Nintendo Delays iOS Version of ‘Animal Crossing’ Until Next Financial Year

Nintendo on Tuesday announced it is delaying the release of the currently untitled mobile version of Animal Crossing, which was previously slated for release before the end of March (via The Verge).

Nintendo said the much-anticipated mobile game won’t appear until the following financial year, which runs from April 2017 to March 2018. Nintendo had originally planned to launch mobile games featuring characters from both the Animal Crossing and Fire Emblem franchises last fall, but delayed them to focus attention on its first official iOS title, the more easily recognizable Super Mario Run. Fire Emblem remains set for release on iOS this Thursday.

News of the delay came during Nintendo’s third-quarter earnings call, in which it reported a net profit of 64.7 billion yen ($569 million) and 174.3 billion yen ($1.5 billion) in revenue. Game sales were predominantly driven by Nintendo 3DS titles Pokémon Sun and Moon, which combined sold nearly 15 million copies, followed by Super Mario Maker, also for Nintendo 3DS, selling over two million copies.

Nintendo didn’t reveal numbers for Super Mario Run, which was downloaded in the millions but requires players to make a $9.99 in-app purchase for the full game.

Tag: Nintendo
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FC Bayern Munich Announces Apple Music Partnership, Exclusive Content Deal

German soccer club FC Bayern Munich announced a sponsorship deal with Apple Music on Monday, offering exclusive playlists and other content to fans of the team that currently tops the Bundesliga, which is regularly broadcast on TV in over 200 countries.

According to iphone-ticker.de, Apple Music is to be regarded as FC Bayern’s official music service, with the first playlist already available for download and more content on the way. The club’s press release offered further details on what’s to come:

From today, music fans will be able to get even closer to their favourite team and players from FC Bayern Munich with exclusive playlists and content, curated especially for Apple Music. From inspirational and uplifting songs to listen to during training to celebratory playlists post-match, there will be music for everyone to enjoy throughout the season. The first team playlist is available now. Alongside exclusive content and videos, Apple Music will also be FC Bayern Munich’s music service of choice.

The press release goes on to highlight the significance of music to both players and fans, noting that Bayern Munich star Mats Hummels appears in TV commercials advertising Deutsche Telekom and Apple Music. The club says it has also signed an agreement with Apple’s Beats by Dre to continue as its “official sound partner”.

The deal represents the first known partnership between Apple Music and a professional sports team, suggesting sponsorship will play a big part in Apple’s drive to strengthen the intersection of technology and popular culture. Apple recently indicated it is seeking ways continue to grow its Apple Music subscriber base by diversifying the service’s offerings beyond music and creating original content, to include TV and movies.

Tag: Apple Music
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Exploring what made the ‘Doom’ and ‘Titanfall 2’ campaigns tick

The new Doom was almost one of my favorite games last year. While it was edged out at the last minute, there’s no denying how refreshing the game was. Developer id’s laser-focus on speed, making the player throw caution to the wind and tossing modern shooter conventions out the window was incredibly exciting. Titanfall 2 on the other hand took a major complaint levied at its predecessor and delivered one of the most unique shooter campaigns we’ve seen in an awful long time. As Mark Brown of YouTube channel Game Maker’s Toolkit points out, the story modes put fun ahead of everything else.

As per usual, the video is rife with insight into each respective game’s design decisions. Doom, for example, not only encourages players get up close and personal with the many demons they’ll face on Mars, it encourages them to do so by offering precious health packs they wouldn’t get otherwise.

For Titanfall 2, Brown calls out how [spoiler] is used to ratchet up the tension when wall-running, shooting dinosaur-like creatures and an army of soldiers — sometimes all three simultaneously. And once that sequence is done, the [spoiler] is thrown out and never seen again.

That’s not to say either game is perfect.

Doom’s combat loop can get repetitive after a bit, and Titanfall 2 doesn’t actively force you into playing with the tools you’re given. Meaning, it can easily turn into a typical shooter where rather than sliding around, using a jetpack and [spoiler] you’re just crouching and taking potshots at enemies from behind a bit of cover. You know, stuff you’d typically do in Battlefield, Call of Duty or Random Military Shooter 2017.

If you loved either game’s campaign mode but couldn’t put your finger on what made it special, maybe giving the video embedded below a spin will help solve the mystery.

Source: Game Maker’s Toolkit (YouTube)

Cassini captures close-up views of Saturn’s rings

NASA has released high-resolution close-up images of Saturn’s outermost rings captured by Cassini as part of its penultimate mission. The spacecraft has been diving in and out of the rings every week since November, taking images that show features as small as 550 meters or around the same size the world’s tallest buildings. That might not sound small from our perspective, but don’t forget Cassini is taking photos of another planet. In the image above, the encircled parts show features called “propellers,” which are bright disturbances caused by the gravity of moonlets embedded in the ring.

Cassini also captured images of “straws” or temporary clumping in the rings caused by gravity from a group of embedded objects. It took photos of density “waves” and “wakes,” as well — take note that the spacecraft captured all these images in visible light using its wide-angle camera on December 18th, 2016. Cassini first showed us these features back when it reached Saturn in 2004, but these new images are twice as sharp and clear than what we’ve seen before.

We can probably expect more ring photos in the next few months as Cassini continues to move nearer towards Saturn. The spacecraft will dance in and out of the gap between the planet and its rings in late April for 22 times before it bids farewell by plunging into the gas giant.

Source: NASA

Lego launches a safe social network for kids to share their creations

If your child is a budding Lego genius yearning to show off their creative constructions to the world, then Lego has just the place for them to do it. The company behind the iconic bricks has just launched a new social network made for kids under 13. Called Lego Life, it’s designed to let kids connect with a community of their peers. They can look at what other kids have created and also share what they’ve built. Lego Life is made for the tablet, and both the iOS and the Amazon Kindle Fire version of it is available today in the US, UK, France and Germany.

If you think the idea a little odd, Lego says there’s a need for it. Rob Lowe, a senior director for Lego Life, says he believes that kids desperately want to share their creations with a broader audience. “They don’t want to just share with family and friends, and there’s no social networks that they can join,” he says. They could submit their creations to the Lego Club magazine, but with over 6 million members, getting their photos noticed is a pretty difficult. With Lego Life, their creations can be shared with the world in just minutes. Lego Life has been in beta for a few months now in the UK and has enjoyed some under-the-radar popularity, according to Lowe.

When you first launch the app, you’ll be asked to create your Lego ID with your parent’s email address. The team over at Lego worked closely with UNICEF and the FTC to make sure the app is safe for kids. Therefore, kids can’t use their real names, so Lego invents names for them. A random name generator comes up with a list of three-word jumbles as the child’s display name, like “DarkMonkeyShrimp” or “ChairmanSmartDolphin,” and they can choose which one they prefer. They can then customize their own little Lego mini figurine as their avatars, which can be ported to other Lego apps if they desire.

Lowe showed me a beta version of the app, and it looks quite colorful. The main central feed is a mish-mash of user-created creations as well as those done by Lego itself. The Lego ones are often mini challenges like “build something with red bricks” or videos showing off animated Lego constructions. There’ll also be posts by Lego “Master Builders” showing off astounding builds. Some of the content at the top is curated by Lego, but as you scroll down, it gets more random. Once you start liking photos and following certain users, the feed will start to populate with creations it thinks you’ll like thanks to an intenal algorithm.

Aside from other kids, you can also follow certain characters from popular Lego sets, like Master Wu from Ninjago or Emma from Lego Friends, who share “building inspiration” posts. They’ll also appear in your comments occasionally to encourage you along. These accounts are actually controlled by Lego staff of course, but Lowe says they add a certain element of magic to the Lego Life experience. In addition to following certain users, you can also follow specific Lego hashtags or themes, like “Friends” or “Animals” or “Heroes.”

Uploading a photo is pretty straightforward. Simply capture it with your tablet’s camera, name the image, tag it with a hashtag or theme, and away it goes. Aside from just posting photos of their creations, kids can also adorn them with special Lego emojis and stickers. As they complete more of the aforementioned the Lego mini challenges or upload more creations, they’ll earn more stickers over time.

Speaking of photos, every image is moderated on some level. The first level of sorting relies on image recognition, to make sure there aren’t any faces or personally identifying information like names or numbers. If it falls into a grey area — where the tool isn’t quite sure what to make of it — then it’ll kick over to human moderation. Also, Lowe tells me that all photos needs to be Lego-related on some level. It can contain competitor bricks or Play-Doh, but photos of, say, your pet cat, isn’t going to fly.

Comments are carefully constrained as well. Open commenting is allowed on Lego-created content — though they’re moderated to some degree — while comments on user-created content is restricted to just emoji and stickers. “Kids might take negative comments to heart a little more,” explained Lowe.

You can share other things aside from photos too. If you sign into your Lego Life account in the Boost app and click “share,” you can share the code you’ve written for your robot so another child can download it. In the future, Lego hopes to make it possible to upload video, like stop-motion perhaps. The only issue there is that if you were to add voiceover, that’s considered personal information, and would need extra parental consent. “You’ll need to use a form of ID to prove who you are,” says Lowe. “The important thing is to keep the child as anonymous as possible.”

“There aren’t that many tools for kids to tell stories,” says Lowe about Lego Life. “Here, there’s an easy and fun way for them to do that.”

Twitter admits ‘didn’t move fast enough’ on abuse, changes coming

After years of hearing users cry out about the abuse on its platform and reacting in ways that may have made its problems even worse, Twitter says it’s listening. VP of engineering Ed Ho tweeted tonight that “We heard you, we didn’t move fast enough last year…We’ll be rolling out a number of product changes in the days ahead.” Also asserting that changes will continue until there is an impact people can feel, Ho was backed up by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey tweeting that “We’re taking a completely new approach to abuse on Twitter. Including having a more open & real-time dialogue about it every step of the way,” and recently-added VP of product Keith Coleman.

There aren’t a lot of details on exactly what is changing, but according to Ho, this week they’ll start with “long overdue fixes on mute/block” (mute and report got a refresh in November) and stopping repeat offenders from creating new accounts.

Of course, we’ve heard this rhetoric before, without much impact to speak of. If Twitter will have more success this time around, it will need to listen to users about what’s going wrong. The execs say they’re open to suggestions, so if you something, say something.

We heard you, we didn’t move fast enough last year; now we’re thinking about progress in days and hours not weeks and months.

— Ed Ho (@mrdonut) January 31, 2017

We’re taking a completely new approach to abuse on Twitter. Including having a more open & real-time dialogue about it every step of the way https://t.co/a1SV7URPEK

— jack (@jack) January 31, 2017

Source: Ed Ho (Twitter), Jack Dorsey (Twitter), Keith Coleman (Twitter)

Study offers best evidence yet that we’re in a holographic universe

Don’t freak out, but there’s a good chance that the entire universe is actually a holographic projection. The theory isn’t new — we’ve been talking about it since the 90’s — but a new study from researchers in Canada, Italy and the United Kingdom hint that it’s even more likely than we thought. Their findings, which are based on irregularities in the cosmic microwave background (the remnants of the Big Bang), suggest there’s as much evidence for a holographic universe as there is for our existing models.

“Imagine that everything you see, feel and hear in three dimensions (and your perception of time) in fact emanates from a flat two-dimensional field,” Professor Kostas Skenderis of Mathematical Sciences at the University of Southampton told PhysOrg. “The idea is similar to that of ordinary holograms where a three-dimensional image is encoded in a two-dimensional surface, such as in the hologram on a credit card. However, this time, the entire universe is encoded.”

The notion of a holographic universe is particularly appealing to physicists, since it would reconcile irregularities with Einstein’s theory of general relativity and quantum mechanics. While Einstein’s findings do a fine job of explaining large-scale aspects of the universe, they break down at the quantum level. The holographic principle comes out of string theory framework, but instead of trying to establish higher dimensional levels like M-theory (which presupposes 11 dimensions), it relies on just two.

If your brain is melting a bit, I don’t blame you. On a fundamental level, proving that the holographic universe won’t change our lives much. But it could lend a bit more weight to slightly more “out there” ideas like David Bohm’s holonomic brain theory, which suggests that the brain operates much like a hologram. (Bohm also had some fascinating thoughts about communication and meaning, which seems particularly relevant today.)

Via: PhysOrg

Source: University of Waterloo

Nextbit has been bought by Razer, will continue ‘cool stuff in mobile’

Nextbit is now a Razer company.

The smartphone-maker announced Monday it was acquired by the peripheral company on 27 January. Nextbit’s press release specifically mentioned that Razer “has acquired the majority of the assets of Nextbit Systems Inc and has brought onboard the management and employees of the company”. Full financial details of the deal were not disclosed in the announcement.

This isn’t Razer’s first major acquisition of a startup. A couple years ago, it scooped up a portion of Ouya, the company behind the Kickstarted $99 Android console. The purchase only included the content catalogue, software assets, online store, and the name Ouya, rather than the console hardware. As for Nextbit, it will remain a standalone business unit with its own management.

Former members of Google’s Android team, along with the former head of design at HTC, founded Nextbit in 2015. The CEO of Nextbit, Tom Moss, told The Verge Monday that the “whole team” will be joining Razer, allowing the company access to more resources than it previously had. The Nextbit staff will physically remain at their San Francisco office for the time being, however.

Moss also said Nextbit plans to continue doing “cool stuff in mobile” under Razer. So far, the company has only released one smartphone, called the Robin, which released a year ago, thanks to a Kickstarter campaign. In our review of the Robin, we said it offers a good Android experience without breaking the bank and that its stand-out cloud storage solution works well.

Nextbit is joining the @Razer family! Now we’ll have more resources for more exciting (rebellious) projects. https://t.co/rC6Oww7TMO pic.twitter.com/HJScaIlVfS

— Nextbit (@nextbitsys) January 30, 2017

What’s on TV: Super Bowl LI, ‘Powerless,’ ’24: Legacy’

This weekend is obviously focused on the Big Game, but there’s more on deck. Netflix is streaming a new series, Santa Clarita Diet, starring Timothy Olyphant and Drew Barrymore, while Amazon has the final episode in this season of The Grand Tour. Also wrapping up a season is Crazy Ex-Girlfriend on CW, which you should definitely watch. New series premiering this week include NBC’s superhero comedy Powerless, and Fox brings us the Jack Bauer-less 24: Legacy. On Blu-ray, there’s Queen of Katwe, and gamers have some new DLC for Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare on PS4. Look after the break to check out each day’s highlights, including trailers and let us know what you think (or what we missed).

Blu-ray & Games & Streaming

• Jack Reacher: Never Go Back (4K)
• Victoria (S1)
• Parents
• Pinocchio
• Queen of Katwe
• Barbie: Video Game Hero
• Tyler Perry’s Madea on the Run
• Tyler Perry’s Boo! A Madea Halloween
• Ballers (S2)
• Masterminds
• Dexed (PS4)
• Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare Sabotage DLC (PS4)
• Hitman: The Complete First Season (PS4, Xbox One)
• Kill the Bad Guy (Xbox One, PS4)
• Candleman (Xbox One)
• Limelight (PS4, PC)
• Abzu (PS4)
• Divide (PS4)
• Conan Exiles (PC Early Access)

Monday

• The Bachelor, ABC, 8PM
• Gotham (winter finale), Fox, 8PM
• Supergirl, Fox, 8PM
• Kevin Can Wait, CBS, 8PM
• Shadowhunters, Freeform, 8PM
• WWE Raw, USA, 8PM
• 2 Broke Girls, CBS, 9PM
• Beyond, Freeform, 9PM
• Jane the Virgin, CW, 9PM
• Lucifer (winter finale), Fox, 9PM
• The Odd Couple (season finale), CBS, 9:30PM
• Becoming Warren Buffett, HBO, 10PM
• Hate Thy Neighbor, Viceland, 10PM
• Timeless, NBC, 10PM
• Quantico, ABC, 10PM
• Desus & Mero, Viceland, 11PM
• Startalk, National Geographic, 11PM
• The Barstool Rundown: Live from Houston, Comedy Central, 12AM

Tuesday

• Bill Burr, Netflix, 3AM
• Super Bowl Greatest Commercials 2017, CBS, 8PM
• The Flash, CW, 8PM
• The Wall, NBC, 8PM
• The Fosters (winter premiere), Freeform, 8PM
• The Game of Dating (series premiere), TV One, 8PM
• WWE Smackdown, USA, 8PM
• The Mick, Fox, 8:30PM
• Switched at Birth (season premiere), Freeform, 9PM
• Face Off, Syfy, 9PM
• D.C.’s Legends of Tomorrow, CW, 9PM
• Outsiders, WGN, 9PM
• Teen Wolf (winter finale), MTV, 9PM
• Inside the NFL, Showtime 9PM
• This is Us, NBC, 9PM
• Fresh Off the Boat, ABC, 9PM
• Bones, Fox, 9PM
• The Real O’neals, ABC, 9:30PM
• Teachers, TV Land, 10PM
• Chicago Fire, NBC, 10PM
• Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., ABC, 10PM
• Taboo, FX, 10PM
• Killing Fields Discovery, 10PM
• Noisey, Viceland, 10PM
• Throwing Shade, TV Land, 10:30PM
• Desus & Mero, Viceland, 11PM

Wednesday

• The Path, Hulu, 3AM
• Showtime at the Apollo, Fox, 8PM
• Madiba: Part 1, BET, 8PM
• Arrow, CW, 8PM
• Hunted, CBS, 8PM
• Lethal Weapon, Fox, 8PM
• Unsung: Case, TV One, 8PM
• Lucha Underground, El Rey, 8PM
• The 100 (season premiere), CW, 9PM
• Are You the One?, MTV, 9PM
• The Magicians, Syfy, 9PM
• Nova, PBS, 9PM
• Star, Fox, 9PM
• NFL Turning Point, NBC Sports Network, 9PM
• The Vikings (season finale), History, 9PM
• The Quad (series premiere), BET, 10PM
• Suits, USA, 10PM
• Workaholics, Comedy Central, 10PM
• It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, FXX, 10PM
• Match Game, ABC, 10PM
• Code Black, CBS, 10PM
• Bong Appetit, Viceland, 10PM
• Man Seeking Woman, FXX, 10:30PM
• Jeff & Some Aliens, Comedy Central, 10:30PM
• Desus & Mero, Viceland, 11PM

Thursday

• The Grand Tour (season finale), Amazon Prime, 7PM
• Supernatural, CW, 8PM
• Grey’s Anatomy, ABC, 8PM
• The Big Bang Theory, CBS, 8PM
• Superstore, NBC, 8PM
• The Great Indoors, CBS, 8:30PM
• Powerless (series premiere), NBC, 8:30PM
• Superior Donuts (series premiere), CBS, 8:30PM
• 30 for 30: This was the XFL, ESPN, 9PM
• Riverdale, CW, 9PM
• Scandal, ABC, 9PM
• Chicago Med, NBC, 9PM
• Alone, History, 9PM
• Mom, CBS, 9PM
• My Kitchen Rules, Fox, 9PM
• Life in Pieces, CBS, 9:30PM
• Lip Sync Battle, Spike TV, 9:30 & 10PM
• How to Get Away With Murder, ABC, 10PM
• Baskets, FX, 10PM
• Colony, USA, 10PM
• The Blacklist, NBC, 10PM
• Portlandia, IFC, 10PM
• Nirvanna the Band the Show (series premiere), Viceland, 10PM
• Training Day (series premiere), CBS, 10PM
• Nightwatch, A&E, 10PM
• People Just Do Nothing (series premiere), Viceland, 10:30PM
• Desus & Mero, Viceland, 11PM

Friday

• Santa Clarita Diet, Netflix, 3AM
• The Vampire Diaries, CW, 8PM
• Grimm, NBC, 8PM
• Last Man Standing, ABC, 8PM
• Rosewood, Fox, 8PM
• Dr. Ken, ABC, 8:30PM
• Trumped: Inside the Greatest Political Upset of All Time, Showtime, 9PM
• Rise: Sacred Water, Viceland, 9PM
• Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (season finale), CW, 9PM
• Emerald City, NBC, 9PM
• Hawaii Five-0, CBS, 9PM
• Sleepy Hollow, Fox, 9PM
• Cut-Off, Viceland, 10PM
• The Wheel, Discovery, 10PM

Saturday

• High School Lover, Lifetime, 8PM
• 2017 NFL Honors, Fox, 8PM
• Cops, Spike TV, 8PM
• Ransom, CBS, 8PM
• Cavaliers/Knicks, ABC, 8:30PM
• Saturday Night Live: Kristen Stewart/Alessia Cara, NBC, 11:30PM

Sunday

• Super Bowl LI: Patriots. vs. Falcons, Fox, 6:30PM
• 60 Minutes, CBS, 7PM
• Mercy Street, PBS, 8PM
• Black Sails, Starz, 9PM
• Victoria, PBS, 9PM
• Secrets of the Six Wives (season finale), PBS, 10PM
• 24: Legacy (series premiere), Fox, 10:30PM

MacBook Pro Touch Bar banned from multiple state bar exams

Here’s an unexpected drawback of Apple’s latest flagship laptops: law students in several states are being asked to disable the Touch Bar on their new MacBook Pros, or leave them at home entirely, if they plan to use the machines when they take the bar exam in February. According to an announcement from testing software company ExamSoft, the Touch Bar’s predictive text feature could compromise “exam integrity.”

If you do bring your fresh new MacBook Pro to a state bar examination in North Carolina, for example, be aware that test proctors have been instructed to keep a look out for models with the Touch Bar and technicians will be on hand to ensure the feature is disabled. Test takers will be approved to use the laptops provided they followed ExamSoft’s helpful instructions for reverting the Touch Bar back to a row of standard function keys and save those Doom sessions for later.

In other states, however, the new model of MacBook Pro is banned outright. According to notices from the New York State Board of Law Examiners and the Colorado Supreme Court, users who show up with a Touch Bar-equipped model in those states will have to write their answers by hand, but they will be allowed to re-download the ExamSoft software to another machine for free if they do it in advance. Although not every state has issued a formal notice yet, Ohio State University law professor and Bar Exam Wizard blogger Katherine Silver Kelly, reports that the Touch Bar is also banned in California, Oklahoma, Massachusetts, West Virginia and Pennsylvania. So prospective lawyers should do their due diligence and check with their local jurisdiction before heading to their exam site.

Via: Apple Insider

Source: North Carolina Board of Law Examiners, ExamSoft