Open source suicide: This 3D-printable ‘death pod’ provides painless euthanasia

Death isn’t a subject we talk about too often in tech. It’s a world where CEOs are already onto their second startup at age 21, billionaires are minted at 30, and people plan to retire long before their bodies start physically failing them. Even when we do discuss old age, it’s more likely to be in the context of ways to extend life — or cheat death altogether by uploading the mind into a machine.

Dr. Philip Nitschke is concerned about a different aspect, though. He is one of the most outspoken proponents of euthanasia, referring to deliberate intervention taken by a person to end his or her life to relieve suffering. And as the founder and director of the pro-euthanasia group Exit International, he is using tech to help his cause. Working alongside Netherlands engineer Alexander Bannick, Nitschke developed a 3D-printed euthanasia machine called Sarco which, he claims, could serve a valuable social purpose.

“The Sarco has been developed specifically to provide a peaceful and reliable death for a rational adult without the need for specific medical or technical assistance,” Nitschke told Digital Trends. “This is important as, while suicide is legal in many jurisdictions, assisting a suicide is a serious crime. With Sarco, no assistance is required.”

Prior to using the machine, users would have to complete an online questionnaire in order to establish their mental competency. After this, they receive a four-digit access code which opens the device. In the chamber, they can start it using voice recognition, the press of a button, or even a series of blinks for paralyzed individuals. Liquid nitrogen is then used to trigger a drop in oxygen, which Bannick says is a “common method used by those seeking a peaceful elective death.” The capsule, which attaches from its base, can be used as a coffin.

“We [currently] have an accurate 1:7 model 3D printed for our launch in Toronto in October at the Exit NuTech ‘New Technologies for a Peaceful Death’ conference,” Nitschke continued. “The next step is a 1:1 working model as a display, and also to test programming for the 3D-printed version. On completion and testing, it will be made open-source. Exit International has no interest in financial gain from the development, and sale of such a device would lead to inevitable criticism for profiteering over death. The only cost will be in the printing, and the sourcing of the [liquid nitrogen.]”

There will no doubt be plenty of controversy about the creation of Sarco, just as there is around the wider topic of euthanasia. But it’s definitely an example of open-source 3D-printing models we’ve not considered before.

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Photo editor VSCO gives users a chat option for creative conversations

VSCO is an app that falls under both photo editing and social media and the platform is expanding the community aspect by launching a new option for private messaging. On Wednesday, December 6, VSCO announced Messages, a chat option inside the app’s creative community.

Like other private messaging platforms, Messages on VSCO allows users to send a message to just one person (or a group of people) rather than publicly sharing within the photo community. While chat makes sense for social-focused apps, VSCO has designed the tool around their photo community specifically.

Using the new messaging option, users can send other users a photo, a video, an entire profile or share journals, VSCO’s term for a blog post. While the app will soon be gaining options to share those types of content in the chat directly from the image or profile itself, users can also chat in the more traditional sense by sending text-based messages, such as asking where a photo was shot or how an image was edited. No matter how the message was shared, whether through a forward of a photo or text, all the messages will appear inside the conversation thread in the new direct message platform.

To start a chat, users navigate to a profile and tap the “message” option below the username. While browsing content from photos and videos to journals, VSCO users can forward the item to another user by tapping the triangular paper airplane icon.

VSCO users can only send messages to users that follow them, while users also have the option to block or report messages they didn’t want to receive.

“One of our most requested features, Messages is a new way to connect, share inspiration, and learn from other creators in the VSCO community,” the announcement reads. “Exchange editing tips and tricks, share compelling profiles and published content and receive creative feedback from peers.”

The chat option will be built into VSCO’s main app. The announcement comes just as Instagram began testing a Facebook Messenger-like split to place Direct messages in a separate app.

The new feature will roll out to VSCO X users first, part of the app’s paid subscription for unlocking the most features and accessing all of the presets. The tool will then roll out to all users over the next few weeks.

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What would Twitter look like in AR? With TweetReality, you don’t need to imagine

If the future entails everyone clad in glasses mixing reality and digitizations, what will future social media platforms look like? That’s the question iOS developer Oscar Falmer asked when he started development for TweetReality, the first app to put Twitter inside an augmented reality space. The iOS app mixes your Twitter feed with your surroundings, putting Tweets into floating boxes to interact with.

TweetReality is made possible through Apple’s latest focus on AR using the ARKit launched earlier this year. Using those tools, Falmer developed a 3D space for displaying a Twitter feed. “My goal was to innovate in what the future will look like, mainly by thinking to the upcoming glasses we’ll all probably be wearing,” he wrote. “It was a lot of research about what is the best interface for humans interact within a 3D space, designing and coding.”

The app takes your feed and arranges the posts into a 3D grid, arranged in the shape of one end of a sphere, which is of course overlaid with the real world around you by using the iPhone (or iPad) camera. The app allows users to tap on the tweet to view the post larger along with options to like or retweet. On the edges of that grid of tweets, TweetReality offers options to navigate to more tweets, compose your own Tweet, search or access notifications.

TweetReality is an interesting take on what Twitter might look like in AR, but as Falmer’s comments suggest, the app is a basic idea that could be taken farther as AR progresses into the future. Twitter’s format makes the network ideal for tweeting about TV shows and sporting events as they air on TV, but augmented reality could mix tweets with live games, concerts, or events if the app adapted to display specific hashtags in real time. As The Verge points out, mixing relevant tweets with the real scene in front of you, and doing so while wearing glasses rather than looking through a phone screen, could bring the idea a bit further.

TweetReality is a free iOS app that’s compatible with iOS 11 or later on devices compatible with the ARKit, including the iPhone 6s, SE, 7, 8, X as well as the Plus versions of those models and the latest iPad Pro models.

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Selfie-style answers let celebs respond to frequently asked questions on Google

Did you ever wonder if Will Ferrell can play the drums? The movie that changed Nick Jonas’ life? Yes, me neither. However, if you’re into that sort of thing, Google released a new program on December 7 that will be right up your alley. The tech giant now offers a selfie-style answer program for celebrities.

Right now the program is only available for mobile users in the United States. Celebrities can answer their “most asked questions” through the program, according to Google’s announcement. It’s unclear how many of those questions each celebrity answered or how often they will update their answers.

While the program is not meant to provide answers to every question, it does aim to serve as a surprise for users who opt for Google over Bing or other search engines. People who use Google will get a definitive answer from their favorite personality, instead of sifting through sometimes dubious and conflicting search results that appear when you ask these types of questions in that manner.

Google has not announced exactly what questions each celebrity answered and, from our testing, finding these selfie-style answers can be a challenge. For example, if you search “Does Tracee Ellis Ross like to sing?” you’ll get the standard list of search results. However, if you search “Can Tracee Ellis Ross Sing?” the top result will be a video response from Ross. While the questions were not exactly the same, we assumed they would be close enough to both elicit a selfie-style answer.

The celebrity selfie program is still in its infancy. Currently a handful of stars are participating including, Will Ferrell, Tracee Ellis Ross, Nick Jonas, Mark Wahlberg, James Franco, Seth MacFarlane, Jonathan Yeo, Gina Rodriguez, Prijanka Chopra, and Dominique Ansel. If the program is successful, expect to see more in the near future. Google has not announced whether it intends to offer the program to users outside the U.S.

If you want to give the selfie-style answer program a spin, input in Google search, “How many languages does Priyanka Chopra speak?” on your phone. The answer may surprise you.

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Watch Nvidia’s powerful A.I. change day into night, and winter into summer

Artificial intelligence is so awesome these days that it can turn summer into winter, and day into night. Well, in a video at least. Presented at this week’s Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS), researchers from Nvidia showcased some seriously smart machine-learning tools that are able to digitally alter a video of a winter scene so that it looks like it was shot on a sunny July 4 weekend.

We’re not referring to a simple palette swap, either; we’re talking about eliminating roadsides lined with snow and replacing them with grassy banks. The only thing that’s missing is a family out having a barbecue.

“The goal of our research is to give machines the ability to create or ‘imagine’ scenes on their own,” Ming-Yu Liu, a senior research scientist at Nvidia, told Digital Trends. “This is a difficult challenge, because most A.I. today require you to have images as training data that exactly correspond for both the input and target image. Let’s say you wanted an A.I. that could turn a driving video from night into day, or convert a sunny day into a rainy day. Today, you would need to record video of that street during both daytime and nighttime, shot from exactly the same location, with the objects — vehicles, trees, pedestrians — in exactly the same location. In contrast, our method just needs a set of daytime images and another set of nighttime images for training, and these images can be taken in different cities or countries. Without the requirement of corresponding images, collecting data for training our model is much easier.”

To create their image-altering tool, the Nvidia researchers developed a novel neural network design to achieve unsupervised image-to-image translation. The algorithm and its source code is described in a paper available here. While it’s certainly an impressive tech demo, Liu points out that it has numerous real-world applications. For example, it could be immensely useful in video editing work. However, Nvidia has a much more immediate application in mind: Training self-driving cars.

“We did this research to help train self-driving cars under different weather and lighting conditions,” he said. “You can shorten training time for self-driving cars by teaching them with simulation. Using our technique, we can convert daytime to nighttime video, add rain or snow, and use that to help train self-driving cars [to deal with a wide range of scenarios they might face].”

Next up, the team wants to work to improve the robustness of the technology, while finding even better ways of improving data efficiency — allowing them to train their neural network with less data.

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Amazon Fire Tablet 7 vs. Fire Tablet Kids Edition: Which should I buy?

You want to get your youngsters an Amazon Fire Tablet, but which version is right for you?

The Amazon Fire Tablet 7 is a great buy at $50, especially for the kids. It’s capable enough to keep them entertained while not costing enough to pull your hair out if it gets accidentally destroyed. You can also get all the (non-Google) major content services on there as well as a dedicated kids mode to keep those little fingers from buying a new laptop on your Amazon account.

But when you go to buy, there’s both a “regular” 7-inch and a Kids Edition, which now also has an 8-inch version. Underneath, they’re both regular Amazon Fire tablets. So what’s the difference and which should you buy?

Let’s break it down.

What’s the difference?

When you spend $50 on the standard Fire Tablet what you get is the 8GB model with special offers, meaning ads on the lock screen. And that’s it. No case or added extras, just the basic tablet and a charger in a choice of your preferred color.

When you buy the Kids Edition, it costs more at $100, but with that you get the 16GB tablet, also with a roughty-toughty kid-proof case to keep it nice and safe during those inevitable falls. Amazon also throws in a “no questions asked” two-year warranty, so if the worst does happen, you just send it back and get a new one. The Kids Edition also comes with unlimited, free access to 10,000 kid-friendly books, movies, TV shows, educational apps, and games with 1 year of Amazon FreeTime Unlimited included.

For an additional $30, you can get the Fire 8 Kids Edition which comes with 32GB of internal storage and a better-looking display.

Value added

The biggest thing to consider when thinking about getting the Kids Edition is the value-added inclusions Amazon gives you. The case itself retails for around $25 if you buy it separately, the 16GB 7-inch tablet costs $70 and then there’s the FreeTime Unlimited subscription on top.

If you buy the basic $50 Fire Tablet you’ll have to pay extra for each of these, and you won’t get a two-year warranty, either. Likewise, if you get the basic Fire 8 which starts at $80. You get the same value-add for less than the cost of buying everything separately.

Different cases

You don’t just have to get Amazon’s case to protect a Fire Tablet from the kids. The FreeTime is no doubt a tremendous case that’s friendly to small hands while still allowing easy access to all the ports and buttons.

There are a number of cases available at various prices though that will do just as good a job. So you can protect a Fire Tablet and give it to your little ones if it’s not just for them.

It’s not inconceivable you might want to use it yourself from time to time!

The best kid-proof cases for the Amazon Fire Tablet

So which should I buy?

If you’re purely buying a tablet for your kids, spend the extra and get the Kids Edition. It’s worth the investment, not least for that worry-free two-year warranty. But it’s a single purchase that comes 100% child-equipped, with that tough as hell case and the included 1-year subscription to kids content. And if you can stretch to the extra for the Fire 8, that’s the one to get. It’s well worth the extra $30.

You can provide the same experience by buying a regular Fire Tablet at $50. But you should probably only get one of those if you’re going to be buying for an older child/teenager or it’s going to be used by yourself a decent amount of the time. If that sounds more like your scenario, then this option is for you. Buy a more grown-up case and slap in a microSD card and use it like a grown-up would!

See at Amazon

Updated December 2017: This post has been refreshed to ensure you still have the latest details on both versions of the Amazon Fire Tablet.

Google temporarily pauses ban of apps using Accessibility Services

Tasker fans, take a deep breath.

In mid-November, Google started contacting developers to let them know that it’d be implementing new restrictions on apps using Accessibility Services. The reasoning behind this was to crack down on security vulnerabilities that can arise as a result of apps using these maliciously, but it also caused for confusion and aggravation around apps like LastPass that use Accessibility Services legitimately.

According to Android Police, Google is now reaching out to developers once again to let them know that it’s taking a step back on these actions.

Per an email that’s being sent out to developers whose apps using Accessibility Services:

We’re evaluating responsible and innovative uses of accessibility services. While we complete this evaluation, we are pausing the 30 day notice we previously contacted you about. We’ll notify you once our evaluation is completed. If further actions are needed to bring your app into compliance with our policies, your 30 day notice will begin when we reach back out to you.

After reading off more specifics for developers, the email reads:

If you believe your app uses the Accessibility API for a responsible, innovative purpose that isn’t related to accessibility, please respond to this email and tell us more about how your app benefits users. This kind of feedback may be helpful to us as we complete our evaluation of accessibility services.

There’s a solid argument to be made for limiting which apps can tap into Android’s Accessibility Services, but we are relieved to hear that Google is keeping an open mind for titles that are using them for legitimate, user-beneficial reasons. It’s unclear when Google will resume its crackdown on these apps, but in the meantime, a lot of developers can breathe much easier.

Accessibility Services: What they are and why Google is cracking down on their misuse

Action Launcher: The ultimate guide

Action Launcher is proof that you really can have it all.

Some launchers are made to be quick. Some launchers are made to be adaptable. Some launchers are made to be smart. Then there are some launchers that try to do it all, and they usually fail. Action Launcher, however, is the rare instance of a home screen launcher that is as quick as it is cunning, and white it does have limits, there’s no doubt that Action is one of the best launchers you could come home to.

The Swiss Army home screen

Action Launcher is a launcher that’s perfect for the instant gratification generation, because it’s watchword is quick: Quickdrawer, Quickpage, Quicktheme. You can get your home screen set up exactly as you want with Action Launcher and you can find your way around it real quick. Here’s what makes Action Launcher the best launcher and the only launcher for so many users.

Action Launcher review

Theming made easy

Theming on Android takes a little skill, a little know-how, and a lot of luck. Or you could just use Action Launcher, which makes it stupid simple to get your launcher themed properly to color-match most wallpapers you set.

Inside Quicktheme

Behold, a Cave of Wonders

Most launchers are pretty straightforward: you have a number of home screens, a dock, and an app drawer. Action Launcher’s not most launchers, and if you look closely at this diamond in the Android rough, you’ll find a treasure chest of hidden wonders.

Covers, Shutters, and Quickpage: Action Launcher’s hidden treasures

Get Adaptive

Adaptive icons are here, and no doubt they will improve, but until they do, Action Launcher has decided to take matters into their own hands by creating launcher-exclusive AdaptivePack to allow users to get Adaptive goodness on their home screens without being completely besieged by white backer plates. As a bonus, you can now have adaptive folder icons to match your adaptive icons!

Action Launcher’s approach to Adaptive icons

Why would you make us choose?!

Swiping from the left edge of Action Launcher, you have two mutually-exclusive features you can choose from: the recently-added Google Now pane, and Action Launcher’s classic Quickdrawer. So… which do you choose? How can you choose?!

Quickdrawer or Google Now, an Action Launcher dilemma

Be a hero with Action Launcher Supporter

App development is a full-time job, and good apps deserve to have their developer compensated so they can devote their full time to making said apps better instead of being distracted by another job. Enter Action Launcher Supporter, and the history that led to it.

Go beyond Plus! Action Launcher Supporters

Why do you love Action Launcher?

Tell us in the comments: what keeps you coming home to Action Launcher?

Qualcomm working with Baidu to optimize DuerOS for Snapdragon processors

A move to help push artificial intelligence even further.

Qualcomm’s second annual Snapdragon Technology Summit is still underway in Hawaii, and during the second day of the event, the company announced a new partnership with Chinese web service provider Baidu in a move to help optimize DuerOS for Snapdragon processors.

DuerOS is Baidu’s own artificial intelligence (think Google Assistant or Alexa), and by working with Qualcomm, Baidu will be able to release and optimize it for phones that are powered by Snapdragon silicon – including the new Snapdragon 845.

With these optimizations, DuerOS will be able to feature an always-on component using Qualcomm’s Aqstic audio codec so that it can be summoned at any time by saying “Xiaodu Xiaodu.” In addition to this, Baidu will also be able to implement both echo and noise cancellation features so users can talk to DuerOS is just about any environment.

DuerOS first launched earlier at the beginning of 2017, but it’s already established more than 130 different partners. You can find DuerOS on not only phones, but televisions, smart speakers, refrigerators, and more throughout China. This partnership with Qualcomm is a big one to help progress the AI even further, and it’ll be mighty interesting to see what effect this has in the coming months.

Top 5 reasons to be excited for the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845

Which PlayStation 4 is best for PlayStation VR?

Which PlayStation 4 should I buy?

Sony now has three PlayStation 4 consoles, which is going to make holiday shopping a little confusing. There’s the PlayStation 4 that has been available to purchase for over a year now, the “New PlayStation 4” with a slimmer body and near-identical hardware, and the more capable PlayStation 4 Pro. If your goal is to purchase a PlayStation 4 to use with PlayStation VR, you’re probably wondering which PlayStation 4 you need to buy.

The good news is that all these consoles support PlayStation VR, but there are some differences you should be aware of.

Read more at VRHeads!