Netflix deal brings ‘Narcos’ to broadcast TV
Did you watch Netflix’s Narcos and think it would be a perfect fit for TV? So did Univision. The Spanish-language broadcaster is forging a partnership with Netflix that will bring the first season of the Pablo Escobar crime saga to TV through the Univision Network. You’ll also see the first run of Netflix’s futbol drama Club de Cuervos air on UniMas. The second seasons of both productions will still be Netflix exclusives (this is more of a promotion than an olive branch), but it’s good news if you’ve wanted to show your friends what all the fuss was about.
Of course, this added exposure comes at a cost. Netflix and Univision are making El Chapo, a drama series surrounding the namesake Mexican crime lord, that will arrive first through UniMas in 2017. Yes, you’ll have to wait to see it on Netflix proper. That may be a small price to pay for Netflix, which no doubt wants any help it can get in courting Spanish-speaking viewers, but it’s unfortunate if you’re used to Netflix getting first dibs on most of its co-productions.
Source: Univision (1), (2)
Live-action ‘Tetris’ film secures $80 million
The fact that filmmakers have their hearts set on bringing a movie based on Tetris to live isn’t news. The fact that Threshold Entertainment has secured $80 million in funding for a hypothetical Tetris movie is. That’s a lot of money, and a lot of questions, like “Why Tetris?”
Threshold Entertainment’s Larry Kasanoff (Mortal Kombat, 1995) will act as co-producer on the film, which is slated to begin filming in 2017 with a Chinese cast and location. According to Kasanoff, speaking with Deadline, the film could potentially be the basis for a trilogy, with a plot that supposedly isn’t what we’re all thinking. “It will be a cool surprise,” he promises. These comments hearken back to his 2014 statements to the Wall Street Journal that what we will see in Tetris is “the teeny tip of an iceberg that has intergalactic significance.”
The fact that Tetris is seeing a film release shouldn’t surprise anyone, especially with Atari’s Missile Command and Centipede coming as we speak. There’s an Assassin’s Creed film on the horizon as well, but there’s a narrative to go on there. It’s tough to say what we might be able to expect from the movie, but that’s a lot of money and a lofty promise from Kasanoff. Hopefully one of those things delivers.
Via: Ars Technica
National Academy of Sciences finds GMOs to be ‘safe’
The debate surrounding the safety of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) has been raging for years and continues to do so. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine has finally weighed in on the matter and found GMOs to not just be generally safe, but good for both people and the environment. The academy has even gone so far as to set up a dedicated website where visitors can peruse the source data that the academy leveraged for its study.
“You can’t just continue to have an opinion without backing it up with data,” Fred Gould, co-director of the Genetic Engineering and Society Center at North Carolina State University and chair of the committee that released the study, told NBC News. “Part of our approach here was to make this not just a report. This is all on a website. We hope that this report will open a conversation, not make some kind of a proclamation.”
The committee reviewed more than 900 existing reports on the subject, interviewed 80 experts throughout the industry and academia and delved through more than 700 comments from the public to reach its conclusions. “The committee also examined epidemiological data on incidence of cancers and other human-health problems over time and found no substantiated evidence that foods from GE crops were less safe than foods from non-GE crops,” the report reads. Additionally, the committee found that added the vitamin A present in GE crops has a marked benefit for humans (in that it reduces the incidence of blindness caused by vitamin A deficiencies), GE plants developed to be pest and herbicide resistant do in fact reduce crop loss and, to a degree, farmers growing GE crops actually make more money than their competitors.
While these findings are not without caveats, this report should help add context to future debates on the matter thanks the study’s novel method backing up its findings with actual facts rather than hyperbole. Given that some 90 percent of US-grown corn, soybeans and cotton are already GE — with salmon and mushrooms on the way — an empirical discussion of the values and potential dangers of GMOs is desperately needed.
Via: NBC News
Source: National Academy of Sciences
Apple Sent Two Engineers to Customer’s House to Figure Out Music Deletion Bug
A couple weeks ago Vellum’s James Pinkstone wrote on his blog that Apple Music and iTunes Match deleted 122 GB of his personal music collection. The post kicked off a wave of speculation about whether Apple Music intentionally deletes users’ music. Apple eventually confirmed that the deletion was a glitch and that a fix was incoming. Today, Pinkstone wrote a blog post detailing how two Apple engineers named Tom and Ezra visited his home to try to recreate the problem.
Before they arrived, Pinkstone said that Apple told him a couple of things: Amber, the Apple Support Representative who told him the music deletion glitch was a “feature” functioning as intended, was mistaken and the company was convinced the issue wasn’t user error.
The engineers spent the day at Pinkstone’s house researching the issue, telling Pinkstone to use Apple Music, iTunes and his personal library as he would in the past. The next day, Tom returned to collect the data logs and cleared any evidence of him being on the laptop. Apple’s engineers weren’t able to recreate the problem, though Pinkstone notes that they did think the issue was a glitch that needed to be combatted. Yesterday’s iTunes 12.4 update includes safeguards to protect users from the music deletion bug.
Through an external drive connected to my laptop, we were now using a specialized version of iTunes in the hopes that the deletion would again occur; an idea that we knew may not pan out, since I’d had Apple Music for eight months before that first mass deletion. If something did go wrong, though, this version of iTunes would document what happened in more detail than the consumer version could.
Pinkstone’s Apple engineer visit is a good example of how far the Cupertino company will go to try to correct bugs in its products. MacRumors has heard several reports of Apple sending out engineers to the homes of users experiencing unique problems in an attempt to research them for fixes. The entire visit can be read about on Pinkstone’s blog.
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Omate Wherecom S3 Release Date, Price and Specs – CNET
Omate
A Chinese company has created a Dick Tracey-style smartwatch for your grandparents. Omate on Tuesday announced the Wherecom S3. It’s an Android-powered smartwatch with GPS, Wi-Fi and 3G cellular connectivity, which means it can function without being connected to a smartphone.
In addition to telling the time, the watch can be used to make calls, send text messages, track steps and remind senior citizens when it’s time to take their medication. The S3 can also act as a Life Alert-esque emergency device. A red SOS button on the side of the watch can be pressed in the event of an emergency (such as a fall) to send the wearer’s GPS location to specific contacts.
Omate
Other features include interchangeable watch straps and up to three days of battery life. It’s unclear, however, if the watch can be worn in the shower or while swimming.
The Omate Wherecom S3 is slated to launch in September in Europe for €149. Pricing and availability weren’t announced for the U.S. or Australia, but the European price converts to about £115, $170 or AU$230.
Specs
- Android
- 37x38x13.9mm
- 2G/3G, Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth
- 1.54-inch color touchscreen with a 320×320-pixel resolution
- MediaTek 1GHz dual-core processor
- 4GB of internal storage
- 512MB of RAM
- 600mAh battery for up to three days of usage
- SOS quick-alert button
- Pedometer
Black+Decker Smartech Battery Release Date, Price and Specs – CNET
Black+Decker
Black+Decker, the company known for its power drills and other tools, has just announced a new smart product: the Smartech Battery. This Bluetooth-connected battery will work with all current Black+Decker 20V MAX tools, and the company says it is available now at Menard’s, Lowe’s, and on Amazon for $70 (converted, that’s about £50 or AU$95; international retailers haven’t been confirmed).
Smartech Batteries will work with the Black+Decker iOS and Android app, meaning people can control the batteries and, therefore, their tools, wirelessly. First, you can enable and disable any of these batteries while in range. That means no one can use any battery-powered tools lying around the garage during a project unless you enable the batteries via the app. You can also use the app to view battery life, use a “locate” feature to find missing batteries and activate each battery’s USB port. The app has other components like a message center for notifications from batteries and a “Projects” section that is supposed to offer insight into construction and ideas for DIYers.
This new Bluetooth connectivity seems promising. The disabling and location features could be welcome additions for anyone with kids around the house and a garage that sometimes falls into disarray. But for many people who don’t want to fiddle with an app in the middle of a project, these devices could just be a hassle. Will Bluetooth features contribute to the quality of Black+Decker’s products without making them less easy to use? We’ll have to see for ourselves.
‘Forza’ NASCAR expansion puts stock cars on the world stage
In an effort to bring even more racing action to Xbox One, Forza Motorsport 6 is adding NASCAR to its lineup of on-track offerings. With an expansion pack, the title gains 24 cars from the 2016 NASCAR season which you can now use to race on the newly added Homestead-Miami Speedway. There’s also a new 10-hour NASCAR World Tour Career mode that lets you put the stock cars on the track in the different series around the globe. The game also gets new multiplayer events and improved drafting and spotting functionality to help you maneuver through the field. If you’re looking to take it for a spin, the add-on is available today for $20.
Source: Forza Motorsport
T-Mobile’s Binge On expands to 80 more video services
As of today, T-Mobile’s Binge On service is expanding to include 80 different video streaming services. Starting today, users will be able to stream content from NBC, Univision, Google Play Music and Spotify.
While previously Binge On was meant mainly for streaming video, the addition of Spotify, Tidal, Radio Disney and Google Play Music offers an additional dimension to users in the form of music streaming.
The full list of streaming services available today include:
- Google Play Music
- Great Big Story
- NBC
- Kiswe
- Ligonier Ministries
- NOGGIN
- Qello Concerts
- Radio Disney
- Univision
- Univision Noticias
- Spotify
- TIDAL
- Toon Goggles
T-Mobile’s Binge On plan allows for customers on qualifying plans to stream data for free, essentially, as the data expended on these streaming services does not deduct from their high-speed data allowances.
So far, according to a press release from T-Mobile, users have streamed over 377 million hours of video since Binge On’s launch, and 92% of customers surveyed plan on watching more video since they have the ability to do so.
Source: T-Mobile
Researchers create Rubik’s cube-like touchscreen display
While modular smartphones like Fairphone or Google’s Project Ara are still works-in-progress, a group of researchers from the University of Bristol’s Interaction Group have designed a slick new reconfigurable form for touchscreen displays. The Cubimorph, as BIG calls it, is a single display built out of smaller, six-sided display cubes that are daisy-chained together and can be repositioned not unlike a Rubik’s cube with a little more flexibility.
In a case proposed by the research team, a device like a flat smartphone could be folded and reconfigured into the shape of a game controller. Or, in a less practical example, you could simply roll your phone out into a rectangular log with a postage-stamp sized display on one end. For users who were never very good at spatial reasoning or origami, an algorithm will help determine the best way to twist and fold the screen into the desired shape.
While the device is still in the awkward prototype phase at this point, the research team will present it to a panel at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation in Stockholm later this week.
Art school grads use tech to tackle big issues
Brooklyn’s Pratt Institute might be well known for its engineering and arts courses, but for students in its industrial design program, it’s about more than just making something pretty and earning a degree. The ethos of the curriculum includes “trying to solve problems of poverty, hunger, energy, health, and other troubling issues of the disadvantaged world population by design.” Indeed, that philosophy was on full display at this year’s graduate student showcase.
The assistant chairperson of industrial design at Pratt, Scott A. Lundberg, told me that while the first year in the Pratt program is about the instructors telling the students what was important in terms of process and skills, the third year is where the students get to show what’s important to them. The projects on display certainly spanned a variety of interests and concerns, from eco-friendly packaging for food carts to a modular kitchen for wheelchair-bound cooks. And, while some thesis designs were a bit whimsical and outlandish — like a dress with built-in fans to cool down women suffering from hot flashes — others took more subdued approaches to solving issues. Check out our gallery to see a few of the projects looking to tackle health and transportation issues via thoughtful industrial design.
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