Playing ‘Splatoon 2’ over LTE won’t kill your data plan

When Nintendo first revealed its new game console back in October, it chose to end the device’s teaser trailer with a shot of a packed arena cheering an esports team. Its game of choice was Splatoon 2 for Nintendo Switch. The scene represented two things: Nintendo staking a claim in the competitive gaming space and a promise that the new console’s portability would allow gamers to take that competitive online experience on the road. I put the latter half of that pledge to the test during last week’s Global Testfire preview, and it held up better than I ever imagined.

I didn’t recreate the trailer’s Splatoon 2 segment shot for shot. The game’s Testfire preview didn’t have local multiplayer that I could use to strategize with teammates, and I certainly didn’t take my console to an arena to compete in a spectator match. But I was caught outside of my house during one of the preview weekend’s blocks of playable time. As an avid fan of the series, I was eager to sneak in a quick round of Turf War, but there was no reliable WiFi in the area. Desperate, I tethered my Switch to my phone’s hotspot and braced myself for the inevitable notification telling me I’d gone over my data allowance for the month. The overage notification never came. It turns out that a single round of Splatoon 2 multiplayer barely eats up any data.

When my first round of LTE-powered multiplayer ended, I pulled up Project Fi’s usage statistics. My three-minute game burned through a mere 0.011 gigabytes of data — a little over 10 megabytes. That rate stayed more or less consistent through my second, third and fourth rounds, taking just 45.6 megabytes from my data budget for 20 minutes of online play (including time spent in matchmaking). While that’s not a completely negligible amount of data, it’s small enough to make a few mobile rounds manageable.

The entire experience felt like something that shouldn’t work. Splatoon 2 was not only light on my data plan but also didn’t play with any noticeable lag. Despite the higher latency of the LTE connection (compared to my cable home internet), my game ran smoothly, with no rubber banding, missed hits or sync issues. This is partially because LTE in my area is particularly strong, but Splatoon is also well suited to tolerating higher latency connections, as game modes task players with painting the game’s environment more than attacking other players.

As neat as it was to play a multiplayer “home console” shooter on the go, Splatoon 2’s data usage isn’t technically out of the ordinary. According to mobile hotspot manufacturer Kita Enterprises, the average multiplayer game eats up about 17.5kb/s, or a little over one megabyte per minute. The rate varies from game to game. Battlefield 4 might hit that target, but MMO-like games like Destiny will demand a little more data. Any game on the lower end of the spectrum, like Splatoon 2, can theoretically be played over LTE without doing too much damage to your cellular bill — but until now, there hasn’t been much of a reason to use a mobile hotspot with a game console. Before the Nintendo Switch, console multiplayer games simply weren’t portable.

Nintendo’s successes are often tied to novelty. The novelty of motion controls. The novelty of a touchscreen. The novelty of 3D. For the Nintendo switch, that novel experience is the ability to take your home console with you and play it anywhere. I fully expected Splatoon 2’s online multiplayer to spoil the magic of the console’s portability, but I was wrong. I doubt it was intentional, but the game’s low data requirement lets it be just as portable as the console itself — and that is incredibly novel indeed.

Democrats demand the FCC tackle cybersecurity

Two Democrats in Congress are imploring FCC head Ajit Pai to address cybersecurity issues in the United States, arguing vulnerabilities in cellular networks infringe on citizens’ liberties and pose a “serious threat” to national security. Sen. Ron Wyden and Rep. Ted Lieu penned a letter to Pai laying out known issues in modern communications systems and asking the FCC to step in. However, that’s unlikely to happen.

Pai and Republican commissioner Michael O’Rielly have repeatedly asserted that cybersecurity is not the FCC’s problem. Considering cybersecurity is a relatively new field for regulation, there are no rules mandating the FCC address flaws in the country’s communications systems. So, Pai has said the FCC simply won’t do anything.

Wyden and Lieu argue this line of thinking is misguided.

“The continued existence of these vulnerabilities — and the industry’s lax approach to cybersecurity — does not just impact the liberty of Americans, it also poses a serious threat to our national and economic security,” the letter reads. “As such, the FCC must take swift action to address fundamental security threats to our mobile phones, which are no less dangerous than those cybersecurity threats that receive far more attention from other government agencies.”

Our phones are vulnerable to being tapped, tracked & hacked. @tedlieu & I ask @FCC to address this major weakness pic.twitter.com/n2jgjSSpDw

— Ron Wyden (@RonWyden) March 28, 2017

Wyden and Lieu specifically call out the Signaling System 7 flaw that received a fair bit of media attention last year. Former FCC chairman Tom Wheeler ordered the Communications Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council to investigate SS7 vulnerabilities, and just this month, the CSRIC working group filed its final report on the matter. The investigation noted security holes in critical US infrastructure, as well as cellular, wireline and 5G networks, and recommended widespread firewall and encryption updates.

The CSRIC working group’s charter ended on March 18th, but Wyden and Lieu urge the FCC to establish a new body to continue and expand the SS7 investigation.

Overall, the letter asks the FCC to do three main things, partially informed by the CSRIC investigation:

Force cellular companies to address vulnerabilities in their systems.
Warn the American people about ways their mobile data can be tracked hacked by foreign governments or other agents.
Promote the use of end-to-end encryption apps.

So far, the FCC under Pai has been largely concerned with deregulation, suspending the agency’s consumer data privacy rules, chipping away at net neutrality and stopping an order that would have addressed serious flaws in the Emergency Alert System. Pai and O’Rielly argue that regulation stifles innovation at communications companies, and many of their moves favor these large businesses.

Meanwhile, Wyden and Lieu want the FCC to focus on security issues affecting everyday Americans and the nation as a whole. As they put it: “It is clear that industry self-regulation isn’t working when it comes to telecommunications cybersecurity.”

Source: Sen. Ron Wyden

Uber plans to ditch Denmark over new taxi laws

Uber likes to think of itself as an enabler of small business, a connector of independent contractors with people who need a ride. Unfortunately for the San Francisco-based company, many places around the world disagree. The company’s latest setback is in Denmark, where a new set of laws will require taxi cabs to have seat occupancy sensors and fare meters. Uber confirmed with The Guardian that it will not be able to operate unless the regulations are changed.

Threatening to leave an area when regulations tighten up isn’t an uncommon response from the ride-sharing company, and it’s one that they must repeat. If Uber complies with laws that apply to taxis, then it is admitting that it’s both a cab-like service as well as an employer. That could seriously restrict its free-wheeling approach to disrupting the transportation industry.

Danish taxi driver unions and cab operators have argued in European courts that Uber doesn’t comply with legal standards set for taxi firms and that the service it enables is unfair competition. Uber doesn’t just face legal challenges, either, as it deals with several public relations issues related to shady executive behavior and evasion of authority.

Uber promises to “continue to work with the government” in Denmark to keep its services running as the regulations go into effect next month.

Source: The Guardian

Scientists recreate the female menstrual cycle on a chip

Scientists don’t understand as much as they’d like about the female reproductive system, both due to their historical exclusion from studies and the challenge in replicating the complexities of that anatomy. At last, however, there’s progress. Researchers have developed an organ on a chip that models a woman’s entire reproductive system, including menstruation and hormone-induced responses. It clearly doesn’t look like the real thing (see above), but numerous key behaviors are present.

The design revolves around human and mouse organ cells (mice sometimes produce similar results) grown in a network of cubes, each of which has tubes that feed the cells with blood and hormones. There are even pumps and valves to simulate pressure. If you want to replicate a particular condition, it’s as simple as injecting the right hormones to produce a reaction from the relevant cells.

To be clear, the current chip model can’t account for everything. It doesn’t include a placenta (rather important for measuring pregnancy-related effects), for a start. However, it’s accurate enough that it could shed new light on how the reproductive cycle works and lead to better solutions. It could test the effectiveness of new birth control methods, model the behavior of cervical diseases or explain why some miscarriages occur. In short: a once nebulous part of human biology is about to become much clearer.

Via: Scientific American

Source: Nature

Robot Nathan Fillion is here to make you think ‘Destiny 2’ is charming

You’d think with its shooter MMO Destiny receiving its final content addition today, its creator Bungie would give it a moment gracefully riding into the sunset before championing its replacement. But an image leaked earlier this week sparked rumors of a September 8th release date for its sequel, which is seriously called Destiny 2, might have forced the studio’s hand to release…a teaser for the game’s official trailer, coming out this Thursday at 10 AM ET. Yeah.

That said, who doesn’t want more Nathan Fillion? The short has the voice actor’s character, the wisecracking quest-giver Cayde-6 from the first Destiny, jawing on about this one time he shot up some dudes. Everything is pretty, including the rubble. If you take anything from this teaser, enjoy the spiffed-up graphics.

Otherwise, they’ve nothing to announce — but Sony does. Apparently, the sequel won’t follow the first game’s lead in keeping its console-exclusive content permanently, well, exclusive. If Destiny 2 really launches in September, PS4 owners will get a year of bragging rights before it also comes to Xbox One in Fall 2018, as confirmed in the last few seconds of the PlayStation YouTube channel’s version of the teaser. Not that we know what that content is yet, but boy, those Sony kids will have it.

Via: Polygon

Source: Bungie (YouTube)

Best Live Wallpapers: An ambitious claim that comes up short (Review)

Overview:

Best Live Wallpapers is a wallpaper library app that advertises futuristic live wallpapers that can make your phone come to life. In practice, it isn’t anything too special.

Developer: Yogesh Dama

Cost: Free (with ads)

Impressions:

Best Live Wallpapers is definitely nice looking, it has some nice Material Design looks and a simple interface for finding wallpapers. The app itself works and does essentially as advertised, providing live wallpapers for your phone.

The wallpapers on offer, on the other hand, are not too special or even that good. Most of the “live wallpapers” are simply short looping .gifs that are too brief to be satisfying and are also not the highest quality or resolution for my phone. They remind me of those old-fashioned feature phone wallpapers from the early 2000’s that were all the rage in my grade school days.

1 of 4

The wallpapers are sorted into a few select categories, generally pertaining to nature or the elements. There is no search function, and not really a great variety of images to choose from. There are not really any images from pop culture or sports or anything that most people would be interested in using for their phone wallpapers, at least in my experience.

Applying the wallpaper of your choice is a fairly easy affair, thankfully. You simply select the image you’d like, and it saves to your device and prompts you to set it as your wallpaper from there. No messy menus to navigate or anything like that. It’s nice to see it be so easy, even if you can’t find a photo you can use in the small library available.

Best Wallpapers also contains ads, but they’re generally unintrusive and small. They pop up alongside the wallpaper results as small images, but a clearly marked as ads. There is an option to remove them with a paid donation to the developer, but unless they offer more varied wallpapers with that donation I’d avoid it.

Conclusion:

Overall, there isn’t too much to Best Live Wallpapers. It’s relatively harmless and does at least what it advertises on the tin, but it is definitely not the best live wallpaper app around. I would look elsewhere if you want to find the best live wallpapers to make your phone stand out.

Download Best Live Wallpapers from the Google Play Store

Sweet Pea is a new dating app that hopes to make online dating more empathetic

Why it matters to you

Online dating isn’t exactly the most humanizing experience, but Sweet Pea wants to help change that.

Let’s be honest. Dating apps these days are a dime a dozen, all promising to cater to different needs. Dog lover? Political junkie? Disney enthusiast? There is an app that wants to help you find love. But somewhere along the way, it seems as though dating apps began to look at users as statistics and individual interests, rather than individuals. Now, there is yet another new dating app that hopes to change that, promising to “empower people to express themselves through meaningful conversations, making online dating a more empathetic and humanized experience.” It’s called Sweet Pea, and it launches on Tuesday.

It’s a lofty goal and one that CEO and founder Michael Bruch is ready to tackle. Promising to focus on “healthy, lasting relationships” instead of just getting people into the same bar or restaurant for a couple hours, Sweet Pea hopes that people will find a way to date based on chemistry, personality, and connection … you know, the way it ought to be.

More: Absurd dating show ‘Game of Clones’ lets contestants design their ideal partner

So how does it do it? Rather than relying on a binary swiping system, Sweet Pea instead has a few features that hope to make digital dating a little more old fashioned. There are icebreaker questions that claim to help people “substantively engage with one another when sending the first message.” There are video stories that hope to give users a more authentic sense of one another, because how much can you really learn from five pictures. And there are also advanced filters that allow users to set their intentions, helping them see and match with folks who are on Sweet Pea for the same reasons (there are more than 50 to choose from). You can also turn on the “Hush” function, which claims to automatically flag offensive messages (though it’s unclear how “offensive” is defined). And with the “Driver’s Seat” feature, you can select whether you want to be messaged first, or if you want to be the one to begin the conversation.

“Sweet Pea is a reflection of the world I want to help build: A world where people feel free, safe, and connected to one another through open conversation and shared empathy,” Bruch said. “As mobile platforms continue to pave the way for social discovery, we’re hoping our app will make finding that person who just ‘gets you’ easier than ever.”

To further Sweet Pea’s mission of creating a better world through meaningful relationships, the company plans to donate 10 percent of all profits to charities that help people escape and recover from toxic relationships and living situations, and partners with organizations like The National Domestic Violence Hotline, Loveisrespect, and RAINN, to raise awareness for and address what the app calls a public health crisis. You can sign up for Sweet Pea here.

Download for iOS

Facebook launches Stories globally with new camera filters, effects, and more

Why it matters to you

Facebook Stories, Facebook’s take on Snapchat Stories, promise to make sharing pics and clips easier.

If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. That seems to be Facebook’s method these days, more or less. Last year, it launched Facebook Live, a streaming video feature “inspired” by apps like Twitter’s Periscope and Meerkat, and it recently added a Snapchat Stories-like feature to Instagram. Now, it’s bringing Stories to the News Feed.

Facebook Stories, which rolls out globally today, lets you contribute to a 24-hour timeline of topical photos and videos, each of which can be individually liked, commented on, and shared. You can post the collection directly to your news feed, or send it to a friend via a private message. You can see who’s viewed it since it’s been up, and when friends post stories, they’ll be ranked based on your relationship with them — the closer you are, the more visible they’ll be.

More: Facebook clones another Snapchat feature with the debut of Stories

Stories boasts new camera options, too. You can select from hundreds of different filter and effects — new filters use augmented reality to insert text and doodles into the background, facial recognition technology overlays masks on top of subjects, and Prisma-like art filters transform your media into abstract art. And in the coming weeks, Facebook Stories will gain support for voice transformation — you’ll see filters for high-pitch voice, a different accent, and more.

Not all effects are available worldwide. Instead, Facebook is tailoring the selection to individual markets. Masks around the Latin American celebration of Carnival will be seen by users in Brazil, for example, but not in the U.S. Facebook told VentureBeat that it has created custom effects for nine specific markets, including the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom.

More: Swapping out video IDs lets programmers delete any Facebook video

Facebook is also partnering with brands to promote concerts, events, and movies. It has teamed up with movie studies like Disney and 20th Century Fox to promote Alien: Covenant, Despicable Me 3, Power Rangers, Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2, Smurfs: The Lost Village, and Wonder Woman.

Despite the robustness of Facebook Stories, it isn’t without its limitations. You can’t save Stories for offline viewing, and content can’t be posted across Facebook properties. And unlike Instagram Stories, you can’t tag friends or apply locations.

But Facebook Stories will see constant tweaks and improvements going forward, product manager Connor Hayes told VentureBeat.

More: From iMessage to Lightning cables, here’s how Apple secures your digital life

“[Stories is] in response to what people do most often on Facebook: Share photos and videos with friends. We’re giving people the best format to do that on Facebook,” Hayes said. “The main thing is flexibility … One thing we learned when talking to people [is that] they need more flexibility when sharing on Facebook. Direct will be good for private moments, while Stories will be good for everything else.”

Stories launch today in the Facebook app for Android and iOS.

Scientists just developed a technique for mass producing synthetic blood

Why it matters to you

Mass produced blood could supplement our existing blood supply, making it easier for people to get the blood products they need.

A team of scientists from the University of Bristol and NHS Blood and Transplant announced a recent breakthrough that makes it possible to mass produce red blood cells. Published in scientific journal Nature, this newly discovered stem cell technique opens the door for the future wide-scale use of manufactured blood. It could be particularly useful for people with rare blood groups, which are difficult to match with the existing pool of donated blood.

Manufacturing red blood cells in the lab is a proven technique, but the yield is often low. Using existing cell culture methods, each laboratory-harvested stem cell is capable of producing up to 50,000 red blood cells before it expires. This is a drop in the bucket compared to a bag of blood which contains a trillion red blood cells.

This newly developed technique captures the stem cells at an early stage when they are multiplying rapidly. Scientists were able to induce these early stem cells to make red blood cells at an incredible rate. “We have demonstrated a feasible way to sustainably manufacture red cells for clinical use,” said researcher Dr Jan Frayne to the BBC. “We’ve grown liters of it.”

More: Nanoengineers develop first biocompatible, 3D-printed blood vessel networks

The researchers may have discovered a biological key that opens the door to mass producing red blood cells, but that is only part of the equation. They also have to figure out how to industrialize the process, so it’s cost-effective and yields a suitable product. Researchers plan to conduct safety trials of the lab-grown blood later this year.

Besides safety, cost also may be a hindrance to the use of cultured red blood cells in the general population. The manufactured red blood cells will be much more expensive to use than the donated cells. NHS Blood and Transplant confirms they have no plans to stop using donated blood despite this breakthrough. This manufactured blood instead may be reserved for recipients whose blood types make it difficult to match with a donor.

Best app deals of the day! 6 paid iPhone apps for free for a limited time

Everyone likes apps, but sometimes the best ones are a bit expensive. Now and then, developers make paid apps free for a limited time, but you have to snatch them up while you have the chance. Here are the latest and greatest apps on sale in the iOS App Store.

These apps normally cost money, and this sale lasts for a limited time only. If you go to the App Store and it says the app costs money, that means the deal has expired and you will be charged. 

More: 200 Awesome iPhone Apps | The best Android apps for almost any occasion

Easy Spending

Easy Spending is the way to go easy on your spending, reduce debt, and grow your wealth — at least, according to its many users. This app promises to be an easy way to grow your wealth on a daily basis, by improving spending habits.

Available on:

iOS

Snaplight

Snaplight is a fast, easy way to capture and share inspirational quotes or other text from the books, magazines, and posters, you physically read.

Available on:

iOS

Pushpin

Pushpin is a beautiful, blazing fast, and feature-packed Pinboard client for iOS. Designed for both power users and newbies alike, Pushpin lets you browse, search, add, edit, and delete bookmarks seamlessly with a gorgeous interface.

Available on:

iOS

Discovr

Discovr is an interactive map of the whole world of music. The app makes it easy to discover new music or explore the music you already love by finding similar artists and displaying artist info like biographies, videos, songs, and more.

Available on:

iOS

Aura

This app promises to help you apply stunning filters to your photos in an easy way. Choose between a large collection of stunning filters to make your photos achieve the specific look and glow you want.

Available on:

iOS

One Second App

One Second App is a business watch that can help to control working hours and earned money. The program is ideal for designers, developers, planners, trainers, psychologists, tutors, consultants, taxi drivers, and many other people whose work is calculated based on the cost of an hour.

Available on:

iOS