WebMD’s Health Pregnancy Study to recruit participants via Apple’s Research Kit

Why it matters to you

WebMD wants to help improve the health of pregnant women. To do so, it’s tapping Apple’s ResearchKit platform.

Apple debuted ResearchKit, a platform that helps scientists recruit participants for studies, back in 2015. Since then, it has been used by the University of Oxford, Stanford Medicine, and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. And now, WebMD is joining the fray with its Health Pregnancy Study, an effort that will let pregnant women “easily and anonymously” answer questions and share data about their pregnancies with researchers.

“Pregnant women are one of the least studied populations in medical research,” Dr. Eric Topol, director of the Scripps Translational Science Institute (STSI) and editor-in-chief of Medscape, said in a statement. “The results of our Healthy Pregnancy Study […] will ultimately provide expectant mothers, researchers, and health care professionals with new medical insights to avoid complications during pregnancy.”

More: The WebMD skill for Amazon’s Alexa can answer all your medical questions

The study, which is launching through WebMD’s newly redesigned Pregnancy app, is being conducted in partnership with the STSI. During a user’s pregnancy, it will ask specific questions about “medication use, vaccinations they may have received, pre-existing conditions, blood pressure and weight change, diagnoses during pregnancy, [and] childbirth location.” During the pregnancy, users will be able to share biometric data such as the number of steps taken and hours slept during pregnancy. And a post-pregnancy component will survey participants on “provider insights and interventions,” the birth size of the baby, and other factors.

As participants progress through pregnancy, WebMD’s Pregnancy app will provide visualizations of trends as data is collected, and allow users to compare their data with that of other pregnant women who share their traits.

According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 65,000 women in the United States have severe pregnancy complications each year, and that’s despite medical advances. As a result of chronic conditions such as high blood pressure and obesity, the rate of pregnancy-related deaths in the United States has increased over the past 25 years.

More: Texas woman turns to WebMD instead of 911 after son is shot

“Over 1.5 million people downloaded WebMD’s Pregnancy mobile app,” Dr. Hansa Bhargava, WebMD’s medical editor and in-house pediatric expert, said. “We will collect large amounts of diverse data that can help scientists and doctors to better understand factors that contribute to healthy pregnancies, [and] ultimately, this will help moms have healthy pregnancies and have healthier babies.”

The Health Pregnancy Study launches on the heels of Mount Sinai Hospital’s asthma patient survey, which used ResearchKit to crowdsource data from 7,600 participants.

It’s a growing trend. The idea of collecting medical research data via smartphones isn’t a new one — indeed, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) launched a project in 2013 to examine the feasibility of collecting phone-based surveys and text messages. But tools like Apple’s ResearchKit lower researchers’ barrier to entry. It’s not perfect — ResearchKit doesn’t support third-party operating systems like Android, for example — but for short-term studies that require rapid enrollment and frequent data collection, it’s useful in a pinch.

Samsung announces Bixby AI for the Galaxy S8, says thousands of engineers are working on it

Samsung has announced Bixby, its upcoming AI assistant for the Galaxy S8. But Samsung has much bigger plans for the cloud platform.

We’ve known about Samsung’s Bixby AI assistant for months now, though the company has kept a pretty tight lid on exactly what it will end up being. We’ve considered that it will, for the most part, be designed to take on Google Assistant, Amazon’s Alexa, and Apple’s Siri, but Samsung has much bigger plans for its artificial intelligence.

Samsung has pre-announced Bixby in a detailed blog post that is half product announcement, half manifesto.

Samsung has a conceptually new philosophy to the problem [of virtual interaction]: instead of humans learning how the machine interacts with the world (a reflection of the abilities of designers), it is the machine that needs to learn and adapt to us.

The company notes three distinct ways that Bixby will surpass its competition:

• Completeness
• Context awareness
• Cognitive tolerance

The first is about being able to use Bixby for anything, in any situation. “[It should] support almost every task that the application is capable of performing using the conventional interface (ie. touch commands),” says the post.

Next is being able to understand what you’re doing as a user and adapt accordingly. “Bixby will allow users to weave various modes of interactions including touch or voice at any context of the application, whichever they feel is most comfortable and intuitive.”

Finally, Bixby will be able to complete tasks from incomplete sentences: “Bixby will be smart enough to understand commands with incomplete information and execute the commanded task to the best of its knowledge, and then will prompt users to provide more information and take the execution of the task in piecemeal.”

Samsung confirms that Bixby will have a permanent place on “the next device,” the Galaxy S8, with a “dedicated Bixby button that will be located on the side” of the phone.

For example, instead of taking multiple steps to make a call – turning on and unlocking the phone, looking for the phone application, clicking on the contact bar to search for the person that you’re trying to call and pressing the phone icon to start dialing – you will be able to do all these steps with one push of the Bixby button and a simple command.

The company also points out that this is a long-term vision for the platform, and that the Galaxy S8 will only have “a subset of preinstalled applications [that] will be Bixby-enabled.”

But Samsung says there are thousands of engineers working on bringing the platform to other devices and applications, including the company’s wide range of appliances. “In the future you would be able to control your air conditioner or TV through Bixby. Since Bixby will be implemented in the cloud, as long as a device has an internet connection and simple circuitry to receive voice inputs, it will be able to connect with Bixby. As the Bixby ecosystem grows, we believe Bixby will evolve from a smartphone interface to an interface for your life. Our investment in engineering resources speaks for itself – we have thousands of software developers supporting this effort.”

It seems like Bixby is one of the most ambitious software projects Samsung has ever participated in, and we’re excited to see what comes from it.

Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus

• Latest Galaxy S8 rumors!
• Galaxy S8 announcement coming March 29 in NYC
• Galaxy S8 release date set for April 28
• Join our Galaxy S8 forums

ZTE’s leaked Android Wear watch looks metal and cheap

ZTE is coming out with an Android Wear watch, and it’s not looking great.

ZTE hasn’t commented on its upcoming Android Wear device, but signs point to the wearable being unveiled in the next few weeks. Not only has it already passed through the U.S. regulator for certification of its internal 3G radio, but we’re seeing more and more proof of its real-world existence.

Android Police has the latest round of information, detailing its metal chassis and rounded face. According to the leak, the watch will be called Quartz (or at least that’s what it’s being referred to) and will have notches around the bezel to denote every hour — a thoroughly analog consideration for a digital product.

Charging via a cheap-looking plastic dock, the Quartz looks to be running Android Wear 2.0, and will ship with neither NFC capabilities for Android Pay, nor a heart rate monitor. The watch also looks like it was designed in the pre-2.0 era, since it lacks a rotating crown or bezel to aid with scrolling.

So this is definitely falling into the LG Watch Style category over the LG Watch Sport, which should be fine as long as the price reflects those decisions.

Android Wear

• Everything you need to know about Android Wear 2.0
• LG Watch Sport review
• LG Watch Style review
• These watches will get Android Wear 2.0
• Discuss Android Wear in the forums!

Moto G5 Plus vs. Moto G4 Plus: What’s changed and which offers more value?

The Moto G5 Plus offers a lot of value, but there are tradeoffs.

The Moto G5 Plus is all set to make its debut in the U.S. shortly, featuring several key upgrades over its predecessor. Motorola has announced that the variant with 2GB of RAM and 32GB internal storage will retail for $229, $20 less than what the Moto G4 Plus debuted at last year. The model with 4GB of RAM and 64GB storage will cost $279.

With the G5 Plus, Motorola finally switched to a metal design, and the internal hardware has also been upgraded. The phone is powered by a Snapdragon 625 SoC, which is significantly better than the Snapdragon 617 in the G4 Plus. The base storage also gets a welcome boost to 32GB, and the camera on the G5 Plus has the potential to be one of the best in this segment. Although the megapixel count has reduced from 16MP to 12MP, the f/1.7 aperture and 1.4 micron pixels make the G5 Plus stand out in this category.

The new features are great — particularly the camera — but for a device that costs $279, the lack of NFC and Android Pay is a sore point. To be fair, the Moto G4 Plus doesn’t feature NFC either, but with the steady rise in adoption of digital payments services in the U.S., NFC in 2017 is a table stakes feature for a phone in this segment. The fact that G5 Plus units sold in Asia offer the feature makes its omission in the U.S. even more glaring.

The G5 Plus has a fantastic camera, but lack of NFC is a major drawback.

Furthermore, Motorola’s recent track record in the U.S. when it comes to software updates doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence. The manufacturer was once lauded for its quick updates, but that is no longer applicable to the Motorola of today. The company announced late last year that it wouldn’t roll out the Nougat update to the Moto G 2015, which made its way to the market just a year prior. The Moto E3 Power — unveiled in July 2016 — was also left out of the Nougat update list.

The Moto G4 Plus and Moto G5 Plus, side by side.

The Moto G4 and G4 Plus are slated to pick up the Nougat update, but there’s no word on when the rollout will commence in the U.S. even though Indian variants have received the Android 7.0 Nougat update nearly three months ago.

The Moto G5 Plus definitely offers a lot when it comes to the value proposition, and the pricing gives it a distinct advantage over other handsets in this space. That said, the Moto G series epitomized budget phones that were available for under $200, and with the lack of a G5 Play variant it looks like the sub-$200 segment will be underserved this year. If you don’t want to spend over $200 on a phone, the base variant of the Moto G4 is still your best bet, and if you’re willing to put up with lock screen ads, you can get it for as low as $150.

See at Amazon

Between the G4 Plus and the G5 Plus, the biggest improvements are in the build quality, the processor, and the camera — the rest of the upgrades are bonus.

ZTE Blade V8 Pro review: Remarkably good for the price

The ZTE Blade V8 Pro is better than it has any reason to be.

I’m always a little shocked at how little people know (or care) about the Chinese companies slowly (and in some cases, not so slowly) eating into market share in the West. Through missteps and massive marketing campaigns, giants like Huawei and ZTE are encroaching on the feeling, if not the actual doorstep, of popular culture, largely because they have found success in their home country and feel it’s replicable in the U.S.

But the powers that be are not ready to concede the traditional handset market to these agitators, at least not at the carrier level, so the likes of ZTE have to play the hand they have. And my, what a hand.

The quick take

The ZTE Blade V8 Pro is the series’ first entry into the U.S., and it’s a stunner. From the incredible build quality to the excellent performance and admirable camera performance, this is a phone that does not betray its $230 price point.

The Good

• Excellent build quality
• Snapdragon 625 gives effortless performance
• All-day battery life
• Restrained software touches
• Competitive price

The Bad

• Big and bulky
• Dual camera setup doesn’t improve photos
• Ships with Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow with no timeline for Nougat

All this for $230?

ZTE Blade V8 Pro Full review

In these kinds of reviews, price is always the most important factor: What do you get for your money? At $229.95 unlocked, the ZTE V8 Pro is one of those phones that offers far more than its price tag would suggest, undercutting a significant portion of the entry-level smartphone market.

Its immediate competitors would seem to be the $229 Moto G5 Plus, which shares a Snapdragon 625 processor platform at its core, and the Honor 6X, which eschews Snapdragon for Huawei’s own Kirin chipset. Let’s take a look at the V8 Pro’s spec sheet.

Hardware

Generally, the spec sheet is in line with what one would expect from a mid-range device in early 2017, but ZTE has done a good job compiling the package into something cohesive. First, this phone is big: It resembles ZTE’s other phones from the past year, but it’s beefier, with a girth and weight that may keep it out of the hands of those looking for something more one-hand-manageable. Me, I like that it is substantial, because in its solidity is the presumption of reliability.

The Blade V8 Pro is big, even by big phone standards.

You’ll be forgiven for not knowing much about ZTE’s Blade line. While Motorola’s been providing U.S. users with the affordable Moto G line since 2013, and Huawei’s Honor phones have been optimized for U.S. carriers since 2016, this is the first time ZTE has broached the subject. But the company had a great 2016 and impressed me with its high-end-but-affordable Axon 7 — which has only improved since its release — and has since released a number of other great options, including the diminutive Axon 7 Mini.

But the Blade V8 Pro is not diminutive — it’s big, even by big phone standards. And unlike the Axon line, there is nothing sleek about this. It doesn’t hide its fingerprint sensor on the back, and it doesn’t try to cut down on thickness. It’s a truck and unabashedly loud about that fact. A fingerprint sensor is embedded in the front home button, a Galaxy derivative that works here; it’s responsive and easily accessible, and while you actually have to turn on the screen to register a fingerprint unlock, I don’t mind, since the mechanism is so well-built.

The phone’s sides are made of aluminum, and the brushed finish feels more expensive than many phones double its price. The backplate, a rubberized plastic, feels a bit like the Kevlar finish on the back of the BlackBerry Priv but without the pretension nor the flex. I love the unabashed utilitarianism of the whole thing. A USB-C port sits in the middle of two identical cutouts on the bottom — one for the mono speaker and the other the microphone. A 3.5mm headphone jack lives on top, while the power and volume buttons are to the right of the phone’s 1080p LCD display, exactly where they need to be.

Touch responsiveness is one of the most under-appreciated specs, and the Blade V8 Pro passes with flying colors.

Like its peers in this price category, the V8 Pro’s display is not wantonly over-pixeled; at 5.5 inches, its 400 ppi pixel density is more than sharp enough. More importantly, its fundamentals are good: colors are not overly saturated nor off-kilter to my eyes but calibrated correctly. And touch responsiveness, an under-appreciated notch on a phone’s spec sheet these days, is excellent. It also gets really bright — good enough to use in direct sunlight and better than many more expensive phones from just a year ago. The commodification of smartphone components is a wonderful thing.

The phone’s home button also acts as a gesture control: You can program a particular finger (up to five can be stored) to open a particular app or initiate an action. While I would have preferred ZTE to blatantly copy Samsung’s double-tap-to-open camera shortcut for the home button, being able to program my left thumb to do the same immediately after unlocking the phone is almost as good.

Camera

Around back, there are two 13-megapixel camera sensors, neither of which are of particularly high quality, but as you’ll see in a moment, I was able to eke some impressive photos from the setup, and the artificial “bokeh” plus the ability to isolate particular colors directly from the camera app, yielded some fun, if not particularly impressive results.

The camera app itself launches quickly, and is nearly identical to the one that ships with the Axon 7 and other ZTE phones. It’s not complicated in any way and does the job, with most of the essential modes within a single tap and a robust manual mode that allows for the tweaking of everything from shutter speed to focus.

As expected, the camera’s only truly usable in daylight, with the small-pixel sensors pushed to their limits during difficult, low-lit nighttime scenes. Without optical stabilization, phase detection autofocus, or laser autofocus, the sensor relies on contrast between light and dark scenes to fix on an object, and while it has no trouble doing so quickly during the day, at night the lens tends to wobble between subjects. Nighttime scenes, once focus is fixed, are muddled and grainy but usable in a pinch; daylight scenes, on the other hand, are remarkably good for a phone of this price.

I also had a lot of fun shooting with the phone’s dual camera mode; like Huawei’s implementation in phones like the Honor 8 and Honor 6X, the phone has trouble differentiating between fore and rear subjects and gets easily confused by complex scenes with fences. These qualms are easily forgivable, though, since the fundamentals are so strong.

That said, there were more than a few examples of the dual-camera engine getting it absolutely dead wrong, to the point where not only was the photo rendered unusable, but it became very clear that ZTE has made very little effort to extract nuance.

Battery life

As for battery life, the Blade V8 Pro manages well over a day with its 3,140mAh cell (rechargeable in no time with Quick Charge 2.0 support and a USB-C connector) and Snapdragon 625 processor. This chip continues to be the workhorse of 2016 well into the new year, though we are anticipating a refresh in the form of the Snapdragon 626 in the coming months. Still, there’s a clear advantage over the Kirin 655 inside the Honor 6X, and from tests I’ve seen elsewhere, the Blade V8 Pro outlasts Honor’s latest mid-ranger despite a 6% smaller battery.

Software

The final piece of the puzzle is at once the most reassuring and disappointing: ZTE has outfitted the Blade V8 Pro with what it calls a “stock” version of Android, which largely means that it has made as few disruptive changes to the UI as possible. And that’s true — the experience is pretty darn unfettered, and good.

But it’s running Marshmallow. Android 6.0.1 with the December 1, 2016 security patch. This isn’t redeemable and not something that I want to implicitly endorse by recommending this phone. That said, I have tried to find reasons to reject the phone outright for shipping with a version of Android approaching its second birthday and I can’t; for most people, this phone does, and will do, everything it needs to. Moreover, being sold unlocked, it’s not encumbered with carrier bloatware and all the other stuff that slows down the average Android build.

It’s just frustrating that I have to be qualifying this review with such a phrase — that in March 2017, the same company brandishing Android 7.1.1 as a selling feature for its $399 flagship, the Axon 7, would ship a phone this good with software this old. After using the Blade V8 Pro for two weeks as my daily driver, there are only a couple of things I really miss from Nougat: in-line replies and stacked notifications; and proper display scaling.

Everything seems huge on this phone, since Marshmallow has no native way to shrink the objects on the screen to a manageable level. Beyond that, there’s very little I can’t get back with Nova Launcher and some proverbial elbow grease, but it’s not a great position to be in.

Odds and ends

• As far as the Blade V8 Pro operates as a phone, it’s a dual-SIM product, the second slot of which also doubles as a microSD card slot. For American users, the additional SIM slot is likely superfluous, but the Blade V8 Pro is indeed a phone sold around the world, and there’s no inherent downside.

• The Blade V8 Pro’s single bottom-firing speaker is quiet — not terribly so but annoying nonetheless. The headphone jack and earpiece are fine, and perform well.

• The capacitive buttons to the left and right of the home button are reversible — they can stand in for either back or multitasking, depending on your comfort. While I’m not a huge fan of this type of setup, the home button is so clicky and responsive that, to me, it’s worth it.

Get it

ZTE Blade V8 Pro Final Thoughts

This is probably the best experience with a $230 phone I’ve ever had, and that’s saying something. I am really excited about trying the Moto G5 Plus, which has a similar spec sheet and newer software, but in the meantime I am really happy recommending this phone, which is, pound for pound, slightly cheaper than Motorola’s latest mid-ranger.

Despite the phone shipping with Android 6.0.1, it has no real weaknesses, and though ZTE won’t commit to an upgrade schedule, the Blade V8 Pro should receive Android 7.x Nougat in the next few months. Should. If that’s too vague a timeline for you, I’d move on to something else. But if you want a near-flawless $230 unlocked phone that does a lot of things right, this is the phone for you.

See at Amazon

Real life images of Samsung’s AKG headphones confirm 3.5mm jack

Samsung spared some time at the launch of its Galaxy Tab S3 to tease some details about the upcoming Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus. One such detail was that the new smartphones will come bundled with some in-ear headphones developed by AKG, one of the audio brands that falls under the Harman umbrella, a company that Samsung acquired in 2016 for $8 billion.

• Samsung Galaxy S8: Release date, rumours and everything you need to know
• Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus: Release date, rumours and everything you need to know

Samsung only showed images of what the earpieces will look like, but now some real life photos courtesy of GiggleHD.com and picked up by Sammobile show a 3.5mm headphone jack, confirming the S8 won’t ditch the analogue connector in favour of USB Type-C.

The headphones also appear to come with a braided cable, instead of a conventional rubber one, which should prove to be more durable. AKG is also known to produce some pretty decent pairs of headphones, so the bundled buds with the S8 and S8 Plus should be of a much better quality than the freebies you’ve gotten up until now, although we can’t say for sure until we’ve put them through their paces as part of a full review.

It’s not clear if these AKG headphones will come with varying sizes of silicone ear tips or if they’ll be available in different colours to match the different colour finishes of the S8 smartphones, of which there are currently rumoured to be six.

Samsung has already employed AKG’s audio services in the Galaxy Tab S3 by implementing quad-stereo speakers tuned by the company, so it’s good to see the company is putting its acquisition to use so quickly.

• Samsung Galaxy S8 image leaks show multiple colours
• Samsung Galaxy Tab S3: Release date, price, specs and everything you need to know

There’s just over a week to go until Samsung officially unveils the Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus at an event in New York on the 29 March, we should find out more details about the bundled headphones then.

Position tracking protects drone herds against hackers

Much ado has been made over flying drones in groups, but there hasn’t been much thought given to protecting autonomous drone groups against security breaches. What happens if someone impersonates enough drones to hijack their collective decision-making process? MIT might have a viable defense. Its researchers have developed a positioning technique that would prevent and mitigate these kind of impostor attacks. The key is to give each drone a wireless fingerprint that reflects its interaction with the environment — effectively, the network can tell the difference between the actual drone pack and a fraud operating from the outside.

The approach relies on measuring the signals from a two-antenna WiFi system used in mid-flight. As its signals bounce off the environment at different times and directions, they give the drone’s transmitter a unique profile that can’t easily be replicated. While the system can’t completely ignore bogus wireless transmissions, it downplays those sketchy signals that are likely to come from the same source. Ideally, this prevents intruders from spoofing drones while protecting legitimate drones that happen to be transmitting similar signals.

Early tests are promising. In a theoretical study, the technique kept the drones largely in their planned positions even when three quarters of the drones had been compromised by an attack. A clever attacker still wouldn’t have much control, in other words. There’s a lot of work to do before this is ready for the real world, but MIT envisions it being useful for delivery drones, self-driving cars and any other robotic herd where one rogue agent could cause serious chaos.

Source: MIT News

Neverware’s Chrome OS for old computers now includes Office 365

Neverware has made a name for itself with its CloudReady software, which essentially transforms any old PC or Mac into a Chromebook. But while that’s a nice way to breathe new life into aging computers, it’s naturally reliant on Google’s online services. Now, the company is offering a new version of Cloud Ready for schools that integrates Microsoft’s Office 365 online suite instead. It might seem blasphemous, but it could be useful for schools and other organizations that are already deeply integrated with Microsoft’s software.

While it’s still basically just Chrome OS, the new version of CloudReady will sport integration with OneDrive instead of Google Drive. And similarly, it’ll point you to the online versions of Word, Excel, Powerpoint and other Microsoft software. There’s nothing stopping you from using the online Office 365 apps with the original version of CloudReady, but the deeper integration could make it a bit easier to use for students, teachers and administrators.

Another plus? Neverware’s Office 365 version of CloudReady will cost just $1 per student every year (or $15 per device annually). That’ll make it very useful for cash-strapped school districts. Neverware worked together with Microsoft to develop the new version of its OS, which should allay IT department fears about relying on a young software company.

Source: Neverware

The internet knows how unattractive I am

Honestly, I’m fine with being unattractive, because owning your flaws is the best way to avoid becoming defined by them. But if the subject comes up in conversation, I’ll joke that, on a hypothetical scale, I’m a “four … in bad light.” The internet, however, has enabled me to find out precisely how other people rate my attractiveness. It’s been a fun week.

59.8. That’s my average score, as calculated by the swaths of people using a selfie-judging app called Spontana. I’ve spent the past few days sharing pictures of myself on the service and receiving the unvarnished truth in response. Thankfully, I’m also able to dish it out, and have helped my fellow app users learn how other people rate them.

“I’m not a four — I’m a five! I’d climbed a whole rung in the social order.”

Spontana’s premise is a weird mishmash of Instagram and Tinder, in that you can share selfies and have them rated, but it’s also something of a dating service. Should you find someone who rates you as highly as you rate them, you’ll be put in contact with one another. In addition, you can click through to someone’s social media profile from their selfies, via Facebook, Instagram or VKontakte, Russia’s Facebook equivalent.

The first thing you do is take a selfie and upload it. Between 30 seconds and a minute later, you’ll get your rating. The majority of the service’s users seem to be located in continental Europe, including Spain, Russia, Georgia and France.

The selfie, taken at lunchtime on a Monday after a restless night and no morning shave, gave me a score of 63, which felt fair. I will admit, I’m now deeply in love with the French woman and the Spanish woman who both rated me a seven out of ten. Gripped by the buzz, I uploaded a second, slightly older selfie and got a score of 56, suggesting that I’m not a four — I’m a five! I’d climbed a whole rung in the social order.

From there, it came time to rate other users, which presented me with a series of unexpected ethical quandaries. Living in the glass house of being unattractive neither ugly nor pretty, it seems wrong to impose my standards upon other people. The first image I rated was pretty easy, since it featured a couple wearing animal masks that had been Prisma-filtered into meaninglessness. Ergo, it got a one.

The next image was of a pair of kids who appeared to be well below the age of 18. I immediately looked for a way to report the picture. First off, I’m not going to think about these kids as anything but kids and, less important, there’s two of them in the shot, so which one was I supposed to judge? I reported the snap for inappropriate content and moved on, not learning until much later that you can swipe the pictures up to avoid rating them.

This is all incredibly messed up when you think about it. We’re judging people based on their looks as if that’s a viable metric for judging someone’s character. It’s a shallow, hideous expression of how debased we’ve become, although it’s not as if we haven’t been doing this since the beginning of time.

Then there’s the fact that my totally objective opinion of someone’s attractiveness is actually going to contribute to their online score. Who made me the arbiter of whether some Russian Instagrammer is prettier than a Spanish mother of two? Also, we all know there isn’t a universal scale of attraction to begin with.

But on the other hand, these people — myself included — voluntarily submitted for this treatment. And so, precisely because I want their honesty, I should do my best to return the favor. It isn’t long before I’ve developed a list of rules about how I’ll judge people in order to not expose them to the full depths of human shallowness. For those I may ordinarily rate poorly, I’ll gently inflate the score to cushion the blow, and I tried to — as best as possible — grade on a curve using the evidence in front of me. I also found myself going down the rabbit hole of each candidate’s social media profile, which is a pretty stalkerish thing to do, but then again, the button is right there.

I eventually decided that it was time to go back to offering up images of myself, since that’s easier than negotiating the ethical quagmire of rating others. I found a picture of myself from a trip to San Francisco, where I was looking particularly thin thanks to the excellent photography skills of my friend Phil. I thought it was pretty good, but the audience disagreed, and I wound up with a paltry, average-ruining score of 57. I go double or nothing and use my Twitter picture, which makes me look like a serial killer, but a handsome one. It gets a 60.

A day later, I decide to throw out one final selfie, with me looking bleary-eyed and haggard (I’d had three hours’ sleep). My face is puffy, my T-shirt stretched, and I’m unconsciously doing that one-eyebrow-raised thing that awful men do in photos to try to look smart.” It gets a 69, which makes me think that people are weird. But hell: I have scientific proof that I’m a 6.9 out of 10, and none of you can take that from me.

Source: Spontana

Welcome to Engadget’s Adult Week

None of us are in much of a rush to grow up. But, eventually, the day comes when you need to give up the slovenly ways of your college years and hard partying habits of your early 20s. It’s time for you to become an adult. That means ditching the pajama pants and ratty band T-shirts for some big boy and big girl clothes. It means protecting your data from hackers and scammers. Oh, and it means making some pretty big life decisions — like do you need to buy a car and whether you should post photos of your child on the internet.

All this week Engadget will be bringing you stories about how to use technology to become a better grownup and how to navigate our tech-saturated world in a manner befitting a real deal adult. The web is a great resource for fashion advice and a solid place to start if you want to turn your deeply held political views into serious activism. It can also help you find love and companionship once hanging out at the bar until 4am loses its appeal.

It’s time to become an independent and constructive member of society.