NASA video recreates Huygen probe’s historic landing on Titan

Before NASA’s Cassini probe captured the most detailed images of Saturn we’ve ever seen, it dropped its companion Huygens on Saturn’s largest moon, Titan. The probe’s historic landing took place on June 14th, 2005. Now, the space agency has taken the data and actual photos Huygens sent 12 years ago to recreate part of its two-and-a-half hour descent into Titan’s hazy atmosphere. The video, which you can watch below the fold, features what the probe saw from an altitude of around 6 miles, including the moon’s rugged highlands and deep ravines.

Thanks to both Cassini and Huygens, we’re now more familiar with Saturn and its complex moon, where temperatures can drop as low as hundreds of degrees below freezing. Huygens remains the only spacecraft we’ve ever landed on a celestial body outside the solar system. However, that could change if NASA pushes through with its plan to send a sub to find any sign of life in Titan’s methane sea.

Source: NASA JPL

Filmic Pro app makes it easy to color correct iPhone 7 video

If “the best camera is the one that’s with you,” then you always have a pretty damn good camera if you own an iPhone 7 or 7 Plus. To give you more options than Apple provides, Filmic has just released a beta version of its Pro app that lets you shoot 4K video in a “log” or flat profile, a feature found on pricey cinema cameras like the Red Weapon. Filmmaker Matteo Bertoli got his hands on it and showed exactly why you’d want video output that, at first, looks fairly drab (above, top). The idea is that you can then adjust the video so that it really pops (above, bottom) without losing details in the shadows and highlights.

“Of course the footage will look weird at the beginning, but this is totally normal,” wrote Bertoli in PetaPixel. “Once we start grading the clips in post production we’ll be able to apply a look-up table (LUT) … [and] capture those details in the shadows and in the highlights that would otherwise be lost.”

To prove his point, Bertoli shot 4K test footage in downtown Salt Lake City using the beta log profile and produced one of the more filmic looking iPhone videos you’ll ever see. At the same time, he made the original, ungraded footage available for download, so you can see the stark difference with the original and try some color correction tricks yourself.

The main problem with the app, he said, was that the darker areas of the image tended to be noisy, so he had to “crush” the blacks (reduce to a single black tone) to avoid it. “This happened probably because the app is still a beta or maybe just because the sensor on a phone is super small,” he said. “What is sure is that you will notice way more noise shooting log on any camera.”

That’s a fairly small quibble, though, and as mentioned, the app is still in beta for now. Mainly, if you’re a student filmmaker with an iPhone 7, the app will let you “experiment in post production without spending a fortune for a camera,” Bertoli wrote. There’s no date for when the feature is coming, but Filmic Pro wrote on Twitter that it’s “coming soon … stay tuned for the official release announcement.”

Via: No Film School

Source: PetaPixel

Apple Hikes U.K. App Store Prices by 25 Percent Due to Weak Pound

Apple announced changes to its App Store pricing policy today in India, Turkey, and the U.K., citing fluctuating foreign exchange rates and taxation changes as reasons behind the move.

In the United Kingdom, Apple is rising the prices for apps and in-app purchases by over 25 percent, in light of the weak pound exchange rate, which has been down against the dollar by about 19 percent since the Brexit vote.

Apps on sale for $0.99 cents will now cost an equivalent £0.99, rather than £0.79. Apps at price Tier 2 will cost £1.99, up from £1.49, with similar equivalent hikes for higher tiers and in-app purchases.

In India, a service tax of 14 percent as well as levies of 0.5 percent were introduced by the government from December 1, 2016. In Romania, the tax rate has increased from 19 to 20 percent. Apple will submit the collected revenue to authorities on developers’ behalf.

Apple’s notification to developers today covered the iOS and Mac App Store, but price increases are likely to come into effect across iTunes purchases like TV shows and movies. In October, Apple hiked Sterling prices across its Mac lineup for similar reasons.

The App Store price increases are set to go live in the next seven days.

Tag: App Store
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‘Resident Evil 7’ Season Pass gives you access to bonus episodes

A Steam page for Resident Evil 7’s Season Pass has revealed what you’re getting if you pay extra for the feature. The pass apparently comes with two volumes of “banned footage” composed of three episodes each, as well as an additional story content. Volume 1’s episodes are entitled Nightmare, Bedroom and Ethan Must Die, while Volume 2’s are 21, Daughters and Jack’s 55th Birthday.

All these come bundled with the Resident Evil 7 Deluxe Edition that costs $90. The Steam page doesn’t have a price for the pass as a standalone download, but considering the basic game costs $60, it’ll likely set you back at least $30. It’s also unclear when all these extras will drop, just that they’ll all be available by December 31st, 2017.

Source: Steam

Mastercard built a mobile marketplace for farmers in East Africa

More than two billion people across the world continue to stay unbanked. One of the biggest reasons for that exclusion is accessibility. In developing countries in particular, low-income groups tend to get left out of the fold because they don’t have access to basic banking services. But now, as simple services like mobile banking have proven to help people transition out of poverty in Africa, organizations are starting to focus on the financial inclusion of vulnerable communities. 2Kuze, a mobile payment solution from Mastercard Labs, is one such initiative that is built for farmers in Kenya.

2Kuze, which translates to “let’s grow together” in Swahili, is a digital platform that connects farmers with agents and buyers for cashless transactions. When a buyer enters an online inquiry, the system generates a text message that taps into the farmer community. A farmer can choose to respond with an offer to provide that produce entirely or pitch in with what’s available at the time. An agent, who works with Mastercard Labs, then goes in to verify that offer and to negotiate the price with the farmer.

Traditionally, farmers have had to walk for miles to buy and sell or make and receive payments. But with 2Kuze, which is currently being used by about 2,000 Kenyan farmers, they’re instantly connected with all the critical points of the marketplace.

The solution is the result of a $11 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. It has been in the making since late 2015, when the Mastercard Labs for Financial Inclusion in Nairobi, Kenya, launched a brainstorm session that brought together designers, developers and local non-profit partners to find a solution for smallholder farming communities. It’s a group that makes up a large chunk of about eight million Kenyan farmers who rely entirely on their produce to support their households. But over the years, faced with climate and economic changes, small-scale farmers who continue to cultivate small stretches of land for a low output have failed to break out of the poverty cycle.

2Kuze is built for small-scale farmers who have less than one to two acres of farmland. It’s a community that comprises 80 percent of the farmers in Africa.

Bringing low-income groups into the fold of digital financial services has gained significance in recent years. Improving their connectivity with the larger economic landscape helps them manage their finances in a powerful way that has only been made possible by a mobile revolution. Services like phone banking allow safer and less-tedious transactions. It enables people to track their transactions and also encourages savings, especially among women in developing countries.

While there isn’t a dearth of ideas, the lack of infrastructure often tends to get in the way of executing those solutions. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has been working towards customized low-cost digital solutions for rural populations across the world. In countries like Bangladesh and India, for instance, where banking infrastructure and mobile connectivity continues to get in the way of digitizing financial transactions, the Foundation has been working with local partners to develop a combination of digital banking and physical financial institutions. So you could conduct transactions online but also have access to facilities for converting cash into digital currency.

But in East Africa, Kenya in particular, where the use of mobile banking through M-Pesa has seen a massive boost over the last decade, the Foundation is funding Mastercard’s vision to focus on extending features instead of building new habits. So the 2Kuze platform builds on top of the existing mobile framework to make financial services more accessible to low-income farmers.

“We believe that by using mobile, a technology that is so ubiquitous among farmers in Africa, we can improve financial access, bring in operational efficiency and facilitate faster payments,” Daniel Monehin, head of financial inclusion for International Markets at Mastercard, says in a statement. “The collaboration between the Lab team and farmers in the market helped to deliver a solution that can be implemented and make an impact without any major changes to the day-to-day.”

(Image: 2Kuze, Mastercard Labs)

The ‘Titanfall’ mobile game will die on the vine

If you managed to get access to the Titanfall: Frontline beta, congratulations: You’re playing a mobile game marked for death. “We’ve learned an incredible amount in the beta test of Titanfall: Frontline, but in the end felt the experience wasn’t ready to deliver the intense action-packed gameplay synonymous with Titanfall,” a post on the game’s website says.

Maybe that has something to do with the fact that Frontline is a card game a la Hearthstone versus any other genre that might be a better fit for the series. Servers will shut down this Friday, but it doesn’t sound like this will be Titanfall’s last go round on portable devices. “We’re excited to take some of the concepts we saw resonate with players and build off of them in future Titanfall mobile games,” the message reads.

If the folks at Square Enix Montreal can make mobile games out of Tomb Raider, Hitman and Deus Ex that feel true to the series and not like cheap cash-ins, then there’s hope that Respawn’s in-house mobile team, Particle City, can do something similar.

Via: GamesIndustry.biz

Source: Titanfall Frontline

16 Snapchat tips and tricks you probably had no clue about

Snapchat is easy to learn and use — as long as you have someone to show you the ropes.

You can take a photo or a video, add a caption or doodle or filter or sticker or lens over top, and then send the final creation (aka a “snap”) to a friend. Or, you can add the snap to your “Snapchat Story” in order to broadcast it to select friends or the public. Friends can view your snap for up to 10 seconds before it disappears forever, and they’ll have access to your story for 24 hours at a time. While this is all basic knowledge to the average Snapchatter, you’d be surprised to learn there are other ways to spice up your Snapchat experience.

We’ll admit it: Snapchat isn’t the most user-friendly. It has a tonne of features that you got to hunt down and figure out. Sometimes you have to unlock buried settings in order to truly take advantage of what this fun messaging app has to offer. If you’d like to learn all about Snapchat’s untapped potential, we’ve rounded up a few tips and tricks. But first ensure you have the latest, up-to-date version of Snapchat.

>> CLICK HERE FOR SNAPCHAT TIPS AND TRICKS GALLERY<<

Want to know more?

Check out Pocket-lint’s Snapchat guide for more tips and tricks, including details on how to use Snapchat to send money to friends, etc. 

ISIS has converted commercial drones into bombers

As Iraqi Security Forces attempt to drive ISIS out of Mosul, a large city in Northern Iraq that the terrorist organization has occupied since 2014, it’s facing an arsenal of improvised, experimental weapons. One of ISIS’ newest hand-made weapons is the armed drone: a commercial quadcopter equipped with the ability to drop grenade-size explosives.

It’s well-known that ISIS uses weaponized drones, but new images out of Mosul confirm that the group is now using the quadcopters as bombers as well as single-mission vehicles. Kurdish media network Rudaw reported last week that the explosive-dropping drones have killed civilians and damaged equipment. So far, ISIS has not used these drones to deliver chemical weapons, Rudaw said.

Nice shot of the improvised release mechanism ISIL is using to drop grenades from commercial off the shelf UAVs https://t.co/Lj8Ltx0arQ pic.twitter.com/KCuzhUbndb

— Alex Mello (@AlexMello02) January 11, 2017

Iraqi forces have anti-drone weapons, including gun-like jammers that can drop some commercial models to the ground, and they’ve taken down at least a dozen armed drones so far, Rudaw reports. The ISF also uses off-the-shelf drones in its military operations, mainly for scouting and helping to call artillery strikes.

Three ISIS drones – all modified to drop small explosives – downed by ICTS in Mosul. Called “tieyara.” Guys are constantly scanning for these flying robot snipers. #SKYNET is self-aware here. #warofthemachines

A photo posted by Mitch Utterback (@mitchell.utterback) on Jan 12, 2017 at 8:53pm PST

Source: Rudaw, Popular Science

E-waste levels are surging in Asia

If you thought our throwaway gadget culture was already having a nasty effect on the environment, watch out… it’s getting considerably worse. A United Nations University study has revealed that the volume of e-waste in East and Southeast Asia surged 63 percent between 2010 and 2015, reaching 12.3 million tonnes. Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and mainland China were unsurprisingly the largest local generators. But why the rapid spike?

The report argues that social and technological progress are to blame. Some Asian countries (such as China) have rapidly burgeoning middle classes. That’s great for quality of life, but it also leads to more people buying gadgets that wind up in landfills. The proliferation of new technologies like tablets and wearables doesn’t help, either. And when it’s both easier to import products yet harder to stick with them for long periods, it shouldn’t be surprising that there’s a lot more junk.

The UN’s findings suggest that the lack of education and motivation doesn’t help, either. Many people don’t realize that they shouldn’t just chuck their devices in the trash, and those that do frequently don’t have strong incentives to properly dispose of their goods properly. Why take your phone in for recycling if locations are few and far between, or if it’ll cost you a significant amount of time and effort? To make matters worse, governments sometimes don’t either have adequate e-waste laws or have trouble enforcing them.

There are some lights piercing through the darkness in this study. Japan, South Korea and Taiwan do relatively good jobs of managing e-waste. Other countries, such as China, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam also established their e-waste laws relatively recently — they may fare better as their legal systems and public awareness levels get up to speed. On the whole, though, the situation is likely to get worse before it gets better.

Via: CNN

Source: United Nations University

New 15-Inch MacBook Pro With Kaby Lake and 32GB of Desktop-Class RAM Coming Later This Year

Apple will release updated Mac notebooks with Intel’s next-generation Kaby Lake processors later this year, according to the latest research note from KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo.

Kuo said new 12-inch MacBook models with Kaby Lake processors will enter mass production in the early second quarter, which starts in March, and noted a 16GB of RAM option could be added—presumably as a high-end or built-to-order configuration. The two current 12-inch MacBook configurations include 8GB of RAM.

Likewise, Kuo said new 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Pro models with Kaby Lake processors will start mass production in the early third quarter, which starts in July. The research note did not specify how much RAM these models will have, but 16GB could remain the limit due to the restrictions of current memory designs.

Interestingly, Kuo also mentions a “15-inch MacBook” that will include 32GB of RAM and enter mass production in the early fourth quarter, which starts in September. He said this model will be “the most significantly redesigned product this year,” and he believes it will adopt desktop-class RAM to satisfy high-end users.

Given the high-end specifications, it is likely that this 15-inch MacBook would be part of the MacBook Pro lineup, but Kuo did not specify. Beyond faster processors and increased memory, Kuo said most other specifications and the design of all of the notebooks will be similar to equivalent models released in 2016.

Kuo believes the new Kaby Lake notebooks will be power efficient, which may positively affect shipments. He estimates that Mac notebook shipments will resume year-over-year growth at about 10% on the strength of the new models, while shipments will be quicker as production delays affecting 2016 models are resolved.

Kuo also expects Apple to discount the 13-inch MacBook Pro with a standard row of function keys this year as that model gradually replaces the 13-inch MacBook Air in Apple’s notebook lineup.

While no release dates were mentioned, Kuo previously said he expects new MacBook Pro models with 32GB of RAM to launch in the second half of 2017.

Related Roundups: MacBook Pro, Retina MacBook
Tags: KGI Securities, Ming-Chi Kuo
Buyer’s Guide: MacBook Pro (Buy Now), MacBook (Caution)
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