Reader Poll: Build your own gaming desktop, or let someone else take care of it?

Gaming desktops come in all shapes and sizes. From the pint-sized powerhouses to the giant machines built for storage and stability, there are too many ways to put it all together, and while some choices are wacky, few are outright wrong, if they fit the user. Which brings us to our weekly reader poll. When it comes to gaming desktops, do you like to build your own, pick one up off the shelf, or pay a bit more for something custom-tailored for you and assembled by a professional?

You're purchasing a new gaming desktop. Working within your personal budget, which do you choose?

— Digital Trends (@DigitalTrends) July 17, 2017

The first option is the most technical, but can also be the most rewarding. Building your own system requires picking out the parts, shopping for the best deals, learning how to put everything in the right place, and troubleshooting any issues that may arise. The upshots are plentiful. You’ll get a way better deal, learn about the components inside a system, and at the end of it all, you’ll have a system tailor made just for whatever your needs may be, with an appropriate power level for your favorite games.

For those with plenty of cash to throw around, there’s a more bespoke approach from PC builders like Origin PC, Falcon Northwest, or AVADirect. These systems use the same off-the-shelf parts that you might buy while building your own system, but often come with premium features like overclocking right out of the box, or special aesthetic options like paint jobs and coordinated RGB lighting. They run a sharp premium for the time the builder puts in, which also saves you the headache of troubleshooting issues or having to make a warranty claim on that GPU that was dead on arrival.

If you don’t want to spend the time, and don’t want to pay extra for premium service, pre-built systems from big box manufacturers provide a more one-size-fits-all solution to desktop gaming without breaking the bank. That said, these systems tend to cheap out with stripped-down, custom motherboards, and reference style cards without an overclock. With few options, you can also end up with systems that have fatal flaws, like missing SSDs or awkward chassis and cooling problems.

Want to learn a new language, ‘Thrones’ fans? Why not High Valyrian?

Why it matters to you

With season 7 finally here, Game of Thrones mania is at its peak. If you can’t get enough, learn how to speak High Valyrian via Duolingo.

For many, learning a new language is a great way to simultaneously engage your brain and feel productive. Whether you want to learn Spanish for everyday use or French for an upcoming European vacation, tools like Rosetta Stone and Fluenz are effective ways to teach yourself a language much faster than a community college class would, for example.

Today, there are lots of mobile apps dedicated to teaching you any language your heart desires. Duolingo, one of the most prominent, offers more than 20 different languages, taught to users via a series of game-like quizzes — all (well, mostly) for free! Just in time for the season 7 premiere of Game of Thrones, the Duolingo team revealed its latest course: High Valyrian.

For those unfamiliar with Game of Thrones (or, as it were, George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice And Fire book series, where the language appears more frequently), Valyrian is the language spoken by the Targaryen family, descendants of Old Valyria — a bygone empire once known as the most powerful in the fictional world, located in Essos, southeast of the Free Cities. In its heyday, the Valyrian Freehold was home to the Dragonlords, a collection of noble families in possession (and control) of dragons.

In the television series, Valyria is nothing more than a distant memory — a ruined empire seen by Tyrion Lannister and Jorah Mormont during their voyage in season 5. The only remaining Targaryen and the only character who speaks Valyrian in the show is Daenerys Stormborn (First of her name, the Unburnt, et cetera), although several characters in Essos speak different dialects of the language in earlier seasons.

The language, which spent several months in Duolingo’s Incubator, was created by David J. Petersen, who is known for his work developing fictional languages and teaching courses on them. Peterson provided updates via the Incubator under the pseudonym Valyrio Māzitas, which translates to “Valyrian is coming.” As Valyrian is spoken sparely by characters in the series, Petersen constructed the language largely around the phrases “Valar Morghulis” and “Valar Dohaeris”, which translate to “All men must die” and “All men must serve,” respectively.

He is also largely responsible for developing the Dothraki language spoken in the show. If you would like to learn Dothraki, Living Language offers a course. The Duolingo course for High Valyrian is available now, but it’s technically in a beta phase, so it is possible that there are some hiccups or errors. To download Duolingo for free, head to the iOS App Store or the Google Play Store.

Google says goodbye to the blob emoji, keeps memory alive through sticker pack

Why it matters to you

If you’re upset about losing the old Android blob emoji, you can download the emoji-themed sticker pack in Google Allo.

After Google revealed its new emoji support in the first beta of Android O back in March, the redesign took them from “blobs” to a more realistic design similar to the emojis you would see in iOS. On Monday — World Emoji Day — Google took to its blog to officially say goodbye to the old Android emoji while reassuring users blob emoji-themed stickers will be available in Google Allo.

While the blog post pulls out all of the dramatic and satirical stops for the farewell, Google’s Twitter mentions might prove otherwise. After encouraging its followers to tweet the hashtag #BlobVoyage, the thread proves users are genuinely upset about the new redesign and don’t actually want to say goodbye to the “blobs.”

The company explains that the change was extremely necessary in order to provide emojis that were similar in appearance across all platforms — whether it’s iOS, Samsung, or Windows. The new design system — such as the reusable components — also helps make future emojis a lot easier to build keeping them more unified, vibrant, and consistent.

To make letting go of the traditional gumdrop smileys a bit easier, users can still access them in the form of stickers via Allo — one of Google’s messaging apps. Allo features Google Assistant — the AI-powered tool that’s always there to serve you things like appointment reminders or restaurant recommendations — along with Smart Reply, which suggests customized responses to your messages, and a GIF search function.

In March, animated emojis joined the list of features within Allo. After choosing a particular emoji, users animate it by dragging it up and down before hitting send. Among other creative features in the messaging tool are doodling on photos or adding text to it, and adjusting the size of your text depending on the emotions behind it.

Allo had also been given a major update when it comes to its interface with a monochrome theme and landscape orientation. Users can reply to messages directly from notifications on iOS and Android  In terms of stickers, users can choose from a variety of different artwork designed by studios from around the globe and independent artists. Google has collaborated with third parties in the past such as Netflix to create a Stranger Things sticker pack and Star Wars stickers in honor of Disney’s Rogue One.

While it’s unclear whether the sticker pack will be enough to cure the sadness people are experiencing from having to say goodbye to the precious “blobs,” it could be enough to fill the void. It might also be Google’s incentive for new users to download Allo and for existing users to send messages more frequently.

7 food porn apps so scrumptious they’ll leave you salivating for more

It’s safe to say that food porn — shorthand for the snaps of colorful brunches cluttering your Facebook feed — is a booming trend. At publication time, a search for the hashtag “#FoodPorn” on Instagram alone yielded more than 122 million listings. Given the surge in popularity, it’s not surprising to find food porn apps on the rise.

Finding the best food porn apps isn’t always easy, though — sometimes, it’s tough to sort through the noise. To help get you started, we’ve rounded up the best food photography apps on iOS and Android we’ve found so far. We’ll update this list regularly as new apps hit the scene.

Searching for something else? Satisfy your cravings with the best food delivery apps, the best food and drink apps for iOS, the best cooking apps, and the best grocery delivery apps.

Hipstamatic with Foodie SnapPak

If you’ve ever dabbled in iPhone photography, you’ve probably encountered Hipstamatic, the award-winning camera app that is filled to the brim with digital filters, flashes, and lenses that mimic the look of yesteryear’s analog cameras. It boasts a manual mode that lets you adjust parameters like exposure, clarity, temperature, easy-to-use presets that sync with iCloud, and a photo editor that saves snaps in a non-destructive file format (i.e., one that lets you undo any edits you make). And an add-on called Foodie SnapPak makes Hipstamatic even more powerful.

The Foodie SnapPak, which is available from Hipstamatic’s HipstaMart Shop, features two new filters inspired by London-based food photo artist David Loftus: The Foodie Lens and Film Pak. With the filters applied, food photos get sharp focus near the center of the image that contrasts with a subtle, hazy vignette around the edges — an effect that looks tailor-made for social media.

Download now for:

iOS

Yummi

If you’re the kind of person who could spend hours browsing food photos on social media, Yummi might be the app for you. It’s a new network packed with features for food obsessives, like a meal organizer that categorizes entries by date and cuisine, a geo-tagging option that shows popular dishes and restaurants closest to you, and a nifty bookmarking tool that saves your favorite foods, locations, cuisines, and hashtags. But there’s more to Yummi than food suggestions and restaurant recommendations. You can post snaps yourself using the app’s built-in camera tools, and sort photos you’ve taken by date or location.

If there’s one thing Yummi doesn’t handle as well as the competition, it’s workflow — besides a cropping tool, there aren’t any adjustable parameters to speak of. But as long as you don’t mind editing snaps with another app, Yummi offers one of the most polished food-browsing experiences around.

Download now for:

Android iOS

Foodie

Foodie, a camera app from the folks behind the popular Line messaging app, aims to “make [your] food pictures more delicious” with a “cornucopia” of features. One of those are filters categorized by “Meat,” Sushi,” “Cake” (26 in all) and other self-descriptive and applies an automatic blurring effect to give images an SLR photography feel. Foodie’s brightness and flashlight features give you more shooting options, and a “best perspective” feature that shows you how to perfectly position the camera above the subject.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Foodie connects to social media accounts like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and helpfully lets you know when the snap you were about to share needs a little TLC — like when it’s too dim, or angled improperly.

Download now for:

Android iOS

Foodgawker

Foodgawker, a nascent social network for self-professed foodies, may not come close to Facebook and Instagram in terms of raw numbers, but it makes up in diversity what it lacks in size. The app boasts a library of more than 325,000 food and drink posts from thousands of food bloggers, each individually curated by editors and updated every day. That includes foreign recipes, which Foodgawker translates to your native tongue on the fly. Foodgawker’s intuitive, infinitely scrolling feed lets you sort images by “Most Favorited” and “Date Posted,” and a handy note/tag feature helps you bookmark favorites.

If you sign in with a Foodgawker.com account, your bookmarked recipes sync with the web app automatically, but Foodgawker doesn’t try to keep you in its walled garden. The app’s sharing features play nicely with Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, e-mail, and more, and even generate links to relevant recipes and blog posts.

Download now for:

iOS

Tender

You’ve probably heard of Tinder, the dating app that serves up photos of matches you approve (or deny) with a swipe. But chances are you’ve never used Tender, a self-described “Tinder for Food” that’s designed to help you find recipes you’ve never tried before. Tender, just like Tinder, customizes results by asking for preferences like favorite cuisine, likes and dislikes, and dietary needs. Once it knows enough about the foods you prefer to cook, Tender pulls up a Tinder-like photo album of recipes that you can save by swiping to the right, discard by swiping to the left, or save to a running “Cookbook.” Viewing a recipe’s details is as easy as tapping a picture, and search tags make sorting through long lists of bookmarked content as easy as apple pie.

Tender, just like Tinder, packs social features. You can share your Cookbook with followers and Facebook friends, and follow other folks who’ve done the same. It’s bare bones, but by design: Tender lets food, not features, take center stage.

Download now for:

Android iOS

Tastemade

Tastemade isn’t like most food photography apps. Instead, it’s sort of like the Food Network of cooking apps — a network of cooking classes, video recipes, entertainment food, and travel shows, all published for free on the web. Tastemade publishes its content on social channels like Snapchat, Twitter, and Facebook, but normally, you’d have to seek it out. The app puts all of it at your fingertips.

On Tastemade, you’ll find series hosted by celebrity chefs like Julie Nolke, Jen Phanomrat, Erwan Heussaff, Frankie Celenza, and Katie Quinn, plus step-by-step recipes across categories like “Healthy,” “Vegetarian,” “Dessert,” and “Breakfast.” Most are free, but ponying up $8 a month nets you Tastemade Plus, the app’s premium tier. Among the benefits included are unlimited saves of recipes, videos, and shows, new in-depth cooking classes every week, original programming, and access from any device, platform, and location.

Download now for:

Android iOS

Foodspotting

Foodspotting, once a digital pioneer in food photography and restaurant recommendations, hasn’t seen a major update since 2014, shortly after it was acquired by OpenTable. But despite the app’s stagnation, Foodspotting’s core features and community are alive and kicking.

Foodspotting, like Instagram, lets you post pictures of your favorite dishes for the world to see, but there’s more to it than pretty pictures. You can scout out restaurants by searching across categories and locations, or drill down to pictures and reviews of individual menu items. Foodspotting serves up recommendations from experts and designated “Foodspotters,” and lets you contribute your own opinion on dishes you’ve tried.

If you see a pic or dish you like, you can express your appreciation by tapping the “Loved it!” button, or by starring it for later perusal.

Download now for:

Android iOS

Canon Pixma TS9020 review

Research Center:
Canon Pixma TS9020

Canon’s strength in photography includes its photo printers, not just cameras. The company’s new Pixma TS-series replaces the MG-series, but at heart they remain the same – all-in-one (AIO) inkjet printers for the home – and serve the same customer. In this Canon Pixma TS9020 review, we take a look at the flagship model: a six-color multifunction printer that prints, scans, and copies, with the added bonus of producing excellent quality photo output up to 8×10 inches. Since it’s intended for the home, and not office, it lacks an automatic document feeder (ADF) and fax, but these omissions are unlikely to figure heavily in the purchase decision for what is a very good photo printer.

Features and design

With the TS-series, Canon has redesigned the look of its consumer inkjet models — less curvy, more boxy. We know taste is subjective, but we find the compact all-in-one (14.7 x 12.8 x 5.6 inches; 15 pounds) sleek, with its two-tone, glossy black and white exterior (it’s also available in red). Lift the white lid up to reveal the flatbed scanner.

The front panel has a 5-inch color LCD that’s touch-sensitive and easy to read. The panel, which also has the power button and near-field communication (NFC) tag for mobile printing (requires compatible devices, mainly Android), tilts up in order to extend the output tray. Tilt the panel all the way up, and you can access the special tray for printing on supported optical media (Canon’s software includes a print utility that lets you create impressive custom CD and DVD labels).

Hiding behind that panel is a lone SD card slot. You can pop the SD card from your digital camera, review the photos on the printer’s LCD, and print the ones you want. Gone are the multiple slots for the various formats before everyone settled on SD, but note that the printer only supports SD and SDHC (and the mini and micro versions, via an SD adapter). This sort of shows the type of general consumer Canon has in mind with the TS9020.

Bill Roberson/Digital Trends

Bill Roberson/Digital Trends

Bill Roberson/Digital Trends

Bill Roberson/Digital Trends

The TS9020 is a three-function AIO. As faxing is increasingly unimportant to a home market, we don’t see this as a huge loss. If you need fax for, say, a home office, Canon sells four-function office AIOs in its Pixma MX-series and Maxify printers. What we truly miss, however, is a useful ADF for scanning or copying multi-page documents; you will find this feature in office models, but not a photo printer such as the TS9020.

One thing we find really awkward is the paper drawer: it’s at the bottom of the unit – fairly common – but in its default configuration, it only accommodates paper up to 8 x 10, which tends to be photo paper, including Canon’s new 5 x 5-inch square photo paper. If you want to print on letter (8.5 x 11) or legal (8.5 x 14) sized paper, you have to extend the paper drawer by pressing on a button and pulling the end of the drawer farther out. When you do this, the drawer sticks out a bit from the edge of the unit, which mars the sleek look.

Canon’s home photo inkjet printer series has a new name, and a sleek redesign.

The small 100-sheet capacity of the paper draw is also an annoyance, and it’s something too common in home printers. In reality, we were only able to load about 90 sheets maximum. Perhaps it isn’t an issue for those who print occasionally, but frequent printers will the small capacity frustrating. Fortunately, the TS9020 is a duplex printer, able to print on both sides of the page automatically. And, a rear paper tray gives you another 100-sheet capacity of plain paper or 20 sheets of thicker photo paper. Canon actually brought the rear paper tray back based on customer request, which had been removed from some MG-series models.

Connectivity options are excellent. In addition to USB, Wi-Fi, and NFC, the TS9020 also supports wired Ethernet. The AIO also supports a variety of mobile and cloud-based print platforms, including Apple AirPrint, Canon’s Print app (iOS and Android), Google Cloud Print, Mopria Device Printing, and Pixma Cloud Link. The TS9020 is also compatible with cameras with Wireless PictBridge (many of the new Canon cameras offer this).

Wireless setup is easy and straightforward – just go through the prompts to connect the printer to a network, which is then discoverable by other devices. With an iOS device, the printer pops up as an option provided both devices are on the same network.

Being that it’s designed for printing photos, the TS9020 is a six-color printer, providing Photo Black and Gray inks in addition to the standard CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black). These ink cartridges are available in standard and high capacity versions. The Photo Black and Gray inks are used only when printing photos. Of the six inks, five are dye-based with the Photo Black ink being pigment-based to give deeper blacks. The standard capacity dye inks run about $13 each (with a 350-page average page yield) and $16 for Photo Black (300 page yield), while the higher capacity inks run $20 for colors (700 page yield) and $25 for Photo Black (500 page yield).

Setup and performance

Setting up the TS9020 is easy. It took us about 10 minutes, which included the printhead alignment and ink priming initialization. We used the included disc to install printer and scanner drivers, as well as applicable software (you can do a full installation, or pick what you want), but you can also download the from Canon’s support website. We opted for a wired Ethernet connection, as it would provide the fastest speed for performance testing (to test the internet-based features, we connected to a Wi-Fi network).

For photography, one of the primary reasons for buying a six-color (or more) printer over the standard four-color CMYK standard is the enhanced quality of the photo output. To be honest, for many users, four-color output is just fine for casual snapshots.

Bill Roberson/Digital Trends

But, the six colors do make a subtle difference, and if you are really into photography, it’s worth having. On a purely visual basis, the prints we generated — a variety that included photographs and charts — were well saturated with deep blacks, and the colors were accurate when compared to the X-Rite color reference we use. In fact, when we checked it against prints we made from a calibrated, nine-color Epson SureColor P600, the differences in quality were noticeable, but very subtle.

We are very happy with the print performance. Canon rates the TS9020 at about 15 pages per minute (Canon calls it images per minute) in monochrome printing and 10 ppm in color. Printing a mostly monochrome four-page Word document, we achieved an output speed of 16 ppm, which dropped to 7.3 ppm when printing a mostly color Excel document. These documents are part of the ISO Document Suite the vendors use, but our test protocol is not as elaborate, so our scores are in-line with Canon’s specs.

Canon Pixma TS9020 Compared To

HP DeskJet 3755

Canon Maxify MB5420

Brother MFC-J885DW

Epson WorkForce WF-2660

Brother MFC-J4420DW

Brother MFC-J870DW

Epson WorkForce WF-7510

Samsung Printer Xpress C410W

Dell C1765

Seiko SLP 450

HP OfficeJet 7410

HP PhotoSmart 8050

HP Photosmart 7760

HP 1100D

HP DeskJet 9670

The scanner has an optical resolution of 2,400 dpi, which is fine for most uses. We tested it by scanning of our image test documents using the Google Picasa (RIP) import function, which recognized the TS9020 as a TWAIN scanner. Printing out the scanned test documents, we found they were very close to the originals in both detail and color accuracy. Unfortunately, if you do a lot of scanning or copying, you’ll find the flatbed scanner a pain to use. For a single scan or two, you won’t miss the ADF too much

Warranty information

Canon offers a standard one-year warranty.

Our Take

The Canon Pixma TS9020 is a very capable six-color AIO with good performance and great photo output. It also boasts terrific connectivity, with NFC and wired Ethernet in addition to the ubiquitous USB and Wi-Fi. It has two main drawbacks: The small 100-sheet capacity paper drawer is limiting if you print often, and sticks out awkwardly when using standard letter-sized paper. And the lack of an ADF and, to a lesser extent, fax may put the TS9020 out of consideration for some users. But we like the large touch-capable LCD control panel, and the unit’s sleek looks. For the money ($200 MSRP, available for $150 as of writing), the TS9020 is a good value.

Is there a better alternative?

Epson’s Expression Photo XP-860 is a six-color printer, but with a list price of $299 (street price of $200), it’s pricier than the TS9020, making the Canon a better buy. However, the XP-860 has a 30-page ADF and fax capability, which may be more desirable if you need those function, like a small office. If large photo prints are your thing and you can do without the multifunction components, consider upping the budget for a printer like Canon’s Pixma IP8720.

Note that the TS9020 is the flagship, and that the TS-series has less-expensive models in the lineup, like the TS8020, which has a smaller LCD but is otherwise the same printer. The TS5020 is the least expensive model, at $100 (MSRP), but it’s a five-ink printer and lacks a touchscreen.

How long will it last?

Canon doesn’t publish a duty cycle for the AIO, but it feels well made. With a 100-sheet paper tray, you aren’t likely to have many long print or copy runs – jobs that put a lot of strain on a print engine. Given average home use, there’s no reason why the TS9020 shouldn’t give you two-to-three years of service, if not more.

Should you buy it?

Yes, for the price, you’re getting a top-quality photo printer that also has copy and scan features. The paper tray has less capacity that we would like, and it’s awkward, but they aren’t deal breakers – especially when you are getting very good performance and great output quality.

If you print a lot, you may want to reevaluate your needs. Would an ADF, fax, and larger paper tray better serve you? If so, a printer designed for office productivity might be the better option. If photo quality is also important, then a machine like the Epson XP-860 is more fulfilling. However, for the majority of home users, we think the TS9020 is a solid buy.

Emojipedia founder talks the past, present and future of emoji

We’ve been a little surprised by the outpouring of enthusiasm for World Emoji Day so far: Apple released a sneak peeks of its new emoji designs, Google signaled the end of its blobs, and the Empire State Building will be lit up in yellow to mark the occasion. (No, we’re not kidding.) Still, despite how hugely culturally relevant these characters have become, details like how new emoji go from idea to icon can sometimes feel shrouded in obscurity. To learn more about the process, we sat down for a wide-ranging conversation with Jeremy Burge, founder of Emojipedia.

Beyond his work at Emojipedia — which sees millions of hits a month — Burge is also a member of the Unicode Consortium’s emoji sub-committee. As he explains it, think of it as the first line of defense against all the inevitably lousy emoji proposals people (and brands) try and squeeze into the Unicode standard. We also dig into whether emoji truly are a universal visual language, and whether an emoji movie was unavoidable. (Spoiler alert: Burge definitely thinks so.)

‘It’ director Andy Muschietti signs on for Sony’s ‘Robotech’ movie

More than 30 years after the original series debuted on television, the classic Mecha anime Robotech will once again grace the silver screen. Sony announced on Monday that it had tapped Andy Muschietti, who just finished directing the reboot of Stephen King’s It, to direct the upcoming live-action reboot.

Muschietti’s creative partner (and sister) Barbara has also signed on to the project. She’ll produce the film alongside Gianni Nunnari and Mark Canton. Sony had reportedly first sought James Wan for the directing role when it acquired the rights back in 2015, though he dropped out to do Aquaman.

Now that the director and producers are set, Sony is reportedly looking to move quickly on the high-priority project. All they need now is someone to write the script, which studio execs are already working with the Muschettis to find.

Robotech, not to be confused with Gundam, Macross or innumerable other giant-robot anime, first aired in the US in 1985. The show had originally been three separate series back when it played in Japan (“Macross Saga”, “The Masters” and “New Generation”) but due to American syndication practices, they wound up all getting mashed together, re-edited and redubbed in order to come up with the requisite 85 episodes. The series has since spawned five animated movies, four console games, a series of art books, and countless toys, models and miscellaneous collectibles.

Robotech has had a huge impact on popular culture. It was one of the first anime to reach American shores and initiated a generation of kids to the wonders of the genre. With such a pedigreed intellectual property, the pressure to do it justice is intense — especially given the recent dumpster fire that is the ScarJo Ghost in the Shell reboot. However, given what we’ve seen from the It trailers, Muschietti could be the perfect guy for the job.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter

Google wants to sell quantum computing in the cloud

Whether or not you believe Google has honest-to-goodness quantum computers, the bigger problem is their limited access: they’re largely off-limits outside of the company itself. That could change sooner than you think, though. Bloomberg sources understand that Google is gearing up toward using its quantum systems in a “faster, more powerful” computing service than it offers today. It recently started offering access to researchers in order to spur development of tools and apps (including through an open source Project Q initiative), and there’s a new lab it describes as an “embryonic quantum data center.” It’s looking at the practical realities of quantum computing, in other words.

Google declined to comment to Bloomberg, but it hasn’t been shy about wanting to make its quantum computing practical. It’s really down to specifics: it’s now clearer how Google will take those first steps toward commercial quantum computer use.

However it achieves that goal, it’ll likely want to hurry. IBM is already offering access to a specialized quantum computing platform, and it’s building a general-purpose quantum computer for business use. Microsoft is interested in the subject, too. There’s a chance that the first company to make a viable business out of quantum computing will have a major (if short-term) advantage over its rivals, since it’ll have processing power that its competition just can’t match. Google may be a cloud superpower now, but there’s no guarantee that it’ll maintain that stature in the quantum era.

Source: Bloomberg

Poll suggests most Americans don’t like how Trump uses Twitter

Do you think President Trump’s penchant for Twitter diatribes is doing more harm than good? You’re not alone… in fact, you might be in the majority. ABC News and the Washington Post have conducted a national poll suggesting that 67 of Americans disapprove of Trump’s use of Twitter. They’re more likely to use negative descriptions of his behavior, such as “dangerous,” “insulting,” and “inappropriate,” and unlikely to use positives like “interesting,” “effective” and “refreshing.” And no, this isn’t as skewed by political leanings as you might think: only 41 percent of Republican supporters believe the tweets are refreshing, for instance.

The news outlets add that the the value of Trump’s Twitter use drops sharply among anyone who isn’t a white man. About 78 percent of women call his tweets inappropriate versus 58 percent of men, while 65 percent of non-white people see them as dangerous versus 46 percent for whites.

It’s important to take the poll with a grain of salt. While ABC and WaPo used scientific methods, they covered only 1,001 random people — that’s a decent poll size, but it’s not guaranteed to extrapolate to the American voting population. Also, Republicans were a relative minority at 23 percent of respondents versus 35 percent Democrats and 35 percent independents. While that won’t necessarily change some figures, it’s not a perfect microcosm of American voting habits.

And of course, there’s a simple reality: whatever the poll indicates is unlikely to sway minds. Trump certainly won’t alter his behavior (unless lawsuits dictate otherwise) given his record of dismissing all negative polls. Likewise, your view will depend in large part on whether or not you agree with Trump’s tweets in the first place. The one certainty from the poll is that Trump’s use of Twitter is far more contentious than that of his predecessor.

Via: CNET

Source: ABC News

In a fragmented VR market, one company wants to unite them all

Virtual reality is a mainstream phenomenon these days, with major headsets like the Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive now increasingly in consumer hands. There’s even a flourishing market in the lower-end, with Samsung’s Gear VR and Google’s DayDream leading the way. But with so many different platforms, the VR market is getting increasingly fragmented.

One company, however, is planning on a headset that can run on not just one major VR platform, but three (Oculus, SteamVR and Daydream). What’s more, it has positional tracking, an eight-hour battery life and while it can be used with SteamVR while tethered to the PC, it can also be standalone while on Android. It’s made by GameFace Labs, and it promises to be the one headset to rule them all.

If the name GameFace Labs sounds familiar, you might remember it from when we covered it at CES 2014. We had given the Best of CES award to the Crystal Cove edition of the Oculus Rift, which was the best and most forward-looking piece of VR tech we saw at the time. Yet, we also took a look at what GameFace Labs had, which was a standalone VR headset that ran on Android. The prototype was pretty rough around the edges, but the proof-of-concept was there. It worked.

Three years later, and the VR landscape has changed. GameFace Labs’ plans to put its headset in stores fell by the wayside. But instead of faltering, the company evolved. Now, it’s focusing its efforts on making a headset that’s compatible with as many systems as possible. The result: A surprisingly capable and powerful piece of hardware that could very well be the future of VR headsets.

We took a look at the current prototype — which the company calls the EP1 — and as you can imagine it’s very different from the MarkIV we saw in 2014. It’s still standalone and it still runs on Android, but now it’s equipped with the latest NVIDIA Tegra SOCs, making it much more powerful than your regular smartphone. Hook it up to a PC, and you can run SteamVR content just like with the Vive.

Other specs include two 90Hz 2,560 x 1,440 display panels (custom made by Samsung) with a 120-degree field of view. There’s also 3D-tracking technology thanks to Intel’s RealSense cameras and Leap Motion’s hand tracking sensors. It also has a unique technology that lets GameFace download content up to 100 times faster than traditional downloading methods, which Ed Mason, GameFace’s CEO and Founder, says enables instant gratification VR content with zero latency.

“Everything is cloud delivered but locally rendered for a latency free VR cloud gaming experience,” says Mason. It even has a built-in fan that promises to keep things nice and cool during operation.

GameFace partnered with Valve to support SteamVR. The EP1 is thus completely compatible with Valve’s Lighthouse room-scale, sub-millimeter positional tracking. Indeed, if you take a look at the front faceplate, it has the same pockmark array of sensors of the Vive, and it’s compatible with HTC’s Lighthouse base stations and with the Vive wand.

This makes the GameFace headset the first ever standalone headset with Lighthouse positional tracking in an Android environment. That means that If a developer already has an app on Daydream, they can use Gameface’s SDK to make it compatible with the more advanced tracking technology, allowing them to have Daydream apps that utilize the same kind of Lighthouse capabilities as more advanced Valve hardware. It promises to make Daydream games way more immersive.

The addition of positional tracking makes the GameFace compatible with controllers that have six degrees of freedom (this is when controllers are actually trackable objects in the space, which allows for greater immersion). Mason says that the final version of the headset will ship with a single Lighthouse base station, mostly for ease of setup, and also because it doesn’t need more than just the one.

The EP1 also works with ReVive, a piece of software that lets you play Oculus-exclusive games. And, as the whole thing runs entirely on Android, it also has native Daydream support built right in. This means it can play any Google Cardboard or Daydream content as well. Mason does warn, however, that the GameFace headset is not Daydream-certified. GameFace has its own UI that lets the user launch any of these platforms from within the headset.

With all of that technology crammed into one standalone headset, you might think it would be pretty clunky. But while the prototype does look quite large, the entire unit is actually surprisingly lightweight. I strapped it onto my head without a problem and it didn’t weigh down my face at all. But while the GameFace headset is standalone, it’s not entirely untethered.

The EP1 prototype headset was attached to a battery pack dongle of sorts, which Mason says you can tuck in your back pocket. Eventually, Mason hopes to incorporate controller functionality into that battery dongle, so you would have it in your hand instead. Also, this way you won’t need to buy an additional controller with the headset.

Speaking of controllers, I tried out the EP1 headset with both Google’s Daydream handheld remote and the Vive wand in a simple white room demo setup. I could move the remote and point at certain objects, represented by a red dot that turns blue (and vice versa). The Vive controller, on the other hand, was mapped to a ball that moved as my hand moved. The demo itself was a little glitchy, but the proof of concept was there.

GameFace says this headset is targeted at developers, so that devs can create content for a variety of different platforms without having to purchase lots of expensive hardware. There are two models that developers can choose from; the GF-DD, which is the basic Daydream headset, and GF-LD, which adds on the Lighthouse positional tracking. The GF-DD is around $500 while the GF-LD will cost about $700. That’s not cheap, but it’s still more affordable than buying multiple headsets and hardware.

“I think one of the biggest holdbacks for VR is content,” says Mason. “The fact is that the people who are pushing the content, they’re not Triple A studios, they’re the indies. These are the guys who can’t afford to buy $10,000 to $15,000 worth of six to seven different headsets just so they can release $5 to $10 apps on six different stores. This is hampering development quite significantly.”

Of course, Facebook, Google and other companies are coming out with standalone VR headsets, too. But none of them are as multi-platform as the one GameFace proposes. Mason says some of them are just nothing more than cannibalized mobile phones with the phone parts taken out. They aren’t nearly as powerful or as long-lasting.

Interestingly, however, GameFace Labs is happy to license their technology to anyone who asks. Indeed, the company is actually in talks with various OEMs and industry leaders in VR right now to incorporate this tech in upcoming headsets. In a very real way, GameFace’s EP1 headset represents the future of VR.

As for entering the consumer market themselves, GameFace says it’ll certainly do that eventually, but for now, it wants to build up the field first. “What we’re trying to do is build one headset that is trying to unify a rapidly fragmenting industry,” he says. “What we really are is a VR enabling company.”