Control your home with a gorgeous wooden remote

If you’re looking for an attractive way to control your smart home, this minimalist, carved-wood multipurpose remote might fit the bill. It’s called the Turn Touch, and it’s pulled in almost twice the Kickstarter funding requested. The project has almost reached its first stretch goal to add IFTTT support, with plans to add Apple’s HomeKit down the line.

The Turn Touch is made from mahogany, maple and inlaid mother of pearl and has four wooden buttons that can be programmed via an app on your Mac or iOS device. It connects over Wi-Fi to control your Hue lights, your smart lock and your music. You can set up a single button to perform multiple tasks at once, like turning down the lights, dropping the volume on your favorite evening tracks and then locking the door.

You can get the Turn Touch on Kickstarter with a $59 pledge for the basic mahogany model, while other versions, like ones sourced from Padauk and Rosewood, are available for $99 and up. A three-pack with a custom inlay design comes in at $499.

Inventor Sam Clay, who also developed mobile app Newsblur, says he made the Turn Touch to look like furniture instead of another gadget. He wanted an elegant, small remote to control his smart devices without having to pull out his phone. The result: a neat-looking little smart controller that fits in the palm of your hand. If nothing else, it could be a killer conversation starter at your next dinner party.

Source: Kickstarter

SpaceX is sending two private citizens around the moon in 2018

It’s been a long time since humans orbited the moon — but Elon Musk’s SpaceX is going to try and change that next year. The company just announced that two private citizens approached SpaceX about a trip to the moon for late 2018. The two potential space travelers have already paid a “significant” deposit and SpaceX expects health and fitness tests along with initial training to take place this year. There’s no word on how much the travelers will pay, nor who the two individuals are, just yet, but SpaceX also says that other flight teams are interested in similar trips — if this first voyage works, we could see a whole sequence of trips around the moon in the near future.

SpaceX was careful to note that there’s no moon landing being attempted here. But still, this will be the first time in 45 years humans return to deep space, and the company says that these travelers will go further into the solar system than any humans have before. CNBC reports that the trip will take about a week. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk says that the trip will “skim the surface of the moon, go quite a bit further out into deep space,” and then return to earth.

The trip will use SpaceX’s Dragon capsules, which the company says were “designed from the beginning to carry humans.” For starters, an initial Dragon capsule will be sent unmanned to the International Space Station, with a manned mission to follow in Q2 of 2018. These will be part of the four annual missions to the ISS that SpaceX has contracted with NASA to carry out; once those missions are underway, the private manned mission to the moon will take place.

Fittingly, this mission will take off from Kennedy Space Center’s Pad 39A near Cape Canaveral, the same pad used to launch the Apollo missions way back in the ’60s and ’70s

Source: SpaceX

Mozilla Acquires Read-it-Later App Pocket

Mozilla today announced it has acquired read-it-later app Pocket, which it says has 10 million unique monthly active users on iOS, Android, and the web. The app, formerly known as Read It Later, launched in 2007 and is integrated in services such as Flipboard and Twitter. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Pocket will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Mozilla Corporation and will become part of the Mozilla open source project, the company said. Pocket’s core employees and technology will help accelerate its Context Graph initiative, while promoting the discovery and accessibility of high quality web content.

Mozilla CEO Chris Beard:

“We believe that the discovery and accessibility of high quality web content is key to keeping the internet healthy by fighting against the rising tide of centralization and walled gardens. Pocket provides people with the tools they need to engage with and share content on their own terms, independent of hardware platform or content silo, for a safer, more empowered and independent online experience.”

Mozilla and Pocket worked together to integrate the service within Firefox in 2015, and this acquisition will allow the teams to work more closely together.

Mozilla’s acquisition follows in the footsteps of Instapaper, one of Pocket’s biggest rivals, which was acquired by Pinterest in August 2016.

Tags: Mozilla, Pocket
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Mega Man Mobile: A Mega Disappointment (Review)

Being a child of the 80’s, Mega Man was one of the cornerstone games to which I compared other games. Jumping, shooting, insane difficulty, creative bosses and the ability to copy boss abilities. It quickly became a favorite game series. Recently Capcom has re-released it’s original 6 Mega Man games on a variety of platforms, the latest of which was mobile phones. I was extremely excited to jump back in and blast on baddies on the go, but all I got was a lot of disappointment. What went wrong? Let’s jump in.

Developer: Capcom Mobile
Price: $1.99 (per game)
Download: Google Play, iOS

Overview

Okay, let’s get down to it. This version of the game is a nightmare to play. The game does not have a consistent framerate at all. Jumping and moving around the screen is super choppy, and that is before anything else is on the screen but you. Once you start moving forward, the screen scrolling and enemies just confound the problem, making the framerate drop even more. I found it very difficult to aim my shots with the constant stuttering and ended up taking a lot of cheap hits all because I was unable to jump and shoot properly. I couldn’t make it through an entire stage without learning how to play the game all over again to adjust to the handicaps I was now faced with, and with aiming and dispatching enemies being increasingly difficult, I found myself not running-and-gunning through the whole level, but rather running and hoping to dodge enough enemies to survive to the next health pack before dying. Bosses are nigh impossible under these situations and it’s only by sheer dumb luck that I managed to hit and destroy Ice Man before he could nuke me.

Dead.

I couldn’t believe that this was what my childhood was reduced to, so I, of course, downloaded 2 different entries in the series to see how they fared and found that I faced the exact same problems in Mega Man 2 and 4 that I faced in the original. It’s at this point that I should mention that these games are not bundled in any way. Each Mega Man game is its own app, and each one costs around $2. There are 6 main series games here, so that would be $12 for the complete set of practically unplayable games. It’s for reasons like this that the refund window on Google Play exists.

Graphics & Sounds

On thing this game has going for it is that it stays true to the original Nintendo sprites. Mega Man, boss portraits, everything retains its original sprite look. Your control pad on the left side of the screen looks like Mega Man’s Mega Buster (his arm gun), while the right side buttons show pictures of shooting and jumping to correspond to those actions. There’s also a fast swap button to switch weapons without opening a menu. The sounds are very similar to how they were in their original release, but I have noticed a few skips in the music. I have heard that the music is off-beat, off-pitch, and skips horrible depending on which device you are playing on, so your mileage may vary.

Dead.

Controls

The controls themselves are decent. When I push right, Mega Man moves right. Jump button makes his jump. The animations do stutter, but the controls themselves do not seem to be the problem here. My biggest gripe about the controls is the “Switch Weapons” button I mentioned before. The weapons scroll through in an arbitrary order, and unless you know that order, you’ll spend too much time hitting the button until you see the right one come up. It takes too long and it’s much easier to just hit the menu button right next to it and pick the actual power you want than to hit the switch button 8 times, then another 16 times because you accidentally went past the one you wanted. Part of that is user error I know, but in the heat of battle, switching weapons on the fly is extremely useful and this system just isn’t efficient enough to be useful. If there was an additional switch button to scroll backward through the list, this would help alleviate the problem a bit (and I would accept full responsibility for being a moron).

Soon to be dead.

Longevity

The best thing to come from this atrocity is the inclusion of a Boss Rush mode. You get placed in a room with a random boss. You have all powers, but your life and weapon ammo are limited to whatever pickups happen to drop when you kill a boss. It’s a cool feature, but shoddy framerates make boss fights extremely difficult when they weren’t always a walk in the park to begin with. Still, this game mode was the polish on the turd. The framerate issues were still heavily present, but I still managed to make it through 3 rounds of all six bosses before finally not having enough weapon energy left to take them down. If the game ran smoothly, I could probably pull out another round or two, but without the leg up of having super effective weapons, the bosses are just too deadly. I don’t want to sound like a broken record, and at this point you may be thinking “I get it, framerate is an issue”, but the fact of the matter is that it’s such a big issue here to the performance that the entire game is almost impossible to play. This game will only last you as long as you have patience to keep playing it, which hopefully is still within the before mentioned refund window, because with so many other ways to play these classic games (still on the go if you have a Nintendo 3DS), the mobile versions are not worth even $2.

Conclusion

Something somewhere went wrong. These games are debilitating framerate issues which prevent you from playing the game properly. You may make it through a level after repeated, repeated attempts, but it won’t be fun. The magic of the old games is gone and is replaced with unfair deaths caused by choppy gameplay and cheap hits. Save your money and buy a digital copy somewhere else if you want to play these classics again. You’ll thank me later.

Facebook is working with local partners to build infrastructure in Uganda

Why it matters to you

Connecting the world has always been at the core of Facebook’s mission, and now, it’s taking that mission to Africa with hopes of building new mobile infrastructure in Uganda.

It may have over a billion monthly users, but Facebook still isn’t done connecting the world. That’s particularly true in developing nations like those in Africa, and on Monday, the social network announced a new initiative “to build shared fiber backhaul connectivity in Uganda.” This, Facebook hopes, will help address the issues of capacity that many operators in Uganda have expressed.

By way of a partnership with both Airtel Uganda and Bandwidth & Cloud Services Group, a wholesale bandwidth provider with an East African focus, Facebook is embarking upon a journey to build a 770km fiber in northwest Uganda. Upon completion, this fiber is expected to “provide backhaul connectivity covering more than 3 million people in Uganda and enable future cross-border connectivity to neighboring countries.”

More: A technical glitch left some Facebook users locked out of their accounts

By working on backhaul capacity, Facebook hopes that a number of different service providers can take advantage of this infrastructure, rather than the build exclusively benefiting the social media company (it’s clearly learned from the backlash it encountered with Internet.org). Facebook also noted that it would be working alongside multiple operators, and has invited others to take part as well through an open access and shared infrastructure framework.

There’s no word yet on exactly what the timeline for the project will be, but when all is said and done, Facebook says that performance will be improved from 3G to 4G in places where operators are constrained by bandwidth.

“This initiative in Uganda is part of our broader strategy to improve connectivity everywhere, including in countries where access to submarine and international capacity has been limited,” Facebook wrote in an announcement. “Based on the learnings and results from our work in Uganda, we will engage with other operators in additional countries to scale this model, with the ultimate goal of helping local operators provide robust network coverage.”

MIT’s ‘Super Smash Bros. Melee’ AI can beat world’s top-ranked players

Why it matters to you

AIs are being trained to excel at increasingly complex games, demonstrating the ongoing evolution of research in this field.

Most fighting games feature computer-controlled opponents that players can use to hone their skills before they’re ready to go head-to-head with a human. Usually, these bots don’t put up too much of a fight — but a new research project has managed to train an artificial intelligence that’s capable of hanging with the world’s best Super Smash Bros. Melee players.

A team of researchers working at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory has taught a neural network model how to play Super Smash Bros. Melee, a game chosen because of its intricacy and depth. The abstract of the paper based on their research makes direct reference to the title’s complex dynamics, as well as the added complication of partial observability.

More: Can AI smart enough to play poker be weaponized without turning Terminator?

The researchers trained the AI by supplying it with coordinates of crucial objects and items like other players and ledges that it could fall from, according to a report from Tech Crunch. Strategies that resulted in victory were incentivized, fostering the sort of play that could worry even top-level competitors.

The AI was pitted against several players who are ranked among the top 100 Super Smash Bros. Melee players worldwide, and managed to win more games than it lost. This is undoubtedly a big achievement — although there are a few major holes in the way the computer plays the game.

For one, it’s apparently unable to work with projectiles, forcing it to use fan favorite character Captain Falcon who does not have access to any such ranged attacks. It also has a strange quirk that forces it to jump to its death whenever an opponent heads to a corner of the stage and crouches for a long period of time, which team leader Vlad Firoiu cites as evidence that AIs trained in simulation might have unexpected behaviors when let loose in the real world.

Of course, those comments speak to the fact that this particular project wasn’t really about Super Smash Bros. Melee, or even video games as a whole. This kind of research is about establishing how we teach AI to tackle a particular task — and games like Melee, Go, and Texas Hold ’em poker are just placeholders for the more important jobs AIs will be tasked with further down the line.

HTC talks release dates, pricing for Vive peripherals, offers headset payment plan

Why it matters to you

HTC is fortifying its Vive line with useful new peripherals, as well as offering a payment program designed to broaden its audience

The Vive Tracker, a peripheral designed to make it easy for developers to integrate real-world objects into their virtual reality experiences, will be showcased this week at the Mobile World Congress, as well as at the Game Developers Conference.

Developers will be able to pre-order the Vive Tracker from March 27 at a price of $99.99, while consumers will have to wait until later in the year. “Building an object that can be tracked alongside the Vive can be complex,” said Valve programmer Joe Ludwig. “But the Vive Tracker makes tracking objects in VR so simple that anyone can do it.”

More: Qualcomm’s VR developer kit specs blow Vive and Rift out of the water

In January, HTC opened up the application process for early access to Vive Tracker hardware to developers. At the time, it was announced that 1,000 units would be handed out, and on  Monday the company revealed that more than 2,300 applications were received over the course of the two-week submission period.

The Vive Deluxe Audio Strap will be available to pre-order starting May 2, and will be available in June. The strap combines integrated audio with new design features intended to enhance the user’s comfort, including a sizing dial that makes it easier to adjust the device for different users.

From here on out, the Vive Business Edition will include the Deluxe Audio Strap as standard, without increasing the overall price of the package. Sold separately, the strap will cost $99.99.

HTC also announced plans to offer a payment plan for the Vive headset. The finance program will allow buyers to pay around $66 per month for the hardware, with no-interest financing for 12 months and zero down. At $799.99, the headset is no small investment, so HTC is hoping that a payment plan will help more users buy into VR.

Spectators no more: New feature lets you buy games on Twitch

Why it matters to you

Twitch has long allowed users to watch the action. Now, by selling games directly, it’s giving them a chance to be a part of it, too.

Don’t just watch others play games on Twitch. Play them yourself, too. On Monday, the Amazon-owned live-streaming video platform announced its entrance into the computer video game market. While the company has never been on the sidelines as far as gameplay is concerned, it’s now solidly in the fray in the business aspect of the industry as well. Now, when you watch a stream of a game, you’ll have the option to buy the game or in-game content (if it’s available on Twitch) via a new “buy” button. It’ll appear below the video on the channel page, if you’re looking for it.

“Ever since our first baby steps onto the internet, our goal has been to make Twitch the ultimate hub for gaming on the web. What started as a simple streaming platform has become a living, breathing social community,” the company wrote in an announcement. “Soon we’ll be taking another step to further strengthen the community and benefit streamers and viewers alike. Twitch has always been the best place to watch, share, and play games. Soon, it will be the best place to buy games as well.”

More: Get ‘The Banner Saga’ and its sequel free with your Twitch Prime membership

Twitch is also offering revenue share to streaming partners who have opted into the new program, so if you buy a game, the streamer gets 5 percent of the revenue. That means a new way for you, the video game fan, to support your favorite streamer, simply by buying a game via his or her channel. Moreover, any purchase you make over $5 gets you a Twitch Crate, described as “a digital loot box with a special reward like a game-specific emote, a chat badge, or some Bits.” Each Crate will be different, as the contents are randomly generated.

All games purchased on Twitch will be available for download and play with the Twitch launcher, or through existing services. At launch, partners include Ubisoft, Telltale Games, Digital Extremes, Hi Rez Studios, Double Fine Games, Fred Wood, 11Bit, Jackbox Games, tinyBuild, Raw Fury, Devolver Digital, Gambitious, Trion Worlds, Blue Mammoth Games, iNK Stories, Versus Evil, Proletariat, Paradox Interactive, Vlambeer, and Campo Santo.

Cricket joins other carriers in throttling unlimited data users past a threshold

Why it matters to you

Cricket customers should be wary of the carrier’s data-saving measures coming in April, especially if they’ve signed up for an unlimited plan.

Cricket Wireless has just announced a change to its unlimited data plan that could bother some of the carrier’s most loyal customers. Starting April 2, those enrolled in the $70-per-month tier will see their speeds throttled at peak hours if they use more than 22GB of data in a billing cycle. Cricket calls the practice Congestion Management, and is rolling out the change alongside a new feature that is designed to diminish data usage when streaming video on the AT&T prepaid carrier’s mobile network, called Stream More.

Stream More automatically reduces the quality of high definition video to 480p, and will be activated for all customers by default when Cricket begins implementing the data-saving measure in April. Customers can turn Stream More on or off by managing their account online or using the myCricket app. Alternatively, Cricket is allowing content providers to opt out if they so choose.

More: Cricket customers now get more data for the same low price

The carrier says it will notify customers every step of the way as these new measures begin to take effect over the coming weeks. When unlimited data users top 16.5GB, they will be warned that they’ve used 75 percent of their throttle-free data allowance. Cricket will also send out reminders about Stream More twice before it is activated and once on launch day — though the company says it expects to “notify (users) before October 2017.” This indicates that it might take many months before Stream More reaches all customers.

Although Cricket is likely to come under fire for adding a caveat to its unlimited data plan, the news does fall in line with the practices of many other carriers, including all of the established postpaid options. Verizon and AT&T begin throttling their top-tier customers at 22GB, Sprint at 23GB, and T-Mobile at 28GB.

The commonality between these networks, including Cricket, is that they deprioritize data speeds for unlimited customers who have passed the threshold and are accessing the network during times of congestion. Once the stress lessens, normal throughput is restored. It is important to note, however, that Cricket users are already restricted to top speeds of 8Mbps over LTE and 4Mbps over HSPA+, compared to the 12 Mbps AT&T’s post-paid customers reportedly average on LTE. As a result, throttling might result in slower speeds on the prepaid carrier than it would elsewhere.

I used VR to walk through a $10 million painting, and it was literally surreal

The floorboards creaked under my feet. A cruel wind blew through the open window to my left, billowing the pure white curtains out as I walked slowly across a room. This was all happening at a time when I wanted to be as quiet as a mouse, because in front of me was a huge, majestic lion, and from the sounds it was making, my presence wasn’t welcome. Yet I continued to move towards it. The lion raised its head, focusing its stare on me. I got ever closer.

More: Why virtual reality must go wireless

No, I wasn’t trespassing at the zoo, I was immersed in a special virtual reality experience that put me squarely at the center of Magritte’s utterly fabulous Le Repas de Noces work. Lion and everything. It was the final scene in a collection of four vignettes, each set inside a famous surrealist painting, made to promote a unique auction at Sotheby’s in London. Magritte’s work is joined by Paul Delvaux’s Filles au Bord de L’eau, André Masson’s Hôtel Des Automates, and arguably the star of the show, Salvador Dali’s Moment de Transition, which alone is expected to fetch up to eight million British pounds, or nearly $10 million. And I’d wandered about in all of them.

Making a 360-degree experience

The result of five weeks intense work, the Masters of Surrealism: A 360 Degree Virtual Reality Experience is the first of its type for Sotheby’s, and was made to celebrate the coming together of such eclectic works of art. What’s fascinating is that after being transported into these pictures in VR, I couldn’t wait to get out and examine the pictures in person. I’m not an art connoisseur, so to have this reaction was unexpected and only emphasized the power and potential of virtual reality to open up new worlds to people in an unexpected, but very immersive way.

After being transported into these pictures in VR, I couldn’t wait to get out and examine the pictures in person.

However, VR is a 360-degree experience, and these works of art are not; so how do you bring them to life in this way while remaining true and respectful to the piece itself? The task was given to Nigel Hilditch, Sotheby’s Europe’s director of video, and Conrado Galves, creative director at film production company FGreat. Hilditch told Digital Trends he had been ready to work on a VR project for a while. “I was almost waiting for a Surrealist exhibition,” he laughed, “these are the paintings you want to be immersed in, where there’s so much going on.”

Working as a team, the two examined the pieces, picking out all the crucial details, then reconstructed it all in 3D, 4K resolution video. Textures used in the painting are repeated in VR, and the position of key elements are mapped out. Art experts were on hand to point out aspects that needed special treatment. For instance, in Dali’s painting, the cart can be interpreted as having a driver, or that we’re seeing part of the city in the distance through the opening. It’s an aspect subtly highlighted in the VR world.

First VR experiences

However, the paintings don’t show the entire environment around them, which meant the team had to use their own talent to fill in the blanks. Hilditch described it as, “Imagining what might be there, but keeping it simple.” Galves, who worked on the 3D environments, said, “The paintings tell you so much, we didn’t create anything new, just tried to imagine what would be off to the sides.” While only basic visuals were added to make a complete 360-degree environment, audio effects have been used very creatively. From the howling winds in Dali’s painting to the lion’s roar in Magritte’s work, it all fits with the surrealist style. Happily, audio was chosen over a spoken description. “You don’t need a voiceover from an art historian,” Hilditch told us, adding he was also mindful of people’s reaction to VR. “You can only take so much in,” he said.

This led to another important consideration in making the films. This may be the first VR journey taken by a substantial portion of the audience, which meant making slow, considered movements, while still adding the crucial extra dimensions VR provides. That didn’t hamper creativity though. Each painting neatly transitions into the next, and you leave Dali’s world by ascending towards the sky, giving first-timers a taste of VR’s disconcerting ability to fool the mind into thinking what you’re seeing is real.

I watched the VR film on an Oculus Rift immediately before I looked at the paintings in any detail, and before speaking to Hilditch and Galves. We talked about the project, and took in the paintings together at the time. As we talked about certain aspects, and little details were pointed out to me, I wanted to watch the VR film again to see how they had been converted over. It made me appreciate the art, and the work of the artists, in two different ways.

Different reactions

For me, walking through Magritte’s painting towards the lion was the most visceral scene, appealing to my love of intense VR and how it added an extra surreal element  — the window and the curtains, specifically — to the original painting. However, Sotheby’s head of European sales Isabelle Paagman had a different reaction. She didn’t like the liberties taken with the scene, arguably the most digitally augmented of the four, and preferred the purity of the still art, or to use her own imagination. It was her first time using VR, in the same way it was my first time enjoying surrealist art. Our differing opinions didn’t matter, because without the VR film, it’s highly unlikely we would have ever had the ensuing conversation.

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Is Sotheby’s first experiment with VR a success? I came away feeling very positive about it. After all, it made me want to see the rest of the exhibition and learn more about the pieces on display. We can get caught up thinking VR is only about games, but in the right hands, it can expand our world in a fascinating way. The virtual reality movie is only the start for Sotheby’s too. It’s dedicated to using digital platforms to help people view and engage with art, and for Hilditch, the next stage is to use augmented reality to bring all aspects together. Gallery visitors could see the art, read accompanying texts, watch videos, and potentially even place bids in AR, he imagined. “This is in the future, though,” he added.

The four pieces of art talked about here, the VR film, and all the other pieces in the collection, are on display to the public at Sotheby’s London ahead of the auction on March 1. Potential buyers will need at least 15 million British pounds, or nearly $19 million, in their wallets to secure the four paintings featured in the film.