What you need to know about Hyperloop
Elon Musk has a plan for humanity that covers clean energy, electric cars and spreading out amongst the stars. The billionaire also wants to do away with the tired and slow railways of the past in favor of pushing people around like parcels in a mail tube. That’s what Hyperloop is: a series of vacuum tubes that’ll enable travelers to get from A to B in minutes rather than hours. But Musk himself didn’t have the time to develop the concept beyond his original idea, so in 2013 he open-sourced the project for anyone to have a go. Less than three years later, the first strides toward a global network of near-supersonic travel tubes are being taken.
The Principle
Remember those vacuum tube networks that businesses used to use to send papers across large buildings? Hyperloop is basically that, but big enough to shoot people cross-country at amazing speeds. First, the tube is six feet wide, and is maintained as a low-pressure environment, though not a true vacuum. In order to prevent the passenger pod from touching the tube, it’ll float slightly above it, either on a cushion of air or using magnetic levitation. Arx Pax, creator of the Hendo Hoverboard, is working to see if its magnetic field architecture technology is suitable for keeping Hyperloop friction-free.
In many ways, Hyperloop is just a sort of maglev train. But because it doesn’t have to deal with as much air resistance, top speeds are much higher. Hyperloop is expected to hit 750MPH, more than twice as fast as the Central Japan Railway’s record-breaking 366MPH speed run. California’s $70 billion high-speed rail project looks positively tortoiselike when you realize that it’ll only reach speeds of “over” 200MPH.
If a network of Hyperloop tubes were built across the United States, it would effectively eliminate the domestic short-haul airline industry. For example, if you want to get from New York to Washington, DC, it’ll take you just under three hours on Amtrak’s Acela Express — which is what passes for high-speed rail in the US. You could also take a flight, which would take an hour and 15 minutes, plus the time spent at security, the gate, and baggage claim. That same journey with Hyperloop is expected to take just half an hour.
It was the amount of money thrown at California’s high-speed railway project that prompted Musk to launch the Hyperloop idea. He felt that the technology was outdated, the costs too high and the speed insufficient for a modern, 21st-century transport system. In his original outline, Hyperloop would be cheaper for several reasons, including the fact that governments wouldn’t need to purchase land to make it happen. Instead, it would be held in the air by a series of pylons so small that they could sit in the median strip of a major highway. Construction would be quick and cheap, too, since the pipes could be fabricated elsewhere and just welded into place when they were delivered.
Hyperloop isn’t just about making sure business types can get between meetings faster than everyone else, either. A huge cause of congestion on roads is freight traffic — eighteen-wheelers carrying cargo containers from ports to warehouses. Los Angeles Port is one of the largest points of entry for containers into the United States, and much of that is taken east by road. Imagine if, instead, containers were pushed via Hyperloop to a new logistics center in Nevada; it would cut thousands of road journeys each year. Yup, Hyperloop could even do something to reduce LA’s notoriously awful traffic.
The Contenders
Musk’s open-sourcing of the idea meant that anyone who wanted to have a go could try and build their own futuristic transport system. Very quickly, two Los Angeles–based players emerged, ready for the challenge and going by infuriatingly similar names: Hyperloop Transportation Technologies and its main rival, Hyperloop Technologies. But while their names are similar, almost nothing else about them is. In fact, when someone comes along wanting to write a David and Goliath movie about Hyperloop, they’ll find it remarkably easy.
David: Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT)
Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT) is a crowdsourced engineering project led by German entrepreneur Dirk Ahlborn. When people think about involving the “crowd” in an enterprise, it’s normally in the hope of gaining their money — but not here. Instead, scientists and engineers have agreed to donate their time and expertise, collaborating with one another online to refine the Hyperloop technology.
You might think that HTT is staffed entirely by amateurs. But last year, Ahlborn assured Engadget that the bulk of his team members have day jobs at legitimate science and engineering outfits like Tesla, SpaceX and NASA. Each person who gets involved is rewarded with the promise of stock options in whatever corporate entity is formed in the future. Ahlborn doesn’t believe that they’re doing it for the promise of cash, but give their time in the hope of making a difference.
Testbed: Quay Valley, California
Quay Valley is a “new town” that’s being cooked up by GROW Projects, an LA-based company that develops environmental projects. Located halfway between San Francisco and LA, Quay Valley is slated to run entirely on renewable, sustainable technology and house 75,000 people by the early 2020s. The project has stalled several times, but GROW Projects signed a deal with HTT to host a five-mile test loop that would encircle the community. This would be used as a proving ground to refine the technology, as well as convey residents from one end of the city to the other in just 80 seconds.
Hyperloop Transportation Technologies filed permits with the local Kings County authorities on January 20th. If it’s granted permission to begin construction and everything goes according to plan (and that’s a big if), HTT will open the facility to passengers by 2018. Then again, there’s still no word on when Quay Valley will begin construction, and right now the green city of the future is reminding us a bit of Florida’s Babcock Ranch, which has also foundered.
Goliath: Hyperloop Technologies (HT)
If HTT is the scrappy underdog relying on the goodwill of its engineers, then Hyperloop Technologies is the blue chip alternative. Its co-founder Shervin Pishevar is a venture capitalist with stakes in firms like Uber, AirBnB and Warby Parker. His wealth is estimated to be in the high hundred millions or low billions. Pishevar is also friends with Elon Musk and knew about the Hyperloop concept before it was made public.
HT’s other co-founder is Kevin Brogan — now known as Brogan BamBrogan — who leads the engineering side of the enterprise. Brogan was a key figure at SpaceX and is responsible for designing the Falcon 1 rocket as well as the Dragon spacecraft. Late last year, the company also recruited another industry heavyweight in the form of ex-Cisco president Rob Lloyd, who became the new CEO.
Testbed: City of North Las Vegas, Nevada
Hyperloop Technologies is building its first test facility at the Apex Industrial Park in the City of North Las Vegas, Nevada. The company has already broken ground on the location and is expected to begin testing inside a two-mile tube by the end of this year.
The Enabler: SpaceX
Elon Musk has no interest in building a Hyperloop himself, but SpaceX will act as a sort of evangelist to help push the idea along. The company is co-sponsoring a pod design competition that’ll see teams from colleges all around the world build the ultimate passenger capsule. It’s also rumored that Musk had a large proportion of his engineers working to refine the Hyperloop concept before he made it public.
Testbed: Hawthorne, California
SpaceX has pledged to build a one-mile test track close to its HQ in Hawthorne, California, where winners of the pod design competition can test their ideas. The firm has recruited AECOM to build the facility, and construction is expected to begin this spring. The company has always said that the loop will be built next to its headquarters, but that part of LA is heavily developed. It’s not clear, at least for now, where exactly there’s sufficient space.
The Problems with Hyperloop
Elon Musk’s original white paper spoke disdainfully of California’s high-speed rail project, which is expected to cost $70 billion. His feeling was that a smaller, lighter, nimbler Hyperloop would cost less. Of course, the sums involved are still eye-watering. Musk’s essay on the technology makes it plain: “Several billion is a low number when compared with the tens of billions proposed for the track of the California rail project.” Unfortunately, nobody’s yet able, or willing, to put a price tag on a real-world Hyperloop.
Then there’s the question of who is expected to pick up the bill, since private finance rarely puts in cash for big infrastructure projects without the public’s help. Hyperloop Technologies has the backing of some of the wealthiest people in the world, and could bankroll this itself. Hyperloop Transportation Technologies doesn’t have the same deep pockets, but it’s hoping investors will step up to finance a test track at Quay Valley. If these firms struggle to keep the cash flowing, then help may have to come from governments, which may not be willing to subsidize an untested system.
If Hyperloop does become entangled in the political process, HT has an ace up its sleeve: Jim Messina (pictured, left). Messina was the deputy chief of staff in the Obama White House between 2009 and 2011 and was a key adviser in Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign. Messina is likely to be involved with Hillary Clinton’s election campaign this year, and also has ties to the prime ministers of the UK and Italy.
If you’re working on an experimental but potentially world-changing piece of technology, it helps if you have the ears of some of the most powerful people in the world. But while Messina’s involvement may be a blessing, it could also be a curse that’ll set back Hyperloop development. His backing of the UK’s Conservative Party likely guarantees that the technology will never be adopted in that country. The party is pursuing a policy of de-funding public infrastructure and has no interest in upgrading its transport system — meaning that there’s no money for a Hyperloop.
It’s going to be interesting to see what the experience of Hyperloop will be like from the perspective of its passengers. Many of the early concept drawings show windowed pods flying through transparent tubes, but the tubes are likely to be all metal. That means that pods will be similarly enclosed, and it’s not clear how that’ll affect people who suffer from motion sickness. Dirk Ahlborn has said that it’s likely there will be displays inside each pod simulating the journey, tricking people’s eyes into thinking that they’re in a car. There should be no physical side effects beyond this, since Hyperloop will travel faster than your average jumbo jet, but slower than craft like the Concorde.
The State of Hyperloop in 2016
Hyperloop Technologies is pledging to have its first working loop by the end of 2016, while HTT is promising that its version will be ready in 2017. SpaceX is planning to have its shorter test loop completed by this summer, to help engineers refine designs for the transport pods. Both HT and HTT claim they’ll have passenger-ready Hyperloops by the end of the decade. Given that the concept was unveiled only in 2013, that would be a staggeringly fast turnaround. If everything goes according to plan, we’ll be shooting people across cities in futuristic vacuum tubes long before Google can get its first self-driving electric cars in consumer driveways.
[Image Credits: SpaceX (Initial Sketch, Interior Concept), Hyperloop Transportation Technologies/Omegabyte 3D (Quay Valley Concept), Jae C. Hong/Associated Press (SpaceX HQ), Hyperloop Transportation Technologies/Enzo Mazzeo (crowd shot), Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty (Musk), Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty (Obama and Messina)]
Why the war on VPNs is one Netflix can’t win
Netflix has started blocking users who try to bypass country-based content restrictions by using a VPN, beginning its enforcement last week with Australian subscribers. The problem is, by forcing customers to turn off their VPN, Netflix is putting its them at risk of being maliciously hacked.
Netflix is trying to protect copyright, local distribution rights and contracts. It would be a totally reasonable idea, if the only people who used VPNs were a minority of duplicitous streaming thieves, trying to sneak a peek at Doctor Who in Malaysia. And that’s how Netflix is trying to sell it — except its VPN user base is hardly a minority, and most people who use VPNs, like enterprise business people, use them for security and privacy protection.
. @NetflixUK I’m in the UK & my UK VPN is blocked! Can I protect my security on networks & watch Netflix? eg a hotel pic.twitter.com/hpC3dNuh8q
— Brian Douglas (@bndouglas) January 25, 2016
Netflix’s solution to its problem is about to create a huge, new one — for millions of people who aren’t trying to trick the service out of a Canadian show in the US. One year ago U.K.-based GlobalWebIndex estimated that 54 million people use VPNs to watch Netflix every month (Netflix declined comment to Variety on GWI’s numbers).
What Netflix is asking (er, forcing) its customers to do is, well, insane from a privacy and security perspective. That a company might insist you use 123456 as your password because it solves an internal problem for them sounds … ludicrous. Except that’s pretty much what Netflix is doing by disallowing widespread use of a security tool as critical as a VPN.
@Netflix, you do know that people use VPN for security, not just to fool geo-targeting, right? Plz don’t do this https://t.co/riBreRIRRf
— Irakli Nadareishvili (@inadarei) January 23, 2016
I’m guessing that the very real security issues are why Netflix decided to make all U.S. military bases exempt from VPN blocking. Not military personnel, mind you, just the bases. Soldiers and military personnel stationed and living off bases abroad will still have to give up the security of a VPN to watch Daredevil when they miss life back at home.
If there was a show on Netflix about stealing candy from babies it would look a lot like using public wi-fi without a VPN. Turns out, there are some scary-good reasons that all advice about attending (or getting anywhere near) a hacker conference begins with “get a good VPN for all your devices and use it at all times.
When you use a VPN, the only thing an attacker sees is your computer talking to it — they can’t see the connection to the sites you’re visiting. The ability of an attacker to spy, intercept, attack or steal information stops at the VPN.
When you use public wi-fi in a cafe, plane, or airport without turning on a VPN first, you can be hacked by anyone who’s downloaded any of the many, excellent, free, open-source network traffic analysis tools (like Wireshark or TCP dump). The risk of being scanned like this is typically low in private networks, and extremely high in public ones.
Without a VPN, someone on the same network as you with one of these tools can see the URLs you’re looking at, metadata, and any information transmitted between you and the sites you’re visiting. They can also maliciously inject traffic, where you visit a trusted web page that’s spiked with code to infect you with malware, which typically steals your banking and identity credentials.
Even if the connection is encrypted (yet you’re sans VPN) the attacker is limited to the URL you’re visiting and any leaking metadata. But if It’s not an “https” site, they’ll be able to see and capture plaintext passwords.
Guess what Netflix, some of us use VPN for legitimate access to our networks and proxies for security, not to steal your services. #its2016
— Jeff Jones (@essentricaudio) January 23, 2016
If you turn off your VPN to watch Netflix, and leave browser tabs or online apps with active sessions running in the background, you’re handing over to malicious hackers anything that’s being transmitted while you’re watching Netlfix.
As hacks and attacks increase, VPN use is something you’re increasingly going to be considered dumb not to do. Using a VPN might feel like insider infosec knowledge at this point in time, but so was making complex passwords not too long ago.
Netflix seriously needs to catch up with real-world security practices, as do other streaming sites who conflate VPN use with thievery; Netflix isn’t the only service prohibiting VPN security in the name of preserving content distribution deals. The company leveraged this when Netflix’s David Fullagar, VP of Content Delivery Architecture, announced in a blog post that this was the company’s move to “employ the same or similar measures other firms do” to solve its licensing headaches.
That Netflix is trying to pave VPN blocking over with an “everyone’s doing it” approach is worrying. Netflix is widely considered the game-changer for streaming content. If it leads the way in reducing user security industry wide by discouraging VPN use among ordinary people, things are going to get a lot worse for stalking, identity theft, ransomware, credential harvesting and much more.
Annoyingly, Fullagar’s post characterized the situation as though Netflix was being tricked by people who had something to hide. Nothing was mentioned about the legitimate use of VPNs by millions of people worldwide. Much in the same way we heard very little about non-criminal use of file-sharing services during the MPAA and RIAA’s decade-plus of campaigning against the evils of torrenting. Hollywood is, in fact, pleased as punch with Netflix’s VPN purge. This week Hollywood even called on Netflix to maintain its VPN crackdown.
if @netflix wants to force me to stop using a VPN on my home computer they will lose a customer. I use VPN for security reasons.
— Kiddi Agnarsson (@Kiddi) January 27, 2016
Dear Hollywood — the security risks are real. Maybe ask your friends at Sony about that.
Five for Friday: Wallpaper apps for every Android user
If you follow us closely, you know that we like curate collections of wallpapers for you guys. We’re always putting together themed collections to share and the posts are among some of our most popular. In short, you can’t get enough. So, we’re here to help you get more of them. So much more, really.
Today’s Five for Friday is based around Wallpaper apps for every Android user. In essence, we’ve found five incredible applications for your phone or tablet which will breathe all sorts of new life into it. Forget grabbing one or two at a time; these apps collect hundreds of images and host them in the cloud. All you gotta do is pick out the ones you like and you’re just about done!
Without further ado, here’s five Android apps you should consider right now if you like to download and install new wallpapers. We’ll let you know some of the main details as to what you can expect, but trust in knowing they are all excellent.
Wallmax
- Sort by relevance, random, views, and favorites
- Search by resolution (1024 x 768) up to Ultra HD (4K)
- Settings for restricting NSFW content
- Sync across multiple devices
- Download and install with one click
- Set favorites to come back to
Wallrox
- Extensive collection of original Material Design wallpapers
- Wallpapers are 3200 x 2560 pixels and higher
- One-touch application
- Crop and apply
- Muzei Live Wallpaper support
Backdrops
- Offers a wallpaper of the day
- Simple interface
- Hundreds of original designs
- Set favorites and easily find them later
- Unlock bonus collections
- Use Google account to sync faves with other devices
Tapet
- Specializes in creating Material Design wallpapers
- Wallpapers are custom-built to your liking
- Numerous effects to create one-of-a-kind background
- Randomly designed wallpapers look gorgeous
- Opt-in automatic wallpaper changing
Plastexo
- More than 100 flat and minimal designs
- High resolution 3200 x 2560 wallpapers
- Supports Muzei Live Wallpaper
- Developer creates many icon packs that complement nicely
- Ad-free
The post Five for Friday: Wallpaper apps for every Android user appeared first on AndroidGuys.
Jolla details tablet troubles; refunds to (maybe) come
Jolla has announced that after another shipment of 540 tablets, no more will be shipped and the rest of the people who backed the tablet project on Indiegogo will receive refunds.
In October, Jolla shipped a batch of 121 tablets and 540 more will be shipped in February. Financial and supplier problems led to Jolla making the decision to pull the plug on the tablet project.
Jolla claims backers of the tablet on Indiegogo will receive refunds starting in the first quarter of 2016. However, whether they receive all or even some of their money back doesn’t seem certain. From Jolla’s blog:
“Jolla aims to refund the total contribution, including shipping and all accessories. Due to the financial constraints this will happen in two parts: half of the refund will be done during Q1/2016, and the other half within a year, our financial situation permitting.”
Also from Jolla’s blog:
“The Tablet shipping and refund processes start immediately once all the practicalities are in place. Specific to refunding, we plan to establish and ramp up the refunding process and start refunding during the course of February.”
Note the qualifiers “aims to” and “our financial situation permitting” in the first quote and “we plan to” in the second. Those seem to indicate that refunds are not at all certain, even though Jolla later goes on to say that backers on Indiegogo, as well as those who purchased tablets via Jolla’s online store, will receive emails regarding how to obtain refunds.
Outside of the vague timeframe of “half of the refund will be done during Q1/2016, and the other half within a year,” Jolla gives no indication of when people can expect any refund.
Source: Jolla
Come comment on this article: Jolla details tablet troubles; refunds to (maybe) come
Review: Stylish Danny P. Leather Wallet Holds iPhone 6/6s Plus, Cards and Cash
Accessory maker Danny P. seeks to give iPhone 6 Plus and 6s Plus users some dual usability with its new Leather Wallet with iPhone 6 Plus Case, which includes seven credit/debit card slots, a rear folder for cash, and a sleeve for the larger-sized iPhone. The case, which is available through Apple’s own online store, is sized at 6.81 inches tall with a width of about 4.13 inches and is aimed to remain slim and unobtrusive even when stocked with an iPhone and various credit cards.
After a week of use, I’ve found that Danny P.’s Leather Wallet Case adheres to the company’s bullet point list of promises describing the case on its website, most notably in the satisfying quality of materials used to craft the iPhone accessory. Anyone with the pocket or bag real estate to house its vertically spacious design will easily find a lot to love in the case, especially those seeking an all-in-one housing solution for both monetary and iPhone protection needs.
Design
The left portion of the bifold holding the seven credit card slots on the inside of the Leather Wallet Case has an opening on the upper and right sides to hold a few dollars in cash, or any other slim pieces of paper or notes. The slot that actually holds the iPhone is a full sleeve, preventing access to the smartphone’s screen and inputs with the sole exception of the home button and Touch ID (if you slide it in upside down).
Like most sleeve cases, the inside of Danny P.’s product has a soft suede finish to make it easier to slide the iPhone in and out of the pocket, and prevent it from getting any scratches while housed there. The company’s logo is also admirably discreet on both the face of the wallet and at the bottom of the iPhone sleeve, although this is somewhat depending on the finish of the Italian leather used on each version of the case. Danny P. sent me the all-black option, and it’s perfect for anyone looking for an inconspicuous accessory.
When fully packed with seven credit, debit, and rewards cards, some cash, and the iPhone, the case’s thickness measured just under an inch for me on a day-to-day basis, which I found to be impressively non-bulky given the amount of content I placed inside. Danny P. also encourages the iPhone to be placed upside down as previously mentioned to access both the headphone jack and Touch ID for quick Apple Pay payments.
‘Star Wars’ and the coming holographic cinema revolution
“AR is going to hit us like a big bang,” says ILMxLab creative director John Gaeta when I ask him whether augmented reality, as that holographic technology is known, has been undervalued by the public and press. “We’re just trying to point out right from the beginning that there will be a form of AR that will be as hi-fidelity as the cinema that you see at some point. I can’t say what year that’ll be. But at some point, we’ll have intimate holo-experiences with performance and things like that.”
And what better way to usher in that next shift in entertainment consumption than on the back of the Star Wars franchise. Gaeta, along with a handful of others from the immersive entertainment-focused ILMxLab team — which combines talents from Lucasfilm; Industrial Light and Magic, the visual effects studio behind The Martian and Avengers: Age of Ultron; and audio post-production house Skywalker Sound — is at the Sundance Film Festival’s experimental New Frontier exhibit showing off ‘Holo-Cinema.’ It’s an AR installation that places viewers within the sandy world of Episode VII’s Jakku.
Unlike Microsoft’s HoloLens, an AR headset that combines a Windows 10 computer and projection system to create its mixed-reality world, Holo-Cinema relies on a pair of lightweight, sensor-laden active shutter glasses. These glasses, in combination with a motion-capture system used to track positioning, let viewers watch the inhabitants of Jakku — in this case, the droids BB-8 and C-3PO — pop out from the projections on surrounding screens and move around in 3D space as if they were physically present. It’s an impressive technical feat that, quite literally, has to be seen to be believed.
Holo-Cinema is merely a preview of the kinds of immersive entertainment Disney-owned Lucasfilm, ILMxLab’s parent company, believes will become commonplace in the very near future. In fact, Gaeta and Rob Bredow, the lab’s head of new media, say their team’s already at work on consumer-facing projects that could accompany the studio’s next blockbuster films. So when Episode VIII of Star Wars hits theaters, according to Gaeta, there’s a very good chance it’ll arrive with a Holo-Cinema offshoot.
“What we’re experimenting with and planning around is to actually give you more of what could be happening in the convergence of that story,” says Gaeta of AR storytelling’s promise. “What happened just before. What happens just after. What’s happening around the boundaries. … Without getting too into ‘Choose your own adventure’ and going into crazy multi-branching, what we’re trying to do is show you that, in this moment in time, in this space that you happen to be standing in, there are things still going on around the periphery of the story for you to find. And if you wanna go free, you can do that, too.”
ILMxLab demos its virtual reality production tool, VScout, at Oculus Connect 2 in Los Angeles.
This past summer, at Oculus VR’s Connect 2 developer conference in Los Angeles, ILMxLab took the wraps off another immersive production tool, dubbed VScout, that Bredow says was developed in parallel with Holo-Cinema. It’s the virtual reality companion to what ILMxLab’s doing with AR. And, like Holo-Cinema, it can be used either as a standalone entertainment experience, allowing viewers to explore and follow separate storylines in the world, or as a tool for pre-production.
“We’ve used it for some of the other filmmakers,” says Bredow of the platform’s filmmaking potential. “Gareth Edwards has leveraged it for some of the work that he’s done on Rogue One.”
“It’s basically like being inside of a movie,” says Bredow.
Using both VScout and Holo-Cinema, Bredows says Edwards was able to make certain pre-production decisions for the next Star Wars film simply by being able to visualize “how big doors should be” on set, for example. The key advantage of which was that the crew didn’t actually have to “build the things at full scale,” thus sparing the production’s budget.
To create the scene taking place on Jakku at New Frontier, artists and engineers at ILMxLab used “real elements” from The Force Awakens, blending both photographed and computer-generated assets. That environment was then combined with a mocap performance of C-3PO and BB-8. The result is a pre-recorded scene that viewers can participate in.
Actors perform in a motion-capture studio to create a scene from Star Wars.
“When we do this for production, we’ll have the person acting for C-3PO and the person driving the droid [BB-8] standing just off set, acting in real time. So you’ll get the interaction of being immersed in the environment and the interaction with a real person. So it’s basically like being inside of a movie,” says Bredow.
As for why ILMxLab chose Sundance to show off the tech, Gaeta says it’s really about community outreach and education. He refers to Holo-Cinema as a “portal” that filmmakers can use to transport audiences into the worlds they’re seeing onscreen. It can also be used, Bredow suggests, as a means of repurposing “things that might’ve ended up on the cutting-room floor.”
Using a tablet interface, ILMxLab can control elements of the projected Holo-Cinema scene.
“This is our way of simulating augmented reality to come,” says Gaeta. “So when glasses come online and are enabled to handle the type of fidelity that we’re looking for, we’re trying to imagine how we would bring cinematic emotional moments into your spaces, your world. This is just kind of like … it’s a little bit of a format teaser.”
Image credits: Lucasfilm (mocap studio)
That time Twitch jumped the shark
Twitch made its debut in 2011. Since then, the service has evolved from a gaming-only subset of Justin.tv into a popular, culture-shaping phenomenon pioneering the world of live online broadcasting. Justin.tv was quickly swallowed whole by Twitch’s immense success, and in 2014 Amazon acquired the entire company for nearly $1 billion. The service has launched careers, beaten YouTube to the punch, attracted celebrities, dominated the streaming eSports market and even spawned its own icon-based language. And it’s done all of this in less than five years.
So far, Twitch has handled its growth spurt in stride. It’s navigated the complicated worlds of partnerships, advertising and mainstream marketing largely without losing its niche-community appeal. That is, until the following headline hit the net this week:
“Live Free. Couch Hard.: Totino’s Pizza Rolls™ Unveils First-Ever ‘Bucking Couch’ to Deliver the Ultimate Gaming Experience Before the Big Game.”
For a legitimate event, it works way too well as an SNLgag.
Twitch and Totino’s are partnering for a pre–Super Bowl show featuring a handful of prominent streamers playing games while sitting on a mechanical-bull-style couch. Also, someone will throw pizza rolls at the streamers every now and then. This round of upholstered ridiculousness will be live-streamed on the official Totino’s Twitch channel, and it’s all wrapped up in a flaky, golden-brown title: the Totino’s Bucking Couch Bowl.
This promotion is equal parts hilarious and confounding. It’s the kind of blatantly branded content that makes longtime Twitch fans cringe and pizza-roll lovers gag on their steaming pockets of processed cheese. This isn’t even the first time Twitch and Totino’s have partnered, and it won’t be the last. Totino’s is a regular sponsor of gaming events in general; the partnership itself isn’t weird. It’s the event. The Totino’s. Bucking. Couch. Bowl.
It feels like a discarded Saturday Night Live skit poking fun at greasy, out-of-touch video game fans. Imagine Kenan Thompson sitting on the giant red couch as it bucks around, his expression resigned as Cecily Strong laughs hysterically and chucks mini pizza rolls at his face. The bodies of his fellow streamers lie strewn across the black padding under the couch. A Totino’s sign flashes happily in the background. For a legitimate event, it works way too well as an SNL gag.
The Bucking Couch Bowl seems like a money-grabbing gimmick partially because Twitch and Totino’s are positioning themselves against the Super Bowl, one of the most high-profile broadcast events in existence, with billions of dollars in ad revenue on the line. This gets to the heart of the issue: So far, Twitch has done an amazing job retaining its community-focused charm while operating as a billion-dollar, Amazon-owned property. But with the Totino’s Bucking Couch Bowl, it feels like Twitch isn’t in on the joke. It’s too big, too try-hard, too branded. It feels like good advertising for Totino’s and solid money for Twitch, but crappy content for viewers.
Twitch has laughed with us during stunts like the Bob Ross marathon, the launch of Twitch Creative and Twitch Plays, even when Microsoft live-streamed a handful of people being tortured while standing on a billboard for Rise of the Tomb Raider. Twitchcon, the company’s first major convention and associated tech-style press conference, was a massive success. Deadmau5 was there, and it wasn’t exploitative; it was big and beautiful and right. Twitch truly does care about its audience and its longtime fans. It’s easy to see in the years of quality content they’ve provided and continue to churn out.
The Totino’s Bucking Couch Bowl is distinctly icky. But, I get it. This is what Twitch has to do, and what it will continue to do, to remain relevant in the broader entertainment market. We’re watching Twitch grow from a niche live-streaming service into a new kind of online network, the first of its kind and the founder of entertainment’s next big leap. The company has more resources than ever at its disposal, with bigger partnership opportunities and buckets of cash on the line. Some of its advertisements will simply feel like advertisements. Sometimes it will feel as if Twitch made a deal with a major company and it’s trying to make things fun. Sometimes that won’t work, and it will feel like we’re laughing at Twitch.
But, most of the time, Twitch is still laughing with us.
Tidal’s Rihanna exclusive drove a ton of interest in the app this week
Rihanna released her long-awaited new album ANTI earlier this week, her first release since 2012’s Unapologetic. It was a surprise launch, and it had a twist: Rihanna offered it up for free in partnership with Tidal and Samsung. They offered 1 million free copies, which ran out less than two days after the announcement; to get the album, you had to install the Tidal app and get a download redemption code. The album is now out to buy on iTunes, but Tidal retains the exclusive streaming rights for Rihanna’s latest, at least for now — you can’t stream it on Spotify, Apple Music, Google Play Music or the rest.
The power of free, highly anticipated new music from one of the biggest artists around proved to be a boon to Tidal, even though it was giving the album away for free. According to the company, the Tidal app jumped all the way to number 13 in the iTunes App Store top free app listings, not far behind Pandora and Spotify. That’s up from 147 earlier in the week, a pretty big jump — even if it was driven by a freebie from a popular artist.
It’s the latest example of one of Tidal’s main selling points: exclusive content. It’s been almost a year since the service relaunched under Jay-Z’s stewardship, and in that time the service has featured exclusive music including the video for Beyoncé and Nicki Minajs’s “Feeling Myself,” Prince’s pair of HITnRUN albums, Little Wayne’s Free Weezy Album and Calvin Harris’s “How Deep is Ur Love” video.
Tidal’s hardly the only ones doing this — Apple’s exclusive streaming Taylor Swift concert that was released over the holidays is just one huge example of the kinds of exclusive material you’ll find elsewhere. And this promo for Rihanna’s latest isn’t widly different than what Jay-Z himself did in 2013, when he partnered with Samsung to give away 1 million copies of his latest album.
Of course, this is almost certainly a temporary blip before Tidal returns to its previous status in the App Store rankings. But if the company can convert some of those many people who downloaded its app to get a shot at the new Rihanna album to its full subscription service, it’ll be a win for the company.
Facebook should know by now what’s news and what’s spam
Late last week, The Guardian published an interview with a survivor of Obama’s first drone strike, which occurred in tribal Pakistan on his third day as president. It detailed the impact the attack had and raised concerns over the civilian damage these drone strikes can cause. But as important as this story sounds, you would not have been able to share it on Facebook. If you tried to do so, Facebook would have blocked you.
Spencer Ackerman, the story’s author, learned about it from friends who tried to share the link and couldn’t. He took to Facebook to voice his disappointment. The piece, after all, contained nothing inherently offensive, without any graphic imagery or incendiary language. After his editors informed Facebook about the block, he was then told that it was an error. It turns out that the link was somehow marked as spam by Facebook’s automated anti-spam system. The story has since been cleared of that false positive and can now be shared. Ackerman, for his part, has told us he believes it was an honest mistake.
But this is not the first time an innocuous news story has been flagged unfairly. In December last year, for example, a New York Times article about 1950s nuclear targets was blocked with a message that read: “The content you’re trying to share includes a link that our security systems detected to be unsafe.” In November, Facebook also initially blocked Boing Boing and Tech News Today stories about a Facebook rival called Tsu.co. Those stories were marked as spam. (Tsu is an incentive-based social network that pays its users for sharing and generating content, which Facebook says encourages spammy behavior.)
These stories were eventually approved and the ban lifted. But the fact that completely benign links can be marked as false positives at all is concerning. For many people — almost 1.59 billion users, at last count — Facebook is their predominant window to the world. It’s the modern equivalent of a web portal, not unlike MSN, Yahoo or even AOL, Engadget’s parent company. Facebook, for its part, doesn’t seem to shy away from this pronouncement. In May of last year, it partnered with several news sites like the New York Times and Buzzfeed to host editorial content from those sites on Facebook’s own servers. Ostensibly, it’s to improve page load times, but it also keeps you, the user, within Facebook’s walled garden. And walled gardens are no good if they keep you from reading and consuming outside links.
You might point out that these issues were all resolved in the end, but what about the stories we don’t hear about? What about news links from smaller blogs or independent websites that don’t have the same clout or reach as The Guardian or the Times? What if a legitimate news story gets blocked and nobody reports it? We might never know about it.
Of course, it’s not really Facebook’s fault either. A social network of its size attracts a slew of spammers and folks who wish to flood the network with bad links. Sometimes spammers embed their links behind URL shorteners or attach them to an image to hide detection. In an explainer on its spam prevention system posted in 2010 (which a Facebook spokesperson claims is still relevant today), Facebook said that it devotes a tremendous amount of time and resources to build systems that “detect suspicious activity and automatically warn people about inappropriate behavior or links.” It uses a combination of anti-spam tools, engineer intervention (they can write rules in real-time to identify malicious content) and community reporting to filter the bad stuff out.
But sometimes legitimate stuff still gets hit with the ban hammer. In that same post from 2010, then-company spokesperson Matt Hicks, wrote:
“Every once in a while, though, people misunderstand one of these systems. They incorrectly believe that Facebook is restricting speech because we’ve blocked them from posting a specific link or from sending a message to someone who is not a friend. Over the years, these misunderstandings have caused us to be wrongly accused of issues ranging from stifling criticism of director Roman Polanski over his sexual abuse charges to curbing support for ending U.S. travel restrictions on Cuba to blocking opponents of same-sex marriage.”
It’s unfortunate, then, that Facebook isn’t more forthcoming about why and how it blocks certain links. Facebook said in the above post that it won’t share details regarding how its anti-spam algorithm works because otherwise spammers might learn to game the system. Indeed, we asked Facebook to comment on what happened with Ackerman’s Guardian story, and the company simply pointed us to a comment left on his post where a Facebook spokesperson said it was a false positive. But it’s still a disconcerting feeling to know that a link might be blocked for no obvious reason beyond that it was marked as spam. That would be a good enough excuse if Facebook were just for communications between friends and family. But when it’s also a daily news source for a billion-plus people, it’s not an excuse at all.
Some of these so-called false positives could be averted if Facebook took its role as news disseminator more seriously. Perhaps it could be more like Apple News, which combines the usual algorithmic news feeds along with links curated by actual human beings. This would be right in line with its status as modern day web portal — MSN, AOL and Yahoo all have full-time editors who curate their homepages. In fact, Facebook did at one point hire editors to curate news: It was for its Paper news feed app, before that transitioned into what eventually became Instant Articles.
To be fair, Facebook’s News Feed is different to that of Apple News or even Twitter Moments in that it’s based almost entirely on who your friends and family are. Your news feed is based on an algorithm that combines stories you tend to “Like” and the kinds of posts Facebook thinks will get the most engagement. In a way, your news feed is already curated, but by a machine, not by a person. For Facebook to hire editors to curate personalized news feeds for all its 1.59 billion users might be asking too much.
And yet, why can’t it have both? A combination of human news curation along with Facebook’s powerful news feed algorithm could send a strong message to its users that Facebook really is their one-stop-shop for all that’s happening in the world. And, more importantly, perhaps having real people monitoring the news would prevent legitimate stories — like the ones Ackerman wrote — from going unseen.
[Image credit: Lead/middle: Getty Images; Bottom: Facebook]
Google Pixel C tablet review: Out with the Nexus, in with the Pixel
Google’s event last Fall left little surprise in the way of Nexus news after a barrage of leaks that preceded it. But we fortunately didn’t know the whole story of that day. Instead of releasing another iteration of the Nexus tablet, Google had taken matters into its own hands and launched a home-brewed solution – the Pixel C.
This announcement threw the mobile industry for a loop for a few reasons: 1) The Nexus program was for the first time challenged, 2) The Pixel branding had historically been reserved for Google’s own pompous Chromebook (running Chrome OS), and 3) This Pixel device ran Android instead of Chrome OS.
The head scratching was put to the side when Google showed off its neat approach to an Android tablet. The body screamed quality with a sturdy, all-metal build. The complementing keyboard accessory was given the same level of refinement, and neatly integrates with the tablet through a clever use of magnets. Let’s review if the Pixel C is all that it’s cracked up to be.
Design
The build is where the Pixel line shines, as quality is one of Google’s biggest ideas behind it. The Pixel C continues the trend that the Chromebook Pixel started. It is the little brother, if you will. Smaller in size and lesser in capability (and in price). Nonetheless, the superb design and construction from the Chromebook Pixel is ever-so present. As far as I’m concerned, this thing is the definition of a premium device.
Except for the front glass, metal surrounds the tablet from every corner. Its soft and smooth finish makes for a fantastic feel in hand. The chassis has been machined impeccably, from the curvature that flows onto the sides to the speaker grills.
From the front, you can see the lip of the metal casing. It surrounds the glass and has a subtle chamfer to smooth the transition.
The power and volume rocker buttons are made of the same sturdy metal (located by the top, left corner). There’s a simplicity and cohesion to them, as they just appear to protrude from the chassis. They are firm and tactile to the press. The brand-spanking new USB Type-C port lives on the bottom, left side, and the 3.5mm headphone jack is on the opposite top, right side.
The primary camera has a small cutout on the back, right corner. It was thoughtful of Google to recess the camera module so that it doesn’t get scratched. The front facing camera is dead center on the bezel above the display. And speaking of the bezel (black space around the screen), it won’t win any awards for being the thinnest. It’s not exorbitant but is definitely significant.
If you recall last years Nexus 9, HTC had incorporated dual front stereo speakers. Although Google had been seemingly sold on the idea (Nexus phones have had stereo speakers too), the Pixel C settled with side-firing speakers instead. But at least there’s still two of them.
Lastly, there are a couple subtle features towards the top of the device. Four microphones along the very top ensure that the Pixel C listens for your “Ok Google” voice commands, even if you’re across the room (noise-cancellation in tow).
You may have already noticed the slit on the back. It’s a split of four LED windows. When the Pixel C is in use, it shines Chrome’s signature colors (blue, red, yellow, and green). But it isn’t just for looks. When the display is off, it can show you the battery status (by fourths – 25%, 50%, etc.) when you knock on the back. It also shines red when there’s little battery remaining.
Display
The Pixel C packs a 10.2″ sized display (in a 1:√2 aspect ratio). It is an LTPS (Low Temperature Poly-Silicon) LCD panel and I must say, Google nailed it with this one. The picture quality (backed by a sharp 2560×1800 pixel resolution) shines stupendously, with a full sRGB color gamut. And at even extreme viewing angles, I didn’t get any hint of washed out or degraded colors.
At 500 nits, it can get plenty bright (50% brightness was typically sufficient in my use). This also mean that outdoor visibility is fantastic.
The display is just a winner all-around, and it totally backs the quality that the Pixel C promotes in presentation.
Performance
Another thing that backs the Pixel C’s top-notch hardware is the lightning fast performance. Android Marshmallow just flies on the Pixel C, the fastest I’ve ever seen it.
The speedy performance is thanks to the choice in SoC – Nvidia’s latest Tegra X1 beast of a chipset. It has an octa-core processor and a 256-core GPU (graphics processing unit), coupled with 3GB of RAM. This horsepower gives Marshmallow a super satisfying fluidity, making it a real joy to navigate around the Material Design UI and play games.
The Pixel C comes in two storage quantities – 32GB or 64GB (with the latter priced at $100 more. Tsk tsk, Google). And there’s no microSD slot for expansion, so you better get comfortable with cloud services if you need more storage. There’s also no SD card reader. It’s sounding more and more like Google didn’t aim the Pixel C to serve as a primary computer (more on this point later).
Although the dual speakers don’t fire sound directly towards you, I did find that they get surprisingly loud. Also, the quality remains composed even at the highest volume. Audio from the headphone jack sounded great as well.
Tablet Usability
You’ll probably be in familiar territory if you’ve used a 10″ tablet before. I’m not personally a fan of large tablets, navigation can be a bit cumbersome while handling.
Fortunately, although the tablet is mostly comprised of metal, it isn’t slippery. The finish has some friction to it and I’ve had no problem keeping my grip. The robust feel of the chassis has made it a joy to handle and well representative of its price. But money isn’t the only cost of a premium build. The tablet is hefty, at 1.14 lbs.
The Pixel C and Dell XPS 13 – brothers from another mother.
The large size makes for a couple ergonomic concerns. My hands borderline grip the sides where the speaker grills are located. I often use my thumbs for support when I’m watching a video (it’s just comfortable for me), and they naturally land right over the speakers. The other concern is with the power button. It’s on the top of the device (left corner), which is a reach to get to. What frustrates me more is that there’s no tap-to-wake to help the inconvenience. Last year’s Nexus 9 had tap-to-wake. What gives?
Keyboard
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It first must be said that while Google included the neat keyboard attachment with our review unit, it’s not included in the retail purchase of the Pixel C. It’s a separate purchase, and not a cheap one, at $150. However, I’ll argue that having the keyboard with this tablet is less crucial than let’s say the Microsoft Surface. Windows is a productivity-focused OS, while Android is not.
I love that although the keyboard is an accessory, it’s not an afterthought, whatsoever. It’s as well built as the Pixel C is, with the same metallic foundation. The keys, which are chiclet style, are also made from Aluminum. Their sturdiness and soft finish makes it a pleasure to type.
I’ve had no problems using the keyboard for lengthy writing sessions (I used it for this review). The keys are decently spaced and have great key-press travel. However, Google had to smush some keys (particularly, the “Enter” key is too small) and omit lesser used symbols to fit it in the Pixel C’s form-factor. Nonetheless, if the Pixel C wanted to be a productivity machine, this keyboard could do it with flying colors.
The Hotkey button “…” toggles extra symbol keys from the virtual keyboard. It can also be used for key combination shortcuts.
Before you commit to the Pixel C + keyboard combo, make sure that you’re okay with the fact that there’s no touchpad. Navigation through the UI is still done via the touchscreen despite the laptop form that the Pixel C can take. This is kind of awkward, especially if you’re an avid laptop user, but it works.
The magnet/kickstand system is pretty fantastic, in my opinion. There’s no special dock to line up when connecting the tablet to the keyboard; just effortlessly plop it on the kickstand and you get a most satisfying merger. The two pieces won’t separate until you want them to. Also, Google made sure to make the magnets attract in the correct orientation, so you can’t accidentally connect the tablet upside-down. This also goes when you close the device (tablet screen face down on the keyboard). There’s only one orientation where the magnets will clasp.
The kickstand is very stiff, which allows the user to freely set the tablet’s angle. The tilt range goes from all the way flat to almost 90° vertical. Be careful to stop when you get to either limit, or the tablet will fly off. That brings me to a point about the magnetic connection. It’s so strong that detaching the pieces is slightly jolting. Users need to be mindful and keep a good grip to avoid gravity taking control. Also, I’ve had a few times that the two pieces inadvertently rubbed against each other when I pulled them apart, which can lead to scratches.
The keyboard communicates through Bluetooth and has its own battery. But you never have to worry about charging it. The tablet charges the keyboard wirelessly when they’re mated. Also, the system is smart enough to only pair the keyboard when the tablet is on the kickstand.
Camera
I’ll cut to the chase and say that the cameras on the Pixel C aren’t anything to write home about. We have a 8MP sensor on the back and 2MP on the front. They work fine for if you’re not mindful on quality. You’ll get an alright shot in good lighting situations, but as the light goes away, quality goes south pretty quickly (grainy-ness will show up).
Check out the gallery below and be the judge:
It’s not as critical to have a great camera on a tablet as it is a smartphone, but I feel like Google should’ve done a bit better, at least with the front camera. I see more likeliness in video chatting than using the rear camera while you’re out and about.
Battery
I was satisfied with the life of the Pixel C’s 34.2 WHr capacity battery. My tablet usage is very on and off. Therefore, the battery life test is determined by usage as much as it is Doze’s efficiency.
Straight up usage shows a really constant battery drain for typical use cases (web browsing, chatting, video watching). I observed about 10% battery drain an hour (with 50% brightness).
With a more on/off behavior, Doze really shows its power when the tablet is not in use. The following battery drain was over a few days.
Notice how little battery life Doze uses with a couple days of no use.
Software
Tons of reviewers bash the Pixel C for not having productivity features to justify the keyboard’s existence. But I think that they’re looking at it wrongly. The keyboard is meant to compliment Android (if you type more than the average bear). Adding on a keyboard doesn’t mean that it’s now a productivity beast, that’s just an implication that the industry is making based on similar devices on the market. My belief is that Google did not target a productivity-focused audience with the Pixel C, or try to make Android something that it’s not.
So from that perspective, let’s dive into the software experience. Android 6.0 (Marshmallow) is as fabulous as ever on the Pixel C. In combination with the powerhouse Tegra X1 chipset, all of the Material Design animations and transitions just fly. Material Design is so beautiful when you see it with this level of fluidity. Sometimes I just want to use it with no purpose; only to play around the UI and adore the response.
You’ll be in familiar territory if you’ve used Material Design. But because this is a tablet, you get native landscape support. The notification shade drops down from the location where you drag it down. The bottom navigation bar splits the three-button layout, with Back and Home on the left corner and Recent Apps on the right. Other than these things, you pretty much have the same UI as on Android phones.
I must mention that everything has not been picture perfect. There are a couple repercussions from Android 6.0 not thoroughly being tuned into a tablet interface. My biggest gripe was that content often merely gets stretched to fill the display’s extra space (unless it’s one of the few apps that is coded to take advantage of the larger screen real estate, such as Gmail and YouTube). It seems like a wasted opportunity to make the user feel like the tablet’s large screen was a vauable investment.
Content generally stays small, while the space is stretched
A Dual Window mode in Android 6.0 would have helped tremendously in this case (Google has said it’s in the works). Also, apps sometimes aren’t coded with landscape support. This is especially awkward when you’re using the Pixel C like a laptop; it disrupts the experience.
I also dealt with a bug in my use. At some point, the performance stopped being speedy, and rather, was jittery and not completely responsive to my taps. So much so that I stopped using it (powering off/on didn’t fix it). When I picked it up again a couple days later (with the intent of factory resetting), I noticed the issue was gone. Weird.
Final Thoughts
Some may look at Google’s Pixel C as a lost cause. From certain angles, I can get on board with that. There are plenty of more capable 2-in-1’s out there at this price-point. But then I feel like we’re missing the point. The Pixel C is made for the premium Android lover. It’s not about practicality.
The fact that it’s a Pixel or that it has a keyboard attachment shouldn’t confuse that this thing is first and foremost an Android tablet. The Pixel branding is a progression and the keyboard is an enhancement. And it makes senses when you look at the retail price of last year’s Nexus 9 – $399 (16GB model). When you take into account the Pixel C’s souped up build and larger screen, the $100 extra is justified (the 32GB Pixel C starts at $499).
However, there’s certainly more work to do. Usability can be improved on a few fronts, such as adding back in tap-to-wake and shedding off a little weight. The cameras don’t represent the quality that the rest of the device does. And maybe most importantly, we need more support in Android to take advantage of the larger screens on tablets.
I look forward to seeing where the Pixel C heads in the future, and hope Google gives the same treatment to its phone this year. But for now, if you’re an Android fan in need of a tablet, and value a premium device, then look no further.
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