Samsung vice chairman quits amid leadership ‘crisis’

Based on the earnings guidance Samsung has released for the third quarter of 2017, the Korean conglomerate is set to make a new record. It puts its operating profit for July to September at around $12.8 billion, almost thrice last year’s $4.6 billion. Despite the possibility of having the best annual earnings ever, not everything’s A-OK for the chaebol. Samsung Vice Chairman Oh-Hyun Kwon has decided to step down and leave his positions as vice chairman, board chairman and member, as well as CEO of Samsung display. He said the company is “confronted with unprecedented crisis inside out” and needs “a new spirit and young leadership to better respond to challenges…”

Kwon has been the face of Samsung after Jay Y. Lee was arrested and eventually found guilty of bribery and embezzlement. Lee, who was sentenced to five years in prison, apparently bribed officials to ensure that the controversial merger of two Samsung-controlled companies would go smoothly in spite of shareholders’ disapproval. While he was only a vice chairman when he was arrested, Lee was considered the company’s de facto leader after his father, Samsung Chairman Lee Kun-hee, suffered a heart attack in 2014. The younger Lee is responsible for conjuring up the company’s long-term strategic vision.

Samsung had a great quarter, thanks mainly to the increasing demand for memory chips with large storage capacities. The mobile division’s performance also got a boost from Galaxy Note 8’s sales, but we won’t know by how much until the full earnings come out. If the conglomerate wants to top Q3’s profit, though, it has to find a way to solve the “unprecedented crisis” it’s going through.

Source: AP, Samsung (1), (2), Reuters

PlayStation’s updated VR headset arrives in Japan tomorrow

You may want to hold off buying the current-gen PSVR, as its successor is imminent. We already knew the updated headset will come with integrated headphones and HDR passthrough support (courtesy of a new processor unit). And, now Sony is blessing us with a release date — for Japan, anyway. The company’s native home will be the first to get the refreshed VR device when it lands there on Saturday. Meanwhile, everyone else will have to wait. At 44,980 yen ($401), the new headset will match the starting price of the original (although, its older sibling now comes bundled with the PlayStation Camera at no extra charge).

The gradual rollout sets it apart from its predecessor, which was released simultaneously in the US, UK, Europe, and Japan one year ago today. To mark its birthday, Sony is giving PlayStation Plus subscribers 80 percent off over 50 compatible titles on its Store for a limited time. Word of advice to all the cat people out there: Set aside some change for the upcoming Neko Atsume.

Source: PlayStation (Japan)

The outcome of this virtual riot depends on your emotions

Consider what your first reaction would be if, during a protest turned violent, you came face-to-face with a riot cop barking at you from behind his clear shield. Not the words that come out of your mouth nor the moves you could make to escape. Before any of that, your emotions would already be fired up and broadcasting to the policeman what you might do next. In RIOT 2, an interactive film by Karen Palmer, controlling these emotions is the key to your escape.

Inspired by protests in Baton Rouge and Ferguson to Turkey and Venezuela, the goal of RIOT is essentially to keep calm. It is designed to make you fearful.

At a recent demo at the Future of Storytelling (FoST) Festival in New York, RIOT was installed in a stand-alone house where a man in a gas mask, helmet and olive-green outfit (actually Palmer’s fiancé, Gary Franklin) directed participants into position in front of a screen. A wrecked trash can, traffic cone and black-and-yellow safety tape littered the dark area — set-design elements added by co-producers from the British National Theatre’s Immersive Storytelling Studio. By the time participants watched real-life intro footage of a protest in Washington, DC, and absorbed the sirens wailing and jarring jungle-influenced soundtrack, their adrenaline was rising.

What follows is an encounter with the riot police and then, if players keep their cool, a cinematic urban chase around London’s South Bank, interspersed with more narrative forks in the road. These are like quick time events in video games, except instead of participants hitting a button, a camera trained on their faces reads their emotions.

Developed by collaborator Hongying Meng at Brunel University London, the software detects calm, fear and anger according to factors like eye width, frowns and mouth shape. The challenge is to stay calm at critical moments or the experience ends. It’s emotional conditioning through gamification.

Software that recognizes emotions — part of the field of affective computing — has made strides in recent years. Fueled by machine learning, companies like Affectiva are able to distinguish genuine from forced expressions and pick up micro-gestures that the human making them isn’t even aware of. While the opportunities for advertisers and political campaigners to understand a target audience are myriad, standout artistic experiences using these capabilities have been scarcer.

“Ultimately we are the original joystick. Our bodies are the way we already interact and process the world.”

Yet the ongoing melding of games and film into interactive narratives raises the question of how we should control these new experiences naturally. Motion sensors, natural language processing, haptics and perhaps even mind control have all been used. Emotions are another, lesser explored interface.

“Ultimately we are the original joystick. Our bodies are the way we already interact and process the world,” said Charles Melcher, director of FoST. “Conversation, facial expression, intonation of our voice, physical gesture — all of those are the natural language of human interaction. Technology is finally discovering what we are as a species and enabling it in the purest way.”

RIOT is part of a wave of narrative experiences that use technology to activate specific emotions. At FoST, there were projects meant to make you feel intimacy or even — purportedly — fall in love. If storytelling is about eliciting human emotions, Melcher said his goal is to find examples of technology augmenting that process to create “sensual media.”

“It’s a kind of storytelling that reminds us of the sensory joy of being alive,” he said. “And I think that’s a direct response to a lot of technology which has for many years been doing the opposite, disconnecting us from ourselves.”

“I believe that if you’re fearful or angry often your narrative in life doesn’t get to reach a conclusion.”

In RIOT, the primary emotion Palmer plays with is fear. “In my opinion, fear is the most powerful emotion,” Palmer, originally from London, said. “If you’re calm, your narrative will play out because I believe that if you’re fearful or angry often your narrative in life doesn’t get to reach a conclusion.”

It’s a recurrent theme in her work — how to face fear head on, and move through it — that comes in part from practicing freerunning for the past 13 years with international group Parkour Generations. An earlier project, Syncself, was a parkour simulator using an EEG headset to measure participants’ focus. If their brainwaves didn’t show concentration, they’d fail to make their leaps.

In the same way Palmer has managed her relationship with fear through parkour, she wants RIOT to help people understand their emotions. “I would like them to get an insight or confirmation into who they are,” she said. Though RIOT is filmed from a first-person point of view, it’s not as much about connecting with another character as learning about your reaction to pressure. You have to confront not only how you feel but also, crucially, how your emotions are projected to others. Research shows that the majority of communication is nonverbal, and it doesn’t matter if you feel calm should the cop think you’re angry and bring out his nightstick. RIOT is about understanding your subconscious, involuntary emotional expression and learning how to regulate it.

Palmer likens RIOT to a “gym of the mind” where you’re “programming yourself,” and it’s easy to see its pragmatic uses in conflict training or any other preparation for a fight-or-flight scenario. It’s a contrast to much storytelling, where your emotional openness to wherever the experience leads you — say, to be frightened in It or warmed in The Big Sick — enhances the enjoyment. In RIOT, you have to steel yourself. Like a traditional movie director, Palmer is still trying to manipulate your emotions. But you have to push back or you don’t get to see the ending.

[Image credit: RIOT 2 directed by Karen Palmer]

iOS Gained Market Share in Most Countries This Summer, Although Samsung Drove Gains for Android in UK

Apple’s portion of the mobile ecosystem market increased in eight major territories in the three months ending August 2017, according to new data collected and shared by Kantar Worldpanel. Over the summer of 2017, iOS saw growth in the following territories compared to the same year-ago period: Spain (4.4 percentage point increase), followed by China (4.3), the United States (3.7), Germany (2.3), France (1.7), the European Union (1.2), Australia (0.9), and Italy (0.4).

Specifically, iOS grew from 31.3 to 35 percentage points year-over-year in the U.S., and although Android still dominates the U.S. smartphone OS market at 63.2 percentage points, it has dipped slightly from its hold of 66.1 percentage points in the same year-ago period. Dominic Sunnebo, Kantar Worldpanel ComTech’s Global Business Unit Director, said that “Apple maintained strong momentum in the US one month before the release of iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus,” so iOS should continue to see positive growth in future data that measures the holiday months.

Galaxy S8 compared with iPhone 8
However, Apple’s iOS decreased slightly in the United Kingdom/Great Britain in the summer months this year. The drop in iOS market share is said to be due to Samsung’s “significant” promotional activity for its Galaxy S8 and J3 smartphones eating into Apple’s pre-iPhone 8 sales. In total, Apple devices running iOS accounted for 33.9 percentage points during this summer period in the UK, dropping 2 percentage points from 35.9 one year prior.

Although this was “offset slightly” by strong sales of the iPhone SE, Samsung itself saw a 6.4 percentage point increase in the June-August 2017 period in the UK. Overall, Android OS grew from 58.9 in 2016 to capture 65.3 percentage points in the three month period. Of course, once Apple’s sales of new iPhones are accounted for in future data by Kantar Worldpanel, iOS should see a resurgence.

A few Galaxy S8 owners mentioned both promotional materials put out by Samsung and a “good deal” on the device as key factors to their purchases. At the time of its launch, Samsung said the S8 marked its “best ever” pre-order period for a smartphone.

“Samsung took full advantage of the weeks just before the iPhone 8 and iPhone X were released in Great Britain, with significant promotional activity that helped drive its overall share to a three-year high of 38.4% for the three months ending August 2017,” explained Dominic Sunnebo, Global Business Unit Director at Kantar Worldpanel ComTech. “More than one in four Galaxy S8 buyers cited a specific promotion as a key purchase influencer, and almost half said that a good deal on the price of the phone was key to their purchase. Both of these metrics experienced a large increase over the last two months of the period.”

Otherwise, the only other regression centered in Japan and accounted for just 0.1 percentage points lost by iOS between 2016 and 2017.

Global smartphone OS shares data via Kantar Worldpanel
iOS market share is expected to see another boost thanks to the launch of the iPhone X, which has caused many people to put off ordering the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus in anticipation of Apple’s greatly redesigned smartphone. Pre-orders for the device go up two weeks from today on October 27, while the official launch date will come three weeks from today on November 3.

For more data on the global market shares of smartphone operating systems, check out Kantar Worldpanel’s research right here.

Tag: Kantar Worldpanel
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You Can Now Order Food From Papa John’s, Five Guys, and More Within Facebook on iOS

Facebook today announced that you can now order food directly from within the Facebook app on iOS. Alex Himel, Facebook’s vice president of local, explained that food ordering and delivery has “gotten complicated” within other apps and services, so the company aims to streamline that process by adding it to Facebook.

Like other newly added services — including local weather and jobs search — “Order Food” will now be on the Explore tab of the Facebook iOS app. Facebook said this section of its app combines options from “a number of food ordering services” and accumulates them into one place. This way, you’ll be able to browse restaurants near you that take orders from EatStreet, Zuppler, Slice, Delivery.com, DoorDash, ChowNow, and Olo.

You’ll also be able to order food directly from Jack in the Box, Five Guys, Papa John’s, Wingstop, TGI Friday’s, Denny’s, El Pollo Loco, Chipotle, Jimmy John’s, and Panera, as well as some “local spots.”

Ordering food for takeout or delivery is supposed to be simple. That’s the point. But somehow it’s gotten complicated. First you need to decide what to eat, then you have to sift through a bunch of options and services.

Today, we’re taking the time out of finding what you want to eat by officially launching the ability to order food for pick-up or delivery, directly on Facebook. People already go to Facebook to figure out what to eat by reading about nearby restaurants, and seeing what their friends say about them. So, we’re making it even easier.

Using Facebook’s social aspects, you can check out restaurant reviews on their pages, and see if your own friends have left reviews before you order. Once you find the restaurant you want to order from, it’ll say if it has takeout or delivery, and from there you can choose which of the food ordering services that the location supports.

Facebook said existing accounts with these services will be supported, and if you don’t yet have an account you can sign up for Delivery.com, DoorDash, or any of the previously listed services without leaving Facebook.

Facebook’s Order Food option in the Explore tab is rolling out now to everyone in the United States on iOS, Android, and desktop.

Tag: Facebook
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Apple Still Offering Free Delayed Battery Repairs for Some 2012 and Early 2013 MacBook Pros

If you own a 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display released in Mid 2012 or Early 2013, and your notebook qualifies for battery service, the repair should be free if you are willing to wait for around one month.

Apple has advised Genius Bar employees and Apple Authorized Service Providers to offer these customers a free battery repair if they are willing to wait until November 15 or later for the service to be completed.

Apple has offered this option since August 25 due to a continued shortage of the aluminum enclosure that the battery is glued into on the aforementioned MacBook Pro models, according to an internal memo obtained by MacRumors.

Top case with glued-in battery for Mid 2012 15-inch MacBook Pro via iFixit
If a customer does not wish to delay the repair, Apple says that standard out-of-warranty prices for battery service apply: $199 in the United States, £199 in the United Kingdom, $289 in Australia, or $259 in Canada.

The policy doesn’t apply to any other Mac, including the 13-inch MacBook Pro, 12-inch MacBook, MacBook Air, or models without Retina displays.

To check if your qualifying MacBook Pro needs battery service, click on the Apple logo in the menu bar. Then, click on About This Mac > System Report > Power. In the Health Information section, the condition should say “Service Battery.”

Apple will confirm if the MacBook Pro qualifies for battery service by performing a diagnostic test at the Genius Bar at most Apple Stores. Repairs are allowed for failed, consumed, and swollen batteries.

Apple is no longer offering customers the option to exchange their MacBook Pro for a functionally equivalent model, as it did for repairs initiated between March 2 and July 25 due to the same part shortage.

During that time, many customers were able to exchange a 2012 MacBook Pro for a much newer model, such as a maxed-out refurbished 2016 MacBook Pro with Touch Bar, for just the cost of an out-of-warranty battery repair.

Related Roundup: MacBook ProBuyer’s Guide: MacBook Pro (Neutral)
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WD is developing 40TB hard drives powered by microwaves

Western Digital (WD) may have lost a bid to buy Toshiba’s flash memory technology, but is still hard at work on its bread-and-butter hard drives. The company has unveiled a breakthrough called microwave-assisted magnetic recording (MAMR) that will allow ever-higher disk capacities, up to 40TB by the year 2025. “Commercialization of MAMR technology will pave the way to higher recording densities and lower cost per terabyte hard disk drives,” said VP of research John Rydning in a statement.

If you’re wondering what microwaves have to do with hard drives, WD has a developed a new type of drive head called a “spin torque oscillator” that generates a microwave field. That allows data to be written to magnetic media at a lower magnetic field than with conventional disks, making it possible to pack more bits into the same space.

“As a result, Western Digital’s MAMR technology is now ready for prime time, and provides a more cost-effective, more reliable solution,” the company said in a technical brief, adding that “MAMR also has the capability to extend areal density gains up to 4 Terabits per square inch.” As with its current enterprise drives, WD’s MAMR drives will use helium instead of air to reduce internal turbulence.

So how “ready for prime time” is it? Western Digital says MAMR-based drives for data centers will appear in the market starting in 2019, and it will produce 40TB 3.5-inch disks by 2025, with “continued expansion beyond that timeframe.” WD didn’t say what capacity early MAMR drives would pack, but it recently released its first 14TB drive via its HGST (formerly Hitachi) subsidiary, so we’d expect the MAMR variants to go beyond that.

Mechanical hard disk don’t have nearly the speed or reliability of SSDs, but the cost per gigabyte is multiple times lower. That’s crucial for data centers and cloud storage firms, especially since data-hungry AI software is becoming more and more pervasive. Don’t expect to see MAMR drives in your local media backup (NAS) drives right away, but it should trickle down fairly soon, giving you enough storage for future 8K HDR videos.

Source: Western Digital

Why I kicked my morning Twitter habit

Up until a week ago, the first thing I did every morning after waking up was reach for the nightstand and grab my iPhone. Then, after hitting the snooze on the alarm a couple of times, I’d open Twitter or Instagram and scroll through my feeds for 10-15 minutes before getting ready for work. Once dressed and prepared to face another day, I’d walk to the train, hop on, take my phone out and check social media again. For 40 minutes, almost the entire length of my commute, I scrolled through people’s posts for what felt like an eternity. Wash, rinse, repeat — save for the weekends. And I imagine many people can relate.

Liking posts on Twitter and Instagram before my day really started became routine; it was a way to catch up with what the world had been up to for the six or seven hours I was asleep. What news did I miss? What were my friends doing? You know, the usual. Some call that FOMO (fear of missing out), but I’d say it’s just a bad habit. I’d even go as far as calling it an addiction. I feel the need to be glued to my phone, particularly social-media apps, as if my brain is wired to open them every chance I get.

Recently though, it’s all become too much — especially on Twitter, where oftentimes the first thing I’d see were tweets about politics and how the world is basically falling apart. It wasn’t just Trump’s questionable tweets, either, or people’s reactions to them, but also things like the discussions around the Las Vegas Route 91 mass shooting. (Instagram is less toxic, because my feed is made up mostly of friends at bars, fashion and sports.)

Don’t get me wrong: I love Twitter and Instagram, and I might even say the same about Facebook if I had an account (but probably not). However, that negativity eventually took a toll on me mentally. I noticed that by the time I got to the Engadget office in the morning, I was already in a bad mood. Things that were out of my control sometimes made it hard to focus on my work. And who wants to start the day like that?

That’s why I decided to impose a social media diet on myself, in hopes of sparing me a few hours of dealing with the world’s problems. No more Twitter or Instagram until after I’m in the office, at my desk and I’ve had time to settle into the day. Instead, I spend my commute playing games on my Nintendo Switch or reading a book.

I’m not alone in wanting to break from the shackles of social media. Celebrities like Solange Knowles have taken digital sabbaticals recently, citing the need to stay away from “racist ugly ass fuck bois who reek of citronella” on Twitter and Instagram. She made that decision three days after the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, on August 15th. As a reporter, it’s hard for me to completely tune out, given that my job requires me to stay informed with what’s happening around us. But if anything needs my immediate attention, I have notifications for breaking news set up, and I still check my work email at home and on the train.

A couple of friends have suggested wiping the slate clean on Twitter — unfollowing everyone and starting from scratch. Thing is, that probably wouldn’t change much — I’d just end up just following most of the same people and media accounts. My colleague Dan Cooper took a break from Twitter for an entire week, but I just can’t bring myself to do that. Where else am I going to get live reactions to sporting events? Especially right now that the Yankees are on their way to snag another World Series pennant. (Editor’s note: Cubs, two years in a row!)

Honestly, I wish I could go back to last year, when the majority of New York City’s subway lines didn’t have cell service. That said, I also understand there are people out there who need to stay connected for more important reasons, not just to check Twitter constantly. Plus, it’s not the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s (MTA) fault I have no self-control.

I’ve enjoyed my experiment so far, and now my mornings feel more pure and free from bad vibes. I’m less disappointed in humanity when I get to work, and it’s great not starting my day by worrying whether or not Trump has started World War III. Sure, that all changes as soon as I check Twitter at the office, or when I absent-mindedly break my diet for a brief second, but there’s no way to avoid reality. The only thing I can do is change the way I use social media, at least if I want to stay sane.

Amazon suspends studio head over sexual harassment allegations

Amazon has suspended the exec in charge of its film and TV unit after a producer accused him of sexual harassment. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Isa Dick Hackett (daughter of sci-fi author Phillip K. Dick) claimed Roy Price made inappropriate sexual advances towards her at Comic-Con two years ago. Hours after the article went live, Amazon said its exec “is on leave of absence effective immediately.” Hackett serves as the producer on two of Amazon’s adaptations of her late father’s works: TV show The Man in the High Castle and anthology series Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams.

In the article, she revealed that Price repeatedly propositioned her in the back of a cab en route to an Amazon staff party on July 10, 2015. He allegedly said “You will love my dick.” Although she made it clear to Price that she wasn’t interested, Hackett claims he later yelled “anal sex” in her ear. Others were allegedly witness to this behaviour, which Hackett promptly reported to Amazon. She claims the company informed her that it was conducting an internal investigation into the matter, but that she was never made aware of its outcome. Although, she did note the exec was conspicuously absent from future events involving her shows.

The scandal comes in the wake of sexual harassment and assault revelations about Harvey Weinstein. Multiple victims, including celebs, have shared their stories about the Hollywood mogul. One of them, actress Rose McGowan, has now taken to Twitter to denounce both Price and Amazon. Across a series of tweets, McGowan revealed that when Weinstein was suggested as a producer for one of her shows, she told Price that he had raped her, only to be ignored. McGowan, who has been outspoken about Weinstein, was briefly blocked from Twitter on Thursday for tweeting a personal phone number.

1) @jeffbezos I told the head of your studio that HW raped me. Over & over I said it. He said it hadn’t been proven. I said I was the proof.

— rose mcgowan (@rosemcgowan) October 12, 2017

Source: The Hollywood Reporter

Apple Co-Founder Steve Wozniak Lends Nickname to New ‘Woz U’ Online Institute Offering Coding Lessons

Apple co-founder Steve “Woz” Wozniak has lent his nickname to Woz U, a new online learning institute aimed at educating and training people in coding and other digital skills through a subscription-based curriculum.

“Our goal is to educate and train people in employable digital skills without putting them into years of debt,” said Wozniak, who co-founded Apple in 1976 alongside Steve Jobs. “People often are afraid to choose a technology-based career because they think they can’t do it. I know they can, and I want to show them how.”

While the announcement suggests that Wozniak founded the institution himself, a footnote at the bottom says it is part of the Southern Careers Institute, a private, for-profit school with seven locations across Texas.

Woz U said it aims to get people into the workforce quickly and affordably with the technology-based career best suited for them. Programs launching today train computer support specialists and software developers; data science, mobile applications, and cybersecurity programs are coming soon.

“My entire life I have worked to build, develop, and create a better world through technology and I have always respected education,” Wozniak said. “Now is the time for Woz U, and we are only getting started.”

In addition to its website and app, Woz U says it plans to open physical campuses in more than 30 cities across the United States and around the world.

Tag: Steve Wozniak
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