours.
150 Kodas will become available to order online in Estonia starting in late 2017, with prices likely starting at €120,000 (about $132,500). The company might later expand sales internationally if it can ramp up production, Kodasema's cofounder, Taavi Jakobson, told Business Insider.
Students at Rural Studio, Auburn University's architectural design program, built two cottages with raw materials that cost just $14,000 each in early 2016. Located at Serenbe, a 500-person community in northwestern Georgia, the 500-square-foot homes are used to house resident artists.
The Rural Studio team calls them the "20K Homes," and hopes they can become a model for building houses that are both beautiful and affordable.
Designed by Netherlands-based Nice Visions, the Ecocapsule features a roof with solar cells and a mini wind turbine. It also has a rechargeable battery that can last at least four days if the off-the-grid sources fail.
In spring 2016, the company started production on 50 units, which cost €79,900 ($83,480) and can be customized to each owner’s requirements. The second generation of Ecocapsules will be available for a lower price in 2017.
Tomorrow, Amazon is holding its first-ever “Digital Day,” a 24-hour period of steep markdowns on apps, games, music, TV shows, movies, ebooks, comics, and other digital content. The company has set up a teaser page revealing some of what will be on sale, including temporary savings on a subscription to Amazon’s Spotify competitor, Amazon Music Unlimited.
“Enjoy up to 80 percent off hundreds of video game titles, 50 percent off on top movies and TV shows, 75 percent off on hundreds of digital comics, and other great deals on popular content for your devices,” the page reads. In total, Amazon is promising savings on “thousands” of digital items.
Other to-be-discounted selections include Disney Crossy Road, H&R Block tax software, The Lego...
