AI’s latest application: wasting email scammers’ time

Schadenfreude is one of life’s simplest pleasures — especially when the victim in question is an email scammer. That’s the service Netsafe’s Re:scam provides. Simply forward your Nigerian prince emails to the service and it’ll use machine learning to generate conversations to waste the nefarious Nancy’s time. The idea is that any time jerks spend engaging with the bots is time that can’t be used to target hapless victims. People have passed some 6,000 emails Re:scam’s way this week alone, and apparently there were 1,000 concurrent conversations at one point. So far the longest email chain has involved 20 exchanges, according to The Guardian.

To keep things believable, each bot has a persona of sorts, ranging from an old man asking “The Illuminati” if they have a bingo night, to someone who replies in ALL CAPS and countless variations in between. For now, the benevolent bots speak with New Zealand colloquialisms, but with each successive use they’ll adapt to different lexicons.

Fighting scammers using tech isn’t anything new, but using machine learning to do it is pretty unique. For example, over the summer on YouTube user crafted a bit of code to flood the phone lines of ne’er-do-wells 28 times per-second with a pre-recorded message detailing exactly what was happening. That’s a bit of table-turning we can all probably get behind.

The video below strikes familiar if you’ve ever seen A Scanner Darkly; the morphing faces are basically a slow-moving version of the film’s scrambler suits. If you’re curious what the bots are capable of before you start forwarding your emails, hit the source link below for a quick demo conversation.

Via: The Guardian

Source: The Guardian, Netsafe, Re:scam

The best smartphones you can buy right now

Smartphones get better every year, but 2017 has seen a string of particularly impressive devices. The benefits are obvious — there’s never been a better year to be in the market for a new phone — but that also means that making a decision is harder than ever. Since we’ve tested all of 2017’s major releases to date, we’ve put together a list to help you figure out which phone is the best choice for you, broken down into sections that’ll give you a better idea of where these devices excel.

Bear in mind, having the best comes at a cost, and all of the options below cost at least $600. We have a separate guide for smartphone shoppers on a budget, and we’re also working on one for the best mid-range phones, for folks not looking to spend a small fortune. If you simply have to have the best, though, have a look at our short list.

Chris Velazco/Engadget

The best smartphones for most people: iPhone 8 or Galaxy S8

This may seem like a cop-out, but we’re legitimately torn: Samsung’s Galaxy S8 and Apple’s iPhone 8 are the best smartphones out there for most people. It really just boils down to where your platform loyalties lie.

Of the two, the Galaxy S8 ($725) is the more physically attractive device, with its 5.8-inch Infinity Display and its meticulously crafted, water-resistant body. It’s plenty powerful, thanks to its Snapdragon 835 chipset, and Samsung managed to squeeze in a few features, like a headphone jack and expandable memory, that some of its rivals have given up on. While we’ve seen devices like the Pixel pull off amazing camera feats, the S8’s 12-megapixel sensor is nearly as good.

When it comes to design, performance and features, you’d be hard-pressed to beat the Galaxy S8. The S8 also enjoys wide carrier support, and since it’s been such a popular device this year, you can often find it for less than the usual asking price through sales and carrier promotions. Oh, and if you’d rather have some extra screen space, there’s always the larger Galaxy S8 Plus. It’s mostly identical to its little brother, so all the same praise applies, but its 6-inch screen is a pleasure to take in, and it has slightly longer battery life, to boot.

But some of you are already heavily invested in Apple’s services, and that’s fine too. If that’s the case, your best bet is to check out the iPhone 8 series. These devices are both incredibly powerful, owing to their shared A11 Bionic chipset, and they offer access to Apple’s huge catalog of polished apps. The iPhone 8 ($699) is a great machine on its own, and is well suited to people who don’t like the idea of carrying around a bigger phone. It also just might be the last, best iPhone of its kind, so you’ll benefit from years of refinement that the iPhone X simply doesn’t have yet.

That said, the 8 Plus has some distinct advantages that make it the more powerful choice between the two. Its bigger battery means fewer trips to the power outlet (or the wireless charging puck, if you prefer). More important, the iPhone 8 Plus uses a 12-megapixel dual-camera setup that is simply superior to the iPhone 8’s single sensor. We still prefer the Pixel 2 as an all-around shooter, but the 8 Plus’s camera is nearly as good and benefits from true optical zoom.

Samsung and Apple have both done some impressive work this year, and we think you’ll be satisfied with any of the devices we just mentioned. These phones are also great entry points if you’ve spent more time using one platform over another: We’ve seen plenty of people switch from iPhones to Galaxy S8s and enjoy the transition, and vice versa.

Chris Velazco/Engadget

The best big-screen smartphone: Samsung Galaxy Note 8

There’s no questioning Samsung’s mastery of smartphone screens, and if you’re looking for something exceptionally big and bright, your search should start with the Galaxy Note 8 ($929). At 6.3 inches, this is the biggest display that Samsung has squeezed into a phone since the Galaxy Mega, back in 2013. Size isn’t everything, though: The panel’s 18.5:9 aspect ratio means it’s much longer than it is wide, making it surprisingly easy to hold with one hand. (It also helps that there’s hardly any bezel surrounding the screen.) And, of course, it’s simply stunning to look at. AMOLED screens are known for their bright colors and deep blacks, but the Note 8’s display was tuned to give colors a little extra oomph without sacrificing overall accuracy. Such vivid hues might not suit everyone, but the Note 8 is nothing if not thrilling to look at.

It’s worth noting that the Galaxy S8 Plus has a screen that’s nearly as big as the Note 8’s, and that it’s less expensive too. While the S8 Plus represents the better value for most people, the Note 8 makes better use of that space. That’s mostly thanks to the included S Pen. Taking notes and doodling on the Note 8 works exceptionally well, and having all that screen real estate means you can keep jotting for longer before having to start a new page. Other features, like onscreen translation, make the S Pen even more capable, and the combination of these features, plus an excellent display, make the Note 8 the big-screen smartphone to beat.

Chris Velazco/Engadget

The best phone for music buffs: LG V30

Just about everyone uses their smartphone to listen to music, so why do so few companies seem to take smartphone audio seriously? Thankfully, LG has made high-quality audio a priority, and its new V30 ($840) stands apart from the pack as the best-sounding smartphone we’ve tested all year. Music piped through its single speaker is mostly just passable, but everything changes when you plug in a pair of headphones. Once the phone’s Quad DAC (digital-to-analog converter) kicks in, music sounds noticeably louder and gains a much-needed clarity boost.

If you’re the kind of audio nut who enjoys fiddling with sound settings, the V30 offers a handful of presets that cater to different tastes — the “detailed” mode emphasizes vocals and draws out nuances that may otherwise get lost in the mix, while “live” adds enough reverb to make music sound like it’s being played in front of you. Audiophiles will also appreciate a few additional filters that tune audio performance even further, but this is the sort of thing you’ll need to listen to really, really carefully to detect the difference.
To be clear, there are more reasons to like the V30 besides its audio chops. Based on our testing, it’s the most versatile smartphone out there when it comes to shooting video. Amateur cinematographers will enjoy the depth and control the V30 offers, but that proficiency at video is blunted somewhat by the dual camera’s mediocre still image quality.

Chris Velazco/Engadget

The best camera phone: Google Pixel 2

While we generally prefer the Pixel 2 XL for its sleeker design and larger battery, lingering questions about the quality of its screen, combined with startling reports of QA mishaps, make the smaller Pixel 2 ($649) the safer bet. Thankfully, both phones share the same 12.2-megapixel main camera, and it’s arguably the best smartphone shooter we’ve used all year. The sensor is only part of the equation, though: Google has lent its considerable computational power to the Pixels in the form of an HDR+ mode that we’d recommend you keep on all the time. Long story short: It makes for excellent colors, lots of detail and wide dynamic range, even in situations where light is scarce.

Frankly, we thought the Pixel 2’s camera was great by itself, but Google had a surprise up its sleeve. Inside every Pixel 2 is a dedicated co-processor called the Pixel Visual Core, meant to make on-device image processing even faster. Designing a smartphone chip like this is uncharted territory for Google, but we’re pleased that the company’s first foray is all about making the Pixel 2’s camera even more capable. More important, the Visual Core is also meant to bring the power of the HDR+ mode into third-party apps, so pretty soon you’ll be able to shoot photos inside, say, Instagram that look just as good as the ones sitting in your camera roll.

Honorable mentions

Since 2017 has been such a banner year for smartphones, we felt it appropriate to shine some light on phones that, for one reason or another, didn’t quite make the cut.

Apple’s iPhone X ($999) represents the most radical change to the iPhone formula ever, and it’s a very, very good phone. Its screen is excellent, as are its performance and camera. You probably don’t need me to tell you it’s perhaps the prettiest slab of hardware Apple has ever built either. Looks aside, its steep price and middle-of-the-road battery life mean there are better choices out there for most people.

Meanwhile, the Essential PH-1 ($499) deserves a nod because it’s a well-made device crafted by a relative newcomer. Essential might be new to building smartphones, but it brings Android co-creator Andy Rubin’s know-how and some undeniable industrial design chops to the table. Ultimately, the PH-1 is held back by its lackluster camera, but the startup deserves credit for proving that giants like Apple and Samsung haven’t completely cornered the market on truly elegant hardware.

And let’s not forget that 2017 isn’t over yet, and we’re looking forward to testing a few other devices that might have nabbed a spot on this list. The Razer Phone ($699) borrowed a design from another handset we enjoyed and modified it to cater to the company’s core audience: gamers. We weren’t thrilled with its camera in our recent hands-on demo, but the Razer Phone is one of the few smartphones in the world with a 120Hz refresh rate, making motion on screen appear impressively smooth. Throw in a Snapdragon 835 chipset, 6GB of RAM and a whopping 4,000mAh battery and we’re left with a device that, while customized for mobile gamers, has plenty to offer mainstream users too.

There’s also the OnePlus 5T, which is set to be officially unveiled at a press conference in mid-November. Based on a glut of leaks, the 5T will ditch its capacitive navigation keys to accommodate a screen that takes up more of the phone’s face, a move that forced OnePlus to stick its fingerprint sensor on the back, beneath an upgraded dual camera. We’re expecting it to be a solid update to an already powerful device, and it should stand as proof that you don’t need to pay sometimes outrageous flagship prices for an extremely capable phone.

Instagram experiments with letting you follow hashtags

Sometimes, you don’t want to keep up with individual people on Instagram as you do a trending topic — say, the latest in tech (we’re slightly biased here) or a big protest. That currently involves laborious searches for hashtags, but it might become relatively trivial soon. Users have discovered that Instagram is testing an option to follow hashtags, not just people. While this only includes popular and recent posts (it could easily become overwhelming if you got all of them), it could easily give you a sense of what’s hot and suggest new people to follow.

Instagram declined to say more when asked about the test by The Next Web, so it’s unclear just how many people have access to the test or how likely it is that you’ll see the feature become a mainstay. The social network frequently tests features that aren’t guaranteed to hit the mainstream.

However, this is one addition we could see taking off. Instagram has been growing rapidly, but keeping that user base may be difficult when newcomers are likely to see a quiet photo feed or just won’t know who to follow. The option to follow hashtags could help them get the ball rolling. And of course, it could help just about anyone who’s looking for a reason to keep coming back regardless of how active their friends may be.

Ok this is new. What does this do @SimonSocialMM @BizPaul @NatalieTFG any ideas? I’ve followed 2 but can’t find what that means!! pic.twitter.com/LlCBk4Wmfv

— Pippa Akram (@Social_Pip) November 9, 2017

Via: Mashable

Source: Pippa Akram (Twitter), The Next Web

Deutsche Bank is using climate change data to predict investment risk

The Trump administration might still be arguing that climate change isn’t real (and if it is, it certainly isn’t caused by humans), but Deutsche Bank wants to be prepared for the financial hit that might result. The bank’s asset management group is incorporating climate change data to determine the biggest risks to investment portfolios.

Deutsche Asset Management and the climate advisory organization Four Twenty Seven released a white paper at COP23, an international climate change conference, called Measuring Physical Climate Risk in Equity Portfolios. The summary says, “Our methodology tackles physical risk head on by identifying the locations of corporate production and retail sites around the world and their vulnerability to climate change hazards, such as sea level rise, droughts, floods and tropical storms, which pose an immediate threat to investment portfolios.”

The asset management group is using this data to make their investors’ portfolios more resilient against the treats of climate change. One of the main challenges here is figuring out exactly where the companies are that people are investing in and determining how vulnerable these institutions are to natural disasters that are occurring due to climate change. What’s more, investors need to be aware of exactly how a specific business would be vulnerable to a specific type of climate change — for example, a water intensive industry would be heavily affected by drought or high heat. It’s certainly not an easy or simple endeavor.

Deutsche Bank aims to use this information as a tool for both analysts and portfolio managers, as well as use the data to create climate change risk scores for different investments. “It is the starting point to investing in resilience, supporting companies with stronger climate risk management approaches, and ensuring our broader economic system is protected from the worst impacts of climate change,” the report says.

Via: Bloomberg

Source: Four Twenty Seven / Deutsche Bank (1), Four Twenty Seven / Deutsche Bank (2)

Netflix cancels Louis C.K.’s second stand up special

Yesterday, the New York Times published a report on Louis C.K. that detailed numerous allegations of sexual misconduct being brought against the comic. And as Variety reports, Netflix is now joining HBO and film distributor Orchard in cutting ties with C.K.

C.K. was set to release a second stand up special with Netflix, following one that was released in April, but that special will no longer happen. A spokesperson for the company said, “The allegations made by several women in the New York Times about Louis C.K.’s behavior are disturbing. Louis’s unprofessional and inappropriate behavior with female colleagues has led us to decide not to produce a second stand up special, as had been planned.” Orchard has also scrapped C.K.’s upcoming film I Love You, Daddy and HBO has cut the comic from its lineup of its “Night of Too Many Stars” charity event. Older works of C.K.’s that have previously been available through HBO On Demand will also be taken down.

Netflix also announced earlier this month that it would not air the final season of House of Cards if Kevin Spacey was involved, following reports of sexual assault committed by the actor.

While it’s definitely the right move to cut ties with these men who are now getting lots of attention for their despicable actions, it should be noted that at least in the cases of Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey and Louis C.K., these allegations have been swirling for years. The New York Times and Buzzfeed may have brought them to light in recent weeks, but outlets like Gawker reported on both Louis C.K. and Kevin Spacey years ago and as many have pointed out following the NYT’s in-depth report on him, Weinstein’s abusive behaviors have been not so subtly worked into a number of shows’ dialogue.

While these conversations we’re having now are incredibly important and the consequences being brought forth against these men are warranted, these companies that likely knew of at least some of these allegations when they went into business with these men shouldn’t get all of our praise just because they’ve decided to dump them when that’s now the only choice they really have.

Source: Variety

A dedicated AI chip is squandered on Huawei’s Mate 10 Pro

Let’s face it: The AI hype train isn’t going away and soon all our devices will be run by artificial intelligence. While Apple’s answer to the AI takeover is to just call its new A11 processor “Bionic”, Huawei has taken a more concrete approach. The company embedded a neural processing unit (NPU) on its Kirin 970 chip, which it claims can run AI tasks faster and with less power than others. The newly launched Mate 10 Pro is the first phone to use the Kirin 970, and it’s meant to demonstrate the wonders of deeply embedded AI. So far though, it’s a capable, well-designed phone that has yet to fully explore what a dedicated NPU can do.

When Huawei asked a group of reviewers what we wanted from AI, I didn’t have a real answer, though my peers pointed out things like natural linguistics and battery management. But after a few days with the Mate 10 Pro, I’ve realized what I want.

My ideal AI would basically be able to predict what I wanted based on how and when I’m using my phone. For example, if I’m holding my phone up at eye level in my apartment at about the same time every day, I’m most likely starting one of my daily selfie sprees. It should know then to automatically activate (or at least suggest) the Portrait mode on my front camera and even take a series of photos when I push one button. It gets tiring having to keep pressing the volume down button to take dozens of pictures.

The Mate 10 Pro doesn’t live up to my unrealistic expectations, but it marks a step in the right direction. The phone can recognize things you’re pointing the camera at, like food, pets, flowers or buildings, and adjusts settings like ISO, shutter speed and saturation to make your photos look good. For now, the Mate 10 Pro only identifies 13 scenes, but Huawei says it will continue adding situations that the phone will recognize.

In other words, the Mate 10 Pro is smart enough to be both camera and photographer. That is, in theory anyway. While the Mate 10 Pro does take lovely pictures that are bright, sharp and accurately colored, I suspect that has more to do with its camera hardware than clever AI. The two cameras on its rear both feature an aperture of f/1.6 — the widest yet on a smartphone (tied with the LG V30). That hardware not only allows for clearer pictures in low light, but also creates a pleasantly shallow depth of field.

When I compared pictures I took in manual mode to those where the AI decided what settings to use, I had a hard time seeing a difference. My photos of flowers appeared as saturated whether the AI was at work or not, and the depth of field looked the same either way. The main difference I saw was a stronger bokeh effect applied by the AI. I guess this is kind of the point — the AI was as good as me, a human, at determining the best settings.

Although the Mate 10 Pro’s tweaks aren’t very noticeable, its scene-recognition is mostly quick and accurate. However, some situations stumped the Mate 10 Pro, like my messy dinner of chicken covered with onions and peppers in a chili paste. Then there are the many objects that the phone can’t identify yet — like a group of players on a basketball court or a pair of pretty shoes. Huawei also needs more data before the phone can learn the best settings for those situations — whether it be bumping up the shutter speed to capture fast moving soccer balls or producing shallower depth of field around shoes. The company said it will keep analyzing pictures (not user-generated) in the cloud and push out software updates to continually improve its camera software. No, Huawei isn’t spying on your photos — these are pictures it got elsewhere (the company hasn’t told us the source yet).

The AI is absent on the front camera, but I still loved the selfies I took with the Mate 10 Pro. Huawei’s Portrait Mode uses face detection instead of depth-sensing like the iPhone X, which creates a softer depth of field that’s sometimes less defined than Apple’s. But the pictures from Huawei’s phone are more flattering. The iPhone X’s Portrait Mode selfies are so sharp that every imperfection and stray hair is obvious.

The primary benefit of having a dedicated neural processing unit on the phone’s CPU is that machine learning tasks can be executed more quickly. Things like image recognition or language translation can be carried out in tandem with other general functions so your phone shouldn’t slow down just to find the 3,500th picture of your cat’s face. With Huawei’s Kirin 970 chip, app developers can tap into the NPU by using either the Kirin API or popular machine learning frameworks like Google’s Tensorflow or Facebook’s Caffe 2.

The problem is, not many apps have done this yet. So far, only Huawei’s own camera software and Microsoft Translator tap the NPU for improved performance. The latter comes preinstalled in the Mate 10 Pro, by the way, and only its image-based translating tool is optimized right now. I took a picture of the phrase “You’re so pretty” in Mandarin and barely a second later Translator told me it meant “You’re beautiful.” Close enough. Subsequent attempts with the same printout yielded dubious results, though, with the app often translating the words to “Hello, Drift.” This is more likely an issue with Microsoft’s engine than the Mate 10 Pro.

I tried the same thing out on a Galaxy Note 8 and an iPhone 8 Plus. All three phones performed within half a second of each other — with the Huawei frequently finishing the fastest. Sometimes the iPhone took the lead, but for the most part none of them lagged far behind the rest.

Aside from its camera and the Translator app, the Mate 10 Pro also uses AI to learn your habits over time so it can pre-allocate resources to the apps it thinks you’ll launch next. From my few days using the phone, it’s hard to judge how effective this has been, but the Mate 10 Pro certainly keeps up with my incessant selfie taking, Instagram binging and light emailing.

So far, the Mate 10 Pro has too few AI integrations for me to really notice the benefits of a dedicated NPU. It’s a sleekly designed handset, though, and I love showing off the attractive “Signature” stripe on its elegant, shiny rear. The epic battery life is also a bonus. It easily gets through two days on a charge, and I can go four days without plugging it in under extremely light usage. I wish its display were sharper than 1080p, but that’s a minor complaint. Since Huawei hasn’t shared the US price and availability yet, I can’t definitively say if the Mate 10 Pro is a better deal than its competitors. But it’s an intriguing preview of the good that can come from a phone powered by AI.

‘Dance with flARmingos’ in a mixed reality mating ritual

Flamingos rule everything around her. Her clothes are covered in them. Her workspace is littered with representations of their spindly legs and hot-pink plumes. She’s spent hours studying their migratory patterns, mating rituals and native environments. She’s traveled the world speaking to conservationists and ornithologists to better understand them. She even adopted 20 of the winged icons to aid her research and their preservation.

Dance With flARmingos was made possible through funding from the Engadget Alternate Realities grant program, established in May 2017. It will debut, along with four other prize-winning immersive-media projects, at the Engadget Experience on November 14th, 2017. For more information about the Engadget Experience, the grant program and the grantees visit our events page, and click here to buy your ticket to the event before they run out.

For the past two years, artist Kristin Lucas’ work has revolved around flamingos, and yet, it wasn’t until this June, during her residency with Print Screen, an Israeli digital-art festival, that she saw one in the flesh.

“It’s like buying a planet or something,” she said. “So you have a leap of faith, and you’re like, ‘I have invested in these flamingos,’ and you’re investing in an organization anyway, but it’s just hilarious to me that I would perhaps never, ever see these flamingos.”

During her tireless research, Lucas located a flamingo habitat in Eilat, Israel, some 215 miles from Jaffa, where she was in residency. The director of the residency was skeptical that she’d find what she was after, but she was determined. She reached out to a conservationist at the International Birding and Research Center who agreed to take her to the site.

“We stayed at a distance inside the car, and I was able to look at the flamingos,” she said. “It was incredibly emotional. I couldn’t believe that I was seeing this bird, and why was this bird not pink?”

As it turns out, flamingos come in an array of colors, from muted gray to bright pink, but our understanding of them is often limited to “hyper-real” (to use Lucas’ words) depictions, the stuff of plastic lawn ornaments and Lisa Frank sticker packs.

Her latest work, Dance With flARmingos, being developed in residency at Pioneer Works in Red Hook, Brooklyn, brings dimension to these iconic birds through the use of mixed reality. It engages the audience in a sort of animated line dance, turning the usual human-flamingo dynamic on its head. Flamingos have been pushed out of their natural habitats due to ecotourism, overpopulation and sea-level changes, leading to declines in their population — but they’ve found ways to adapt. In flARmingos, Lucas wants us to adapt to them and not the other way around.

“Representations of flamingos out there by far outnumber the actual bird,” she said. “The flamingo is a bit of a cultural icon for us, and there’s sort of a flatness to an icon. It’s really hard to approach or to get much further with the images — it’s difficult to penetrate the image of the flamingo.”

Lucas broke the project down into three distinct parts that she says represent distinct types of storytelling: traditional, interactive and immersive. When viewers approach the installation, they’ll be greeted by a sort of olfactory bartender or tour guide who will introduce them to a custom-made scent that mimics the wetlands flamingos thrive in. This is the traditional storytelling stage. In the interactive stage, an attendant will hand them an iPad they can use to fill an AR habitat with representations of Lucas’ adopted flamingos and learn more about the birds through informational overlays.

The final “immersive” stage puts the viewer inside the habitat that they’ve just seen on the iPad. They’ll be placed inside a room with windows where observers in the prior interactive stage can view them among the flamingos, as if at a zoo. This is where the “dance” part of Dance With flARmingos comes in: Two viewers will slip on a HoloLens headsets at the same time.

Once inside the headset, they “become” the flamingo. The two HoloLens users will see each other as flamingos, as will the audience members holding iPads outside the room. They’ll then be prompted to follow Lucas’ digital flock through a choreographed mating ritual. This part is set to a custom soundtrack using archival recordings of flamingos composed by Adriano Clemente.

If it sounds like she’s doing a lot, it’s supposed to. Flamingos aren’t one-dimensional animals, and Lucas wanted that to come through in the work.

“That’s why I’m interested in AR,” she said. “Because I want you to be able to interact with more than one world at the same time. I like the porousness between worlds; I like the porousness between devices. And I realize that there’s just a complexity to all of the subjects that I’m studying. There are many different paths to take here to have this conversation about flamingos, and I don’t want them to be held separately from one another — I want to understand the whole ecology of thoughts, of conflicts, of concepts that are part of this piece.”

The porousness that she was after created a unique challenge for Lucas’ technical team. Ben Purdy, the project’s lead software developer, and Thomas Wester, the technical director, were tasked with getting an iPad using ARKit and a HoloLens to “see” the same thing.

“From a technology perspective, we needed to create a common virtual space that all these devices look into. So, the iPad and the HoloLens are, in a sense, views on a virtual space that we’re creating. I think that’s a really interesting way to start thinking about augmented reality in a space. Every device in that space should be able to look at the augmented version of that space. Instead of we all just have our own augmented realities in our phones, or in our headsets, we’re all looking at a shared augmented reality.”

There is no seamless way to make that happen. HoloLens was announced in January 2015 but is still largely inaccessible to the public. Meanwhile, Apple’s ARKit isn’t even a year old. As Purdy puts it, “The whole AR/VR landscape is very new still, and these platforms, even on their own, are very green.”

For Purdy, it’s been hard to let go of the idea that the eventual synchronization might not be just right. For Lucas, it’s an opportunity.

“I’m really interested in the intangibility of the flamingo and the uncertainty of their future, and I think that AR does a really interesting job of working with this kind of content because of its intangibility. Because every once in awhile it loses its tracking. I love errors, and that everything isn’t perfect.”

The imperfections in Dance With flARmingos don’t stop at the shared view of two disparate operating systems. All of the choreography on display was created using motion-capture, and while Lucas is quick to drop everything and show off all that she’s learned — mimicking the bird’s signature head flagging, preening, marching and wing salutes — the flamingos in her piece are still oddly human. Their legs bend in the wrong direction, their necks aren’t nearly as expressive, and there’s a big old hole in their chests — a trait Lucas attributes to human error.

“I’m the kind of artist who gets her feet wet in everything, and that was the best flamingo I could make,” she said. “But I wanted the flamingo to also be very accessible and more like a sketch. I wanted it to be approachable. I wanted it to sort of carry some of the simplicity of the types of images that I see in fashion and tourism so it’ll be easily recognizable as a flamingo, but you might also actually feel bad for it.”

This is the beauty of Lucas’ art. It is, like her, devoid of pretense. She lives in a world that is often obtuse, even off-limits. Her work has appeared at major art institutions like the Museum of Modern Art, Dia Center for the Arts and The Whitney. She teaches transmedia in the University of Texas at Austin’s Department of Art and Art History, and speaks in metaphors. She is, on paper, an artist’s artist. Step inside her world, however, and you’ll find a woman who loves flamingos, unencumbered.

To say that she has a preoccupation is an understatement, but it only takes a moment to realize that her fascination is completely genuine.

Apple Stores in Burlingame, CA and Burlington, MA Reopen Next Weekend Following Renovations

Apple today announced that its retail stores in Burlingame, California, near San Mateo, and Burlington, Massachusetts, near Boston, will celebrate grand reopenings on Saturday, November 18 at 10:00 a.m. local time.

A render of Apple’s new store in Burlingame, California via Storeteller
Both locations have been closed for several months while undergoing renovations, as part of Apple’s efforts to modernize its retail stores around the world. The updated aesthetic typically includes large glass doors, sequoia wood tables and shelves, and a large video screen for Today at Apple programming.

Apple Burlingame originally opened in July 2003, while Apple Burlington has been serving customers since November 2005. Apple now operates over 250 retail stores across the United States, and nearly 500 worldwide.

Related Roundup: Apple Stores
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Facebook Rebrands Standalone ‘Events’ iOS App as ‘Facebook Local’

One year after launching the standalone “Events” app for iOS and Android devices, Facebook today announced a rebranding and relaunch of the app that will also bring bars, restaurants, and nearby attractions to your attention. Now called “Local from Facebook,” or simply “Facebook Local,” the app combines your Facebook events with nearby hotspots into a single app, which is powered by the company’s 70 million business Pages as well as your own friends and family members’ personal reviews (via TechCrunch).

Images of Facebook Local via TechCrunch
The app’s home page includes shortcuts to show you nearby restaurants, cafes, drink spots, attractions, and more, as well as a guide to where your friends visit often. The original app’s calendar of your Events is located here, as well as a Trending Events section, guides to music, nightlife, and other notable happenings, and filters to see all events occurring on specific days.

Facebook Local can sync with your iPhone’s Calendar app to combine all of your plans into one area, and the new app also allows you to update your current city if you’re traveling. Facebook’s recent Order Food feature isn’t implemented into Local, but Pages for certain restaurants sometimes include a link to other delivery apps like Grubhub.

According to Facebook Local product manager Aditya Koolwal, all of these features are meant to further Facebook’s new mission of “bringing the world closer together.”

Facebook Local product manager Aditya Koolwal tells me the goal was to “Make it as lot easier to do certain kind of looks ups that are very common when making plans with friends.”

Facebook’s new mission is “Bringing the world closer together” and few things do that as vividly as nightlife. The company is often criticized for supposedly isolating people, but there’s no replacement for Facebook Events. When I hear people considering deleting their Facebook account, it’s often Events that they stay for. By bundling these with local business listings, Facebook could finally give Events the spotlight they deserve.

Before Facebook Local, the company just yesterday expanded Marketplace to include apartment rentals, and previously launched car listings in October. In terms of standalone apps, in August Facebook shuttered the Groups and Lifestage apps, specifically stating that Groups was returning to be a focus of the main Facebook app and the social network’s website.

You can download Local from Facebook on the iOS App Store for free today. [Direct Link]

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Apple’s Extended 2017 Holiday Return Policy Said to Begin November 25

Apple’s annual extended holiday return policy will begin November 25 in the United States, according to a senior Apple support advisor.

Most products and accessories purchased between November 25 and December 25 of this year will be eligible for return until January 8, 2018 in the United States, and the extended window likely applies to Australia, Canada, and select other countries as well. Last year, in most of Europe, the end date was January 20.

Apple products that can be returned include, among other things, the iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and Apple TV. The few items that cannot be returned include Apple or iTunes gift cards. Apple products can be opened and used prior to the return date, but must be returned undamaged with the original packaging.

When making a purchase at an Apple retail store, we recommend that you ask for printed and emailed copies of your receipt. Both printed and emailed receipts will indicate the return date for each product purchased, while Apple also lists the cutoff date under the “Your Account” section on its website.

All purchases made before November 25 or after December 25 are subject to Apple’s standard 14-day return policy in most countries.

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