The first 4K NBA broadcast in the US happens tomorrow on DirecTV
NBA fans in the US will get their first chance to check out a live game in 4K Ultra HD on Saturday night when the Utah Jazz visit the Denver Nuggets. The broadcast will be available via DirecTV if you have the proper package and equipment (Genie HR54 DVR), as AT&T is working with NBA TV on the broadcast. In early 2015 (pre-Porzingis), the NBA did a very limited test 4K broadcast of a Knicks game, and in January it tried one on UK and Canadian TV, but this is apparently the first one available widely in the US. Keen-eyed forum posters noticed another Nuggets home game listed as 4K in November, but it’s unclear whether that one was actually in 4K. Additional 4K games are planned, although there’s no word yet on which ones.
Source: AT&T
Apple VP of Special Projects Paul Deneve Removed From Leadership Webpage
Apple this evening updated its executive profiles page to remove Paul Deneve, suggesting he is no longer with the company or has left the executive team. Hired in 2013, Paul Deneve served as Apple’s vice president of special projects, reporting to Apple CEO Tim Cook.
Paul Deneve came to Apple from luxury fashion house Yves Saint Laurent, where he served as CEO. Deneve, who joined Apple as it was working on the Apple Watch, also worked at several other luxury fashion labels like Courreges, Nina Ricci, and Lanvin.
Paul Deneve’s executive profile, which has now been removed from Apple’s website.
During his time at Apple, Deneve had a hand in marketing the Apple Watch. He was involved in projects like the massive floral window installation at Selfridges, and worked alongside Apple’s head of retail Angela Ahrendts getting the Apple Watch in high-end boutiques around the world.
Deneve’s LinkedIn page has not yet been updated and continues to list Deneve as a vice president at Apple.
Tag: Paul Deneve
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Microsoft expands its accessibility efforts on Windows 10
Microsoft is keen on making sure people with disabilities can use their products, and next year it’s only going to expand upon that directive. It starts with some big additions to Windows 10 and Narrator for the Creators Update like support for braille, some 10 news voices for text to speech and volume ducking when Narrator chimes in while you’re listening to Spotify or another music program.
Narrator will also dovetail better with the Edge browser too, making it easier to fill out forms and navigation via heading levels. On Xbox One (that’s a Windows device too, remember?) you’ll be able to tweak how fast Narrator speaks and the pitch of its voice.
If you were worried that Office 365 would be left out, those fears were unfounded. Next year, the productivity suite will make it easier to create stuff that’s accessible by people with disabilities. That includes an AI boost from its Computer Vision Cognitive Service that makes it ” easy to insert alternative text descriptions for images and meaningful display names for hyperlinks, as well as making the accessibility checker available in more Office applications”. There are a few other bits and bobs like a read-aloud while simultaneously highlighting text option and a tool that breaks words into syllables for easier reading.
Those last bits are already rolling out to Office Insiders and people in the First Release programs. Everyone else is just going to have to be patient until next spring, it sounds like.
Source: Microsoft
The Game Awards 2016: All the new game trailers unveiled, in one place
This year’s Game Awards are done and dusted, but if you didn’t catch the show live, no worries.
Pocket-lint has gathered up every new game trailer that premiered at The Game Awards 2016 and listed below. We’ve also included a 4K stream of the actual show, in case you feel like watching the whole thing for yourself. Also, if you’re unfamiliar with The Game Awards, we got you covered there, too. Here’s everything you need and want to know, in one place.
What are The Game Awards?
The Game Awards is an annual awards ceremony to honour “outstanding artistic, technical and gameplay achievements” in the video game industry. It is guided by an advisory board that includes the executive leadership teams from Activision, AMD, Electronic Arts, Microsoft, Nintendo of America, Rockstar Games, Sony Interactive Entertainment, Telltale Games, Ubisoft, Valve, and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment.
This committee selects 29 video game media organizations (see list here) that nominate and subsequently vote on the video games in several categories. The advisory board is not involved in the selection of nominees or winners. It learns of the winners at the same time of the public.
When are The Game Awards 2016?
The 2016 awards ceremony was held in Los Angeles on 1 December.
Who won at The Game Awards 2016?
You can see this year’s full list of winners across all the categories from here.
Can you stream The Game Awards 2016?
Yes. Although the three-hour-long show has ended, you can still watch the stream online, whether that be from Twitch, YouTube, Xbox Live, PlayStation, or some other source. You can see the full list of available streams from here.
We’ve also embedded a 4K one below.
Did any trailers premiere at The Game Awards 2016?
Yes. Many trailers premiered during the event, and there was some big news as well. Here’s a roundup of all videos:
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild Demo
Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition
Rocket League Starbase Arc
Death Stranding:
Warframe
Telltale’s Guardians of the Galaxy
Dauntless
Lawbreakers
Halo Wars 2
Shovel Knight: Specter of Torment
Prey
Walking Dead: A New Frontier
Mass Effect: Andromeda
Halo Wars Definitive Edition
Want to know more?
Check out Pocket-lint’s Games hub for related news.
Hulu now offers 4K, starting with original shows and 20 Bond films
Hulu has begun offering 4K streams for Xbox One S and PlayStation Pro owners.
The US-based streaming services has announced that starting 2 December anyone with the latest generation, 4K-capable Xbox and PS systems can stream a selection of shows and movies in Ultra HD at launch. Netflix and Amazon Video, which are Hulu’s biggest rivals in the States, already offer an impressive slate of 4K content, so the number of titles Hulu is offering right now seems pretty slim. That said, 007 fanatics will be thrilled.
- How to watch 4K Ultra HD content on TV and online
Hulu is streaming 20 James Bond films in 4K. But other than that, Hulu is only offering its original series in 4K. That includes shows like 11.22.63, The Path, Chance, etc, none of which are award-winning critically praised productions. Hulu has a lot of catching up to, especially with Netflix just announcing that it has enabled offline downloads. But where Hulu scores big-time is that has a huge catalogue of cable TV programming.
We’d love to watch South Park, Family Guide, The Daily Show, Designated Survivor, Bob’s Burgers, and many of the other hit TV shows it offers in 4K. Hopefully it’ll hustle and get that in order. In the meantime, we don’t mind watching some Bond while drinking martinis (shaken, not stirred).
Republican congressmen question value of asteroid redirect mission
A pair of Republican congressmen, both of whom sit on the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, contacted NASA Administrator Charles Bolden on Tuesday, requesting more information from the space administration about a recent report supporting the Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM). The ARM program aims to intercept a near-Earth asteroid, grab a boulder from its surface using a robotic spacecraft and then coax said boulder into a stable orbit around the moon where it can be studied at leisure by future manned missions.
Reps. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), chairman of the HCSST, and Brian Babin (R-Texas), chairman of of the HSST space subcommittee, made the request because they reportedly feel that the incoming administration should be “unencumbered” by decisions made by the current one — like what they want to do with the ACA — and has access to “honest assessments” of ARM’s value rather than “farcical studies scoped to produce a predetermined outcome.”
Specifically, the pair questioned a November 16th report which proposed that performing this mission would close five “strategic knowledge gaps” (SKGs), or subjects that NASA has said it needs additional experience or technologies in before it can continue its space exploration plans. These SKGs include everything from how to limit a crew’s radiation exposure during round trip missions, how many such missions a crew could complete before radiation exposure becomes an issue or how to even land on and collect materials from the orbiting boulder. What’s more, these are SKGs would be answered with the completion of the baseline ARM mission — we could close another eight knowledge gaps (out of NASA’s total of 27) with subsequent follow-up missions.
“This report is an important step in identifying ways that ARM will be more scientifically relevant as we continue mission formulation for the robotic and the crew segments,” Michele Gates, program director for ARM, wrote in the November 16th statement. It was this conclusion with which Reps Smith and Babin are taking umbrage. The two argued that NASA has set a “bizarrely low bar” for the role ARM would play in closing these SKGs, citing that NASA itself had previously questioned the need for the ARM mission.
The ARM program was already under assault from the GOP before Smith and Babin’s letter. The House’s version of the 2017 FY appropriations bill includes wording that would force NASA to fully defund the ARM program. Furthermore, the two reps wrote, “the next Administration may find merit in some, if not all, of the components of ARM, and continue the program; however, that decision should be made after a full and fair review based on the merits of the program and in the context of a larger exploration and science strategy.” Funny, coming from an administration that has already announced that it plans to dismantle NASA’s Earth-study programs and defund “politicized” climate change research.
Source: Space News
Amazon’s new Snowmobile collects data instead of blasting through powder
Moving large amounts of electronically stored data is both difficult and time consuming. Current internet technology limits how quickly data can be transferred using the internet. While a few pictures on your phone can be uploaded in seconds, backing up all the data for an entire corporation can take years. This is a problem Amazon Web Services, the cloud-based computing arm of the online retailer, is currently dealing with. They now have a solution: the Snowmobile, literally a massive mobile server.
The Snowmobile is an expansion of Amazon’s Snowball service. Amazon ships an 80 terabyte Snowball storage unit to customers. Once they uploaded their data, the customer would ship the Snowball back to Amazon so the data could be directly transferred to a server. Amazon designed the Snowball to deal with high network costs, long transfer times, and security concerns at come with moving large amounts of data over the internet.
For some customers, the Snowball simply didn’t provide enough space. This led to the development of the Snowmobile, a semi-truck with 100 petabytes (or 100 million gigabytes) of storage that Amazon will use to directly transfer and move digital data from a customer to one of their data storage facilities. Essentially, they send customers a truck-sized hard drive that will physically move all of your stored data. Although it may sound strange to use a truck to move digital data, moving 100 petabytes over fiber internet could take more than 20 years. According to Wired, a Snowmobile can do a full New York to Los Angeles trip in 10 days, including the data transfer time.
Pricing is based on how much data is stored on the Snowmobile per month. Amazon is charging $0.005 per gigabyte, which is relatively inexpensive. Do the math and you’ll find that a fully-loaded truck will set you back $500,000. Amazon obviously believes there will be enough demand to invest in the Snowmobile.
Amazon Web Services has storage facilities worldwide, with several scattered throughout the United States. This means the turnaround time for a Snowmobile can be days, not years. For Amazon’s part, they’re taking Snowmobile security and encryption very seriously. The company will provide dedicated security personnel, GPS tracking, alarm monitoring, and 24/7 video surveillance. Customers have the option of a security escort vehicle to accompany the Snowmobile while in transit. The truck itself will be tamper-resistant, water-resistant and temperature controlled.
Related Video:
Via: Wired
Source: Amazon
Cybersecurity commission calls for increased investment and innovation
In April, President Obama officially formed the The Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity to examine the country’s electronic vulnerabilities in the wake of high-profile hacks like that of the Office of Personnel Management in 2015. Today that commission finally wrapped up its duties and delivered a comprehensive report to the President (and the public) identifying areas of weakness and offering concrete steps to improve.
Many of the recommendations are obvious, though getting them fully implemented will certainly be tricky. Setting stringent authentication requirements for all federal employees and contractors, is an admirable goal, but getting all the various agencies and departments inline will be easier said than done. The same holds true for getting all federal agencies to adopt the Cybersecurity Framework set forth by the Obama in 2014 — a fact that the commission readily acknowledges saying:
“…many agencies are not yet using the Cybersecurity Framework. They may be reluctant to do so because they are focused on the many requirements that they face, or because they do not understand how they can make productive use of the Framework within the larger context of managing their operations.”
The commission’s solution, to simply have the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) mandate it, might be effective, but it’s certainly not ideal.
Many of the other recommendations involve improved collaboration between various government agencies and the private sector. Including incentivising companies to implement cyber risk management principles and actively work with the government to “identify, protect from, detect, respond to, and recover from cyber incidents affecting critical infrastructure.”
This collaboration extends to increasing both public and private investment in research, development and establishing industry standards around security. This includes developing a “integrated government–private-sector cybersecurity roadmap for developing usable, affordable, inherently secure, resilient/recoverable, privacy-protecting, functional, and defensible systems. “
One area of the consumer market singled out in particular is the internet of things (IoT). The importance of which was made all the more clear by the recent attack against a popular DNS service that brought down major swaths of the internet, including Twitter, Spotify and New York Times.
Perhaps the most important and difficult recommendations focus on updating our laws and educating the public. Because, as the report goes out of its way to highlight, simply building security systems isn’t enough, every individual has a part to play in protecting the country against hackers, criminals and cyber spies.
President Obama released a statement embracing the commission’s recommendations, but with his time in office winding down, there’s only so much he’ll be able to implement. The president directed the commission to brief Donald Trump’s transition team “at their earliest opportunity.” You can read the entirety of the commissions report for yourself right here.
Facebook could fight fake news with curated articles
The proliferation of fake news on its network has haunted Facebook since the presidential election. Initially downplaying its impact, CEO Mark Zuckerberg has come around to start speaking on the social platform’s action plan, including cutting off ad money. But now they have a new plan to ensure their users get quality content with actual facts: Handpick publications themselves.
Sources tell Business Insider that the new feature, called Collections, will serve up stories and media from sources chosen by Facebook. The social media titan has been courting entertainment and media companies in the last few weeks to create content for the new section. Early partners have been told that their created content will be inserted directly into users’ News Feed, giving it a much broader reach.
But the entertainment focus reason enough to expect that Facebook will likely use Collections to both editorially curate superior content and compete with Snapchat. Its Discover section is seen by its 150 million daily users. But other information, from its partner list or whether Collections will include advertising or when it will debut, is currently unknown.
Source: Business Insider
Users Find Some New MacBook Pros Suffer From Major Graphics Issues
Since new MacBook Pro models launched last month, an increasing number of early adopters have reported serious graphics issues on Apple’s latest notebooks. The glitches and other problems appear to be most prevalent on built-to-order 15-inch models, but standard 13-inch and 15-inch configurations are also affected.
MacRumors reader Jan Becker, for example, said the graphics began to glitch on his new high-end 15-inch MacBook Pro, equipped with built-to-order AMD Radeon Pro 460 graphics, while transcoding video with Adobe Media Encoder in Premiere Pro. The notebook subsequently crashed.
Becker claims when he took his MacBook Pro to an Apple retail store to be replaced, an employee said the graphics issues are likely a hardware problem. He later claimed he received a phone call from Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, California, where it allegedly has a team of engineers looking into the issues.
Apple called me from Cupertino. They put together a group of engineers to get to the root of this. I re-created the incident while I was on the phone with them and sent them the log files of the crash. They also want to “capture” my MacBook Pro with all the files on it to investigate more.
The most common symptoms reported by users include brightly colored flickering, full-screen checkerboard patterns, screen tearing, and other visual artifacts. Affected systems may subsequently experience unresponsiveness or a kernel panic, sometimes resulting in the MacBook Pro crashing.
15-inch MacBook Pro with AMD Radeon Pro 460 graphics with full-screen visual artifacts
The high-end 15-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar and built-to-order AMD Radeon Pro 460 graphics appears to be most commonly afflicted, but several users have reported similar issues on 15-inch models equipped with standard AMD Radeon Pro 450 or AMD Radeon Pro 455 GPUs as well.
MacRumors reader Jayselle recorded his 15-inch MacBook Pro with AMD Radeon Pro 455 graphics flickering while connected to two external LG displays.
It is not entirely clear if the issues are a hardware or software problem. The graphics appear to act up most when users are completing intensive tasks, such as transcoding video with Adobe Media Encoder, syncing large photo libraries with Photos, or using other Adobe apps such as Photoshop and Lightroom.
It would initially seem the issue is limited to 15-inch MacBook Pro models with dedicated AMD graphics, but there are a few isolated reports of graphics issues on 13-inch models with integrated Intel Iris 540 and Intel Iris 550 graphics — including the new 13-inch MacBook Pro with a standard row of function keys.
User complaints extend to the Apple Support Communities and other MacRumors discussion topics, indicating the graphics issues are rather widespread, but not all users are affected. Some speculate the latest macOS Sierra beta may fix the issues, but evidence remains anecdotal.
Separately, a number of users are reporting brief glitches during the boot up process on new MacBook Pro models, particularly along the bottom of the screen. It appears this issue is related to FileVault 2 startup disk encryption, as the glitches go away for many of these users once the feature is disabled.
As insurance, Apple’s extended holiday return policy is currently in effect. MacBook Pros purchased or delivered between November 10 and December 25 are eligible for return until January 8, 2017 in the United States, Australia, and Canada, or January 20 in the United Kingdom and some other European countries.
Select 2011-2013 MacBook Pro models have exhibited similar graphics issues in the past, including distorted video, no video, or unexpected system restarts. Apple accordingly launched a Repair Extension Program offering free repairs and refunds, but not before facing a class action lawsuit over the matter.
Apple appears to be aware of and is investigating these latest graphics issues, but it has yet to publicly comment on the matter. Apple been actively exchanging MacBook Pros for affected customers, according to users. Schedule a Genius Bar appointment or contact Apple Support to facilitate this process.
Related Roundup: MacBook Pro
Buyer’s Guide: MacBook Pro (Buy Now)
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