Fox crime drama sees police turning to the public for real-time alerts

What happens when an eccentric billionaire buys an entire district of the police force and equips it with a gamut of high-tech tools to fight crime? Fox’s latest crime drama, APB, is a timely take on the challenges of privatizing the police force and the implications of fighting crime with invasive technologies.

The show, which premiered on Monday night, is inspired by a real-life story of a wealthy New Orleans entrepreneur who took it upon himself to crowdsource crime alerts through an app. APB presents an exaggerated version of that reality: A tech-billionaire named Gideon Reeves (played by Justin Kirk) witnesses the murder of a close friend in an act of petty violence. Enraged by the tragedy, he seeks justice at Chicago’s 13th police district. Instead, he walks away with the sobering realization that law enforcement is painfully overworked and underfunded.

Reeves, an inventor cut from the same cloth as Tony Stark, decides to fund the district out of pocket, with the idea that the project will be his greatest engineering challenge yet. He takes over the police department with tricked out cruisers, drones and eventually even robots. But his biggest contribution is a crime-crowdsourcing app called APB. It draws knowledge directly from the public and uses advanced GPS mapping capabilities to trace the culprits. So instead of dialing 911, anyone in this fictional world can tap the app for real-time inputs on a crime or a suspect.

From the get-go, the show attempts to tackle the complexities of privatizing the police force, a collaborative effort that already exists in real pockets across America. According to a New York Times report on the real-life New Orleans app, there are 450 such partnerships in place, with one of the largest operating out of the University of Chicago, not far from where the show APB is set.

The show also touches on the delicate relationship between humans and technology. At times, the tools seem to augment the fine-tuned instincts of the cops on the ground, but other times they fail to have an impact without human oversight. While this tension is already widely played out in sci-fi dramas, APB attempts to go deeper into the ethics of using technology. What happens when you use an all-seeing drone to catch a criminal? What’s at stake when you deploy technologies on the streets of a crowded city?

I caught up with executive producer Trey Callaway to find out more about the ways in which APB could take on the strengths and limitations of technology in law enforcement and society today.

As soon as I started watching the pilot, I knew this wasn’t going to be another Minority Report situation. There are body cams, drones and a crime-fighting app. The premise of the show feels current and plausible, even. Was that always the intention?

You’re right. We decided early on that this wouldn’t be Minority Report. This is not science fiction. We want it to feel very real and grounded in terms of the technology that we use in the show. From the fictional aspect, of course, we have this billionaire who has unlimited funds at his disposal. But we really want to use technology that if police departments today could afford it, it’s available to them. But the other side of this is that, as much as we love technology, we don’t ever want it to be a magic wand that fixes all of our problems in this series.

Sometimes technology will fail, like it does occasionally, but we go to great lengths in the writers’ room to come up with tech for problems that are unintended or have unanticipated consequences, like privacy issues or civil liberty issues when it comes to law enforcement. We often say as much as we love Tony Stark from the Iron Man movies what you never see in those stories, because they’re big and broad, are the consequences the day after he blows something up or tears up the city streets. Where’s the line of lawyers that would be outside his door? That’s something we play with heavily in the series. We love and embrace technology but we also want to explore the ways in which it unintentionally hurts us.

For a show that’s pegged as a high-tech series, what’s the balance between conceptual technologies versus more practical tools?

For the most part, at the very least, it has to be beta tested. We don’t allow ourselves to make things up. It has to be something that is demonstrated somewhere. It may not be used for law enforcement purposes. In fact that’s a sweet spot for us. We try and stay away from technology developed specifically for the police or military. It’s frankly more interesting and surprising to let someone like Gideon Reeves bring all kinds of available technology to the department.

At one point we take a new conceptual space shuttle cockpit chair based on actual technology. This shuttle chair is designed to carefully monitor an astronaut’s biometric information but we, in the show, use it to monitor the emotional state of a suspect during an interrogation. That’s a repurposing of a technology that’s designed for a very different purpose but is put to use in an interesting way that’s also problematic. The technology exists but we’re using it unexpectedly.

We’ve also directly played out the conflicts that are inherent within policing right now, that make the headlines. We borrow from the original NYT article, so when Gideon Reeves unveils the APB app, which is powerful in its ability to connect citizens directly to the police in a way that wasn’t possible before, it creates unperceived consequences like holding that technology for just one district against the backdrop of Chicago that is impacted by violence in so many different ways.

We create high tech sidearms for the cops as you see in the pilot. We explore that further as the season goes on, we introduce lethal and nonlethal capabilities. They are based on real designs but haven’t been implemented by the law enforcement yet. The benefits are obvious: You get two weapons and have a choice in the moment whether to fire a lethal or nonlethal round. With that kind of choice comes controversy and that’s another sweet spot for us.

The complexities of privatization of law enforcement are briefly touched upon within the pilot itself. Do you flesh out the benefits and the limitations of that through the season?

It’s definitely something we explore further. One of the ways we do that is by exploring the flip side of Gideon’s decision to embark on this bold experiment. All the money he is spending is coming at the expense of the other companies he owns and that creates corporate problems for him and internal strife within the company. Some of the individuals who are part of those previously successful corporations try to figure out if there’s a way they could profit from this costly experiment. That creates a difficult conundrum because Gideon does have responsibilities towards shareholders but also has the personal relationships that he develops in the 13th district with Detective Murphy [played by Natalie Martinez] and Captain Conrad [Ernie Hudson] and the whole force, which meets him initially with some resistance but later come to see the value in his resources and his genius. It puts him in a difficult spot of trying to figure out how to please opposing masters. It gives us an opportunity to explore the problems that privatized policing can create.

“We love and embrace technology but we also want to explore the ways in which it unintentionally hurts us.”

There seems to be an interesting play between human instincts and technology. In what ways will we see that tussle played out further?

It’s always a delicate dance. We explore that through things like body cameras, a controversial issue in the law enforcement. Gideon wants cops connected through audio and video at all times which can be helpful but it can create privacy problems for each of the officers. The notion of repurposing a shuttle chair to try and surreptitiously read the biometric information from a suspect — is that evidence permitted in court? Drones, which are introduced heavily, take on multiple forms throughout the season. Those are opportunities to get a bird’s eye view, literally, on all kinds of crime but again it runs into privacy issues that are very real and not easy to ignore.

This is a delicate dance that has happened historically within the police department even with all kinds of antiquated technologies. Sometimes you have to be sneaky to catch the bad guys but how sneaky can you be legally? That’s a fine line.

What kind of research did you put together to explore those legal implications and ethics of relying heavily on technology?

The show is born from a lot of research and our staff represents all kinds of voices. One of our writers is a ten year veteran of the Chicago police department and so we get a unique perspective there. We work closely with the real Chicago police department and there’s a tech adviser that we work with.

But you know, first and foremost, our job is to entertain and we hope this is the most action-packed crime drama that people have seen in quite some time but the thought provoking part is key for us. That whole notion of how technology helps but how it could potentially hurt us — that’s great food for thought. In the rush for innovation and launching technology, which I am one of the first people to jump on, you can never guess what the hidden costs may be and that’s really fertile territory for episodic crime drama.

The delayed BeatsX wireless earbuds arrive February 10th

If you’ve been waiting to get your hands on a pair of BeatsX wireless earbuds, you’re in luck. Today, Beats revealed on Twitter that the delayed model will arrive this Friday (February 10th). What’s more, in addition to the black and white color options that were previously announced, the company tells CNET that blue and gray versions will follow shortly.

BeatsX is one of three wireless models Apple teased when it confirmed it was killing the headphone jack on the iPhone 7. The three different Beats headphones were meant to give customers some options alongside the newfangled AirPods. Like those AirPods though, the BeatsX was also delayed. The wireless earbuds were supposed to arrive back in the fall, but the company announced in December that they wouldn’t go on sale until February.

In addition to providing a $150 alternative to the pricier AirPods, BeatsX also packs in Apple’s W1 chip for quick pairing via Bluetooth and Fast Fuel quick charging. That latter feature means BeatsX will give you two hours of use on just a five minute charge. It’s something that could come in handy if the earbuds go dead while you’re at the gym. They’re also attached to each other with a cord and in-line remote, if you’re worried about losing individual buds. When the time comes on Friday, expect to nab the new listening accessory via both Apple and Beats websites as well as Apple’s retail stores.

AVAILABLE FEB. 10. #BeatsX @TrvisXX pic.twitter.com/5LBNajwoK9

— Beats By Dre (@beatsbydre) February 7, 2017

Via: 9to5Mac, CNET

Source: Beats By Dre

How indie game ‘TumbleSeed’ made it to the Nintendo Switch

Greg Wohlwend is an accomplished independent game designer and artist whose résumé includes critically acclaimed mobile titles Threes, Ridiculous Fishing and Puzzlejuice. His games tend to be whimsical and playful, and his latest project, TumbleSeed, is no different in this regard.

TumbleSeed is a “rolly roguelike” — players guide an adorable rolling seed up a treacherous, procedurally generated mountainside pockmarked with deadly holes and dangerous creatures. Fall into a hole or run into a nasty beast, and players are sent back to the base of the mountain to begin the climb all over again. The concept is easy to grasp, but the game itself is difficult to master, Wohlwend says.

In that sense, it’s reminiscent of early Nintendo Entertainment System games like Tetris or Dr. Mario. That’s one reason Wohlwend wanted to bring TumbleSeed to Nintendo’s new console, the Switch.

“TumbleSeed has a lot of the same values a Nintendo game has,” Wohlwend says. “It’s colorful and easy to get into. But it also has a lot of the things from the NES days, especially difficulty. We’ve spent a ton of energy on getting TumbleSeed to fit that combination of natural-to-learn mixed with challenging and fun, even after playing for two years. That’s how long we’ve been playing, and we still genuinely have fun with it.”

To get TumbleSeed on the Switch, Wohlwend reached out to Nintendo this past summer. He describes the process as a pain-free experience.

“We always felt like TumbleSeed would really be at home on a Nintendo console, so we cold-called them, and, luckily, they felt the same,” he says. Wohlwend’s experience with Nintendo should be a positive sign for other independent developers looking to get in on the Switch.

Nintendo has been rehabilitating its image as an indie-friendly studio for years now. In 2013, the company removed a handful of onerous restrictions on independent developers looking to develop games for the Wii U, including the requirement that they have “relevant game-industry experience” and a separate, secure office outside of the home. These regulations were out-of-touch with the rising independent market — Nintendo’s competitors, Microsoft and Sony, were courting indies with hassle-free registration processes and headlining spots during their major press conferences.

Today, Nintendo isn’t as walled-off as it once was. Registering to be a Nintendo Developer requires basic personal information, and the company highlights its indie selection with special events like the #Nindies Summer Jam. A handful of larger indie studios have released games on Nintendo consoles, including Shovel Knight from Yacht Club Games, Octodad: Dadliest Catch from Young Horses and Severed from Drinkbox Studios.

As it prepares to launch the Switch, Nintendo is dedicated to the indie space, a spokesperson tells Engadget. “Nintendo greatly values its collaborations with indie developers across the world, and is working closely with them on a wide range of content,” the representative says. “We look forward to discussing more as we approach GDC 2017.”

The Switch is set to get a smattering of independent games, including modern cult classics like The Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth+, massive hits including Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove and Terraria, fresh IPs like Rime and Redout, and, of course, TumbleSeed.

These changes have bolstered Nintendo’s reputation as a hub for independent games, but many low-profile developers still feel locked out of the company’s systems. Take Robert Boyd, for example: He’s the co-founder of Zeboyd Games, the studio behind Cthulhu Saves the World and the Penny Arcade’s On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness series. Zeboyd is working on Cosmic Star Heroine, a PC, PlayStation 4 and Vita game that raised more than $100,000 on Kickstarter back in 2013.

On January 11th, Boyd said on Twitter that he was interested in bringing Cosmic Star Heroine to the Switch, but he didn’t have access to a developer kit because he didn’t have an existing relationship with Nintendo.

“As far as I know, it’s impossible to get Switch devkits now if you’re an indie who Nintendo isn’t specifically seeking out,” he said.

@ShaunMusgrave It’s looking like unless Nintendo makes the first step, you’re not getting a devkit until post-launch.

— Robert Boyd (@werezompire) January 14, 2017

Boyd isn’t alone in his assessment of Nintendo’s indie-outreach efforts. A handful of independent developers, including Yacht Club Games and Tequila Works, recently told US Gamer that Nintendo should be doing more to build relationships with talented independent developers.

However, Wohlwend’s experience with Nintendo suggests there’s hope for a studio like Zeboyd. Wohlwend has historically specialized in mobile games, and TumbleSeed will be his first game on a Nintendo platform.

“I can’t speak for what’s happened in the past because this is the first time I’ve worked with Nintendo, but I can say they’ve been a joy to work with,” Wohlwend says. “They’re truly as excited about TumbleSeed as we are about being on the Switch, and so it’s been a really solid partnership so far.”

Wohlwend is excited about the Switch’s ability to be both a mobile and a living-room console, and the new HD Rumble system. He says that in TumbleSeed, the Switch’s HD Rumble gives players a sixth sense of where they are in the world and how fast they’re rolling. Plus, he says, the console itself simply feels right, seamlessly shifting between hand-held and big-screen gaming.

“There’s a wonderful invisibility to the console that I think all beautifully designed objects have,” Wohlwend says. “It gets out of the way and showcases the games like no other console I’ve owned.”

That’s precisely why many other independent developers want to bring their games to the Switch. Developers like Boyd still face Nintendo’s invisible walls, while others like Wohlwend get lucky and find an easy in. If the rules continue to relax and Nintendo takes feedback from frustrated developers seriously, the Switch could represent a new phase of third-party, independent development for Nintendo — a phase four years in the making.

Watch the first trailer for Marvel’s ‘Iron Fist’ on Netflix

With Marvel’s Iron Fist hitting Netflix on March 17th, it’s about time we’ve got a full look at the series. The series’ first full trailer quickly introduces you to Danny Rand (Finn Jones), who returns to New York City after being away for 15 years. His goal? To reclaim his family’s company, and, apparently, beat up a lot of bad guys with mystical martial arts powers. As you probably expected, Iron Fist will lead to the eventual team up of Netflix’s Marvel shows later this year in The Defenders.

Netflix’s bet on “adult” Marvel series has mostly paid off. Daredevil, Jessica Jones and Luke Cage were well received by audiences and critics alike (though they all ran into problems towards the end of every season). There’s a good chance Iron Fist will be a rollicking good time, at least based on past evidence. Though, like Marvel’s Doctor Strange, its origins as a kitschy 70’s-era comic with troublesome racial politics might be an issue for some.

Source: Netflix (YouTube)

Email Privacy Act has another run at becoming law

If the definition of madness is doing the same thing and expecting different results, someone should check in on the Email Privacy Act. The bill is taking its third run at becoming law after failing to pass the house in 2013 and the senate in 2016. Reuters reports that the bill was waved through congress but faces a difficult time of it in the Senate.

The law that governs how the police and security services can access our emails is the Electronic Communications Privacy act from 1986. The date alone should tell you how antiquated the law is here, basically letting agencies read your emails without a warrant. Nobody had anticipated how much of our lives would be carried out over email, so the law doesn’t cover it.

As the ACLU argues in a letter, the existing law essentially violates the fourth amendment, protecting citizens against unreasonable search and seizure. Richard Salgado, Google’s head of information security, adds that the bill has good bipartisan support in the House. Salgado describes the existing regime as a “constitutional flaw,” letting the FBI and others read our private emails without a warrant.

Unfortunately, despite the backing of heavyweights like Google and Microsoft, the bill still has to go back to the Senate. When the act reached that part of the hill last year, republican senators added amendments that were designed to kill it. John Cornyn pushed an amendment that gave law enforcement agencies warrantless access in counterterrorism cases. The clause also gave wide-ranging powers to the FBI, enabling it to force people to hand over personal data without oversight.

Additionally, Jeff Sessions — who is currently nominated to be attorney general — added an additional poison pill of his own. His contribution to the bill was a line enabling officers to bypass warrant requests in an emergency. Of course, such a wide-ranging shortcut was bound to be abused, and so the bill’s co-sponsors withdrew the whole thing. It’s not clear what, if anything, is going to change given the makeup of the current Senate compared to last year. But we can all keep our fingers crossed and keep calling our elected officials in the hope of getting this passed.

Source: Reuters

Stanford students recreated a 5,000-year-old Chinese beer

Homebrewing is a niche hobby today, but before the industrialization of the industry, a lot of beer was made in people’s kitchens. Li Liu, a professor in Chinese archaeology at Stanford, was part of a team that recently discovered a 5,000-year-old beer recipe that she figured could be recreated at home. The process was approachable enough for students in her Archaeology of Food: Production, Consumption and Ritual course to make in the classroom, so that’s what they did.

The recipe, found during research that presents the earliest known evidence of beer production in China, consists primarily of grains like millet and barley, as well as Job’s tears (a type of grass native to southeast Asia) and traces of yam and lily root. The concoction produced is thicker than modern beers, and one student said it had “a pleasant fruity smell and a citrus taste, similar to a cider.”

Liu said she was surprised to find that barley was part of the recipe, since the earliest evidence of barley seeds in China dates back to about 4,000 years ago. This could mean that barley was first brought to China for alcoholic uses, rather than other food purposes.

“Archaeology is not just about reading books and analyzing artifacts,” Liu said. “Trying to imitate ancient behavior and make things with the ancient method helps students really put themselves into the past and understand why people did what they did.”

Ancient drinks have captured the imaginations of many consumers and enthusiasts, which is why breweries like Dogfish Head make their own throwback beverages based on the traditions of yesteryear. For those wanting to learn more about the process, watch Liu explain the process in the video below.

Source: Stanford

CRISPR, ‘binge-watch’ and ‘botnet’ are now in the dictionary

The vocabulary experts who decide which terms get added to the Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary are at it again. Today, over 1,000 new words made the cut from fields like science, tech, medicine pop culture, sports and more. Among the new additions are CRISPR, botnet and binge-watch alongside microbiome, truther, SCOTUS and FLOTUS. Other notable new entries include Seussian — of, relating to, or suggestive of the works of Dr. Seuss — and the technical term for the inability to recognize faces: prosopagnosia. Merriam-Webster doesn’t publish the full list of new additions, but you can take a brief survey via the source link below.

Source: Merriam-Webster

References to Next-Generation MacBook Pro Models Discovered in macOS 10.12.4 Beta

While the latest MacBook Pro with Touch Bar notebooks launched under four months ago, references to possible next-generation models have already been discovered in the latest macOS 10.12.4 beta.

Apple blog Pike’s Universum uncovered a trio of motherboard identifiers that do not correspond with any current MacBook Pro model, but use the exact same processor power management data as 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Pro models released in late 2016. The plist files do not exist in previous macOS Sierra versions.

The next-generation MacBook Pro models would likely be powered by Intel’s faster Kaby Lake processors, which are the natural successor to Skylake processors used in late 2016 models. This would be in line with a report from six weeks ago claiming the MacBook Pro will receive only minor bumps in processing power for 2017.

Mac-B4831CEBD52A0C4C would likely be for two new 13-inch MacBook Pro models with function keys. The models would likely have Kaby Lake processors with a maximum Turbo Boost of 3400 MHz and 4000 MHz respectively.

Mac-CAD6701F7CEA0921 would likely be for three new 13-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar models. These notebooks would likely have Kaby Lake processors with a maximum Turbo Boost of 3500/3700 MHz and 4000 MHz respectively.

Mac-551B86E5744E2388 would likely be for three new 15-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar models. These notebooks would likely have Kaby Lake processors with a maximum Turbo Boost of 3800/3900 MHz and 4100 MHz respectively.

The blog said it checked the performance bias setting of each motherboard and determined that they are unlikely to be for desktop models such as the iMac and Mac Pro. There is also no GPU data as of yet.

The blog cross-referenced Intel’s lineup of Kaby Lake processors currently available with the motherboard identifiers and was able to determine which chips are likely to be used in each new MacBook Pro:

13-inch MacBook Pro without Touch Bar

Intel Core i5-6360U 2.0 GHz (max Turbo Boost 3.1 GHz) with Intel® Iris™ Graphics 540 (15W)
Will be replaced by the:
Intel Core i5-7260U 2.2GHz (max Turbo Boost 3.4 GHz) with Intel® Iris™ Plus Graphics 640 (15W)

Intel Core i7-6660U 2.4 GHz (max Turbo Boost 3.4 GHz) with Intel® Iris™ Graphics 540 (15W)
Will be replaced by the:
Intel Core i7-7660U 2.5 GHz (max Turbo Boost 4.0 GHz) with Intel® Iris™ Plus Graphics 640 (15W)

13-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar

Intel Core i5-6267U 2.9 GHz (max Turbo Boost 3.3 GHz) with Intel® Iris™ Graphics 550 (28W)
Will be replaced by the:
Intel Core i5-7267U 3.1 GHz (max Turbo Boost 3.5 GHz) with Intel® Iris™ Plus Graphics 650 (28W)

Intel Core i5-6287U 3.1 GHz (max Turbo Boost 3.5 GHz) with Intel® Iris™ Graphics 550 (28W)
Will be replaced by the:
Intel Core i5-7287U 3.3 GHz (max Turbo Boost 3.7 GHz) with Intel® Iris™ Plus Graphics 650 (28W)

Intel Core i7-6567U 3.3 GHz (max Turbo Boost 3.6 GHz) with Intel® Iris™ Graphics 550 (28W)
Will be replaced by the:
Intel Core i7-7567U 3.5 GHz (max Turbo Boost 4.0 GHz) with Intel® Iris™ Plus Graphics 650 (28W)

15-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar

Intel Core i7-6700HQ 2.6 GHz (max Turbo Boost 3.5 GHz) with Intel® HD Graphics 530 (45W)
Will be replaced by the:
Intel Core i7-7700HQ 2.8 GHz (max Turbo Boost 3.8 GHz) with Intel® HD Graphics 630 (45W)

Intel Core i7-6820HQ 2.7 GHz (max Turbo Boost 3.6 GHz) with Intel® HD Graphics 530 (45W)
Will be replaced by the:
Intel Core i7-7820HQ 2.9 GHz (max Turbo Boost 3.9 GHz) with Intel® HD Graphics 630 (45W)

Intel Core i7-6920HQ 2.9 GHz (max Turbo Boost 3.8 GHz) with Intel® HD Graphics 530 (45W)
Will be replaced by the:
Intel Core i7-7920HQ 3.1 GHz (max Turbo Boost 4.1 GHz) with Intel® HD Graphics 630 (45W)

Apple seeded the first beta of macOS 10.12.4 to developers on January 24, and additional betas should follow. It is highly unlikely Apple will launch new MacBook Pros until the software update is officially released at the earliest, which should happen by late February or early March based on previous releases.

Apple could feasibly launch next-generation MacBook Pro models at any point following the release of macOS 10.2.4, but its late 2016 models are still rather new. WWDC 2017 in June is likely the earliest possibility for a refresh, but previous rumors also point towards a launch in the second half of 2017 or later.

Last month, KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said new Kaby Lake-equipped MacBook Pros will enter mass production in the July quarter. He also mentioned a “15-inch MacBook” that will include 32GB of RAM and enter mass production in the early fourth quarter, which starts in September.

Related Roundups: MacBook Pro, macOS Sierra
Tags: Kaby Lake, Pike’s Universum
Buyer’s Guide: MacBook Pro (Buy Now)
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Steve Wozniak to Share More ‘Untold’ Stories About Apple at ‘Startup World Cup’ Next Month

Fenox Venture Capital today announced that Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak will share more “untold stories of Apple” at the Startup World Cup Grand Finale on March 24. The event will take place at the Marriott Marquis hotel in San Francisco.

Steve Wozniak, aka “Woz”, will share insights on his time at Apple and tell some untold stories. In 1976, Woz co-founded Apple with Steve Jobs, where he developed the Apple I, and co-created the Apple II. He remains a Silicon Valley icon and is recognized as a pioneer of the personal computer revolution.

Wozniak, better known as “Woz,” co-founded Apple alongside Steve Jobs and Ronald Wayne in 1976. He temporarily left Apple after injuring himself in a personal airplane crash in 1981, and he permanently left the company in 1985. He published a book called iWoz in 2007 to reflect on his past with Jobs and the company.

Startup World Cup consists of 16 startup competitions around the world. The top startup from each competition will be flown to the final event in San Francisco, where they will be competing for a $1 million investment prize from a panel of venture capitalists. It is at this grand finale where Woz will speak.

Tag: Steve Wozniak
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Apple Seeds Second macOS Sierra 10.12.4 Beta to Developers

Apple today seeded the second beta of an upcoming macOS Sierra 10.12.4 update to developers, two weeks after seeding the first macOS Sierra 10.12.4 beta and just over a two weeks after releasing macOS Sierra 10.12.3.

The second macOS Sierra 10.12.4 beta is available for download through the Apple Developer Center or the software update mechanism in the Mac App Store for those who have previously installed a beta.

macOS Sierra 10.12.4 brings iOS’s Night Shift mode to the Mac for the first time. First introduced with iOS 9.3, Night Shift is designed to gradually shift the display of a device from blue to yellow, cutting down on exposure to blue light. Blue light is said to disrupt the circadian rhythm and is believed to interrupt sleeping patterns.

Night Shift can be activated through the Displays section of System Preferences, where a setting to have it come on at sunset and turn off at sunrise is available. Night Shift can also be toggled on manually through the Notification Center or via Siri.

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The 10.12.4 update focuses mainly on Night Shift, but also includes dictation support for Shanghainese, cricket scores for Siri, and improved PDFKit APIs.

Related Roundup: macOS Sierra
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