Highway to the top-notch tech zone with MrMobile and Modern Dad!

GoPro and solar and watches — oh, my! It’s Top Notch Tech with MrMobile and Modern Dad!

Previously, on MrMobile Meets ModernDad, I took a look at some sweet home tech used by my paternal pal. But Modern Dad also likes to be mobile on occasion, and I’d been eyeing the sweet little camera known as the GoPro Hero5 Black (on sale for $349!) that he’s had on hand. Think about it. … Is there anything better than a tiny 4K camera that fits in the palm of your hand, with a built-in waterproof case?

The question was where to play with such a perfect picture-taker. Well, when in Pensacola you’ve got to make a trek to the beach. Or, in our case, 190 feet above the beach, in a historic lighthouse overlooking a beautiful blue bay, the Gulf of Mexico, and Pensacola Naval Air Station. From there we visited the National Museum of Naval Aviation — and, yes, we nerded out just a bit.

One other thing Florida is famous for is (off and on) the sheer amount of sun. And a perfect little accessory for that is a solar-powered charger, like the little 15-watt model from Anker ($49)that we took a look at on an, erm, anchor. That was a very cool little thing.

From there it was back to the Modern Dad office for a few more of our favorite things. All in all, a successful and fun week in Florida!

Be sure to subscribe to Modern Dad, and start thinking about how we can lure him up north once we’ve got a couple of feet of snow on the ground!

Featured products

• GoPro Hero5 Black
• Anker 15W solar charger
• Withings Steel HR
• Withings Wireless Blood Pressure Monitor
• Withings Body scale
• [Casio WSD-F20](http://moderndad.com/snXg

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Playing witness to an android riot in ‘Detroit: Become Human’

I don’t know when I’ll get to play Detroit: Become Human again. The latest game from David Cage’s Quantic Dream studio (Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls) conspicuously didn’t have a release date, or, hell, even a release year when Sony showed off a brand new demo at its media briefing earlier this week. Behind closed doors I was shown an extended version of the stage demo and saw just how an android riot starts.

At every turn there were at least a few choices to make, and some were beyond the binary “peaceful” or “violent” options. Peaceful protest meant doing things like tagging park benches or planting a flag at the top of a building. Inciting a riot was a bit more… hands-on. Tossing bricks through windows, driving a garbage truck through an android showroom’s plate glass window, flipping cars and starting fires were the order of the snowy night. And once the Motown square was razed the presentation was over and I was able to go outside and play last year’s previously hands-off demo, which centered on an android hostage negotiator.

I was pressed for time, so I wasn’t able to fully explore the penthouse apartment for evidence to see how and why the android nanny was holding his charge hostage on the rooftop. Going out to the rooftop with less than 50 percent of the evidence (there’s a confidence meter of sorts) I wasn’t sure what would happen. I screwed up my first attempts at winning the caretaker over and sensed things were about to go south.

Surprisingly, I was able to salvage the situation, but at a great cost. At the last minute I reached out and grabbed the little girl, just as the nanny started falling backward off the roof, pushing myself in the adolescent’s place and getting her to the roof. Then I reflexively covered my mouth as my character, the negotiator, started falling backward in slow motion toward the Motor City street below. For people who played Mass Effect 3, this should be a familiar scene.

Because this is a David Cage game, that would mean in the full version that this character’s story would end. Yes, I saved the girl, and got a “mission accomplished” but at the cost of seeing where the negotiator’s narrative thread would end. For a demo, it’s not a huge deal. But in the full game, whenever it comes out, that means missing out on a huge swath of story.

Despite the game not having a release date and being an alpha build, everything looked incredible on a visual level. There were a few hitches in animations here and there, but on the Sony 4K TV (which looked like an OLED; I wasn’t able to confirm) connected to PS4 Pro hardware, faces were incredibly expressive and detailed, skirting the uncanny valley for a slightly stylized appearance. That’s to say nothing of how detailed and believably cluttered the environments were in each demo.

It only takes me around three hours to drive to the real Detroit, but I still can’t wait until whenever Quantic Dream is done with its virtual version so I can see how an android uprising plays out.

Follow all the latest news from E3 2017 here!

A chat with the 76ers’ first all-female eSports team, Dignitas

The Philadelphia 76ers bought Team Dignitas — an established esports organization with teams across League of Legends, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Heroes of the Storm — in September, making it the first North American sports franchise to plant a flag in the world of professional gaming. In February, Dignitas picked up its first all-female professional team with players from Selfless Gaming, which had just placed second at the Electronic Sports World Cup in Bordeaux, France.

“We went from literally having nothing — we were all sleeping in one small hotel room together, six of us,” team founder Emmalee “EMUHLEET” Garrido recalled on the Engadget E3 stage. “We would make our own jerseys. … We went from having to deal with that to being part of team Dignitas and the 76ers, which I still can’t believe to this day because it’s amazing.”

Garrido joined teammate Catherine “Cath” Leroux and Feminist Frequency founder Anita Sarkeesian on-stage to discuss the realities of playing games professionally, full-time and as women in a male-dominated market.

“I think the scene is growing magnificently with female players,” Garrido said. “And if you look around, there’s so many more people around here at E3 that are females, and it’s very nice to see because I think we’ve always loved playing video games, but back when I was younger, it wasn’t the thing to do for girls — it’s nice for us to be role models who show that you can play video games. You can even play competitively if you want to.”

Follow all the latest news from E3 2017 here!

This is the OnePlus 5

OnePlus starts airing the first OnePlus 5 promo in India — giving us a look at the full device, front and back.

OnePlus showed off a teaser of the OnePlus 5 earlier this month, giving us a look at the dual rear cameras and an early look at the design on offer. We’ve received other leaks since then, and today the company is showing off the device in its entirety in its first official TV spot.

Airing in India during the finals of the ICC Champions Trophy cricket tournament, the ad features OnePlus India brand ambassador and Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan unboxing what looks to be a OnePlus 5, with an official render of the device itself showcased at the end.

The phone lines up with previous leaks, showing off a design with curved sides, dual cameras at the back, antenna lines at the top and bottom edges, front fingerprint sensor, and an understated aesthetic that looks great in black. The OnePlus 5 will likely be sold in four color options, and is confirmed to run the Snapdragon 835.

With millions of people around India tuning in to watch the game, OnePlus picked the right time to air the commercial. In a country obsessed with cricket, there isn’t a match that has the same allure as a final where India is playing Pakistan. And that’s exactly what’s happening today at the Kennington Oval in London.

The OnePlus 5 is slated for an official unveiling on June 20, and will be launching in India on June 22, where OnePlus is hosting a major launch event.

OnePlus 5

• Latest OnePlus 5 rumors
• OnePlus 5 confirmed to have Snapdragon 835
• OnePlus 3T discontinued to make room for OnePlus 5

OnePlus

Ben Heck’s Logic Gate board game: Finding a purpose

The team’s having trouble with the Logic Gate board game and needs your input. Behind all good games is a fun concept, whether it’s racking up points or solving puzzles. Now, the team needs help identifying what this could be for their Logic Gate board game. Also in this episode, Ben puts together the pieces for programming the LCD screen, getting it to display a set of logical operators, such as NOR, AND and OR, by setting up the hardware as a USB mass storage device to easily copy across the puzzles. As Karen and Ben debate the game’s purpose, you can head over to the element14 Community and share your own two cents.

Monsanto bets on AI to protect crops against disease

Monsanto has drawn plenty of criticism for its technology-driven (and heavily litigious) approach to agriculture, but its latest effort might just hint at the future of farming. It’s partnering with Atomwise on the use of AI to quickly discover molecules that can protect crops against disease and pests. Rather than ruling out molecules one at a time, Atomwise will use its deep learning to predict the likelihood that a given molecule will have the desired effect. It’s whittling down the candidate list to those molecules that are genuinely promising.

The move could save massive amounts of time and money. Monsanto notes that typical crop protection takes 11 years to reach the market, and costs $250 million to develop. The AI collaboration could help the company turn a quicker profit, of course, but it could also help the agricultural industry tackle diseases and infestations before they do too much damage. It might also give researchers more time to look into possible side effects that could harm benign insects and bacteria.

Via: Feedstuffs, St. Louis Business Journal

Source: Monsanto

Jupiter is the oldest planet in the Solar System

Jupiter’s ancient name really is well-deserved: according to a new study, the king of the planets isn’t just the largest in the Solar System, it’s also the oldest. A team of researchers from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and the University of Munster in Germany have determined that Jupiter’s core was already 20 times the size of Earth merely 1 million years after the sun took shape 4.6 billion years ago. Since newborn stars tend to release energy that blows away gas and dust for planet formation, the gas giant must have had to absorb materials very, very fast.

The team came to the conclusion after testing for the presence and abundances of molybdenum and tungsten isotopes in some iron meteorites that fell to Earth. They found that the meteorites contained components from two distinct reservoir of materials, thanks to the data from the molybdenum isotopes. One reservoir has material from a different star than ours that didn’t make it to the other reservoir. The data from the tungsten isotopes, on the other hand, showed that the two pools of materials were separated for 2 to 3 million years. In addition, they’ve been separated as early as a million years into the formation of the solar system.

The team explained that “the most plausible mechanism to efficiently separate two disk reservoirs for an extended period is the accretion of a giant planet in between them.” Yes, that gas giant is Jupiter, and while its formation slowed as the years went by, it kept growing and growing enough to create a permanent barrier between the two pools. The researchers now believe that it could also be the reason why there are no super-Earths near the sun, which are commonly found in other star systems. That means we could owe our existence to Jupiter, because who knows if and how life would flourish on Earth if it’s too near other, more massive planets.

Via: Space

Source: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

How Red Bull captured a 1,200-mile trek through Vietnam for ‘Blood Road’

Red Bull’s latest documentary is much more than an action adventure film.

Rebecca Rusch had a story to tell. The world-class endurance mountain bike racer and Red Bull athlete is known for her incredible feats of daring and adventure, but this story was about much more than that. It was something personal; so personal that when she approached Red Bull Media House with the idea for a documentary, the studio decided to produce the entire thing in-house – the first time it had ever done that for a feature-length film.

The result is Blood Road, which, on the surface, is an outdoor adventure film not unlike numerous others to which the energy drink company has lent its name. In it, Rusch, along with riding partner Huyen Nguyen, travel the length of the Ho Chi Minh Trail by mountain bike – 1,200 miles in total, through dense jungles and rushing rivers. But underneath, Blood Road is about much more than that. It’s about discovery, growth, and personal change.

Some 40 years prior to her setting out on the trail, Rusch’s father, an Air Force pilot in the Vietnam War, was shot down. Many years later, his remains were eventually recovered and identified. Blood Road is the story of Rusch’s search for his crash site, and her search for the father who died before she was old enough to even remember him.

Blood Road is the story of Rebecca Rusch’s search for the father who died before she was old enough to remember him.

This is the reason that Red Bull Media House kept the production under one roof, according to director Nicholas Schrunk. “Because of the nature of this story being so personal to Rebecca and all the intricacies and the detail of what we had to do to pull it off, this was really the first project where it fully made sense for us to do it in-house,” he told Digital Trends.

While the journey itself would last 23 days on the trail, it would take three years to finish the film. Preparing for the project was no easy task, and while the small crew and support staff would need to be able to travel light, Schrunk did not want to sacrifice his desired look for the film. Early on, he had decided to go with anamorphic lenses – a type of lens historically used in Hollywood to achieve a widescreen look that has seen a resurgence in modern digital cinema, thanks to its unique optical properties.

“With anything, you want to adhere to a visual style that supports the story,” Schrunk explained. “This was such a personal story that I wanted to find a way to document it that really brought he human characters to life.”

The anamorphic lenses created a warmer, softer look that helped breathe life into skin tones and wasn’t as hyper-sharp and clinical as many modern lenses can be. But it wasn’t just the human characters that needed to be brought to life. One of Schrunk’s secret weapons was a Cooke I 65mm anamorphic macro lens, the first one to roll off the production line. It would be used for close-up shots of the maps, which Schrunk says became their own characters in the film.

Josh Letchworth

Josh Letchworth

Josh Letchworth

Josh Letchworth

Additional lenses used included a 32mm, 50mm, and 100mm – all from the Cooke i-series. Schrunk decided on Cooke lenses because they could hold up to the extreme temperature and moisture changes in the jungle, where older or cheaper alternatives would have failed. In a setting with no room for redundancy and no time to send lenses in for service, the crew needed gear that they could rely on 100 percent.

But in this type of production, those Cooke lenses came with one significant drawback: they were very large and heavy. On the single-track trail, the six-person film crew would be traveling by way of dirt bike. That meant all of the gear had to be packed into backpacks, and as they wouldn’t be returning to a home base at the end of each day, they had to be able to carry absolutely everything with them – not just production gear, but also food, water, clothing, and first aid equipment.

With the Cooke lenses locked in, the crew had to save space elsewhere, starting with the cameras. They elected to use the carbon fiber version of the Red Dragon, which may be large compared to a consumer camcorder, but significantly smaller than other professional cinema cameras from the likes of Sony and Arri. The team also coordinated with local drivers who could transport larger pieces of equipment in trucks, meeting up with them every few days as the trail allowed.

An eye in the sky

Another critical component of the film’s visuals was the aerial photography, which does much more than give the film that “epic” look that drone enthusiasts lust after. In this case, letting the audience look down from the sky was integral to telling the story.

“Aerial shots were really important because that was the way Rebecca’s father, as a pilot, saw the country,” said Schrunk. They also revealed landscapes that just couldn’t be viewed adequately from the ground. “There are whole fields of bomb craters that are still there. If you get a camera up in the air, you can really see the extent of the impact of the bombing campaign.”

In order to improve the quality of the GoPros, the stock lenses were stripped out and replaced.

The crew relied on two different drones to achieve these shots: two DJI Phantom II (which was new at the time) and a massive Freefly CineStar that could support the weight of a Red Dragon, Cooke I lens, and a Movi gimbal. The CineStar was too large to travel by motorbike on the trail, but the team would use it whenever they could link up with the transport vehicles.

The Phantom IIs, on the other hand, were great because they could travel in a backpack and get airborne within seconds when needed. The problem is that the GoPro Hero4 cameras they were outfitted with didn’t match the look of the rest of the film. Or at least, not by default.

In order to improve the quality of the GoPros, the stock lenses were stripped out and replaced with custom lenses with narrower angles of view and anamorphic elements. Snake River Prototyping, a company specializing in custom GoPro and drone accessories, then made bespoke neutral density (ND) filters for those lenses, which would allow the GoPros to shoot at slower shutter speeds, bringing the look of the footage in line with that of the Red cinema cameras.

Josh Letchworth

During a pick-up shoot, the crew was able to use a DJI Inspire 1 RAW with a Micro Four Thirds (MFT) mount. Even then, the consumer MFT lens they used was first shipped off to Duclos Lenses to have its coatings stripped in order to get it to flare more and look closer the anamorphic lenses.

An emotional journey

In the end, every detail of production was about conveying the feeling of the film. What started as an intense journey and a struggle against the elements became a much deeper, more profound experience. After spending 23 days together on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, Schrunk and the crew weren’t just outside observers to the story, they were living it. This allowed them to connect on an individual level to Rusch’s story, which aided their ability to document it. This is something that Schrunk hopes comes across to the audience.

While the film contains all of the elements of a traditional adventure epic, including the exploration of culture and environment, it also goes beyond that. “It’s an emotional journey of a daughter looking for her father,” Schrunk said. “So people will get this feeling of adventure, but my hope is that they really see that emotional journey and see Rebecca change, and live this story through her. It’s her change as a character which is what I think we were the most successful at documenting.”

Blood Road is currently screening around the country and will be available for purchase on June 20. For a screening schedule and more information, head to the film’s official website.

Galaxy S8 update gets rid of the black navigation bar, lets you auto-hide nav keys

Galaxy S8 picks up a slew of new features in latest update, but not all of them are great.

The Galaxy S8 and S8+ are receiving an update that brings the June 1, 2017 security patch along with several UI tweaks. There’s now an icon to the left of the navigation bar that lets you auto-hide the navigation keys when you’re in an app. allowing you to make full use of that 18.5:9 panel. You can toggle it with a quick tap, giving you the option to automatically hide or display the navigation bar.

If you don’t like the auto-hide feature, you can disable it entirely from the settings by going to Settings > Display > Navigation bar > Show and hide button. The update also limits the color options that can be used as the navigation bar’s background. Previously, you could use an RGB scale to tweak the background to your liking, but Samsung now offers a narrow set of seven light colors. With the update, there isn’t an option to use a black navigation bar.

Samsung is also making it easier to use apps in fullscreen mode. There’s a button that sits above the navigation bar that allows you to go fullscreen mode for apps that don’t support the Galaxy S8’s native 18.5:9 resolution. The prompt has the self-explanatory label, “Tap here to fill entire screen.” Once you hit the button, the app will restart and launch in fullscreen mode.

The lack of a black navigation bar is certainly an annoyance, and there’s no reasoning as to why Samsung decided to roll out the change. It is possible the manufacturer was worried about burn-in issues on the AMOLED panel. The update comes in at 454.18MB, and is now rolling out in India. It should be available in other markets shortly.

Hackers stole credit card data from Buckle stores’ cash registers

If you shopped at Buckle in the past several months, you might want to check your financial statements — the clothing store has confirmed a Krebs on Security report of a data breach. Intruders planted malware on the chain’s cash register systems to steal credit card data between October 28th, 2016 and April 14th, 2017. The potential data loss is limited if you used a relatively secure chip-based card, but it’s much worse if you relied on the magnetic stripe. The malware looked at stripe tracking data to collect names, card numbers and expiration dates.

Buckle says it “promptly” took steps to investigate and scrub the malware (which didn’t touch its online store), but it’s not clear how many customers could have been affected or who’s behind the breach. If the attackers wanted, though, they could have used the info to duplicate cards and go on shopping sprees.

The incident is a reminder of the ongoing problems with magnetic card security at American stores, some of which aren’t the fault of the retailers. It’s clearly a problem that Buckle didn’t catch the malware for months, and that we’re only hearing about the breach two months after Buckle resolved it. However, there’s only so much that shops can do to mitigate the damage from these thefts. Some American banks still haven’t issued chip-based cards, and you aren’t obliged to replace an existing stripe-only card until it expires. It may take years before chips dominate American shopping the way they do in other countries, and that makes it all too tempting to hijack their point-of-sale systems in the meantime.

Via: Krebs on Security

Source: Buckle