Fitbit Ionic is a great smartwatch for this new dad

Half a year back, my daughter suddenly stopped sleeping through the night, meaning that my wife and I stopped sleeping as well. No fancy bedroom gadget, or anything else, has alleviated the terrible fog that clouds our brains after an average of four hours’ sleep. But there is one device that I’ve found myself clinging to in the last few months, something that’s helping me get through the day in one piece. It’s the Fitbit Ionic, and yes, I’m as surprised as you are.

When Ionic finally emerged from development hell at the tail-end of last year, it was met with lukewarm praise. One complaint was that it was boxy and looked unmistakably like a fitness tracker, which is fair, but I’m a fan of its looks. Much like the Basis Peak, it’s a device that looks worse in photos than it does in person, and on the wrist. Thing is, I’m a dad: Nobody’s judging my desirability at all, and my unattractive watch matches well with my vomit-tainted jeans and chewed sweater.

Another complaint was that the Ionic falls short against the Apple Watch when it came to the wearable’s app ecosystem. Fitbit bought, and killed off, Pebble and (my beloved) Vector to help remedy this issue, but we’re still waiting for anything substantial to happen. It’s funny, though, because for all of Apple’s strength in this area, the company only found a way to successfully market its wearable when it focused on its strengths as a fitness tracker. A wrist-worn general computing platform is a fine technical achievement, but doing anything complex on that tiny screen is irritating. I’d much rather my watch do fewer things, better, than try to do everything at the cost of its battery.

Longevity is essential for a wearable, especially when it’s used for sleep tracking. The Apple Watch’s official 18-hour battery life* simply can’t compete with the Ionic’s four-days of juice. Even nicer, Fitbit sends an email when it thinks the Ionics needs to rejuice; although, the trick is to just plug it in when you’re showering. Either way, not needing to take a charger on work trips shorter than three days is another few grams of weight I’ve saved.

And sleep tracking is key, since my default state these days is of permanent, prolonged confusion with a faulty memory. It’s become something of a habit for me, every morning, to instantly open my phone and see how much sleep I was able to steal the previous night. The Ionic’s sleep tracking is good enough for me to know how things went while I was mindlessly soothing a teething toddler. And knowing how ruined I am helps me decide how to structure the day, even down to food intake.

And it’s in this state that my fitness tracker needs to be proactive enough to help me maintain something approaching good habits. If all my addled brain wants to do is eat chips and watch TV, then it’s necessary for someone, or something, to consider my long-term health for me. That’s why I also like the Ionic’s inactivity reminders, which prod me to take a minimum of 250 steps each hour. Fail, and I get a reminder at the 50-minute mark, which I comply with by walking up and down stairs a couple times.

Daniel Cooper

There are other perks that flow from the Ionic’s long battery life, such as its ability to continuously track heart rate. Should Fitbit succeed in its plans to identify cardiac issues from tracking data, then it’ll go from nice option to essential purchase. Although, if I was being brutally honest, the Apple Watch’s three-ringed visualization is still an easier way to view fitness data.

Financial outlet Seeking Alpha believes that Fitbit had a poor holiday season, predicting that sales of the new Ionic were well below expectations. We won’t know the extent of the slump until February 28th, but it’s likely that the company has lost yet more ground to its rivals. It could be, too, that Fitbit will ultimately suffer a similar fate to GoPro, where the strength of the brand and the products are too easily undermined by cheap copycats. In 2018, it’s harder to justify blowing hundreds on an Alta when the MiBand 2 exists as a dirt-cheap equivalent.

Which is a shame, because if someone asked me to pick between the Apple Watch and the Ionic, I’d still opt for the latter. If I wasn’t tired all the damn time, I’d probably use all its smart-coaching and fitness features as well. But, as a perma-sleepy dad in an otherwise insane world, at least it helps to keep me on the straight and narrow.

Ionic will do enough to help you hit those New Year’s resolutions of getting more sleep and exercise and remind you what’s going on even if your brain runs out of power. The only thing I really take issue with is the name, which you can rest assured I typed as Iconic and had to manually correct every single time.

* Like most things, battery life varies with use, and the Apple Watch Series 3 can last past a full day with light-enough use.

US regulators charge three bitcoin operators with fraud

Today the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission announced that it has filed a federal civil enforcement action against three virtual currency operators. The details of one case remain sealed, but the other two companies facing charges are CabbageTech and Entrepreneurs Headquarters Ltd. The charges include fraud, misrepresentation, misappropriation and more, and are the first enforcement actions since the CFTC allowed trading bitcoin futures.

Bitcoin has been on a rollercoaster recently. Its value has been in a freefall; two days ago, it tumbled below $10,000, losing half of its peak value in less than one month. According to Coinbase, it’s risen a bit as of this writing. Bitcoin’s value is currently in the mid-$11,000s.

There are also fears that bitcoin and other cryptocurrency could threaten the security of the global economy; as a result, the US isn’t the only country taking action. China is moving toward an “orderly exit” from bitcoin mining because of its use of resources, as well as its affect on investors. Back in December, South Korea (which is the third largest market for cryptocurrency, after the US and Japan) banned all anonymous cryptocurrency accounts and enacted new regulations for monitoring exchanges.

In a joint statement, the CTFC Enforcement Director and the Securities and Exchange Commision Enforcement Co-Directors made clear that the US government will be keeping a close eye on cryptocurrency action. “When market participants engage in fraud under the guise of offering digital instruments – whether characterized as virtual currencies, coins, tokens, or the like – the SEC and the CFTC will look beyond form, examine the substance of the activity and prosecute violations of the federal securities and commodities laws,” they said in a joint statement.

Via: Reuters

Source: CFTC (1), CFTC (2)

EU says social media is getting better at blocking hate speech

In 2016, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft and YouTube signed on to a European Union code of conduct, agreeing to review all reports of hate speech on their platforms within 24 hours and taking down flagged posts if necessary. The EU has kept close tabs on the companies’ performances since signing and today EU officials reported that the tech giants had improved substantially since May of last year. “Today’s results clearly show that online platforms take seriously their commitment to review notifications and remove illegal hate speech within 24 hours,” said European Commission Vice President Andrus Ansip.

EU Commissioner Vĕra Jourová said in a press conference today that the social networks had together reviewed 81 percent of hate speech reports within 24 hours and removed 70 percent of reported posts. Last May, the four companies were managing to review 51 percent of reported hate speech within 24 hours and to remove just over 59 percent of that content, so today’s numbers show marked improvement in timeliness. The EU reported that Facebook, which received most of the hate speech reports, reviewed flagged posts within 24 hours over 89 percent of the time, while YouTube and Twitter, which each had about half the amount of reported posts Facebook did, reviewed reports within the one-day timeframe over 62 percent and 80 percent of the time, respectively.

While the code of conduct is not a law, the EU has pursued legislation that would require action on hate speech. However, Jourová said that due to these recents stats, she’s less likely to push for those sorts of legal routes. Germany, on the other hand, enacted a law last year that allows the government to fine social network companies up to €50 million (around $61 million) if they fail to remove hate speech from their platforms within 24 hours. It went into effect at the start of the year.

The European Commission said that Google+ and Instagram will sign the code of conduct as well, and Reuters reports that the Commission plans to issue recommendations on how these companies should handle extremist content next month.

Via: CNET

The best digital piano for students

By John Higgins

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

After researching more than 80 digital console pianos and testing nine with a panel of professionals and amateurs, we think the Yamaha Arius YDP-181 is the best digital console piano for a student who doesn’t want an acoustic piano because of space or budget considerations. Its action has a good feel, the piano sounds are excellent, the control panel is well laid out and easy to navigate, and the piano comes with a bench. It’s an excellent choice for a beginning or intermediate student and should ease the transition to an acoustic instrument as they progress.

Who this is for

If someone in the household is showing an interest in the piano and wants to begin taking lessons, a digital piano is a great option. Unlike acoustic pianos, digital pianos don’t require tuning or maintenance, and can be used at low volumes or with headphones. They also tend to be smaller and less expensive than acoustic pianos.

How we picked and tested

Liz Kinnon and I check on some of the sound adjustments of the Roland RP501R. Photo: Kyle Fitzgerald

In order to find the digital piano that best emulated a traditional piano playing experience, we looked for the following features:

• 88 keys and three pedals, to match a standard acoustic piano.
• Weighted action, to simulate the feel and responsiveness of depressing a key on an acoustic piano.
• An accurate piano sound. Having additional sounds—such as electric piano, strings, or brass—was an added bonus.
• Built-in speakers and a headphone jack.
• An attached stand to keep the keyboard solid and secure.
• Price limit of $2,000.

We started by searching the Internet and reading editorial reviews of digital pianos, and looked into 89 models. After applying the above criteria and sampling a few pianos in a music store, we narrowed our list to nine pianos. We then ordered each piano, assembled it, and brought in a group of amateur and experienced players to test each model.

Our pick: Yamaha Arius YDP-181

The Yamaha Arius YDP-181 has a classic console look with a sliding key lid, but comes in only a dark-brown rosewood finish. Photo: Rozette Rago

Of all the pianos we tested, the Yamaha Arius YDP-181 felt most like an acoustic piano. The keyboard action is firm and responsive, and the pedals have nice sensitivity. The default Grand Piano 1 sound is good with a sparkly high end; and the panel controls are clearly marked and easy to navigate. The speakers don’t envelop you in sound as much as those of some other pianos we tested, and it comes in only a dark rosewood finish, but it’s the one piano I constantly go back to and would enjoy playing all day.

The YDP-181 has Yamaha’s Graded Hammer action, one of the company’s midrange quality actions, which emulates an acoustic grand piano by giving lower-range keys a heavier touch than higher-range. Our test’s panelists thought the action felt good, though the amateur player found the action to be too quick. But overall, it was the easiest for controlling chord voicing—manipulating the relative volumes of notes within chords—of any piano we tested. The pedal sensitivity is impressive as well, and even allows for half pedaling.

Runner-up: Roland RP501R

Photo: Rozette Rago

The Roland RP501R is another great choice for a developing musician. The action is pretty good, and the damper pedal has Progressive Damper Action, Roland’s name for its half pedaling response that is similar to the Yamaha’s. The piano sound was decent, but not as realistic as the Yamaha’s. The Roland comes with 300 sounds and 72 rhythmic accompaniments. It’s available in black, rosewood, and white, and comes with a matching bench.

The RP501R also has the ability to connect a music score display app on a smart device via Bluetooth, so that you can assign one of the keyboard pedals to turn the page. It also has an internal interface that lets you connect the Roland directly to your computer.

The action on the RP501R has a somewhat firm feel that is satisfying and easy to play. One of our testers found it so comfortable that she said she would play on it every day, but another didn’t like the slight vibration she felt when she pressed the key into the keybed.

Budget pick: Korg LP-380

The Korg LP-380 has a shallower depth and more unassuming visual profile than the Yamaha YDP-181 or Roland RP501R. Photo: Rozette Rago

For around $700 cheaper than our Yamaha pick, the Korg LP-380 is a decent starter piano. For a more experienced player, it isn’t as good a choice as the Yamaha or the Roland due to its limitations in action and sound. It is easier to fit into a small space, however, because at 13.82 inches, it is not as physically deep as the Yamaha or the Roland.

The LP-380 comes with 30 internal sounds. Our testers thought the default piano sound and a few of the electric keyboard sounds were very good. However, its action is spongier than that of our other picks, and a bit harder to control. The Korg LP-380 is available in black, white, red, a rosewood grain finish, or black with red side panels and a red cover.

The biggest flaw of the Korg is the design of its cover. In the open position, the cover becomes the music desk, but it doesn’t lean back quite far enough. This limits your ability to illuminate your music from above, and one of our testers found it was uncomfortable to use.

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

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

ISS astronauts will complete Challenger teacher’s science lessons

On January 28, 1986, the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded during liftoff. Onboard were seven astronauts, one of which was teacher Christa McAuliffe. She was selected from over 11,000 applicants for the position of NASA’s Teacher in Space. McAuliffe had plans to conduct lessons from Challenger; now those lessons will finally take place from the International Space Station.

Over the next few months, astronauts Joe Acaba and Ricky Arnold will conduct four of McAuliffe’s six planned lessons, focusing on liquids, effervescence, chromatography and Newton’s laws. They will be filmed and then posted online by The Challenger Center, which focuses on outreach to students about STEM topics in memory of the Shuttle and her crew. Acaba is a part of Expedition 53/54, which launched in September 2017 and is currently aboard the ISS. Arnold’s mission to the space station will launch in March.

Both Acaba and Arnold have teaching backgrounds and were chosen as educator-astronauts. “As former teachers, Ricky and Joe wanted to honor Christa McAuliffe,” Challenger Center spokeswoman Lisa Vernal told the Associated Press. NASA’s first educator-astronaut, Barbara Morgan, was originally McAuliffe’s backup on the Challenger mission. She assumed the Teacher in Space duties after McAuliffe’s death, and was officially selected as an astronaut in 1998.

Source: AP

MoviePass will invest in films to have a stake in their success

MoviePass’ pseudo-unlimited subscription theater service is increasingly popular, but that doesn’t mean it’s profitable — it currently has to subsidize tickets, which isn’t exactly sustainable in the long run. The company’s solution? Secure a stake in the movies themselves. It’s launching a MoviePass Ventures subsidiary that will “co-acquire” films alongside distributors. While the details aren’t entirely clear, MoviePass expects to benefit from the entire pipeline, whether it’s the initial theatrical release, streaming services or in-flight viewing.

The company is betting that its impact on movie performance will convince companies to hop aboard. MoviePass normally accounts for roughly 3 percent of US box office sales, but that figure has jumped to 10 percent or more when it uses its app and overall platform to influence viewing, such as The Post and The Shape of Water. In short: if MoviePass takes a share, it could do more to promote a movie and help its success.

This is more about leverage than profiting from the movies themselves. MoviePass might persuade partners to lower the price of the tickets they offer, and might convince more companies to buy the viewing information it sells. There is a chance this could skew MoviePass’ promotions too far in favor of its investments (a brilliant indie flick might be overshadowed in favor of a mainstream title), but this might be the key to making its offering a financial success.

Via: Variety

Source: BusinessWire

Survival game ’We Happy Few’ is delayed until summer

We’ve been excited about We Happy Few, the paranoia-fueled horror survival game set in a small English town, for awhile now. But it looks like we’re going to have to wait a bit longer to play it. While the game was originally scheduled to be released in April 2018, it’s been pushed back to sometimes this summer.

The game’s developers, Compulsion Games, took to YouTube to explain why exactly that’s happening, as well as reveal information about a new character named Sally. You can see their video below.

Upon play through, the team realized that the beginning of the story, which follows a man named Arthur, wasn’t quite where they wanted it to be. It didn’t live up to what the game eventually delivered. “The game didn’t start as well as it should. So we went back to the drawing board and made a couple of big decisions: we brought forward a number of story moments, to get into the action faster, and also rebuilt the whole first island for Arthur,” they say in the video. But doing this, of course, means delaying the release schedule.

It’s not a bad thing for developers to want to get things right and do justice to their product, even if it means delays. While it means we’ll have to wait a bit longer to get our hands on We Happy Few, the delay is worth getting a better game in exchange.

Via: Polygon

Source: YouTube

Lockheed’s ‘Son of Blackbird’ spy plane might already be here

The Lockheed Martin SR-71 Blackbird is one of the most recognizable aircraft designs in history. Few other planes have captured the public’s attention and imagination in quite the same way as the SR-71 has since it was declassified in 1990 (nearly 30 years after it entered service). And though we’re now two decades on from the Blackbird’s retirement, America’s need for supersonic, high-altitude surveillance has not diminished.

That’s why Lockheed’s secretive Skunk Works team has been developing the SR-72, dubbed “Son of Blackbird”, since at least 2007. This next generation spy plane will reportedly exceed its predecessor in nearly every way. Rumored to be powered by an air-breathing scramjet engine, the SR-72 will conceivably be capable of topping Mach 6 (4,000MPH), granting the hypersonic aircraft an ability to streak through enemy air defenses before anyone knows it’s even there.

But drafting a design proposal and building an unmanned airplane capable of breaking the sound barrier six times over are two entirely different animals. That’s partly why the SR-72 isn’t expected to enter the prototype phase until around 2030 (though Lockheed vice president Jack O’Banion recently hinted that it already has).

Even though the US Air Force has been toying with the technology since the 1960s, hypersonic aircraft and the scramjets that propel them, remain on the bleeding edge of aerospace engineering. This is due in part to the sheer difficulty in developing them, Dr. Bobby Braun, Dean of Engineering and Applied Science at University of Colorado Boulder, told Engadget.

“When it comes to a hypersonic system that’s going to carry a significant payload, there are a number of technical challenges,” he explained. “In fact, it’s the integration of what is generally three different domains — aerothermodynamics, structures and propulsion — that make developing a hypersonic vehicle such a challenge.”

Hypersonic vehicles have to maintain their shape to get the right aerodynamic characteristics, Braun explained, which is harder than it sounds when the aircraft’s surface is heated to thousands of degrees Fahrenheit due to air friction.

Braun also points out that propulsion is an equally daunting challenge, noting that aircraft designed for subsonic flight (a Boeing 737, for example) have very different propulsion needs than supersonic fighter jets and hypersonic spy planes.

“These systems, they’re all designed to fly optimally in their domain of interest,” Braun said. However, the hypersonic vehicle has to be able to fly at all three speeds. “That means that you’re either making compromises for the vehicle to fly sub-sonically and supersonically, which hurts its performance, or you’re modifying the propulsion system… to transition between supersonic and hypersonic flight, like scramjet.”

Actually building and testing such an aviation system poses an entirely different set of challenges. “A hypersonic system is going to be relatively costly to build and operate,” Braun said. “It’s going to be relatively unforgiving to mistakes. ‘Cause anytime you are going that fast, a small discrepancy propagates very quickly.” As a UAV, the SR-72’s lack of onboard humans ameliorates some of that danger, but does not eliminate the risk of crashing altogether. “There would be some risk associated with it. But in that sense, it’s not unlike any other aerospace system,” Braun concluded. “There’s always risk.”

And that’s where the computer modeling comes in. “Computer modeling is incredibly important for this type of work,” Braun said. “A hypersonic vehicle is going to fly at high altitudes at high speed, and when it does so, it’s going to encounter a different set of conditions that you would if you just took the air at sea level and accelerated that to the same speed.”

Simulating those conditions digitally is currently the most feasible means of testing hypersonic designs and far more cost-effective than building prototypes and hoping they don’t explode during their tests. “Our computer models have gotten quite sophisticated and quite capable,” Braun continued, “We can design and optimize the complete system in the computer before building it.”

While the US Air Force will be the initial beneficiary of Skunk Works’ efforts, Braun expects the technology to quickly trickle down to civilian applications. Imagine being able to jet from where you are right now to any other place on the planet within 90 minutes. That’s the promise hypersonic travel offers.

“Hypersonic is not just about making a cool-looking vehicle and putting some payload on it and transporting that payload somewhere quick,” Braun said. “Hypersonic, to me, is a much larger domain that affects everything from military supply and reconnaissance to rapid delivery of payloads from one point to another, to access to space, or return from space.”

Apple Seeds Seventh Beta of iOS 11.2.5 to Developers and Public Beta Testers

Apple today seeded the seventh beta of an upcoming iOS 11.2.5 update to developers, just a few days after seeding the sixth beta and more than a week after releasing iOS 11.2.2, an update designed to mitigate a serious hardware-based vulnerability called “Spectre.”

Registered developers can download the iOS 11.2.5 beta from Apple’s Developer Center or over-the-air once the proper configuration profile has been installed from the Developer Center.

Early iOS 11.2.5 betas introduced a new feature letting Siri play daily news podcasts from MPR, Fox News, CNN, or The Washington Post when queried about the current news, but the feature was officially released in iOS 11.2.2 ahead of the iOS 11.2.5 update.

iOS 11.2.5 appears to address a bug that allowed a malicious link to freeze the Messages app on iOS devices. As of the sixth beta, the link in question no longer affects the Messages app.

It’s not clear what other new features, if any, will be introduced in the iOS 11.2.5. We didn’t discover other noticeable outward-facing changes in the first six iOS 11.2.5 betas, so it’s possible this update focuses mainly on bug fixes and security improvements aside from the Siri news update.

If that’s the case, we may not know the extent of what’s in the update until it sees a public release. Apple is supposed to be releasing an iCloud Messages feature that was pulled from the iOS 11 release, but there has been no indication of when we can expect iCloud Messages to be reintroduced.

Today’s beta appears to be the final golden master version of iOS 11.2.5 that will be released to the public next week.

Related Roundup: iOS 11
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Apple Seeds Sixth Beta of macOS High Sierra 10.13.3 to Developers and Public Beta Testers

Apple today seeded the sixth beta of an upcoming macOS High Sierra 10.13.3 update to developers, just a few days after seeding the fifth beta and more than a month after releasing macOS High Sierra 10.13.2, the second major update to the macOS High Sierra operating system.

The new macOS High Sierra 10.13.3 beta can be downloaded from the Apple Developer Center or through the Software Update mechanism in the Mac App Store with the proper profile installed.

It’s not yet clear what improvements the macOS High Sierra 10.13.3 update will bring, but it’s likely to include bug fixes and performance improvements for issues that weren’t addressed in macOS High Sierra 10.13.2.

It does offer additional fixes for the Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities that were discovered and publicized in early January and fixed initially in macOS High Sierra 10.13.2.

The update also fixes a bug that allows the App Store menu in the System Preferences to be unlocked with any password.

The previous macOS High Sierra 10.13.2 update focused solely on security fixes and performance improvements, with no new features introduced, and a supplemental update introduced a fix for the Spectre vulnerability.

Related Roundup: macOS High Sierra
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