Pixelbook will soon do split-screen multitasking in tablet mode

Your Pixelbook’s about to get a lot more productive.

If you’ve got the spare $1000 to spend, Google’s Pixelbook currently offers the absolute best Chrome OS experience you can find. However, that doesn’t mean the device is without its issues. One area of aggravation lies with Chrome OS’s inability to properly multitask when in tablet mode, but thanks to the latest updated in Chrome OS 64, this is finally changing.

Discovered by Googler and Chrome fanatic François Beaufort, Split View multitasking can now be enabled in tablet mode by enabling a flag within the Dev Channel for Chrome OS.

The flag is labeled as chrome://flags/#enable-tablet-splitview, and once turned on, you’ll be able to tap on the overview icon to see which windows are open and then move them to either side to snap them in place and run two tabs of Chrome on the screen at once.

Split View in tablet mode currently only works with the Chrome browser, meaning that you still can’t run two Android apps side-by-side when using your Pixelbook as a tablet. That’s undoubtedly disappointing, but even so, this is a big step in the right direction for where Chrome OS needs to be.

Split View in tablet mode on a Pixelbook.

There’s no ETA for when this feature will be available to use without having to enable the developer flag, but our guess is that it’ll be here soon. Keep an eye out.

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Horizon Zero Dawn: The Frozen Wilds — How to get all the awesome new equipment

Questing for Bluegleam is the way to new equipment.

Horizon Zero Dawn was a breakout hit for PlayStation 4 when it was released earlier in 2017, and now the first —and possibly only — expansion, The Frozen Wilds, is available. Traveling up into the Banuk region of The Cut gives you new story to explore, machines to kill and loot, and of course, some awesome new weapons and outfits. You’ll need more than just metal shard and machine components to pick these up though, and we’ve got the details on how to do it.

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Quests are your friends

Once you’ve made it to the first settlement inside of Banuk lands, and gotten through the cinematic, you’ll see a trader nearby. You can sell him any extra gear you have cluttering up your inventory, but it’s what he’s holding on to that ought to really get your fingers itching. There are several new outfits, as well as three new bows for you to add to your inventory.

Of course, there is a catch. Even if you roll up with all the shards and components in existence, you still won’t have what you need to purchase this new equipment. That’s because it requires a new resource: Bluegleam. Bluegleam grows on the bodies of the oldest machines, but the way that you’ll acquire it in-game is by completing quests or finding natural reservoirs of the stuff.

Quests will offer Bluegeam as a reward, and depending on the quest you can snag between one and seven as a reward. Of course, each bow sold by the Banuk is fairly pricey in Bluegleam alone, starting at 12 and moving up from there. While you can get a decent start by completing quests as quickly as possible, there is also another way to find it.

Bluegleam deposits

There is a specialty trader up on the side of the mountain who will trade you maps of collectibles — including a Bluegleam deposit map — so long as you bring her what she needs. In the case of the map we’re talking about, you’ll need a goatskin, and a badger bone in order to make the trade. Thankfully both of these animals are pretty common this far up the mountain, so it shouldn’t take long.

Once you’ve acquired the map, you’ll be able to see the deposits where Bluegleam is hiding out in the wild. Much like collectibles from the main game, you’ll get a general area on the map and then need to use your focus to identify it and harvest what you can. Since there is only a limited amount of Bluegleam to be acquired from quests, if you want every new piece of equipment you’re gonna need to hunt down a significant amount of it.

A special quest for to modify your spear

While you can find new outfits and some sweet new bows from Traders, there is also a way to modify your spear. Yes, even if you’re playing after beating the game. This quest, called A Secret Shared, will send you to the very top of the map to go hunting through an old drone hangar looking for a specific part. You need to find a rail that can be attached to your spear, allowing it to enjoy the glory of modifications.

It’s a quest that will let you finally modify your spear, making it far more dangerous than it had been up until this point. You’ll have to delve down and into the hangar to find a rail inside a drone, the point of this quest. Once you return to Song Edge and speak to Kamut, the character who sent you on this quest, you’ll be able to modify your spear for the first time.

Is the new equipment worth the wait?

The Frozen Wilds are a savage place. With new machines more powerful than the corrupted ones you’ve seen down south, having the right weapons to get the job done are absolutely critical. While none of the new weapons are particularly easy to snag, they are well worth every piece of Bluegleam that you pay for them.

These weapons are built to take down the nasty new machines running amok, and even playing at level 47 they made a huge difference compared to the weapons that were already in our inventory. It’s the outfits that become a bit more complicated. Depending on when you take on the Frozen Wilds, they may, or may not be worth the effort.

Namely, if you’ve already gotten Aloy the Shield Weaver armor found in a bunker in the main game, then you really don’t need to worry about picking up any other outfits. Those other outfits are solid, they just don’t hold a candle to the capabilities that Shield Weaver has. It is, after all, the ultimate armor, and requires some serious work on your end to unlock.

Are you playing?

Horizon Zero Dawn: The Frozen Wilds delivers an excellent expansion to an already spectacular game, and gives players plenty to do there. With new bows to shoot those machines from a distance, the ability to modify your spear for the first time, and some swanky new outfits to acquire, there is plenty of new equipment to feast your eyes on. So are you playing The Frozen Wilds? Let us know in the comments below!

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Google Pixel Buds: What I learned in my first afternoon with the headphones

Can these headphones really be worth $159?

Google’s Pixel Buds were one of the more … under-the-radar announcements back at Google’s October hardware launch event. What with the Pixel 2, Pixelbook, Home Mini, Home Max and new services, a pair of Bluetooth earbuds kind of got lost in the shuffle. But now the short-supplied wireless headphones are shipping to reviewers and some early buyers alike, and I have a pair in my ears right now.

I’ve used the Pixel Buds for just an afternoon, but here’s what I’m finding about them so far.

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The fit is comfortable, but has trade-offs

The design and fit of the Pixel Buds will only truly be familiar to those of us who had Google Glass with the optional earbud attachment. It’s a very similar design, with a shallow hard plastic earbud and a bit of a cord that’s used to form a loop to keep the bud in your ear. It’s designed this way because the earbud itself doesn’t have the typical soft rubber tip that goes deep in your ear.

Easily the most comfortable wireless earbuds I’ve used.

The core feature of this design is comfort — these are easily the most comfortable wireless “earbuds” I’ve ever placed in my ear. If it weren’t for the cord dangling on the back of my neck, I would forget they’re in my ears — yes, they’re THAT comfortable. Part of that is the super light weight of the buds, but also how they sit in your ear rather than jamming down inside. The cord loop is difficult to adjust and it takes a while to figure out the “right” fit in your ear (with awkward time spent in front of a mirror) but just like any other pair of earbuds I think I will be able to figure it out.

On the other side of that coin, the Pixel Buds have almost no sound isolation. Because there’s no rubber “tip” that goes into your ear to seal out the outside world, you still hear most everything around you. For someone riding a bike down a busy street that’s probably a good thing, but if you’re sitting in a cafe and want to concentrate it’ll be annoying.

Sound quality is surprisingly good

These are headphones, after all, so here are my quick thoughts on sound quality. My initial take is that it’s surprisingly good. Even with a general lack of sound isolation letting in lots of noise from your environment, you can get a good range of sound and even a little bit of bass out of these tiny buds. They get louder than I’d ever want for my hearing’s sake, but that lack of noise isolation also means that there’s a higher chance you’ll be turning the volume up a bit higher — not great for your ears, or for the people sitting next to you on the train who probably don’t care about your music choices.

Are they as good as wired earbuds of the same size and cost? Nope. But they’re definitely better than what I experienced with the Gear IconX 2018 earbuds and are on par with larger “neckbud” type headphones I’ve used in the past. That’s pretty good for a relatively tiny pair of headphones, and will be good enough for most people — even if they don’t necessarily give you amazing quality for the money.

Bluetooth ‘Fast Pair’ is amazing

This isn’t something that’s specific to the Pixel Buds — you’ll find it on all “made for Google” headphones — but the new Bluetooth Fast Pair is fantastic. Open the Pixel Buds case, unlock your phone, and with a tap you’re paired. It’s absolutely wonderful, and it removes one of the biggest pain points of Bluetooth audio devices today.

I can only hope that this gets adopted across the industry and makes its way down to the inexpensive headphones out there and doesn’t remain a high-end feature, because everyone should be able to experience this.

This is as good a place as any to remind you that the Pixel Buds are only designed to work with Pixel phones (either generation), at least when it comes to the advanced features. Google could definitely expand this further in the future, but it support documentation right now only talks about the Pixels when it comes to Fast Pair, Assistant and Google Translate.

Google Assistant is FAST … and needs some polish

Though these aren’t the only proper “Google Assistant headphones,” this is my first experience with the feature — and consider me super impressed. Rather than using “OK, Google” detection, the Pixel Buds trigger Assistant by pressing and holding on the right earbud (yes, only the right one) to speak the command. Lift off of the earbud, and it finishes taking your input and does what you asked it to do.

It’s absolutely ridiculous how fast this is working when connected to my Pixel 2 XL. Most of the speed really comes from the fact that the Pixel Buds don’t have to guess when you’re done talking — as soon as you lift off of the earbuds, it knows you’re done an is ready to give you information back through the earbuds. But the responses come super quickly as well.

The only issue, as ever with Assistant, is what it can actually do and how it fails. As we’ve experienced with Google Home, it’s tough to deal with a voice-only interface when things go wrong. Multiple times the Pixel Buds gave me a confirmation-type sound after speaking, only to do absolutely nothing. Rephrasing my question or retrying, it’d hear me and perform the action. Other actions, like “skip forward 30 seconds” while listening to a podcast work, but often didn’t resume playback after doing so. Saying “walking directions to X” pulls up the directions on my phone, but doesn’t give me step-by-step guidance in the earbuds.

Google’s list of suggested Assistant actions for the Pixel Buds is basically the same set of things you’d normally do with your phone, and that’s totally fine. But it’s how those things are manifested in an audio-only interface rather than on a screen that looks like it needs a little work.

I’m probably going to turn off notifications

As part of this Assistant-type functionality, the Pixel Buds also feed notifications from your phone into your ears. Rather than just send you the sound, it also gives you extra information, including the app that sent the notification and if applicable who sent it. It’s useful the first couple of times, and being able to double tap the right earbud to read the notification aloud and then also reply via voice is very cool in certain circumstances.

It just takes too damn long to manage notifications through voice and taps.

But considering the number of notifications I get, I’m likely going to be turning off this feature until I’m in a situation where I can’t actively look at my phone. Having my podcast or music paused for 5 to 10 seconds so I can try to tap and speak to manage a message in my earbuds just isn’t worth it to me. And with dozens of notifications coming in every hour, I’m going to be spending a large amount of time managing things rather than concentrating on what I’m actually listening to — the whole reason I have headphones on in the first place.

This could easily be fixed by giving control over which notifications come through to the earbuds, but right now the Pixel Buds don’t offer that. It’s all or nothing.

A fabric charging case?

Just like the Apple AirPods and Samsung Gear IconX 2018 earbuds, the charging case is a big part of the experience of the Pixel Buds — with 5 hours of charge, you need to let the buds sleep in this case and charge back up again periodically. Google loves fabric right now. Look at the Daydream View, Google Homes or new line of Pixel 2 cases — they’re all fabric. The same type of stuff makes up the Pixel Buds case.

The case is fine — but what will it look like after several months of daily use?

The case looks nice. The fabric on the outside and soft rubber on the inside are very friendly and easy to get acquainted with. But I have serious concerns about the longterm durability of something that is this soft. The only real structure to the case is around the bottom surrounding the battery (makes sense) but the lid is simply hinged fabric and rubber and the edges are very flexible. Normally I wouldn’t be super worried about these sorts of things, but the Pixel Buds charging case is designed to be with you all of the time — in your pocket, in your bag, on the table — and I’m not sure how it’ll handle that every day for months on end.

The case’s functions are all just fine. There are strong magnets that suck the L and R buds into place for charging, and a handy diagram sticker inside shows you how to wrap the cord around (though I doubt people will hold to this, and that may create some problems with the cord down the road). Three LEDs show the charging state of the case itself, and pressing a button shows the charge state of the buds that are inserted. The case provides “24 hours” of charge for the buds, and charges over USB-C — yes, it can even charge off of a Pixel 2.

TBD — voice translation

The final fun part of the Pixel Buds — and their one true differentiator — is the promise of real-time language translation via Google Translate. Not expecting my Pixel Buds to show up today I don’t have the means to test this just yet, but I plan to. I have already lowered my expectations, understanding that it can’t possibly consistently work in the same seamless way as Google’s demo on stage in October, but I’m cautiously optimistic after seeing how quickly Assistant works for other things.

If Google has figured out how to get the latency down, and deal with ambient noise (the big issue) it could be a fantastic tool. We know the core Google Translate experience is good, but the rest of it has to be perfect or it’s going to get really frustrating.

That’s it for now — let us know in the comments what else you want to know about the Pixel Buds and we’ll do our best to answer!

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The UFC’s big bet to keep fighters fighting

This article contains images of violence that may upset or offend.

If you’re curious about what the world’s preeminent mixed martial arts competition is like but did not pay as much as several thousand dollars for Madison Square Garden seats last Saturday, here are some of the sights UFC 217 offered:

Light heavyweight prelim bout. Corey Anderson’s head hits the canvas with a resounding whump. The culprit: a crashing left kick to the jaw from a now-strutting Ovince Saint Preux. Each replay of the knockout garners a spontaneous “oh!” — equal parts exhilaration and wincing — from the mostly male, disproportionately swole, crowd of 18,000. M.O.P.’s “Ante Up” plays after the bout.

Heavyweight prelim bout. “Elbow him in the face!” a man yells as Walt Harris of Alabama and Mark Godbeer of England face off. There’s no decisive elbow, but the six-foot-five-inch, 250-pound Harris does plant a solid — and illegal — knee into Godbeer’s groin. As the Brit backs off, Harris sends a kick to his face. The ref stops the fight and Harris is disqualified.

Women’s strawweight title bout. Fiery champion Joanna Jedrzejczyk is dethroned in just over three minutes by Rose Namajunas, a lithe, quietly confident five-foot-five fighter with a buzz cut. Fighters often jockey for a dominant position over a grounded opponent from which to punch their head repeatedly — known as “ground and pound” — which can end a fight. In this case, Namajunas sinks Jedrzejczyk with a left hook, then pounces for a dozen or so punches to her defenseless skull until the champion surrenders.

There were 11 fights in total; we haven’t even gotten to the marquee event. Yet somehow, this was one of the less violent nights in the Ultimate Fighting Championship’s 24-year existence.

The UFC started with a 1993 fight in Denver, Colorado. The idea was to pit wildly different fighters — say, a spindly kickboxer with a 600-pound sumo wrestler — against each other to compare styles. Once labelled “human cockfighting” by Senator John McCain, you could count the number of rules in one hand. While regulations varied from event to event, usually only the most barbaric ways of inflicting pain like biting and eye-gouging were banned.

In 2001, Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta bought the UFC for $2 million and the organization started angling for mainstream legitimacy. New rules were added — no more kicking an opponent when they’re down or head butting — as well as weight classes and time limits. The company hosted fights in Brazil, Australia and Japan, and also launched a reality show, The Ultimate Fighter. UFC events started making a steady pay-per-view profit. Last year, New York, the last state where MMA was still illegal, lifted its ban. Then, the Fertittas announced they’d sold their company for $4 billion to the Ari Emanuel- and Patrick Whitesell-led Hollywood talent agency WME-IMG.

Today, mixed martial arts (MMA) rivals boxing as the world’s most popular combat sport — 25 percent of Americans are a fan of the former, while 28 percent follow the latter, according to a recent poll by The Washington Post and UMass Lowell. Each year the UFC, MMA’s biggest promoter, puts on about 40 “cards” — the list of matchups on a fight night — beaming them to over 150 countries. Last weekend’s card at UFC 217 brought in over a million pay-per-view buys, said the UFC’s president and public face Dana White. Madison Square Garden ticket sales totaled $6.1 million.

MMA’s authentic brutality has long been both a key selling point and criticism. The fights are the closest most people get to gawking at skilled, nearly-anything-goes combat.

Fight cards are both soap opera and athletic contest, and injuries disrupt the narratives that build for months ahead of each fight.

The problem with making money off raw aggression is injury. Damage to the body is a byproduct of every sport, but in MMA, harming your opponent is the entire point. Facial lacerations and bruises are just another day at the office; noses and eye sockets breaking are hardly uncommon.

When athletes pull out of one of the UFC’s 500 or so annual fights, it’s not enough for the promoter to simply find a willing replacement. Fight cards are both soap opera and athletic contest, and injuries disrupt the narratives that build for months ahead of each fight (like the underdog versus the cocky champ). In the UFC, star athletes like Conor McGregor and Ronda Rousey sell tickets through their personalities as much as their technique. A fight that captures the fan’s imagination can mean the difference between a million viewers paying for the live action versus 100,000.

The tension has plagued MMA for years. It’s a sport that’s institutionally organized around two people brawling until one is unconscious or unwilling to continue. Can its biggest promoter keep athletes fit enough to maintain bankable stars with lengthy careers and regular fights? To find an answer, the UFC is turning to technology.

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A few miles from the Las Vegas strip is the UFC Performance Institute, a gleaming, 30,000-square-foot, $14 million bet that the latest performance technology can maintain their athletes’ bodies.

At the end of 2014, the UFC was going through an internal audit. “It was a bit of a bad year so we tried to identify the cause of that,” said James Kimball, the Performance Institute’s VP of operations. Athletes were falling off fight cards through injury, not recovering fast enough, or failing to get their bodies to the right weight for competition. Spurred by Lorenzo Fertitta, the UFC examined the facilities of NFL and NBA teams, eventually modelling their center largely on Manchester City Football Club’s. Part of the organization’s new corporate campus, the UFC wants to make the institute a mothership for some 500 fighters around the world to check into occasionally and fine-tune their training.

UFC flyweight Joseph Benavidez.

Recently, Conor McGregor prepared here for his boxing bout against Floyd Mayweather. Cirque du Soleil performers, the NBA’s Brooklyn Nets and NHL team Vegas Golden Knights have also passed through. But a regular face here is Joseph Benavidez, the second best fighter in the UFC’s under-125-pound flyweight category, who lives a 15-minute drive away.

Benavidez has been an MMA fighter for 11 years, but his first serious injury came earlier this year in a freak accident during routine sparring. “I just pushed off for a punch and my foot kind of just got stuck in the mat,” said Benavidez, who at 33 has the face of a veteran fighter: cauliflower ears, slight crook in his nose, scar from a split brow. “There was no blunt force or anything foul going on.” Benavidez’s body went one way, his foot stayed planted, and he fell to the ground.

Weeks out from a major fight in New Zealand, Benavidez had torn his anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) as well as two other ligaments holding his knee together. In short, he would need a full knee reconstruction and 10 months on the sidelines.

An ACL tear is a traumatic injury for any athlete. Recovery essentially requires reprogramming the brain on how to control the leg as if the sportsman were a baby again. Only then can Benavidez build muscle and practice fighting moves, all while trying to avoid injury in the same, vulnerable spot again — especially in a sport where opponents may target a perceived weakness.

With strength and conditioning coaches, nutritionists and physical therapists under one roof, the UFC wants to aggregate everything a fighter needs to train in one place.

Since his surgery, Benavidez has been in rehab at the Performance Institute five days a week. Recently off crutches, he does cardio on an anti-gravity treadmill — which seals the atmosphere below the waist so athletes can run on as little as 20 percent of their body weight — to reduce the impact on his knee. Meanwhile he uses the DEXA machine, which is a type of X-ray that can precisely measure how much muscle he has rebuilt in his right leg compared to the uninjured left one. The hard data both serves his trainers and gives him quantified feedback on how quickly he’s improving.

The institute also houses what looks like a tanning bed but uses infrared light to reduce inflammation and speed up muscle repair. A PowerKube pad quantifies the power of an athlete’s punch while pressure plates in the weight room can measure movement patterns on every rep of a squat. A sealed altitude chamber can mimic elevation of up to 22,000 feet, so athletes can push their cardio exercises in a short amount of time.

Essentially, the institute’s equipment molds the environment around an athlete to maximize the efficiency of their training and recovery. With strength and conditioning coaches, nutritionists and physical therapists under one roof, the UFC wants to aggregate everything a fighter needs to train in one place. And, while they’re at it, to measure as much of that activity as possible and turn it into data.

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Around the facility, iPads are placed on the walls and next to weight racks with the headshots of every athlete who’s visiting that day. They tap into their profiles, and can access a bespoke training plan, while inputting everything from how well they slept to their mood. The hope is that when they return to their home gyms, they’ll continue inputting this information manually.

“The UFC in all honesty probably wasn’t doing a really great job in tracking performance-related issues in terms of data, in terms of understanding what is the cause of certain physical ailments,” Kimball said. “Really this facility is meant not just to be a training center for the athletes but a research, innovation and development and data capture facility.”

The company that centralizes all that data is Kitman Labs. Founded five years ago in Dublin, Kitman aims to use machine learning to find the root causes of sports injuries, correlating a host of metrics like athletes’ training plans, hydration levels and medical records. Having worked with Everton Football Club in the UK, the LA Dodgers and Miami Dolphins, Kitman claims to reduce injury between 30 and 40 percent across different sports by combing through data that already exists.

“Whether it’s the NFL, the NBA, Major League Baseball, Major League Soccer, they all store medical records on their athletes, and they all store private performance data that the teams are collecting,” said Stephen Smith, CEO at Kitman Labs. “They’re collecting that data and they’re storing it in the equivalent of a bucket. They’re basically putting the lid on it every day, and it’s useless.”

For Duncan French, the UFC Performance Institute’s VP of performance who previously worked with the British Olympic taekwondo team, University of Notre Dame and Newcastle United FC, identifying the cause of the UFC’s injuries is the “golden bullet.” “We’re never going to stop injury. What we’re trying to do is minimize injury rates,” he said.

“I’ve been researching for the last 20 years, 15, years, what’s the best way to train for MMA. Nobody really knows.”

About 35 percent of the UFC’s fighters have used the facility in its first five months, said Kimball, and the more athletes use the facility, the more data feeds into the UFC’s system. As red flags for injury are discovered over the next 12 months, the UFC can educate its athletes on how to train most effectively. As a relatively young sport with individual gyms dotted around the world, there are few standardized training techniques.

“I’ve been researching for the last 20 years, 15, years, what’s the best way to train for MMA. Nobody really knows,” said Forrest Griffin, a former UFC athlete in the hall of fame who has been involved in the Performance Institute’s development since conception and is its VP of athlete development. “Every football, every soccer, every baseball, basketball — you know what traits you’re trying to magnify. But MMA is the most open sport there is. We have guys that are horrible athletes and they’re amazing fighters — why? Guys that are amazing athletes but they’re horrible fighters — why?”

The Performance Institute is essentially the next step in the UFC’s evolution as a serious sport. Three of the institute’s official targets are to reduce injury, maintain cards on pay per view and accumulate athlete data, although a UFC spokesman declined to make the numbers they are targeting public. Right now, says French, the UFC is “working towards” an analysis of how much revenue injury is costing them every year.

“MMA is behind other more mainstream sports when it comes to surrounding the athletes with a good team and resources, so the Performance Institute is a big step in the right direction,” said Jonathan Gelber, a sports medicine specialist and board member of the Association of Ringside Physicians. “Tracking injuries and performance is what all the other major sports do on a regular basis.”

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Over the years, UFC audiences have seen an arm get broken in four places, an ear half ripped off and teeth sent flying from the cage. Yet the ailments hanging over UFC, and all contact sports right now, are brain injuries.

A recent study of deceased NFL players’ brains showed that 110 of 111 of them had chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative brain disease associated with repeated trauma to the head. Meanwhile last year, Jordan Parsons was the first MMA fighter to be publicly diagnosed with CTE after he died at 25 in a traffic accident.

CTE can currently only be identified posthumously, while many brain diseases don’t become apparent until later life. It’s only now that a generation of MMA fighters are retired and discovering the long-term effect the sport has had on their brain.

“It’s a relatively young sport,” said Robert Cantu, the co-founder and medical director of the Concussion Legacy Foundation and a clinical professor of neurosurgery at the Boston University School of Medicine. “The amount of research that’s been done is trivial.”

There are also many questions around CTE like whether there’s a threshold of hits to the head one can take before the disease risk shoots up and what makes some people more susceptible to it than others.

“The body doesn’t adapt to being punched in the head at all … You don’t get used to it.”

The most comprehensive ongoing research is the Professional Fighters Brain Health Study at the Cleveland Clinic, partially funded by the UFC, which has been giving MRI scans and cognitive tests to current and former fighters once a year since 2011. Meanwhile, a University of Toronto study found that 32 percent of UFC fights between 2006 and 2012 resulted in head trauma — a higher rate than ice hockey and football. Yet most injuries happen in training.

For the UFC, that means a change in mindset: While blows to the head are inevitable in the ring, they can be minimized in sparring. “You shouldn’t compete every day. You shouldn’t put yourself in a win or lose situation where you’re going to go 100 percent with another human being every day,” said the UFC’s Griffin. When he was competing, Griffin would spar two or three times a week for as many as ten rounds, which he now calls “unnecessary.” It’s part of a mentality in some fighters that the more you spar and get hit, the more prepared you are for the fight. “The body doesn’t adapt to being punched in the head at all,” he said. “You don’t get used to it. You don’t build up calcium deposits.”

An Octagon at the performance center equipped with 12 VICON cameras next to an 82-inch touch screen for video analysis is supposed to encourage athletes to fight less and analyze their spars more, something Griffin says he did at most five times in his career.

However, to some experts, brain injury is going to be inevitable for UFC athletes, and it’s unclear how much tech-assisted training methods can stop that.

“That’s part of the culture. If you can knock a guy out in MMA with a shot to the head you’re going to do it,” said Shelby Karpman, chief medical officer for the Edmonton Combative Sports Commission in Canada. Karpman has worked as a ringside physician in boxing and MMA fights since 1992, handling about a half dozen annually; this September he saw UFC fighter Gavin Tucker get four bones broken in his face in one fight.

“The fans love to see people get hit in the head,” Cantu said. “So those fighters tend to learn to strike because they make more money and they are more popular. Long term, later life ramifications of all that head trauma is going to be a reality.”

The knockouts, after all, are what everyone is here to see.

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By the time UFC 217’s fight of the night comes on, the blood of past combatants on the Octagon floor has settled into burgundy smears around the Harley Davidson logo.

The hero and villain of this fight has been telegraphed loud and clear. Michael Bisping, the defending middleweight champion is a weathered and cocky Brit who, at the pre-fight press conference, made fun of his opponent’s suit and called him a “little bitch” to jeers from the fans in attendance.

Georges St-Pierre, a mild-mannered Canadian and former champion known both as a cultured grappler and lover of dinosaurs, is making his comeback after four years away from the sport. He’s been drinking in Bisping’s derision for months with a bemused grin. Amid the smack-talking culture of MMA, “GSP” is the kind of guy who says things in interviews like “martial arts is not about who’s got the biggest balls,” then apologizes immediately for saying “balls.”

Their fight — like many others — has already been delayed twice, with St-Pierre recovering from an eye injury and Bisping nursing his knee. Finally, it starts.

In the third round, St-Pierre takes Bisping to the ground and wraps his arms around him, pushing his head into Bisping’s chest. Bisping, trapped beneath the stocky Canadian, launches elbow after elbow to his face.

They get back up. St-Pierre’s face is a mess of crimson, his head and nose cut open, blood streaking down his chest and covering Bisping’s torso too. He looks fatigued, unable to keep Bisping on the floor where he is most effective. But a left hook from St-Pierre soon drops the Brit, and he follows up with a flurry of punches and elbows to his downed opponent.

Then, St-Pierre maneuvers himself for a Hollywood finish: the rear naked choke. He wraps his legs around Bisping from behind, fastens one arm around his neck and applies pressure with the other. It’s a move of complete domination; once Bisping is locked in, everyone knows it’s over, including Bisping. The six-foot-three-inch middleweight champion has a look of helpless panic on his face before he slips out of consciousness and slumps over.

This is the moment everyone has waited for. The prospect of a knockout, of extreme, cringe-but-can’t-look-away, blink-and-you-miss-it violence animates every moment of a fight. Its occurrence is like a home run: a flawless show of superiority. The money shot replays on giant screens in slow motion, repeatedly. The stadium roars.

After the fight, White declares UFC 217 “one of the best ever — if not the best ever” nights they’ve had. “This is the best year by a long shot in the company’s history,” he adds.

Bisping’s face is splotchy with purple bruises, but nothing serious — “scuffs,” he says.

St-Pierre is whisked to hospital for stitches in his nose right after the victory. He is ordered by doctors not to fight for 45 days, wins congratulations from his prime minister Justin Trudeau and gets a $50,000 “performance of the night” bonus for his troubles.

Some iPhone X displays have a nasty green line

The iPhone X’s design revolves around its all-encompassing OLED display, so you can imagine the heartbreak when that display is glitchy… and unfortunately, it looks like a handful of owners are going through that pain. People on Apple’s forums, Reddit and elsewhere are reporting a glitch where a green line runs down the left or right edge of the display, regardless of what’s happening on-screen. This doesn’t appear to affect the functionality, but it’s clearly annoying.

We’ve asked Apple for comment on the issue. It doesn’t appear that restarts or other common software solutions fix it, though, and this might be strictly a hardware problem. It’s not necessarily an overscan line like you might see on a TV, either. No matter what, it’s safe to say that you can get a replacement if the usual troubleshooting proves fruitless.

It’s unclear how many people are affected by the green line, although it doesn’t appear to be a widespread issue. Between this and the (software-fixable) cold weather responsiveness issue, though, it appears that the iPhone X has some teething troubles. That’s not entirely surprising. It’s Apple’s first phone to use an OLED screen, and it’s using a custom (Samsung-manufactured) panel at that — there may be a learning curve involved as the companies master their production techniques. As it is, Samsung has had problems with its own OLED phones. Provided the iPhone X flaw is a hardware issue, it illustrates the broader issues with manufacturing cutting edge OLED screens.

My new #iPhoneX appears a green line on the screen😂, and the faceID can’t recognize me when I with glasses.@Apple @AppleSupport pic.twitter.com/Fgj5fg9v2x

— Lejia Peng (@fanguy9412) November 6, 2017

Via: 9to5Mac

Source: Apple Communities, Reddit, Lejia Peng (Twitter)

The best turkey fryer

By Ganda Suthivarakom

This post was done in partnership with Wirecutter, reviews for the real world. When readers choose to buy Wirecutter’s independently chosen editorial picks, it may earn affiliate commissions that support its work. Read the full article here.

After testing two stoves, frying two turkeys (one on a propane burner and one in a top-rated electric fryer), and talking to three chefs about what types of equipment work best, we’re confident that the Bayou Classic Aluminum Turkey Fryer Stockpot paired with the Bayou Classic Single Burner Patio Stove is the best option for Thanksgiving. And once the holiday has come and gone, both can serve you well for other outdoor-cooking projects, such as lobster boils and clambakes. We have tried to find a good indoor alternative to the propane fryer but have been consistently disappointed in the soggy, oily results. If you’re going to fry a turkey, do it right.

These things are dangerous

Using a turkey fryer can be dangerous if used improperly or indoors. Fortunately, you can find plenty of guides on the Internet that can teach you how not to set your house on fire. Be sure to read up to understand what you are getting into before you begin.

We’re serious. Turkey fryers are so risky that Underwriters Laboratories, the global safety company whose UL logo certification you find on nearly every piece of technology in your house, won’t certify turkey fryers. This UL video shows what can happen when you don’t take the proper precautions.

Why risk using a turkey fryer?

The risks have not deterred adventurous cooks around the country from dragging propane tanks into the backyard. But even if you’re not a thrillseeker, there are benefits to frying your turkey rather than roasting it. First, you get more room in the oven on a day when space for your side dishes and pies is at a premium. Secondly, a fried turkey cooks in a fraction of the time of a roasted one—about 30 to 45 minutes as opposed to three hours. Fried turkeys also have more flavor, all things considered equal.

How we picked and tested

A turkey fresh out of the propane-frying process. Photo: Ganda Suthivarakom

Most reviews we read point to buying a pot made specifically for the purpose of turkey frying—it’s the right shape and has max-fill line warnings, so you don’t have to worry about not being able to fit the bird in or having to buy too much peanut oil. The pots themselves are pretty straightforward, with slightly different styles of turkey racks. Between aluminum and stainless, we chose aluminum, because it conducts heat quickly and is the more affordable choice.

The problem is that most of these brands make all-in-one kits with lesser-quality burners included. All three chefs we spoke with told us that the burner is where you want to pay attention to build quality—and for that, you’re better off buying separately.

We considered many different outdoor cooker models from top retailers, and ultimately decided to test two fryers from Bayou. Both models had a sturdy build, a single-burner design, powerful heat, and good value. To investigate the difference between a turkey fried in an electric fryer versus one fried over a propane burner, we also tested an indoor electric fryer from Masterbuilt. (Spoiler alert: The results from the electric fryer were very disappointing).

We started by assembling each fryer, noting how easy it was to go from box to boiling. Then, we hooked them up to a tank of propane on a windless, 55 ºF night and tested how long each took to boil 6 quarts of water in a stainless steel pot, uncovered.

Finally, the fun part: turkey frying time! We determined that the performance of the two propane burners was close enough that we could get away with picking one over the other for design and stability reasons. So we fried only one 10½-pound turkey in our pot pick, and another 10½-pound bird in the electric fryer. We let each turkey cook for 35 minutes, following the recommendations of 3½ minutes per pound. That said, the breast was a bit overcooked in the propane burner, and we probably could have taken it out at least five minutes earlier.

Our pick

Our turkey frying in the Bayou Classic Aluminum Turkey Fryer Stockpot. Photo: Ganda Suthivarakom

Our pick is the Bayou Classic Aluminum Turkey Fryer Stockpot. It comes with the necessary poultry rack, hook, thermometer, and injector (which you don’t need). It’s big enough to hold your 10- or 12-pound turkey. It comes from Bayou, the go-to brand in the category, and the same pot (with its burner) was recommended by Serious Eats and Leite’s Culinaria.

However, we prefer to pair this pot with the Bayou Classic SQ14 Single Burner Patio Stove. We eschewed the full kit’s tripod for this one because this solidly constructed model has a sturdy 16-inch square base on four welded legs. It comes with a 29-inch braided metal hose, which felt sufficiently long. The double-ring burner does not have a wind protection screen, but we found that the flame got hot and spread wide, licking up the sides of the pot.

Runner-up

The Bayou Classic SP10 High-Pressure Outdoor Cooker was the other gas burner we tested. It’s supported by a slightly smaller 14-inch-wide welded tripod frame (compared with the SQ14’s 16 inches), and it has only three legs, instead of four. It also has a longer, 48-inch hose (the SQ14’s is 29 inches). It took just 15 minutes to boil 6 quarts of water, one minute less than the SQ14. Ultimately, we thought the added stability of the SQ14’s fourth leg and larger footprint outweighed the nominal speed boost you get from the SP10, because safety should always come first.

This guide may have been updated by Wirecutter. To see the current recommendation, please go here.

Note from Wirecutter: When readers choose to buy our independently chosen editorial picks, we may earn affiliate commissions that support our work.

Sony will sell a PlayStation 4 for $200 on Black Friday

It’s hard to believe that Thanksgiving is almost upon us, but it also means that one of the biggest retail days of the year, Black Friday, is quickly approaching. With that in mind, Sony has released its Black Friday deals for the PlayStation. This sale starts early and will run from November 19th through November 27th.

If you’re looking for a standard PlayStation 4, the 1 TB slim console will retail for $200. That’s a discount of about $100 off MSRP. The PlayStation VR bundles will also be on sale. You can snag the PlayStation VR Gran Turismo Sport bundle for $300 (normally it’s $400) and the Skyrim VR bundle for $350 (the regular price is $450). If you need to stock up on DualShock 4 wireless controllers, those will start at $40 (about $10 off MSRP).

PlayStation Plus members will also be treated to discounts on game titles. Starting Black Friday, games will be on sale in the PlayStation Store for up to 40 percent off. If you’re not a Plus member, you can take advantage of the discount a few days later — the sale will open to the general public on Tuesday, November 21st, and will run through the 28th.

Source: Sony

The naked truth about Facebook’s revenge porn tool

Facebook has announced it’s trialling a tool in Australia to fight revenge porn on its platform, one that requires victims to send the company a copy of the violating images. Amazingly, this is true, and not a Clickhole story. It’s the kind of thing that makes you wonder if there are human people at Facebook, and do they even understand what words mean? Because as we unravel the details of this tool — totally not conceived by actual robots or a company with a zero percent trust rating among users — we realize it’s a very confusing tool indeed.

According to press who wrote about it (forcing Facebook to come back with panicked explanations) in detail that made it sound even worse, the revenge porn tool works like this:

A person starts a conversation with themselves in Facebook Messenger and uploads a nude.

Apparently, someone might want to do this if they see one of Facebook’s monstrous users publishing nonconsensual sexytime photos of them, or fear a revenge porn scenario may some day come to pass. The process presumes the victim has these photos in the first place, and cavalierly ignores that this person is living in a nightmarish hellscape trauma that is in no way re-experienced by handing the instrument of their terror to an anonymous, unaccountable, possibly grey alien Facebook employee.

The idea is, that the user flags it as a “non-consensual intimate image.” The photo is copied to Facebook, because that is what computers do: they copy files.

This apparently sends a copy of the image to the probable-Cybermen behind the scenes at Facebook, who momentarily pause from massaging advertisers with whale tears, laughing at people worried about Holocaust denial, high-fiving over scenes of unbelievable human devastation, and destroying democracy.

Then a person, and totally not a heartless tech bro, who works for Facebook looks at it. They decide if it is revenge porn, or if on that day you are just shit out of luck for getting your nonconsensual nudes removed.

At some point, according to what Facebook told Motherboard, the image has portions of it blurred out. This may happen with magic grey alien technology in transit, somehow preserving the privacy and dignity of the revenge porn victim. Maybe the employee just blurs their eyes over the sensitive parts by squinting really hard or rubbing their eyelids. Perhaps a superhacker Facebook cyber-script blurs the private bits so quickly you can feel a breeze come off the Facebook employee’s computer.

But probably not. A Facebook spokesperson told Motherboard that when the image is blurry, a highly specialized and incredibly trained team are the only people who have access to it for a few days. It is my personal hope that their training is in martial arts.

Yet when asked about how and when the blurring process happens, a Facebook spokesperson told Engadget that to clarify about the blurring process, the photos are hashed. We were then directed to this post, which doesn’t talk about blurring of images at all.

So the exact process protecting the privacy of revenge porn victims that Facebook told Motherboard happens in its offices, and claimed to clarify to Engadget, may or may not be happen like this at all. This is what one might call “a bad sign.”

Anyway. As best we know, after employees look at the photo (and it may or may not be altered for the privacy and dignity of its subject), Facebook’s machines take over. Facebook makes a hash of the photo and stores it in a repository that’s cross-checked against photo uploads on the service. We can rest assured that this part will work perfectly because Facebook has never made a mistake.

Once the hash is made, only then does Facebook delete the photo from its servers. A Thursday post from Facebook stated:

Once we hash the photo, we notify the person who submitted the report via the secure email they provided to the eSafety Commissioner’s office and ask them to delete the photo from the Messenger thread on their device. Once they delete the image from the thread, we will delete the image from our servers.

Actually, hashes are how photo sites and indexes check for child porn. When those illegal photos are seized, they’re hashed and put into databases that scan for matching images, helping authorities find violators and victims. The neat thing about photo hashes is that the photos can’t be reconstructed from just the hashes.

In theory, this would make Facebook’s process pretty slick. Except for the part where you’re uploading the image to Facebook, of course, and the image is being looked at, transmitted, processed, and stored by this particular company. In contrast to its Thursday update, Facebook had assured Motherboard that the images are discarded after a few days of review. None of which makes us feel better. And it shouldn’t if you take a minute to learn how easy it is to recover deleted files.

Facebook did not respond to my question as to whether or not the image or its hash is included in a user’s shadow profile, or falls under Facebook’s photo Terms, which are:

(…) a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook (IP License). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account unless your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it.

After all, Facebook is in the business of collecting data.

The laws around the publication of intimate and private photos online without the subject’s consent are a mess. The rules themselves, and the results, differ from country to country (and from state to state in the US), and even between civil and criminal federal laws. But technically — and it’s curious that Facebook isn’t mentioning this — if you created the images or you own the rights to them. If you own the copyright, you can (and should) ask for removal with a DMCA request.

The problem here, obviously, is trust. Lesley Carhart told Motherboard that her speciality is digital forensics. “I literally recover deleted images from computer systems all day—off disk and out of system memory,” she said. “It’s not trivial to destroy all trace of files, including metadata and thumbnails.”

Facebook is asking people to trust it. The company that said Russian propaganda advertising only reached 10 million people then was forced to admit the true number was 126 million. The company that reached into people’s address books on phones and devices, and altered Facebook users’ contact information, re-routing communications to Facebook. The company that enforces a “real names” policy on users despite the fact that the National Network to End Domestic Violence proved that Facebook is the most misused social media platform by abusers. The company that let advertisers target users by race, outs sex workers, said “fake news” was not a real problem, and that experimented on its users’ mental health.

Trust is something Facebook literally has none of.

Getting revenge porn taken down is hard, as well as emotionally and psychologically grueling for victims. It feels horrible, and is a fresh trauma every time the victim is confronted with a new violation. The police won’t do it, and victims are tasked with finding all the images and videos, and sending each website and its host a takedown request that asks sites to remove the content.

If Facebook wanted to implement a truly trusted system for revenge porn victims, they could put the photo hashing on the user side of things — so only the hash is transferred to Facebook. To verify the claim that the image is truly a revenge porn issue, the victim could have the images verified through a trusted revenge porn advocacy organization. Theoretically, the victim then would have a verified, privacy-safe version of the photo, and a hash that could be also sent to Google and other sites.

Facebook plans to roll out its fabulous new program in other countries soon. As they say in Menlo Park, “May the odds be ever in your favor!”

Disclosure: Violet Blue is an Advisor for Without My Consent, a nonprofit dedicated to helping victims of online privacy violations find paths to justice.

Images: PA/PA WIRE (Blurred smartphone image); REUTERS/Stephen Lam (Mark Zuckerberg)

Faraday Future continues to struggle as three more executives depart

Faraday Future is having a tough year. The electric automotive startup began 2017 cutting its planned 7-car line down to 2 vehicles before scaling down the size of — and then suspending — a planned $1 billion Nevada production facility. Today brings more woes, as news emerged that three top executives are leaving or have already left Faraday, including chief financial officer Stefan Krause.

Krause came to Faraday in March after holding executive roles at BMW group and Duetsche Bank. Sources told Jalopnik that during his short tenure as CFO, Krause did attract some potential investors, but they reportedly balked when a stipulation wasn’t met: Faraday’s main financier, entrepreneur and LeEco founder Jia Yueting, give up control — which he refused. Krause quietly left Faraday last month, but the news was confirmed today.

Accompanying him out the door are two other senior executives, according to The Verge. The first is Ulrich Kranz, another BMW veteran who joined Faraday in July, and the other is Bill Strickland, head of vehicle manufacturing who formerly headed the Ford Fusion program. It’s the latest in a string of executive exits from the struggling company, including a pair of its founding execs a few months ago.

The Verge’s report paints a bleak picture for Faraday, with sources describing it as a sinking ship with low workforce morale. The company is reportedly bringing in some new talent, including an executive who describes himself on LinkedIn as a “crisis management expert” to run communications, as well as a soon-to-be-announced global head of tax.

Source: The Verge

Roku bought a Sonos-like company focused on multi-room audio

You’ve probably never heard of Dynastrom, but Roku has. The streaming player company acquired Dyanstrom last month, a Danish firm building multi-room audio software, Variety reports. The news follows an earlier report from the outlet in September, which noted that Roku was seeking audio experts for new roles. That led to speculation that the company was building a smart speaker of its own — an increasingly intriguing category, albeit one that seems surprising for Roku.

Variety notes that Dynastrom employees, among them its CEO and CTO, were listed as Roku employees on LinkedIn in September. The company also revealed that it made an acquisition for $3.5 million in a regulatory filing yesterday, though it didn’t name Dyanstrom directly.

“We are always looking to expand our engineering team, and the addition of Dynastrom allows us to scale the team further,” a Roku spokesperson said in a statement. “They will continue operations in Denmark as a subsidiary of Roku Inc. We are not disclosing any additional details related to the transaction.”

The bigger question? We don’t know what the company plans to do with this multi-room audio technology. Essentially, it seems to allow for Sonos-like functionality over WiFi. Roku could conceivably build smart speakers of its own, but that might be tough since speakers are an entirely new category for the company, and there’s plenty of experienced competition on the market. Alternatively, Roku could partner with other companies to implement its audio technology. Just imagine being able to hear the audio from a TV show in several speakers throughout your home.

Source: Variety