‘Flying Lotus in 3D’ is a jam session between music and holograms

Backstage at the concert venue Brooklyn Steel in New York, the artist Flying Lotus was discussing his persistent desire to create experiences so new that they were inconceivable to an audience before the show.

“I want people to be able to just be like, ‘Wow, that exists? Wow, this is happening? This is possible?’” said the producer and musician, whose name is Steven Ellison. “I want people to remember magical feelings, like being enchanted and being mesmerized and just having a new experience. That is what I’m always chasing after.”

In following this idea, the jazz, hip hop and electronic music artist has made a conceptual album about death, performed at a Hollywood cemetery and made a film about — literally — shit. His latest experiment, however, is in 3D: a 28-stop tour where audiences put on glasses to see an abstract technological spectacle surround them as he plays.

Dubbed the “electronic Jimi Hendrix,” Ellison has worked with Herbie Hancock as well as Kendrick Lamar, and is the great nephew of Alice and John Coltrane. But he is also a trained filmmaker and says that’s where his heart is. “I’ve always wanted my shows to feel more cinematic because that’s how I enjoy my music,” he said. “I love this idea that people, when I look out into the crowd, it looks like they’re going to the movies.”

The problem with 3D, however, is that eight years after the release of James Cameron’s Avatar, the technology falls squarely in the realm of gimmick. The 3D box office is down to its lowest point since 2009, and Greg Foster, the CEO of Imax Entertainment, has said that 2D film demand is beating 3D in North America. Most cinema 3D glasses create a darker, blurrier image, and require looking at a screen in a set position.

“3D has gotten a bit of a bad name due to a lot of really poor 3D movies that are not that great to look at,” said Ryan Pardeiro, chief operating officer at 3D Live, the company behind the hardware at Ellison’s show, and who is also a co-producer.

3D Live touts its technology as viewable from 120 to 140 degree angles, meaning the holographs looks good from around a concert hall. The display — a wall of screens behind Ellison on stage — are LEDs, not projection-based, meaning a brighter screen. Pardeiro speaks of the technology as a kind of shared augmented reality: combining virtual and physical elements within a venue to immerse the audience in an extension of Ellison’s vision.

However, even if you exceed your audience’s imagination — as Ellison wants to do — that “wow” moment then becomes the new normal. To keep people entertained, you have to raise the bar again and again.

At Flying Lotus in 3D, the job of the VJs and 3D artists is essentially to externalize Elliot’s avant-garde mind. Strangeloop (real name David Wexler) and Timeboy (aka John King) co-produced the show and operate the live visuals. Wexler described the overarching aesthetic as “dirty and vibey,” the feeling of entering “Lotus’ universe.” When asked what that meant, their responses oscillate between whimsical and terrifying.

“His universe? Oh man, that’s a really fun place to go to and sometimes very shocking,” said King.

“Sometimes shocking, sometimes fun, sometimes scary,” said Wexler. “Always very cinematic.”

“He has a very playful sense of humor,” said King.

“Filled with some humor, some horror, some irreverence,” said Wexler.

“Pushing the boundaries of comfortability sometimes,” concluded King. “It’s definitely one happy fucked up family, but in the artistic sense, I personally love to go there too and test the senses, test perceptions.”

About 60 feet in front of the stage, blending in with the sound and lighting technicians, the two VJs are set up with MacBook Pros. With 3D Live, they created a palette of some 400 3D animations, controlled through Resolume Arena software.

“I love the fact that it can go wrong at any moment. We’re all in danger, creatively.”

Wexler plays cinematic 3D clips, essentially steering the visual theme, with his laptop’s keyboard. King has the venue’s strobe lights mapped onto a Akai MPK MIDI keyboard. He uses the keyboard controller as well as a Novation Launchpad — a grid of illuminated buttons that electronic musicians typically use to play musical samples and construct beats– to trigger individual rhythmic elements within a 3D animation. King and Wexler are playing the lights and 3D animations as if they were instruments. There is no set list; the whole performance is improvised both musically and visually, making each show different. Ellison can’t even see what animations are going on behind him.

“I don’t like to rehearse, and I don’t like practicing because it never really translates,” said Ellison, showing his jazz roots. “I love the fact that it can go wrong at any moment. We’re all in danger, creatively.”

The one-hour show itself — few breaks for chitchat, no encore — is a jam session between audio and visual realms, with all three artists trying to communicate with each other through sound and light, anticipating where the other is going next.

The sheer spectacle of it is powerful at times, and the audience whoops with every piece of virtual detritus that appears to fly over them. Those moments, like in certain 3D movies, can feel like a breaking of the fourth wall, a holograph that bridges the physical space between performer and audience. Objects appear to surround Ellison: giant jellyfish, human heads that melt like pink modeling clay in a microwave, or a Star Destroyer-like ship that sails above the heads of the crowd. Plumes of virtual smoke meld with a real-life smoke machine, blending the audience’s idea of what’s real and fake.

“Having that extra layer of propulsion and depth really enhances that visceral feel,” said Tim Saccenti, a longtime photographer and music video director who’s collaborated with Ellison, and attended the show on a different night. “It’s so overwhelming that you’re almost depersonalized.”

Yet it’s the cohesion between the visuals, lights and music that keeps the audience engaged. Strobes might match a bass drum before going off on a rhythm of their own, while the 3D at times created an ethereal, infinite swirl of stars or fractal neon patterns, like a visualizer receding deep into what looks like a tunnel behind the DJing and rapping Ellison. Whether in hip hop or comedy, improvised performances make you trail artists as you hurtle through unfamiliar terrain together, not knowing whether they’ll sail or swoop next. The fact that this trip involves a holographic medium foreign to the crowd added to the mystery of where it would lead, keeping them in the moment.

“Halfway through the show, people forget that it’s 3D.”

When the show works, it’s because of this back-and-forth between 3D as a dazzling wave of an individual moment, and as a refined, responsive interplay between visuals and audio for the crowd’s attention to surf along.

“You need to have some of that spectacle, I think, just to get people into the headspace of what is possible and hopefully choose the right moments where it artistically makes sense to go there,” said Wexler.

“Halfway through the show, people forget that it’s 3D,” King said. “I think you have to remember to let that feeling come in and out. Get them immersed and then pull back a little bit, so that they’re not just adjusted to the fact that it’s 3D and then boom, okay, it’s a 3D gimmick.”

Dude, if you pay money to come see me, just let’s just turn that shit off for like a little bit. Let’s just zone out together for like an hour. How crazy is that?

Steven Ellison

In the middle of Ellison’s set, from a balcony, I saw the flicker of about a half dozen phones in the crowd — fewer than I’d seen at any concert in years. This was another way the concert’s technology kept people in the moment: a 3D concert doesn’t film well on smartphones.

“I just love any kind of possibility of being there, together,” Ellison said. “Dude, if you pay money to come see me, just let’s just turn that shit off for like a little bit. Let’s just zone out together for like an hour. How crazy is that? One hour without touching your utility belt, Batman. Let’s just fucking watch a show together and trip out, have some fun and then you can tweet about it all night.”

With the house lights up and beer cans being swept into small mounds, Ellison was in a gregarious mood, pouring shots of Patron in red solo cups for crew, performers and hangers-on.

“Usually, in this moment, if I had a shitty night or even a so-so night, I would probably be way more depressed,” he said. “But I actually feel like I did my part tonight. I don’t know what the 3D did. I did what I do and I felt content with that. If they don’t like it I’m sorry, but that’s what I got, you know what I mean? That’s my bag of tricks.”

Images: 3D Live / Flying Lotus

A security expert built an unofficial Wikipedia for the dark web

Wikipedia is a nigh-essential source of information, but it’s usually so accessible in Western countries that users forget when it isn’t. Take Turkey, which blocked its citizens from accessing the site in April and rejected an appeal when the Wikimedia Foundation refused to play ball with the government, part of its wider effort to silence online dissent. For citizens in similar countries that crack down on users accessing the free online encyclopedia, there’s a new version those governments hopefully can’t track — which operates on the dark web, naturally.

1/ As an experiment, I’ve set up a Wikipedia Onion Site at: https://t.co/NhGD8w3nSU – I’ll keep it running for a few days. pic.twitter.com/KMlF8k3snS

— Alec Muffett (@AlecMuffett) November 23, 2017

Former Facebook security engineer Alec Muffett created an experimental Wikipedia service on the dark net. It’s accessible through the Tor browser, which hides users by pinballing their connection around the world. It uses its own onion service to safely encrypt all traffic while users are surfing around the online encyclopedia.

Given that Muffett launched an onion service for Facebook in 2014, and then released the open source Enterprise Onion Toolkit (EOTK) that The New York Times eventually used to build their own encrypted service, he knows what he’s doing. But since the dark Wikipedia is completely unaffiliated with the Wikimedia foundation, Muffett’s creation is unofficial and rough to use; It uses self-signed certificates that might not play well with Tor’s security, so you’ll have to manually white-list addresses, Motherboard points out.

In any case, Muffett will only keep the Wikipedia onion service online for a few days as a proof of concept and foundation for Wikipedia to hopefully pick up and continue itself.

Via: Motherboard

How to use Nova Launcher to become an Android superstar

Tired of staring at the same old home screen? If you’ve got a smartphone running Google’s Android operating system, good news: You don’t have to put up with the monotony any longer. Android supports what are known as third-party launchers, custom apps that supercharge your home screen with new features, themes, and optimizations. There is a pretty large list of launchers to choose from, but few come close to the level of polish and customizability of Nova Launcher, a free (and optionally paid) Android launcher for all devices running Android 4.0 and newer.

Nova Launcher replaces your home screen and app drawer, the scrolling list of app icons normally accessible by swiping up on your phone’s home screen. But on the default settings, you won’t notice much in the way of change — that is because Nova Launcher sticks to a fairly vanilla take on Android’s home screen. But there is a lot Nova Launcher can do that is not immediately obvious. Don’t like the shape or style of app icons? It’s easy to swap them out. Bored of the transition animations between home screens and apps? Just pick different ones. How? We’re going to talk you through some of the main points right here.

Selecting Nova Launcher and getting started

Nova Launcher (free) vs. Nova Launcher Prime

First thing’s first: You have to download Nova Launcher in order to use it. Install it like you would any other app by heading to the Google Play Store, where you will face your first big decision: Whether to settle for the free version of Nova Launcher, or spring for the paid version — Nova Launcher Prime ($5).

What’s the difference between Nova Launcher and Nova Launcher Prime? It comes down to customization. Nova Launcher Prime lets you assign gestures (e.g., pinch, double tap) to apps on the home screen, and adds unread counts — little overlay badges that indicate unread messages — across the launcher. You also get custom drawer groups, which let you create new tabs or folders in the app drawer; an option to hide apps from the app drawer; custom per-folder and per-icon swipe gestures; and an expanded list of scroll effects.

It’s a lot to consider, but here is our recommendation: Unless there is a Nova Launcher Prime feature you don’t think you will be able to live without, try the free version first. Run it through its paces and see if you like it and if you find yourself bumping up against its limitations, consider making the purchase.

Alternatively, consider buying Nova Launcher Prime and trying it for a day. If you’re not convinced, ask for your money back — the Google Play Store lets you refund any app purchase made less than 48 hours ago.

Getting started with Nova Launcher

Now that Nova Launcher is installed, you have to set it as your default launcher. If your phone is running Android 7.0 Nougat or newer, find the Apps sub-menu (it will depend on your phone) and tap the Settings cog icon in the upper right-hand corner. From there, scroll down until you see Home app, tap it, and choose Nova Launcher from the list.

If your phone is on any version of Android between 4.4 KitKat and 6.0 Marshmallow, the process is slightly different. Once you’re in the Settings menu, find the Home sub-menu, tap Advanced, and select Nova Launcher from the available choices.

On phones running pre-Android 4.4 KitKat, there is no home screen selector in the Settings menu. You have to head to the Settings menu, tap Apps, swipe to the All tab, and scroll down until you find your current launcher. Tap on it, and then hit the Clear defaults button near the bottom of the selection screen. Then press your home key, and select Nova Launcher from the options presented.

Some Android manufacturers make it a bit more difficult to change your default launcher than others.

• On most Samsung devices, try heading to Settings and tapping the Applications option. Look for Default Applications, and select Home Screen from the list.
• Huawei phones with Emotion UI (EMUI) hide the setting in a sub-menu. Open the Settings menu, tap Apps, scroll down to the Advanced button, and tap the Default app settings. On the next screen, select Launcher and choose Nova Launcher from the list.
• On Oppo phones running ColorOS, you’ll find the launcher selector in the Additional Settings menu. Tap Default application, then tap Home.
• LG phones relegate the launcher options to a special Home Screen menu. Open Settings, tap Display, and scroll down to Home Screen, and select Nova Launcher from the list of choices.

Once you have switched your default launcher to Nova Launcher, you get a welcome message that will walk you through the basic theme set up.

Tweaking Nova Launcher’s Appearance

If you never used Nova Launcher before, you might be surprised by how similar it looks to Android’s stock home screen. The basic customization options aren’t all that different — tapping and long-pressing on the home screen pulls up a three-button menu that lets you change your home screen wallpaper, insert widgets, or launch the settings menu. One handy difference is a home screen selector button near the top of the screen; selecting it reassigns the default home screen to whichever one is currently in view.

Tapping on the Widgets button brings up a list of widgets from the apps you’ve installed, and tapping and holding on any of them lets you situate them on the home screen. But you will notice something different when you press and hold on a widget. As soon as you lift your finger, you get an accordion menu of four different menu options: Remove, Resize, App info, and Settings.

• Remove deletes said widget
• Resize increases the length and/or width of the widget
• Padding thickens or thins the widget’s borders
• App info pulls up the widget’s corresponding menu in Android’s Settings screen.

You can use these options to change your widgets to fit whatever designs you have for your home screen.

Desktop Settings

The Desktop menu lets you customize the layout, scroll, page indicator, and more. Within the Layout menu you can fine-tune the size of your home screen. Tap on Desktop grid and you get a pop-up diagram of your home screen’s layout. Sliders on the left and right add or subtract rows and columns. Want a super-dense 12-by-12 grid of app icons, or a comically small two-by-two one? The choice is yours. A checkbox near the bottom toggles off the home screen’s snap-to-grid feature, giving you greater freedom in placement.

Nova Launcher’s Icon layout menu dives into app icon design. You can adjust the overall size, but also toggle the appearance of the text labels beneath them. A progress slider lets you increase or decrease their size, and checkboxes let you add a drop shadow, a multi-line wraparound, and switch to a different font color and styling.

Once you’ve adjusted the Desktop and Icon layout settings to your liking, you’re ready to move to the next few settings. Width padding and Height padding tweak the distance of the home screen’s border from the screen border — the larger the padding, the further from the screen your shortcuts and widgets will be. Persistent search bar and Search bar style let you mess around with the Google search bar that is installed by default on some Android phone lock screens. You can toggle it off, of course, or jump into the Search bar style menu and choose between four different bar styles and six different Google logo styles.

Next up: Scroll. If you’ve grown bored of the transition animation you see between home screens, try one like Cube, which re-imagines your home screens as faces on a digital 3D cube, or Card stack, which slowly fades in the next home screen from the background as the previous one slides to the left or right. Alternatively, you can opt for wallpaper scrolling, which applies a parallax effect to your phone’s home screen. (If you’ve selected a suitably wide wallpaper, you’ll see it “move” as you transition between home screens.) Or there’s infinite scroll, which “teleports” you back to the left-most home screen when you swipe past the right-most home screen (and vice-versa).

Also, try messing with the Page Indicator and New apps settings. The former lets you change the design and color of the dots at the bottom of the screen, which indicate which home screen is in view. The latter allows you to disable the Play Store’s (sometimes annoying) habit of automatically adding app shortcuts to your home screen, albeit only partly — you have to disable the corresponding Play Store setting to avoid error messages.

Diving into the Desktop menu’s Advanced settings exposes even more options. You can allow resizing of widgets on top or underneath of app shortcuts (so that they overlap). You can lock the home screen to prevent changes (handy once you’ve got it how you like it), and toggle a shadow at the top and bottom of the screen.

Sleep apnea patients may find some relief with the Go2Sleep wearable

There’s little in this world as important as a good night’s sleep, but even so, research suggests that one in three adults (in the United States) aren’t getting enough shuteye. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) has long urged healthcare providers to “routinely assess patients’ sleep patterns and discuss sleep-related problems,” and to “educate patients about the importance of sleep to their health,” but try as they might, doctors can’t always do everything for everyone. Luckily, you can now monitor the quality and quantity of your sleep yourself with the Go2Sleep, a new “home sleep management device” that hopes to help the 33 percent of folks who simply aren’t sleeping enough.

The artificially intelligent device is worn as a ring, which you can don and forget right before bedtime. But while the Go2Sleep ring might not be on your mind, the little device is constantly working to monitor your sleep pattern and screen for sleep apnea. What exactly is sleep apnea, you ask? The breathing disorder is characterized by pauses in breathing during repose. This leads to reductions in blood-oxygen levels, and the brain jolting you awake with a loud gasp or a snort. Sleep apnea is commonly connected to snoring and excessive daytime sleepiness.

Heralded as the world’s smallest sleep detection ring, the Go2Sleep monitors wearers’ heart rate, blood oxygen saturation levels, perfusion index (your pulse strength), and the amount that you’re tossing and turning during your sleep in order to provide you with a sleep report. This is particularly useful for folks who already know they suffer from a sleep disorder, and can be crucial in helping others discover potential medical conditions like sleep apnea (particularly as the ring measures your blood oxygen saturation, which varies drastically for sleep apnea patients).

Requiring just one charge for three nights’ monitoring, the Go2Sleep weighs in at only six grams, and can store up to a week’s worth of data locally. And if you’re a sweaty sleeper, fret not — the wearable has a waterproof rating of iP67. The ring comes with three band sizes, so it can fit anyone (or really, any finger). The Go2Sleep is currently available for backing on Indiegogo, where a pledge of $89 should get you one of these rings by May 2018.

Chromecast vs. Chromecast Ultra: Which should you buy?

If you’re looking to buy a Chromecast, here’s what you need to know.

Google unveiled the new Chromecast Ultra at its October 2016 event in San Francisco, and while it doubles the price of the original Chromecast at $69, it packs quite a punch when it comes to its capabilities. It’s still the small, easy to use, and affordable media streamer that people love, only designed for folks who want all the high-end features when they stream their media.

That means it might be one of those products that offer things you won’t need or can’t use, and the “regular” Chromecast may be a better fit. Here’s everything you need to know to pick the right Chromecast for you.

What exactly is a Chromecast?

A Chromecast is a small device that plugs into an open HDMI port on your TV, A/V receiver, or any other display that can playback video and audio. There is a Chromecast that’s built for audio only, too, if that’s what you’re looking for and it makes building a great whole-house audio system easy.

Once in place you use an app for your phone (Android and iOS only) or through Google Chrome to set it up, give it a name, and get it ready to receive a movie or TV show or anything else you want to see on a bigger screen. To send the media there, you first open it on your phone or in Google Chrome and “cast” it to the Chromecast receiver. Your stream will start playing on your TV and you’re free to do other things on your phone or in Chrome while it plays.

The features and price make a Chromecast the best way to stream your media.

A Chromecast can stream local content like pictures or video you took yourself, but when you’re streaming from an online source like Netflix, it doesn’t go through your phone. Instead, it makes a connection with the source and streams directly, saving battery and not using your phone’s network bandwidth. You can still use your phone or Chrome to control the stream and do things like pause playback or change volume, but the actual transmission from Netflix (in our example) goes to the Chromecast. Think of your phone as the remote.

There are hundreds of apps in Google Play or the App Store that are Chromecast-enabled, and we see more and more every day. The Chromecast is simple to set up and use, is very inexpensive, and does a great job, This is why it’s one of Google’s best selling products, and why we think it’s the best way to stream the media you enjoy watching.

The ‘regular’ Chromecast

This $35 HDMI puck (it’s often on sale, too) is the basic media streamer many of us want. It handles 1080p video streams really well, is very small and can be powered by your TV if you have a suitably powered USB port on the back. It supports 802.11ac Wi-Fi at both 2.4GHz and 5GHz and is powered with a Micro-USB cable connected to a 5V/1A power source. If your TV can’t provide the power, there is an adapter included along with a 1.75-meter cable.

If you like, you can buy an ethernet adapter built for the Chromecast instead of using Wi-Fi. It replaces the power cord and has a standard RJ-45 socket (the one that looks like a great big telephone plug) where you plug in a 10/100 ethernet cable. The power cord on the ethernet adapter is 2-meters long to make sure you can position it where you need it. Everything else works the same — you cast from your phone or the Chrome browser and watch the streaming media on your TV — but you’re using a faster and more stable network connection.

• If you don’t have a 4K television or won’t be streaming any 4K content, the Chromecast is for you.

See Chromecast at Best Buy
See Chromecast Ethernet Adapter at Google Store

The Chromecast Ultra

The Chromecast Ultra offers a step up from the regular version. When provided with a suitable broadband connection, it can stream 4K Ultra HD and HDR content. The hardware inside the Chromecast Ultra is fast and powerful enough to do things on the fly without a lot of buffering or skipping. It’s more expensive at $69 but can stream the highest quality content with ease.

Of course, to stream UHD or HDR content you need a fast network. The Chromecast Ultra connects to 802.11ac 2.4GHz and 5GHz Wi-Fi with a 1×2 SIMO (Single Input Multi Output) antenna for fast network speeds and low latency. It also comes standard with an ethernet port built into the power supply if you want to plug it into a wired network switch instead of using Wi-Fi.

• If you have a 4K or HDR TV (or plan to have one soon) and want to stream at a quality that can match its capabilities, the Chromecast Ultra is for you.

See Chromecast Ultra at Best Buy

Of course either Chromecast will work to stream 1080p media or with a 4K display. To stream UHD HDR media you need the Ultra, but if what you’re streaming isn’t in 4K or you just don’t have the network speed to stream at that quality, the “regular” Chromecast will still work and save you a few dollars. Also, if you plan on upgrading to a newer TV or monitor that will display UHD HDR content you can buy a Chromecast Ultra and use it for HD streaming on your current display.

No matter which Chromecast you choose you’ll enjoy great movies and shows from hundreds of apps, and you won’t have to figure out any cryptic software or network settings to get started.

Chromecast

• Chromecast vs. Chromecast Ultra: Which should you buy?
• Chromecast and Chromecast Audio review
• Chromecast Ultra vs. Roku
• Join the discussion in our forums

Chromecast:

Google Store
Best Buy

Chromecast Audio:

Google Store
Best Buy

Chromecast Ultra:

Google Store
Best Buy

How to customize the Shelf in OxygenOS on the OnePlus 5T

How do I use and customize the shelf in the OnePlus Launcher?

OnePlus has a knack for leaving Android mostly untouched in OxygenOS, but one unique aspect of its custom software is the Shelf to the left of the home screens in the OnePlus Launcher.

Though OnePlus One users can’t access the Shelf, owners of any other OnePlus device can enjoy the convenient home screen add-on, so long as they stick with the default launcher.

Note: The Shelf is available on OnePlus devices as far back as the OnePlus 2, running OxygenOS version 3.0 or newer.

Why would you want to use the Shelf?

As a longtime user of the popular third-party home screen replacement Action Launcher, I’ve grown accustomed to the convenience of having a screen dedicated to my favorite widgets, without having to worry about app shortcuts or non-matching wallpapers getting in the way.

The Shelf in the OnePlus Launcher gives a similar experience, allowing you to sort your widgets into a vertically scrolling list to the left of your home screens (where Google Now would be on the Pixel Launcher). You can add custom widgets from any of your apps, and OnePlus throws in some widgets of its own; one for setting quick reminders, one displaying your ten most recent apps, one displaying recent contacts, and a dashboard breaking down system usage.

More: OnePlus 5T review: Come for the value, not the excitement

How to customize the Shelf

Swipe right from the first home screen to access the Shelf.
Press and hold on any widget, then drag it up or down to reposition it in the list.
Drag the white circle at the bottom of the widget to resize it.
Tap the red X button in the top-right corner of a widget to remove it from the list.
Tap the blue + button in the bottom-right corner of the screen to add a new widget.

That’s it! You can arrange the widgets any way you like, or if you just don’t like the Shelf you can remove it altogether.

How to disable the Shelf

It may be simple, but the Shelf is one of my favorite parts of OxygenOS. Still, it isn’t for everybody, and if you just can’t stand accidentally swiping to it from your home screen, luckily it’s easy to disable.

Press and hold on the home screen.
Tap Settings.
Swipe the toggle next to Shelf to the off position.

Just like that, the Shelf will no longer appear when you swipe right from the leftmost home screen — just remember that if the OnePlus Launcher isn’t to your liking, you can always download a third-party launcher in its place. That’s the beauty of customization.

Questions? Comments?

If you have any questions about the Shelf, or want to share you love (or disdain) for OxygenOS, we want to hear about it. Sound off in the comments below!

OnePlus 5T and OnePlus 5

• OnePlus 5T review: Come for the value, not the excitement
• OnePlus 5T specs
• Should you upgrade from the OnePlus 3T?
• OnePlus 5T vs. Galaxy S8: Beast mode
• All of the latest OnePlus 5T news
• Join the discussion in the forums

OnePlus
Amazon

Best watch face customization apps for the Huawei Watch 2

With Android Wear, you have tons of watch face options for your Huawei Watch 2!

The Huawei Watch 2 comes with a bunch of built-in watch faces, but they won’t all be to your taste. The good thing about Android Wear, though, is the ability to load custom watch faces and complications with just a few taps! Here are our favorite apps for downloading free and paid watch faces — or, in some cases, to build your own!

Facer Watch Faces

When it comes to options for watch faces within a single app, nobody does it better than Facer. You’ve got two main options — you can browse through hundreds of watch face designs or create your own.

There are watch faces featuring everything from Garfield to Star Trek, and you can browse through the catalog by genre and style. If you find one that you like you’ll be able to see a mockup of it in action to ensure that it’s the right fit for you before downloading.

The Facer Creator, which allows you to make your own watch face, is also easy and fairly intuitive to use even if you’ve never done something like this before.

Download Facer (free w/ IAPs)

Pujie Black Android Wear Watch Face Designer

When it comes to serious control over what your watch face looks like without having to get too overly technical, Pujie Black does a great job. It offers 20 preset faces that you can choose from to create a completely custom design that takes advantage of Android Wear watches’ OLED panels.

You get access to backgrounds, time styles, widgets, and more, and you can even build a customized watch hand if you prefer an analog look for your watch face. Highly recommended!

Download Pujie Black ($1.99)

WatchMaster

If you’re less interested in building the perfect watch face and you’d prefer to just browse through a collection of fantastic prebuilt ones, Watchmaster ought to be your go-to. The Watchmaster app gives you access to over 100 different watch faces from various different designers.

New watch faces are added every month, with many of them staying free as part of sponsorships with popular design companies. Premium watch faces will cost you a few dollars. WatchMaster also lets you preview any watch face before downloading.

If you find that you can’t pick just one, you can upgrade to WatchMaster Premium from inside the app, and get access to every watch face in the collection.

Download WatchMaster (free w/ IAPs)

Do you have a favorite?

While the Play Store has plenty of standalone watch face apps, finding an awesome collection makes it easier to swap between faces without taking up extra space on your phone for yet another app. These were our favorite apps for access to plenty of different watch faces, and the ability to customize different aspects. Is there another watch face collection that ought to be on this list? Let us know in the comments below!

Android Wear

• Everything you need to know about Android Wear 2.0
• LG Watch Sport review
• LG Watch Style review
• These watches will get Android Wear 2.0
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Samsung smart TVs gain Amazon Prime Music support

Samsung has recently tightened its relationship with Amazon, partnering up on its HDR10+ tech meant to counter Dolby Vision HDR. Now, Samsung’s smart TVs will be some of the first third-party, non-Alexa devices able to stream Amazon Prime Music and Unlimited Music in the US and elsewhere, Samsung announced. The service will also work on all of Samsung’s audio devices, including sound bars and wireless speakers.

Amazon Prime Music has a limited choice compared to services like Spotify or Apple Music, but it has one huge advantage: It’s free if you’re already a Prime member, at least in the US and UK. Unlimited Music gives you more choice, but is a paid service with a discount for Prime members and Echo owners. Up until now, however, the services have been pretty much limited to your phone, PC, Amazon’s Echo or other Alexa devices from Sonos and others.

The music services will work on most Samsung Smart TV models, provided you’re in the US, United Kingdom, Germany, Austria, France, Italy and Spain, for now. That could be because of limitations on Amazon Unlimited and/or Prime Music availability. Some countries like the US and UK offer both Prime Music and Unlimited Music, while other nations (France) only have the Unlimited option.

Recently, Amazon launched Unlimited Music more widely and Prime Video across the world. Hopefully, that same detente will apply to its Alexa and Echo devices, as well as Prime Music, which are still only in just a handful of countries so far.

Via: Sammobile

Source: Samsung

Hear us out: Human-robot relationships are totally a good thing

Make no mistake about it: here in 2017, relationships between humans and robots are a very real thing. Given the amount of time we spend with our devices, that’s no great surprise, either.

While the most attention-grabbing may be the plethora of stories about sex robots, there are plenty of other ways we’re interfacing with machines that’s totally different to any other point in history. Far from being some weird tech niche, developing relationships with our robots is going to be essential to us not only leading longer, happier lives, but also making smarter machines which can get the best out of both us and our machines.

Fortunately, it’s a challenge that robotics and AI researchers are already busy solving.

The lovability of robots

For starters, robots are made to be loved. That might sound trite, but there’s something fundamentally lovable about robots and computer software which attempts to approximate human intelligence, which is what a lot of AI is supposed to do.

If you saw the footage of Boston Dynamics’ Spot robot being kicked to test its balancing capabilities, there’s a good chance you felt a degree of sympathy for it. That’s because we tend to anthropomorphize and project emotions onto the more lifelike machines around us — in a way we’d never do with a regular desktop computer.

This effect was widely observed in the 1990s, when Tamagotchis and Furbies became the “must have” toys of the season. In one notable anecdote, one airplane passenger disembarked her flight, vowing never again to fly that same airline again, because the flight attendant told her to turn off her Tamagotchi for take-off — because she knew this would reset the device and thus “kill” her creature.

The effect isn’t just found in people who get strangely attached to toys, either. “U.S. soldiers have been known to form close bonds with their bomb-disposal robots, even though these robots are not particularly human-like in their features,” John Danaher, co-editor of MIT Press’ new book Robot Sex: Social and Ethical Implications, told Digital Trends.

New ways to build robots

This opens up entirely new opportunities when it comes to the deployment of new machines; applications which were unavailable at any other point in history. One example of how the emotional component of a robot relationship can be harnessed is in caregiving.

This opens up entirely new opportunities and  applications that were unavailable at any other point in history

While robots are never going to be an adequate replacement for emotional human relationships or contact, there are scenarios where they can have an invaluable role to play. For example, with a limited number of caregivers available, and a growing elderly population, robots or chatbots with natural language processing (NLP) abilities could prove to be excellent companions for older people.

They can remind folks to take their medication, help people with degenerative neurological disorders like Alzheimer’s by playing memory games, and even provide other forms of reassuring comfort.

The most famous therapeutic robot, more of a pet than an approximation of human company, is Paro the “therapeutic robot” seal. Designed with the elderly market in mind, Paro can make eye contact with users by sensing the direction of their voice, has a limited vocabulary of words for “understanding” people, and is able to fine-tune its behavior depending on how it is treated. Stroke it softly or more forcefully and its behavior will change to mirror that of the user. This provides comfort to its users by appearing to empathize with them.

Intuition Robotics’ ElliQ, meanwhile, is another robot designed with the elderly market in mind. A bit like a cross between a simple Amazon Echo and a robot version of the animated Pixar mascot, ElliQ uses AI and machine learning to maintain physical and mental health in its users, as well as offering companionship to older people.

“Given the general suspicions held by older members of the population surrounding AI, ElliQ is proactive rather than reactive,” Joe Lobo, a robot expert at AI and natural language processing company Inbenta, told Digital Trends. “It will learn the preferences and personality of the person to recommend relevant activities such as going for a walk, playing games or even calling members of the family. It will also remember important daily routines such as when to take medication or when there are upcoming hospital appointments.”

Helping teach social skills

In addition to the elderly population, robots could also prove invaluable communicative tools for people with autism. It’s easy to be cynical about the reductive relationship that a robot or AI can have with a person, but sometimes that is exactly what is needed.

Robots could also prove invaluable communicative tools for people with diseases like autism.

In 2014, three years after Apple’s AI assistant Siri debuted on the iPhone 4s, the New York Times published a story titled “To Siri, With Love,” describing how journalist Judith Newman’s 13-year-old autistic son had forged a relationship with Siri, which helped him develop his communication skills in the real world. Siri, Judith writes, is “wonderful for someone who doesn’t pick up on social cues: [the] responses are not entirely predictable, but they are predictably kind.” Is an AI that answers everything in a “predictably kind” way a realistic portrayal of human relationships? No way. Is it better in this case? You bet!

A few years on from 2014, there are now a number of companies focused on building AI tools which can help people with autism to develop real world communication skills. One company which has led this charge is the Wisconsin-based emotion tracking company Affectiva. Unlike Siri, which recognizes only words, tools developed by Affectiva can also incorporate other elements to cute effect — such as a video display which dispenses free chocolate samples when you smiles at the screen.

Recently, Affectiva’s technology was used in a smart glasses “life coach” which can gamify the social experience by helping identify people’s emotions, and provoke conversations with autistic users about what these might mean.

As chatbots and AI systems become smarter and more deeply embedded in our lives, the number of use-cases will explode. By forming bonds with these robots and AI systems, we can carry out tasks more effectively, while getting the same boost that we get from speaking to a likeminded person. Just like Paro mirrors its users, AI assistants could learn our speech patterns and which ones prompt the best responses, and learn to use them.

With AI increasingly used as a teaching aid, it may even be possible to introduce AI assistants early in a person’s life and have it grow and evolve with them — while transferring its personality from machine to machine, much as Siri is available on the iPhone, Mac, or Apple TV. The possibilities are endless.

The importance of reciprocity

So here’s one more billion dollar question: do robots need to be able to reciprocate in order for us to consider the relationships real? This is a difficult question. If we found out that our partner was a Truman show-style actor, being paid to act as though they were in love with us, it would be deeply traumatizing. The same thing would be true with our buddies.

But does it have to be true with robots? And does it matter?

Do robots have to act like they love us in order for us to consider the relationship real?

It’s a question that has been examined by people working in artificial intelligence for decades — and not just within the confines of science fiction stories. In the 1960s, researchers at MIT developed a computer psychotherapist named ELIZA, which was designed to carry out seemingly intelligent text-based conversations with users. By echoing fragments of a user’s language in a way that either seemed to support or question their statements, ELIZA was able to act like, well, a real psychotherapist.

So far, so good. But Joseph Weizenbaum, the researcher behind ELIZA, had an experience that’s not usually shared by people developing new technology: ELIZA worked too well. Although it had no actual “understanding” of what users were discussing, Weizenbaum was disturbed by the fact that it prompted people to reveal intimate details of their lives, including relationship difficulties or complex life issues. For Weizenbaum, there was something ethically troubling about it.

However, not everyone thinks this way. The Turing Test posits that, if a machine acts in an intelligent way, we should attribute intelligence to it. Is the same thing true with a robot relationship?

VCG via Getty Images

“I’m not entirely sure what reciprocity or mutuality really is and whether it is off-limits for machines,” said John Danaher. “I’m guessing people think of it as some inner mental state. But that’s problematic when it comes to human relationships. We never really know what another human being thinks of us. We only have their behavior to go on. If they consistently act as if they love us, we think there is mutual affection. I don’t see why robots couldn’t be behaviorally indistinguishable from human partners. It would require some pretty sophisticated technology – far more sophisticated than we currently have – but I don’t think it is impossible.”

On a technical level, it would be fascinating to see if we could ever develop a machine that cares for us in the same way that we might care for it. But it’s not necessary to create a meaningful relationship that can enrich our lives.

Even if it’s never going to be quite the same thing as a human relationship.

Unearthing oxygen-starved bacteria might worsen climate change

A recently-released federal report has finally credited humans with causing climate change, but we might have more to worry about than fossil fuel emissions. While we knew bacteria in earth’s soil releases almost a third of the carbon dioxide that reaches the atmosphere every year, a portion of this population has gone overlooked. A new study has found that bacteria which don’t require oxygen to produce CO2 occur in more areas than previously thought. And while its production is far lower than normal (aerobic) processes, that rate will likely increase if the surrounding soil was exposed to air or when the global climate warms up.

Stanford scientists forced bacteria into oxygen-starved (anaerobic) environments where they produced far less CO2, according to their study released today in the journal Nature Communications. In this mode, the bacteria decomposed far fewer carbon-rich lipid and wax molecules, which dropped carbon dioxide production by a factor of 10.

Of course, the model could shift the other way: If previously oxygen-deprived bacteria is exposed (say, if rigorous farming disrupts the soil), they could increase by tenfold the amount of CO2 they put into the atmosphere. Similarly, warming climate — or different irrigation patterns as humans adjust to changing weather — could accelerate soil bacteria’s carbon dioxide production.

Via: Phys.org

Source: “Anaerobic microsites have an unaccounted role in soil carbon stabilization”, Nature Communications