China’s Baidu, Changan enter the autonomous vehicle fray

The race for truly widespread driverless technology is now seriously burning up the pavement. The international competition is on like never before as China pursues the development of its very own autonomous vehicles. Asian giants like search engine Baidu and manufacturer Changan have joined the race previously spearheaded by American companies like Google and Tesla. Last year, two autonomous Changan cars made a 1,200 mile trip from the southwestern city of Chongqing to Beijing, marking the nation’s first long-distance test of this technology. And now, Baidu has unveiled plans of its own to start mass producing autonomous cars by 2021.

According to Boston Consulting Group projections, China will soon corner more than a quarter of the driverless car market, which is expected to hit 12 million by 2035. Contributing to the popularity of this technology in the eastern nation appears to be the widespread public acceptance of driverless cars. In 2015, a survey by Roland Berger found that 96 percent of Chinese citizens would consider using an autonomous vehicle in day-to-day transportation, whereas only 58 percent of Americans said the same. And given the often gridlocked traffic scene in China and the high prevalence of accidents, some are hopeful that self-driving cars could improve the overall transportation situation.

Baidu’s partnership with Chinese automaker BAIC Group could certainly help with that improvement. The automaker is already one of Baidu’s parters in its Apollo self-driving program, and this open platform will be leveraged to build Level 3 autonomous vehicles (where drivers can safely take their eyes off the road for some time while the car drives itself). Indeed, Level 3 cars are expected to be in production by 2019, and the company is hoping for fully self-driving Level 4 vehicles two years later.

Ultimately, experts say, the goal for China would be to employ driverless cars in taxi and car service businesses. “The real payoff for truly driverless technology will come when cars on the road are no longer owned by people, but are owned by fleet management services,” Bill Russo, managing director of the consultancy firm Gao Feng, told the AFP. “That’s where you want to think about taking the driver out of the equation. Mobility on demand is hugely popular here.”

Citing “very positive feedback” from the Chinese government, Baidu already has routes mapped out for its new public transportation system, and seems confident that autonomous cars and buses will usher in a new era for transportation in a seriously congested traffic situation. And as the company grows its team dedicated to self-driving cars, it looks like the new frontier for vehicular innovation may be slowly moving overseas.

Update: Baidu has plans to start mass producing self-driving cars by 2021. 

OnePlus announces it will allow users to opt out of data collection program

Why it matters to you

Privacy is important to everyone and OnePlus’ new policy represents a step in the right direction.

OnePlus recently found itself embroiled in a bit of controversy when the extent of its data-collection efforts was revealed. In short, it was discovered that Oxygen OS, the Android-based OS that powers OnePlus phones such as the OnePlus 5, has a built-in data collection service that users are automatically enrolled in. The goal of the program was similar to others of its type, which was to allow OnePlus to collect data from a large number of users in order to address issues with the phones. However, it was also reported that the company was collecting personal information such as telephone numbers, Wi-Fi information, and other sensitive data.

OnePlus responded to these reports by ensuring users that the data was kept secure and private and insisted that it was only collected in order to aid in customer service. On Friday, OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei took to the company’s official forums in order to reassure the company’s userbase that their privacy was valued and their personal data was not being shared with any third parties.

The post also added that the company would take steps to ensure that users would be made aware of the data-collection program and would be prompted to opt out during setup. The option is already available on the Oxygen OS, but it is buried in the settings menu, so users may not be aware of it. However, that will change later this month. Pei said that by the end of October, an update would be rolled out which would ask users, during set-up, if they would like to opt into the user experience data collection program or not.

Pei’s post only seems to address the collection of analytical. Obviously, this is important, but some users questioned why OnePlus needed Wi-Fi information or phone numbers in order to help with customer service. Obviously, concerns that data such as phone numbers might be sold to third parties such as telemarketers was a prime concern for some users, and its one that OnePlus hasn’t directly addressed. It is unclear whether or not opting out of the user experience program will also prevent OnePlus from collecting personal data such as telephone numbers.

OnePlus will start prompting users to opt out of data collection

OnePlus will give users the option to opt out of data collection when setting up an OxygenOS phone for the first time by the end of October.

As it has a tendency to do every now and then, OnePlus found itself in hot water earlier this week when users were reminded as to just how much personal data OnePlus smartphones were collecting and sending back to the company. Essentially, the operating system on OnePlus devices (OxygenOS) has a “user experience program” that users are automatically entered into.

The goal of the program is to collect data from phones so that OnePlus can then analyze it and then provide better customer service as a result, and while there was your typical stuff such as which apps were being installed on phones, how they’re being used, etc., OnePlus was also collecting IMEI numbers, Wi-Fi network information, MAC addresses, and telephone numbers.

OnePlus responded to us shortly after people started raising a fuss, and while this helped to clear some things up, the company co-founder, Carl Pei, has since issued a more formal response in the form of a blog post on OnePlus’s forums.

By the end of the month, customers will be able to opt out of data collection from day one.

Pei starts out by reiterating a number of times just how much OnePlus values its customers’ personal information, and he reminds everyone that you can choose to opt out of the company’s data collection practices by going to Settings -> Advanced -> Join user experience program. This reminder is nice, but it’s not readily apparent that you can do this without a proper explanation first.

Thankfully, by the end of October, OnePlus will be adding a new prompt when setting up an OxygenOS device for the first time that will give customers the option of opting in or out of the program right out of the box.

Although this is something that should have been made available in the first place, it is a step in the right direction. Pei doesn’t outline why OnePlus was collecting MAC addresses, Wi-Fi networks, and other info to begin with, but I wouldn’t hold your breath for a proper explanation on that anytime soon.

OnePlus responds to OxygenOS data collection concerns

OnePlus 5

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OnePlus 5 is mysteriously unavailable to purchase

A sign of things to come?

The OnePlus 5 might not be perfect, but its price-to-specs ratio is undeniably great. With smartphones like the Galaxy Note 8 and Google Pixel 2 XL reaching dangerously close to that $1000 price tag, options like the OnePlus 5 can start to become even more appealing than they were before. Unfortunately, if you were hoping to purchase a OnePlus 5 from OnePlus soon, you won’t be able to do so.

OnePlus has had inventory issues ever since it launched with the OnePlus One back in 2014, whether it be with an irritating invitation system or regularly running out of devices for its customers to purchase. The OnePlus 5 has been out of stock for a number of weeks at this point, and while this on its own wasn’t all that odd, something interesting recently happened.

For at least 24 hours at the time of publishing this article, OnePlus has removed the “buy now” button for the OnePlus 5 from its website. The OnePlus 5 JCC Limited Edition and a link to learn more about it accompanies the site’s home page (a version of the phone that isn’t even available for purchase in North America), and clicking on the OnePlus 5 tab at the top of the site will reveal no option at all to buy the device.

No phone for you!

You can still access the OnePlus 5’s sale page by clicking on the Accessories tab and then the OnePlus 5 header at the top of the page, but doing so will reveal that all models of the phone are out of stock.

At this point, we can think of a couple explanations for OnePlus’s decision to effectively end sales of the OnePlus 5. Either the company is having production issues with the phone and wants to get those worked out before encouraging people to go to the sales page, or it’s already pushing the OnePlus 5 to the curb in anticipating for its follow-up.

A render recently surfaced for what’s supposedly the OnePlus 5T, and it was suggested that the upcoming phone will be made available for purchase in November. We had some issues with the legitimacy of that rumor (and still do), but the timing of it and OnePlus’s recent removal of the OnePlus 5 is interesting to say the least.

What do you think’s going on here? Speculate away in the comments below.

OnePlus 5

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• OnePlus 5 specs
• Which OnePlus 5 model should you buy?
• Camera comparison: OnePlus 5 vs. Galaxy S8
• The latest OnePlus 5 news
• Join the discussion in the forums

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Iran blamed for cyberattack on UK parliament

When hackers attacked UK parliament email accounts in June, it was tempting to blame Russia. After all, it’s been rather busy lately. However, it looks like people were pointing their fingers in the wrong direction. The Times has learned that British intelligence has pinned the campaign on Iran — it’d be the country’s first cyberattack against the UK, in fact. While the actual damage was relatively limited (about 30 Members of Parliament were compromised out of roughly 9,000 total accounts), the intrusion supports beliefs that Iran has become a serious player in cyberwarfare after years of being little more than a target. Officials aren’t commenting on the attack, but there are a few theories as to why Iran would take this risk.

One theory suggests that this was really an exploratory mission: Iran may have been looking for data that could compromise the UK’s interests or force it to make concessions. Iran may have been looking for an advantage in trade, too. There’s even the possibility that factions in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard were trying to undermine the country’s anti-nuclear proliferation deal in a bid to cancel it, giving officials the excuse they needed to resume full nuclear technology research.

It’s that last part which has politicians worried. Reportedly, officials said the link between Iran and the cyberattack has “complicated” Prime Minister Theresa May’s attempts to protect the nuclear deal. They didn’t believe it changed the argument in favor of the deal (if anything, it shows why Iran must be contained), but it’s no longer as simple as claiming that Iran has turned a corner.

Via: Reuters

Source: The Times

Uber decides against leaving Quebec over tough ridesharing rules

Uber vowed to leave Quebec if it starts implementing stricter rules on October 14th. A few hours before the deadline, though, the ride-hailing firm has changed its tune: Uber has decided to stay, hoping to have a “constructive dialogue” with new Transport Minister André Fortin. Quebec is requiring Uber drivers to undergo 35 hours of training similar to the one taxi drivers go through. It also wants drivers to be background-checked by the police. The company obviously wasn’t happy with these proposed rules and is likely aiming to sway the young transport chief, who’s only been on the job for a few days, in its favor.

Perhaps Fortin’s clarification on one of the proposed regulations has given Uber hope. According to CBC News, the new minister said authorities are willing to give Uber drivers time to get their background checks done. He said the original proposals’ wording didn’t make that obvious.

Further, the company said it has confirmed with the local government that the new training requirements won’t be enforced in the next few months. A group of taxi owners didn’t like that the government is giving the ride-hailing firm leeway and complained about how they “must always patiently wait while Uber gets compromises and exceptions” in an open letter.

Fortin made it clear, however, that Quebec intends to push through with the new regulations. “My job is to put a regulatory framework in place” he told CBC Montreal’s Daybreak. “Whether a specific private company decides to operate within it, it’s not for me to be for or against that.”

Source: The Guardian, CBC News

The Q-Collar draws inspiration from a woodpecker, may help prevent concussions

Why it matters to you

Devices like the Q-Collar may be the answer to the problem of brain-related injuries across all sports.

While player-related safety across all sports is focused on protecting athletes’ heads with better helmets, a small, almost unseen device could provide an answer on how to better prevent brain-related injuries.

The Neuroshield, as it is marketed and sold in Canada, is called the Q-Collar in the U.S. It is going through human trials while under review by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration before it can see commercial release stateside. The device draws biomimicry inspiration from a woodpecker ,wrapping around the user’s neck as a way to increase blood volume (like an airbag) in the skull to help stabilize the brain when it’s impacted by sudden movement.

The idea came from the mind Dr. David Smith, and was developed with Connecticut-based Q30 Innovations after Smith spent nine months studying woodpeckeras and other animals that are capable of withstanding repeated high-impact blows to the head. Among his discoveries was that nature developed a way for certain animals to change the pressure inside of their head.

“It’s just unbelievable to see what nature evolution has done to bring the tongue up over the top of its beak, up over the top of its skull back around the back underneath its ears,” Smith told ESPN about the woodpecker’s ability to use its tongue to change its cranial pressure.

But the device still has its detractors. Eric Nauman, a professor of biomedical engineering and basic medical science at Purdue University, has his doubts on whether or not the Q-Collar is beneficial.

“We actually did not pursue this one because we had concerns about the idea of pressing on the [jugular] vein, especially in an uncontrolled way,” he told ESPN. “I would just be too nervous something bad is going to happen.”

Although it has yet to see widespread use, Carolina Panthers linebacker Luke Kuechly is the first known NFL player to wear the device, although given its experimental stage, he can’t say much about it, according to The Charlotte Observer. Kuechly began wearing the device this season after missing six games in 2016 with a concussion. Despite wearing the device during the 2017 season, Kuechly suffered another concussion during a game on Thursday, October 12.

While football players are the most obvious sector to potentially make use of the device, it may see adoption across all sports and workplaces. NASCAR driver Brad Keselowski, for one, wants to test it out.

“If Q-Collar does what the company believes it can do,” Keselowski told SportsTechie, “it will change the face of sports dramatically.”

The top 6 internet hoaxes, from sex in space to fake time travelers

While “fake news” has been the buzzword of choice lately, the notion certainly isn’t new by any stretch of the imagination. From Piltdown Man to Ponzi schemes, hoaxes and fraud are tied into the very fabric our truly wonderful and haphazard existence on this space rock. The Internet simply helped exponentially increase the scale at which even the most baseless, unverifiable, and even impossible claims could exploit human gullibility.

It’s no secret at this point that the World Wide Web goblet overfloweth with grifts and misinformation. (In fact, Kickstarter recently hired a Common Sense Specialist to minimize fraudulent campaigns — because in the year 2017, the very real occupation of Meme Translator simply wasn’t enough.) With every click, share, and “like” —  inadvertent or not (we’re looking at you @TedCruz) — each of us has the unique ability to do our little part in seeing to it that the truth is buried beneath a mountain of misinformation. Be it a secret NASA-sanctioned space sex study that unfortunately never happened to a rare banana-borne flesh-eating pandemic, here are the best internet hoaxes that somehow got our virtual goat.

NASA’s secret space sex program

Of course, NASA, the same agency that purportedly faked the moon landings and has systematically hidden all verifiable evidence that we, in fact, live on a flat disc and not a sphere, would make this list of hoax perpetrators. In 1989, a leaked NASA report known as Document 12-571-3570 explained in great detail a program aboard space shuttle mission STS-75 that was designed to test the most effective zero-gravity reproduction methods. As racy as zero-gravity sex looked in the television show The Expanse, coitus in the final frontier would actually be pretty awkward — for everyone, according to Paul Root Wolpe, the director of Emory University’s Center for Ethics and the first Chief of Bioethics for NASA.

“One of the things that gravity helps us do is stay together, so sex in microgravity might actually be more difficult because you’re going to have to make sure that you’re always holding each other so you don’t drift apart,” he said.

To minimize Newton’s Laws of Motion (in the Ocean) — an object in motion will stay in motion unless thrusted upon by another astronaut in the name of science — NASA apparently placed astronauts in an inflatable bubble and used some sort of elastic band to keep astronauts from “drifting” during said deed. The document was widely shared online and was even used as a legitimate source in Pierre Kohler’s novel The Final Mission, prompting NASA to publicly deny the report. Alas.

Time travelers

While Emmett Lathrop “Doc” Brown, may have used a little suspect plutonium, a flux capacitor, and a souped-up DeLorean to bend space and time in The Back to The Future films, humanity met yet another time traveler, John Titor, in 2000, this one cruising the space time continuum in a 1967 Corvette.

Titor first appeared on a message board, claiming that he was from the year 2036 and was part of a specialized military task forced stationed in Tampa, Florida. He said his mission was to return to the 1970s to get his hands on an IBM 5100 computer, but he was making a quantum pit stop in 2000 for “personal reasons.” Over the course of several months, Titor went to great lengths to post many words about his time machine without actually saying anything at all. He even posted an illustrative user manual of the machine that looks more or less like a sophisticated furnace.

“My ‘time’ machine is a stationary mass, temporal displacement unit manufactured by General Electric. The unit is powered by two top-spin dual-positive singularities that produce a standard off-set Tipler sinusoid,” he said. (What’s a Tipler sinusoid? If you have to ask, you can’t afford it.)

The whole story gained enough traction that the man claiming to be John Titor was even interviewed on a globally streamed radio program. Just as mysteriously as Titor appeared, he vanished, but before Titor blasted off with his ornate box and Speak & Spell, he did leave us with a list of dates and prophecies for the years ahead. He claimed a civil war stemming from unrest in 2004 would eventually divide the U.S. into five separate factions and a nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia would take place in 2015.

Fortunately, none of these prophesies came to fruition, although it could be argued that Titor unraveled the cosmic fabric of our realm with his very being, and for that we are forever thankful to ol’ time-hoppin’ Johnny Tampa.

Kremvax hoax

All semantics and technical distinctions aside, the Kremvax incident may be the first hoax ever perpetrated on the internet. (For all intents and purposes, the hoax occurred on the Usenet network — an early iteration of the pre-internet internet.) In 1984, computer programmer and internet pioneer Piet Beertema took it upon himself to hoodwink Americans on Usenet into thinking the Soviet Union was attempting to connect to the computer communications system.

Beertema logged onto multiple Usenet boards and uploaded a message that seemingly came from Konstantin Chernenko, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. What reinforced the whole sham was the fact that the message appeared to be sent from a pseudo-Kremlin server (kremvax.UUCP). If Usenet, in fact, had any network connectivity to the Eastern Bloc, this breach would pose a direct threat to U.S. national security.

The immediate results on the American side of things was utter shock, disbelief, and paranoia. It didn’t take long before the Pentagon started looking into the charade and soon after Beertema revealed himself as the wizard behind the digital curtain. Got him!

15 days of darkness

In late 2015, the highly reputable website NewsWatch33 ran an article titled “NASA Confirms Earth Will Experience 15 Days of Complete Darkness in November 2015.” Not long after publication, the internet was abuzz with astronomically impossible terror. Per the article, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden had issued a 1,000-page memorandum on a worldwide blackout, citing something about Jupiter, Venus, and “planetary alignment theory.” You know, space stuff. Sadly, the report gained enough traction on the Interweb that former NASA scientist Marshall Shepherd penned an article to settle the brouhaha. Thankfully, the fortnight of no light never was.

How to charge an iPod with an onion

From the Orgone to the Gravgen, free energy devices and the like have been peddled by charlatans and confidence men for centuries. Needless to say, some grifts never die and, as the saying goes, a sucker is born every minute. While many of us are familiar with the timeless Potato clock, fewer of us may be privy to the powers of the onion.

In 2008, a video claimed that an electrolyte-enhanced beverage and a medium-size onion (use a larger onion if you prefer speedier recharge times)  could recharge an iPod via a standard USB cable. Viewers were prompted to puncture the onion with a screwdriver and then let the vegetable steep in the electrolytes for 30 minutes. They were them prompted to forcibly shove the USB end of the charging cable into the onion and voilà, instant energy. Makes sense, right? Right.

According to the experts in this video, this electrolyte-soaked onion should be able to charge your iPod for 15 to 20 minutes (that is assuming, the onion has absorbed about one cup of electrolyte solution). After garnering more than seven million views on YouTube, the gumshoes at ABC rolled up their sleeves to test the hypothesis in pursuit of a George Polk Award for journalistic excellence. Fun Fact: No, you can’t actually charge anything with an All Sport soaked onion. Not even a little bit.

Flesh-eating bananas

In 1999, as both the new Willennium and apocalyptic Y2K glitch loomed, tensions were high. The last thing anyone needed as they approached their unknown fate was yet another baseless reason to be marginally paranoid. In comes a suspect email straight from an anonymous source at the nondescript Manheim Research Institute about a shipments of bananas en route to the U.S. from Costa Rica containing flesh-eating bacteria.

The e-mail claimed these bananas — infected with a bacteria causing necrotizing fasciitis — had “decimated the monkey population in Costa Rica,” and would soon be on the shelves in supermarkets across the U.S. The whole sham got so big the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention eventually acknowledged the prospect of such an event.

“Theoretically, it’s possible,” stated a CDC spokesman. “But, to our knowledge, the so-called flesh-eating bacteria have not been transmitted via banana.”

The skeptics, however, will surely read in between those heavily lawyered lines. Nonetheless, this hoax was so heated that the International Banana Association (IBA) — yes, that’s apparently a thing — had to step in. Banana czar Tim Debus of the IBA placed such a prank on par with “internet terrorism.”

“When we first heard about it in January, it sounded too unbelievable to be believable,” proclaimed Debus. “But when you’re talking about a food product, people will err on the side of caution.”

To the best of our knowledge, to date, no one has died as a result of this potential bandemic. Crisis averted — for now.

6 ways humankind might accidentally bring about the ‘techpocalypse’

Why it matters to you

They may sound like scenarios from a Michael Crichton thriller, but here are six plausible ways that technology could bring down life as we know it.

Here in 2017, technology’s pretty great. It’s helping us live longer, healthier lives, with more access to education and entertainment, and tools like artificial intelligence and gene-editing are providing new ways to solve major problems. But not everything about technology is swell. As the cultural theorist Paul Virilio once noted, the inventor of the ship is also the inventor of the shipwreck. In other words, no matter how good technology might look, there’s always something that can go wrong.

On that cheery note, here are six of the most likely ways we might spring the techpocalypse on ourselves.

Superintelligent A.I. takes over

Universal Pictures

The arrival of superintelligence and the technological singularity is based on the assumption that it’s possible for A.I. to one day possess abilities greater than our own. Compared to humans who are limited by biological evolution, machines could then improve and redesign themselves at an ever increasing pace; becoming smarter all the time. At this point, enormous changes would inevitably take place in human society — which have the possibility of posing an existential risk to humankind.

It’s impossible to predict how an entity more intelligence than us would behave, but the results could be anything from machines wiping out humanity, Terminator-style, to enslaving the world’s population. Heck, combine artificial intelligence with nanotechnology and you might get a scenario like…

Transforming the world into grey goo

RIJASOLO/AFP/Getty Images

The words “grey goo” are rarely associated with positive life experiences. This particular hypothesis is one which has arisen with the advance of nanotechnology, in which self-replicating nanotechnology consumes all the matter on our planet.

It was first proposed by nanotechnology expert Kim Eric Drexler in his book Engines of Creation, in which he writes that: “Imagine … a replicator floating in a bottle of chemicals, making copies of itself… The first replicator assembles a copy in one thousand seconds, the two replicators then build two more in the next thousand seconds, the four build another four, and the eight build another eight. At the end of 10 hours, there are not 36 new replicators, but over 68 billion. In less than a day, they would weigh a ton; in less than two days, they would outweigh the Earth; in another four hours, they would exceed the mass of the sun and all the planets combined – if the bottle of chemicals hadn’t run dry long before.”

The idea was shocking enough that it prompted the U.K.’s future monarch Prince Charles to call the Royal Society to investigate it. Right now the technology for self-replicating nanobots doesn’t exist. But, hey, there’s always tomorrow!

Depleting our planet’s natural resources

A combination of growing human population levels and new controversial ways of extracting our planet’s natural resources, such as fracking, could add up to disaster. While there’s a worldwide push toward using renewable energy sources — and scientists are showing an ever increasing interest in the prospect of colonizing other planets — the possibility of somehow depleting our natural mineral resources is certainly a risk factor to be wary of.

Massive cyber attack

PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP/Getty Images

This one isn’t so much about physically destroying the world as it is about leveling governments, crashing economies, and generally obliterating society as we know it. From the large scale hacks we’ve seen in recent years, it’s pretty clear just how destructive giant coordinated hacking attacks can be.

A major cyber attack could pollute water plants, switch off our power, and bring travel to a shuddering halt. It could also result in the leak of sensitive classified information, wipe trillions of dollars off the stock market or personal bank accounts, or take down telecommunication networks.

Add in humanity’s looting-and-pillaging tendency to behave badly once the veneer of polite society is gone, and you wouldn’t necessarily need a James Bond-style villain holding the world’s nuclear weapons to ransom for this to cause unimaginable chaos around the globe.

Experimental technology goes wrong

Frederic Pitchal/Sygma/Sygma via Getty Images

With projects such as Switzerland’s super-powered particle accelerator the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and New York’s spin-polarized proton collider the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), scientists are interested in unlocking some pretty deep secrets of physics, concerning the nature of matter, dark energy, and other high-energy experiments.

Not helped by various techno-thriller writers, this has raised plenty of concern about doomsday scenarios, such as the accidental (or purposeful) creation of a manmade black hole, an unstable “strangelet” particle, false vacuum states, or something else entirely.

The possibility of this happening is present, although the odds are very, very, very long. Our favorite quip about this came from Frank Close, professor of physics at the U.K.’s University of Oxford, who likened one such scenario to the odds of, “winning the major prize on the lottery three weeks in succession.” The problem, he said, is that people believe it is possible to win the lottery three weeks in succession.

We go to war using high-tech weapons

Sadly, the entry on this list which could already happen from a technological perspective is this one. Mankind currently has the ability to end pretty much all life on Earth, courtesy of its enormous stockpile of nuclear weapons. The two most nuclear-armed states are the U.S. and Russia, which have around 15,000 warheads between them.

More recently, another threat that has arisen in warfare is the arrival of fully automated weapons systems. Referred to as the “third revolution in warfare” in a 2017 open letter signed by Elon Musk of Tesla and Mustafa Suleyman of Google, the threat of autonomous weapons is that they will allow armed conflict to be fought at greater scales than ever, and at a timescale faster than humans can possibly comprehend.

Remember the 1983 movie WarGames? Picture that scenario, with less Matthew Broderick and more advanced weaponry.

Nintendo Power Glove gets new life as a retro HTC Vive VR controller

Why it matters to you

A retro game controller from the ’90s realizes its true potential, thanks to the creative minds at Teague Labs.

“I love the Power Glove … it’s so bad.”

So said the evil villain Lucas in the 1989 video game movie The Wizard. The new Nintendo peripheral was prominently featured in the film, but it may have been a few decades ahead of its time. The eight-bit processors of the early consoles were ill-equipped to handle the rigors of virtual reality (VR), and the Power Glove never caught on because it was clumsy, difficult to use, and worked with very few games.

Now the wizards at Teague Labs have breathed new life into this arcane bit of video game trivia by designing a true Power Glove VR controller. With Power Gloves readily available on the second-hand market, they set about realizing the dream of this often-mocked accessory.

They mounted an Arduino Due and a Vive tracker on the glove where the buttons would normally go, added a custom shield, and interfaced it with the tracker to make it compatible with the HTC Vive VR system. It created a more natural interaction than the conventional controller. “Holding virtual objects, touching mock-up screens, and pointing at things just feels a lot better when using the dexterity of one’s fingers instead of trying to use a fixed wand,” the engineers explained at their site.

They also got better results with the Power Glove than the Vive controller for on-screen touch interactions. “With the Power Glove and a second tracker mounted to the backside of an acrylic iPad, we were able to simulate more natural interactions with an iPad in VR,” they noted. “The overall experience improves dramatically when using the glove. The acrylic iPad even provides the same haptic feedback as a tablet would.”

If you’re interested in a more technical explanation (or you’d like to build one of your own), all of their files are available for download at GitHub.

In the first application Teague created for their do-it-yourself peripheral, you can shoot lightning by making a fist. Then they made a prototype “game” where you fought off incoming waves of rocks, paper, and scissors. “The game is still in an early stage, but it’s already a lot of fun to play!” they said.

As the advertising tagline for the Power Glove put it, “Everything else is child’s play.”