Russian Parliament members claim FIFA 17 is gay propaganda
The Russian government has a problem with a lot of current technology: a YouTuber was imprisoned for playing Pokémon Go, Microsoft Outlook was banned from government computers for being an American boogeyman, and good luck accessing LinkedIn from St. Petersburg. This week, Electronic Arts became the country’s latest target when a group of Russian members of Parliament asked the government’s communications oversight agency to possibly block FIFA 17 after the popular soccer franchise promoted a tie-in with a UK-based LGBT rights group.
Show your support, get your FREE Rainbow kit in FUT now! More on the #RainbowLaces campaign: https://t.co/2NohXaloXe pic.twitter.com/xSbY9G8wAp
— EA SPORTS FIFA (@EASPORTSFIFA) November 26, 2016
FIFA 17 has lots of connections to the English Premier League for a variety of obvious reasons, but as the Guardian notes, the Russian MPs’ beef with the title stems from EA’s support of the Rainbow Laces campaign, in which the league partnered with LGBT rights group Stonewall to fight homophobia and transphobia at matches in the UK. EA’s part in that campaign included virtual rainbow-colored uniforms FIFA 17 players could use to deck out their in-game teams. Even though the Rainbow Laces tie-in ended in November, the MPs claim the game is in violation of a 2013 law that outlaws the promotion of non-traditional relationships because they could bring “harm to children’s health and development.”
The MPs are asking the state consumer protection and communications oversight agencies to investigate whether the game should be banned from distribution in Russia, or if developer EA Canada should be ordered to change the game’s age rating or even modify code to remove the parts that the Russian government finds so offensive.
Engadget has reached out to EA for comment and we’ll update when we hear back.
Via: The Guardian
Source: Izvestia
Apple’s TV single sign-on feature goes live in the US
Apple just made your TV watching much easier… if you subscribe to the right services, that is. After dropping some hints in November, Apple has activated its promised single sign-on feature for Apple TV and iOS users in the US, but only for a handful of offerings. DirecTV, Dish and cord-cutter service Sling TV are the highlights among providers. Only some channel-specific apps can use SSO as well: A&E, Bravo, NBC, Syfy and USA are among the choices, and the option isn’t always available on both Apple TV and iOS gear.
How well the feature works will rely heavily on app creators. There are some glaring omissions in the selection right now (HBO, anyone?). The situation might improve sooner than you think, however. Single sign-on might see greater adoption now that you don’t need a beta operating system to try it, and there will be a stronger incentive to use it once Apple’s unifying TV app is available. If support is rough around the edges right now, it might be a very different story in the months ahead.
Via: MacRumors
Source: Apple
Google further shrinks the size of your Android app updates
If there’s a regular bane in Android phone owners’ existence, it’s the never-ending stream of app updates. Even though they’re smaller than full downloads, they still chew up a lot of data — just ask anyone who has sucked down hundreds of megabytes updating a new phone. Google’s engineers have a better solution, though.
They’re introducing a new approach to app updates that promises to radically shrink the size of updates with “file-by-file” patching. The resulting patches tend to be about 65 percent smaller than the app itself, and are sometimes over 90 percent smaller. In the right circumstances, that could make the difference between updating while you’re on cellular versus waiting until you find WiFi.
The technique revolves around spotting changes in the uncompressed files (that is, when they’re not squeezed into a typical app package). Google first decompresses the old and new app versions to determine the changes between files and create a patch. After that, updating is just a matter of unpacking the app on your device, applying changes and compressing it again.
Don’t expect to see this when you tap the “update” button, at least not yet. Google is currently limiting the new patching approach to automatic updates, since it needs extra processing power and might take additional time on older hardware. Your brand new Pixel XL should blaze through it, but someone’s aging Moto G might take longer. Performance will improve over time, however, so you might well see this expand to all updates once baseline performance is high enough.
Source: Android Developers Blog
Pandora officially unveils its long-awaited Spotify competitor
That Pandora was planning to launch a full fledged Spotify competitor was no secret. The company said as much last year when it bought the ashes of Rdio, which had filed for bankruptcy. But today, at a lavish, over-the-top event in New York City, Pandora gave a small group of VIPs and press a look at the new streaming service. It’s called Pandora Premium, and just as you’d expect, it offers on-demand access to a massive music catalog — and it looks a LOT like Rdio, from the brief glance we have seen so far. But Pandora is leveraging the years of information it has about how its users listen to music to provide the all-important recommendations necessary to help people find new songs to listen to.
Pandora CEO Tim Westergren thinks Pandora has created the “first truly premium music service” — and that “premium means personal.” Following that statement, he played a quick video showing off the main features of the service. All of the thumbs-up you have given songs over the years will be used to show you songs, artists, and albums you might be interested in. If you start building a playlist, Pandora Premium will suggest songs for you to add and even do it automatically. And, of course, you can take all of these songs offline.
By default, the Pandora home screen looks identical to now — all your recently played stations and full collection of stations is found in the “my music” section. But it also keeps created playlists and albums that you love in one combined list. It doesn’t force you into a category first — but of course, you can filter down to artists, albums, stations and playlists if you’re so inclined.
The “now playing” screen is also redesigned, with a bold colored background that changes based on the album artwork for the song you’re listening to. Naturally, the thumbs up and down icons are still here, and every time you thumbs-up a song, it gets added to an automatically-generated playlist. And that playlist pulls in every single song you’ve ever given a thumbs-up to. If you’ve been using Pandora for a long time, that list could get very, very long indeed.
The playlist feature in particular seems really interesting. Pandora noted that lots of Rdio users had “playlist orphans” where you add a handful of songs to a playlist but don’t actually go through the trouble of fleshing it out beyond those initial choices. Pandora will now let you automatically add songs based on similarities in the Music Genome Project, and you can of course remove songs that you’re not interested in.
Pandora also says that it has redesigned the search experience. It says that most services use popularity-based search rankings — so everyone gets the same results as they type. But Pandora Premium will personalize search by user. It’ll take into account things that you’ve searched for before and music you like so that the search results popping up are more personalized to the user.
The “browse” screen now features a “new music” section that’s somewhat similar to what Spotify does with Discover Weekly. But rather than present a playlist of personalized songs, Pandora will show you a personalized selection of full albums based on your listening history. Instead of digging into a specific genre every week and finding albums you want to hear, Pandora will surface them for you. If you have eclectic tastes, they should all be represented here. When you finish playing an album, the “autoplay” feature (taken from Rdio) will start playing more similar music to match the tone of what you just finished.
Westergren kicked off the event by recounting how he helped start building the Music Genome Project years before Pandora eventually launched in 2005 — long before most streaming music services. He then mentioned how music has fully gone online, with a wonderfully vast collection of music that’s hard to understand and navigate. To get that catalog of music to the lister are on demand solutions like Apple Music and Spotify — but he thinks that isn’t the way to go. “Giving the keys to the record store” isn’t the best way for people to find music.
This announcement comes after a busy few months for Pandora. The company recently went through a full-scale rebrand in advance of the Premium service, and it also revamped its existing $5/month paid “Plus” service that cuts out ads, lets you skip more tracks and offers some offline features. And now, the company is one of the few streaming services to offer a free service alongside two different paid options.
Unfortunately, there’s no specific timeline or pricing for Pandora Premium yet. The service should launch in Q1 of 2017, but Pandora said its VIPs will get a chance to try the service before it launches. Additionally, the company didn’t actually say how much Pandora Premium would cost. In all likelihood, it’ll hit the $9.99 per month price point that basically all other services offer, but we’ll have to wait to confirm that.
While it’s hard for a streaming service to really stand out at this point, Pandora Premium looks like it’ll contain the best parts of Rdio’s excellent design and marry it with the massive amount of music knowledge that Pandora has gathered over many years the service has been alive. Hopefully the company will release more details publicly soon.
Google Docs could make writing that term paper a little easier
Formatting and inserting citations are some of the worst parts of writing a term paper. But Google wants to help make that tedious process a little less soul-crushing. An upcoming update to G Suite will toss those attributions in as a footnote for a Doc, Sheet or Slide with a single tap. It’s thanks in part to how the new, contextual “Explore” tab Google launched earlier this year works. It’s a little confusing though, because screenshots in the blog post are from mobile web and there isn’t any clarification if this is a desktop option as well.
But beyond that, the feature will format the citations in APA, Chicago or MLA styles. So, no matter what your professor requires you’re probably covered here. This starts rolling out tomorrow for folks using G Suite for Education. You know, just in time for that final paper you’ve been putting off all semester long.
Source: G Suite blog
Apple Shares Tips for Taking ‘Pro’ Photos Using iPhone 7 Plus Portrait Mode
Apple today shared some tips to “Shoot like a Pro” with depth-of-field “Portrait” effect in the iPhone 7 Plus, highlighting a range of suggestions collected from professional photographers on its news site.
Tips include getting up close to a subject to bring out details, minimizing the background, putting the sun behind a subject, slightly underexposing, and using soft, diffused lighting.
The suggestions are sourced from fashion photographer JerSean Golatt, celebrity photographer Jeremy Cowart, travel photographer Pei Ketron, and wedding photographer Benj Haisch, and are accompanied by photos shot on the iPhone 7 Plus.
For many years running, the iPhone has been the most popular camera on Flickr, which has encouraged Apple to make continual improvements to the camera equipment in its smartphones.
Along with dual cameras and the Portrait mode in the iPhone 7 Plus, both the iPhone 7 and the iPhone 7 Plus feature lens, sensor, stabilization, and image signal processor improvements that offer much improved performance compared to previous-generation devices, especially in low-light conditions.
Related Roundup: iPhone 7
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HP Omen X review – CNET
The Good The HP Omen X is a powerful gaming desktop with a modern, minimalist design, and is angled for easy access to ports and components. DIY types can buy the just case and build it themselves.
The Bad The system is big, heavy and expensive. Lighting effects are limited compared to some other gaming desktops.
The Bottom Line The HP Omen X builds a powerful gaming desktop with smart ergonomics into a bold but expensive statement piece.
It’s big. It’s powerful. It’s cube-shaped.
The Omen X desktop from HP is one of the boldest PC designs of the year, taking what could have been a cool but not exactly groundbreaking cube shape and standing it on one edge for a sharp, angular look.
The first thing everyone does when they see the Omen X is reach out and ever so gently give it a shake. Even though it looks precariously perched on a single edge, the stand is actually rock solid, and there’s zero danger of it tipping over.
View full gallery Sarah Tew/CNET
Why is this desktop balanced on one edge? It’s actually a pretty brilliant idea that makes it very easy to access the ports, the drive bays, and even the interior of the system. With standard desktops, you usually have to (carefully) lie them down on their side, or else crawl up next to them on the floor. That makes removing the side panel difficult to start with, and also makes working inside the case, swapping out hard drives and graphics cards, a hassle.
In the Omen X, you just pop off the side cover, and everything’s already at an ergonomic 45-degree angle and easy to reach. It’s easiest on a desk or table, but works fine on the floor as well.
View full gallery Sarah Tew/CNET
Three ways to get into the
Omen
The configuration reviewed here is a pretty basic build, with an Nvidia 1080 card, an Intel Core i7 CPU and a 256GB SSD and 2TB HDD storage combo. It runs $2,499 on HP’s website right now, a similar configuration sells for £2,499 or AU$4,499 in Australia. And it comes with a handful of CPU, GPU and storage options.
But, that’s not the only way to get the Omen X experience. As the big, airy case is sure to appeal to DIY-style system builders, HP offers the case itself, minus any components, for $599 or £549. It’s not currently available in Australia, but that price converts to about AU$800. To address the elephant in the room right away: That’s an insane price for a PC case, even one as nice-looking and feature-filled as the Omen X. It’s hard to imagine spending more than $200 on an empty case, even at the high end.
View full gallery Sarah Tew/CNET
If you want something really high-end with speciality components, extreme overclocking and a custom paint job, HP is going to kick you over to a well-respected gaming PC custom builder named Maingear. They’ll take the basic Omen X case and build you the very expensive gaming desktop of your dreams, starting at $2,999 — that’s about £2,365 or AU$4,025.
HP Omen X
| $2,499 |
| 4GHz Intel Core i7-6700K |
| 16GB DDR4 SDRAM 2,400MHz |
| 8GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 |
| 256GB SSD + 2TB HDD |
| 802.11ac wireless, Bluetooth 4.? |
| Windows 10 Home (64-bit) |
Enter the cube
There’s plenty of room for two graphics cards and even liquid cooling in the main compartment, and that’s because this cube is cut into separate quadrants. The power supply is tucked away in its own zone, and all the hard drives are in a separate zone — makes cooling and cable management much easier.
Razer Ornata Chroma Release Date, Price and Specs – CNET
The great keyboard schism comes down to the keys. Membrane switches are electrical, and rely on each keystroke completing a circuit on a single board. Your average office keyboard most likely uses membrane switches.
The other side of the divide, favoured by gamers, uses mechanical switches. In a mechanical keyboard, every switch uses its own spring mechanism to record keystrokes. This gives a lot of control over travel distance, resistance and, most importantly, accuracy.
Razer’s new Ornata Chroma keyboard isn’t taking sides. It’s using both kinds of switch in its keys.
Dave Cheng/CNET
Key specs
- $100 (£100, AU$170)
- Razer’s specially designed “mecha-membrane” switches
- Full keyboard with numpad
- Anti-ghosting on up to 10 simultaneous keypresses
- Game mode to turn off Windows key
- Magnetized palm rest
- USB connection
- Razer Synapse app and Chroma customisation
Of mech and membrane
OK, so it’s a keyboard designed for gaming. Which means, you’re probably dealing with some real purists, and you’re telling them that their gaming keyboard doesn’t have fully mechanical keys.
What do they get though? The newly developed Razer tech appears for the first time in the Ornata, and it does manage to combine the satisfying click of a true mechanical switch with the softer touch of a membrane dome. It can also manage an impressive 10 simultaneous keypresses without ghosting (when too many keys are pressed and some don’t register).
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On the technical side, it also means there’s a much shorter distance between keystroke and activation without sacrificing too much travel on each key — they all sit at half height. Whether that translates to more speed and accuracy is going to come down to the user.
I’ve typed this whole review on the Ornata, and for general use, I’ll say this much: It stands head and shoulders above the mechanical keyboard plugged into my gaming rig at home. For one, the quieter actuation means my frantic tapping isn’t driving my coworkers crazy. There’s a reason my mechanical keyboard is at home, and not in the office. For another, it takes much less pressure per keystroke than pretty much every mechanical keyboard I’ve used.
The gravy
Then there’s the little quality of life features. I’m in love with the included magnetized palm rest. It snaps in place perfectly and hasn’t shifted on me once, even with rigorous use. It also puts your hands perfectly level with the keys, and honestly I wouldn’t recommend using the keyboard without it — at around an inch tall, it’s just too far off the desktop to use comfortably with no added support. That also means it takes up a fair amount of desk space — around 18 inches by 9.5 inches. Keep that in mind if space is already at a premium.
Make your keyboard psychedelic with Razer Synapse and programmable LEDs.
Dave Cheng/CNET
The Ornata is firmly in the Razer family, and fully integrated with the Synapse desktop app. The LEDs are completely programmable, and you can do anything from only highlighting your WASD keys to having a full rainbow wave playing beneath your fingers.
On the subject of lighting, I found the glow from in between the keys muddied the backlighting on the keys themselves. Not a deal breaker, especially if you’re touch-typing or going by feel, but it’s definitely something to be aware of if you’re using the Ornata in a brighter room.
Verdict
The new switches, while in a very well designed package, are going to come down to personal preference. Are you okay with the half-height travel, with the resistance, with the sound of the keystrokes? Personally, I found that the hybrid switches make for a very good hybrid keyboard, but it’s hard to go past fully mechanical keys on a gaming peripheral.
What the Ornata does offer is the best of both worlds. Springy keys. Clicky typing, but not too loud. Middle of the road travel and soft-touch actuation. It may not be enough to convert loyalists in either the membrane or mechanical camp, but if you’re open to seeing how the other half lives, the Ornata is a great way to do it.
Razer DeathAdder Elite Release Date, Price and Specs – CNET
The most accurate mouse ever.
It may sound hyperbolic, but Razer’s Deathadder Elite gaming mouse can back up the claim. The original Deathadder, Razer claims, is the most popular gaming mouse in the world. So when the upgraded Elite version was announced, it’s safe to say that people were a little antsy.
Razer has made good on the promise though, with bleeding edge sensors for improved accuracy and design tweaks that make the Deathadder Elite even more comfortable to use.
Dave Cheng/CNET
Key specs
- $70 (£70, AU$120)
- USB connection
- Mechanical switches
- Two side buttons
- Switches to control sensitivity on the fly
- Programmable Chroma LEDs
- Rubber grips and treaded scroll wheel
And, since this is what you’re really here for:
Key bragging rights
- 16,000 DPI tracking
- 99.4 percent resolution accuracy
- Tested to 50 million clicks
- 450 IPS tracking (30 percent higher than its closest competitor)
Hitting the mark
That’s right. In addition to some very compelling physical redesigns, the Deathadder Elite is near impossible to beat when it comes to accuracy.
It’s got the usual mechanical switches underneath the main mouse buttons for the best possible responsiveness, and if you’re worried about lifespan, those switches are tested to 50 million clicks (rather than the 20 million odd typical for mice).
But it’s the sensor itself. This is a gaming mouse, which means precision and speed. Without getting too bogged down in the numbers, suffice it to say that the Deathadder Elite’s sensor is 99.4 percent accurate, it tracks with hardly any latency and it has more points of reference than pretty much any other mouse you’ve ever used. That means you cursor should track your movements as close to perfect as possible.
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The Deathadder Elite is packing the most advanced optical sensor in the market, and that translates to literally unprecedented accuracy in a mouse. It’s customisable down to the point where you can specify the type of mouse pad or change the sensitivity on the fly with buttons located behind the scroll wheel. Razer has designed this with an audience in mind (the extensive research hit on the pain points and needs of e-sports pros), and those boasts about accuracy and performance don’t come up short.
While that’s all well and good — it’s certainly a performance device, and it’s noticeable, even for an amateur — you can’t go past how good it feels.
A mouse in the hand is worth two in the box
My colleague Sean Hollister called the original Deathadder “one of the most comfortable mice he’d ever held”. I’m with him on that point. The Deathadder it’s my own personal go-to. So when I say that the upgraded Deathadder Elite feels even better, I’m not mucking about.
The rubberized sides provide excellent traction and the tread on the scroll wheel offers just enough grip for rapid use. Design elements like Razer’s usual braided fabric USB cable also offer a great deal of peace of mind for long-term, intense use and surviving any travel.
It doesn’t have the full range of under-the-thumb programmable buttons that you’d find on the Naga, but the Deathadder Elite’s two side buttons are wonderfully positioned — easy to hit with a twitch of the thumb, but high enough on the side that you won’t bump them accidentally.
As is usual for a Razer product, it’s managed with the proprietary Synapse app so you can get the LEDs to flash in just the right way. I mean, every button and in-depth sensitivity control is also programmable through Synapse, but we all know what you’ve come here to do. And it’s custom LED patterns.
Dave Cheng/CNET
Verdict
If you want a mouse and have the money, it’s very, very hard to go past the Deathadder Elite. It feels great, it lives up to some wildly over-the-top claims and it’s an impressive evolution of one of the most popular gaming mice ever produced. While its baby brother is a better recommendation for the budget-conscious, the Deathadder Elite has set a new bar for gaming peripherals.
AIVAnet 