‘Overwatch’ has its first match-fixing scandal

In a month’s time, Blizzard’s popular multiplayer first-person shooter Overwatch will officially be a year old (not counting the beta). In that time, the game has accumulated over 25 million players, welcomed multiple new characters and maps, and established a very credible esports scene.

Global prize money has amounted to hundreds of thousands of dollars in 2017 alone, bringing with the unfortunate threat of match fixing. In one of the first reported cases of Overwatch match-fixing, Korean police confirmed this weekend that the player manager and coach of local esports team Luminous Solar were charged without detention for attempting to fix a qualifying match for the second season of the APEX Overwatch league.

The Gyeonggi Bukbu Provincial Police Agency Cyber Bureau officially charged two men with interference with business. While the pair weren’t named, event organiser OGN — a Korean esports cable channel known — had already banned Luminous Solar’s player-manager Jin Seok-hoon and coach Baek Min-jeh for allegedly offering sponsorship to rival team UnLimited in return for forfeiting the match back in February.

While eSports is gaining in popularity in the west, it’s already huge in South Korea. In 2015, Korean authorities arrested nine people, including two professional players and coach representing PRIME, for fixing professional StarCraft 2 matches. It’s reported they received between 5 million and 20 million won ($4,400 and $17,600 at the time) for fixing five games over the course of the year. However, Starcraft cheating can be traced back to 2010, during the Brood War match-fixing scandals.

Although gamers, particularly in Korea, can make good money from winning tournaments, illegal gambling can offer much more. As Overwatch continued to grow its fanbase, it was only a matter of time until such issues came to light. However, nobody could have predicted how quickly it happened.

Source: ESPN

Apple’s iPhone 8 might not ship in September

Apple has practically settled into a routine with its flagship iPhone launches: it announces the new model in early September and ships it later that month. You can practically set your clock by it. Well, you might not want to bank on that schedule this year. KGI analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who has a mostly solid track record when outlining Apple’s plans, believes that the long-rumored OLED iPhone won’t enter production until October or November. Reportedly, the new model’s “significant hardware upgrades” (such as the OLED screen and depth-sensing front camera) are pushing back the release. There could be shortages until Apple refines its manufacturing, too.

Provided the analyst is on the mark, this won’t be great for either you or Apple’s bottom line. While there has been talk of Apple releasing three new iPhones later this year, the OLED model is believed to be the truly exciting one — the other two would be mild upgrades to the iPhone 7 line. You may end up waiting several weeks longer to get the iPhone you really want, and that could leave Apple’s sales in the doldrums for a while.

Source: 9to5Mac

Apple Maps Now Supports Transit in Paris

Apple Maps has been updated with transit data for Paris, enabling iPhone users in the city and the greater Île-de-France region to navigate with public transportation, such as the subway, commuter trains, and buses.

Apple Maps supports many public transportation services operated by the RATP Group, including the Métro subway system, RER commuter trains, and buses. Transilien trains and select other services are also supported in the suburbs.

Apple Maps is several years behind Google Maps in supporting transit routing in Paris, as in many other cities, but Apple’s public transportation support is comprehensive, mapping all station entrances and listing departure times.

Apple Maps has had a Transit tab since iOS 9.

At launch, the feature was limited to Baltimore, Berlin, Boston, Chicago, London, Los Angeles, Mexico City, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Sydney, Toronto, and over 300 cities in China. Since then, Apple has been working to expand support for public transportation to other cities around the world.

Newer additions include Atlanta, Columbus, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Honolulu, Houston, Kansas City, Manchester, Melbourne, Miami, Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Montréal, New Orleans, Portland, Pittsburgh, Prague, Rio de Janeiro, Sacramento, Salt Lake City, San Antonio, San Diego, Seattle, and Vancouver, B.C.

Apple Maps transit support in Paris was expected, as station outlines in the city increased significantly in the weeks leading up to today’s rollout. Likewise, transit directions may soon be enabled in Adelaide and Perth in Australia, Las Vegas, Madrid, Phoenix, Rome, Singapore, Taiwan, and the Netherlands.

A smaller number of station outlines in Apple Maps are visible in the American and Canadian cities of Albuquerque, Buffalo, Calgary, Edmonton, Orlando, Ottawa, Nashville, Norfolk, St. Louis, and Tucson.

A complete list of cities that support Transit in Apple Maps is available on the iOS Feature Availability page of Apple’s website.

(Thanks, Bernd!)

Tags: Apple Maps, transit, France
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Western Digital Upgrades Suite of Storage Drives With Thunderbolt 3, Optimized Speeds, and More

After revealing the G-Drive USB-C a few weeks ago, Western Digital today announced the launch of a trio of upgrades coming to a few of its G-Technology product lines, including the G-Drive with Thunderbolt 3, G-Raid with Thunderbolt 3, and G-Speed Shuttle XL. The performance upgrades mainly account for optimized speeds that will help creative professionals who capture and transfer heavy loads of high-resolution content.

The new G-Drive with Thunderbolt 3 includes dual TB3 ports, a USB-C port, and supports USB 3.1, allowing users to daisy chain as many as five additional devices at once so multiple drives can remain connected, enabling complex workflows through a single connection. The G-Drive with Thunderbolt 3 includes a HGST-brand Ultrastar 7200RPM Enterprise-class hard drive, transfer rates up to 245 Mb/s, and includes the G-Drive line’s usual Time Machine plug-and-play set-up.

The G-Drive with Thunderbolt 3
Users interested can pre-order the G-Drive with Thunderbolt 3 now, and it’s available with four optional storage capacities: 4TB ($399.95), 6TB ($499.95), 8TB ($599.95), and 10TB ($699.95). An additional 12TB version will debut sometime “next quarter” at $799.95.

“G-Technology recognizes the need for a complete workflow solution that takes advantage of the power of Thunderbolt 3 and USB-C,” said Sven Rathjen, vice president of marketing, Client Solutions, Western Digital. “The result is a substantial upgrade across several product lines that delivers reliable, fast, and easy-to-use storage solutions to fit the current and future needs of our customers.”

Western Digital is also updating its line of high-performance, removable dual-hard drives with the G-Raid with Thunderbolt 3, which features two TB3 ports, one USB-C port, and one HDMI port that is out-of-the-box ready for video running at 60fps in 4K as well as HDR content. The G-Raid has dual removable 7200RPM hard drives, can daisy chain up to five additional devices, and has a transfer rate of up to 500 Mb/s.

The G-Raid with Thunderbolt 3
Storage tiers for the G-Raid with Thunderbolt 3 start at 8TB ($749.95), and increase to 12TB ($849.95), 16TB ($1,099.95), 20TB ($1,549.95), and 24TB ($1,999.95). The first four tiers will launch this June, while the 24TB model is set to launch next quarter.

The last of Western Digital’s updates centers on the company’s high-performance, transportable 8-bay RAID solution — which now comes with two Thunderbolt 3 ports — called the G-Speed Shuttle XL. The new unit offers hardware RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, 10, and 50 configurations and comes equipped with G-Technology’s usual Ultrastar 7200RPM Enterprise-class hard drives, and boasts transfer rates up to 2000 MB/s.

The G-Speed Shuttle Xl
The G-Speed Shuttle XL will be available to buy in the following storage tiers: 32TB ($4,099.95), 48TB ($5,399.95), 64TB ($6,999.95), 80TB ($8,599.95), and 96TB ($10,199.95). Similar to the previous G-Technology products announced today, the first four tiers will debut ahead of time in June, while the highest-capacity model will see a launch sometime after.

All of Western Digital’s G-Technology devices come pre-formatted for Macs, enabling easy set-up and storage drive compatibility with Time Machine. More information about G-Technology’s new Thunderbolt 3 family of products — including new ev Series bay adapters — can be found on the company’s website.

Tag: Western Digital
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Sennheiser Ambeo Smart Headset preview: Exploring 3D sound

Sennheiser launched the Ambeo mic in 2016, taking a step into devices that were designed for 3D audio, or audio to support the sort of sound experience you’d expect in VR applications. The Ambeo VR mic does exactly this, capturing sound from all directions to reinforce that spacial definition in VR or 360 content.

The Ambeo Smart Headset joins original mic in having been designed to this type of “3D” audio in mind, but where the original Ambeo mic is a slightly niche offering for professional content creators, the Ambeo Smart Headset falls firmly into the consumer sphere, pardon the pun.

Originally announced at CES 2017, we caught up with some of the very first samples at IFA Global Press Conference 2017. Here’s our experience with 3D audio capture.

A smarter headset

Designed to be worn as a normal headset, the Ambeo Smart Headset’s most distinctive feature is the mics on the outside of the earbuds. Topped with wire mesh, there’s no missing the pair of mics it packs in.

Pocket-lint

Aside from at the Ambeo Smart Headset is worn like many sports headsets, with an in-ear design supported by over-ear arms for support. It’s comfortable enough and fairly easy to fit, although not the most practical for wearing with glasses or sunglasses.

The wires pair up at the inline controller box which is rather chunky. It houses a range of controls that will let you use the headset’s functions – from standard multi-press button controls, to playback volume through to more specific control for controlling the “transparent audio” function, offering the ability to turn down the noise of the real world. 

The cable then runs down to a Lightning connector for iOS compatibility. At launch Sennheiser announced that there would also be USB Type-C for a range of Android devices, although we’ve only tested the iOS version.

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Why has Sennheiser opted for this design?

The idea is to make the Smart Headset as practical as possible. The all-in-one design reduces the need to have a specific smartphone mic with you. When you’re not capturing audio, you’ll be perfectly happy listening to music through the headset. 

But the message from Sennheiser is really about being able to offer the sound as you hear it, and where better to place the microphones than where you hear it? The separation and balance between those microphones is the same as your ears, so that sound you record should be the same as you would hear.

Pocket-lint

This gives you a full soundscape based around your head, rather than around the phone that you’re holding. There’s no chance of covering the mics with fingers or brushing them as you move the phone, but it does mean that if you’re filming in one direction and moving your head to look elsewhere, the sound stage will shift with it. 

Generally though, from the short time we spent playing with the headset in Lisbon, it’s comfortable and easy to use.

Fuss free software

Perhaps the best part of this arrangement is that you don’t actually need any different software. There is an app to support the headset – which is powered by Apogee for those interested – but when it comes to video capture, we just used the standard iPhone camera app. 

The Lightning port is essential to both power the headset as well as send the information back to the phone, but when capturing video you don’t have to change any setting or do anything specific. iOS recognises an external mic and that’s what you use to capture to sound.

It’s then there on the video that you recorded and available for playback through any audio device or on any platform. Apart from the current requirement to use it with an iPhone, there’s no format complications or codec confusions or anything else. We captured with the iPhone, transferred the files to our MacBook Pro and listened to the same great spacial audio over our Sony MDR-1000X headphones. 

That also means you can upload it to YouTube, play it through your TV surround sound system and anything else you might want to do. It’s as simple as it can be.

Performance first impressions and sound quality

We spent a brief time with the Sennheiser Ambeo Smart Headset and we will be taking a more detailed look at it longer term, but first impressions are good. Firstly, sound playback is good. Listening to a variety of music, we found it to be a nicely balanced delivery, as you’d expect from Sennheiser headphones.

We didn’t have any earbud tips with our sample, but this would naturally allow you to get a better fit. We imagine the retail version will give you a range of options, so will potentially offer more secure fit and better sound isolation than in our tests.

When it comes to capture, the first thing we noticed is how sensitive the microphones are. There’s real distinction to the sounds it captures. Watching a waiter clear tables, you can hear as things are moved around the table, but there’s distinction in the location of other sounds. There are bird noises, music from off to the left by the pool-side bar.

There’s a sense that this is realistic noise. It what the location sounded like while we were sitting in that spot. Sensitive mics can suffer from hiss and yes, that could be a problem for the Ambeo, but with its aim of recreating the sound of the place you are, it might never be recording silence which can really make that hiss noticeable – although in the quieter hotel corridors, it still sounds pretty good. It’s worth noting that in the outdoor scenes in the video above, there’s background road noise.

For us, the best test is listening to that soundtrack with our eyes closed. The realism takes you right back to the location and although we’ve not had the chance to test it with anything too impressive – just the hubbub of conference hotel life – there’s an emotive quality to it.

That was Sennheiser’s aim, to make the audio an emotional experience and brings a missing dimension. Our first impression are that this quirky headset achieves those aims. If you’re the sort of person who captures video in a wide range of locations and want to boost and widen the sound stage, then this is a very simple way to do it. 

Other playthrough functions

We mentioned “transparent” audio before and that’s worth a closing mention. The idea with transparent audio is to bring you ambient noise. That’s something that a number of sports headsets offer, as well as some noise cancelling headsets, with the aim to ensuring that you’re not totally isolated from your environment when wearing the headset.

For someone walking down the street, for example, some noise can be beneficial so you’re a little more aware of your environment.

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Additionally, you can use the Ambeo Smart Headset to turn down the outside world, like wearing noise controlling ear plugs. The example we were given was at a loud concert, where you could plug in and alter the volume so you don’t hurt your ears or end up with tinnitus 

We’ve not had the chance to really test these latter functions, no have we had the chance to use this headset where it’s really noisy for capture (like a concert), but we’ll update and expand on our findings as we use it more. 

There’s no price on the Sennheiser Ambeo Smart Headset, we’re expecting confirmation and availability around the time of IFA 2017, in September.

SlingStudio makes multi-camera video production a reality for all

Putting video on the internet is easier than ever — even livestreaming has been dramatically simplified, thanks to products like Periscope and Facebook Live. But video production gets much more complex when you bring multiple cameras into the mix, which is useful for covering live events from different angles. At that point, you’d typically need to bring in professionals who know how to use complex studio equipment.

Sling believes it has a better option with the SlingStudio, a $999 device that makes it dramatically simpler for anyone to wirelessly juggle multi-camera video production. And yes, it even works for livestreaming.

The SlingStudio is basically the hub for a new video production platform. It can connect to iPhones and Android phones, and, together with a $349 CameraLink accessory, it also connects to any DSLR or video camera with an HDMI port. Instead of a huge mixing board, the SlingStudio handles all of the video coming in from those devices (up to 1080p/60 FPS). It also doesn’t require laying cable all over the place, as the video comes over a private 802.11ac (2.4Ghz or 5Ghz) WiFi network. It’s all managed by an iPad app, which lets you preview and switch sources on the fly.

Clearly, this isn’t a device that every consumer will want, but Sling sees a market among schools and large organizations that want to produce more professional-looking video. You can conceivably just bring the SlingStudio to an event, set up some nearby cameras, and get someone up to speed with the iPad app quickly. There’s also a battery accessory for an additional $149 that gives you three hours of charge, which could be useful for shooting in remote locations.

You can juggle up to 10 cameras at once on the SlingStudio, though you can only monitor four at the same time. One of its big selling points is seamless streaming video to Facebook Live and YouTube, but, not surprisingly, you can also bring your projects to Adobe Premiere and Final Cut for additional tweaking. Even if you’re not using it live, the SlingStudio could still save you plenty of time from editing hours of raw video.

The SlingStudio’s hardware is pretty much the same as the Dish Hopper. Its beefy CPU, in particular, is important for juggling those video streams. It can record up to 1080p/60FPS video at 30Mbps, and produce 1080p livestreams at up to 8Mbps. The box is portable, at just 1.43 pounds and the size of a hardcover book. It includes an SD card slot and USB-C port for storage, an HDMI input port for bringing in additional video sources, an HDMI output port for previews and an audio-line in connection. The latter could be used for connecting separate audio mixing equipment, or just an announcer recording commentary. A $49 USB-C expander also lets you plug in USB 3.0 hard drives and connect to gigabit Ethernet.

While it’s an unusual product to see from Sling, it also makes a lot of sense. Reps tell us that the company isn’t investing much in building a new version of the Sling boxes that made it famous. (Really, that should have been obvious since the launch of Sling TV and the rise of streaming video.) In their mission to find a new product category to disrupt, they realized that nobody was working on a way to make multi-camera production easier, and they had plenty of technology that could tackle that issue. The CameraLinks, for example, are basically just typical Sling streaming boxes.

The SlingStudio technically had its debut at SXSW this year, where it was used to produce the show’s Innovation Awards livestream. I also saw it in action briefly at Dish’s NYC offices, where I watched a live feed powered by DSLRs with CameraLink accessories, as well as a handful of iOS devices. One of those was an iPod Touch several rooms away from the demo areas, which captured decent-looking video (it certainly wasn’t as clear as the closer cameras).

Sling says it worked especially hard to ensure that the different video streams stayed in sync, which is important for making it useful as a multi-camera platform. The SlingStudio’s Console iPad app also looked simple and easy to use. The interface gives you room to preview changes before they go live, and you can also add effects, text overlays and transitions.

While I’m no video professional, I could see the SlingStudio being a good option for anyone that hopes to step up their video game. I wouldn’t be surprised if YouTube broadcasters ended up using it to make their livestreams seem more professional. Its big appeal is flexibility: You don’t need a ton of pro-grade equipment to get a multi-camera video anymore, just a DSLR or two, along with a few smartphones.

Rickard Nordin, Sweden’s ‘Hearthstone’-streaming politician

For many people, eSports cropped up when they weren’t looking, growing out of the passionate local communities built by game creators and players. Professional teams now compete in high-stakes leagues for prestige, tournament winnings and lucrative sponsorship deals — but only in places where eSports is encouraged to take root. Many countries don’t offer pro game players the same ease of travel as traditional athletes, leading lawmakers to continue debating just how much the state should support the local video game scene. Such is the case with Sweden, but national Parliament member Rickard Nordin is rallying his peers to embrace the financial and cultural benefits eSports can bring, and he’s reaching out to fans (near and far) on a platform fitting his mission.

Just after Parliament members from each party hold their regular Tuesday meetings, Nordin retires to his office in Stockholm’s Parliament House and loads up his current favorite competitive title, the digital card game Hearthstone. As befits a legislator keen to bridge cultural and generational gaps, he livestreams his games on Twitch at 7PM CET. There he spends two hours every week fielding questions from viewers across the globe about everything from global politics to his favorite decks.

As a representative of the municipality of Gothenburg, Sweden’s second-largest city, Nordin votes as a member of the country’s Centre Party (Centerpartiet), which advocates for free markets and environmental protections. But when it comes to advocating for eSports, he’s mostly alone, and the 34-year-old legislator finds himself educating his fellow older Parliamentarians and occasionally butting heads with opposition in the press. Bridging the generational divide means correcting the stereotype of gamers as couch potatoes, which is made all the more difficult as games become scapegoats for rising obesity levels. Instead, Nordin emphasizes the teambuilding and community that comes when players thrive in eSports’ competitive atmosphere.

Försöker sammanfatta gårdagens premiärsändning av e-sport och politik på Twitch. Helt sjukt bra utfall! 4000… https://t.co/gC7XNwIzcX

— Rickard Nordin (@rickardnordin) March 1, 2017

It didn’t take long for Nordin’s colleagues to get curious about his weekly broadcasts from his Twitch pulpit. The day after his initial stream on March 1st, a flurry of press coverage from Swedish online outlets had piqued their interest — including the most senior member of the legislature.

“The speaker of the whole Parliament said ‘Hey Rickard, can you tell me about Twitch? How’s the eSports thing going, can you tell me more?’ So that’s a good sign,” Nordin told Engadget. “And there has been numerous members of parliament asking about what Twitch is and what I do and how it’s like. So there has been a big interest!”

His streaming odyssey began with an announcement on the eSports subreddit before his first hour-long broadcast. By popular request, he’s since tacked on an extra hour expressly in English, for those of us (ahem) who can’t follow his Swedish Q&A sessions. Nordin humbly insists that you shouldn’t go to his streams for elite Hearthstone tips, as he treats his streams as office hours open to anyone wondering how to facilitate eSports in their countries. While Swedish eSports fans have hosted amateur competitions and gaming gatherings like Dreamhack for years, there are things the government can do to clear roadblocks.

At the top of Nordin’s list: Getting eSports professionals the same visas as those given to athletes of traditional sports. The harder it is for players to enter the country and stay for extended periods, the tougher it is to attract talent and build up local teams. That’s part of the reason the United States and South Korea have become hubs for eSports. But even with supportive policies, like when the US started granting League of Legends players athlete visas in 2013, there are still legislative obstacles.

Last year, over 100,000 people signed a petition urging the United States to grant eSports players P-1 visas, a designation specifically given to “internationally recognized athletes.” It began after Team Solomid’s Super Smash Bros wizard William “Leffen” Hjelte was denied entry to the US for nine months, which forced him to bow out of several tournaments. The delays killed his chances to attend the 2016 Evolution Championship (Evo) last summer, which is one of the most prominent fighting game events in North America. A top-performing player who can’t compete in their game’s prime tournament scene isn’t just cut off from potential winnings (in Hjelte’s case, it reportedly reduced his income by $17,000 from 2015 to 2016). It also isolates them from competition, destroying opportunities to refine their skill. It would be like keeping a sports team out of the whole regular season and only let them in for the playoffs.

And that’s in a country where eSports has received relatively significant support. To help Sweden’s scene, Nordin has his eye on fixing another impediment: Taxes. Players visiting Sweden from the US pay certain rates if they make tournament money while abroad. And that’s to say nothing of antiquated laws that need updating — one of which Nordin has already taken care of.

In 2015, he helped abolish old regulations that had been on the books since the 80s. Internet cafes had inadvertently fallen under an obscure law, Automatspelslagen, which required them to pay fees and obtain legal permission to open. This had formerly allowed local municipalities to regulate the youth-corrupting pinball arcade halls that cropped up in the era, but had ended up reaching far beyond its date of relevance.

Nordin aims to get eSports rooted in university education, too. Currently, the country’s post-general instruction education (called ‘Gymnasium’) doesn’t have the equivalent of an eSports major. Without, players end up prioritizing separate educational and occupational gaming tracks — and some end up leaving to go pro.

That’s what Felix Edling did. Better known by his handle “Betsy,” Edling plays midlane on ROCCAT’s League of Legends team, which competes in the European ring of the game’s Championship Series (LCS). He’d lived in Sweden since he was a toddler but only started seriously playing video games later in high school; By 18, he left higher ed to play games professionally. Now, two years later, he’s playing on a professionally-ranked team in Berlin.

That’s where League of Legends’ creator Riot opened a headquarters for the European LCS. Most of the region’s teams have set up shop in the city accordingly: “All the teams pretty much have to stay here to compete,” Edling told Engadget. With the game’s professional community centered in Berlin, it would take a lot of effort — and cost — for a team to establish themselves elsewhere and travel to Germany for weekly matches.

“If I could play LCS in Sweden, I would. That would be perfect,” Edling said, citing missed family and friends in his old home city. “For now, it’s not possible, unless every team moves there and LCS as a whole moves there. But that’s probably not going to happen.”

For a medium played over an internet connection, competitive eSports can have a very local focus. Casual matches, on the other hand, link folks from across the world — and more people are playing than ever. Gaming has grown beyond the nerds, the 20-year-old Edling observes: even parents are playing. That cultural relaxation around games has made it a more acceptable pastime and passion.

Nordin has noticed it, too: His colleagues in Parliament ask questions about eSports and encourage him to propose motions. There have even been Starcraft tournaments at lower levels of government. Counter to the time-wasting couch potato stereotype, Nordin believes players get real-world benefits: Gaming online, he says, increases young Swedes’ English proficiency, as it’s apparently the most common language used to communicate (and trash talk) on popular competitive titles.

Whether eSports should be recognized as a sport by the Swedish government isn’t just a semantic debate, either. If it becomes defined as a sport, it would fall under the relevant national authority, the Swedish Sports Confederation, and be entitled to funding that is typically used to support traditional athletics. But eSports already gets funding from the private sector, says David Lega, deputy mayor of Gothenburg and former Paralympian.

“Even with our taxation level, it’s impossible to support everything,” Lega told Engadget. “eSport [players] have a huge advantage compared to many sports in Sweden because they are getting professionally noticed and increased sponsorship interest by private companies.”

Lega opposes moving eSports under traditional sports’ umbrella. Lega has sparred with Nordin in the opinion pages of Svenska Dagbladet, and his position is firm: Sports require physical activity. Gaming’s sedentary nature means the extended competitive play sessions that eSports requires isn’t something to encourage while children’s obesity continues to rise, Lega told Engadget. Children should be motivated to move.

“I want to see more kids playing eSports, but I want to see them run, too.”

Not that Lega considers eSports to be valueless, he enjoys gaming on his PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. But like chess, he considers it a mental skill, not physical.

“Don’t get me wrong, it takes a lot of skill to be a successful eSporter and a lot of training, but it doesn’t have physical exercise. It’s a new way to learn how to adapt to a group, to grow with other people and to get better — so it’s important,” Lega told Engadget. “But it’s not a sport in Swedish ways. I want to see more kids playing eSports, but I want to see them run, too.”

Unfortunately for Nordin, the Confederation seems to be thinking along the same lines.

“Just today there was a verdict from The Swedish Sports Confederation, that the application from eSports to become a member has been re-scheduled ’til 2019 and that they will rework their statues ’til then,” Nordin told Engadget via email. “That sounds to me like they will do all they can to keep them out. That’s outrageous and the benefits The Swedish Sports Confederation has today with the rights to decide which educations get to be started and so on has to be changed. So there are many fights to take in the parliament on the behalf of eSports right now.”

Nordin’s reception on Twitch, on the other hand, has been almost completely positive. Initially wary of fielding questions from random internet users, he’s continued streaming every week, holding court for an hour each in Swedish and English every Tuesday on his channel. Questions are usually split 50/50 between gaming and politics: Some ask about his take on Russia and North Korea, while others ask about his Renolock deck. Just fielding inquiries satisfies his goal to make both internet gaming and statecraft more accessible.

“If I can lower the threshold for people to take an interest in eSports, I’ve done enough. They don’t have to be interested in my party; no matter what their opinions are, one of my goals is to lower the threshold and enable more people to discuss politics,” Nordin told Engadget. “It’s good for society to have open discussion.”

That means committing to the long run. He doesn’t expect to immediately change minds — or legislative priorities, though he does have some more motions pending that haven’t been up for debate yet. But he does see eSports as a rising tide that it would behoove his peers, and politicians at all levels, to begin understanding.

“One of my core messages to my colleagues is that this is not going to go away. It’s going to get bigger and better. It’s much better to be a part of it,” Nordin said. “Change always takes a while, especially at the national level. But that’s part of the game.”

Images: Twitch (lead image); Rickard Nordin (Hamid Ershab Sarabi); Rickard Nordin at computer (Hamid Ershab Sarabi).

‘A Moment in Time’ shows the charming potential of art in VR

Quill, like Google’s Tilt Brush, is an artistic tool that lets you paint in virtual reality. Designed for the Oculus Rift, it’s a liberating way to draw and view art in 3D space. The next step? Animation. Goro Fujita, art director at Oculus Story Studio, has created a small but beautifully detailed street which you can explore with the Rift. It’s all hand-drawn, and positional audio means you can hear birds chirping in the trees, as well as cars rushing by and a nutty engineer building robots in his store. He’s uploaded a guided tour to YouTube, which I highly recommend checking out.

The public version of Quill doesn’t offer any animation tools at the moment. As Fujita explains in his video, the app’s development team — which is also part of Oculus — allowed him to “test” a new version which has these capabilities. “I started with a street and animated a guy walking down this street frame-by-frame,” he recalls in the description. “Then I added a guy smoking a cigarette on the other side of the street all as looping animations. The more I added to the scene, the more magical it became.” Fujita spent 80 hours creating the bite-sized scene. It even includes his flat, complete with a cartoon version of Fujita painting in VR.

Here’s the real and virtual version side-by-side, for comparison:

It’s not the first time a VR movie has been made with Quill. Dear Angelica, an immersive piece about a young woman, Jessica, reminiscing about her late mother, was created with the software by Oculus Story Studio. It premiered at Sundance Film Festival and was described by our own Devindra Hardawar as “truly unique” and “genuinely moving.” For now, it’s unclear if these animation tools will be offered to the public. I hope they are, because it would make the concept (genre?) accessible to a larger pool of artists. We’ve seen what Rift and Vive owners can do with VR painting software — just imagine what they could make with these extra tools.

Via: VR Scout

Source: A Moment in Time

Ming-Chi Kuo Agrees iPhone 8 Will Launch in September With ‘Severe’ Shortages Due to Delayed Production

As more alleged design schematics and dummy models of the “iPhone 8” leak online, one of the biggest questions remains the smartphone’s actual launch date. Although some industry sources believe the tenth-anniversary iPhone will still launch in September — perhaps in very short supply — Japanese site Mac Otakara earlier this year suggested the OLED iPhone 8 would launch “very much” behind the the LCD models.

Today, KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has published a report supporting the theory that Apple will debut the OLED iPhone in September, but the device will face “severe supply shortages” for some time. Kuo believes that production ramp-up on the OLED iPhone model won’t begin until as late as October-November, two months later than previous ramp-ups in August-September. Similar delayed production rumors have been circulated by Bloomberg, analysts from Barclays, and Brian White.

Kuo believes that this delay “won’t undermine actual demand,” as long as the iPhone 8 lives up to the hype, but the heaviest demand might be pushed back until as far as the first quarter of 2018, when the bulk of users could get their hands on the device according to Kuo.

Production ramp up of OLED iPhone could be delayed to October-November (previously estimated to be August-September, as in previous years). That said, if new features, such as 3D sensing, can provide good user experience, a temporary supply shortfall won’t undermine actual demand, which may be deferred to 1H18. In that case, potential contribution starting late-2Q17 from OLED iPhone could be partially delayed by 3-6 months for related suppliers.

This delayed production ramp-up is listed by Kuo as a “potential downside risk to shipments” of all three iPhone models believed to launch this year, with a second risk coming from Apple’s competitors. Samsung, Huawei, OPPO, Vivo, and Xiaomi are all gearing up to launch “high-end full-screen smartphones” in 2017, and all could have an impact specifically on the LCD models of the 2017 iPhone, according to Kuo, because those models “do not have full-screen form factors.”

Because of these potential risks affecting the iPhone’s shipments this year, Kuo adjusted shipping estimates for the device accordingly. The analyst believes that the “worst case scenario” could see iPhone shipments decrease by 15 to 20 percent and result in 80 to 90 million units shipped, versus a previous estimate of 100-110 million units (a 60:40 weighting is placed for the OLED and LCD iPhone models). Ultimately, Kuo said that, “We see a higher probability of the worst case scenario coming to pass.”

Production delays in this year’s OLED iPhone are again sourced from the device’s intricate manufacturing processes, thanks to numerous upgrades including its customized OLED panel, new 10-nanometer A11 processor, all-new 3D Touch module, substrate-like printed circuit board, and 3D sensing. Despite these production difficulties, Kuo said that the iPhone 8’s announcement and launch time of the new iPhones will remain similar to previous years, suggesting the usual September iPhone event from Apple.

While we believe the announcement and launch time of the new iPhones will be similar to previous ones, production ramp up of OLED iPhone could be delayed to as late as October-November compared to the usual ramp up period of August-September, due to increased production difficulty. In other words, severe supply shortages may persist for a while after the new models are launched, capping total shipments of new iPhones in 2H17.

Kuo also sees a potential loss of appeal by high-end users on the LCD versions of the new iPhone models, due to their lack of a full-screen design, contributing to Apple’s potentially weak shipping momentum for the iPhone later this year in addition to the worst case scenario for the OLED model.

Related Roundup: iPhone 8 (2017)
Tags: Ming-Chi Kuo, OLED
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Mass starvation looms on the horizon, but robots may come to the rescue

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.

Ever since American citizens’ industrial age migration from the country to the city, urban areas have tended to be associated with cutting-edge technologies.

Well, scratch that correlation — because in the age of artificial intelligence, a new research project by Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute is setting out to prove that the country can be every bit as technologically advanced as the smart city.

Called FarmView (not to be confused with FarmVille, the time-wasting game that has overrun Facebook feeds for much of the last decade), the project employs machine learning, drones, autonomous robots, and virtually every other area of big-budget tech research to help farmers grow more food, better and smarter.

“We’ve been doing research into robotics for agriculture for about 15 years now,” George Kantor, Carnegie Mellon senior system cientist, told Digital Trends. “It’s taken a number of different forms, and this was an attempt to pull it all together into one cohesive project.”

“The world population will hit 9.6 billion by 2050.”

But FarmView is way more than just a top-down organizational reshuffle, like making the finance administration team responsible for accounts receivable instead of accounts payable. In fact, it demonstrates a new sense of urgency around this topic, thanks to a statistic that hammered home its importance to the researchers involved.

That stat? According to current predictions, the world population will hit 9.6 billion by 2050. What that means is that if better ways aren’t found to use our limited agricultural resources – including land, water, and energy – a global food crisis may well occur.

“That’s a statistic which really forces us to look for solutions,” Kantor continued. “Technology alone isn’t going to solve this potential crisis; it also involves social and political issues. However, it’s something we think we can help with. It’s not just about how much food there is, either. The way we produce food right now is very resource intensive, and the resources that are available are being used up. We have to increase the amount of food we produce, as well as the quality, but do so in a way that doesn’t assume we have unlimited resources.”

(Photos: Carnegie Mellon University)

As part of the project, the team has developed an autonomous ground robot capable of taking visual surveys of crop fields at different times in the season — courtesy of a camera, a laser scanner to measure plant geometry, and a multispectral camera that looks at nonvisible radiation bands. Using computer vision and machine-learning technology it can predict the expected fruit yield later on in the season.

Rather than just passively passing on this information to a farmer, however, it can then actively trigger the robotic pruning of leaves or thinning of fruit in a way that maintains an optimal ecological balance between leaf area and fruit load.

CMU researchers also use a combination of drones and stationary sensor networks to take macroscale measurements of plant growth.

“Our push now is to start using these tools to solve problems on a large scale.”

While these are definitely smart examples of technology, the really long-lasting impact is going to come from how technologies like leaf-cutting robots and drones can be used to help improve crops.

In this capacity, Kantor pointed toward the crop sorghum, a coarse, dry grass grain that originated thousands of years ago in Egypt. Grain sorghum is widely eaten, and is considered the fifth-most important cereal crop grown in the world. Because it features so many different varieties (a whopping 42,000!), it also has enormous genetic potential for creating new high-protein varieties that could make it even more important.

After all, who’s satisfied with simply being the fifth-most important cereal crop?

That’s where AI comes in. If it’s possible to use machine-learning technology to measure sorghum parameters in such a way that breeders and geneticists can choose the traits most necessary for improved yield, as well as most resistant to disease and drought, it could have a massive positive impact. Just improving the yield alone by, say, 50 percent would represent a realworld impact that very few computer scientists can ever be credited with.

So does this all of this mean that the farm of the future, like the factory of the future, will be largely free of humans — with row after row of gleaming Terminator-style robots carrying out all the work? Not quite.

“We’re not doing this to replace people. What we’re doing is to introduce new technologies that can make farmers more efficient at what they do, and allow them to use fewer resources to do it,” Kantor said. “The scenario we envision doesn’t involve using fewer people; it involves using robotics and other technologies to carry out tasks that humans aren’t currently doing.”

At present, many of the technologies are still at the “proof of concept” phase, but Kantor noted that they’ve had some interesting discussions with agricultural early adopters. Now the project — which also includes folks from Texas A&M, Penn State, Colorado State, Washington State, the University of Maryland, University of Georgia, and South Carolina’s Clemson University — is preparing to hit the big time.

“A lot of people don’t think of this as being the first place to do this kind of research and development, but it’s an area that — and I’m sorry to use this pun, but it’s really unavoidable — is really ripe for progress,” Kantor concluded. “Our push now is to start using these tools to solve problems on a large scale.”