Skyrim on PlayStation VR: Tips and tricks for survival!

Skyrim can be an unforgiving place, but these tricks ought to help you thrive.

Skyrim has arrived for PlayStation VR allowing you the ability to really feel like you are traveling the world. This huge, open world game has dragons, magic, combat, necromancers, vampires…and a whole lot more. While it is true that you can do, well, just about anything, having a few tricks up your sleeve can definitely help keep you alive. Whether this is your first visit to Skyrim, or you’re returning for the umpteenth time, these tips and tricks should help you survive the journey.

We’ve got the tricks to survival in Skyrim VR for you here!

Read more at VRHeads

HTC’s Blackest Friday sale offers $50 off U11 and free $200 JBL earphones

The sale is live now and will be available until November 29.

Although we’re still a few days away from the official Black Friday, there are more than a few sales and promotions that you can already take advantage of. HTC recently launched its “Blackest Friday” campaign, allowing customers to get discounts and freebies on some of HTC’s latest handsets.

Probably the best deal being offered here is on the U11. HTC is offering $50 off the phone to bring the price down to $599, and along with this, you also get JBL’s Reflect Aware C Earphones (a $200 value) and HTC’s Fetch accessory ($25 value) for free.

The HTC Fetch is also included with the purchase of an HTC U11 Life or HTC Bolt, and similar to a deal that was running earlier this month, you can pick up the Bolt for as little as $200.

Along with these deals, HTC is also offering 50% off an accessory of your choosing with the purchase of any phone, as well as $5 cases for the HTC One M8, M9, and A9. The sale is live now and will run through November 29 at 12:00 AM EST.

See at HTC

OnePlus 5T is now available for purchase, starts at $499

OnePlus’s best (and most expensive) phone is here.

The OnePlus 5T was officially unveiled just a few days ago in New York City, and the phone is already available for purchase from OnePlus’s website if you want to be among the first people to own the company’s latest and greatest.

Just like with the OnePlus 5 earlier this year, there are two models of the 5T to choose from – the 6GB of RAM and 64GB of storage variant will set you back $499, but upgrading to 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage will increase the price to $559. There’s only one color to choose from this time around (Midnight Black), and placing your today, November 21, will allow you to get 50% off the Early Bird Bundle.

OnePlus’s Early Bird Bundle comes with either a Sandstone or Karbon protective case, as well as a 3D tempered glass screen protector. This bundle usually costs $39.90, but you can get it now for just $20.08 when ordered with a new 5T.

Both models of the OnePlus 5T are slated to ship out within four days of placing your order, shipping is free, and OnePlus offers a 15-day return period for some added peace of mind.

See at OnePlus

Here are all the official OnePlus 5T cases

OnePlus is a phone maker, but it’s also well-known for its excellent cases, too.

Over the years, OnePlus has refined its product strategy: it started by releasing one phone every year along with a couple of in-house accessories, and has since expanded to two phones a year with a suite of cases, headphones, backpacks and other swag.

For a company selling phones for such razor-thin margins, this strategy makes sense: the cases are between $20 and $30 each, which isn’t a huge number in the case world, but the company makes a considerable profit on each one. Rinse, repeat.

That brings us to the OnePlus 5T. As with every previous device in its arsenal, OnePlus is issuing a bunch of cases, and we’re going to take you through them right now.

Sandstone case

The Sandstone case harkens back to the early days of the OnePlus One, offering the same ultra-grippy sandpaper-like texture from the company’s first phone. It’s my favorite snap-on case, as it’s both adequately protective, extremely low-profile, and lightweight. This style is also available in Karbon coloring (see below) and comes in at just under $20.

See at OnePlus

Karbon Bumper case

The Karbon Bumper case is one of the more protective ones available for the OnePlus 5T, with a hard plastic shell that covers all the sides fairly well. At $30, it’s not cheap, but its carbon fiber pattern (hence the name) is quite attractive.

See at OnePlus

Ebony Wood case

OnePlus’s wood cases are among the nicest out there. The Ebony version is darker and has a more defined, almost feline pattern that the Rosewood case. There’s a plastic lip around the front to protect the screen, and it’s done so that it’s not distracting. At $30, it’s excellent value.

See at OnePlus

Rosewood case

Rosewood is my favorite of the OnePlus case styles. It blends beautifully with a wooden desk (seen here at a local coffee shop 😂) and its lighter tone looks fantastic. It’s not that protective, but the plastic bumper around the front definitely helps protect the Gorilla Glass of the OnePlus 5T.

See at OnePlus

Silicone case

The Silicone case definitely looks familiar, but if you’re cloning an iconic design, you might as well do it right. OnePlus does, and at $20, charges significantly less for the privilege. The Silicone case wraps around the back of the phone and feels awesome to hold. Very grippy, too.

See at OnePlus

Your favorite?

What’s your favorite official OnePlus case? Let us know in the comments!

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

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Android has tracked location info regardless of privacy settings

When you tell your phone to stop sharing your location, you expect it to honor your request, don’t you? Unfortunately, that hasn’t been entirely true with Android as of late. Quartz has confirmed that, starting in early 2017, Android phones have been sending the addresses of nearby cellular towers and sending it back to Google, regardless of your location sharing settings — even if you didn’t have cell service turned on and hadn’t used any apps. In theory, Google or an intruder could have triangulated your approximate position using the data for multiple towers.

A Google spokesperson stressed that the tower info, known as Cell ID codes, wasn’t being used and was tossed out as soon as it was received. The company had been “looking into” using the data to speed up message delivery. Also, Google has promised to end the behavior. Android phones will stop sending Cell ID by the end of November.

The immediate threat to your privacy wasn’t high, then. Google wasn’t spying on people, and a hacker wouldn’t have found a treasure trove of data sitting on Google’s servers. However, the real concern is that Google decided to transmit location info despite your privacy settings, using a service (the network sync system) you couldn’t turn off. Simply put, the company wasn’t fully respecting your intentions — you couldn’t completely eliminate the risk of location-based surveillance.

Source: Quartz

Sonos One now supports voice control of Spotify with Alexa

The Sonos One is the company’s first voice-activated speaker, letting users control their music via Amazon’s Alexa assistant. When we reviewed it back in October, editor Nathan Ingraham called it the best-sounding smart speaker you can buy. But when it launched, the Sonos One’s voice control features didn’t work with Spotify, though Sonos promised it this integration would arrive by December 21. It turns out it’s here early; Alexa can now use Spotify to to play your favorite album, artist, playlist or song on the Sonos One.

If you have Sonos speakers, but not the Sonos One smart speaker, this news is still relevant to you. Older Sonos speakers can be controlled with your voice, thanks to the Echo, Echo Dot and other Alexa-enabled devices. If you have this integration set up, you can control Spotify with your voice on your non-Sonos One speakers as well.

Sonos is all about improving its connections and integrations; last week, it announced direct control for both Pandora and Tidal through their respective apps. The timing of this new Spotify voice features is also nice; it’s just in time for holiday cooking and entertaining.

If you don’t have a Sonos system yet, Sonos is offering some great Black Friday deals this holiday season. From November 23rd through the 27th, you can get $25 off the Sonos One, $100 off the Playbase and Playbar and $50 off the Play:1 and Play:3.

The unconventional analogies of ‘Your Hands Are Feet’

Last week, we held the first Engadget Experience in LA, where Your Hands Are Feet was one of five immersive art projects to debut. The virtual reality experience drops you into a surreal world, full of experiential metaphors. Experiences like, for instance, what it’s like to shave a giant’s hairy pink leg in the desert. In our documentary, creators Sarah Rothberg and Amelia Winger-Bearskin explain their working partnership, visual style and the inspiration behind their psychedelic worlds.

’Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp’ is now available, a day early

This week, Nintendo announced that the mobile installment in its popular Animal Crossing franchise, called Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp, would arrive on iOS and Android devices around the world on November 22nd. But it turns out that the game is here a little bit early. It is apparently available now for download on both iOS and Android.

Despite the fact that you can download it from both the App Store and Google Play, it appears that the servers supporting the game are overwhelmed due to its popularity. Pocket Camp does require you to have an internet connection while you play. Gamespot reports that the situation seems to have improved in the past few hours, though.

Pocket Camp is free to play (Nintendo seems to have learned from the mistakes it made when it priced Super Mario Run so high), but this version of the game has players populating a camp full of animals, rather than a town. The game will also have microtransactions in the form of Leaf Tickets, which allow you to buy items and build things faster. It’s safe to say that many of us are impatient enough to put some real money into this game.

Via: Gamespot

Source: App Store

Laser wormhole art is as dazzling as it is dangerous

When an artwork in features both high-intensity lasers and a carbon fiber sculpture meant to keep spectators back, you know it’s not going to be dull. Rita McBride’s Particulates art installation at the Dia Art Foundation in Chelsea, New York features 16 lasers, scattered by particles of dust and water, forming a visual depiction of a science fiction “wormhole.” The barrier, meanwhile, is meant to keep you away from said lasers, which are strong enough to do some harm.

The low-key exhibition is located at Dia:Chelsea, a former factory where marble was cut (by saws, not lasers). As spotted by Design Milk, there’s a sign outside the entrance door warning of laser radiation of 1.2 watts per beam, easily enough to damage your vision or burn you.

McBride drew inspiration from another exhibition at Dia:Chelsea by Dan Flavin, a minimalist piece called untitled, to you Heiner. That features a low, metal barrier 110 feet long adorned with green fluorescent lights that transform the drab cement space into something otherworldly.

Much like Flavin, McBride’s piece was conceived specifically for the Dia space and uses green light, in this case from lasers. However, it varies in that the light itself forms the “structure,” and is separated and delineated by the carbon-fiber fence structure for both artistic and safety reasons. Unlike most sculptures, it’s also unaffected by gravity, and with the powerful lasers, would be an infinitely large piece unbounded by space if not for the back wall.

Though you can call the piece minimalist art, it’s based on McBride’s interests in space, time travel and quantum physics. “I’ve always loved the efficiency of wormholes and the possibility of time travel,” McBride said last year. “And also this highly hypothetical, theoretical position that seems to give a lot of possibilities.”

It also just looks cool from various angles, as the beams criss-cross and vary in intensity, depending on where you stand and how much dust and mist is floating around at any given moment (see the video, above). As such, you can enjoy it as a contemplation of physics, art or geometry, making the whole thing more fun as a spectator.

Particulates is now exhibiting at the Dia:Chelsea in New York until June 2, 2018. If you can’t make it in person, there’s a livestream every few days shot from a camera that’s located at the one place you don’t want to be as a spectator: Inside the circle of lasers.

Via: Design Milk

Source: Dia Art

AI spots art fakes by examining a single brushstroke

Attempts at art forgeries run from the laughable (remember Monkey Jesus?) to the exquisite (this ambiguous Baroque masterpiece nearly cost a gallery €120 million last year), and traditionally the art world has had to rely on expert knowledge and supporting documentation to weed out the real from the fake. But now researchers claim AI is able to identify forgeries simply by looking at the brushstrokes used to compose a piece.

Researchers from Rutgers University and the Atelier for Restoration & Research of Paintings in the Netherlands have demonstrated that their system broke down nearly 300 line drawings by Picasso, Matisse and other famous artists into 80,000 individual strokes, learning how to match the features of each stroke to the corresponding artist. Some artists push harder on their brushstrokes than others, for example. The researchers then commissioned a team of artists to recreate the pieces in the data set, with the AI correctly identifying forgeries every time on the basis of a single stroke.

The system is currently only useful where brushstrokes are clear, so it’s not helpful on pieces where the paint has been blended. However, the team is now planning on testing the method on Impressionist art to further validate their results, heralding a potentially revolutionary technology for an industry which is traditionally slow to embrace change.

Source: Technology Review