BBC captures nature in 4K for ‘Planet Earth II’

The 4K wildflife documentary Netflix promised us isn’t slated to debut until 2019, but you won’t have to wait that long to see vivid images of nature on TV. BBC’s gearing up for the release of Planet Earth II, its six-part follow-up to the original Planet Earth series shown in 2006, later this year. Just like the original series, the six, one-hour episodes will explore jungles (both real ones and concrete), deserts, grasslands “and the extraordinary ways animals survive within them.” This time, though, BBC captured the planet’s habitats on cam entirely in 4K.

Planet Earth II’s executive producer Mike Gunton says “It will be a truly immersive experience, providing audiences with a unique perspective on the most extraordinary places and animals on our planet.” As icing on the cake, Sir David Attenborough (who provided the first series’ voice-over) is coming back to narrate how animals live in the wild.

Source: BBC, Variety

Bill Gates sides with FBI over iPhone access issue

Bill Gates says that Apple should help the FBI break open the San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone. Talking to the Financial Times, he said this was a very specific case: “They are not asking for some general thing.” Gates has taken a different view compared to major tech companies: Facebook, Google and Twitter have all sided with Apple’s stance after a judged ruled that the company needs to help the FBI in unlocking the shooter’s phone to assist in their terrorism investigations.

FBI director James Comey has also insisted that this case is very narrow and that the bureau “doesn’t want to break anyone’s encryption.” Gates added that rules were necessary as to when information could be accessed. “I hope that we have that debates so that the safeguards are built.” While Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella hasn’t said anything directly, a spokesperson for the company has pointed media to a Reform Government Surveillance statement, which opposes the order. Microsoft is a member of the RGS.

Source: FT

Volvo is the latest to add phone-free Spotify to its rides

Volvo has been involved with a fair bit of high-tech stuff as of late but the latest announcement from the company is a little less fantastical than garbage collecting robots. The Swedish car manufacturer is partnering with Stockholm-based Spotify for a native streaming app in its XC90 SUV, S90 sedan (above) and V90 wagon this spring, no mobile device required. Accessing the streaming service in your new ride will require a Spotify Premium account, much like using it on a PlayStation 4 or other device would.

A prepared statement says that you’ll still be able to go about things the old way (connecting your mobile device via Bluetooth or CarPlay), if you want. But, the tablet-like infotainment center will probably offer a better experience in terms of user interface while you’re driving. You can search for an album or artist by scrawling the first letter of its name with your fingertip, for example. And hey, if you want some of the old school feel, Spotify Connect can still act as a remote for playback for your passengers.

Via: Gizmag

Source: Volvo

IBM’s supercomputer will power an online, anime VR game

It’s a bit odd that no one’s thought to fuse the virtual-reality, role-playing game centric anime Sword Art Online into a proper VR experience before now, but that’s the future we live in. No worries though, because IBM is using (Japanese) its Watson Cognitive Computing tech and SoftLayer cloud computing for Sword Art Online: The Beginning. It’s a massively multiplayer VR game, of course, and perhaps other details will clear themselves up come a Tokyo-based event running from March 18th to the 20th. There, a 3D scanner will put folks’ likenesses into the game for use as an avatar, Siliconera reports.

Right now, the anime’s creator has said The Beginning will be “completely foreign” from any other video game experience, but that’s about all there is to go on. SlashGear writes that the game will support both the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift and that next month’s alpha test starts with a paltry 208 testers from the Tokyo metro area. But should you get in, control won’t take place via brainwaves like on the show, as motion controls are on tap for the real-world version.

Getting your hopes for a surprise NerveGear VR headset announcement might be a little premature, though — we still have six years before the show’s 2022 setting arrives.

Via: SlashGear

Source: VR MMO Project (Japanese)

There’s more than just one iPhone the US wants to access

Remember when the head of the FBI swore blind that authorities only wanted backdoor access to the iPhone in this one, special case? Turns out that his friends over at the Justice Department just blew that claim miles out of the water. The Wall Street Journal has revealed that the DOJ is currently pushing court cases to get access to the data on no less than 12 different iPhones. The paper’s sources say that officials are using the All Writs Act, the same 18th-century law that the FBI feels justifies its request for a backdoor.

The paper also makes mention of how Apple, until this point, has chosen to deal with requests that Tim Cook describes as “chilling.” According to a prosecutors letter filed in New York, the company “simply deferred complying with them, without seeking appropriate judicial relief.” This time, however, Apple’s decision to go public and fight the case has seen luminaries from across the tech world weigh in, most of whom (but not all) support the company.

At the same time, pro-Apple rallies are currently being organized for 5:30pm (your time) later today by advocacy group Fight For the Future. If you want to participate, simply head down to your nearest Apple Store and tell people about why this is generally a bad thing.

Source: WSJ, Fight for the Future

Oppo can fully charge a smartphone in 15 minutes

Most people might not drool over Oppo phones, but they’re going to get a feature that might get those salivary glands pumping. This morning at Mobile World Congress, the company showed off its new SuperVOOC quick-charging technology — if real-world results are as promising as they say, Oppo fans will be able to fully charge some of their devices in 15 minutes. No, seriously.

Oppo says that’s about how much time it’ll take to charge a dead 2,500mAh battery to 100%, and that the technology will work over traditional MicroUSB and USB Type-C cables. That’s even faster than what we’ve seen out of Qualcomm’s most recent QuickCharge 3.0 demos — the fast-charging technology baked into chipsets like the Snapdragon 820 can get a smartphone from bone-dry to 80 percent in around 35 minutes. Of course, it’s sort of no surprise Oppo can squeeze better performance out of their system — it’s more-or-less proprietary Oppo, so the company has full control over the battery, silicon and software involved. That’s the sort of end-to-end control that helped Huawei figure out how to super-charge smartphones, too.

In some cases, you’ll be able to get a full charge in less than 15 minutes. An Oppo hypeman plugged a metal-encased reference device into a charger and continued his spiel in Mandarin. Less than ten minutes later — after he discussed an algorithm that varies current to maximize charging efficiency while keeping temperatures low — the phone was back up to 100 percent. Our natural skeptics can’t help suspect this was just a staged demo for the show, so here’s hoping we get to test a SuperVOOC phone ourselves soon.

Netflix is going all in on HDR and more original content

After revealing an ambitious plan for global expansion earlier this year, Netflix is now looking to focus on what’s arguably the most important part of its business: content. In a recent meeting at Mobile World Congress 2016, the video giant shared more details about what subscribers should expect next. And that mostly revolves around making a bigger push for original shows, improving the Netflix mobile apps on iOS and Android, as well as bringing support for high dynamic range (HDR) programming.

The company hasn’t been shy to divulge its appreciation for HDR, but it’s going all out on the technology in 2016. “We started exploring HDR content about one year ago,” says Chris Jaffe, vice president of user interface innovation at Netflix, “it is the [obvious] next-level resolution in the playback experience.” Over the coming months, there will be many HDR shows available on the platform, including Marco Polo season one and the highly anticipated second season of Daredevil.

But Jaffe knows it won’t be easy, particularly due to the amount of internet bandwidth required by this type of content. As such, he says, Netflix has already worked out various compression algorithms, which adjust the quality of the video based on its complexity and still serve it up at a high resolution. So long as you have 16-20 Mbps connection, the experience should suffer from a minimum buffering woes. Of course, Ultra HD content plays a major role in Netflix’s strategy too, and there are more than 600 hours of 4K programming expected to hit the streaming service in 2016.

Additionally, Jaffe says Netflix is launching 30 shows this year, including new seasons for existing series like House of Cards and Orange is the New Black, plus 10 original movies and a number of documentaries and exclusive content for kids. “[We have] 75 million members around the world; essentially that means 75 million different experiences,” he says about the challenge Netflix faces to have something for everyone, from movies and TV shows to the algorithm used to recommend what you should watch.

On the mobile side, Netflix is expected to rollout a revamped iOS app tomorrow, featuring support for Arabic and auto-play episodes. Later this year, both the iOS and Android applications will let also you manage your data usage, in case you have a cap on your smartphone or tablet plan and want to limit streams to a certain quality.

Meanwhile, if you have a Chromecast, you can expect a second-screen experience for to arrive “shortly,” which is going to give you access to IMDB-like metadata from your iOS or Android device. It’ll come in handy during those times when you don’t know who an actor is, or want to know what other movies they are in — the benefit here is you’re able to do it directly from the app.

You have to give it to Netflix for its appetite to keep growing across the board, but you also have to ask yourself if it’s trying to do too much all at once. As always, however, only time will tell. For now, if you’re a Netflix buff, there’s no reason you shouldn’t be excited about the company’s plans for the near future.

[Image credits: Netflix, Getty Images]

O2 CEO says blocking mobile ads isn’t ‘the answer’

Just a few days after Three announced it was going to block mobile ads at the network level, O2’s CEO Ronan Dunne has spoken out against the practice. In an interview with Campaign at MWC, Dunne criticised pop-ups and other “intrusive forms of advertising,” but added that grand-scale blocking wasn’t “the answer.” It’s a slightly different tune than O2 was humming late last year. Days after EE said it was considering ad-blockers on its network, O2’s MD of digital commerce made it clear the carrier was in the advanced stages of assessing the technology itself, and was even testing it with some customers.

And if O2’s apparent U-turn on the subject wasn’t awkward enough, Three’s owner is in the process of acquiring the rival carrier. While that’s far from a done deal, it could make for some frigid boardroom meetings considering the networks’ conflicting stances. It’s important to note that Three won’t block all ads at the network level, just those deemed intrusive, irrelevant or malware-ridden. O2 isn’t a fan of those types of ads either, but Dunne prefers a more passive approach, encouraging advertisers to commit to the Internet Advertising Burea’s guidelines on responsible ads.

Call it conflict of interest or industry insight, but O2 runs its own advertising platform called Weve, which is doing quite well for itself if last year’s revenue growth is any indication. Online advertising is one of those necessary evils: It keeps websites afloat and mobile games free. But you only have to look at the growing acceptance of ad-blocking tech among huge device makers like Apple and Samsung to see there’s an appetite for a leaner web. Circumventing ad-blockers is a business now, too. Companies have taken to paying their way onto whitelists already, so perhaps O2 will pull another one-eighty if it concludes there’s any money to be made.

Source: Campaign

Facebook’s latest VR video innovation is a big deal

Streaming video in virtual reality, as with just about everything, isn’t easy to pull off well. The experience of watching 360-degree videos in VR usually ranges from grainy and blurry, to high-quality but slow-loading. But Facebook’s recently announced dynamic streaming technology for the Gear VR could change all that. Basically, it uses several copies of a video in multiple resolutions to make sure you’re looking at the highest quality version possible, while video on your periphery is lower quality. The kicker? It makes those adjustments on the fly, as you move your head around the scene. After seeing the dynamic streaming technology in action, it definitely feels like something that every VR platform needs.

Whether I was gazing at a Masai tribesman or crystal clear water, the video I saw through a Gear VR headset looked clear and smooth. If I moved my head quickly enough, I could see the transition from low-grade to a higher-quality resolution, but for the most part the experience was fairly seamless. I was just viewing local video files though, so I can’t say how the technology could apply to typical streaming performance. For what it’s worth, they still loaded up quickly on the Gear VR.

Max Cohen, head of mobile at Oculus (which Facebook owns), also pointed out that the technology could make it possible to stream 6K video files. Since 360-degree videos have all of their pixels spread out throughout the scene, they’re not nearly as sharp as traditional 2D videos shot in the same resolution. So when comparing a video in 4K and 6K, there was a noticeable bump in quality. I could make out individual blades of grass in a 6K video, for example, while the 4K version tended to look muddled.

Given that 4K streaming requirements are hefty for 2D videos (you’ll need a connection between 12 Mbps and 15 Mbps a the least to stream them smoothly), adaptive streaming could make it possible for people with slower connections to enjoy the benefits of higher resolution video.

While Facebook is only discussing the technology around the Gear VR right now, I’d expect it to end up on the Oculus Rift eventually. It’s also the sort of thing that every other VR platform will want, so now the question is if Facebook will ever license it out. Expect to see plenty of similar solutions around VR moving forward, since focusing processing power on what you’re viewing, as opposed to everything else in the scene, is a simple way to optimize. NVIDIA, for example, uses a similar method for anti-aliasing to smooth out 3D scenes without a huge performance hit.

Justice Department Calls Apple’s Privacy Case Stance a ‘Marketing Strategy’

The United States Justice Department today asked a federal judge to compel Apple to comply with the court’s original order that would force the company to help the FBI hack into the iPhone of San Bernardino shooter Syed Farook. In the filing, shared by The New York Times, the DOJ calls Apple’s refusal to help “a marketing strategy” that “appears to be based on its concern for its business model.”

The DOJ bases this assertion on Apple’s past cooperation, when it provided data from devices that ran earlier versions of iOS when ordered to do so via search warrant. Prior to iOS 8, Apple had the tools to extract data from locked iOS devices. With the release of iOS 8, Apple stopped storing encryption keys for devices, making it impossible for the company to access data on devices running iOS 8 or later.

Based on Apple’s recent public statement and other statements by Apple, Apple’s current refusal to comply with the Court’s Order, despite the technical feasibility of doing so, instead appears to be based on its concern for its business model and public brand marketing strategy.

The government has demanded Apple create a tool that would allow the FBI to more easily hack into Farook’s iPhone 5c through brute forcing the passcode, something that’s quite different than the orders that Apple has complied with on pre-iOS 7 devices. Apple has been asked to develop a new version of iOS software that would do the following:

– Eliminate the auto-erase function that wipes an iPhone if the wrong passcode is entered 10 times.
– Eliminate the delay that locks the FBI out of the iPhone if the wrong passcode is entered too many times in a row.
– Implement a method that would allow the FBI to electronically enter a passcode using software.

Apple has publicly stated its intention to oppose the order, saying it sets a “dangerous precedent,” a statement echoed by several technology companies that have come out in support of Apple. Apple believes that fulfilling the “chilling” request will lead to similar unlocking requests in the future or a general demand to weaken encryption on electronic devices.

Following an extension granted yesterday, Apple still has several days to formulate an official response to the court’s demands. Apple is expected to argue that the order goes beyond the powers granted to the government by the All Writs Act, a key law that’s being used in the case.

Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.

Tags: privacy, Encryption
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