Multiplayer VR is about to look much more realistic

Multiplayer VR is imperfect, especially on a large scale. Body tracking tends to be quite limited, so it’s not uncommon to see generic animations and herky-jerky movements from your fellow players. OptiTrack hopes to fix that. It’s launching body sensors that promise whole-body skeletal tracking in VR arcades and other multiplayer venues. Attach it to your hands and feet and you should get accurate positional tracking that reflects more natural movements, such as aiming a weapon or peeking around a corner.

To no one’s surprise, this isn’t something you’re about to pick up for home use. It wouldn’t be as vital there as it is, since the room-scale tracking for the HTC Vive or Oculus Rift is frequently good enough. However, it could be important the next time you don a headset at a dedicated venue. While it won’t necessarily be fun to strap sensors to your body, that added immersion could be enough to justify a repeat visit the next time you’re looking for some virtual thrills.

Via: Variety

Source: OptiTrack

Lyft’s ‘Minnie Vans’ will drive guests around Disney World

Earlier this month, Lyft teamed up with Taco Bell for a new Taco Mode service that lets riders add a stop to the fast food chain on their late night route. Now, Lyft is partnering with another brand — Disney. As of today, guests staying in Disney World’s Boardwalk, Yacht Club and Beach Club resorts can call a Lyft to drive them to wherever they want to go within the Walt Disney World Resort. And the best part is that the vehicles are painted to look like Minnie Mouse’s dress and are called “Minnie Vans.”

Lyft has been doing pretty well for itself lately. While it still has a ways to go before catching up with Uber, Lyft has been growing faster that its popular but trouble-ridden competitor and its service hit one million rides per day earlier this month. Positioning itself alongside brands like Disney and offering exclusive services with companies like Taco Bell could keep pushing Lyft’s growth.

Minnie Vans can carry up to six guests, come equipped with two car seats for children and will be driven by Disney cast members in costume. Disney and Lyft haven’t said when or if the program will expand to other Disney World resorts or if the service will launch in Disneyland.

Image: Disney (Vans)

Source: Lyft

FCC says sharing DDoS attack details undermines security

Back in May, Comedy Central’s John Oliver exhorted viewers to add their public comment on the FCC’s website for net neutrality. While at first it seemed as if the server couldn’t handle the extra load of commenters, the FCC said that the site had been a victim of multiple distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. When asked for evidence of the cyberattack by regulators, senators and journalists, the FCC refused to share any data.

Last month, a group of ranking House committee members sent a letter to the FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, which expressed concerns about the agency’s “cybersecurity preparedness, and the multiple reported problems with the FCC’s website in taking public comments in the net neutrality proceeding.” Pai’s response — dated July 21st and posted on July 28th — was predictably vague in responding to the specific queries from the Representatives. He said “it would undermine our system’s security to provide a specific roadmap of the additional solutions to which we have referred.”

Pai doubled-down on the reasoning in response to requests for what specific hardware solutions were in place, saying, “While it would undermine our system security to provide a specific roadmap of what we are doing, we can state that FCC IT staff has notified its cloud providers of the need to have sufficient ‘hardware resources’ available to accommodate high-profile proceedings.”

As noted by Ars Technica, the FCC has refused to respond to several Freedom of Information Act (FoIA) requests around the DDoS attacks. The Commission has also denied reports that it didn’t even document the event, confusing matters further. In the current letter, Pai asks the House members to trust that everything is now under control, since things seem to be working. “The docket now contains more than 10 million comments overall, demonstrating that our processes are facilitating widespread public participation in this proceeding,” he wrote. “Although I cannot guarantee that we will not experience further attempts to disrupt our systems, our staff is constantly monitoring and reviewing the situation so that that everyone seeking to comment on our proceedings will be afforded the opportunity to do so.”

Via: Ars Technica

Source: FCC

HP brought a trippy tech museum to a music fest

It was a blazing hot summer’s day, but inside a pitch black room in HP’s “The Lab” at the Panorama music festival in New York, I got the chills. I was experiencing Right Passage, one of seven art installations hosted at a gallery set up by the company, which sponsored the festival. Right Passage was by far my favorite — it’s a spectacle that captured my imagination without inundating me with the “tech” of it all.

Most of the installations at The Lab were visually arresting and interactive structures that presented excellent selfie ops. But after a series of those works, walking into the dark, blacked-out room that housed Right Passage was disorienting. I felt apprehensive but excited, like I had walked into a haunted house. Moments later, rays of light shot out of a distant crevice, and I got slightly worried I had been abducted by aliens. Those of us in the area were drawn to it. But it was quickly obscured, and I noticed a stoic, expressionless woman standing in front of me. Without a word, she walked over to the side and pushed a large wall-like structure into the middle of the room.

Behind her, two other people did the same thing, splitting the room up into four smaller and almost claustrophobic sections. Lights continued to flash, the “walls” kept rearranging, synced to the throbbing music overhead. It was confusing, chaotic, and yet fascinating. After awhile, the people moving the panels started to dance in a slow, trance-like state; it was like interactive theatre meeting modern dance in a futuristic art museum. My fellow festival goers were just as absorbed, ooh-ing and ahh-ing aloud. Not once did I see an HP logo or feel like this was an orchestrated marketing stunt (even though, let’s be real, that’s exactly what it was).

At The Lab, branding is kept to a minimal. “We want to power the experiences; We don’t have to be the experience,” HP’s PR manager Conor Driscoll said. You’ll still see placards at each exhibit’s entrance, explaining what HP products were used to create it, but otherwise the pieces are left to speak for themselves. That’s a smart move on HP’s part, and the whole event itself is a clever marketing tactic. Although the company is far from being a “cool” brand the way Snapchat and Instagram are, it is so far one of the few PC makers to reach out to the ever-important millennial audience on their turf. You don’t see rivals like ASUS, Lenovo, Acer and Dell going to music festivals and engaging people the way HP has.

This isn’t the first time HP has used an unconventional, millennial-friendly event to reach a younger, savvier audience, either. The company also sponsored Panorama last year, and launched new laptops at Coachella this year. At both those festivals, HP also hosted similar exhibits to showcase works that blended art and technology.

As is usually the case when artists create with tech, the strongest works are the ones that don’t focus on the gadgets behind the product. Some of the displays at Panorama managed to do that, delivering transportational experiences with technological subtlety, including Right Passage and short film The Ark. The latter is presented in a dome-shaped theater, projected on the walls and ceilings for an audience that reclines on beanbag chairs. While Right Passage had me wondering if I had been kidnapped by aliens, The Ark straight up took me on an intergalactic adventure.

The film is an immersive, almost-360-degree animated ride through some very strange worlds — basically a trippy acid dream. Some people cheered, some whooped, and many gasped as we “fell” into a chasm that turned into a tube entering a spaceship. I was amused when I noticed some folks make beelines for the best seats in the house (in the middle of the room). It’s as if they knew what to expect, perhaps from attending a previous HP-hosted screening.

I was most surprised by the immense number of people lining up for one of HP’s demos — the “bandana inking station.” There, attendees could design and print their own free bandanas using one of HP’s recently launched laptops. This shows just how well HP understands what people at these events want — air-conditioning, picture-perfect staging and free swag.

Literally 🔥 🔥🔥🔥 #selfie #queen #PanoramaHP

A post shared by Cherlynn Low (@cherlynnstagram) on Jul 28, 2017 at 12:01pm PDT

HP did two things right at the event this year. It gave people mementos — whether it was a free bandana or a cool selfie video — that they could share or take home from the festival. It also offered engaging experiences that managed to avoid coming off as aggressive PR stunts. Of course, the entire tents were covered in HP logos, but once you’re immersed in the actual art, the advertising melts away. It’s a shrewd move that puts the company ahead of its relatively old-fashioned competitors for now. HP could have simply thrown money at the festival’s organizers in exchange for a “Sponsored by” logo on the event’s website and banners, but it participated in a more meaningful way. Doing so may not generate immediate returns for HP, but if it continues to work on its image with the creative crowd, it may see immense benefits in future.

Tech CEOs haven’t yet agreed to attend House net neutrality hearing

Last week, the House Energy and Commerce Committee invited CEOs from Facebook, Alphabet, Amazon, Netflix, Comcast, Verizon, AT&T and Charter Communications to testify at an upcoming hearing about net neutrality and potential legislation regarding it. When the invitations were announced, committee chairman Greg Walden said, “With almost everyone in agreement about fundamental principles to prevent anti-competitive behavior such as throttling and blocking, I think we are closer than ever to achieving a lasting resolution. The time has come to get everyone to the table and get this figured out.”

But as Recode reports, none of those companies have agreed to show up at the hearing. The committee initially placed a July 31st deadline on the companies’ attendance decisions, but has decided to extend that indefinitely in hopes of getting the CEOs to agree to appear. “The committee has been engaging in productive conversations with all parties and will extend the deadline for response in order to allow for those discussions to continue,” a spokesperson told Recode.

This spotlight on tech CEOs is making some of them look like they’re all talk and no action. Many of their companies participated in the Day of Action earlier this month and in a statement Verizon released that day it said, “We respectfully suggest that real action will involve people coming together to urge Congress to pass net neutrality legislation once and for all.” But none of them seem to want to get their hands dirty in the fight for or against net neutrality regulations when it comes to testifying before Congress.

Communications and Technology Subcommittee Chairman Marsha Blackburn told Recode, “I think it would be appropriate, I think it is expected, for the tech companies to choose to show up — to have the discussion — and I don’t think it’s a discussion they want to be absent from.”

The CEOs could be concerned about having a net neutrality conversation with Congress or they could be worried about what other questions might come up. But regardless of what’s causing their hesitation, the hearing is scheduled for September 7th. If they want their opinions on the table, they might want to choose to attend, because decisions could be made without them. “We’re very likely to see something with net neutrality take place this Congress,” Blackburn told Recode. “Congress needs to act, so therefore we’re going to do something about it.”

Source: Recode

Samsung hints how the Galaxy Note 8’s dual camera will work

It’s no secret that the Galaxy Note 8 will likely include dual rear cameras given all the leaks, but you don’t have to take the rumor mill’s word for it — Samsung appears to have dropped a not-so-subtle hint of its own. The company’s electromechanical division has posted a feature list for a dual camera module that lines up eerily well what’s expected from the Note 8’s rear sensors. To begin with, the second camera allows for 3X optical zoom, or a notch better than the 2X you see in the iPhone 7 Plus and OnePlus 5. If you’ve ever wanted to get a close-up shot at a concert using only your phone, this might be your handset of choice. And importantly, it’s not the only arrow in Samsung’s quiver.

There’s a depth-of-field effect, as you might guess, so it’s entirely possible that you’ll see an iPhone-style portrait mode as well as after-the-shot refocusing. However, Samsung is also promising that the module will improve image quality even in regular shots. The dual cameras enable brighter low-light shots when used in tandem, and “dual fusion” can expand the dynamic range of a photo to preserve details in highlights and shadows. There are a couple of more novelty-oriented features, too, such as a “background effect” (to blur the all but the center of a shot) and a “perspective view” (which tilts the image based on how you rotate your phone).

It’s possible that some of these software tricks won’t show up when Samsung unveils the Note 8 on August 23rd, but Samsung has a history of previewing components and features that are clearly destined for its next major smartphone. It would be more surprising these features didn’t appear. Either way, it’s likely that photography will be the Note 8’s biggest feature after its namesake pen.

Via: 9to5Google

Source: Samsung (translated)

Watchdog asks FTC to look into how Google collects shopping data

Back in May, Google introduced a new tool, “store sales measurement,” which tracks debit and credit card purchases in the real world. The company claimed it could help them prove that online ads directly lead to in-store purchases. But a privacy watchdog group isn’t comfortable with the vague safeguards the search giant put in place as it tracks buying habits, and has asked the FTC to investigate.

As written in its formal complaint to the FTC, the Electronic Privacy and Information Center (EPIC) is requesting the agency discover how Google’s tool connects online browsing with in-store shopping, which the search giant has kept secret. The company’s post introducing the tool back in May outlined its potential benefits to marketers, but not how it collects data; It did note that the tool’s methods “match transactions back to Google ads in a secure and privacy-safe way, and only report on aggregated and anonymized store sales to protect your customer data.”

But the complaint goes a step further. Google maintains that users can opt-out of the tool’s data collection by going to their account settings and toggling off “Web and App Activity.” But EPIC claims that’s a spurious assurance and outright deceptive trade practice because some users must also call their banking or credit institution, which might have its own third-party relationship feeding consumer purchasing data to Google. To that end, EPIC requests the FTC force Google to divulge all of its third-party partnerships, which the tech titan noted “capture approximately 70% of credit and debit card transactions in the United States” in the May blog post.

The FTC has its own FAQ page describing what rights users have when opting out. We’ve reached out to Google for comment and will add it when we hear back.

Via: The Hill

Source: Complaint by the Electronic Privacy and Information Center (PDF)

Spotify Hits 60 Million Paid Subscribers Ahead of Going Public

As it prepares to go public, Spotify has reached 60 million paid subscribers, reports TechCrunch. The 60 million mark comes nearly five months after the company announced its 50 million paid subscriber milestone in March.

When adding in customers who listen to the free ad-supported tier, Spotify has more than 140 million subscribers worldwide. Comparatively, Apple Music now boasts 27 million paying subscribers, a number Apple shared at its Worldwide Developers Conference in June.

Since its 2015 debut, Apple Music has been growing steadily by luring customers with exclusive album releases, concerts, and original television programming, but it does not offer a free tier like Spotify. Apple Music subscriptions start at $9.99 per month after a three-month free trial.

Spotify paid subscriptions are also priced at $9.99 per month, and in 2016, Spotify’s revenue grew over 50 percent to $3.3 billion.

In the near future, Spotify plans to go public through a direct listing, forgoing the traditional initial public offering and making existing Spotify shares available to the public. With this method, likened to an elopement instead of a full-on wedding, Spotify avoids the fanfare of an IPO and does not have to hire an underwriter. Spotify is expected to initiate its direct listing in 2018.

Tag: Spotify
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Comix Zone (Review)

Ah, Sega. No introduction necessary for them, I hope!

Comix Zone was originally made for the Sega Genesis back in 1995 and has since been released on Steam, Wii, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Game Boy Advance, as well as Android and IOS. It follows the story of Sketch Turner, who… gets trapped in his own comic book by the main villain, Mortus, in order to kill Sketch so Mortus can escape into the real world. Not the most normal of plots but it’s a plot!

In order to install Comix Zone, you will need approximately 100MB of storage, as well as granting it the storage and… Wait, location? That one is optional if you are a privacy fan like myself.

Tutorial?

Older games had a habit of including tutorials in the manual, rather than in game. as such, here are the controls:

D-pad: the four directions let you move, the diagonals put you into stances for high/low kicks and punches.

A button – You’ll be using this one a lot, as it is used for attacking people and things. Also used for using items that you have selected (see C button)

B button – You jump. Me and jumping in games never mix.

Yes, Thanks Mr. Turner!

C Button – use this to scroll through the 3 items boxes in the top. When you do, you can press A to use the highlighted button. To pick said items up, just crouch on them (D-Pad down) Keep in mind you do get some items at the start, so grab ’em and go!

LOOT!

Oh, and there is a save button on the top corner. Unless you pay for local saves, your saves are stored on the cloud via Google Play Games. Mind the AD on that menu if you do not have ad-free.

How does it play?

Exactly as you would expect from an emulated game – i.e. “results may vary.” My Older phone (A Bush Spira B3) had some struggles, while my Wileyfox swift 2 plus (Name hopefully more familiar) ran it A-OK. As far as visuals and audio go.. its an emulated game from 1991. It’s not about the how it looks and sounds as that department was really limited back then-but still pretty fitting for each other, and that’s what matters.

Oh, and it’s surprisingly cruel. Firstly, you only have one life – you die, game over. Secondly, Health from what I’ve seen is rare- I had one health item. Oh, and thirdly? Punching any blocks, barrels, etc. damages you. It’ll be a fun day where I die again because I need to get rid of a barrel to continue progressing. Ah well, it’s part of the fun!

I have an issue with the saving mechanic. Not only do you have to pay or watch an advert to save or load, but you have to sign into Google Play Games Every. Single. Time. You can pay £1.99 to have Non-Sega adverts removed, although I’m not 100% sure if this affects saving. There was a way to buy local saves, but it seems to have disintegrated after I said no to it after the first launch. Not great.

Conclusion

While I can’t say much that hasn’t already been said, Comix Zone is a fun, albeit frustrating to some people. It’s good to see older games get a new lease of life through emulators, and CZ is not an exception to this. The use of adverts is annoying, however, and the saving system makes free users both be online and put up with adverts.

Microsoft says goodbye to Word Flow, hints at future SwiftKey integration

Why it matters to you

Word Flow was one-handed typing done right, and especially useful for those with giant phones. Hopefully it will surface again as a SwiftKey feature.

Microsoft is shutting down Word Flow. The inventive one-handed keyboard app exclusive to iPhone is being de-listed from the App Store, and the company is instructing users to go download SwiftKey instead.

“The Word Flow experiment is now complete!” the app’s page on Microsoft’s site reads. “We encourage you to download the SwiftKey Keyboard from the App Store. The SwiftKey product team is frequently building and evaluating new features for SwiftKey and shipping updates.”

Word Flow was developed by Microsoft’s experimental Garage division, and was introduced to the iPhone in April of last year. For a long time, the keyboard was exclusive to Windows Phone. An Android release was teased after Word Flow made its way to Apple’s handsets, but that never came to fruition.

At one point, Word Flow was used to set the world record for fastest text message typed — though that record was later broken by Fleksy. We gave Word Flow the thumbs (thumb?) up in our quick video review last year, saying it was especially useful for firing off one-handed messages on the ginormous iPhone 6S Plus.

So, where does the future of one-handed typing go from here? And what are happy Word Flow users to do? With Microsoft having acquired SwiftKey last year, it’s quite possible this is the first step in offering a similar mode in the much more well-known multiplatform keyboard app. As one of Microsoft Garage’s most successful experiments, we’re hoping this isn’t the last we’ve seen of it.

Speaking of Garage, the team has been routinely pumping out some of the company’s most interesting and endearing apps over the past several years, from fun photo-captioning app Sprinkles to Dictate, which lets you talk to your desktop Office programs, like Word and Excel.

Word Flow isn’t the first high-profile Garage app to meet a premature demise. At the beginning of the year, Microsoft shut down Cache, a sort-of clipboard-meets-digital organization tool available for both iOS and Windows. To date, Cache’s features have yet to show up in another app — though Microsoft hinted at the time that they could very well appear again down the line.