‘Overwatch’ turns one with more skins for your arsenal

Last week, Blizzard answered the susurrous rising from Overwatch fans wondering whether the studio would celebrate the game’s one-year anniversary: Yes, an event was in the works. (And there was much rejoicing.) To commemorate the game’s arrival exactly a year ago, and in recognition of its wild critical and commercial success, Overwatch is launching a new event and releasing a Game of the Year edition for $40. But if you need convincing, the game will be free to play this weekend.

Like each of the half-dozen events in the game’s first year, Overwatch: Anniversary will run a few weeks offering exclusive new skins, sprays, emotes and other tchotchkes in every loot box until it ends on June 12th. After that, it’s unclear when said items will be available again, as previous event exclusives haven’t returned. And if you think the last round of limited-time skins was impressive, wait til you see Super Sentai Green Ranger Genji, dapper Lucio and Cyberlegionary Zarya.

The event also brings three new Arena maps to the game: Necropolis, Castillo and Black Forest. All take design cues from existing levels but are scaled down for the Arcade modes up to 3v3. If you’ve been ignoring the weekly Brawls to avoid having to play on the Arena’s only level prior to this update, Arctic Base, your ship has come in.

If you haven’t bought Overwatch yet, Blizzard’s replaced its Origins edition of the game with a Game of the Year version for $40. It contains all the goodies that the former edition had, including exclusive skins and Overwatch-themed ornamental items for Diablo 3, Starcraft 2 and Hearthstone along with unlocking the character Tracer in Heroes of the Storm — plus ten loot boxes to start filling out your Overwatch collection. The regular version of the game will also get discounted to $30 and players with the core game can upgrade to the GOTY edition for $10, but buy soon: The sale ends on June 5th.

Source: Blizzard

New York forces smart lock maker to improve its security

Smart locks promise the security of a traditional lock without the need to carry around a key. Most can be unlocked with a mobile app or an RFID-equipped card you can store in your wallet. Unfortunately, they’re also pretty easy to hack open. The office of New York’s attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, announced a settlement today with one such smart lock manufacturer. Utah-based Safetech Products has agreed to encrypt all of its smart lock passwords, electronic keys and other credentials within its locks, prompt users to change the default password upon initial setup and establish a more comprehensive security program.

Safetech makes both padlocks and door locks, each available on Amazon. According to the New York AG’s office, independent security researchers found that the company’s locks did not secure passwords or other security information in its locks, which left customers open to hacking and theft.

“Companies employing new technologies must implement and promote good security practices and ensure that their products are secure, including through the use of encryption,” Schneiderman said in a statement. “Together, with the help of companies like Safetech, we can safeguard against breaches and illegal intrusions on our private data.”

While this may be the first time an attorney general has taken legal action against a smart lock company like this, it won’t likely be the last. Kwikset was sued recently for its Smart key lock’s alleged culpability in the rape and murder of a young woman in Florida by the building security guard. While not a true smart lock, the lock in question has a programmable cylinder that can be made to work with any key, which can be used to give temporary access to anyone. It’s also easily broken into with a screwdriver and a paper clip.

As we all turn to smart devices and the Internet of Things in our lives, it becomes even more important to make sure we’re being protected from both hackers and ourselves. The settlement with Safetech could be the first big step towards companies building better security into their smart devices.

The devices in our homes are increasingly connected to the internet—posing new privacy & security risks to consumers. We’re taking action.

— Eric Schneiderman (@AGSchneiderman) May 23, 2017

Source: New York Attorney General’s office

Target settles with 47 states over its 2013 data breach

Believe it or not, Target still isn’t done paying the price for the 2013 breach that exposed the shopping data of tens of millions of customers. The retailer has reached a settlement with 47 states (and the District of Columbia) that will have it pay a collective $18.5 million and institute key reforms. It’ll have to separate its card data from the rest of its network, further control access to its network (such as by implementing two-factor authentication) and run “appropriate” encryption policies. It’ll also have to implement a “comprehensive” info security program with a dedicated executive, and hire an outside firm for security reviews.

As far as settlements go, this is one of the smaller examples. Target is shelling out more than the $10 million it paid to individual victims, but the current settlement is peanuts compared to the $39 million paid to banks and the $67 million Visa agreement. It’s barely comparable to the $19 million MasterCard payout.

However, this will likely serve as yet another reminder that lax security (such as Target’s decision to ignore hack alerts for 12 days) can have long-lasting consequences for retailers, let alone customers. It also represents a closure of sorts Target can spend less time dealing with the fallout from the breach and focus more on reducing the chances of a repeat disaster.

Source: New York Attorney General

Fashion and technology will inevitably become one

There’s no denying that the technology world is obsessed with fashion. Amazon, Apple and Google, three of the biggest names in tech, are all trying to carve their own path into the fashion space. Apple’s doing so with fancy smartwatches, Amazon with a shopping platform and voice-controlled cameras, and Google with conductive fabrics embedded in a smart jacket made by Levi’s. And the interest is mutual. Fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld, Chanel’s creative director, has expressed his love for tech by experimenting with partially 3D-printed pieces and runway shows that simulate a rocket launch. He’s not the only one, either. Zac Posen, with help from fashion house Marchesa, worked with IBM’s Watson supercomputer to create a cognitive dress that lights up and changes colors based on activity on social media.

All of this is to say the line between these two industries is blurring. And now more than ever, it feels like high-tech fashion is on the verge of being more than just a gimmick. In the not-too-distant future, you could even be 3D printing your own shoes or clothes at home. Instead of going to a store, you’ll buy designs straight from the designer. And we’re quickly heading toward a world in which “wearable” will be more than a fancy word for a smartphone accessory. Think about it: Your Apple Watch is basically a brick if you don’t have an iPhone paired with it.

3D printing’s potential

Three-dimensional printing has come a long way and is no longer just for prototyping. Sportswear giant Adidas, for example, is on the way to making 3D-printed shoes a consumer product as part of an effort known as Futurecraft, which began in 2015. Earlier this year, it teamed up with Silicon Valley startup Carbon 3D on a new manufacturing technique called digital light synthesis, which mixes light and oxygen with programmable liquid resins to create 3D objects in a matter of minutes. Adidas says this technology will allow it to 3D-print sneakers on a large scale; it’s planning to ship 100,000 pairs by the end of 2018.

Adidas Futurecraft 4D.

While 3D-printed shoes may at first sound like a gimmick, the reason Adidas is betting on the technology is its customization potential. Imagine being able to walk into a store, hop on a treadmill, have your foot measured to a T and get a pair made based on your results in less than 24 hours. This approach means the shoes would match your footprint elements, including contour details and precise pressure points — which, in turn, could give you the most amount of comfort.

Sponsored athletes already benefit from this, because brands typically custom-make designs for them, but the idea is to expand the concept to every consumer. That’s the future Adidas imagines, one that’s also going to depend on the company’s Speedfactory, a manufacturing facility staffed by robots that can make products at a rapid pace and in high volumes. It’s an automated assembly line that’s straight out of a sci-fi film.

Vanessa Friedman, fashion director and chief fashion critic at The New York Times, says 3D printing will have a significant value for fashion companies down the road, especially if it transforms into a print-it-yourself tool for shoppers. “There’s real sense that this is not going to happen anytime soon,” she says, “but it will happen, and it will create dramatic change in how we think both about intellectual property and how things are in the supply chain.” She adds: “Certainly some of the fabrications that brands can use will be dramatically changed by technology.”

“Power laces, alright!”

Nike, on the other hand, has been busy with self-lacing shoes. What started as a project inspired by nostalgia for the Mag — a prop with power laces worn by Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) in Back to the Future Part II — has turned into something with larger implications. The HyperAdapt 1.0, which features a self-lacing system dubbed E.A.R.L. (Electro Adaptive Reactive Lacing), is essentially the consumer version of Nike’s beloved Mag. The company says one of the reasons it created it is because athletes often complained about their shoes untying during workouts, and HyperAdapt solves that problem because it requires little to no effort when you’re putting it on. It’s a costly solution, though — each pair is a whopping $720.

Still, just like high-definition TVs, they will go from being a luxury item to commonplace over time. While Nike isn’t pitching HyperAdapt or E.A.R.L specifically to people with disabilities (particularly those unable to tie their own shoes), there’s definitely potential there. Nike does have its Ease Challenge, a project that recruits outside designers and engineers to “advance and reinvent footwear design for athletes of all abilities.” This year, Nike awarded $50,000 to the designer of a shoe with a heel counter that acts as a small door for your feet, removing the need to tie laces or use a shoehorn. The winner, Brett Drake, will work with the brand to create a prototype of the design and perhaps eventually bring it to market.

“This is the very first baby step toward having a truly adaptable shoe,” Matt Powell, a sports-industry analyst at research firm NPD, says about Nike’s E.A.R.L. technology. “It isn’t just going to tighten or loosen laces; it could increase or decrease cushioning, it could ventilate or warm [the shoe]. This is a very, very small step in a long path of making footwear that is adjusting to our needs on the fly.”

Smart fabrics

Google’s Advanced Technologies and Projects (ATAP), the group that handles the company’s offbeat innovations (like the now-defunct Project Ara), has been rethinking the very materials clothes are made of. For the past couple of years, the tech giant has been experimenting with conductive fabrics that can make fashion garments smarter. With Project Jacquard, Google created a system for weaving technology that can turn clothes or any other textiles into gesture-controlled surfaces. Google hopes designers and developers will implement this tech in sensor-laden garments that can be used in everyday life, including jeans, T-shirts and jackets.

To show Project Jacquard’s potential, Google teamed up with Levi’s on a connected Commuter denim jacket that has 15 conductive threads on the left sleeve, each just visible enough for you to know where to touch to trigger certain actions. A Bluetooth cuff pairs the jacket to a smartphone, letting you brush your fingers on the smart fabric to check the time or swipe to play music, etc. And Google and Levi’s could make the jacket more interactive.

Levi’s and Google’s Commuter jacket is slated to hit stores this fall for $350, and it’s the first of many products the tech company hopes to see integrate with Jacquard. “We think about Jacquard as a raw material that will make computation a part of the language which apparel designers and textile designers and fashion designers speak,” the company said when it introduced the tech at its I/O developers conference in 2015. “We want digital to be just the same thing as quality of yarn or colors used.”

Google’s Project Jacquard.

The smartphone-dependance

More often than not, technology and fashion seem to have trouble understanding each other — remember that underwhelming tech-themed Met Gala in 2016? So perhaps collaborations like Levi’s’ and Google’s are the way forward. And although it’s unclear if the smart denim jacket will be a success ( it probably won’t be), Google is already planning to work with more fashion labels on future Jacquard projects. Who wants some Gap Jacquard khakis?

Whatever it may be, Friedman says tech companies need to figure out a way to make their fashion products less dependent on smartphones. “Right now we’re just saying, ‘OK, here we have these devices that we all love which is our phones. How can we attach that to something else that we have?’” she says.”I think the real question is: ‘What doesn’t the phone do? What is something completely new that our clothes could do?’”

Kate Sicchio, an assistant professor of integrated digital media at New York University, says the future could be a “more embedded” one, in which the clothes or accessories we wear have a better way of sensing our every move. She says part of the problem now is that the tech industry doesn’t necessarily take the time to fully understand our bodies or movement, but she’s hopeful that’ll change. “Electronics sometimes aren’t flexible enough or don’t form to the body quite right,” she says. “We can’t change the shape of the body, but hopefully we can mold our tech to fit it better.”

Sicchio adds that it’s imperative to move away from the smartphone being the brains of the operation. “That will make a huge difference,” she says. “If we look at the history of ubiquitous computing … in the ’90s, all these MIT researchers had backpacks full of laptops, and now we just have this little [rectangle] we keep in our pocket, and soon that’s going to disappear and it just will be a small microcontroller in our garments.”

We can’t change the shape of the body, but hopefully we can mold our tech to fit it better.

Time to think outside the box

The hope, Sicchio says, is that soon enough we’ll have clothes that will be able to collect your health and fitness data without the need for an auxiliary device like a smartwatch, band or phone. “That’s one of these things that smart fabrics are really good at, they can be on the body and read the body,” says Sacchio “So far, all we’ve done is quantify and measure that rather than apply it. Tech people have to realize there are experts on bodies and movements out there that they should be listening to.”

Still, you get the feeling technology companies are on the verge of a major breakthrough in fashion, and it’s only a matter of time before we see products that are both useful and accessible to everyone. We have to remember that what may seem like a gimmick now could end up laying the ground for something bigger: What if Google’s Jacquard jacket could one day measure your heart rate, along with letting you pick which song to play next? Or if Nike’s self-lacing shoes could also track your step count? That future can’ be far off.

“Breakthroughs are hard,” says Friedman. “They only come every once in awhile, and it requires someone who can really think outside any existing boxes, and most of us are very embedded in our boxes.” It’s hard to see the future, but we can take a guess at what it will look like based on today’s reality. What’s clear is that technology and fashion companies must work together to make this vision more than just a sci-fi fantasy.

Welcome to Tomorrow, Engadget’s new home for stuff that hasn’t happened yet. You can read more about the future of, well, everything, at Tomorrow’s permanent home and check out all of our launch week stories here.

Uber admits New York drivers were underpaid for years

Uber drivers have it tough lately. They have to deal with rate hikes they won’t see directly, company plans for self-driving cars, and higher insurance rates. Uber doesn’t have it much easier, already having settled in January to pay $20 million for exaggerating drivers’ earnings, a loss of love for self-driving cars in Pittsburgh and a CEO caught arguing with one of his own drivers. Now, the company admits to “mistakenly” underpaying New York City Uber drivers over the past two and a half years. Thankfully, Uber plans to refund the drivers what they are owed.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Uber took a higher cut of driver earnings when calculating it’s commission from New York-based drivers. It reportedly took its fee before accounting for a local injury-compensation fund fee and sales tax in New York. The company has promised to refund the money to the region’s drivers at an average of about $900 each. Assuming there are at least 45,000 drivers in the city (as reported by the Independent Drivers Guild union) Uber could end up paying upwards of $40.5 million back to its contractors.

“We are committed to paying every driver every penny they are owed — plus interest — as quickly as possible,” said Rachel Holt, Uber’s Regional General Manager for the US and Canada, in a statement to Engadget. “We are working hard to regain driver trust, and that means being transparent, sticking to our word, and making the Uber experience better from end to end.”

While it seems odd that a company with such high-tech routing software could make such a large accounting error, but at least it’s owning up to the mistake. However, it does seem like the ride-sharing company has more than its fair share of missteps lately.

Source: The Wall Street Journal

Medium’s existential makeover continues with a revamped homepage

Despite its high profile, Medium still hasn’t quite figured out what it is in the five years since it launched as a minimalist blogging platform. In the meantime, Medium has pivoted from tech company to publishing service and various shades in between as it tries to draw an audience, fix “a broken system” and eventually turn a profit. In March, Medium announced an ad-free $5 premium tier with curated content and audio stories, but it seems that experiment has already run its course. After just two months, Medium has made the curated homepage available to everyone.

The “smarter reading experience,” as Medium is calling it, is designed to “deliver a satisfying, completable, and controllable experience for every reader.” In other words: Medium wants make sure you never run out of things to read, preventing that overwhelming feeling that comes with an endless flood of content. What that means in practice is you’ll be able to subscribe to topics of interest like Tech, Politics, Design, Productivity, Culture, etc. and your homepage will populate with a mix of four to six stories from each. The stories in each Topic collection are hand-picked from the platform by Medium editors and there are over 50 to choose from. You can also switch back to the original feed if you prefer to read chronologically.

The feature is currently rolling out to all users on the web and iOS versions, but Android folks will have to wait until the next app update to get it on mobile. As for the $5 Premium membership, Medium is still advertising that tier with access to exclusive content, offline reading and audio versions of top stories.

Via: The Verge

Source: Medium

Google simplifies sharing notes, calendars and photos with family

Google knows that a large part of its customer base probably have families. That’s why it introduced a family plan option to Google Music a couple of years ago, as well as Family Library sharing for the Play Store last year. When YouTube TV launched a few weeks ago, you could add up to five additional family members to your plan from the start. Now, Google is ready to add family-friendly features to even more of its products; namely: Calendar, Keep and Photos.

With Calendar, this means that you can now have a shared family calendar with everyone’s schedules in one place. A shared Keep account means you can share shopping lists and notes so that everyone’s on the same page. And finally, a shared Photos group means that anyone in the family can add photos and videos to the same album without much hassle. To be fair, these are all features that you could already do before; Google is just making it that much easier with a pre-rolled family group that you can create right from the start.

These family sharing features will roll out starting today in Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Russia, Spain, the UK and the US.

Source: Google

China’s LeEco lays US ambitions to rest with massive layoffs

Several days ago, the CEO of Chinese corporation LeEco, Jia Yueting, resigned. While he remains chairman of the company, the move followed worrying announcements over the past six months: Growing so quickly it was running out of cash, selling the site intended for its Silicon Valley headquarters and backing out of a deal to buy Vizio. But today, the axe finally fell for its American operations as the company announced it’s slashing 70 percent of its US workforce due to lack of funding.

LeEco will continue to operate in the US but will focus on the narrower segment of Chinese-speaking households, a spokesperson told Cnet. This partial retreat isn’t surprising, as the company has been in such dire financial straits that it delayed paying its US employees back in April to buy time. But it does mean a severe rollback of its plans to seize some of the US market.

LeEco’s expansion into the US had been tenuous since Jia admitted in a letter back in September that the company had overextended itself without sufficient capital and funding to back up its growth. The Tesla-killer Jia was developing with EV maker Faraday Future might never happen as the latter scrambled for funding at CES lest it go out of business. The shaky automaker did state that its operations wouldn’t be affected by LeEco’s extensive US staff cuts.

Via: Cnet

Apple Files FCC Application to Test Next-Generation 5G Wireless Technology

Apple is planning to test next-generation 5G wireless technologies, according to an application document filed with the FCC and discovered by Business Insider.

Apple applied for an experimental license to test wireless technology on millimeter wave spectrum bands. Millimeter wave bands provide higher bandwidth and throughput up to 10Gb/s, but are limited by line of sight issues that cause problems in dense urban areas.

“Apple Inc. seeks to assess cellular link performance in direct path and multipath environments between base station transmitters and receivers using this spectrum,” Apple wrote in its application.

“These assessments will provide engineering data relevant to the operation of devices on wireless carriers’ future 5G networks,” it continued.

Apple will test the technology in two locations in Milpitas and Cupertino over a period of time that is not expected to exceed 12 months, using equipment sourced from Rohde and Schwarz, A.H. Systems, and Analog Devices. Apple will use the 28 and 39 GHz bands, which were among those opened up by the FCC last year for the purpose of next-generation 5G broadband.

It’s not entirely clear why Apple is planning to test millimeter wave performance or the purpose behind the testing. Cellular carriers like AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile are currently testing 5G networks in preparation to deploy the next-generation technology in the coming years.

Apple could perhaps be preparing its future iPhones to take advantage of 5G technology, or the company may have some other purpose in mind. As Business Insider points out, the 28GHz band in particular could be of interest as it has been earmarked for earth-to-space transmissions, an area Apple has been exploring based on recent hires with satellite expertise.

Tags: FCC, 5G
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Sky Dancer: A Temple Run-style game for all the dreamers out there (Review)

Overview

Endless runner-style games aren’t a novelty, but the poetically named Sky Dancer manages to distinguish itself from the slew of Temple Run alternatives out there.

Not only does Sky Dancer provide gamers with challenging gameplay, but it also creates a unique atmosphere thanks to its beautiful graphics and immersive music. Did I get your attention? Keep reading below to find out more.

Developer: Pine Entertainment

Price: Free

Impressions

If you’ve been playing Temple Run before, you’ll have no problem navigating the word of Sky Dancer. At first you play a character called Tharbadis, a martial arts experts of sorts, whose objective is to jump down platform, avoid obstacles and collect as many coins as possible.

There are actually 10 different Sky Dancers characters available and more will be coming with future updates. However, you’ll need to collect orbs of light and coins to unlock additional characters.

Game controls are quite simple. You keep running automatically and tapping on both sides of the display will make your character jump over an obstacle or from one platform to another. Tap left or right to control the direction of your character. In theory it sounds quite simple, but in reality it proves quite challenging.

Navigating through the air towards the next platform is probably what makes this game so hard to master. My strategy, after numerous failures – mind you, involves moving in the general direction of the platform while in the air, and making some last minute adjustments as the character reaches the platform.

At first, when you make the plunge it’s quite complicated to approximate the location of the platform and sometimes you end up moving the character too far to the left or right, only to see it get swallowed up by the void.  But after numerous trials, I finally managed to get the gist.

Gamers can gain more points by completing Challenges like Dive across a chasm or Survive for 30 seconds and Perform a precise jump right after a perfect landing. The majority of missions are accumulative and can be completed after multiple attempts.

But to be frank, it’s not the game play that drew me to the game, but its almost-dreamlike atmosphere. You see, the game is dominated by an eerie sentiment, as the world of Sky Dancer seems remotely distant from our own with its peculiar geography and spectacular sunsets and exponentially large moon. Atmospheric effects allow you to start the game at sunrise or sundown and as to advance through the levels watch the moon rise in the distance.

There’s not much of a story to backup game play in Sky Dancer, but for me this proved to be a positive feature, as it allowed me to create my own narrative – one involving an alien race descendant from humans, fighting for survival on a distant planet.

While the app is free to download and play, but you should be aware there are in-game purchases that can get you coins or new characters. The game is also ad-supported, so expect a few annoying ads to pop up while  you’re navigating the game’s settings or such.

Video ads are also present – but the good news is that they are hidden behind an optional button that appears when you die. Even so, the ads do not disturb game play in any way, so you can expect a seamless game experience.

I couldn’t finish off this review without mentioning the game should run fluidly on most devices. I didn’t have a problem playing it on my average-specced Samsung Galaxy A3 (2016) – no random freezes or slowing down of game play involved.

Conclusion

The game’s developers freely admit they have created Sky Dancer out of their passionate love for Temple Run. Still Pine Entertainment took things to the next level with Sky Dancer by placing the gamer within unearthly world full of mystery and wonder. The simple controls and engaging playing style also contribute to the unforgettable experience that is Sky Dancer.

Download Sky Dancer from the Google Play Store