Study says body cameras don’t always change police behavior

In theory, body cameras are supposed to not only catch police abuses of power, but deter them: officers will be on their best behavior knowing that they could be hauled in. As Washington, DC researchers have learned, though, that isn’t guaranteed. They’ve published a study showing that body cameras didn’t significantly affect officers’ use of force or the number of civilian complaints in either direction. While there were actually 74 more uses of force per 1,000 officers when body cams were present, that’s roughly consistent with a typical range of differences when the equipment comes into play. The changes could just easily be pinned on variances in crime rates, in other words.

This doesn’t mean that body cameras are a waste, but the researchers believe that departments should “recalibrate” their expectations. A police force shouldn’t expect body cameras to magically solve any problems with excessive uses of force — rather, they’re part of a larger strategy that includes better overall discipline and video from eyewitnesses.

As it stands, DC police may not be the best test case for body cameras. They’ve gone through years of federal supervision intended to boost their quality, and they have rigorous training and accountability systems in place. It’d be another story in departments that are relatively prone to police abuse. There have certainly been tangible improvements in some cities. And importantly, it’s not so much about the quantity of incidents as averting or justifying particularly serious incidents. Body cams may justify themselves if they catch just one egregious example of abuse, or save an innocent officer.

This does hint that departments may want to hold off on body cameras, especially if it would squeeze their budgets. Also, the use of body cameras is only as good as the policies attached to them. If the video is not only private but accessible to officers, there’s a chance they’ll alter reports to match the footage. And of course, this assumes cops don’t (or can’t) turn their cameras off. In some cases, it may be wiser to skip the cameras in favor of policy reforms and improved training.

Via: NPR

Source: The Lab at DC

Billboard Charts will weigh streaming services more heavily in 2017

Why it matters to you

Streaming services are changing the way we listen to music and Billboard Charts is finally catching up.

In the world of entertainment, streaming services are increasingly becoming the norm among consumers. Traditional cable providers, along with now-defunct brick and mortar video rental stores, found themselves utterly unprepared for the rise of juggernauts like Netflix. The music industry has faced a similar issue with streaming services such as Pandora and Spotify eating into album sales. Another area in which the entertainment industry has failed to adjust is in rating the popularity of individual songs.

There are signs that things are changing, however, as Billboard has announced that it is adjusting its ranking systems to give “greater emphasis to paid subscription streams.”

“Beginning in 2018, plays occurring on paid subscription-based services (such as Amazon Music and Apple Music) or on the paid subscription tiers of hybrid paid/ad-supported platforms (such as SoundCloud and Spotify) will be given more weight in chart calculations than those plays on pure ad-supported services (such as YouTube) or on the non-paid tiers of hybrid paid/ad-supported services,” the company’s website reads.

Billboard acknowledged that the music industry, particularly when it comes to how consumers obtain their music, has changed in recent years. In past decades, music fans really only had two options. They could either listen to the radio or go to the store and purchase physical albums. Now they have access to a wide range of different options such as YouTube Music and various ad-supported and subscription-based services, in addition to the traditional methods that still cling on.

Billboard says that its new methodology “is a reflection of how music is now being consumed on streaming services, migrating from a pure on-demand experience to a more diverse selection of listening preferences (including playlists and radio), and the various options in which a consumer can access music based on their subscription commitment.”

Measuring metrics aside, streaming services such as Spotify have become rather controversial among musicians in the industry. While there are many who feel that they help artists reach a larger fan base, others argue that it doesn’t pay artists enough for their music. Many artists, including Prince and Taylor Shift, even pulled their catalogs from Spotify in protest of the low pay.

Editor’s Recommendations

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• The music industry is on the upswing thanks to streaming
• YouTube rolls out its own live-TV streaming service, YouTube TV

‘Blade Runner 2049: Memory Lab’ is a VR adventure into the film’s setting

Why it matters to you

As technology evolves, so does the role of storytelling in virtual reality.

At the Oculus Connect expo in 2016, Oculus announced it had partnered with Warner Bros. to create a trilogy of virtual reality experiences set in the iconic world of Blade Runner 2049. Based on the sci-fi film directed by Denis Villenuve, the first experience, Replicant Pursuit,was released in July. In this program, you pilot a spinner through the streets of Los Angeles on a hunt for a rogue replicant.

The latest installment, created by Magnopus, is Blade Runner 2049: Memory Lab. It was released on October 19, with a Gear VR version coming October 26. The free 25-minute experience (dubbed a “demo” by Oculus) is not much of a game, nor much of a film either, but it’s a fascinating look at the possibilities of the future of VR entertainment.

As a replicant Blade Runner, your job is to hunt down runaway replicants in service to the Wallace Corporation. It turns out you’re no Rick Deckard, as you accidentally kill a human, mistaking him for a replicant. As a result, you must return to the scene of the crime and erase all evidence of what occurred.

The game uses the Touch controllers for Rift, and it was photographed using Microsoft’s Holographic capture rig (but no cell phones).

Magnopus got designs and raw assets from the film production to create the realistic environments. Most of it was built from scratch, although developers  did use scans and photographs from the actual movie production. The entire project took about eight months to create.

In an interview with Venture Beat, executive producer at Magnopus Ben Grossman said they wanted to use live actors and create a new storyline to explore. “We tried to use new characters that weren’t in the film,” he said. “If someone saw the VR experience before they saw the movie, we wouldn’t be giving anything away.”

The experience is more cerebral in nature than many VR ventures, with a film noir detective feel to it. “In this case we wanted it to be more about exploration,” he explained. “We know that storytelling is a challenge in VR, but stories about exploring may be the new frontier.”

If you snagged a VR setup during the Summer of Rift promotion, this is a great way to experience the future of entertainment in this evolving technology, especially if you’re a fan of the films. “We were pretty happy about the level of faithfulness, both to the new movie and the old movie,” Grossman said.

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• For the creators of ‘Blade Runner 2049,’ honoring the original was everything
• Oculus Connect 4 Keynote — here’s how to watch it live
• Clowns, clowns everywhere! Alamo Drafthouse to hold clown-only screening of ‘It’
• Blade Runner 2049 review

Huawei may be releasing a foldable smartphone next year

Why it matters to you

Huawei maybe joining the ranks of Samsung and ZTE by offering a foldable smartphone next year.

Edge-to-edge displays were the defining trend of smartphone design in 2017. First appearing on the Samsung Galaxy S8, the feature will be included on the iPhone X and numerous other smartphones. As pretty as these screens look, it is possible that we’ll be seeing yet another trend emerge in 2018, and it’s one that could really shake things up: foldable smartphones. ZTE kicked things off with the Atom M, which featured two screens connected by a hinge. The device was certainly an interesting one, but we found it lacking in comparison to the more traditional, and much cheaper, Axon 7.

ZTE’s offering may not have been perfect, but it may have been a herald of things to come as CNet has reported that Huawei is working on a foldable smartphone for next year. Richard Yu, CEO of Huawei’s consumer business group, said that the company already has a workable prototype, but stressed the need for better design and innovation.

“We have two screens,” Yu said. “But we still have a small gap [between the screens]. That’s not good, and we should get rid of that gap.”

Such new features are more than just a novelty for tech enthusiasts. It is one of the ways in which Huawei hopes to overtake its rivals and become the world’s largest smartphone manufacturer.

“We will overtake them definitely,” Yu said. “That’s our destiny. Maybe I’m not humble … but nobody can stop us.”

Such boasting might seem like PR spin, but Huawei has the resources and market share to back it up. The company might not be the household names that Samsung or Apple are, but it is the world’s third-largest smartphone manufacturer.

In terms of foldable smartphones, Huawei isn’t the only company seeking to enter the market. Samsung is hoping to release a bendable smartphone next year. Samsung’s device, which appears to feature a single flexible screen, is more in line with the rumors and patients regarding foldable phones. As for Huawei, it remains to be seen whether their device will be closer to Samsung or ZTE’s. Either way, 2018 is looking like it will be a very interesting year for smartphone enthusiasts.

Editor’s Recommendations

• ZTE Axon M hands-on review
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• HTC U11 review
• Huawei Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro hands-on review
• Samsung Galaxy X: Rumors and news leaks

What we’re watching: ‘Raw’ and ‘Feast of Fiction’

Welcome back to Video IRL, where several of our editors talk about what they’ve been watching in their spare time. This month we’re kicking things off with some seasonally-appropriate horror fare, that you can catch right away on Netflix or Amazon Prime. Then it’s time for a Gundam throwback before Kris Naudus points out a couple of YouTube food channels perfect for binge eating or binge watching.

Them / Raw

Timothy J. Seppala
Associate Editor

To get into the Halloween spirit, I’ve been watching at least one horror movie a day since the end of September — the lower the budget, the better. Problem is, so many of the American low-budget or indie horror offerings on Amazon and Netflix are crappy Paranormal Activity clones, cheap-thrill gore-fests or uninspired found-footage “documentaries.” Whether it’s by design or coincidence, I’ve found that French horror movies have held my attention the most lately. Specifically, 2016’s Raw, as well as Them, from ten years prior. They’re more psychological thrillers than straight-up horror, but that didn’t stop me from being more on edge while watching them one afternoon than I was during A Haunting in Saginaw, Michigan, late at night. Both start with a car crash, but they couldn’t finish any more differently.

Raw, recently added to Netflix, tells the tale of a vegetarian girl in her first week at a prestigious veterinary school. During a hazing ritual, she’s forced to eat a raw rabbit kidney. She immediately gets sick, throws up and wakes herself up that night scratching a full-body rash to near bleeding. This bout with food poisoning is just the beginning, though, and soon protagonist Justine finds out she has a taste for forbidden fruit. As the remaining 70-ish minutes unfolded, I lost track of how many times I clasped my hands over my mouth, agape in shock, to stifle my shouts of “OHMYGODWHATTHEFUCKISEVENHAPPENING?!”

But French director Julia Ducournau balances every body-horror scene either with something pedestrian twisted into being unsettling (like a horse on a treadmill) or with something that makes you ask how far Justine can go before someone confronts her about her new diet. And those questions keep coming right until the credits roll. I can’t say I enjoyed watching Raw, but it was a hell of a ride.

The same goes for Them, currently streaming on Amazon Prime. Its focus is narrow, centering on a young couple living in a cavernous farmhouse, terrorized over the course of a night by unseen horrors. The camera never quite gives away who (or what) the perpetrators are, and revealing the twist would be a sin. As with Raw, its atmosphere and overall creepiness won me over straightaway. The scariest part? Realizing that I’ve probably driven past a shot like the final scene countless times and not thought twice about it. If you’re willing to read subtitles, both of these should make you shiver and scream more than The Conjuring 2 on HBO Go could ever hope to.

Mobile Suit Gundam The 08th MS Team

David Lumb
Contributing Editor

I’d heard that a lot of anime had left Hulu, but I scanned their selection anyway looking for classic shows I’d missed, like the original Mobile Suit Gundam. They don’t have that — but they did have a series I didn’t finish the first time it aired on Toonami, the 1996 classic Gundam side story The 08th MS Team. Unlike the franchise’s other show released the year before, the massively successful Gundam Wing, 08th ditches the brand’s typical pretty-boys-in-unbeatable-robots for a grounded and sobering story about the people who get caught up in wars — desperate soldiers, civilians and guerrillas alike. It’s dirty, honest, utterly humane and gorgeously animated.

It’s also a little preachy and melodramatic, and it shows its age with odd sexist moments. While it’s still the Thin Red Line of the Gundam universe, I remember it far more fondly from when my 14-year-old self grazed the series on its first American airing. There’s something sad in seeing an old favorite for the flawed media it always was. Much like Waypoint’s Rob Zacny, I’ve grown up and seen a lot since I first caught the show as a starry-eyed teen. I still think The 08th MS Team is a wonderful little 12-episode miniseries with a big heart, but I won’t revere it so highly — and will think a little harder about who I recommend it to.

Feast of Fiction / Binging with Babish

Kris Naudus
Senior Editor, Database

Back in March, I came home from a trip only to discover that my oven didn’t work. The cooking gas in my building had been shut off due to a leak. My building management seemed to be on it, so I made do with a combination of microwavables, toaster oven and Seamless. Unfortunately, weeks and months went by, calls to the city were made and permits were issued, but, even as I write this in October, gas still has not been restored to my building. My landlords eventually threw their collective hands in the air and began installing electric ranges in every apartment, so a few weeks ago I was finally able to cook for myself again.

I am so jazzed to be able to make food. Hot food! Scrambled eggs! Steak! Cookies! I started reading food blogs and cookbooks, and shopping to refill my pantry. I’m halfway through Kenji Alt-Lopez’s The Food Lab, a huge 900-page hardcover that talks about the science of how food cooks. On the lighter side, I’ve also been reading food-themed comics like Delicious in Dungeon and Food Wars. And the latter title (which is also an anime) ended up sucking me into a YouTube hole of food videos that I’ve been obsessed with ever since.

You see, the very first chapter of Food Wars features the “Gotcha” Pork Roast, a bacon-wrapped potato loaf that hero Soma Yukihira makes to save his family restaurant. It looks pretty tasty, so I searched for recipes and pics online and stumbled onto Jimmy Wong and Ashley Adams’ Feast of Fiction, a series that demonstrates how to make various foods seen in cartoons, video games and comics. If you ever wanted to taste Steven Universe’s beloved Cookie Cat ice cream sandwiches or Kirby’s super-spicy curry, there’s an episode for you. One thing I really enjoy is how they also incorporate crafts into it, showing how to make paper wrappers for your Reptar chocolate bars or genuine-looking Ecto Cooler Hi-C boxes.

I’ve been marathoning through the episodes, which the YouTube algorithms have definitely picked up on at this point, throwing food show after food show into my suggestions. One that caught my eye was Binging with Babish. Where Feast of Fiction mostly sticks to the realm of kids’ cartoons, anime and video games, Binging with Babish is a little more mainstream, covering foods from popular media like Mad Men, Seinfeld and House of Cards. Still, there’s a bit of overlap — both Babish and Feast have done their own takes on the Ultimeatum from Regular Show and Krabby Patties from SpongeBob SquarePants. But the recipes are different, and I watch the shows for the personalities. Feast of Fiction is pretty silly (and there’s a cute dog), while Binging with Babish is a little more subdued. Not that Babish can’t be ridiculous as well — the Moist Maker is one of the most ridiculously complicated sandwiches I have ever seen, basically asking you to cook an entire Thanksgiving dinner.

Sadly, I still haven’t done a lot of actual cooking since getting my stove back. I’m having too much fun watching other people do it instead, with the added bonus that I don’t have to clean up the mess.

“IRL” is a recurring column in which the Engadget staff run down what they’re buying, using, playing and streaming.

LG’s OLED TVs now pack loss-free 3D audio

There’s a dirty secret to listening to Dolby Atmos sound on LG’s current OLED TVs: all the audio is compressed, so you’re losing a little fidelity for the sake of immersive 3D sound. You won’t have to make that sacrifice before long. LG is trotting out an update later in October that will add support for lossless Dolby TrueHD audio to all its 2017 OLED sets. If you’re watching a 4K Blu-ray movie (the most likely candidate for TrueHD support), you can hear jets soaring overhead at maximum quality.

The Dolby format should be available in more places, too. There’s now TrueHD audio bitstreaming when you’re playing console games, so titles that support it can pass that audio directly to your receiver for decoding. You’ll get the benefit of TrueHD if you’re using a supporting sound bar, as well. You might not necessarily notice the difference from going lossless (especially if you’re using built-in speakers), but look at it this way: if you’ve already paid a pretty penny for an OLED TV, it only makes sense that you should get the no-sacrifice audio to match.

Via: HD Guru, Forbes

Source: LG Newsroom

We now know when China’s ‘Heavenly Palace’ will crash to Earth. But where?

Why it matters to you

Debris from the space station will fall to Earth in January or February, according to new calculations.

The Chinese space station Tiangong-1 has accelerated its out-of-control descent and will plunge to the ground somewhere on Earth in early 2018. Launched in 2011 in an effort to compete with the U.S. and Russia, the spacecraft was decommissioned in 2016, and China notified the UN that it would likely break apart and fall to Earth sometime in 2017 or 2018. Now we have a better prediction of when the “Heavenly Palace” may come crashing down, as Harvard astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell told The Guardian.

“Now that [its] perigee is below 300 km and it is in denser atmosphere, the rate of decay is getting higher,” he said. “You really can’t steer these things.”

Even a slight change in the atmospheric density could change the landing site by thousands of miles. “Not knowing when it’s going to come down translates as not knowing where it’s going to come down,” he added.

A California company that advises the government on space programs and national security has calculated that the date of re-entry will be late January or February of next year. “[We] receive orbital data from the Joint Space Operations Center (JSpOC) on a daily basis,” Andrew Abraham of The Aerospace Corporation told Newsweek. “We have been monitoring this data closely and perform re-entry calculations on a regular basis to monitor any changes in the space station’s orbit or decay rate.”

It’s unlikely that the remnants of the Tiangong-1 will land in a populated area, with most of the Earth covered by water and huge tracts of uninhabited land. However, chunks of debris as large as 60 pounds are expected to make it through re-entry and to the planet’s surface.

What should you do if pieces of the space station crash-land in your neighborhood? Don’t mess with it, says The Aerospace Corporation: “For your safety, do not touch any debris you may find on the ground nor inhale vapors it may emit.”

At 10.4 meters long and nearly 8.75 tons, Tiangong-1 served as a testbed for a variety of critical systems, such as life support. It also docked with the Shenzhou-8, Shenzhou-9, and Shenzhou-10 spacecrafts and performed a variety of other tasks during its four-and-a-half-year lifespan, some two years longer than initially anticipated.

Tiangong-1 was replaced by Tiangong-2. The new station will house two Chinese astronautsfor up to a month, with further tests on life support systems and “scientific research.” One of those tests is an atomic clock, which scientists want to use to determine if the effects of gravity increase the accuracy of the timepiece, according to news reports.

But even Tiagong-2 won’t stay in orbit very long. That station, too, will fall to earth in an uncontrolled manner, likely soon before the final version of the station launches sometime in the 2020s.

Updated on 10-21-17: Added updated information about the expected date of impact.

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Google officially activates Project Loon over Puerto Rico

After receiving FCC approval to use its balloons to restore cellular and LTE service to the people of Puerto Rico, Alphabet wasted no time in deploying Project Loon. On Friday, the company announced that it had successfully partnered with AT&T to restore service to part of the island.

“Working with AT&T, Project Loon is now supporting basic communication and internet activities like sending text messages and accessing information online for some people with LTE enabled phones,” Project Loon leader Alastair Westgarth wrote. “This is the first time we have used our new machine learning powered algorithms to keep balloons clustered over Puerto Rico, so we’re still learning how best to do this. As we get more familiar with the constantly shifting winds in this region, we hope to keep the balloons over areas where connectivity is needed for as long as possible.”

Alphabet’s Loon balloons serve as replacements for the cell towers that were destroyed by Hurricane Maria, but they aren’t capable of providing any service on their own. Google’s parent company is still relying on AT&T and other cellular carriers to provide service; Loon just serves as a delivery mechanism.

Westgarth warned that Project Loon was still an experimental technology, so the company could make no promises regarding how long Loon would work. However, he said that they intended to maintain the project “in areas where it’s needed for as long as it is useful and we’re able to do so.”

Unfortunately, it is looking like Project Loon might be needed for many months to come. NPR reports that nearly 80 percent of Puerto Rico remains without power, and lack of reliable communication services further slowed the recovery. Google’s parent company is hopeful that Project Loon will be able to aid relief efforts while ensuring that those caught in the storm are able to keep in touch with friends and family.

This isn’t the first time that Project Loon has been used to respond to disasters. Earlier this year, the company worked with the Peruvian government and wireless providers to restore internet access to the tens of thousands of people who were affected by floods.

Editor’s Recommendations

• Google to deploy Project Loon balloons to Puerto Rico to restore cell service
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• Watch Mark Zuckerberg awkwardly tour hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico in VR

Google will give you a $1,000 to hack Android’s most popular apps

Why it matters to you

These programs offer a way for hackers to earn legitimate money while helping to keep your devices secure.

Need some extra cash? Then good news! Google is offering $1,000 to people who can hack popular Android apps. In a partnership with HackerOne and several popular Android developers, Google has launched the Google Play Security Program. The tech giant has offered similar bounty programs before, but this is the first time that it has partnered with individual developers. Currently, 13 of the most popular app developers are part of the program. The program includes Tinder, Duolingo, DropBox, Snapchat, Head Space, MyMail, and several others.

The rules for the program are fairly simple. Once you discover a bug or vulnerability in one of the participating apps, you simply report it to the developers and work with them to fix the issue. Once the issue has been resolved, the app developers will pay you, and then Google will chip in a $1,000 bonus on top of whatever you were already paid.

In addition, Gooogle will be collecting data and sharing it with other app developers in order to help them address similar issues. This does mean that the rewards will be handled on a first-come-first-serve basis. If multiple people discover a problem, Google will only reward the first person to submit the issue.

Currently, this program is only available to 13 app developers, but if it proves successful, Google may expand it to others.

Bug bounties such as this are nothing new and so-called “white hat” hackers can make a decent living working with tech companies to resolve security issues. Both tech and video games companies are offering rewards to those who are able to hack their services and hardware. Such programs provide a way for hackers to make a living while helping to keep people’s personal data safe.

One of the largest bug bounties was offered by Microsoft. In 2015, the company increased its bug bounty reward from $50,00 to $100,000. If you want to make similar money while still helping out Google, then you’ll be glad to know the company is offering $100,000 to those who can pull off a major Chromebook hack. The stipulation that the hacker pull off a “persistent compromise” of a Chromebook in guest mode.

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Can you stream Daydream games to Twitch?

Yes, but it’s a bit complicated.

Twitch streaming is now an integral part of modern gaming and as such any chance to stream new or unique content is going to be worthwhile for any streamer. There are a lot of fun, interesting apps and games available for Daydream that would be worth streaming and with a little leg work you should be able to get a great stream running.

Want to stream to Twitch? Here’s how to get started!

Read more at VRHeads!