India mandates all smartphones must come with a panic button

India has decreed that, from 2017, all phones must be sold with a panic button that lets users instantly alert the emergency services. A year later and all devices sold must also come with GPS as standard in order for authorities to quickly locate victims of sexual assault. According to India’s Economic Times, a long press on either the 5 or 9 button on a feature phone will be routed straight to police. In addition, smartphones will have to provide an on-screen emergency button or enable a panic call to be placed by — for instance — pressing the sleep/wake button three times in succession.

It’s not just local manufacturers that will be forced to abide by the new ruling, with outfits such as Samsung and Apple also liable. It’s not the first time that manufacturers will have to tweak their designs to deal with local legislation. For instance, Russia imposed a hefty 25 percent import levy on all smartphones that didn’t support its homegrown navigation system, GLONASS.

The move has come from the country’s telecoms minister, Ravi Shankar Prasad, who said that he made the decision to “help our women in distress.” India is currently dealing with what the Daily Beast has described as a rape crisis. The number of reported violent sexual assaults in the country has gone up by nearly 13,000 in the last five years. There is no telling how many unreported attacks are going on, although one stat suggests that a woman is raped in the country once every fifteen minutes.

Mashable quotes Prasad as saying that “technology is solely meant to make human life better, and what better than using it for the security of women.” The industry’s relationship with sexual assault is a complex one, since most of its efforts are directed at creating panic buttons rather than addressing the cause. Companies such as Wisewear are developing wearable technology disguised as jewelry that will alert the emergency services in the event of an attack.

Via: Mashable

Source: Ravi Shankar Prasad (Facebook), India Economic Times

HTC Vive teardown shows it’s even easier to fix than Oculus Rift

We’ve seen the iFixit folks tear apart the Oculus Rift, now they’ve taken their tools and relentless curiosity to the other big VR player, the HTC Vive. Both headsets are basically just complex containers for two OLED displays, but it’s fascinating to see how the companies went about designing them. For example, while they both use fresnel lens designs (which allow for thinner lenses compared to early VR headsets), the Vive’s approach relies on its eye relief mechanism to tweak focus, whereas the Rift’s curved lenses requires you to move the headset higher or lower on your face for focus.

In the end, iFixit gave the Vive a repairability score of 8 out of 10, mostly due to how easy it was to take apart the headset. The Rift, in comparison, scored a 7 out of 10. There’s not much of a chance you’ll easily find replacement hardware if anything goes wrong with your VR headset, but it’s nice to know they’re not just sealed off mystery boxes.

Among other highlights from the teardown, iFixit notes that the Vive’s controller touchpad design is very similar to the Steam controller, which shows just how much Valve influenced HTC’s design. The repair group also came up with the best explanation I’ve seen yet of how the Vive’s IR base stations actually work:

Each Lighthouse flashes its IR LED array, signaling the start of a cycle. Vertical and horizontal lasers then sweep across the room, and all of those fancy photosensors on the headset and controllers start looking for lasers. The tracked headset or controller can then determine its position based on the order its sensors receive the laser sweeps.

Source: iFixit

The best foam mattresses you can buy online

By Kevin Purdy

This post was done in partnership with The Sweethome, a buyer’s guide to the best things for your home. Read the full article here.

We researched 15 of the top online mattress companies, surveyed hundreds of Wirecutter readers about their mattresses purchased online, interviewed sleep and mattress-design experts, spent over 40 hours researching foam mattresses, and slept on six models. We recommend the Leesa as a mattress that will work well for most people who sleep on their side or stomach.

How we picked and tested

The mattresses we tested for this guide, as they would arrive at your door. From left: Tuft & Needle, BedInABox, Casper, Leesa, Signature Sleep Contour 8, IKEA MATRAND. Photo: Jeremy Pavia

We focused on an increasingly popular subset of mattresses—those that come in only one model, cost less than $1,000, arrive within a week (usually in a vacuum-packed roll inside a box), and come with a free trial of at least 100 days (as well as an offer to take a rejected mattress away for free). We sought mattresses that would work best for the primary sleep positions: side, stomach, and back. Most surveys (and our own quick Twitter poll) show that 60 to 70 percent of people primarily sleep in some kind of side position.

We slept and napped on each mattress over the course of a week, taking notes and using personal sleep trackers to confirm how each mattress performed. Though a night of sleep and a nap or two on each mattress does not constitute a full test—doctors and mattress companies recommend at least 30 days to let your body adjust when switching mattresses—our experiments gave us far more hands-on time than most mattress shoppers get.

How you feel sleeping on each mattress is obviously the key consideration, but we also took into account how each mattress breathes as you sink into it, how supportive the mattress’ edges are, if someone on one side of a mattress can feel movement by someone on the other side, how well sheets fit on each mattress, and how easily you can pick up and rotate the mattress.

We weighed our observations against what readers told us in our survey about their own online-purchased mattresses, and we talked with owners of specific mattresses. We also considered the impressions of Wirecutter staffers who owned or tested the mattresses.

No mattress works for everybody

Unpacking a BedInABox mattress, from the initial roll to the mostly inflated state. Like our picks, it comes folded in half, rolled up, and placed inside a tall box. Photos: Kyle Fitzgerald

Here is the core truth of the mattress market: You won’t find one mattress that works for everybody. Our experts told us that the best any mattress can do is sleep great for a small group of people, feel pretty good for some, and do okay for a majority of people. This compromise is complicated further by the subjective feelings of “firm” or “soft.”

Many factors can alter your firmness preference, including injury, weight, stress, diet, apnea, your pillow, the warmth or coolness of your room, the sheets you put on your bed, how often you switch positions, and if you sleep with a partner. Or you may just prefer something other than what your sleep style naturally suggests. All of that explains why single-model mattresses you can try out for about 100 days are gaining in popularity: Finding one perfect mattress is tricky, but making a mistake shouldn’t be a 10-year disappointment.

Our pick

The Leesa mattress, our top pick for how most people sleep. Photo: Jeremy Pavia

The Leesa is our top pick among online-purchase mattresses because it felt the best overall for side sleepers and stomach sleepers. Its contouring “hug” is comfortable rather than hot or muddy, and it breathed better than other mattresses we tested, allowing for a cooler sleep. The Leesa handles better at its edges than our other picks, providing acceptable support for entering, exiting, or rolling over on the bed. It has a surface that feels good under thin sheets, and its gray and white stripes look good. For the price, the Leesa is a real value that will appeal to many people buying a foam mattress online.

Runner-up

The Casper mattress may work better for people who switch positions often. Photo: Jeremy Pavia

If you switch between back sleeping and side sleeping, or if one of two people sharing a bed tends toward back sleeping or prefers a firmer mattress, the Casper mattress is a more middle-of-the-road pick than the Leesa. Its “hug” was not as comfortable for our testers as the Leesa’s, and side sleepers will likely find the Casper less pliable and accommodating than the Leesa. But the Casper’s mix of four foams may work better for people who switch positions often (especially onto their back) or for couples that include back sleepers.

For dedicated back sleepers

The Tuft & Needle mattress, with its two layers visible (3 inches of hybrid comfort/contour foam, 7 inches of support). Photo: Jeremy Pavia

Tuft & Needle’s mattress is firm. It’s as firm as foam can get before it becomes uncomfortable. If you’re a back sleeper or prefer to float on your mattress instead of sink into it, the Tuft & Needle works fine. But it isn’t ideal for most side sleepers and stomach sleepers. And at its substantially lower price—a queen costs $200 to $300 less than that of our other picks—it’s an economical pick, at any size, for a guest room or other occasional uses.

Care and maintenance

For all of our mattress picks, be sure not to flip them over—their support and memory foam are at the top. But you should rotate them every three to six months, especially if you sleep alone on one side of the bed or if partners have a notable weight difference.

Most direct-order mattress companies suggest a flat foundation or a slatted base (slats no more than 3 inches apart), but the mattress could work on the floor, too. If you have a box spring with actual springs in its structure, and it has already seen years of regular use under a mattress, you should probably get a new foundation.

All of the mattresses we tested contain synthetic, petroleum-based foams, which will release some gases (and related odors) for the first couple of days. However, the amounts your mattress exhales are pretty small, and you don’t need to worry about them.

Our mattress picks each come with a zippered cover, but you should not remove it for cleaning except for serious bedwide stains. None of our picks’ manufacturers openly sells a replacement cover, but you should contact the maker if a cover rips or pulls under normal use.

This guide may have been updated by The Sweethome. To see the current recommendation, please go here.

Stop trying to make me sign up for more subscription services

Here’s something you didn’t know you needed in your life: a Netflix, but just for the prestige films of yesteryear. That’s the idea behind FilmStruck, a subscription service that’s being developed by Turner Classic Movies and the Criterion Collection. According to the New York Times, the offering will house upwards of 1,000 films you can’t get elsewhere, including Seven Samuari, Blood Simple and Mad Max. Pricing for the offering has yet to be decided, but the WSJ believes that it’ll be under $10 a month. There’s a sting in the tail for Hulu users, too, since Warner / Criterion movies that are currently available there are likely to be pulled.

One of the reasons that cord-cutting and on-demand services took off was the idea that people could stop paying for things they didn’t use. For instance, if you wanted to watch nothing but sports, you probably resented having to pay for any of the non-sports channels on your cable bill. The advent of Netflix was meant to do away with this, but that company’s success has led to a wave of imitators. For instance, the TV and movie market is now split between Netflix, Amazon and Hulu, with others looking to follow suit. NBC’s Seeso, CBS’ All Access, Starz, HBO Now and even YouTube Red are also vying for a slice of our monthly paycheck. Wether you’ll be prepared to spend yet another $9 on the chance to watch old movies on-demand is anyone’s guess.

Via: Re/code

Source: WSJ, NYT

Cyclist banned for six years after racing with a hidden motor

A professional cyclist has been banned for six years after it was discovered she was racing with a hidden electric motor. Femke Van den Driessche was caught at the UCI Cyclo­cross World Championships in January, while her spare bike was in the pit area. The scan, which Road.cc reports was conducted with a tablet, allowed officials to spot a battery and Vivax motor in the seat tube. Van den Driessche could have activated it using a Bluetooth switch concealed under the tape on her handlebars. She denied the allegations at the time, claiming the bike was given to her by mistake.

“It was my friend’s and was identical to mine. This friend went around the course Saturday before dropping off the bike in the truck. A mechanic, thinking it was my bike, cleaned it and prepared it for my race.”

The six-year suspension runs from October 11, 2015 to October 10th, 2021. The earlier start date would suggest that the UCI is confident she was cheating earlier in the season. As a result, the Belgian has been stripped of all the medals and prize-money she has accrued since that date. Her name and times will be removed from the relevant race rankings and she’ll no longer hold the Under-23 European Champion title or Under-23 Belgian Champion title. In addition, she’ll need to pay a fine of 20,000 CHF (20,569 US dollars) and foot the bill for the case proceedings.

Van den Driessche’s “mechanical doping” ban is the first of its kind. The UCI says it scanned over 100 bikes at the event and will continue to “test heavily” across all cycling disciplines this year. “We have invested considerable resources in developing this new and highly effective scanning technology and also in strengthening the sanctions applicable to anyone found cheating in this way,” UCI President Brian Cookson said.

Professional cycling has a tarnished reputation after widespread doping was discovered at the top level. Lance Armstrong’s spectacular fall from grace is still fresh in people’s minds — cases such as this one will, if anything, only slow people’s ability to trust the sport’s athletes once more.

YouTube’s mobile homepage redesign has better recommendations

YouTube wants to put more of the videos you like in front of you, so it’s giving its Android and iOS apps a bit of a facelift. Specifically, its homepage is getting a bit of a makeover. Gone are the small thumbnail previews, and in its place are larger, higher-res images. More importantly, the company has worked hard behind the scenes to improve its recommendation engine with a deep neural network. That way, the system should be able to work out the clips you want to watch next well before you’ve even thought about it — keeping you on the site for longer.

Part of the homepage redesign is that groups of recommended videos are now gone. Now the suggested clips appear in a single ranked list. “Instead of recommending groups of videos to you, we’re going to take the best video from the groups and put them in the right order for you,” said Johanna Wright, YouTube’s VP of Product Management. It uses machine learning and algorithms to figure out your viewing patterns automatically, learning and improving over time. The homepage will also now occasionally surface videos from your Subscriptions, since that’s what a lot of people go to YouTube for.

“We believe it’s possible to create this personalized experience because we have so many videos in our database,” she said. Indeed, YouTube claims that it has about 400 hours of video uploaded to its service every minute. Still, it’s challenging work. “We have a billion users, all of them very different. Matching that vast combination of videos to such a varied set of people is really difficult.” In the end, they found that people who tried the new homepage tended to spend more time watching videos.

The YouTube homepage makeover is currently mobile only, but even though the desktop home looks the same, it still benefits from the improvements that YouTube has made to recommendations. One of those improvements? You’ll start to see newer videos in that recommended list. “We are showing fresher videos with these changes,” said Wright. “More videos that have been uploaded in the past hour, more recent videos of your Subscriptions.”

To get a closer look at what’s going on, you can go ahead and download the update; it should be available on both Google Play and the App Store starting today.

Pandora pads podcast lineup by adding ‘This American Life’

Pandora was the “exclusive streaming partner” for season 2 of the popular Serial podcast, despite the show being available through iTunes and other apps. Now, the internet radio service is adding another popular podcast from the creators of that investigative title. Hosted by Ira Glass, This American Life will debut new episodes on Pandora every Monday, available through its Android, iOS and web apps. The company says Serial’s first two seasons were streamed over 15 million times, so there’s clearly some interest in content other than stations that compile a playlist based on your preferences.

Pandora picked up what was left of Rdio last year when the streaming service shut down after filing bankruptcy. While no official announcement of a full-on streaming option from Pandora has been made, it’s likely on the way. By adding podcasts, albeit only two of them, to its lineup, it looks like a library of the episodic content could be part of the company’s plans for that service. Spotify added both video and audio podcasts last year, padding its slate of streaming content that already included a la carte music and Pandora-like radio stations. Google recently added podcasts to Play Music, too.

If you aren’t familiar with This American Life, the Pandora station is already live with past episodes, so you can introduce yourself while you wait for new shows to arrive. There’s no mention of exclusivity this time around, so you should be able to enjoy the show elsewhere if you prefer to do so.

Source: Pandora (Business Wire)

Apple Watch Developers Talk Gaming as Apple’s Wearable Turns One Year Old

The Apple Watch turned one year old on Sunday, and Macworld decided to use the device’s anniversary as an opportunity to revisit the state of gaming on Apple’s first wearable. While the launch of the Apple Watch brought a wave of excitement for users and developers alike, the subsequent months saw a noticeable dive in both buzz-worthy Apple Watch game announcements and user interest, with a few exceptions.

As it was in April 2015, developers still believe that what works best for Apple Watch games are short, “quick-hit experiences” that get users in and out of fun, engaging games before raising their wrist grows tiresome. Everywhere Games CEO Aki Järvilehto, whose company created one of the first popular Apple Watch games, Runeblade [Direct Link], believes that as well as quick bursts of entertainment, wrist-worn games should “grow with the player” over the course of a few days, weeks, and even months.

The company’s viewpoint has netted an enthusiastic fanbase who have created detailed wiki pages and generate an active subreddit on Runeblade. According to Everywhere Games’ statistics, active players log into the game about 100 times per day. Runeblade crafted a bite-sized RPG experience that’s become a model for other Apple Watch games, but another popular blueprint being followed by developers comes from Three Minute Games’ interactive fiction experience Lifeline [Direct Link], which puts players in the shoes of the only person who can communicate with a distant, stranded astronaut.

All the same, some developers simply think gaming and the Apple Watch don’t mix at all. Indie developer Jacob Williams said it took him essentially one day with the initial watchOS SDK sent to developers ahead of the device’s launch to realize that Apple’s new wearable was simply never “going to work for gamers.” Williams’ beliefs underscore a late 2015 and early 2016 largely bereft of flashy, big title Apple Watch games akin to those found in the iOS App Store. A Tiny Game of Pong [Direct Link] developer Matt Wiechec thinks that Apple could be helping in this regard more than it currently is.

“It’s not often that I open the Watch app to check for new apps, and I bet this is the case for a lot of people. There aren’t many new Watch apps that Apple showcases, so each week you check, don’t find anything new, and you slowly build a habit of checking less often,” admits Wiechec. “I think it would be much better if Apple integrated Watch apps directly into the main App Store app; adding a new category for them, adding top charts, but also showcasing them on the Featured page for users who own an Apple Watch.”

Still, most of the developers that spoke with Macworld remain optimistic about the future of gaming on the platform, pointing out that even though it has been a year, that’s only one year into the lifespan of an entirely new platform. Nearly all agree that the introduction of native app features in watchOS 2 — and Apple’s upcoming clamp down on any non-native apps — is perhaps the biggest motivator for high-quality game development on the Apple Watch.

Check out Macworld’s full article on Apple Watch gaming, along with a number of developer interviews, right here.

Related Roundups: Apple Watch, watchOS 2
Buyer’s Guide: Apple Watch (Caution)
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Apple Seeds Third Beta of iOS 9.3.2 to Developers

Apple today released the third beta of an upcoming iOS 9.3.2 update to developers for testing purposes, one week after the release of the second iOS 9.3.2 beta and more than a month after the launch of iOS 9.3, an update that introduced Night Shift mode and other feature improvements. iOS 9.3.2 has been in testing since April 6.

iOS 9.3.2 beta 3 can be downloaded over-the-air using the beta configuration profile or through the Apple Developer Center.

iOS 9.3.2 is the second minor update to iOS 9.3, coming after iOS 9.3.1, an update that introduced critical bug fixes. iOS 9.3.2 appears to fix a major Game Center bug that has plagued some iOS users for months and it reintroduces the ability to use Night Shift and Low Power Mode simultaneously.

Aside from those tweaks, there appear to be no outward-facing changes, with the update focusing on under-the-hood improvements. Any new features or fixes found in the third beta will be listed below.

Related Roundup: iOS 9
Tag: iOS 9.3.2
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Microsoft Debuts Skype for Business Preview on Mac With Outlook Integration

Microsoft today announced the launch of its Skype for Business Mac Public Preview, bringing expanded Skype capabilities to its Mac business users. The Public Preview of Skype for Business for the Mac follows the launch of Skype for Business on iOS.

Skype for Business will be released in three stages leading to the public launch of the app during the third quarter of 2016. Starting today, Skype for Business Mac users will be able to see meetings in the Skype business client through built-in Outlook calendar integration, joining them with a click. Full screen video, content viewing, in-meeting chat, and the ability to invite additional people to the meeting are all supported features.

In the second phase of the Public Preview, Microsoft plans to add instant messaging, presence, and contacts, which will come in the early summer. Phase three, which will include telephony features, will be available later in the summer.

Skype for Business, designed for corporate users, supports up to 250 people per call and it includes enterprise-grade security features and employee account management.

Microsoft’s commercial customers can request an invite to test the Skype for Business Mac Public Preview through the Skype for Business website. Microsoft plans to begin issuing invites to IT administrators to download the client with a gradual expansion of the preview coming in the current weeks.
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