Google Daydream does not work on the Galaxy S8 yet, but SOON!

One way or another, Daydream will work on the Galaxy S8.

Update 5/17/17: Google has announced Daydream support for the Galaxy S8 will be available via update this summer!

If you try to install Google Daydream on the Galaxy S8, a phone that exceeds the requirements for Google’s VR platform in every conceivable way, you’ll be met with an error message stating a compatible version is missing and will not be able to install Daydream. Just like we were, when trying this out during the event in NYC.

The bad news — a compatible version of Google Daydream doesn’t exist for the Galaxy S8.

The good news — that isn’t going to be true forever, but you’re going to need to wait a bit.

Read more at VR Heads!

You can finally stuff your head into a Windows VR headset

After a few months of waiting, you can snap up a Windows Mixed Reality headset for yourself… if you meet the right conditions, that is. Microsoft is now selling both the Acer and HP Developer Edition headsets at respective prices of $299 and $329, but only to developers — you can’t pick one up just because you think an Oculus Rift is too expensive, unfortunately. The HP model is also out of stock as of this writing, so you can’t be too picky.

Thankfully, you’re largely getting the same experience. Both wearables include a pair of 1,440 x 1,440 displays, a 95-degree field of view, support for 90Hz refresh rates (the usual target for VR) and a single cable that carries both HDMI video and USB data. Those aren’t mind-blowing figures, but that’s not the point. This is more about fostering VR and AR apps to make sure there are plenty of them when Windows Mixed Reality hardware is available to the general public. If all goes well, Microsoft will have laid the groundwork for taking VR and related technologies into the mainstream.

Source: Microsoft Store (Acer), (HP)

YouTube will isolate offensive videos that don’t violate policies

YouTube has been working on ways to manage offensive and extremist content that do and do not violate its policies, and some steps it has taken include AI-assisted video detection and removal as well as input from more experts. Today, in a blog post, the company provided more detail about its ongoing efforts.

First, its machine learning video detection has been hard at work and during the past month over 75 percent of videos taken down because of violent, extremist content were done so without the help of humans. This system has helped YouTube remove twice as many of these sorts of videos. The company has also started working with a number of non-governmental organizations including the Anti-Defamation League, the No Hate Speech Movement and the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. “These organizations bring expert knowledge of complex issues like hate speech, radicalization, and terrorism that will help us better identify content that is being used to radicalize and recruit extremists,” said YouTube in the blog post.

For videos that contain “controversial religious or supremacist content” but don’t violate any of YouTube’s policies, they’ll now be placed in a “limited state.” YouTube said, “The videos will remain on YouTube behind an interstitial, won’t be recommended, won’t be monetized, and won’t have key features including comments, suggested videos, and likes.” It says that the limited state will start being applied to desktop versions in the coming weeks and will hit mobile versions shortly thereafter.

YouTube said that these changes are just the beginning and it will be sharing more about its work in the months ahead. “Altogether, we have taken significant steps over the last month in our fight against online terrorism. But this is not the end. We know there is always more work to be done,” it said.

Via: Gizmodo

Source: YouTube

‘Sustainable seafood’ grows in a lab instead of the ocean

Taking a whiff of a tray of multiplied cells, made from the stem cells scraped off a dead fish, all I could detect was a faint aroma of something smelling ‘off.’ Fishy, even. The co-founders of Finless Foods are working every holiday and weekend to ‘feed’ the cells so they divide and grow well enough to construct a fish fillet of edible meat within a few months. The biotechnology startup is pinning all of its hopes on consumers choosing lab-made meat over the potentially overfished or antibiotic-laden pieces of fish they might be purchasing now.

That’s not to say eating all fish is unethical. Top US marine exhibit and research institution Monterey Bay Aquarium created the Seafood Watch program (with a website and an app) to help people buy sustainably caught fish, and steer them away from meat that is already overfished, over laden with chemicals- or endangered.

Finless Foods is beginning by replicating the cells of Bluefin Tuna because it is overfished, everywhere, and can’t be reproduced in captivity. Co-founder and CEO Mike Selden says even farmed fisheries owners he has talked to warmed up to him when they heard about his work with tuna.

“We’re growing a small sample of fish meat out from a real fish in a large bioreactor, in massive scale, in clean, sterile breweries that won’t engage in all sorts of harmful practices like run-off, won’t have high levels of antibiotics or hormones,” said Selden.

There are so many experts loudly warning about the pillaging of fish from the oceans, but multiple agencies and reports all seem to settle on one statistic: 31 percent of global fish stocks are currently being overfished. And the trend shows that commercial fishing will likely die out unless we start effectively managing fisheries worldwide. A few select countries, like New Zealand, are shining examples of management done right, but that’s not enough; especially because many fish (like Chilean Sea Bass) are caught illegally. Researchers warn that even well-managed fisheries won’t save the oceans from what seems to be coming.

In California, science forecasts that human actions like urbanization, agriculture, fishing, existing dams and climate change will contribute to the death of half of the state’s native trout and salmon population within 50 years. That’s why marine biologists in a San Francisco aquarium are fired up and doing more than just educating visitors about wildlife.

“We are taking fish from the world’s ocean on an unsustainable pace,” said Melissa Schouest, a marine biologist at Aquarium of the Bay. “Globally speaking, it is one of the biggest environmental threats that this world faces.”

Schouest herself avoids eating fish, though she admits a weakness for Dungeness Crab, a West Coast specialty. I tell her I get it: Everyone has their own ‘bacon.’

But because they care about fish and marine wildlife so much, she and her co-workers call Finless Foods when the occasional exhibit fish dies. Selden or his co-founder, Brian Wyrwas, then rush over to collect it before useable cells are gone. This way, the co-founders say no fish has to die specifically for them, as they make tweaks to their cell-growing process.

This kind of business activism has been done before.

Professor Mark Post caused a media storm in 2013 when he famously cooked and consumed red meat he’d constructed in a lab. It was so successful that Post founded a company, Mosa Meat, that aims to have cell-cultured meat available for $30 a pound within three years. Even Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, helped to bankroll Post’s 2013 synthetic hamburger effort because of concern about animal welfare.

Post has presided over popular opinion polls for lab-grown meat and thinks there is enough support to make it work.

“There are a lot of concerns out there that don’t have a valid basis, when we have 50 percent of people that say ‘yeah, I want to try this,’” said Post. “The technology to scale up this production is there, it’s just never been done.”

And Hampton Creek, owners of vegan darling ‘Just Mayo’ is also newly on-board, announcing in June 2017 that it will begin making a lab-made meat. It intends to get its product to grocery stores by 2018, the most ambitious goal of the groups working on cell-cultured flesh. Then again, the company got a $100 million investment last year, so perhaps it’s doable for them.

With a growing demand for protein the world over, Finless Foods, Mosa Meat, Hampton Creek and a few others are at the forefront of a trend that the following generation might find routine: Creating lab-made, not pasture-raised or fresh caught, meat.

But listen, I’m not here to shame anyone for their meat or fish consumption. I went into this story skeptical, but emerged with an entirely new perspective. At a farmers market last weekend, I hesitantly bought salmon that had been farmed along the coast of Scotland, only after the seller reassured me that no antibiotics were used and that it was raised in a healthy environment. (I couldn’t buy the local rockfish because of all the different types of it I’d just marveled over, at the aquarium.) I thought of the cramped quarters the salmon must have endured as I ate the softly-tinted pink meat, so different from its wild caught brethren that I looked it up on the Seafood Watch site later on. I was guilt-ridden to see I likely ate fish on the avoid list, because of the diseases that could carry over when captured fish escape nets. That kind of farming can taint a whole ecological system around it.

With the world’s oceans suffering from overfishing, climate change and god knows what other man-made calamities I’m not-yet obsessing over, I just don’t feel comfortable with that.

I’ll be avoiding fish for awhile now, but not steak. With apologies to Mark Post, steak will always be my bacon.

Nintendo has a fix for the Switch’s battery bug

Nintendo has sold almost 4.7 million Switch units in the four months since the system launched in March, so it’s safe to say the console is a success. But it’s still plagued with a few system issues — one of which Nintendo fixed (kind of). If users update the operating system to the latest version (3.0.1), the console will finally display the correct charge level on screen. Usually. If not, they can follow extensive instructions to charge then drain the battery, which will gradually fix it. Hopefully.

It’s not a foolproof solution, but it at least addresses a Switch bug that displayed full battery charge one minute and empty the next. If the update doesn’t fix the issue, Nintendo has posted a step-by-step process to gradually train the console into more accurately displaying charge. It amounts to changing the settings, filling the battery and then letting it run down until a certain point — then rinse and repeat two to six times.

Hopefully that won’t be necessary, but fixing Switch bugs can be an…unconventional process. A manufacturing flaw in some of the first Joy Cons resulted in finicky wireless connections, which Nintendo recalled and fixed with what looked like conductive foam — though intrepid DIY users innovated their own solution with a soldering iron, wire and steeled resolve.

Via: Polygon

Source: Nintendo (Issue resolution page)

Pinterest wants you to think of it as a visual search engine

Pinterest might have started out as a social network, but it’s quickly moving into search engine territory. This week, the site announced that it’s moving the “Search” and “Lens” features to a more prominent space in its mobile apps.

Lens is a visual search tool that rolled out to US users earlier this year. It’s functionally the equivalent of a reverse image search. Users can take a photograph of something, say a desk, with Lens, and the smart search will return interesting pins with related design ideas and similar furniture. Pinterest is constantly updating Lens’s features and its accuracy.

More and more people are using Pinterest’s search features on mobile, so it makes sense that the company would want to move them front and center. The company says that 85 percent of all searches, both text-based and visual with Lens, occur on a mobile device. That’s a significant chunk of traffic.

The company also made some tweaks to the home feed. You should start seeing fewer duplicate pins in your feed and your recommendations will update in real-time, taking into account your most recent pins and searches. These added features are available in the iOS app today and should be ready for Android soon.

Source: Pinterest

Amazon adds live home camera feeds to Fire TV’s bag of tricks

It seems like every day brings a new announcement for Alexa and Amazon-branded devices, and this day is no different. Today, the online retail giant announced that soon you’ll be able to view your live home camera feeds through the Fire TV and second gen Fire TV sticks. Compatible camera systems include Ring, Arlo, Nest, EZVIZ, Vivint Smart Home, Amcrest, Logitech and August.

This isn’t the first Amazon device to support this feature. The bulky Echo Show can also link with cameras on your home network to show a live feed. If you don’t have the video-equipped device, the regular Echo or Dot can play audio feeds. A simple “Alexa, show the front door” will bring the video (or audio) up on a compatible device.

Additionally, users can pair Echo devices with a Fire TV, allowing you to control your Fire TV or Fire TV stick with your voice. Amazon has updated the range of commands available. All you have to do to make it happen is ask a question and use “Fire TV” — for example, “Alexa, show me dramas on Fire TV,” and your Alexa device will automatically pair with your Fire TV. Alexa can launch apps and search for TV shows and movies by title, genre or actor. You can also control playback through Alexa. The updated Alexa features are available now for Fire TV and Fire TV sticks (Fire TV Edition smart TV users will have access sometime this week), while support for home camera feeds will arrive soon.

Source: Business Wire

Windows 10 will soon include built-in eye tracking

It’s not easy to use a PC if you have ALS or another neuromuscular disease that prevents you from using your hands. You can use eye tracking, but that could easily entail specialized software and an imperfect experience. Microsoft thinks it can do better. It’s adding built-in eye tracking to Windows 10, nicknamed Eye Control, that will let anyone navigate using their gaze. You can launch apps, type and otherwise perform common tasks just by focusing your eyes on the right part of the screen.

Microsoft partnered with Tobii on Eye Control, and it won’t surprise you to hear that Tobii’s trackers have the broadest compatibility with the new feature. The upgrade is available in beta as part of a Windows Insider preview if you’re eager to try it right away, although there’s no firm timetable for when it’ll reach stable Windows versions.

The addition represents the next big step in making PCs truly accessible. Both Apple and Microsoft have accessibility features, but they’re usually focused on vision and hearing issues. This opens the door to people who need an entirely different control scheme. Don’t be surprised if you see eye tracking interfaces (and eventually, other interfaces) come to other platforms and mobile devices.

Via: The Verge

Source: Microsoft Accessibility Blog

Microsoft shrunk the Xbox One wireless controller adapter for PCs

Microsoft has a few new accessories on the way for Xbox One and PC gamers. Along with three new Wireless Controllers in Xbox 360-style Grey/Green, hot red Volcano Shadow, and Halo-esque Patrol Tech variants, the gaming company has announced a brand-new Xbox Wireless Adapter for Windows 10, a little USB stick that’s 66 percent smaller than the original. You can purchase the miniature adapter — which lets you use an Xbox One controller on your PC — for $25 on its own, or grab it as a bundle with the plain black controller for $80.

The new controllers have all the regular features you expect from an Xbox One device, including a textured or rubberized grip, a decent wireless range and Bluetooth for gaming on your PC or mobile device without an adapter. If you’ve got the Xbox Accessories App, you can even remap the buttons for your specific play style. These redesigns will be available in September, on the 5th, the 18th, and 26th, respectively. The itty-bitty wireless adapter will be available January 31, 2018 and you can pre-order all of these new peripherals now.

Source: Microsoft

‘Resident Evil’ will haunt the Nintendo Switch this fall

Before Resident Evil 7 came along and blew everyone’s expectations of what a survival horror game could be out of the water, the franchise was in a bad spot for awhile. The Revelations sub-series was a more back-to-basics approach to RE, existing alongside the increasingly awful numbered sequels leading up to this year’s first-person adventure. Well, if you missed Revelations on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 and are looking for something scary for your Switch, later this fall you’ll be all set.

Resident Evil Revelations Collection will set you back $39.99 for one cartridge and one download code (for the first and second game, respectively). The double pack will contain all previously released add-ons. Or, if you only liked one game or the other, each will be a $19.99 download.

The pair of remastered games will also appear on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. The first game arrives August 29th, and PS4 fans will get an animated theme for their system should they digitally pre-order. The two-pack will be released for Switch sometime this autumn. Y’know, the perfect time of year to fight off zombified crabs and corals.

It’s easy to be cynical and say that, yeah, these are just ports, but there are a lot of Switch owners who didn’t have last-gen consoles, so the third-party library from that round of hardware is going to feel pretty new for a lot of people. Meanwhile, Bayonetta 2 with an actual playable frame-rate is nowhere to be found.

Source: Capcom