Facebook opens suicide prevention tools to everyone
That emo Facebook update your friend posted may be a passing bout of frustration, or it may be a sign of something deeper. If you suspect your connections of having suicidal thoughts and want to help, but don’t feel equipped to reach out, a tool from the social network is now available to everyone, making it easier to show concern.
Facebook is rolling out its suicide prevention tools to everyone in the world, and has collaborated with mental health organizations to offer more thoughtful services. The feature was available in the US to a select group of users, as well as in the UK, but will now enable anyone to report worrying content to Facebook. The company also worked with local partners to provide support in all languages in which the site is available.
After you’ve flagged the status, the author will receive a message saying that someone was concerned about their post. They’ll get options to talk with a trusted friend, call a helpline, get tips and support, or skip.You can also choose to reach out directly to your friend, and Facebook will offer suggestions on wording.
Of course, it’s easy to see how this system can be abused. Snarky friends may prank their pals by reporting status updates as suicidal, especially if there is no consequence for offenders. But Facebook has a team that reviews incoming reports and prioritizes most serious cases, such as potential self-injury, which should help it weed out fakes.
Suicide is the tenth leading cause of death in the US, and the second most common for deaths of people aged between 15 and 24. The most common cause for suicide is untreated depression, and cyberbullying has been found to be strongly related to suicidal ideas. That’s why it’s important that organizations create as safe a space online as they can.
If you suspect someone you know is in immediate physical danger, Facebook recommends calling 911 or law enforcement for help. For those who are worried about a loved one but don’t know how to help, it’s a relief to have these resources within such easy reach.
Via: TechCrunch
Source: Facebook
Fear and faith: ‘The Last Guardian’ is an incomplete opus
“Yes, I worry. All I can do at this moment really is pray.”
Fumito Ueda has been working on The Last Guardian for almost 10 years, and in just four months time, it will be released on PlayStation 4. At E3 2016, Ueda showed me the fruits of his labor and shared his fears about the reaction to its eventual release on October 25th.
In The Last Guardian, you play as a young boy who wakes up in an unknown land next to a giant creature named Trico. The animal is mostly catlike in appearance but with mangled, shorn wings and a ratty tail. I played the first 40 minutes of the game, and it’s changed a fair amount from the section we saw last year.
The game starts by establishing its controls with on-screen prompts and begins to tell Trico’s story. Your first task, as in last year’s demo, is to remove the spears preventing Trico from moving. To do this, you need to begin to befriend the creature, feeding it barrels to satiate its hunger and build trust. With spears removed, you then set about freeing Trico from his chains, a feat that requires you to scale his furry, feathered torso and remove a collar from his neck.
Before The Last Guardian, Ueda worked on Ico and Shadow of the Colossus. Both were released on PlayStation 2 to critical acclaim, but they hail from a different time. And The Last Guardian does too. Work began on the game in 2007, the same year Uncharted, BioShock and Assassin’s Creed all debuted. Despite the fact that those series have spawned a combined 13 sequels, bringing all manner of advances and additions to their respective formulas, Ueda says his vision for The Last Guardian has not changed. Speaking through a translator, he noted that while “from a technical standpoint, the detail and amount of expression” may have changed due to the long development cycle, the game is “exactly what I had in mind with my vision.”
That vision still eludes me. The gameplay, from both the demo I went through and the various trailers over the years, is roughly divided between puzzle-solving and platforming. You utilize the two characters’ vast difference in stature to your advantage, crawling through gaps and cracks with the boy and reaching high above with Trico. But Ueda’s games have always focused on story as much as gameplay, and The Last Guardian concentrates on telling the animal’s story through its relationship with the boy.
Both Ico and Shadow of the Colossus deal with childhood, innocence, growth, nonverbal communication and bonds. The Last Guardian appears to explore similar notes, albeit in a new arrangement. The commonality is no accident, but Ueda says he doesn’t want to tell stories about these themes. Instead, he comes back to them because they allow him to best convey stories. The child, for example, mirrors the mindset of a player as she’s exploring a new world. The lack of dialogue allows for a wide range of interpretation among different gamers. He’s not crafting characters “to make 100,000 people to feel [a certain way]” but rather creating characters that will help 100,000 people feel whatever they want to feel.
Fumito Ueda, the game’s creator and director.
Prior to the demo, and in my subsequent interview with Ueda, I saw the boy as the main character. That was wrong. While he is playable, Trico is our voiceless protagonist (when he opens his mouth, it’s only to emit a birdlike shriek). It’s through the two characters’ relationship that we get to know the creature and learn his story. Ueda spoke passionately about his creation, telling me that even in the team’s darker moments, “we just couldn’t forget about Trico. It’s something that we’ve created and we can’t forget, and we continue to pour our heart and soul into.”
And there must have been some truly dark times over the game’s development cycle. I asked Ueda how he and his team remained motivated, delay after delay. He pinpointed the release of PlayStation 3 versions of Ico and Shadow of the Colossus as pivotal in maintaining focus. When they were first released, “we were just on the brink of entering social media,” he explained, but by the time the HD remasters released, “there was a different feedback loop that we hadn’t experienced.” Hearing fans’ responses and seeing their delight in discovering the games “was a great positive factor for us” and spurred the team to continue its work, even when it became apparent that it would have to move development from PlayStation 3 to PlayStation 4.
I have no doubt that The Last Guardian will engender positive responses from fans. It was a true delight to discover the various mechanics of the game, so much so that I almost feel bad revealing them. There’s the color of Trico’s eyes, which changes with his mood, allowing you to learn what he’s thinking nonverbally. There’s a magical shield with which you can spur Trico to shoot lightning from his tail. There’s the narrator, ostensibly a grown-up version of the boy retelling the tale, who says what he did in order to guide you in the right direction. There’s the gorgeously exaggerated key frame animation of the boy as he creeps around in the darkness. It’s the most impressive tutorial I’ve ever played. By the end of the demo, the bond between the boy and Trico was only just beginning to form, but the bond between Trico and me was already strong.
By the end of the demo, the bond between the boy and Trico was only just beginning to form, but the bond between Trico and me was already strong.
That said, I have some concerns about The Last Guardian being ready by October. The game should be in the “refine for release” phase, but I noticed plenty of graphical glitches, awkward camera angles and even one instance where a jump that should’ve barely lifted me into the air propelled me 10 feet high.
To be clear, none of the issues detracted enough from the experience to make this anything other than the most memorable 30 minutes of my gaming year, but it’s still a worrying sign when we are this close to the release of a title that is so anticipated. Although Ueda and his team at genDESIGN remain the creative force behind the project, since the switch to PlayStation 4, Sony’s Japan Studio has been handling the technical side of the game. Perhaps the full force of that 400-strong team working to the deadline will be enough to give The Last Guardian the polish that fans are expecting.
Although social media has helped Ueda believe in the strength of his vision, its potential for negativity worries him as well. “Today, [social media] is maybe a little too much. Your harshest critics are also your biggest fans.” Combined with the extremely long development cycle, this has made Ueda tense about its October release. “Yes, I worry. All I can do at this moment really is pray,” he told me. Now it’s just a case of faith. “When I put my ideas on paper, I’m coming from my own player perspective. This is the type of game I want to play too. When the game comes out, all you can hope for is there are others who have the same passion and ideas that I have. That’s all I can hope for: That there’s a very wide range of players out there that can feel that.”
Researchers have engineered monkeys with Parkinson’s Disease
Scientists in Japan have successfully bred a set of genetically modified marmosets with Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease and motor neurone (Lou Gehrig’s) disease, The New Scientist reports today. The development could lead to major breakthroughs in the treatment of neurological disorders.
Professor Hideyuki Okano from the Keio University School of Medicine in Tokyo presented his team’s finding at the State of the Brain symposium in May, describing the process by which his team gave the marmoset test subjects “faulty” copies of the human gene SNCA. In Parkinson’s patients, the same mutation causes a buildup of the protein alpha-synuclein in the brain, which in turn kills the brain cells that create dopamine. Because dopamine is important for movement and motor control, the end result are the loss of motor control and tremors commonly associated with Parkinson’s.
By the time they were three years old, the marmosets began showing the same symptoms of Parkinson’s as human patients. By their fourth year, the marmoset subjects were showing a buildup of Lewy bodies — a clear indicator of Parkinson’s — in their brain stems. The monkeys’ symptoms could be managed with L-DOPA, the dopamine replacement therapy used to treat human patients.
Okano’s team hopes that by using live primate subjects with brains similar to our own, they can track the disease’s progression at different stages of the monkey’s life and develop new treatments to slow its effects. While regulations and lack of public support generally limit the controversial use of primates as test subjects in Europe and the United States, those same barriers don’t exist for researchers in China or Japan. In the US, most neurological disease research is carried out on mice, which The New Scientist points out has led to some misleading results in the past. Hundreds of potential Alzheimer’s treatments that looked promising in mice, for example, were completely ineffective on human patients suffering from the disease.
Big data shows racial bias in police behavior
Stanford University just delivered further proof that massive, readily available data sets can solve tricky law enforcement problems. School researchers combing through a mix of 28,119 Oakland Police Department stop reports, officer body camera footage and community surveys have learned that there are “significant” racial biases at play. OPD officers are not only more likely to stop a black person, but far more likely to conduct searches of black people, even though they weren’t any more likely to find something incriminating. Officers more frequently handcuffed black people without arresting them, too. And the pattern is the same regardless of the crime rate in a given region.
The dialogue from the body cameras has its own share of insights. Officers more often brought up the subject of parole or probation when stopping black people. However, they were far more likely to mention the reason for a stop to a white person.
Stanford is quick to mention that these gaps in treatment shrink with experience (veterans are less likely to cuff someone without an arrest). It also stresses that there isn’t hard evidence of conscious, overt racism. The police may not be intentionally treating black people differently, but there is an “institutional problem” that leads to unfair treatment.
The good news? Stanford conducted this data study in tandem with the OPD, and it’s implementing the university’s recommendations. That includes improving how the department collects and studies data, making that data more accessible and using body camera footage for audits and training. As you’d hope, the force is also educating officers to both minimize bias and identify troublemakers. These solutions won’t apply everywhere and certainly aren’t guaranteed to end racism in law enforcement, but the very hint of progress suggests that the data collection was worthwhile.
Source: Stanford University
Apple will only let you remove iOS 10 apps, not delete them
Apple confirmed that it’s giving you the power to drop native mobile apps on iOS 10 when it published an official support page detailing the feature for beta testers. What that page didn’t mention is that you can’t really delete stock apps, you can only remove them from your home screen. When you delete a stock application on iOS 10, it loses its configurations and purges any data you gave it. However, its binary file will remain in your system even if you can’t see its icon anymore, the company’s SVP of software engineering told Apple blogger John Gruber.
While that might not be good enough for people who have a seething hatred for stock iOS applications, it likely won’t have any effect on the way you use your device. Apple points that its pre-loaded apps use less than 150MB and don’t take up a big part of your storage space. That said, you’ll still need to redownload them from the App Store — Cupertino made them available on iTunes for this purpose — if you change your mind.
By the way, Apple’s support page also gives you the rundown on some possible complications when you remove certain programs. For instance, if you try to remove the Watch app while it’s paired with a smartwatch, iOS will prompt you to unpair it first. You can’t use the Music app with CarPlay if you drop it, and stock and weather notifications won’t pop up anymore if you choose to get rid of them.
Source: Apple, John Gruber
Bose SoundSport Wireless review – CNET
The Good The SoundSoundSport Wireless is a very comfortable in-ear wireless Bluetooth sports headphone that’s sweat-resistant and sounds great. The earphones fit securely in your ears thanks to winged tips. The headphone works decently as a headset for making cell-phone calls and has an auto-off feature to preserve battery life.
The Bad The ear pieces protrude noticeably from your ears (they’re a little bulky but don’t feel heavy); battery life tops out at 6 hours.
The Bottom Line The Bose SoundSport Wireless is the most comfortable, best overall in-ear Bluetooth sports headphone you can buy right now.
Visit manufacturer site for details.
Over the years I frequently get asked what the best Bluetooth sports headphone is. My stock answer is that none are perfect, all have their drawbacks, and the handful of top models may fit you well and work great — or they may not.
Bose’s SoundSport Wireless, the company’s first Bluetooth sports headphone, isn’t perfect either, but it may just be the best Bluetooth sports headphone currently out there.
What makes it the best? Well, it’s very comfortable to wear, sounds good, seems well built, and — at $150 (£140, AU$249) — it isn’t outrageously priced.
Like the original SoundSport wired, which remains in the line and gets a price chop from $130 to $100, this new SoundSport Wireless has an open design. By open, I mean you don’t jam the earbud into your ear and completely seal off your ear canal (that type of headphone is referred to as a “noise-isolating” in-ear headphone). Thanks to Bose’s StayHear+ eartips, which come in three sizes — small, medium, large — the bud sits loosely in your ear yet remains securely in place.
The SoundSport Wireless comes with three sizes of StayHear eartips.
Sarah Tew/CNET
This model is equipped with a special sport version of the StayHear tips that’s different from the StayHear tips included with Bose’s earlier in-ear headphones, so they aren’t interchangeable. I should also point out that because the earpieces extend out from your ears you’ll probably have some trouble wearing these under certain helmets.
The ear pieces are somewhat bulky, but not so bulky to feel heavy on your ears. However, if there’s a criticism of this headphone’s design, it’s that the ear pieces could protrude out a little less and be more discrete-looking. Easier said then done, of course — today’s battery technology is holding back miniaturization efforts.
Rival headphones — such as Jaybird’s X2 and Freedom, Beats’ Powerbeats 2 Wireless and Monster’s Adidas Sport Adistar — give you the ability to shorten the cord length (or cinch up the cord) for those who want to wear the cord closer to the neck. With this headphone, you can’t adjust the cord length, but what Bose has done is provide a clip you can hook on to the back of your shirt (at the top) to keep the cord from flopping about. It’s a smart design and I thought it worked well; the cord remained fairly stable, even while I was running.
The headphone comes in aqua and black colors at launch with yellow arriving in September.
Sarah Tew/CNET
The only downside to the floating-fit, open design is that ambient sound does leak in: this isn’t a great headphone for noisy environments. (If that’s your preference, Bose’s upcoming QuietControl 30 is a wireless model that features active noise-canceling.) But if you’re out running or biking, you’ll be able to hear cars coming, which is why a lot of runners and bikers prefer their headphones to have open designs.
As you might expect, the headphone is sweat- and water-resistant and there’s an inline mic and remote that lets you skip songs, adjust volume, and take and make calls. Bose is touting its quality as a headset for making calls, as well as how reliable the Bluetooth connection is. I can attest to experiencing only minimal Bluetooth hiccups and was satisfied with how it performed as a headset, though the QuietControl 30 and QuietComfort 35 offer superior headset performance. Those models have noise-reduction features that muffle ambient sound, including wind and street noise.
Just as importantly I had no trouble pairing and repairing the headphone with my iPhone 6S and Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge (the Bose features near-field communication tap-to-pair technology for devices like the Samsung that support this feature). I also simultaneously paired it with my iPhone 6S and MacBook Air and had no trouble switching between the two when a call came in as I was watching a video on the computer.
Bose Connect, a free app for Android and iOS, allows you to manage your pairing list, upgrade the firmware and change the auto power off settings (the headphone powers down if you don’t use it for a certain length of time, which is a good battery-saving feature). When you turn on the headphones, a female voice alerts you how much battery life is remaining and with which devices you’re paired. That information is also available in the app.
Solarin Release Date, Price and Specs – CNET
A star-studded London launch with actors Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hardy. Premium materials like titanium and leather. These are not the reasons anyone would want to buy a $16,500 (or £9,500 or AU$22,700) phone.
But if Sirin Labs, the creator of the ultra-pricey Solarin phone, has its way, a little switch on the back will bring celebrities, government officials and other Very Powerful and Important People flocking. Rich people, who have the cash to spare.
Meet the luxury phone for the super-rich…
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The switch in question turns on an enhanced security mode that encrypts messages and limits much of the Android phone’s hardware and software capabilities. You would use this when sharing extremely sensitive information, the kind of heady stuff that Sirin Labs imagines would make Solarin owners a target for hackers.
To that end, the company joined with two other security firms, Zimperium to guard against threats, and KoolSpan, which boasts military-grade chip-to-chip encryption with 256-bit AES. Security support remains on twenty-four hour standby.
Solarin isn’t meant for the mass market, which is probably the only thing saving it from being a complete farce. Its core customers “are international business travelers that spend much of their lives on the move,” Sirin Labs CEO Tal Cohen told CNN.
If you really wanted to, you could buy the Solarin now online or at a few stores in London.
Solarin, left, compared to the Apple iPhone 6S.
Andrew Hoyle/CNET
Solarin’s hardware specs
- 5.5-inch LED display (2,540×1,440 pixel-resolution)
- 23.8-megapixel camera
- 8-megapixel front-facing camera with flash
- Wi-Gig technology (speeds of up to 4.6Gbps)
- Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 processor
- 4,000mAh battery
- 128GB storage, 4GB RAM
Is it worth the cost?
Phone security is a big deal; nothing highlighted that more than the FBI asking Apple to build a backdoor into its iPhones, and there are other security solutions out there.
Samsung already goes beyond Google’s Android security with its Knox software for Galaxy phones and BlackBerry claims boosted security on the Priv phone. The Blackphone promises even greater security, as does Silent Circle’s GranitePhone.
Speciality devices, especially those cloaked in fancy materials, typically use claims of keeping confidential information secure in order to justify a slightly higher cost — but this sticker price shoots into the realm of the absurd. And clearly draws on the very real fears of an extremely narrow segment of the population.
But without seeing the Solarin in hacker-thwarting action, it’s hard to think of it as anything but exploitative — though of course, we’ll reserve our final judgment.
Best shooters and action games of E3 2016: Battlefield 1, Gears 4, COD: Infinite Warfare and more
One of the best-served genres in gaming each year is the good, old fashioned shoot-em-up. From first-person to sideways-scrolling shooters to more esoteric blast-a-thons, there’s always plenty to choose from, and plenty are launched or shown at E3.
Additionally, there are plenty of action games where a gun and bullets aren’t part of the mayhem, but there’s still more than enough viscera and gore to go around.
That’s why we’ve put together a selection of our favourite shooters and action games from this year’s show, along with short reasons why, for you to check out. All of them are worthy contenders for your cash on the build up to Christmas and beyond.
Just flick through the gallery above to find out our faves. They’re listed in no particular order and, bar one or two, are generally multiplatform, for PS4, Xbox One and PC.
We’ll also be adding to this list as we see more on the E3 2016 show floor.
READ: E3 2016: All the launches, games and consoles at the show
And we’ll be putting together similar round-ups of our favourite driving, sports and adventure games, plus RPGs too, which you’ll be able to see on Pocket-lint soon.
This is the new Sony PlayStation VR Aim Controller
At the start of E3 this week, Sony announced a first-person shooter alongside a new controller called PS VR Aim.
The PS VR Aim is shaped so the user can hold it like a rifle pulled into the shoulder or fire from the hip. The controller uses a similar system to the Move controllers, meaning it will mirror your movements in the real world. So, if you point the gun to the side, it’ll move that way (independently of your head movements). Pulling off badass shots without even looking should now be a gaming possibility.
PS VR Aim will work with Farpoint, which is described by its indie developer, Impulse Gear, as an “unnerving space adventure set on a hostile alien world”. After you crash land, you have to fight to survive and explore the planet’s secrets. Your only hope of escape is to keep moving, with the PS VR Aim of course, which is considered “the most realistic and precise way” to control Farpoint.
Pocket-lint
Pocket-lint got a chance to see the VR Aim controller on the showfloor at E3 this week and could see that it has all the same controls found on the standard DualShock 4, including two analogue sticks, four face buttons, two bumpers, two triggers, a directional pad, Share and Options buttons, and another button mapped to the DualShock’s touchpad button (but there’s no touchpad on top).
The two triggers are in different positions, naturally, allowing the controller to be handled like a gun. VR Aim is also ambidextrous, as its R1 button for re-loading is mounted on either side of the trigger and beneath your index finger. Keep in mind Sony’s PlayStation VR headset works with the controller to bring your wrists and arms into VR, adding that extra layer of precision to the experience.
Pocket-lint
Also, this is not Sony’s first gun controller. It developed the Sharpshooter back in 2010. They look similar, but Sony said its VR Aim is more accurate and has less delay. Impulse Gear said it developed Farpoint to work specifically with VR Aim controller, too. Presumably, the controller will come in a bundle with Farpoint. It’ll also, hopefully, be compatible with more games in the future.
We don’t know much else right now. While the PS VR is available for pre-order, there is no sign of the VR Aim just yet.
Zelda: Breath of the Wild preview: Prepare to lose your breath
In among the halls at the E3 gaming expo Nintendo has dedicated a giant space to Zelda. It’s an escape from the bustle outside, with its own real grass and trees, a day-to-night lighting system, sound effects and all Nintendo’s usual quirk running to the maximum. It might sound like someone’s plonked a giant garden centre slap bang in the middle of a gaming exhibition, but Nintendo has pulled it off, the mood is set for us to take a deep breath and dive into 35-minutes of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
We’re excited. After all, this game is a big deal and has been in the making for what seems like forever. Sure, we still have to wait until 2017 before it will actually be released – as the Wii U’s swan song and the opening gambit for Nintendo NX. It is, therefore, a game on which Nintendo is hanging huge hopes. It has to succeed.
It’s clear the game has been in development forever too, because the Wii U immediately shows its age and fidelity limitations: this isn’t the ultra-crisp gaming that many have come accustomed to with new-gen consoles and PC rigs. Even so, Nintendo has dunked Zelda in a bucket load of style and painted a new feel for the game; one that feels at once truly Zelda and sincerely beautiful. Sweeping reeds, a painterly style, lingering backdrops that tease the lands you’ll be exploring later in the game. We can’t wait to see how the NX version will ramp things up – that’s the version everyone will really want to play.
The game begins with Link awaking in a pool, having been in a slumber for 100 years. Calamity Ganon, depicted as a dark force around Hyrule Castle, is about to become all powerful. It’s typical Zelda stuff, as ever. Link doesn’t know it yet, but he’ll be tasked to stop that happening.
Story set, it’s time to get to the controls. Giant GamePad in hand and it’s not the most comfortable setup, plus the odd arrangement of buttons feels awkward – run and jump sit at total opposites as one example. There’s that Nintendo quirk again. But once we’ve got used to shooting arrows, slashing through the undergrowth and clubbing bad guys (whose deaths are realised in a kid-friendly puff of smoke) it’s manageable. The integration of GamePad’s three-dimensional controls are limited too; it can be used to aim arrows by facing the pad itself at the target, but we much preferred to just use the d-pad.
Nintendo
There are heaps of controls to get accustomed, given the breadth of Link’s arsenal this time around. It’s the most RPG-like Zelda ever. For example, clothing plays a more integral role than before, with climate a factor – you can’t go into the icy hills wearing a thin shirt, for example, you’ll need a proper padded top for that. Other items and food can be collected and crafted, too, with cooking playing a role this time around.
Amiibo – Nintendo’s real-world toys that instigate in-game characters – is also compatible. We synched the Wolf Link Amiibo with the Gamepad, a lone wolf who can help with hunting and attacking enemies. It’s not possible to designate tasks to him, which we thought would have added an additional layer of tactics, but then it’s not essential to use Amiibo to play the game, hence keeping the game accessible for all. Wolf Link can only be summoned once a day.
Combat-wise Breath of the Wild feels more free-flowing and less locked-in the some Zelda games before it. The usual shielded defence, timed weapon attacks and skipping about to avoid bad guys is at the game’s core. Weapons wear out, so collecting spare clubs and tree branches might come in handy. But in this Zelda the environment can be used too: we set fire to some bushes, for example, while rocks can be rolled down hills to strike enemies. There are all manner of possibilities, such as explosive lanterns which can be shot down to explode and, we suspect, Nintendo will have gone fully creative on other ways to despatch the bad guys.
Nintendo
The game is huge too. Looking into the distance it’s possible to pick-our mountains and a volcano, all of which will be accessible. Open the map and this giant world makes itself apparent. Big doesn’t always mean best, of course, so we’ll have to see how fast-travel and horseback riding are integrated to expedite travel when it’s needed.
First Impressions
From combat to puzzles, shrines and runes, collectibles and puzzles, Zelda: Breath of the Wild has all the make-up of a classic Zelda title, wrapped into a different, stylised skin. Despite slightly fussy controls (not nearly as bad as StarFox though) it’s certainly shaping-up to be the best Zelda ever. And with the power of NX revealed in 2017 for the game’s launch, we’re doubly excited to find out just how much better it will look.
AIVAnet 