Mario Kart 8 Deluxe review: The best ever version hits Nintendo Switch

If you seek evidence that Nintendo learned some major lessons from the Wii U’s humiliating failure, you need look no further than Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.

Its arrival so soon after that of the Switch console demonstrates that Nintendo has well and truly woken up to the necessity of providing its consoles with compelling games, as quickly as possible. Especially so when you consider that Mario Kart 8 was the only full iteration of any of its classic franchises to grace the Wii U.

And on Nintendo Switch, Mario Kart is as good as it’s ever been. Even more propitiously, Deluxe is much more than a mere tarted-up port of the Wii U original. Indeed, it’s the next must-own title for Nintendo’s latest console.

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe review: More than a mere port

First up, Deluxe includes all Mario Kart 8’s downloadable content, which brings 16 new tracks, including Zelda and F-Zero themed ones, a bunch of new playable characters (there are 42 in all), karts and kart-parts, plus the 200cc mode which was added to Mario Kart 8 as an update. On top of all that, Battle mode has been completely – and very effectively – revamped. But what really surprises is that a number of small but significant tweaks and additions have been made which affect the core gameplay.

Perhaps the least significant of those are new driver aids which add auto-acceleration and steering assist (the latter removing the danger of plummeting off cliffs), designed to make Mario Kart 8 Deluxe accessible to those who are so young that they haven’t yet developed effective motor skills.

But there are plenty of additions which will excite die-hard Mario Karters, including double item-boxes – stacked one on top of the other – which give you two power-ups for the price of one. You can’t select which one to use first, but they still come in dead handy – and are generally placed in harder-to-reach positions.

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe also adds a third stage of drift-boost: drift around one of the longer corners, and the boost will go from blue to orange and eventually to purple, catapulting you forward when you exit the corner.

Nintendo

The Boo item – which lets you steal someone else’s power-up – is back, too, despite being absent from the original Mario Kart 8.

Such tweaks don’t fundamentally alter Mario Kart 8 Deluxe’s gameplay, but they add to the potential for satisfaction or frustration, depending on whether you manage to beat someone to a double-item box or just get pipped.

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe review: Battle mode reborn

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe contains all the original’s modes, namely Grand Prix – in which you race against 11 others, either human or AI-powered – Time Trials, VS Race (as ever, four-player split-screen is possible, and on the Switch a single Joy-Con is all you need to race, which you can fit into a tiny steering wheel accessory) and Battle.

Nintendo

Previously, Battle mode was the game’s only weak spot – abandoning Mario Kart’s pure racing, honed over a quarter of a century, in favour of party-style games that felt a tiny bit self-defeating. But Battle mode’s games have been heavily tweaked and added to in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, rendering them much more compelling than previously.

It now comprises five different games, of which the newest, Renegade Roundup, also happens to be the best. It splits participants into two teams, which are essentially cops and robbers. The “cop” team players get Piranha Plants and every opponent they chomp is transported to a jail. But they can be sprung if an elusive team-mate manages to hit the button below the jail.

Balloon Battle has been tweaked so that instead of being a case of last player with a balloon left wins, you’re apportioned points according to how many balloons you have at the end of each round.

Nintendo

Bob-omb Blast is similar to Balloon Battle, except the only available items with which to burst your opponents’ balloons are Bob-ombs; cutely, every player’s Bob-omb explosions are colour-coded.

Coin Runners involves collecting as many coins as possible – and firing items at rivals to steal their ones – while Shine Thief is all about finding a Shine and holding onto it as long as possible before someone else steals it.

Overall, the Battle mode games constitute great post-pub party-game fare, which is utterly in keeping with the Switch’s return to Wii-style party-games. And Nintendo has managed to make them all fun to play this time around, whereas in the past you might have found one which you liked and hated the rest.

Nintendo

Plus, for the Battle mode hardcore, there’s even a new technique you can learn – a sort of 180-degree handbrake turn – and you can set the items to ones which require skill to wield, such as green shells and boomerangs.

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe review: Irresistible online

The online side of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is the one element that Nintendo hasn’t tweaked, with good reason: it just works, seamlessly, addictively and with the minimum of fuss.

Pre-launch, it was frustratingly underpopulated, as you would expect, but with the Wii U original, Nintendo showed that it could cope with the demands of taking Mario Kart online. Hopefully the success of the Switch won’t lead to undue strain on its server infrastructure.

Nintendo

If we’re to nit-pick, we’d suggest that Nintendo could have made the ranking system – in which you lose or accumulate points according to where you finish – into something a bit more glamorous, and it would have been nice if the company had added some new conversational phrases to use in the lobby. But the sheer exhilaration of taking on human opponents remotely in a Mario Kart game is what matters.

And the Switch lends itself magnificently to local multiplayer – you can take your Switch round to a mate’s house and instantly compete wirelessly; with three Switches hooked up and enough controllers for four-player split-screen on each (best achieved with each Switch hooked up to a TV), you can even keep 12 people entertained simultaneously, which is mind-boggling.

Verdict

If, like most, you never committed yourself to buying a Wii U, then you’re in for a treat with Mario Kart 8 Deluxe on Nintendo Switch. It’s now 25 years since the first Mario Kart, and in that period, Nintendo has honed the franchise’s gameplay to utter perfection. No other game offers such a delicious mix of whimsy, skill and sheer brutality – the pain of being hit by a blue or red shell yards before the finish line while leading, and then being hit by a fusillade of items as the rest of the field catches and passes will live with you forever.

What is really gratifying about Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is that it contains more than we expected. The 16 extra tracks are all good, and some are stone-cold classics. They even include a take on the NES version of Rainbow Road, bringing the number of Rainbow Road versions in the game to three. Graphically, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is superb – the original looked fabulous, but on the Switch, it’s even crisper, with much better textures – which won’t leave you thinking that the Switch is underpowered (not that that matters a jot).

Quite simply, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is the best ever version of one of the best ever games. If you own a Nintendo Switch, you would be mad not to buy a copy.

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is released worldwide on 28 April 2017, exclusively for Nintendo Switch

HTC will unveil a squeezable ‘U’ phone in May

Sounds like HTC’s busy preparing for a big event in its home country: the electronics maker has just sent out a Save the Date for May 16th. Invites like this are typically shrouded in mystery, and HTC’s is no different. All the invitation says is “Squeeze for the Brilliant U,” though the blurry phone in the background and the company’s tweet gives us some idea of what it could announce. In the video, you can see a hand squeezing the edges of a phone, hinting that you’ll be able to interact with the device by giving its frame a squeeze.

That’s consistent with the reports going around about an HTC phone codenamed “Ocean.” It will reportedly sport a 5.5-inch display, 4GB to 6GB of RAM and 64GB to 128GB of storage, depending on the model. It won’t have a headphone jack. More importantly, Ocean will apparently feature what HTC calls “Sense Touch,” which gives you the power to summon menus and trigger various actions by squeezing and swiping on its edges.

Those details are but rumors, though. You’ll have to wait until May 16th to find out for sure. HTC will stream the event live from Taiwan on its website, starting at 2AM Eastern.

Squeeze for the Brilliant U. 05.16.2017 https://t.co/89OuHXbBlt pic.twitter.com/jLaeFD2wMW

— HTC (@htc) April 20, 2017

Source: HTC, (Twitter)

Apple is on a mission to only use recycled materials

With the release of its new environmental report, Apple is looking to push the envelope of what it can do for the good of the planet. Last year, it boasted about how much cash its recycling efforts had saved it, including $40 million worth of gold re-used from old devices. This year, it’s talking about “closing the loop” on its use of raw materials, potentially redefining how gadgets are made altogether.

Apple believes that it’s now on the road to being able to use only recycled materials to build its next generation of products. It’s not there yet, of course, and there’s still much to be done in order to ensure secondhand iPhones come back to Apple, rather than the scrap heap. Still, if the company can make good on its admittedly lofty goals in the next few years, it’s good for everyone.

The company also believes that its experiments with material reclamation — embodied by its Liam robots that disassemble 2.4 million iPhone 6 models a year. Apple says that the two lines that have a Liam on it have salvaged 1,900 kg in aluminum for every 100,000 phones taken apart. In fact, the company has built a secret run of Mac Mini units with materials recovered by Liam, which are used to run iPhone production lines.

The rest of the report is the usual self-congratulation, although it does make a big point about saying that its data centers are wholly renewable. Apple is probably mindful of Greenpeace’s recent public shaming of companies like Netflix, Amazon, HBO, ASUS and Acer for using coal and gas power to run their servers. By comparison, iMessage, FaceTime and Siri “run on 100 percent renewable energy.”

Apple, famously, wants to own and control every part of its computers, and that attitude carries over to its energy. The company is aiming to own as much of its power generation as it can, rather than buying juice on the wholesale market. So, where it can, it’s building, running and /owning/ its solar and wind facilities rather than partnering with a third party.

By 2020, the company is hoping to have 4 GW of power generation capacity by 2020, enough to power 725,000 homes. That will be spread between Apple owned and operated sites and those that it has helped bankroll with partners. 4GW is enough to power 725,000 homes, and that’s just the start of the company’s ambition. It’s entirely plausible that Apple could start selling its excess power as a side hustle without anyone realizing.

As always, most of the credit goes to Lisa Jackson (pictured), a former head of the EPA that joined Apple way back in 2013. She’s been spearheading the company’s efforts in switching to renewables, cutting carbon emissions and generally being a good citizen of the world. Her work has ensured that Apple went from the bottom of Greenpeace’s rankings in 2011 to the top for the last three years running.

Source: Apple (.PDF)

A letter from your editor: Changes ahead

My name is Christopher Trout, your new editor-in-chief. You may not recognize my name, but chances are you’ve read something I’ve written. When I arrived at Engadget nearly seven years ago, I was a freelancer fresh off of unemployment, our rivalry with Gizmodo was going strong and Josh Topolsky was planning an exit to start The Verge. In the coming years, I’d serve under three other editors, first as a full-time writer, then as the executive editor of our award-winning digital magazine, Distro. I’ve also been the managing editor of the whole damn thing, and, most recently, the main site’s second-in-command.

Oh, and, yes, I am that sex robot guy.

With each new editor at Engadget came a new direction, meant to reflect the state of technology. In those early days, we were the go-to place for exhaustive hardware news, and as gadgets went mainstream we followed suit. We broadened our vision beyond the narrow scope of gadgets, pushing the boundaries of what it means to be a tech blog. We took on gaming, entertainment, politics, culture and science. We acquired the archives and expertise of early digital publishing pioneers like TUAW, Joystiq and gdgt. We moved away from aggregating press releases and started focusing on original reporting, invested heavily in new formats like video and social. Some of those changes paid off; others proved to be a distraction.

Now it’s time to do what we do best. Going forward, we’ll concentrate on the areas where we have the deepest expertise: consumer electronics (“gear”), gaming and entertainment. That doesn’t mean we’ll give up on things like diversity in the tech industry or NASA’s latest milestone, but we’ll be more selective about how we cover culture and science. You’ll also see more of the stuff Engadget built its reputation on: authoritative reporting on the tech industry and the people, products and ideas that power it.

Of course, innovation doesn’t occur in a vacuum, and what happens today can change the course of tomorrow. The future is an exciting and unexpected place and our editors have front-row seats to the action. That’s why, after 13 years in the game, we’re leveraging our history to bring the future into focus. You’ll see more on the next phase of Engadget in the coming months, but in the meantime, allow me to introduce you to the people leading the charge.

Dana Wollman, our former managing editor and the person responsible for our industry-leading gadget reviews, has moved up the masthead to become our executive editor. You can expect her expertise to come in handy as we put the focus back on our core coverage.

Terrence O’Brien, news junkie, voice of the Engadget Podcast and our current managing editor, will remain in his position to oversee our East Coast headquarters. He’ll be joined by resident drone expert and audiophile James Trew, and Mat Smith, previously our man in Japan, who will oversee our West Coast and European operations, respectively.

Senior Editor Aaron Souppouris will be stepping up as features editor in an effort to bring you in-depth, long-form reporting on the topics you care most about. He’s the monster who’s been teaching AI to take our jobs.

Nathan Ingraham is moving up to become our deputy managing editor and will be joined by Senior News Editors Billy Steele and Richard Lawler in steering our daily news efforts. You already have these guys to thank for our 24-hour news coverage, breakneck event updates and liveblogs … all the liveblogs.

Director of Video Production Olivia Kristiansen is the woman who brought you the Webby Award-nominated documentary Super Humans: Inside the World’s First Cyborg Games.

Evan Rodgers, formerly of Vice, The Verge (because everything comes full circle) and a short retreat to the Deep South recently joined us as our social media manager.

Amber Bouman, our community manager, is the one putting the smack down in the comments, so be kind.

And then there’s you. As we look to the future, your input is more important than ever. You can get at us in the comments, on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, and wherever quality, ad-supported media is found. We may be strange, but don’t be a stranger.

GoPro’s Fusion spherical camera is six GoPros in one

GoPro has taken the wraps off a spherical camera called Fusion hot on the heels of Facebook’s 360-degree camera launch. Unlike the brand’s other action cams, Fusion is a spherical device that can capture 5.2K resolution VR and non-VR videos and photos. If you want to take a non-VR pic, you can use its OverCapture feature that punches out the composition you want from a spherical image. GoPro founder CEO Nicholas Woodman describes the device as “six GoPro cameras fused into one” and says it “represents the state-of-the-art in versatile spherical capture.”

The company first hinted that it’s working on a consumer-level 360-degree camera in a promo video showing its partnership with MotoGP. It featured a device with back-to-back lenses attached to the back of a motorbike. Woodman also told Engadget at CES earlier this year that he envisions a future where you can “record your activities with one multi-lensed GoPro” and create a matching 2D video for sharing with a phone app. It’s unclear if the Fusion can do that, since GoPro isn’t quite ready to release it yet and has revealed but a few details about the device. We don’t even know if it’ll look like what’s in the image above, though you can see samples of what it can do in the video below.

The company’s pilot partners will be some of the first people to see Fusion in person when the program begins this summer. In fact, GoPro is now accepting applications from professional content creators, brands and agencies who want to test it out. It’s also planning a limited commercial release for the end of 2017 — unfortunately, we can’t say how much you’ll have to set aside, because the company hasn’t revealed its pricing (and exact availability) yet.

Since the device will likely cost more than the Hero models, it won’t be able to replace them right away. An all-seeing camera that allows you to choose the shots you want sounds like the perfect action cam, though. You can go as fast as possible without having to worry about framing shots or getting the most interesting things you see on cam.

Source: GoPro Fusion

Samsung and Amazon counter Dolby Vision HDR with HDR10+

Samsung and Amazon have unveiled HDR10+, an improvement of its current HDR10 open standard that brings it more up to par with rival Dolby Vision. The partnership makes sense as Amazon will create and stream HDR content, while Samsung will include HDR10+ in all its 2017 4K TVs, and offer updates for last year’s models. The tech will help them counter some, but not all, of Dolby Vision’s advantages, while still letting Samsung and other manufacturers avoid paying Dolby licensing royalties.

Like Dolby Vision, HDR10+ uses “dynamic metadata” that’s encoded into scenes ahead of time, as opposed to the fixed metadata in HDR10. That’ll allow an HDR10+ TV to adjust brightness on a “scene-by-scene or even frame-by-frame basis,” Samsung says. For instance, with HDR10, dark scenes in a generally bright movie may look “significantly darker than was originally envisioned by the director,” it adds. The new tech will adjust for that on the fly, making films look more as their creators intended.

That sounds very similar to how Dolby describes its tech, and as with Dolby Vision, HDR10+ metadata will have to be baked into content before TVs can decode it. As such, Samsung has teamed with Colorfront to incorporate HDR10+ mastering into its “Transkoder” systems used by post-production houses. It also worked with MulticoreWare to integrate HDR10+ into the newish x265 high efficiency video coding (HEVC) codec used by UltraHD Blu-ray, Netflix and satellite and terrestrial broadcasters.

While Dolby charges royalties for its tech, HDR10+ is an open standard, so it can be adopted by other TV manufacturers for free. However, HDR10+ still lacks some of Dolby Vision’s features, in particular its wider 12-bit color range and maximum 10,000 nit brightness — both features aimed at future TVs. Dolby Vision also works with the older HDMI 1.4a standard, while HDR10 requires HDMI 2.0. Dolby Vision is backwardly compatible to HDR10, but it’s not clear if it will work with the new standard.

Samsung has avoided Dolby Vision, but most other manufacturers including Sony and TCL have opted in. Dolby also has deals with Warner Bros., MGM, Universal and other studios to use its encoding tech. At the same time, Amazon, one of the main consumer streaming companies, has committed to start broadcasting HDR10+ globally “later this year,” it said. In other words, this format rivalry probably isn’t going away anytime soon.

Source: Samsung

Facebook Working on Tech That Will Let You Type Texts, Emails, and Status Updates Using Your Brain

During its F8 Developers Conference in San Jose, California this week, social media company Facebook revealed an ongoing project in which it aims to launch a product that will allow users to send emails, texts, and post status updates using only their thoughts (via Reuters).

Conducted in a new wing it calls “Building 8,” Facebook said that any final hardware launch is a few years away, but it’s believed that the company is looking at the new product as a way to diversify its income so it might not have to rely so heavily on advertising revenue.

Former Google executive and DARPA director Regina Dugan is leading Facebook’s new initiative, which ultimately aims to allow users to type at 100 words per minute by monitoring their brain waves. Current technology allows researchers to type at eight words per minute, but it requires a brain implant. Facebook’s solution, on the other hand, will be non-invasive.

Additionally, Facebook is working on a way for users to “hear through their skin.” Beyond launching as an easier way to access Facebook and other content on smartphones, both technologies could see a huge surge in users who are deaf and disabled, or act as a way to break down the language barrier. “One day, not so far away, it may be possible for me to think in Mandarin and for you to feel it instantly in Spanish,” Dugan said.

On Facebook, Dugan shared a few details about the “silent speech interface” projects:

Over the next 2 years, we will be building systems that demonstrate the capability to type at 100 wpm by decoding neural activity devoted to speech. Just as you take many photos and decide to share some of them, so too, you have many thoughts and decide to share some of them in the form of the spoken word. It is these words, words that you have already decided to send to the speech center of your brain, that we seek to turn into text. And unlike other approaches, ours will be focused on developing a non-invasive system that could one day become a speech prosthetic for people with communication disorders or a new means for input to AR. Even something as simple as a ‘yes/no’ brain click, or a ‘brain mouse’ would be transformative.

We also described a system that may one day allow you to hear through your skin. You have 2 square meters of skin on your body, packed with sensors, and wired to your brain. In the 19th century, Braille taught us that we could interpret small bumps on a surface as language. Since then many techniques have emerged that illustrate our brain’s ability to reconstruct language from components. Today we demonstrated an artificial cochlea of sorts and the beginnings of a new a ‘haptic vocabulary’.
And we’re just getting started…

Other products and initiatives mentioned during the F8 conference included “clear, fashionable AR glasses that don’t obscure eyes,” internet connectivity in disaster zones, and a pair of new three-dimensional cameras. These last few projects are said to be more near term, while the thought-to-text and skin-listening technology are both “years away” from an end-user launch.

When asked if Facebook has any plans to build a voice assistant of its own for its iOS and Android apps, David Marcus, Facebook’s VP of messaging products, told Variety this week, “We are not working on that actively right now.” The company is instead focusing on bolstering its chat bot, “M” for Facebook Messenger, because it believes that users are more inclined to use text inputs to control their smartphones over their voice, particularly in crowded public situations.

Tag: Facebook
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From lab-grown steaks to plant-based blood, science is taking the animal out of meat

Agriculture has come a long way in the past century. We produce more food than ever before — but our current model is unsustainable, and as the world’s population rapidly approaches the 8 billion mark, modern food production methods will need a radical transformation if they’re going to keep up. But luckily, there’s a range of new technologies that might make it possible. In this series, we’ll explore some of the innovative new solutions that farmers, scientists, and entrepreneurs are working on to make sure that nobody goes hungry in our increasingly crowded world.

Animal agriculture has quietly become a huge contributor to climate change.

According to the United States Department of Agriculture, global agriculture — dominated by livestock production and grains grown as animal feed — accounts for roughly 30 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. Another study, conducted by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, found that 18 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions are “directly attributable” to livestock production. That’s more than the emissions generated by the entire transportation sector. The problem is cows, not cars.

Despite growing evidence that animal agriculture is damaging the planet, the Western diet isn’t likely to change anytime soon. In fact, studies suggest rising incomes and urbanization are actually fueling a global dietary shift toward consuming even more meat and dairy in the future.

How do we reconcile our insatiable appetite for meat with our duty to protect the environment?

It’s quite the predicament: On one hand, it’s increasingly obvious that addressing animal agriculture should be a big part of our efforts to mitigate climate change. On the other hand, meat is absolutely delicious and demand for it is steadily increasing.

So how do we fix this issue? How do we reconcile our insatiable appetite for meat with our duty to protect the environment?

The answer: highly convincing fakes. Over the past few years, a handful of enterprising startups have sprung up with the goal of creating animal-free meat. There are several big players in this space, with some growing meat in petri dishes and others developing new and innovative ways to use plants in meat-substitute products. In this article, we’ll take you on a tour of some of the biggest players in the space, and explore the innovative ways they’re hoping to solve the carnivore’s conundrum.

Exo Protein

Despite what your mother may have taught you when you were young, eating insects isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Most people tend to find the idea a bit unsettling, and therefore don’t look at insects as a viable source of nutrients. That’s where Exo Protein comes in. The idea was born of an attempt by several college students at Rhode Island’s Brown University to make a food product out of insects that actually tastes good.

Co-founder Gabi Lewis already had a concept for a protein bar that dealt with the nutrition versus taste trade-off that many protein bars suffer from. With 2,000 crickets – yes, crickets – a recipe for cricket flour, an oven, and a blender, Lewis and co-founder Greg Sewitz created a protein bar that makes insects palatable.

Why cricket flour? Well, even with just 40 crickets per pound, you get flour that consists of 65 percent protein. That’s more than twice the protein content of other commonly lauded healthy protein sources like beef jerky, chicken, and salmon. It also contains all essential amino acids, and twice the iron content of a comparable serving of spinach.

But perhaps the best reason to start eating crickets is its environmental benefit. Crickets produce one hundred times less greenhouse gas than cows, and require 0.05 percent (that’s five one hundredths of a percent) of the water cows do. Plus for every hundred pounds of feed, you get 60 pounds of cricket protein — 12 times the average yield from cattle.

Lewis and Sewitz admit that getting people to consider insects as a food source is a challenge. While 80 percent of the world’s population is said to eat insects regularly, in the Western world it’s seen more as a strange delicacy. If the Exo team can get Americans past that, the idea of the protein bar may be about to change in a big way.

Impossible Foods

When most of us think of a veggie burger, we think of a burger that tastes nothing like that juicy quarter pounder meat lovers can’t do without.

Impossible Foods wants to change that. In 2011, the Silicon Valley, California, startup embarked on a mission to create a completely plant-based burger that actually tastes — and bleeds — like real meat.

It took nearly five years to perfect the recipe, but in July of last year, the company’s burger debuted at Italian-Asian fusion restaurant Momofuku Nishi in New York. Since then, the company has expanded its reach into three other New York City restaurants – Bareburger, Public, and Saxon & Parole – as well as Cockscomb in San Francisco and Crossroads Kitchen in Los Angeles.

Impossible Foods has created a completely plant-based burger that actually tastes — and bleeds — like real meat. (Credit: Impossible Foods)

What’s the secret? While the true process is a trade secret, Impossible Foods says that what makes its burgers taste like meat is something called “heme.” Heme is found in large quantities in animal muscle; it’s what gives meat its signature red color and satisfying taste. The company says it discovered a way to extract heme from plants and ferment it using a process similar to how the Belgians have been making beer for nearly a thousand years.

And the burger is only the beginning. Impossible’s scientists already have concept products for chicken, pork, fish, and even a kind of yogurt that is entirely plant based. But in the near term, you’ll need to make a trip to one of the company’s partner restaurants to try it out.

Beyond Meat

Beyond Meat doesn’t grow fake meat in a lab. Instead, it uses a specific combination of plant proteins to create an astonishingly meat-like burger patty.

Of all of the futuristic foods we’ve discussed here, only Beyond Meat has been successful in a wide-scale rollout, offering products in stores ranging from Walmart to Whole Foods. Frozen food producer Tyson also took a 5-percent stake in the company, which is further cementing the startup’s position as the current market leader in plant-based meat substitutes.

Beyond Meat’s success can also be attributed to the fact that the company has urged its retail partners to place its products in the meat case versus the vegetarian aisle. It’s still a veggie burger, but founder and CEO Ethan Brown says you shouldn’t judge it that way.

“The flavors in meat are the result of a reaction of about 600 different molecules,” Brown told Digital Trends in an interview. “We’ve studied those molecules to identify similar molecules in the plant kingdom and combine them in the same way, so they give you that aroma and flavor.”

Memphis Meats

Even if you’ve made the perfect veggie burger that you claim tastes just like meat, it’s still a veggie burger. That’s where Memphis Meats comes in. The company’s product could be described as a burger grown in a petri dish. But what makes Memphis Meats’ process special is that no animals are slaughtered in the process.

Instead, cells are extracted from a living animal and fed a mixture of vitamins, minerals, and plants. After about two weeks, the meat is then harvested when it reaches the desired tenderness. Compare this with raising and slaughtering traditional livestock, a process that takes nearly six months to complete.

An actual product is about five years off, CEO Uma Valeti admitted in an interview with Digital Trends. However, Valeti’s team has made great strides in reducing production costs, which in turn will make it a viable traditional burger alternative – albeit one that sells at a slight premium compared to normal hamburger meat.

“As we scale up, we are confident we will be able to produce meat at a price that is cost-competitive with, and ultimately more affordable than, conventionally produced meat,” Valeti says. The company has also recently announced a chicken and duck substitute, grown in the same way the meat is, that’s set to be widely available later this year.

Soylent

Arguably the most recognizable future food on our list, Soylent was developed by co-founders Rob Rhinehart, Matt Cauble, John Coogan, and David Renteln as a healthy alternative to traditional food. Rhinehart and his team initially planned for Soylent to be a nutrition drink like any other. But response to the product’s release in 2013 — including suggestions it could feed the malnourished cheaply — changed the direction of the company so drastically that it now actively promotes the “development of a world where access to affordable, complete nutrition is no longer a challenge.”

At the heart of Soylent is its composition. Each 400-calorie bottle is formulated to provide 20 percent of daily recommended nutrition, and can be consumed as a meal replacement. The cost per bottle is $2.69, which is far less than the modern meal and comparable to other meal-replacement drinks on the market.

One major drawback to Soylent has always been taste. It’s unappetizing and bland, and has been compared to drinking chalk. The company recently released two new flavors – cacao and nectar – to address that issue. Reviews are generally positive, but it’s still unlikely to be something you’d want to live off of for an extended period of time – though some have tried.

But with the manufacturing process improving and prices of the drink falling, we might not be too far off from seeing Soylent in areas where food is either scarce or at a premium.

Clara Foods

Factory farms have gotten increasing attention over the past few years for the inhumane treatment of animals in captivity. The demand, especially among egg production in its current form, is just not sustainable over the long term according to government and private studies. Due to the fact that egg whites are found in lots of foods (mayonnaise, meringue, pasta, protein supplements, and most baked goods), a solution is needed quickly.

Clara Foods is seeking to develop an animal-free egg white substitute.

To that end, Clara Foods is working toward a completely animal-free egg white substitute. While quite a few options already exist, those substitutes are often insufficient for sensitive applications like angel food cakes, meringues, and macaroons. So the company is taking things a step further by actually building the egg whites “from the ground up,” as CEO Arturo Elizondo puts it.

For example, the substitute could be engineered to foam more to make better meringues and angel food cakes. Or it could have better binding characteristics so that it works better to keep vegetarian meat substitutes together. And yet another version could be tailored to provide certain nutritional benefits, like higher protein content.

While no immediate release date for a market-ready product is available, the company is hiring for several positions and recently completed a $1.75 million seed funding round.

Future of Food, or Just a Passing Fad?

There are those that might argue that all this lab-grown, plant-based meat business is just a flash in the pan – a fringe food trend that won’t stick around. But the fact of the matter is that meat substitutes and dairy alternatives have been around for decades, and what we’re seeing today is really just the evolution and maturation of a longstanding idea. Impossible Foods is the Boca Burger of the 21st century. It’s the same core concept, but executed with better technology – and that trend isn’t going away anytime soon.

We will be able to produce meat at a price that is cost competitive with conventionally-produced meat

It’s also important to remember that the startups discussed in this article are just the tip of the iceberg. They’re just the most recent and successful of the bunch, and there are dozens more behind them vying for a spot on your plate. One startup alone might not make a significant impact on the world, but together, these startups are expanding the range of choices you have at the grocery store.

In the future, making the choice between real and fake meat probably won’t be as much of a compromise. Ten years from now, we wouldn’t be surprised if choosing between cow and plant patties was like choosing between paper and plastic: making the environmentally friendly choice isn’t an inconvenience — it’s just a choice.

Your next MasterCard may have a fingerprint sensor built into it

Why it matters to you

Companies are taking security very seriously these days, and biometric authentication is rapidly becoming the standard way to protect our identity.

Most of us are used to using a fingerprint for an assortment of verification processes, from unlocking our smartphones, to authenticating entry into buildings, or at passport control at the airport. Soon, you may use your fingerprint to confirm purchases made in stores using a special MasterCard with a biometric reader built in to it. The company has revealed the first card to use the technology — something it has worked on for several years — which has been undergoing tests in South Africa.

The way it works is simple, and will be familiar to anyone that has used Apple Pay or another mobile payment system. Put the biometric card into the payment terminal as usual, and keep your finger on the card’s reader. Provided everything matches up, the payment will be approved. This means you no longer have to enter a PIN, and never having to hand the card over to a cashier. Of course, the biometric authentication aspect won’t work for online purchases, and it’s not compatible with contactless payments.

Don’t worry about fingerprints being stored in a cloud-based server. Remember, the card doesn’t have a data connection, so it compares a captured digital image of the print taken when the card is inserted into the terminal, with an encrypted digital template stored on the card itself that’s set up when you first get it. The transaction still has to be approved by the bank, even when the prints match. Think of it as a direct replacement for your PIN number, and because there’s no need for special equipment on the retailer’s part, the new cards are compatible with most existing chip-and-PIN readers.

While fingerprints are considered more secure and more convenient than PINs and passwords, they’re not the ultimate in security. For example, research into so-called “master prints” that could trick sensors has been carried out recently, and there are concerns that even high-resolution images could be used to make fake fingerprints for criminal use.

MasterCard has been running trials of its biometric card in South Africa, seeing success at a supermarket and Absa Bank, which is a subsidiary of Barclays Africa. Over the next few months, further trials will take place in Europe and Asia, with a full launch before the end of the year.

How to switch the position of the navigation buttons on the Galaxy S8

I put my Galaxy S8 down, flip it and reverse it.

The Galaxy S8 is the first Samsung phone with on-screen navigation buttons, which is a big change for the company, and its users! By default, though, the Galaxy S8 puts those virtual buttons in the same position as Samsung’s older phones, with the “back” button to the right of the “home” button, and the “multitasking” button to the left.

Thankfully, these can be reversed, making it easier for people coming from other phones to adjust to the new Galaxy S8! Want to switch around the position of those buttons? Easy!

Put the back button where it should be on the Galaxy S8!

From the home screen, swipe down to reveal the notification shade.
Tap on the Settings button (cog icon).

Tap on the Display menu.

Scroll down and tap on Navigation bar menu.
Tap on Button layout.
Switch orientation to Back-Home-Recents (if applicable).

That’s it! Now you can let your brain calm down and your mind open up to navigating Android just as Google intended.

Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8+

• Galaxy S8 and S8+ review!
• Galaxy S8 and S8+ specs
• Everything you need to know about the Galaxy S8’s cameras
• Get to know Samsung Bixby
• Join our Galaxy S8 forums

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