Samsung Galaxy S6 Review: Not The Next Big Thing, Just a Fantastic Phone

Remember the good old Samsung Galaxy S III? It was a fantastic little trooper, but we’ve come a long way since plastic phones were king. iPhones and Nexii and Motorolas and HTCs have been pushing the limits of style and substance, and now the Galaxy S6 is finally, finally catching up with them. It’s stylish, it’s solid. It’s the whole package.

What Is It?

Samsung’s new non-giant flagship phone. A drastic glass and metal redesign of the plastic handset that became one of the most ubiquitous Android phones out there. A 5.1-inch stunner with a 577 PPI, 2560 x 1440 AMOLED screen, Samsung’s own Exynos 7420 processor, a great 16MP rear-facing camera, two forms of wireless charging, a non-removable 2550 mAh battery, and no microSD expansion. A smartphone that looks a whole lot, even suspiciously, like an iPhone—way more than the lineage of plastic phones that triggered an avalanche of lawsuits. It’s uncannily familiar. It’s also a pretty fantastic phone.

Oh, and it’s a phone that comes in two variants, one with a curved screen. Read more about its counterpart, the Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge, right here .

Why Does It Matter?

Regardless of the Nexus phones and Moto X’s that nerds like me (and maybe you?) fawn over, Samsung is Android to lots of people. Next time you’re on a subway or a bus, just take a look around and you’ll see what I mean. Samsung reached this incredible ubiquity not (just) through snarky ads but by making cheap phones that weren’t total garbage. It’s a strategy that pretty much topped out with the band-aid-esque and pretty relatively underwhelming Galaxy S5. With the S6 though, Samsung’s offering something a bit more premium, and way more iPhoney.

If you’re a diehard Samsung fan, the Galaxy S6 might actually push you into the waiting arms of another brand. But if you’ve been waiting for Samsung to finally figure out how to build a premium smartphone, this could be the moment you hop aboard the TouchWiz train.

Design

Beautiful and cohesive in a way a Samsung phone has never been before. No more fake leather, dimpled Band-Aid plastic or fake metal edges—the Galaxy S6 is all glass and aluminum. Previous Samsung phones tried to look premium, but there were always telltale signs that the Korean manufacturer had cheaped out in one way or another. The S6 nails it.

It looks great from all angles. The glass back feels and looks classy, the buttons feel great, the metal trim is lovely. On the one hand the Galaxy S6 design is not particularly unique or exciting, but on the other much more important hand, absolutely nothing about it sucks.

And yes, it looks like an iPhone. A lot like an iPhone! Enough so that my fiancée and I have confused my white S6 for her white iPhone at least a half-dozen times. It’s only ever for a split second—after all, the S6 has a smaller button and different front facing speakers and a SAMSUNG logo—but with the same color and shape, the similarity is the first thing you’ll notice.

But Samsung isn’t (just) aping the iPhone’s style here; there are some considered differences that make it better. Yes, the Galaxy S6 has a unibody aluminum frame which means no removable batteries, but the glass back gives it a sort of old-school premium feel like the Nexus 4 or iPhone 4 / 4S. It feels pretty fantastic.

Around the sides, the S6 has a rounded metal rim that’s a little like the iPhone, but not entirely. Instead of being fully rounded, it actually plateaus a bit, which does wonders to make this thing easy to hold and settle into your hand. The iPhone 6’s full rounded edges make it feel like it could pop out of your hand like a bar of soap if you really gave it a death grip. And the S6 doesn’t suffer from that.

Still, that doesn’t necessarily mean you won’t drop it. That glass back can be pretty slippery! The second you try to hold the S6 in any sort of open-handed way—which is to say just letting it lay on your hand without exerting pressure on the sides—it’ll slowly slip until you (hopefully!) catch it on the protruding camera. That’s not the end of the world, but it can be annoying!

But as for shatters and scratches, I’ve seen none of either yet. I’ve kept the S6 in the same pocket as my keys (heresy! I know!) but all i’ve managed is cosmetic scratches on the home button. When I got a little more, ahem, deliberate, the Gorilla Glass 4 back withstood considerable pressure from my keys and the tip of my pocket knife unscathed. As for drops, it’s survived a handful of three-foot falls from hand to hardwood and tile floor, and more aggressive tests suggest it can take much more.

The S6’s screen is eye-poppingly good, but at ludicrous 577 pixels per inch (the iPhone 6 has 401, and the Note 4 has 518) it’s reaching the point where it mostly doesn’t matter. Yes, the screen is crispy as hell, but not like it’s soul-rendingly better than other phones that creep up on the same ~500 territory. The only point at which this starts to matter is if you strap this thing to your face. Gear VR, Samsung’s phone-based virtual reality headset that’s soon to be revamped for use with the S6 and Galaxy Edge, actually makes use of that extra resolution.

With its 5.1-inch screen but smallish top and bottom bezels, the S6 is not that much bigger than the iPhone 6. It falls right into what I personally (admittedly with largish man-hands) consider to be the sweet-spot for non-gigantic phone-size. It’s right in there with the HTC One M9 and the Nexus 5 and the new Moto X. This is Android’s new “small” and it’s pretty much what you’re stuck with unless you’re willing to do something drastic, like buy an old 2013 Moto X or hunt down a Sony Z3 Compact.

Using It

The Galaxy S6 is blisteringly fast. Switching between apps, scrolling through the multitasking queue, pulling down the notification shade, opening the camera, running games, I never once saw the slightest hitch in performance. There’s nothing wildly throw-your-hair-back about the speed; it’s not unbelievable or anything like that. Other recent flagship phones feel fast, too. But the S6 does everything you’d want it to as quickly as you could ask. And it does it consistently.

The S6 runs an Exynos processor—one of Samsung’s home-grown chips—instead of the Qualcomm’s new flagship Snapdragon 810, but it doesn’t suffer for it in the slightest. Apps launch with a snap, and even with Samsung’s historically bloated TouchWiz interface sitting on top of Android, swiping through homescreens, pulling down notification shades, and opening app drawers is quick and fluid.

To push the processor a little further, I loaded up old faithful Dead Trigger 2, which ran fantastically on the auto-detected “low” settings, and barely any worse once I manually jacked up the settings all the way to max. Similarly, GTA: San Andreas runs smoooooooth as hell, although I did see some super weird graphical glitches. So far, though, it’s the only place I’ve seen anything like that.

But all of this performance talk comes with a big ol’ asterisk. It’s great for now. Samsung’s TouchWiz interface has been getting less and less obtrusive—the newest version that runs atop Android’s latest Lollipop update is the most scaled back it’s ever been—but Samsung phones can get bad quickly. The Galaxy S5 we have banging around the office (still waiting for its fabled Lollipop update) is a shadow of its former self performance-wise, staggering under the weight of Samsung’s software plus new versions of Android. It’s impossible to predict if the S6 awaits a similar fate.

For now, though, the S6 a pleasure to use and it’s worth expressing one more time how not-terrible Samsung’s proprietary UI has gotten. In a streak of good decisions, Samsung has culled most of the extra bullshit options out of things like the camera. Once cluttered with useless toggles, it now looks simple, clean, with just the buttons you want and need. It’s practically indistinguishable from stock Android when you boot it up.

The quick notification buttons, those ones you use to toggle things like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth from the notification shade? TouchWiz gives you options to customize the ones you want, without slapping you in the face with like 50 superfluous buttons for “Golf mode” or whatever insanely extraneous bullshit it used to. All that, plus the material design ethos in Android Lollipop has bled over into TouchWiz and made it less ugly than ever. Samsung has (mostly) learned how to keep its bullshit out of your way.

And when it isn’t getting out of your way, it’s actually doing a good job of adding value. The Galaxy S6 can run apps in windows, and even run two different ones side by side, just like the Note 4, though admittedly it’s not quite as useful on a smaller screen and without a stylus. What is useful though is that a double tap of the home button will immediately bring up and open Samsung’s quick and snappy camera app, which makes the Galaxy S6 maybe the best split-second shooter I’ve ever used.

If you’re looking for a real down-and-dirty look at how the Galaxy S6 shapes up shot-for-shot against its toughest competition, you can check out our camera comparison. But that’s almost beside the point. The point is that it’s fucking fast, and in the end that’s all that really matters. The app launches fast, it focuses fast, and shoots fast in a way that makes every other phone I’ve used feel like something from the civil war. When the camera is this fast, little differences in color quality hardly matter when you catch a photo that you would have missed entirely.

Here’s a sampling of street photos from the Galaxy S6 (click the magnifying glass to enlarge):

Another special S6 feature that’s not in stock Android, the fingerprint scanner, is pretty good! Really! Samsung’s early fingerprint scanners were trash. The one in the Note 4 actually requires you to run your finger across the button like a laptop from 2008. This one is way better though. It’s a lot like Apple’s Touch ID—you just have to set your finger down, and there’s a fair bit of leeway as to the angle. It’s not quite as good as Apple’s, but it’s close! I’d say it works like a charm 9 out of 10 times, which is nothing to sneeze at.

Obviously, it works for unlocking your phone, but you can also use it to enter account passwords in your browser if you store the credentials ahead of time. It can be used to verify anything connected to your Samsung account—but only your Samsung account. That means you can your thumb to confirm purchases in the Samsung app store, but not the Google Play Store where you’ll actually be getting your apps. And while Samsung hasn’t spilled the deets on exactly how Samsung Pay will work just yet, you can bet it’ll also make use of that fingerprint-Samsung account tie-in.

Now I know you nerdy, replaceable-battery devotees out there are worried about the battery life since you can’t carry a spare for a Samsung phone anymore. Yes, the S6’s battery is built-in. Well, battery life is…fine. It’s fine! It could be better but it’s fine. In my use so far, With light to moderate use, I’ve been able to cruise into the witching hour (after taking the phone off the charger at 7am) with something like 15 to 20 percent battery left. Under more strenuous use—like the day I spent an hour making actual calls—it’s iffier; I hit the 20 percent mark around 10pm and had to carefully coast to the finish line.

But! There are a few mitigating factors here. The S6 has a quick charge feature—as most phones do these days—and with it I was able to boost myself up from zero to a sold 52 percent battery in 30 minutes. In addition to that, the S6 also supports wireless charging in a BIG way. As you may or may not know, there’s kind of a standards war going down with wireless charging, and there are currently two big flavors that most phones only support one of. But the S6 has both!

Like

The camera! God, is that super-fast camera great. The “double-click to open” shortcut on the home button is gonna get me a really god damn cute cat picture I just know it. It’s maybe the best feature on this whole phone.

The fingerprint scanner is damn good Not perfect, but best I’ve ever used on an Android phone, easy. Between this and the camera shortcut, Samsung’s doing a way better job justifying the existence of a physical button than Apple.

I haven’t mentioned it much here because I haven’t tried it for the S6, but Gear VR! Samsung’s Gear VR for the Note 4 is badass (if a little expensive) and Gear VR for the S6 is bound to be even better since it has a screen with a higher pixel density. Gear VR is only just getting off the ground, but it’s still the coolest phone accessory you could hope to buy.

Speaking of stuff that isn’t here yet, Samsung Pay—build on legitimately cool technology from a company called Loop—sounds cool. It doesn’t launch until the summer, but it seems like something that could be a decent Apple Pay analogue.

No Like

The glass back is slick but it’s also, well, slick. The way it can just sliiiiiiide down your hand is an ultra drag. (Except it doesn’t drag. Because it’s slick. I digress.) But, unlike my glass-backed Nexus 4 that I swear had an actual death wish, the Galaxy S6 has yet to take a header off of any tables or bathroom sinks of its own accord yet.

TouchWiz and all the other stuff that comes built into Samsung’s phones is still there. The modifications Samsung makes to the skeleton of Android is less heinous than ever but the stable of included and uninstallable apps is still enormous.

The battery life could be better. It’s adequate, but for every phone that’s all “oh wow, thin!” or “big battery but check out this pointlessly nuts screen!” I yearn for a phone that’s still nice-looking but packs some much needed battery-junk in its trunk.

Should You Buy It?

Yes. The Galaxy S6 is fantastic. With great performance, premium design (finally!), and a camera that just screams, it’s one of the best Android phones out there. It’s a solid buy for anyone looking for a premium, solid, not-ginormous Android device. And if you like the iPhone but for some reason cannot bring yourself to buy an iPhone, Samsung’s mostly got you covered.

But just because it’s fantastic doesn’t necessarily make it exciting. Unless you plan buy a Gear VR to go with it—or pretend you’ve got an iPhone for the LOLs—there’s nothing reatolly new or special here to show off to your friends. Honestly, I find it a little boring. It’s just a great phone, a phone with no huge downsides, which is pretty damn rare in the Android world. So yeah, the Samsung Galaxy S6 isn’t the Next Big Thing. It’s just the next phone you’ll wind up buying.

from Gizmodo http://ift.tt/1DpRFMo

Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge: A Quirk That Doesn't Really Work

Samsung’s Galaxy S6 is a fantastic smartphone. But maybe you find it boring. Maybe it’s disappointing that the new Android standard-bearer looks so much like an Apple product. If that’s the case, perhaps the Galaxy S6 Edge is more your speed.

The S6 Edge is the “whoa, that’s weird looking” variant to the more straight-laced Galaxy S6. You pay $100 more, and in return you get a curved phone. Though it’s the same size, same resolution, the screen just rolls right over the edge to meet a dramatically reduced profile.

Oh sure, we’ve seen curved phones before. Last year, LG debuted the G Flex, and Samsung the Note Edge, two different smartphone takes on the same idea—curves. But I’ve spent some quality time with the new S6 Edge, and I’m not so impressed. Where LG’s update to its banana-shaped smartphone experiment turned into something worth buying, the S6 Edge is only really worth it for a specific kind of person.

Before I rain a torrential downpour on your Edge parade, let me clear up some things first. There are tons and tons of things the S6 Edge gets very right. Eye-catching design, a better TouchWiz Android skin, and a stellar camera are just a few of them. But then again, so does the normal S6. And when it comes to the Edge half of the equation, it all feels pretty ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

I knew something didn’t feel right as soon as I picked up the phone. Because of the flat back and rounded screen, it’s almost like holding a normal smartphone—but backwards. In fact, when I flip the S6 Edge over, palm against screen, it feels so much better. After spending near a week with the S6 Edge, I almost forgot how bad it was until I picked up my fellow Gizmodean Eric Limer’s normal S6. I immediately regretted my edged fate.

But the Edge doesn’t exist for comfort. When Samsung introduced the Note Edge last fall, the always-on side display was sold as convenience, the ultimate productivity tool that kept all your most-needed apps only a swipe away. It also decluttered other apps like the camera by moving all the software controls to the edge, and Samsung even spoke of grand plans for an SDK, so app developers could tap into the potential of the Note’s new edge display.

Almost none of that shows up on the S6 Edge. Actually, the only way you can use the side screen is when the phone is completely off, and even then you have to summon the ticker with perhaps the most awkward gesture ever. It looks something like this:

I actively tried to use that ticker for a night time clock and to check hockey scores and what not, but it’s so frustrating and limited.

The only OK feature, exclusive to the S6 Edge, is where you can swipe from the edge of the screen to pull up a very iOS-like frosted glass window with quick access to your favorite contacts. That’s cool and everything, but there are apps that already do that but even better (like this one) and you don’t really need a curved edge to use it.

The only thing that’s actually unique to the Edge is when a friend calls—if you’ve assigned them to your favorite contacts—the edges will glow a certain color so you can see who’s calling, even if your phone is face down on a surface. If you’re busy, you can double tap on the heartrate sensor to send a pre-selected text. Neat, but a pretty limited use case. I had the feature active for a week and never used it once.

Reading on a dual-edged device is also a double-edged sword. (Yep, I went there.) For one, watching pages melt away when you swipe is strangely cool, but reading certain things, like comics for example, can distort the image along the edges of the screen. The angled glass also catches light in each bend, making the screen more annoyingly reflective in some cases than a flat screen would be.

On the plus side, my greatest fear about the S6 Edge didn’t come to pass. I figured that the S6 Edge would be an accidental touch nightmare—because how do you hold a phone like this without touching at least part of the screen? To my surprise, it really isn’t. There were a few times, when juggling the phone on the subway, that I’d hit something with my palm. But none of it was nearly enough for me drop to my knees and curse Khan.

When it comes down to it, I don’t quite understand why the Edge exists, and I don’t think Samsung does either. It really feels like Samsung made this crazy phone, asked itself “Okay, so, why did we make this?” and then created some half-baked software to help answer the question, when really saying “eh, it just looks cool” would have been enough.

The Edge does have one thing over your run-of-the-mill S6. It’s a conversation starter. That’s really the only thing you’re buying for $100—it’s cosmetics, not convenience. I guess that makes sense. Samsung’s Note has always been seen as the productive one, and the S series the pretty one. If the edges on the S6 Edge are just there to look good, that’s not too surprising.

A couple times over the past week, I pulled the S6 Edge out of my pocket in certain social situations and counted the seconds until someone said “Oooohh, what is that?” It never failed. The Edge looks great, and so far it doesn’t seem even a teeny bit worse than the S6 in terms of performance and battery life. The ergonomic downgrade, the lack of useful software, and $100 premium just doesn’t make sense for me, and I suspect most people will feel the same.

But if you want The Next Big Thing—just to show it off—well, that’s what the S6 Edge is for.

---

Contact the author at darren.orf@gizmodo.com.

from Gizmodo http://ift.tt/1C9yfED

Greece's air traffic radar needs a serious upgrade, controllers say

ATHENS, Greece — Greece's air traffic controllers' union is calling for an urgent upgrade of the country's air traffic radar system and for more staff to be hired to handle increasing number of tourist arrivals.

The country's air traffic control system was operating with diminishing staff and a main radar system dating from 1999 that has only been upgraded once, in 2008, union head Spyros Rolakis said Wednesday.

See also: The dirty, dangerous job that powers Greece

Rolakis insisted there was no compromise to flight safety, but said that in order for fewer staff to safely handle more flights with aging technology, flights would likely face delays. Read more...

More about Travel, Destinations, Greece, Air Travel, and Lifestyle



from Mashable http://ift.tt/1Hjw6Lf

'Discrimination is bad for business': 39 tech leaders call for LGBT protection

A number of tech leaders signed a joint statement on Wednesday calling on lawmakers to add non-discrimination protections for the LGBT community to existing civil rights laws.

The letter includes signatories such as Zynga CEO Mark Pincus, Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman, SalesForce CEO Marc Benioff, Square CEO Jack Dorsey, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo, AirBnB CEO Brian Chesky, eBay CEO John Donahoe, among others. It's a response to a range of bills signed in Indiana and Arkansas this week that critics say are "anti-gay."

See also: Boycott Indiana: Who's actually doing something to protest 'anti-gay' law Read more...

More about Lgbt, Gay Rights, Us World, and Politics



from Mashable http://ift.tt/1COOmMR

Duke University students react to noose found hanging on campus

School officials are investigating a noose found hanging on the Duke University campus in the early hours of Wednesday morning, an incident that comes amid rising tension at the university.

The noose, apparently made out of yellow tape, was found at the Bryan Center Plaza, an active student hub that houses many of the campus's fraternity and sorority communities as well as the Center for Multicultural Affairs

See also: A segregated past is still present in today's campus troubles

A noose was found early this morning hanging from a tree on the campus of @DukeUhttp://ift.tt/1xylh7I

— Shaun King (@ShaunKing) April 1, 2015 Read more...

More about College, Racism, Us World, Us, and Duke



from Mashable http://ift.tt/1Fibgfd

The Forgotten Offices That Influenced Apple, Facebook, and Google

Online, Apple, Facebook, and Google are competing to control the future of technology. Offline, they are competing to build the future of corporate architecture—small cities nestled in the Silicon Valley suburbs that are designed by some of the most famous architects alive today. It’s a space race. Literally.

These buildings are powerful marketing tools. They’re designed to reflect what makes each tech giant unique, and to reflect the work and mission of each. They’re more like branding than architecture—sprawling, glassy developments designed by carefully selected architects that seem closest aligned to each respective company’s identity. Apple has the elegant, stoic Sir Norman Foster. Google has the fun-loving it-boys Bjarke Ingels and Thomas Heatherwick. Facebook? Facebook has the cranky expressionist Frank Gehry.

But there’s no such thing as tabula rasa in architecture. Designers learn from their elders, and a bit like your smartphone, every building has a predecessor—including these ones. That’s not to say that these buildings aren’t original (they are). It’s that they’re drawing on an amazing, half-forgotten history of corporate office design that was spurred by IBM, Bell Labs, RAND Corporation, and many others—decades before the iPhone was a twinkle in Apple’s eye.

Apple’s Spaceship

When the British architect Norman Foster unveiled his vast, circular office design for Apple, there was a single word that kept coming up as the world worked to describe it: “spaceship.”

They weren’t wrong. This thin, glass-wrapped corridor, which curls into an infinite loop like a snake eating its own tail, feels like an extraterrestrial world. It’s isolated from the neighborhood around it by acres of trees and green space, as self-sufficient like a spacecraft would be. It’s oriented inward, towards its own lush garden full of apple orchards and olive trees. The New Yorker calls it “a private walled garden, costing an estimated five billion dollars.” It even has its own recycled water system.

It’s tempting to see the building like the iPod or iPhone: An object totally free of history and precedent that just fell out of the sky one day. In reality, Foster’s building on the ideas of a Finnish-American architect named Eero Saarinen, who in the 1960s and 70s designed some of the earliest and most important corporate campuses on the planet for clients like IBM and Bell Labs.

Bell Labs by MBisanz.

If you haven’t heard of these buildings, you’re not alone. They’re nestled in lesser-known suburbs of New York and New Jersey, where half a century ago, companies were developing the technology that made cellphones and laptops possible. For example in Holmdel, New Jersey, Saarinen designed an office for Bell’s R&D wing that became known as “the birthplace of the cellphone,” seen above.

In Yorktown, about 40 miles north of New York City, IBM hired Saarinen to build a lab that would express its extraordinary technology through architecture. And what he made tells us a lot about what Apple is going for with its new campus.

1961: Watson Research Center by Eero Saarinen. Image: Archman8. 2016: Apple HQ by Norman Foster.

In 1961, IBM commissioned Saarinen to build its Thomas J. Watson Research Center: A secure, relatively inaccessible place where the company could houses its research wing—which at that time was working on everything from supercomputers to theoretical physics.

The building Saarinen designed was “part university, part monastery, and part fortress,” as John Harwood writes in The Interface: IBM and the Transformation of Corporate Design. Its entire facade was curved, wrapping around an incomplete circle that was oriented towards the forest around its concave side.

Like Apple’s new office, which is almost hidden inside acres of trees and gardens, it was intentionally difficult to access. It “greets the arriving scientist with a nearly blank wall,” Harwood says. “Entrance is only possible by crossing over a ‘moat’—a sunken landscaped garden of crushed white limestone and grass mounds.”

The circular facade wasn’t just for show. It was a design feature intended spur collaboration between the scientists inside by giving them easy access to each others’ offices and labs. “The large curving hallway running along the building serves as a promenade in which IBM scientists and engineers converse and hold discussions at specifically designed alcoves that face out to the forest that lies beyond,” as the American Physical Society Sites puts it.

1961: IBM by the Library of Congress; 2016: Apple.

Foster and Apple explain the circular plan of their office the same way. “The concept of the building is collaboration and fluidity,” Apple’s CFO told Mercury News. “It’ll provide a very open-spaced system, so that at one point in the day you may be in offices on one side of the circle and find yourself on the other side later that day.’’

This isn’t actually the first time Foster has appropriated Saarinen’s circle language. “At that time, this was an extraordinary composition!,” writes Hardo Braun in Research And Technology Buildings. “Just how groundbreaking the scheme really was became apparent 40 years later when Sir Norman Foster adapted it for his McLaren Technology Center.” And now, in Cupertino, he’s finally completing the circle.

Google’s Canopies

So what about Google, the most recent to unveil is plans for a new campus?

Google actually chose two younger architects to collaborate on its plan: The Danish-born Bjarke Ingels, and the British designer Thomas Heatherwick. Together, they designed a series of lightweight, tensile structures that will blanket dozens of new offices which themselves can be moved and added to as time goes by.

Google’s new campus; Frei Otto model via Icon Eye.

Because we know less about the specifics of the design, it’s harder to compare it to one specific building or architect. The tensile canopies hearken back to the German architect Frei Otto, who in the 1970s pioneered the idea of cheap, lightweight structures that acted like giant tents to enclose outdoor spaces for human use.

Or you could look at an office on a rural patch of land just south of Lake Erie in Geauga County, Ohio, where in 1959 the American Society for Metals—or ASM International—built its world headquarters. In the 1950s, it decided to build itself a headquarters on a patch of land in Ohio, where an architect named John Terrence Kelly was recruited to build the office.

Google campus; AMS Headquarters via Wikimedia.

Like Ingels and Heatherwick, Kelly designed an elegant and simple building, but that was hardly the point—he also designed a huge geodesic dome to cap the structure, whose tens of thousands of distinct pieces create a half-indoor, half-outdoor space.

The dome itself is often credited to Buckminster Fuller, but it was really built by Synergetics, Inc, the engineering company that specialized in building the domes Fuller designed. It’s a similar idea to that of Google’s architects, who say in a release that “instead of constructing immoveable concrete buildings,” they’re creating “lightweight block-like structures which can be moved around easily as we invest in new product areas.”

Google HQ; AMS headquarters by Flickr user Jason/CC.

At AMS’ headquarters, engineers could debate and discuss the questions of their day in nature, around a “mineral garden” displaying all manner of metals and ore, protected by Fuller’s dome.

Google employees will have similar opportunities to commune with nature: “Large translucent canopies will cover each site, controlling the climate inside yet letting in light and air,” the company writes. “With trees, landscaping, cafes, and bike paths weaving through these structures, we aim to blur the distinction between our buildings and nature.”

Google; AMS headquarters by the Chesler Group, which renovated the structure.

Facebook’s Shed

On Monday Facebook unveiled its new Menlo Park office, designed by Frank Gehry of ”Architecture Is Shit” fame. Mark Zuckerberg calls the new space “the largest open plan office in the world.” It’s basically a half-mile-long shed, where Facebook’s teams work in the same room, topped by a roof deck.

Gehry himself insisted that it’s “not a grand design statement.” Zuck, he said, “wanted a space that was unassuming, matter-of-fact and cost effective. He did not want it overly designed .” The idea is to distance Facebook from the wildly expensive and precious architecture of its competitors—this is an office, not art, you guys.

Facebook’s new office by christauziet.

If it seems like Gehry and Zuckerberg are harping pretty hard on the “under-designed” thing, it’s because they are. They’re drawing on an idea that’s been kicking around since World War II. The theory is this: That the best work happens when you throw a bunch of people in a random box that means they have to interact and engage with each other to work.

You can find the same idea all over the place. Look all the way back to the RAND Corporation, which grew out of several World War II defense departments to lead the information revolution in the 1950s. RAND designed its own simple headquarters in Santa Monica based on the same theory.

The critic and architect Michael Kubo wrote a thesis and book about the building called Constructing The Cold War Environment: The Strategic Architecture of RAND. The book’s description says, by way of introduction, that the building was “designed (based on a memorandum written by a RAND mathematician) as a redundant matrix of corridors to maximize chance interactions among researchers and promote creative thinking.” Essentially, it’s randomness generated by math—engineered to engage human inhabitants, just like Facebook’s new office.

Facebook’s Menlo Park plan. RAND Corporation’s offices in Santa Monica, image via Utile Design.

Even the name of Facebook’s new office feels like it was plucked from the past: It’s called MPK20.

That’s anonymous and utilitarian way to name a very expensive office, and it’s a lot like Building 20—a legendarily crappy building (also known as the “plywood palace”) at MIT that ended up producing some of the most influential work of the 20th century. Building 20 was built during World War II, and it was supposed to be torn down after it ended. Out of necessity, the school started using it as a catch-all for everyone from Noam Chomsky to early pioneers of electronics until it was demolished in the 1990s.

Since then, Building 20 has become a kind of swan song amongst architects—recreating its mixture of randomness and necessity that seemed to result in such remarkable innovation.

Building 20 at MIT; Facebook’s new building by gk3.

Facebook and Gehry are reappropriating the idea in Menlo Park—but of course, they’re throwing some nice perks in, like art from legendary graffiti artists and a bonkers roof deck. But the bones of the idea are all there.

To do this, we designed the largest open floor plan in the world,” wrote Zuckerberg yesterday, “a single room that fits thousands of people. There are lots of small spaces where people can work together, and it’s easy for people to move around and collaborate with anyone here.”

---

In the end, each of these offices is the unique product of the company paying for it. But it’s fascinating to see how threads of each plan reach all the way back to the 1950s and 60s. There’s something kind of poetic about the fact that the first wave of buildings were built to house engineers and scientists whose work directly contributed to the creation of cellphones, computers, and the internet itself.

Now, their work—and the offices that housed it—is being put to use by a new generation of engineers and architects. Will Facebook, Apple, and Google have the same impact that IBM or Bell Labs did? Only time will tell.

---

Contact the author at kelsey@Gizmodo.com.

from Gizmodo http://ift.tt/1xzyHk6

How to Choose the Best Firmware to Supercharge Your Wi-Fi Router

Installing a custom firmware on your Wi-Fi router is like God Mode for your home network. You can see everything going on, boost your Wi-Fi signal, beef up your security, and even do advanced tricks like install your own VPN. Still, there are so many options available it can be tough to pick the right one. Here’s what you need to know.

Why Bother Anyway?

Installing your own custom firmware isn’t just an afternoon project for alpha-geeks looking for something cool to do—it actually makes your router better. Pick the right one and you can monitor your network in real time, make sure your roommate doesn’t slow down your Netflix binge by downloading music (but make sure your music downloads are nice and fast), make your network friendly to guests but unfriendly to intruders, and more. Open firmware gives you more control over your Wi-Fi performance, and most even let you crank up your Wi-Fi signal so that one corner of the house doesn’t have to be a dead zone anymore. You also get perks like the ability to run your own VPN at home (something you should definitely try), and are updated to fix security problems way more frequently than the manufacturer updates their stock software, both of which are huge for security.

Sure, it may take a little work, but if you’re up to the task, you’ll get a faster, more secure home network, and one you’re in total control over at all times. If your speed drops, you’ll know exactly why. You’ll be able to log and monitor your connection to make sure your service provider (like Comcast or Verizon) isn’t throttling you down because you dared to watch Netflix or fire up Spotify.

The Big Three: DD-WRT, OpenWRT, and Tomato

Some of the most popular open router firmwares are names you may have heard already, like DD-WRT, OpenWRT, and Tomato. We’ve shown you how to install DD-WRT on your router before, and shown you how to supercharge a router with Tomato, but here’s a quick refresher on how they differ:

• OpenWRT is the firmware from which many others were born. It’s completely open source and customizable, based on the Linux kernel, supports package management and has tons of extra add-ons and utilities. It’s not the easiest to use and install, but it supports the broadest base of hardware, from powerful and high-end home routers to pocket-sized travel routers and even enterprise hardware. It offers the most features of any open firmware, but it can often be tricky to configure. For example, OpenWRT supports just about any Linux device you can put on a network (like printers, webcams, and more), has a rich interface, real-time network monitoring, built-in dynamic DNS (so you can access your home computers from afar), IP tunneling for a built-in VPN, built-in Quality of Service (QoS) that lets you prioritize some things (like streaming or VoIP calls) over others (like torrents or other downloads, for example), and so on. You can check out supported devices here.


• DD-WRT is based on OpenWRT. DD-WRT carries a lot of OpenWRT’s features, like real-time monitoring, access control, QoS, and the ability to set up your own VPN, all packaged behind a more user-friendly interface. You also get extra features like Wake-On-LAN, so you can put computers on your home network to sleep, but wake them up when you need to connect to them from abroad. It’s easier to install than OpenWRT, and a bit easier to manage as well. It doesn’t support as many devices as OpenWRT, but it does support some of the most common home routers. You can search to see if your router is supported here.


• Tomato Firmware is most notable because it’s super lightweight, its user interface is intuitive, and it’s even easier than DD-WRT to install and use., Its biggest strength is its real-time bandwidth and connection monitoring, which mean you can see everything that happens on your network as it’s happening, which is great for troubleshooting connection problems or making sure there’s no one creeping on your network. It’s also lean, and unlike other firmwares here, it’s designed so you don’t have to reboot the router after every little change. Similarly, it makes increasing your Wi-Fi signal strength easier than a lot of the others here. Even advanced features like firewall configuration and access controls are easy to approach, even by new users. Tomato’s only downside is that it supports relatively few devices. You can see if your router is supported here.

For most people, one of these three will support the device you have and give you all of the features you could possibly need. Of the three, DD-WRT is the most well-supported on home routers, and it’s relatively easy to install and set up. Tomato is the most user-friendly, and certainly the most attractive of the three, but it supports the fewest devices. OpenWRT supports the most gear in general, including stuff only a network engineer would use, but its learning curve can be steep. It’s also the most moddable and tweakable, and a good option if you have hardware that’s not supported by anything else. Even so, they’re not your only options by a long shot.

Other options for Tweakers and Hackers: Router-Specific or Dev-Friendly Firmwares

While those three may be the most well known and most popular, there are tons of others to choose from as well. Here’s a rundown of all of your options:

• Gargoyle is also based on OpenWRT, specifically designed to be lightweight and for Broadcom and Atheros-based router hardware. It’s tiny, easy to install, has a great-looking web management page, and supports a number of travel and portable routers. It’s most notable for its ability to limit bandwidth to certain IP addresses or give you unique insight into how your bandwidth is being used. Gargoyle is ideal for people who have travel routers, or if you’re the type who’s less concerned with stuff like security and Wi-Fi signal and more concerned with how everyone in your house is using your bandwidth. It’s perfect for people with bandwidth caps. You can check out supported routers here, or buy one of their open hardware routers with Gargoyle pre-installed from their site.


• LibreWRT is a completely free and open firmware that’s adheres to the Free Software Foundation’s Free System Distribution Guidelines. If you’re wondering what router firmware someone who lives and dies by open-source like Richard Stallman or Linus Torvalds would pick, this is probably it. LibreWRT is also designed to be a lightweight option for aspiring developers to get involved with and contribute to. It’s also based on OpenWRT, but it supports only a handful of devices (although you can certainly build it yourself, although it’s not a project for beginners.)


• DebWRT is another umbrella firmware that has a number of derivatives. Users of Debian-based Linux systems—like Ubuntu or Linux Mint—will appreciate it, since it’s essentially Debian, built on top of OpenWRT, and designed to run on home routers. It includes all of the basics you need, but it’s not the most feature-rich on its own. You’ll need to add packages and additional tools to make the most of it, and its command-line interface isn’t exactly the most beginner-friendly (although, if you’re already familiar with Debian, it’ll seem like home to you.) It also helps that it offers everything you would get in a standard Debian install, along with its package manager and any compatible utilities. Still, it’s probably not for the faint of heart.

These are just the largest derivatives of the three major players. They’re great, but if you like the look of OpenWRT but need something specific, check out its other derivatives. For example, Gargoyle was designed to give OpenWRT a friendly, usable web interface that made customizing and setting it up simpler. Many of these also support third-party plugins for features like an at-home VPN, mesh networking to connect your network with the home networks of your friends, or any other more complicated setup you may have in mind. If you’re willing to get your hands dirty and you have some coding experience, you can rebuild any of these to make your own tweaks, or add your own packages.

Start with What Your Hardware Supports and Browse by Features

If you’re trying to decide between any of these firmware options, the first thing to consider is the router you have, and what open firmware supports it. If you’ve ever installed your own firmware, you know this already. Odds are yours—even if it’s a newer 802.11ac model is supported by one of these options, you just have to figure out which one.

If you only find one option that supports your router, the decision is made for you. If you find several, choose based on your needs, but don’t forget to see how well supported the firmware is. Are there guides or documentation you can follow, or forums where you can get help? You want the best option for you, but you also don’t want to be out in the cold if you have trouble. “Once you’ve picked your firmware of choice, just follow the installation instructions they provide—but for more information, check out our guides on installing DD-WRT and Tomato here.

Where to Go for Help

Finally, if you’re still stuck, or you don’t know whether a particular firmware will do what you want it to do, do some digging. Like we mentioned, many of these projects have forums for users to discuss the project and troubleshoot one anothers’ issues. Beyond that, Google your router model and the firmware you’re looking at to find out if it’s compatible, or if anyone out there is complaining about it before you install it yourself. After all, once it’s installed and set up, it’ll be your gateway to the internet, so after you’ve done the job isn’t the time to start doing research.

If you can’t find an open firmware that supports your router, or the one you want doesn’t work with the router you have, you do have the option to buy a router specifically for the firmware you want to run. Check the compatibility list for the firmware you want to run and pick your favorite router model from that list. That way you know you’ll get a router that’ll work without trouble. Alternatively, you could buy a router with your firmware pre-installed. For example, Buffalo sells routers with DD-WRT pre-installed, and some VPN providers even sell routers with open firmware installed and their VPN set up and ready to go. TorGuard and SlickVPN both do this. Just make sure you get the features that matter to you in the router as well as the firmware you want before you buy.

Title image made using kentoh (Shutterstock), Viktorus (Shutterstock), and ridjam (Shutterstock). Additional images by audioreservoir, Arkadiusz Sikorski, Kevin Jarrett, and Thees.

from Gizmodo http://ift.tt/19JOD7X

California snowpack wilts to shocking all-time record low

California's mountain snowpack — a lifeblood of the thirsty state's water resources — has reached an anemic state not seen since record-keeping began in 1930. The snow water equivalent of the state's snow cover, which is a measure of the water content contained in the snowpack, is just 5% of average snow water equivalent typically seen on April 1, according to the state's Department of Water Resources

This is the lowest for the date of any year since such records began in 1950. The new data is yet another indicator of the severity of the state's record drought, which is stretching into its fourth straight dry season and is the state's most intense drought since at least 1895. Read more...

More about Climate Change, Global Warming, Water, Us World, and Us



from Mashable http://ift.tt/1EF6o68