Thursday, March 31, 2016
Glamorgan bring in the pace of Tait
Australian fast bowler Shaun Tait has signed with Glamorgan for the second half of the NatWest T20 Blast tournament.
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Kevin Hart will anchor Lionsgate's new streaming comedy channel
Lionsgate has just announced it is launching a new streaming service focused on comedy, and comedian Kevin Hart will be the big draw and main talent for starters. Laugh Out Loud will feature a number of original series from Hart, the first of which is a hidden camera situation with the comedian working as an undercover Lyft driver. Beyond starring in his own shows, Hart will also "curate" other content, and the service will feature more shows from various comedians and social media stars.
That tie-in to social media extends beyond courting creators like Logan Paul (who Lionsgate says is the "most-viewed" creator on both Facebook and Vine) -- Lionsgate and Hart are partnering with developer Fifth Journey to build a "social adventure" game for phones. In the game, you'll play the role of an up-and-coming comic going on adventures with Hart as your guide; activities include going on comedy tours, starring in movies, hosting awards shows and the like. It sounds not entirely dissimilar to a Kim Kardashian: Hollywood situation, though we're hoping Hart manages to build something with more humor and substance (and less in-app purchases) than Kim's game.
There's no word on when this all rolls out, but Laugh Out Loud isn't Lionsgate's first foray into running an online video service. The Tribeca Shortlist channel movie service launched last year, and a Comic-Con channel is set to launch this summer.
Via: Mashable
Source: Lionsgate
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Sprint is now selling monthly Amazon Prime subscriptions
Sprint announced on Thursday that it will begin selling Amazon Prime subscriptions to its customers for $11 a month. That's slightly more than what you'd pay if you purchased Prime on your own but this is the only way to get the service for less than a year -- and $100 -- at a time. Interested Sprint customers can sign up through the company's website.
This move comes as the battle between carriers for customer hearts and wallets continues to heat up. Sprint has brought back two-year contracts and is offering double the data allowance for those willing to switch carriers. Verizon and AT&T, on the other hand, are offering up to $650 for people to jump ship. T-Mobile, for its part, will let customers binge on porn.Source: Sprint
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NASA takes a Super-Earth's temperature
NASA researchers recently trained the Spitzer Space Telescope at a nearby Super-Earth, 55 Cancri e, and, for the first time, have managed to map its temperature as the exoplanet orbits its host star. The map reveals that the planet suffers from extreme temperature swings, depending on its orbit. Since 55 Cancri e circles so closely to its star (completing orbits in just 18 hours), it behaves much like the Earth's moon. That is, one side of the planet continually faces the star and is therefore far hotter than the opposite side -- 4400 degrees F and 2060 degrees F, respectively.
"The latest findings tell us the planet has hot nights and significantly hotter days," lead author of the study, Cambridge University's Brice Olivier Demory, said in a statement. "This indicates the planet inefficiently transports heat around the planet. We propose this could be explained by an atmosphere that would exist only on the day side of the planet, or by lava flows at the planet surface." Researchers had initially discovered that 55 Cancri e does possess an atmosphere, however this data would suggest that the planet's atmosphere is thin at best. NASA plans to follow up this study with additional observations using the James Webb telescope.
Source: NASA
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NASA will attempt to develop drugs in space
A team of researchers from the University of Southern California and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory are sending fungi aboard a SpaceX flight to the ISS on April 8th. Not to expose them to Mars-like conditions like an earlier experiment did, but to see if they can be used to develop medicine in space. See, fungi produce molecules called secondary metabolites that can be used to develop medicine. One good and familiar example is penicillin. However, scientists (including USC professor Clay Wang who's leading this project) found that in many cases, fungi can only generate secondary metabolites when they're put in stressful conditions. And space can provide an environment harsh enough to activate the production of those molecules.
The researchers believe that the species they're sending out, Aspergillus nidulans, could produce up to 40 different types of drugs in microgravity. It's the perfect organism for the experiment, because it's been used widely in pharmaceutical research and is already known to produce metabolites that can be used for osteoporosis drugs. Seeing as astronauts lose bone mass when they spend long stretches of time outside our planet, A. nidulans could be a valuable cargo for deep space missions. The team also believes the the organism can be used for cancer, anti-fungal and Alzheimer's disease studies.
The fungi will be kept at 39.2 degrees Fahrenheit during the trip to the space station, where they'll be thawed and stored at the ideal growth temperature of 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit for up to seven days. Wang's team will get the specimens back for testing in May, hopefully after having produced the molecules that can be used for drug development. If the experiment works, then that means the researchers successfully found a way to make medicine in space. And as Professor Wang said:
"Drugs have an expiration date. NASA's human mission to Mars is expected to last anywhere from one to three years. Not all drugs are going to be stable in that time period, so the ability to make drugs in space will enable us to go further away from Earth and will also benefit future space explorations."
Via: Motherboard
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Dhoni turns interviewer to quash retirement talk
In an unusual move India captain MS Dhoni invited a journalist to sit alongside him when asked if he was going to retire immediately after India were knocked out of the World T20 by West Indies
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Watch Microsoft's opening-day Build keynote in just 10 minutes
If you didn't happen to be sitting near a computer during the opening ceremonies for Microsoft's Build developer conference yesterday, never fear: We've condensed the two-hour, opening-day keynote into a roughly 10-minute video. Included in our highlight reel are CEO Satya Nadella's opening remarks; the Windows 10 "Anniversary Update"; news on universal apps; a demo of new Windows inking features; Microsoft's surprise Linus news; a peek at HoloLens's packaging; and, most importantly, a glimpse at Microsoft's incoming army of chatbots. If you've got just 10 minutes, we'll give you all the meat, minus the fluff.Other Sites :
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Kanye West's new album may hit Apple Music, Spotify tomorrow
Anyone who's familiar with Kanye's antics knows to always take his words with a grain of salt. Back in February, after releasing The Life of Pablo exclusively on Tidal (a music service he owns a stake on), West tweeted that the album would "never never never be on Apple [Music]." But, thankfully for some of his fans, it looks like that statement won't hold true. According to reports from Mashable and Recode, citing sources familiar with the matter, TLOP will be released on Apple Music and Spotify this Friday, April 1st. Shocker.
My album will never never never be on Apple. And it will never be for sale... You can only get it on Tidal.
— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) February 15, 2016
Over the past few days, songs from the The Life of Pablo started showing up outside of Tidal. First it was Famous, a track that shoutouts Taylor Swift and, most recently, I Love Kanye -- as if we needed reassurance of Kanye's love for himself. Leading up to tomorrow's purported arrival of The Life of Pablo on Apple Music and Spotify, Kanye has updated the album for Tidal listeners, making changes to 12 of the 19 songs featured on it. It's not the first time he's done this, however: Wolves recently saw the reintroduction of vocals from artists Vic Mensa and Sia.
If you're an Apple Music or Spotify subscriber, we don't recommend holding your breath for TLOP. Because this is Kanye we're talking about, and in the life of Kanye, anything can happen.
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Microsoft's Edge browser gets a handful of new extensions
Microsoft has announced some important new extensions for its Edge browser at the annual Build developer conference. Major services like Pinterest, Amazon, Evernote, LastPass, Reddit, Adblock and Adblock Plus can now plug into Microsoft's newest browser. This comes a few weeks after an updated version of Edge rolled out that supported a paltry three extensions; those announced at Build bring the number up a little bit, but Edge still lags far behind Chrome, Firefox or even Safari in this department.
It's worth noting that the support for Adblock and Adblock Plus extensions is how Microsoft plans to offer an ad-blocking experience. Originally, some slides from a developer presentation made it seem as if Edge would have built-in ad-blocking; instead, it'll just support the feature from third-party developers. That's just how Apple and Google handle ad-blocking with Safari and Chrome.
While it's good that Microsoft is supporting more extensions, the company has a lot of work to do to close the gap with its browser competition. Most users probably don't use more than a handful of extensions (and lots probably don't use any at all), but those who swear by them likely won't switch to Microsoft's browser without replacements.
Via: VentureBeat
Source: Microsoft
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'Call of Duty: Black Ops III' second DLC arrives April 19
Treyarch announced on Thursday that the second DLC pack for Call of Duty: Black Ops III, dubbed Eclipse, will be released on April 19th. The new content, which will initially be available only on the PlayStation 4, features four new maps as well as a new Zombies storyline set on a remote, WWII-era island somewhere in the Pacific.
If you haven't purchased the game's $50 season pass, which grants access to all four DLC packs scheduled for this year, you can still pick up this one for $15. There's no word on when, exactly, Eclipse will hit the XBox One but you can be sure it won't be arriving on last-gen consoles any time soon.Other Sites :
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DraftKings and FanDuel pull the plug on college fantasy contests
While debates about the legality of fantasy sports services DraftKings and FanDuel rage on, both companies have announced that they'll suspend all paid contests on collegiate sports as of this week. Sorry, armchair coaches: looks like your March Madness championship paydays aren't coming after all. While the news might be a bummer for people already gearing up for the Division I college football in a few months, CNBC also reports that the two companies will also stop offering contests involving "high school and youth sports."
According to ESPN, the announcements come on the heels of prolonged conversations with NCAA officials and state legislators. It's easy to see where state governments come into play -- the federal government hasn't taken a firm stance on daily fantasy contests, leaving individual specific regulation up to states. Opinions, to put it mildly, are varied. New York has been ardently opposed to the fantasy sports operators, while Virginia recently became the first state to pass a daily fantasy sports law. All told, DraftKings said in a statement, "nearly 30 states" have "advanced thoughtful and appropriate regulations for fantasy play. Also up for interpretation is how non-professional athletes figure into these daily fantasy equations. EA Sports had to discontinue its NCAA Football games after a class-action suit over player likenesses popped up, and CBS Sports points out financial contests involving the same players are similarly questionable.
[Photo credit: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg/Getty Images]
Source: ESPN
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'Home ground' helps Simmons feel wide awake
It's an amazing life Lendl Simmons leads. One day he is lounging at his home in the Caribbean, watching the World T20 from afar then he is winning a semi-final
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Tribeca Shortlist brings its movie-streaming app to Apple TV
Up until today, Tribeca Shortlist has been available on iOS, Fire TV and Roku. And now the movie-streaming service, created by the company behind the Tribeca Film Festival and Lionsgate, is expanding to the new Apple TV. The application, which requires a $5 monthly subscription, will give you access to more than 150 movies on demand. While that number seems low in comparison to Netflix or Hulu Plus, Tribeca Shortlist is all about quality, not quantity, according to the company.
The curated content it offers is based on recommendations made by "personalities you know [actors, directors]," and ranges from classics like Good Will Hunting to City of God. If you don't have an account yet, you can grab a free trial from the Tribeca Shortlist site, which should help you determine whether it's worthy of your cash every month.Source: Tribeca Shortlist
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'Batman v. Superman' in 4DX made watching a bad movie worse
If you've ever wanted your movie-going experience to feel like an abusive amusement park ride that went on way too long, 4DX is probably for you. But after seeing Batman vs. Superman in 4DX last weekend, it's not something I'd ever want to suffer through again. Created by the South Korean company CJ Group, 4DX aims to add another dimension to theaters with moving seats, strobing lights and weather effects, such as water, wind and fog.
For the most part, though, I found it to be a messy experience that detracted from the film. And worst of all, it costs $28.10, around twice the price of a typical New York City movie ticket.
4DX has been around for a few years now, starting in South Korea and eventually making its way to the west coast. The Regal Union Square theater, just a few blocks from our office, is the first place in New York to offer the technology (it will also be available at the Regal E-Walk in Times Square next month). There are also a few competing standards: MediaMation's MX4D offers all of the same features as 4DX, while D-Box focuses more on moving seats.
Given the extensive nature of 4DX's environmental effects, theaters have to refit an entire screening room to support it. That includes adding new seats on hydraulic platforms, infrastructure for water and smell effects, and extra lighting and fog generation. All of the additional hardware inevitably leads to fewer available seats, but theaters probably hope to make up for that with the higher ticket prices.
Since the seats are lifted off the ground, you actually have to climb onto them. That was a bit of a struggle for the young kids in my audience. The seats are also surprisingly uncomfortable; they're stiff with no ability to recline. That makes sense since they're supposed to move around, but sitting in them makes you feel more like you're riding a rollercoaster than relaxing for a film. The arm rests are fairly wide, and there's also a button for turning off the water effects. (I imagine many will end up doing that.)
I knew I wasn't going to enjoy 4DX almost as soon as Batman v. Superman started. As we relived the death of Bruce Wayne's parents for the umpteenth time, cross-cut with a somber funeral scene, the seats rolled back and forth in tune with the dramatic camera angles. It was raining during the scene, so I should have guessed that meant I'd have water sprayed in my face as young Bruce Wayne mourns. I don't think that's the sort of immersion most viewers are looking for. Gunshots led to the seat punching me in the back, and I could feel the fluttering of bats on screen with air jets going off near my head. And that was just the first few minutes of the film.
Over the course of Batman v. Superman's two-and-a-half-hour runtime, I came to hate how the 4DX seat would punch me during every action scene, as well as the seemingly random use of water effects. This is New York City, after all: We spend most of our time avoiding mystery liquids in public. The fog effects also seem particularly ill-advised. One bro couldn't stop shouting, "The theater's on fire!" every time it happened. (That's illegal, dude.) I didn't detect many smell effects, but that's also something you can look forward to with 4DX. (The Sensorama Simulator did the same thing 50 years ago.)
While I'm sure some people might enjoy what 4DX is offering, especially for big, dumb action movies, it feels more fitting for short rides at Universal Studios than feature-length films. When I looked around at the audience as Batman and Superman were punching each other, I saw only looks of pain and annoyance from all of the 4DX effects. I understand that theaters need to try new things to combat falling ticket sales, but is this really how they expect to get people away from their couches and Netflix queues?
4DX is total garbage, not sure how being punched in the back and sprayed with water = 2x the price. Everyone involved should be ashamed
— Devindra Hardawar (@Devindra) March 27, 2016
The high price is another big issue. My heart sank when I saw families with two to four kids attend my screening. Do the math: It would cost around $120 for a family of four to attend a 4DX screening, and that's not including drinks and popcorn. Pricing like that might lead families to go to the theater less often, which would be bad news for theaters, since they make most of their money from concessions.
It also didn't help that the 4DX theater was one of the smallest screens at the Regal Union Square. You can get genuinely bigger screens and better sound systems from Dolby Vision theaters and IMAX (even so-called "lie-MAX" screens) for far less than 4DX prices. And if you really want to treat yourself, look for local theaters with dine-in options, like the popular Alamo Drafthouse chain.
Perhaps I'm too much of a purist. When I go to the cinema, I actually want to, you know, see the movie. But just about everything about the 4DX experience gets in the way of that. For a company that markets itself as a new method of immersing yourself in films, it's really just innovating ways to distract you.
[Photo: Warner Bros. via AP]
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AT&T said to be building a Cyanogen-powered phone with ZTE
AT&T is reportedly working with Cyanogen and ZTE on a new phone for the US market. It would run Cyanogen's forked version of Android, allowing the carrier to push services like DirectTV in a more aggressive manner. That's according to The Information anyway, which cites two sources -- one with direct knowledge and one that's been briefed on the talks between the three companies. There's no guarantee that such a handset will ever materialise, but the talks do emphasize the growing interest from networks to increase their revenue through services.
Carrier bloatware is a longstanding problem on Android. Networks are forever pushing their own apps, hoping they'll take hold over those offered by Google and other developers. There's some method to the madness -- if the app is on the home screen or visible in the app drawer, there's a chance customers will use it at least once. For the countless startups trying to battle for visibility in the Play Store, that's half the battle already won.
For now, the exact nature of the phone is a mystery. The Information suggests that the entire project could merely be a "spectre" to help AT&T wrestle some control from Google. Cyanogen is keen to integrate its platform with other services -- Cortana, for instance, has been mixed into Cyanogen OS. AT&T's proposals could, therefore, appeal under the right circumstances. For ZTE, such a phone would be a huge victory as it fights trade restrictions imposed by the US Commerce Department.
Via: The Verge
Source: The Information
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West Indies power hit their way to World T20 final
A total of 192 was about par on a batting-friendly Wankhede, and it was set up by a Virat Kohli masterclass. But West Indies' power hitters bulldozed their way through it to their second World T20 final
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Microsoft's mobile OS isn't Windows -- it's Cortana
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella didn't mention Windows Mobile once during the opening-day Build developer conference keynote yesterday, nor did any of the other executives who took the stage. But that doesn't mean the company lacks a mobile strategy: The presentation offered a bold look at how Microsoft thinks we'll soon be using our phones. Instead of digging through apps, we'll just use natural language to tell our phones what we need to do -- or, they'll be smart enough to know what we want, when we want it.
We'll have bots to thank for that, and Microsoft wants developers to embrace them, the same way hordes of developers embraced iOS apps back in 2008. "We want every developer to build experts for Cortana," Nadella said onstage Wednesday. "We want all developers to build bots." Because of the cross-platform nature of both Cortana and the many communication apps Nadella cited yesterday, Microsoft's bot army will work on whatever device you want to use.
The company debuted a host of tools yesterday to make that happen, including the Microsoft Bot Framework, which will let developers build bots and deploy them across the various communication platforms we use. That framework solves an important problem for Microsoft -- namely, making it easier for developers to hook their bot into a variety of different platforms without having to rebuild it every time. "We started with a technical problem," engineer Lili Cheng told reporters in a press briefing Wednesday. "Can we make it really easy if you already have a bot to connect it to all the places people talk?"
Microsoft is also offering the computing power to make it easy for developers to build bots without worrying about how to make them smart enough to answer various queries and communicate with users. All of Microsoft's years of experience with machine learning as well as voice and language recognition are at a developer's disposal. "We don't expect every company to have these tools," said Bing VP Derrick Connell at the press briefing. "They can just focus on having a good back-end experience."
That ease of development was one major tentpole of Microsoft's strategy, but it doesn't get at why the company is making a big bet on bots. As Cheng and Connell explained, it's an extension of what Microsoft has been doing for years with Bing and Cortana. The company is getting better and better at understanding natural language and has a massive knowledge graph with Bing that few other companies (except Google) can rival.
From there, it's a matter of taking the natural language capability of Cortana and giving it a wider variety of specialized data sources to tap into. That's where the bots come in. "We're building on 10 years of Bing, more than 10 years of speech and language modeling," said Connell. "We think we have a lot of good assets, but we're entering a new environment where we can put it all together."
That means making conversation a new user interface, something Nadella alluded to throughout his keynote. "Humans have conversations all the time; all of those conversations can become more efficient," Connell said. He then gave examples of the three types of conversations Microsoft envisions users having. For starters, there's obviously human-to-human conversation, and Connell envisioned bots being able to augment that conversation by bringing up relevant info based on analyzing the text in the messages themselves.
There's also human-to-agent, which is what happens already when we talk to Cortana or Siri or Google. Lastly, emerging human-to-bot conversations, will let Cortana become even more useful. "Today we can bridge to websites on mobile or PC, but as bots come in that [interaction] can become much richer," Connell said.
Cheng was quick to note that just because Microsoft showed off lots of chat bots today, the goal isn't to flood users with a bunch of computers to converse with. "We want to make software more conversational without meaning it has to be the example we showed up on stage [today]," she said. She went on to add that most software products have a conversation with their users. "They just don't visibly converse back all the time," she said.
Pulling all these threads together and it comes clear that Microsoft has fully accepted that it won't be the third mobile platform in a traditional sense -- something that's been fairly clear since Nadella took over in 2014 and immediately started moving Microsoft in a more cross-platform direction. However, it's getting on the bot train early, and if the company's vision of conversational computing becomes more prevalent in the coming years, Microsoft could be well-positioned to capitalize on the trend. There are a lot of challenges that could stop Cortana from being our steward into a future where helpful bots get things done for us. But if nothing else, the company isn't late to the party like it was to the world of smartphone apps.
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BMW gets into the virtual assistant game with its ConnectedDrive app
BMW is one of the more tech-focused car companies out there, and today the company announced an expansion of its ConnectedDrive in-car systems at Microsoft Build. The new BMW Connected app for the iPhone is powered by Microsoft's Azure platform and is BMW's take on a always-on assistant, not unlike Cortana or Google Now. The unveiling on stage was quick, but generally speaking it looks like BMW Connected will start off by managing your appointments and giving you notifications about when you should leave, how traffic will change your route, whether you should get off the highway to avoid a traffic jam and so on.
All those features sounded similar to what Google Now and the iPhone do now, but the difference here is that BMW Connect will sync up with your car as well (assuming it's a BMW running the ConnectedDrive platform). In addition to pulling in destinations and appointments from your calendar, the BMW Connected app will learn from your routines and places you search for commonly and give you travel times for those locations automatically. Frequent and recurring are stored and revealed to you when the app thinks you'll want to return to them.
If you're a BMW driver, the big benefit here will likely be the way the app integrates into your car -- but lots of drivers would probably be just as happy using Android Auto or Carplay to tie their phones and vehicles together. That said, the new app ties right into your car, letting you unlock and lock the doors, flash the lights, kick up the AC before you're in it and so forth. But if BMW Connected still isn't compelling to you yet, BMW says it'll keep updating the app with more features. We're going to get a demo of the service today at Build and will update with any more details we learn.
Source: BMW
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Apple patents on-the-fly censorship technology
Apple recently patented a software system that can automatically detect and remove swear words from streamed audio tracks. The patent, dubbed "Management, Replacement and Removal of Explicit Lyrics during Audio Playback" scans a piece of music, compares the lyrics against a database of banned words, marks any explicit bits it finds and then removes the offending content, replacing it with either a beep or silence. The technology can also, according to its patent filing, detect the background music and boost that to cover what's being censored. The system isn't limited to music, mind you, it can just as easily be applied to audio books. As with many of Apple's patents, there is no word on when -- or even if -- the technology will ever make it into an actual product.
Source: Business Insider
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Philander eyes South Africa comeback as return gathers pace
Vernon Philander made a successful return to franchise cricket after more than four months out of action and is targeting more competitive action over the South African winter in the hope of an international recall
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Untethered and unguided: Our first deep look at HoloLens
There's a white unicorn with a rainbow horn on the wall in front of me. A tiger sits casually by the door on the right. On a grey couch at one end of the room, a globe starts to spin when I gaze at it. A second celestial object with the word "Fragments" floats over a white coffee table. I walk towards the couch and turn onto a short hallway next to it. I see a bright pink octopus staring back at me from the tiled toilet floor. Microsoft's HoloLens is an augmented reality headset. It's a self-contained Windows 10 computer that projects high-definition holograms onto real objects, walls and surfaces. As the device makes its way to developers this week, I strapped on the untethered headset for a first-of-its-kind unguided demo in a suite at San Francisco's W Hotel. After a year of suspense, carefully controlled experiences with prototypes and a strict no-pictures policy, the company is letting its prized hologram-generating machine operate in civilian hands (like mine).
After a quick run through with Lorraine Bardeen, director of studio business and operations, I was left alone in the living room to discover the digital information all around me. The juxtaposition of three-dimensional holograms and real objects had created a mixed reality. Interacting with the projections peppered in the room quickly started to feel like some sort of technological hallucination. The holograms were only visible to me.
One of the first things I noticed about the headset was its see-through "holographic lens". It's held in place by a matte black frame that looped around my head. I could move the lens front and back ever so lightly to fix it at a comfortable distance away from my face (this feature created enough room for my large-framed prescription glasses, too.) There's a second black rim with an adjustment wheel to tighten the device around the head. It supports the entire contraption and keeps it firmly but comfortably in place.
The headset, which weighs a little over one pound, is packed with sensors, a custom-built holographic processing unit and a ton of cameras. There's a front facing camera and four environment-mapping cameras -- split into pairs on both left and right corners of the lens –- that make the precise placement of holograms possible.The HoloLens experience requires a complete engagement of senses. It's not trying to hack the senses to create a virtual world, instead it works with sight, sound and movements to create an interaction between human, machine and the environment. That's what makes the experience feel unique yet natural. While the system imposes an artificial overlay on reality, it relies on intuitive controls like direction of gaze, gestures and voice.
Staring at projected objects to indicate intent is a big part of the HoloLens experience. Before I could take the contraption for a spin around the room, I had to calibrate my eyes to make sure the holographic effect worked the way its creators intended. I looked at an introductory app that was projected on the floor, held out my right index finger and pushed it down to make the "tap" gesture, which indicates a selection. It starts with an automatic interpupillary distance feature that measures the distance from the center of one pupil to the other.For the calibration, I closed my left eye and looked through my right eye at the image in front of me. Three taps later, I repeated the same process for my left eye by closing the right. The process, which took a few seconds and was saved on the device for future interactions, made sure the holograms in the room were customized for my eyes.
A mechanical voice proceeded to tell me how I could use gestures and my gaze to indicate what I wanted. While I had learned how to tap and select an app, it also told me how to exit one. I followed instructions, moved my hand up to my field of view and flared my fingers up and out to indicate a blooming flower. The "bloom" gets you out of an experience in an instant.
Now that I knew how to start and quit the apps floating around me, I was set for a barrage of demos. The first app I tried was a browser. The Engadget website was preloaded in front of me (it was the live site, too, I refreshed to check the front page stories). After messing around with the Internet projected on a wall, I quickly launched into RoboRaid, a first-person shooting game that used spatial mapping of the room (done at the beginning of the demo) to project alien enemy creatures on the walls around me. Seconds into the game, I heard crunching sounds on my left and I swiftly turned to spot the mini-Transformers-looking creatures bursting out of the walls. I saw them, zapped them, destroyed them. They hurled fireballs at me that I dodged. The game was straightforward. But it illuminated the profound possibilities of projections that are loaded with 3D sound.
I could turn up the sound of the holograms with small, inconspicuous buttons on the right arm of the headset. But even at the highest volume, the ambient sounds in the room were not blocked out. The speakers are concealed in one inch bars on either side of the headset to ensure that the sound stays close to the ears but it doesn't overwhelm them like headphones.
In addition to the speakers, there are four microphones in the device. So at any point in the demos, I could call on Cortana, Microsoft's virtual assistant which has been integrated into the holographic system. I could switch from using my index finger to communicate my needs to simply stating them. As a bonus, I could ask my assistant to take pictures and videos of my imaginary experience as part of the Mixed Reality Capture feature. There's a micro USB port on one side to download those captured shots.
"Hey Cortana, record a video," I tell her when I want to capture shots in a game or an app. Almost every time, she threw up a string of random words ending in "video" in my field of view. She didn't always decipher my words with accuracy. (My accent, while clearly understood by humans in my daily interactions, is currently beyond the comprehension of most digital assistants.) But she understands the intent and starts recording almost every time. Except for the time she thought I said "God video" and opened a browser for me as if to say "you're on your own for this one."
Despite Cortana's occasional struggles to truly understand me, the voice-activated interaction feels ingenious and necessary. It makes the application possibilities wide-ranging -- interaction between an astronaut and a NASA operator on the ground, collaborative work among a couple of group of designers, a Skype call with a family member or an expert dialing in to help fix a broken refrigerator. Using my voice quickly became a crucial part of the experience.
Through some of the experiences, the voice in my head, err, the one that was coming from the headset, often reminded me to move around the room. I forgot I was untethered. Having tried enough VR (some that made me nauseous), I have adopted a stand-still-and-be-immersed approach. Partly because wired headsets like the Oculus Rift curtail movement, but mostly because moving around in VR, completely disconnected from reality, can make the experience of walking feel precarious.
My legs didn't quiver at any point through the many experiences of HoloLens. Even when I walked the simulated cobbled streets of Italy in HoloTour, a travel app locked inside the floating globe on the couch, I felt immersed but I wasn't disconnected from the reality of the hotel suite that I was in. And that's precisely the point. The magic happens because the holograms mediate reality, not replace it. It's a different kind of immersion that neither leaves you nauseous nor disoriented.
All the applications aren't geared for immersive experiences, though. Practical ideas like the HoloStudio allow you to create your own models of places and objects. A pop-up menu lets you drag and drop holograms and even resize them. You can also replicate those movements outside this app. Each hologram can be adjusted and moved with a tap and hold gesture. It's a useful feature but it wasn't the easiest one to learn. I struggled to relocate a yellow puppy projected on the floor. But when I slowly got the hang of it, I noticed the low latency of the hologram that moved in sync with my gesture.
While I had trouble engaging with the lifeless dog in the room, the holograms that were loaded with spatial sounds were incredibly believable. 3D audio is critical to an immersive experience like VR. It's the thing that draws you in and tricks your brain into thinking the simulated is real. But the audible cues are just as significant, if not more integral, to the experience of augmented reality. What good is a holographic RoboRaider if you can't hear it firing at you from behind?
Spatial sound makes you look in the direction of the virtual characters. In Fragments, a murder mystery game that's a cross between Minority Report and Clue, I was given both audio and holographic clues to solve a crime. An AI helper -- a pale-skinned, dark haired man in an indigo spacesuit –- narrated events and guided me through the game. But the thing that drew me in was the sound of sobbing. It took me a second to find the source but the weeping alerted me to the presence of a young boy on the floor in front of me, below and out of sight. The murder scene was right next to the couch.
Projecting sound in front of the listener is an incredibly hard feat in spatial audio. But the audio cues were spot on in the game. They weren't just helping me locate the holographic people in the room, they were significant to the believability of the mixed reality experience.
Sounds aside, the characters in the game sat on the furniture and were able to pinpoint my location in the room. They fully inhabited the space to complete the illusion. At one point in the experience, when the leader of my mysterious investigative group showed up, she knew exactly where the couch was. She was sitting on it. HoloLens had mapped the entire suite with its sensors at the beginning of the demo.
Minutes later, when she addressed the room, while looking away from me, I realized we weren't the only ones in the room. On my right were three other key members of the investigative team. Sarah, the one standing closest to me, looked straight at me when she introduced herself. The hologram had sensed my presence.
The virtual crew was clearly simulated. But the HoloLens projected them with stunning clarity. As Bardeen would later tell me, Microsoft has devised its own unique terms to define the resolution of its holograms. The absence of a benchmark for 3D projections makes it hard to measure and compare the clarity and density of these objects. But visually, the projections looked drastically different. While the puppy and the pop orange tiger were clearly cartoony avatars, the characters in Fragments were much more detailed and comparable to existing Xbox One graphics. I noticed the lines on their faces and the creases on their clothes.
Through the hour and a half of the demos, I continuously found myself struggling with the limited field of view that remained unchanged across all HoloLens experiences. The holograms only appear in a rectangular frame right in front of the user. It leaves a wide gap on both right and left. But I'm told the peripheral view that borders the holographic frame is intentional, even necessary, to the experience. Augmented reality is all about overlaying information onto real environments. But it only works when the room is constantly in your view. The holograms juxtaposed with reality keep you grounded at all times.
The unguided experience showcased the strengths and pitfalls of the HoloLens. But Microsoft is ready. With the technology packed in a sturdy and surprisingly comfortable headset, it's time for the developers to test the holographic power of the computer that's been in the making for years. More importantly, it's time for app creators to unleash the potential that the medium presents. While NASA's already sent a couple of headsets to the International Space Station to assist crew members, down here on Earth, Microsoft hopes the device will transform the way we learn, teach, communicate and collaborate in the future.
It's easy to draw comparisons between the two new mediums that are starting to shape new realities –- the virtual and the augmented. But everything from the physical headset, the experience, the human impact and the future applications are entirely different.
As my demo drew to a close, I noticed that I had no trouble returning to reality. Unlike VR, where I was often disoriented after taking off the headset, this time my brain wasn't struggling to differentiate between the real and the virtual. But I did get used to seeing things that weren't really there. After I handed back the HoloLens, I walked by the toilet to an empty spot where I'd parked my bag at the beginning of the demo. I instinctively turned to look for that bright pink octopus on the tiled floor.
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Facebook's Instant Articles now support video ads
From a user's perspective, Facebook Instant Articles are a no-brainer. Just tap the relevant link in your News Feed and the piece is visible immediately. Brilliant. For publishers, however, the feature is a little more complicated. There's a trade-off between performance and control which not all news rooms are comfortable with. To tempt them across, Facebook is introducing video ads to Instant Articles. It's a move to show that the format can be as flexible and, more importantly, as monetizable as the rest of the web. Animated ads and "click to play" videos will be supported immediately, followed by autoplay video ads in the coming weeks.
Publishers can already sell and display ads themselves inside Instant Articles. Doing this will net them 100 percent of the resulting ad revenue. If they give the space to Facebook to sell, however, the social network takes a 30 percent cut. Video ads are, therefore, a move on Facebook's part both to bring publishers on side and also to increase its own advertising business. It could prove to be a valuable revenue stream, especially once the Instant Articles are opened up to all publishers next month.
Introducing Instant Articles, a new tool for publishers to create fast, interactive articles on Facebook.
Posted by Facebook Media on Tuesday, May 12, 2015
Via: WSJ
Source: Facebook
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iPad Pro 9.7 review: Apple's best tablet, but it won't replace a laptop
The iPad Pro raised some eyebrows when it debuted last year, but it really shouldn't have. While tablet sales as a whole have been tanking, sales of tablets with detachable keyboards have actually grown. Is it any surprise, then, that Apple built a 9.7-inch version of the Pro to try and regain some of its tablet momentum? Not at all. Whether or not this new Pro can be the "ultimate PC replacement" Apple was hyping at its launch event depends on your personal preferences, but let's get one thing straight from the start: This is one the best tablets you can buy.
Hardware
Tell me if this sounds familiar: Apple, looking to broaden its appeal, takes an existing high-end device and squeezes its important bits into a smaller, familiar-looking body. That was the case with the iPhone SE, and at first glance, that appears to be true of the 9.7-inch iPad Pro as well; it seems like last year's iPad Pro in the body of an iPad Air 2. Still, there are some omissions to be aware of. The A9X chipset in the 9.7-inch model is back, for instance, but it's paired with 2GB of RAM -- half of what the larger model has. I'll dig into what that means for performance a little later (spoiler: not much for most people), but the change nonetheless makes this Pro seem, well, a little less Pro. 3D Touch still hasn't made it over to the iPads, either because of cost or sheer technical infeasibility. There's a Touch ID sensor embedded in the Home button as usual, but it seems to be the slower, older version, not the one in the iPhone 6s. Oh well.
Your mileage may vary, but the tradeoffs seem well worth it to me. It's been a week since Apple loaned me a review unit (a silver LTE model with 256GB of storage, priced at $1,029) and I'm still impressed with its fit and finish. The physical differences between this model and the Air 2 are negligible: It's a hair thicker and wider, but not noticeably heavier. If you're the sort of person who prefers tablets that are easy to hold with one hand, you'll find plenty to like here.
Then again, I'm not the kind of person who's eager to trade a traditional laptop for a tablet. Full disclosure: I've been an outspoken fan of the Air 2's design since it came out, but using the super-snappy Pro ruined that older tablet for me. Now nearly all that power is available in a more manageable size, albeit one that feels less like a full-blown PC replacement. After all, the big Pro's 12.9-inch screen was great for movies and certain professional applications (as was that extra RAM).
The rest of the new Pro's broad strokes are the same as its big brother's: There's a power button up top, four speakers drilled into each corner and the same three-pin Smart Connector on the left side for accessories. Apple couldn't downsize the massive 38.5Wh battery to fit in the Air 2-sized chassis, though, so we're left with a smaller 27.5Wh battery instead.
Curiously, the 9.7-inch model is in some ways more impressive than the original. For starters, it features the iPhone 6s's 12-megapixel rear camera with a f/2.2 lens (tourists, rejoice!). I won't dwell on it since I've basically reviewed the same camera sensor three times now; suffice to say it's the best camera ever put in an iPad and you'll be able to capture some primo shots if tablet photography is your thing. Oh, and the plastic panel on the back of 3G models has been placed with an iPhone-like antenna band, too. Now it's time for some nitpicking: The antenna band carved into the LTE Pro's aluminum body isn't completely even, and I can't un-see it. On the plus side, the camera lump on the back doesn't make the iPad wobble when it's resting face-up on a table -- iPhone 6s owners can't say the same.
All this power might cost you, though. The Pro starts at $599 for the 32GB WiFi model, with 128GB and 256GB versions costing an extra $150 and $350, respectively. And as always, cellular-ready options will cost you even more: a $130 premium across the board.
Display and sound
Now, about that screen. It's fantastic. The 9.7-inch LED display runs at a resolution of 2,048 x 1,536, so it's not any crisper than the Air 2 or original Pro, but whatever: It's still sharp and beautifully saturated. Videographers and editors in particular will appreciate Apple's support for the P3 color gamut, a standard with a broader range of colors that sees wide use in the film industry. The feature first debuted on the recent 4K and 5K iMacs and could be quite valuable for some -- after all, the Pro offers enough power to ingest and edit three 4K video streams at the same time. Then again, if you're an amateur like me, you'll likely never need to know these specifics.
The screen is very bright too -- actually a hair brighter than the first iPad Pro (the difference is 100 nits, if you're keeping count). The difference might not be vast, but if nothing else, it makes for a display that's easy to read in direct sunlight. The sun's only going to get more intense as spring wears on, but I was able to breeze through a few chapters of a Rafik Schami novel while lounging in my backyard. Reading, as it turns out, is a great way to test one of the new Pro's unique features, the True Tone display. In short, it uses an ambient sensor stuck in the iPad's forehead to figure out what kind of light you're in and change the screen's color temperature to look more natural.
It might sound like one of those uber-nerd features you'll never use, but it's actually lovely. See, the iPad's display is normally neutral to the point of looking slightly bluish. True Tone automatically adjusts the color so that whites look like a sheet of paper no matter what weirdly lit environment you're in. This might sound a little familiar: Samsung's Galaxy Tab S did this too years back, but it's a neat feature nonetheless. True Tone doesn't seem to have much of an impact on battery life either, so the only reason not to use it is if you're editing photos or cutting video -- situations where you really need that color accuracy.
Meanwhile, the speakers are just as loud as they were on the original Pro. If you haven't used the larger model, take it from me: This is a good thing. Speaker design aside, we've also got some clever software to thank for this. As on the first iPad Pro, no matter which way you're holding the iPad, highs and mids get routed to the top-most speakers, while lower frequencies issue forth from the bottom pair. The end result is crisp sound whether you're listening to audiobooks or the amazing finale from Whiplash.
Performance and battery life
| iPad Pro 9.7 | iPad Pro 12.9 | iPad Air 2 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Geekbench 3.0 Multi-core | 5,235 | 5,379 | 4,510 |
| 3DMark IS Unlimited | 33,403 | 32,544 | 21,659 |
| GFXBench 3.0 Manhattan Off/onscreen (fps) | 51.2/34.9 | 79.3/33.6 | 13.0/8.8 |
| SunSpider 1.0 (ms) | 199 | 191 | 393 |
| Google Octane 2.0 | 19,946 | 19,872 | 10,659 |
| Mozilla Kraken (ms) | 1,512 | 1,499 | 2,332 |
| JetStream 1.1 | 139 | 141 | 83 |
| SunSpider and Kraken: Lower scores are better. | |||
I'll admit it, I was pretty curious coming into this review. After all, this iPad Pro has half the RAM the other Pro does, but then again, it's driving a much smaller display (and therefore needs to push fewer pixels). As it turns out, I was concerned over nothing. Thanks to Apple's A9X chipset, the 9.7-inch Pro is almost equally fast.
I spent my week putting the Pro through a wide (and weird) variety of scenarios. It was well-suited to shooting off Slack messages and Outlook emails during workdays, as well as light photo editing in Pixelmator and incessant Tweetbot refreshes. Basic actions like switching between apps and using iOS 9's Slide Over feature to run two apps in split-screen felt smooth too. I expected multitasking in particular to be a little jerkier because of the smaller RAM allotment, but nope: all was well.
Of course, the Pro line prides itself on running specialized, power-intensive apps, and those posed no problem here either. I blew an entire evening spinning a meticulously rendered skeleton around to learn the names of bones and trying (in vain) to design something worth showing off in 3D design apps like UMake and Autodesk's Formit 360. (Sorry mom, I'll never be that architect you wanted.) When my misguided attempts at creativity failed, I threw myself into gorgeous games like AG Drive and Warhammer 40,000: Freeblade. Surprise, surprise: Both of them (and many others) ran smoothly.
Now, I didn't see any differences in graphical and gaming performance between the two iPad pros, but that doesn't mean there aren't any. The Pro 9.7 notched near-identical benchmark scores as the bigger model, except for some strangely low frame rates when I ran GFXBench's off-screen Manhattan test. (Both Pros delivered near-identical numbers when rendering frames on-screen.) That hiccup aside, this is the most power Apple has ever crammed into a 9.7-inch iPad, and if you're coming from an older iPad it's downright revelatory.
The iPad Pro 9.7 ships with iOS 9.3, and aside from a few notable additions like Night Shift and a more secure Notes app, the software experience is nearly identical to the original Pro. Sadly, that means multitasking can feel clumsy and inelegant -- not quite what I hoped for out of a device Apple claims can replace a traditional laptop. Swiping on the screen to open the app drawer (where you can choose an app to run in "Split View" mode) reveals an unorganized list that often requires some poking around to find the app you were looking for.
And when you're split-screening, it takes to work to change how those two apps are displayed. Let's say you've got Safari running on the left side and Mail on the right: To make them switch places, you have to drag the divider to make Mail full-screen and open up Safari from the Slide Over panel. Nightmare? Hardly, but it's still more tedious than it should be. Then again, this is the sort of interface issue that affects power users and PC switchers more than anybody else; if you're just looking for a speedy tablet, you might not care at all.
|
Battery life |
|
|---|---|
| iPad Pro 9.7 | 9:21 |
| iPad Pro 12.9 | 10:47 |
| iPad mini 4 | 13:04 |
| iPad Air 2 | 11:15 |
| Galaxy TabPro S | 10:43 |
| Lenovo Yoga 3 Pro | 7:36 |
| Surface Pro 4 | 7:15 |
Apple likes to say that each of its iPads can last through "up to 10 hours" of continuous use, and each of the last three iPads we tested easily exceeded that mark in our battery rundown test (looping an HD video with screen brightness set to 50 percent). The 9.7-inch Pro sadly didn't fare quite as well: It lasted for nine hours and 21 minutes before giving up the ghost. I'll admit, I was a little disappointed that it didn't do better, but I also can't fault Apple for "only" delivering what it promised. Managing expectations can be tricky, folks.
Not everyone uses their tablets for daily Netflix marathons, though. The 9.7-inch Pro hung around for between three and four days of mixed use. Think: firing off emails, watching YouTube videos, streaming podcasts and more, mixed with long stretches of idle time. This sort of off-and-on usage more accurately reflects the way most people use their tablets, and in that regard, the iPad Pro does a fine job.
Accessories
The iPad Pro formula extends beyond just the tablet: It includes some first-party accessories too. First up is the $99 Apple Pencil, which is as useful as always. I did a lot of doodling in notebooks growing up and even tried my hand at drawing webcomics (which you will never, ever see). Using the Pencil to sketch in Procreate and even the stock Notes app is a surprisingly lovely experience; the screen does a great job tracking the Pencil's textured nib, and pressing harder to get bolder lines works way better than I expected it would. If anything, I enjoyed using the Pencil more with the smaller Pro because the tablet is closer in size to a clipboard, making it better for one-handed note-jotting.
Then there's the new, smaller Smart Keyboard cover ($149). I tried writing this review using the keyboard just to prove a point, and man, I just couldn't do it. Mechanically, there's no difference between this version and the bigger one meant for the full-size Pro; the whole thing is covered in a custom fabric is both liquid-repellant and gives the keys their shape. Since iOS doesn't support mice, there's no trackpad here either, so you'll frequently be reaching to tap the screen.
The problem is, the keyboard itself can feel pretty cramped if you're used to anything more spacious. Notably, the Return and Tab keys are much smaller than on the big Pro's keyboard, making it frustrating to navigate and format some documents. I eventually got half-decent at pecking out short stories, but using it for anything longer than that can be tricky. The keyboard cover only props up the iPad at one angle, so you're out of luck if you need to adjust it. If you don't mind looking a little silly, though, you can attach the Smart Keyboard meant for the full-sized Pro onto the baby model and peck out memos no problem. In fact, that's how I wrote the majority of this review. While there aren't any keyboard alternatives that run into Apple's Smart Connector, that'll change soon (and they'll probably cost less too).
The competition
At the company's recent keynote event, Apple's Phil Schiller kept calling the iPad Pro the "ultimate PC replacement," but that honestly seems like a stretch for most people. That's why I'm not lumping the new Pro in with typical flagship laptops. Between its smaller screen and thin build, I suspect people are more likely to use it as a normal tablet than a full-on productivity machine.
Anyway, if you're considering buying this, there are two obvious alternatives you'll need to consider: the 12.9-inch Pro and the iPad Air 2. Apple dropped the price of the 16GB Air 2 to $399 to serve as the company's entry-level big iPad, but really, if you're scrimping for a roughly 10-inch tablet, you're better off paying the extra $200 to get a 32GB iPad Pro 9.7. The better screen, improved horsepower and extra memory are worth it. Meanwhile, there really isn't a functional power difference between the two iPad Pro versions: The bigger model ($799-plus) is the better bet if you really want to use an iOS device as a workhorse, but you'll probably need to buy some accessories to complete the effect.
You could also consider something like Google's Pixel C: It's a well-built tablet that also doubles as a faux-laptop with a surprisingly nice little keyboard add-on. The base 32GB model will set you back $499 -- $100 less than the base iPad Pro 9.7 -- but Google needs to do a better job getting developers to craft thoughtful, well-designed tablet apps. There's no split-screen multitasking in Android Marshmallow, though that won't be a problem for too much longer; Android N includes that feature and it seems to work well even on phones like the Nexus 5.
And of course, there's the Windows side to look at too. Microsoft's Surface Pro 4 starts at $899 but comes with more storage, its own pressure-sensing pen and an OS that can run crucial legacy desktop apps in addition to touch-optimized ones. In short, the Surface Pro 4 is a Windows laptop with the body of a tablet. The iPad Pro 9.7, meanwhile, is a tablet that only aspires to be as versatile as a PC.
Wrap-up
As I've been working through this review process, I've been struggling with one question: What, beyond just marketing, makes this iPad a Pro? Don't get me wrong, the 9.7-inch Pro is easily the best conventionally sized tablet Apple has ever made, but its size makes it tougher to use as an "ultimate PC replacement." In the end, though, the "Pro" distinction might prove to be meaningless. If you're looking for a new tablet, you'd miss out if you didn't at least consider this thing. It's just a fantastic little machine.
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Explore a multimedia multiverse in Santa Fe
What links Kickstarter, alternate dimensions, George R. R. Martin and the image you see above? House of Eternal Return, a new art exhibition in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
In House of Eternal Return, visitors explore a 20,000 square foot space, created by Meow Wolf, an arts production company focused on interactive multimedia experiences. The many environments within can be visited in any order, and tell a larger story. Created by dozens of artists, together they form a narrative of a family in the midst of a dimensional rift, and explores the theory of the multiverse through wormholes linking the exhibits. Installations are varied and interactive; one has a full-scale mastodon skeleton with musical ribs and light-up mushrooms, while many play with sound and visuals in interesting ways.
Although ostensibly funded through Kickstarter last year, the project was only made possible thanks to Martin's involvement. The Song of Ice and Fire author purchased an old bowling alley, leased it out to Meow Wolf and partnered with the company on renovations.
House of Eternal Return opened earlier this month, and is a permanent exhibit. Tickets range between $10-$18, depending on your age and whether you're a New Mexico resident.
The Big Picture is a recurring feature highlighting beautiful images that tell big stories. We explore topics as large as our planet, or as small as a single life, as affected by or seen through the lens of technology.
Source: Meow Wolf
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Microsoft's Edge browser will offer ad blocking
Ad blockers continue to go mainstream as Microsoft revealed its Edge browser will soon have the tech built right in. The feature was spotted by ZDNet during a Build 2016 presentation, where a slide showed that the software giant will "build ad blocking features into the browser" in the next release. The wording implies that the feature may work natively without third-party extensions, which is a good thing since Edge only just started supporting those. However, the same slide also shows that Microsoft plans to "provide a modern extension/plug-in model," complete with a store, for the next Edge release.
If accurate, the browser would join Opera, Safari and other browsers in natively stopping ads. Google has abstained so far with its mobile version of Chrome (for five billion reasons), though you can install third-party ad blockers on Chrome desktop. While users may enjoy extra data-savings, security and speed using such apps, publishers that rely on ad revenue are revolting. Sites like Forbes won't even let you browse without turning off your adblocker and in France, multiple news sites have banded together to curtail them.
Microsoft didn't say how its tech would work or when, exactly, the next Edge version will come. If its figures on Windows 10 adoption are accurate, however, a larger number of folks would suddenly get access to ad blocking tech. That could change the equation for publishers and ad networks (like Engadget's parent AOL) significantly.
Source: CNET
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Twitch shows love for mobile eSports with 'Vainglory' deal
Twitch has made a deep foray into touchscreen eSports with a deal to broadcast and promote the Vainglory Championships. The streaming company partnered with the app's developer, Super Evil Megacorp, for three years, with each company investing multi-millions of dollars to support the tournament. As a reminder, Vainglory first appeared when Apple used the title to show the power of its A8 chip. It went on to become the fastest growing mobile Twitch game last year and is available on Android or iOS.
According to Twitch, the game was also the biggest touchscreen eSport last year, with $350,000 in prize money around the world. During the winter championships, the competition drew over 1.5 million viewers on the streaming service. The deal means that Twitch will provide a dedicated broadcast team to cover Vainglory events and handle sponsorship and merchandise deals. The spring championships kick off today with registration for three-player teams competing for a total prize pool of $80,000.
With the new season comes new game options, including a new beta "Battle Royal" mode, along with a new hero, skin and "Halcyon Days" event. According to Twitch eSports director Nick Allen, the deal shows that mobile titles, once slagged by gamers, are on the upswing thanks to higher quality titles. "The eSports industry has been dominated by PC and console titles, but Vainglory is ushering in a new mobile games movement," he says.
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Amazon now has Dash buttons for over 100 brands
Amazon's Dash buttons are making shopping lists a thing of the past. You're a Prime member, after all, and shouldn't have to trouble yourself with such things. Since the little connected buttons became available, nigh on 30 brands have made ordering mac and cheese, diapers and washing powder that bit more convenient. And to celebrate Dash's first birthday, Amazon today announced a significant expansion, with a total of over 100 different buttons now on hand to take your orders for thousands of individual products.
Plenty of well-known brands now have Dash buttons to call their own, so if you're running out of anything from Red Bull to Doritos to Trojan condoms, replenishment is but a prod away. You can check out the full list of new additions here; and remember, they're effectively free, so go wild and make a fridge-door collage of the things if you want to.
Via: The Verge
Source: Amazon
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Samsung could help Apple avoid large patent payout
A review board at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has invalidated a claim against Apple with help from rival Samsung. The two firms are normally on opposite ends of the rope when it comes to a tug of war over patents. The story began about a year ago, when a Texas court ordered Apple to pay $533 million to holding firm SmartFlash, after it argued Apple's iTunes infringes three of its patents. SmartFlash's claims related to technologies for payments, storage and copy protection. It's the payment patent that the review board has dismissed, stating that it covers a "fundamental economic practice long in existence in commerce." Samsung's involvement isn't entirely selfless. The Korean giant was also accused of infringing the same technology, moving it to persuade the USPTO to review the validity of the patents in the first place. Apple still faces a review of the other two patents, verdicts for which should arrive on April 4 and May 30. Only then will we know if the iPhone-maker needs to issue a payout, and for how much. For Apple's part, it not only claims the patents are invalid, but that it doesn't even use the techniques they cover. SmartFlash, which makes its money licensing patents, can challenge the USPTO's decision.
Source: Bloomberg
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Here's your first look at the all-new 'Top Gear'
The BBC is still filming the next season of Top Gear, but to get fans excited it's taken some time out and put together a short teaser trailer. As you would expect, it's a minute of pure motoring adrenaline, with plenty of exotic cars and jaw-dropping cinematography. Top Gear host Chris Evans and Hollywood actor Matt LeBlanc take center stage, although racing car driver Sabine Schmitz also makes an appearance towards the end. It's hard to judge a show based on 60 seconds of footage, but here's one obvious takeaway: the show's budget and production values are still sky high.
Top Gear will be rebooted in May, months ahead of Amazon's new motoring show on Prime Video. It'll be a decisive moment for the broadcaster, as it tries to prove Top Gear can live on without Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond. With new presenters and a reworked creative team, there's a lot to prove, especially given the reported problems both on and off camera. Clarkson, meanwhile, is currently filming for Amazon. The first of three seasons will arrive on Prime Video this autumn -- no doubt some comparisons will be made between the two.
Source: Top Gear (YouTube)
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ICYMI: Sad unicorn truth, disease-fighting drones and more
Today on In Case You Missed It: The news that a type of unicorn walked the earth at the same time as prehistoric humans makes modern-day fantasy novels make a lot more sense. CERN is getting its Large Hadron Collider back online after a hiatus to improve its electrical system. And Ethiopia is using drones to drop sterile tsetse flies over the country, intending for them to breed with the wild natives and cut back on the population of disease-carrying insects, thus lowering risk of illness to humans and animals.We also share that paleontologists mapped the evolution of the largest type of dinosaurs, learning new things about them; and also touched on how vertical farming operations are moving into grocery stores. As always, please share any great tech or science videos you find by using the #ICYMI hashtag on Twitter for @mskerryd.
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'Disney Infinity' drops support for its Apple TV version
Apologies if you bought Disney Infinity 3.0 for your Apple TV, but the game's development team has stopped supporting the platform. On the Disney Infinity forums a user posted about an issue where Baloo and Marvel Battlegrounds figurines weren't working in the game, but Zootopia figures were. Turns out that the reason for that is because there was already support in the game for the latter, but that an update was needed for the other characters. Except that update isn't coming any time soon.
One of the forum mods posted that the development team is "currently focusing on the traditional gaming platforms. We are always evaluating and making changes, but there are currently no plans for further updates to the Apple TV version of the game." It turns out that the Battlegrounds playset wouldn't be a good fit because it focused on three-and-four player games, something the Apple TV version doesn't support.
It's a crappy situation, to be sure. The forum thread is justifiably rife with complaints and, unlike other app-based games, this stings a little harder for those who invested simply because they were promised a console-like experience with the game. That and the Infinity figures and starter kit cost way more than the typical app: $14 per (or $20 for a playset) and $100, respectively. You can still buy the latter directly from Apple.
The Infinity team did something extremely similar with the game's PC version recently, too. When we last wrote about Infinity at length, we said that it finally felt like a full-fledged game. Unless you're playing on a console, that sadly isn't the case.Via: Touch Arcade
Source: Disney Infinity forums
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WiFi distance detector could shut out router invaders
Researchers from MIT have figured out how to detect the distance between WiFi users and a single router, a feat that could make drones safer and public internet more secure. They did it by measuring the "time of flight" of WiFi signals between the transmitter and receiver, and multiplying by the speed of light to calculate distance. That concept isn't new, but MIT's CSAIL team, which has already looked through walls using WiFi, managed to build a working prototype.
During tests, the device calculated time-of-flight down to 0.5 nanoseconds, making it 20 times more accurate than other systems. In a four-room apartment, researchers picked out a user's correct room location 94 percent of the time, and figured out if someone was using WiFi inside a cafe with 97 percent accuracy. They also tested it on a drone, keeping it a set distance away from the operator with a 2-inch margin of error.
Previous attempts at WiFi user calculation required multiple routers for triangulation, but MIT's system works with a single access point. There's no word on plans to commercialize the product, but the fact that the CSAIL team made a working prototype is always a promising sign. If the tech was incorporated into a router, it could shut out snoopers or internet thieves in many circumstances, making public and private WiFi much less of a security crapshoot.
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Cooper, spinners push West Indies Women to maiden final
West Indies Women used their belligerence to defend 143 by six runs against New Zealand Women in Mumbai to book a place in their maiden final against Australia in Kolkata on Sunday
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WiFi distance detector could shut out router invaders
Researchers from MIT have figured out how to detect the distance between WiFi users and a single router, a feat that could make drones safer and public internet more secure. They did it by measuring the "time of flight" of WiFi signals between the transmitter and receiver, and multiplying by the speed of light to calculate distance. That concept isn't new, but MIT's CSAIL team, which has already looked through walls using WiFi, managed to build a working prototype.
During tests, the device calculated time-of-flight down to 0.5 nanoseconds, making it 20 times more accurate than other systems. In a four-room apartment, researchers picked out a user's correct room location 94 percent of the time, and figured out if someone was using WiFi inside a cafe with 97 percent accuracy. They also tested it on a drone, keeping it a set distance away from the operator with a 2-inch margin of error.
Previous attempts at WiFi user calculation required multiple routers for triangulation, but MIT's system works with a single access point. There's no word on plans to commercialize the product, but the fact that the CSAIL team made a working prototype is always a promising sign. If the tech was incorporated into a router, it could shut out snoopers or internet thieves in many circumstances, making public and private WiFi much less of a security crapshoot.
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Feds agree to unlock iDevices for an Arkansas prosecutor
Arkansas prosecutor Cody Hiland doesn't have to go after Apple to unlock an iPhone and an iPod belonging to two teenagers accused of killing a 66-year-old couple. According to Associated Press, the FBI has agreed to help him crack the devices open. The prosecutor believes that one of the teenagers charged of capital murder and aggravated robbery used his iPod to talk about his plan to kill the victims. He thinks he can find more evidence in the device, as well. Based on recent events, the agency could be more than capable of delivering on its promise.
If you haven't heard, the Department of Justice dropped its case against Apple after the third-party entity it brought in managed to unlock the San Bernardino shooter's iPhone 5c. The feds wanted the company to unlock the shooter's device for them, but Apple refused to comply to the very end and fought back in the name of privacy and security for months. They didn't reveal how the third-party entity hacked the device, and it's unclear if they'll be using the same method to access the devices connected to this case. By agreeing to the prosecutor's request, though, the feds are showing that they don't need Apple's help, at least until they want to access the company's newest devices.
Source: Associated Press
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Where to buy Apple's iPhone SE in the UK
"Let the 4-inch form factor not perish with the aging 5s," bellowed Apple; and thus, the iPhone SE came to be. Apple's latest handset, aimed at smaller paws and skinny jeans, is a curious blend of old and new. That's true of the design, at least, but inside you're effectively looking at an iPhone 6s, the only major difference being the lack of 3D Touch. And as you may have guessed, the little power puncher goes on sale today. But where, and for how much?
| O2 | EE | Vodafone | Three | Carphone Warehouse | Buymobiles | Mobiles.co.uk | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cheapest contract (with upfront) | £24 (£100) | £27.49 (£50) | £26 (£99) | -- | £17.49 (£200) on EE | £15 (£215) on EE | £14 (£200) on EE |
| Cheapest contract (no upfront) | £29 | £30 | -- | £31 | £26 on Voda | £30 on Three | £26 on Voda |
The iPhone SE has the lowest launch price of any iPhone that's come before it, and that's being reflected in what carriers and contract resellers are able to offer. There are plenty of tariffs available that don't demand an upfront payment and better yet, you're not really paying over the odds each month to compensate. Bear in mind the figures above are for the 16GB model and most come with modest data allowances (500MB or 1GB), but still, you're looking at a nice low barrier of entry.
As far as competition between MVNOs is concerned, there's not a great deal in it. As usual, Tesco Mobile has the best offer, just, at £26.50 per month with no upfront and a 1GB data cap. Virgin Mobile's iPhone SE 1GB plan is £28 per month, Carphone Warehouse's iD network is slightly more expensive at £29.50 per month for 1GB, and giffgaff's 1GB tariff is £26.57 per month with an initial payment of £35. The absolute cheapest MVNO contract can be found at Virgin Mobile, but £23 per month and no upfront payment only gets you a 250MB data allowance.
Tracking down a pay-as-you-go iPhone SE plan has proved impossible, meaning an unlocked, SIM-free model is the way to go if you want to pay a lump sum and be done with it. You won't find any variation in pricing whatsoever just yet, though. So, whether you go direct to Apple, or hit up Currys, Clove, Carphone Warehouse, John Lewis or anywhere else, the best prices you'll find are £359 for a 16GB model, and £439 for 64GB of storage.
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