Canadians can save $100 on the BlackBerry KEYone Black Edition right now

The 24-hour flash sale is back on in Canada, and this time it’s for the BlackBerry KEYone Black Edition!

Following up on the previous 24-hour flash sales in Canada which were for the BlackBerry KEYone in Silver, BlackBerry Mobile has kicked off another 24-hour flash sale. This time around, Canadians can score a BlackBerry KEYone Black Edition for $100 off bringing the total to $699.99 CAD.

Where can you buy it? Right here 👇

See at Amazon
See at Staples
See at Blueshop
See at Best Buy

The sale runs from 11/8/17 from 12:01 AM – 11:59 PM (EST) and as always product availability and shipping times will vary by retailer, but given Amazon, Staples, Blueshop and Best Buy are all participating, everyone looking to pick up a BlackBerry KEYone Black Edition should be able to snag one.

Also, do keep in mind that not all the sites may update their pricing at the same time, so if your desired retailer doesn’t have the sale pricing listed, keep checking, they will soon enough. Sale pricing is only valid online and for those possibly in the U.S. looking to order one, Blueshop will ship out of Canada but you’re responsible for customs, duties, brokerage fees and taxes.

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The FCC is helping cable companies evade consumer protection rules

VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol): is it an information service or a telecommunications service? This is the question that sits at the heart of an ongoing dispute between the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission (MPUC), as the FCC takes steps to help cable company Charter avoid state consumer protection rules.

The FCC has never definitively settled the regulatory status of VoIP. If regarded as a telecommunications service — instead of a less heavily regulated information service — it would be subject to strict state rules. In this case, MPUC wants Charter to collect fees from customers to contribute to state programs that help the poor and hearing-impaired access telephone services, and to allow their customers to appeal to MPUC in the event of any disputes. Charter, with the support of the FCC, is trying to stop this, and the case has been taken to the Federal Court of Appeals which could, finally, provide clarification on VoIP’s regulatory status.

Charter has found support from a number of other telecom companies, including AT&T, Verizon and USTelecom, which claim that preventing the utility regulation of VoIP promotes continued competition and ultimately benefits customers. Consumer groups, however, argue that a Charter victory would mark the loss of protection that guarantees universal access to basic telephone services at fair prices, and that VoIP service provision shouldn’t come with fewer protections simply because it’s provided in a different way to traditional landlines. The outcome of the case will undoubtedly set a precedent for VoIP regulation in other states, and as MPUC says in its brief on the matter, “This case presents an important question of nationwide significance: whether the rule of law may be rendered obsolete by technological innovation.”

Source: Ars Technica

‘Dinner Party’ relives an interracial couple’s alien abduction in VR

On the night of September 19th, 1961, Barney and Betty Hill were the victims of the first widely publicized alien abduction in US history. The Hills, an interracial couple active in the civil-rights movement, were on their way home from a trip to Niagara Falls when they noticed an unusual light in the sky. Shaken by the erratic behavior of the UFO, they headed in the direction of the closest town but never made it.

Dinner Party 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.

Somewhere along the way, they turned off the road, where they encountered a fiery orb, but they couldn’t quite recall what happened next. For months after, they were stalked by an unnerving feeling, but it wasn’t until they underwent hypnosis that the two recovered the detailed and disparate memories of their abduction.

The Zeta Reticuli incident, as it came to be known, is the subject of books, TV shows, federal investigations, conspiracy theories and cable-TV specials. There are seemingly countless ways to consume the Hills’ abduction. Now Laura Wexler wants you to experience it. Wexler, a writer and producer whose works include a book about the last mass lynching in the United States, came across the Hills’ abduction while researching another project with her writing partner, Charlotte Stoudt, whose writing and producing credits include House of Cards and Homeland. The two were immediately drawn to the story not only for its supernatural appeal but also because of the real-world parallels with racial tensions in the United States today.

“These were two people taken from the same car, as they reported, and had really different experiences,” Wexler said. “One, a white woman; one, a black man — and to me, that was an opportunity to explore a racial dynamic. Not just a UFO story, though UFO stories are great, but to explore to what degree race and race in America, in particular, affected the experiences they reported as these UFO abductees.”

Wexler says the story was the perfect fit for virtual reality, which has been repeatedly referred to as the empathy machine for its ability to put the user in another’s shoes. In its current form, Dinner Party is a two-part VR experience. In the opening scene, the audience is transported to the Hills’ home. The couple entertains guests and prepares the dining room table for dinner until Betty interrupts the festivities with a surprise. She’s decided to play the couple’s hypnosis tapes for the first time. From there, the viewer is transported to the car on the night of the abduction and experiences the alien encounter as the Hills recalled it.

The Hills’ story is the first experience in a series called The Incident, which Wexler and Stoudt hope will become the Twilight Zone of the VR era. It’s an ambitious project with the support of some influential virtual-reality players behind it. The pair developed the concept earlier this summer at the Sundance New Frontier Lab, a weeklong workshop for artists and storytellers who embrace new technologies. There they met Saschka Unseld, the co-founder of Oculus Story Studio and celebrated director of Dear Anjelica, who would become a consultant on the project.

New Frontier then led to a fellowship at Technicolor Experience Center (yes, that Technicolor), which provided the two with access to visual-effects experts and tools that would have otherwise been out of reach. From there, RYOT* Studio’s Angel Soto, director of the critically acclaimed VR short Bashir’s Dream, came on board. Skybound, the company behind The Walking Dead, joined as a production partner and Telexist, co-founded by director of photography Sam Gazari, signed on as the show’s VR producer.

The moment I stepped on set, I was struck by the sheer scale of the project. There were so many people on set, it was hard to tell what half of them did. There were script supervisors and caterers, gaffers and gofers, art directors, set designers and lighting techs. There were craft services and a makeshift dressing room. There was even a row of directors chairs occupied by a small group of people who looked like they just rolled out of a sound bath in Joshua Tree and a guy with a booming voice whose sole occupation seemed to be shouting down their gossip.

The point is, there’s nothing small about this production — that is, except for the camera. For its relative scale, the nine-lens shooter has an outsize role in Dinner Party. On the day we visited set, a 30-foot techno-crane filled the middle of the soundstage. The 360-degree camera, a Z Cam v1 Pro, affixed to the end of the crane floated above a modestly set dining room table. The arrangement was necessary to facilitate a carefully orchestrated four-minute continuous shot, in which the camera (and thus the viewer) seems to take on a life of its own.

“A lot of times in VR you’re giving the camera either sort of a bird’s-eye perspective or a fly on the wall,” Gazari said. “There’s a voyeuristic element to that, and if you introduce something like body presence, you’re going to have explain why that’s there. This was a case where we wanted to free ourselves up from that a little bit — tie the camera movement into overarching narrative and create something that hasn’t been done very often.”

The use of camera movement and a single continuous shot not only broke with established 360-degree cinema techniques but answered a question that Wexler and Stoudt encountered repeatedly during their time at the New Frontier Labs: Who is the camera?

“It was very organic. It wasn’t done on purpose, and I think that was the beauty of it,” Soto said. “You are this omnipresent being that’s there all the time, tormenting them, following them, studying them, like God.”

*RYOT is owned by Verizon, Engadget’s parent company.

Wembley to host English football’s first video ref this week

The German Bundesliga uses it, the American MLS is on board, but never before has the video assistant referee (VAR) system officiated a formal match in the home of football: England. That changes this Friday when England plays Germany at Wembley Stadium in one of several international friendlies ahead of the FIFA World Cup tournament in Russia next year, which itself will adopt replay referees for the first time.

The VAR will remain glued to a screen on Friday, ready to advise the on-pitch referee on crucial decisions. The common argument against VARs is that they slow the pace of the game, but like implementations elsewhere, the VAR will only pipe up/intervene when serious matters like penalties, red cards and offside decisions crop up, leaving all minor judgements up to the referee on the ground. Criticisms of VAR go beyond bleeding momentum out of the game, though. As The Times notes, the arbiter of the Bundesliga’s system was suspended recently after allegedly showing bias during a match, influencing two VAR penalty decisions to the benefit of one team.

The Football Association (FA) will tentatively introduce the system for some third-round FA Cup matches in January, setting the stage for the Premier League to potentially adopt VARs next season following countless trials of the technology all over the world, including in the UK. Before that, though, the Premier League and its referees’ association have to agree on how they want to implement the system. Instead of having an off-pitch VAR, they are thinking about having the on-pitch referee dash to a TV on the sidelines to review the action there, ensuring only one person makes all the important calls.

Source: The Times (paywalled)

Postmates promises 30-minute grocery deliveries in New York

Postmates isn’t just for late-night take-out delivery anymore. The service just launched grocery delivery in Los Angeles, Manhattan and San Francisco. It’s called Fresh. More than that, the firm completely overhauled its app to make ordering a 12-pack of Dr. Pepper or a loaf of bread (or basically anything else you forgot while at the grocery store) a lot easier. A post on Medium claims that it shouldn’t take more than a half an hour for your goods to arrive — supposedly a quarter of the time some of its competitors. It’s about the same wait time for a Postmates booze drop-off. Amazon Fresh, on the other hand can take hours to make a delivery.

The delivery service is limited for now, but the upside of that, apparently, is that everything is going to be very high quality and come from small grocery stores. So, in LA, your food will come from Urban Radish; the East Village Farm in Manhattan; and Farmstead in San Francisco. Each pride themselves on offering curated picks for their foods and being active members in their respective communities.

Of course, this isn’t going to be as cheap as, say, running to your neighborhood bodega. Postmates charges a $3 fee per order, but the service doesn’t control the prices set by its partner stores. If you can afford to have groceries delivered, however, you likely aren’t going to sweat the potential price difference here.

Source: Medium

Christopher Nolan apologizes for trash-talking Netflix

Film director Christopher Nolan made no secret of his disdain for Netflix’s business model over the summer, when he gave an interview calling the streaming service’s “bizarre aversion” to supporting theatrical releases “mindless” and “untenable”. Now, he tells Variety that he sent a personal email to Netflix’s chief content officer Ted Sarandos, apologizing for his comments.

The exact contents of the email have not been disclosed, but Nolan tells Variety, “I should have been more polite. I said what I believe, but I was undiplomatic in the way I expressed it.” So clearly his apology didn’t renege on his previous comments. However, he concedes that Netflix is a new driving force in the film industry and needs to be acknowledged as such. “I wasn’t giving any context to the frankly revolutionary nature of what Netflix has done. It’s extraordinary. They need appropriate respect for that, which I have.” Nolan has previously stated his refusal to work with Netflix in the past, but this turnaround, however restrained, could well mean he’s not ruling it out in the future.

Via: The Verge

Source: Variety

Harry Potter AR game is coming from the makers of ‘Pokémon Go’

It’s hard to exaggerate the success of Pokémon Go, Niantic’s augmented reality game. That’s why it’s such big news that the company has announced the hit game’s successor. Niantic Labs will once again work with a much-loved property, but this time, it’s Harry Potter. Harry Potter: Wizards Unite is set to launch in 2018, in cooperation with Warner Brothers Interactive and Portkey Games, reports TechCrunch.

Details on the game are pretty scarce, so it’s not clear what the game will involve or what its mechanics will be. Niantic did say in September that the company was looking at using audio cues in future AR games because holding up a phone for an extended period of time “makes them look like a total doofus,” according to Niantic CTO Phil Keslin. It’s possible that Harry Potter: Wizards Unite will use sounds as cues.

According to TechCrunch, the game will borrow from Ingress, a previous endeavor from Niantic Labs. Players will move through their physical world to collect power-ups and defend locations (presumably, similar to Pokémon Go’s gym system). Whatever the mechanics of the game, with the Harry Potter franchise extremely large fanbase, it’s safe to say there will be a lot of interest in this game.

Source: TechCrunch

Zynga Debuts ‘Words With Friends 2’ Eight Years After Launching Original iOS Game

In 2009 developer Zynga debuted Words With Friends, a Scrabble-like game on the iOS App Store that quickly became one of the most popular and well-known apps associated with iPhone gaming. Today, Zynga is launching the first proper sequel to the game, Words With Friends 2, as a brand-new and free app on the App Store, and it’ll carry over all of your friends, running games, and settings from the first app.

In terms of gameplay, Words With Friends 2 plays the same as the original, offering up a word-creation board game against your friends in an asynchronous multiplayer experience. Additionally, Zynga said that it has added in a few new features to the sequel, “requested from the Words With Friends player community,” including a Solo Challenge that pits you against an AI bot, a team versus team Lightning Round, and an enhanced Social Dictionary.

Solo Challenge is meant to help you develop your strategy and vocabulary in a single player-style experience of “increasingly tough matches.” The Lightning Round mode is Zynga’s first-ever synchronous multiplayer feature, allowing you to play against more than one person in the same match by joining a team of five total players, resulting in a “faster and more competitive” mode than the traditional gameplay.

All of the new features come in an app that’s also newly designed with a “refreshed, modern look and feel,” according to Zynga.

“As one of Zynga’s most popular and iconic forever franchises, Words With Friends continues to connect millions of people around the world every day through a shared love of social wordplay,” said Bernard Kim, President of Publishing, Zynga. “Words With Friends 2 honors the rich, pop-culture legacy and beloved social gameplay of Words With Friends, while introducing innovative features in the largest refresh in the game’s eight-year history.

We’re proud to bring our loyal fans a brand-new experience that’s inspired by all the ways they want to play. Whether it’s teaming up in our first-ever synchronous multiplayer mode with Lightning Round or improving their vocabulary prowess in Solo Challenge, Words With Friends 2 gives players more opportunities to master their favorite word game than ever before.”

Zynga mentioned that over the course of eight years, more than 140 billion words have been played in Words With Friends, and to this day over 6.5 million matches are created every day. The popular original game spawned numerous spiritual successors created by Zynga and tackling other well-known game genres, including Hanging With Friends, Chess With Friends, Matching With Friends, Crosswords With Friends, Boggle With Friends, Word Streak With Friends, and more.

You can download Words With Friends 2 on the iOS App Store for free beginning today [Direct Link]. The sequel is also available on Google Play for Android devices.

Related Roundup: iOS 11Tags: Zynga, Words With Friends
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You Can Now Add Photos or Videos More Than 24 Hours Old to Your Instagram Stories

Instagram this week announced that users can now add photos or videos that are more than 24 hours old to Stories.

Instagram continues to catch up with rival app Snapchat by removing the 24-hour limitation, which should come as no surprise given Instagram has essentially been copying Snapchat for well over a year.

Just like you normally would, swipe up from the camera to open your Camera Roll or tap the gallery icon. Scroll to choose your photo or video, and tap to select what you want to share to your story, which still disappears after 24 hours itself.

If you choose a photo or video that’s more than 24 hours old, you’ll automatically see a new sticker that helps you add context for when it was taken. The sticker can be rotated, resized, or removed as usual.

The updated version of Instagram is available now on the App Store [Direct Link].

Tag: Instagram
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The Reflex 1 is the first manual film SLR in decades

Written off not long ago as dead technology, film has recently been embraced by instant photographers and filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino and Christopher Nolan. A company called Reflex has capitalized on that trend by launching the manual focus, 35mm Reflex 1 SLR, “the first newly designed manual SLR system in over 25 years.”

The Reflex 1 has the classic look of an older Nikon or Canon SLR, and comes with an interchangeable, modular plate that supports a variety of lenses, including Nikon F, Olympus OM, Canon FD and universal M42 thread mounts. It also includes an interchangeable film back that lets you load rolls of 35mm film instantly by swapping a fresh one in. You don’t get automatic aperture control settings, but there’s a button for depth-of-field previews.

You get both an integrated flash and continuous LED light source, each with three intensities. The camera supports manual exposure and aperture priority settings, with +4 stops of EV, and has ISO settings ranging from 25-6400. (Film stocks generally max out at 3200 ISO for black and white and 1600 for color.) If you’re curious, a 36-exposure roll of 35mm film costs between around $6-10, and processing runs about $5 per roll ($10 with 36 4×6 prints).

So why get this instead of, say, a used SLR or even brand new Nikon F6 and FM10 35mm SLR cameras? For one thing, there’s the price: It’s on sale for £350 (around $465) on Kickstarter, before it goes up to £399 ($530) when the campaign is over. That’s a bit cheaper than the $570 FM10, and a lot less than the $2,700 F6. The other interesting thing about the Reflex 1 is the interchangeable plate, which lets you change lens systems instantly — handy if you have legacy glass lying around from different companies.

The Reflex 1 joins other retro film products, including Fujifilm’s SQ10 instant camera, the Leica Sofort and (hopefully soon) Kodak’s digital Super 8 movie camera. Technically, the Reflex 1 isn’t the first new SLR design in decades if you count the Lomography Konstructor, but that’s a relative toy that can’t take interchangeable lenses.

The Reflex 1 a relatively cheap, nice-looking, hand-made 35mm SLR camera being built in what looks like a serious way. As with any other Kickstarter project, there’s a risk you’ll lose your money, so you’re buying into the concept and the company, not the camera itself. if you’re just looking for a product, you can probably find a decent used SLR on eBay for a couple of hundred dollars.

Source: Kickstarter