VR helps US Olympic ski and snowboard teams prep for South Korea

When skiers and snowboarders prepare for a competition, they often have incredibly limited access to their race routes ahead of time. But the US ski and snowboard team is doing things a little differently than it has in the past, using VR to review routes multiple times before competing. It’s working with a company called STRIVR, which has developed VR training programs for professional sports teams, college sports teams and even companies like Walmart, Visa and Lowe’s. Now, STRIVR is helping US Ski & Snowboard prepare for competitions like the World Cup and the upcoming Olympic Games by letting the team relive particular routes in VR.

“One of the rules of thumb I use for VR is that the technology is especially useful for teachable moments that are rare in the physical world. Getting mere minutes to prepare on the ski race course is the definition of rare,” Jeremy Bailenson, director of Stanford University’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab, said in a statement. “But with VR, the scarcity issue is greatly diminished. U.S. Ski & Snowboard athletes are able to relive the exact course as many times as they want, in a VR simulation environment that to their brain responds to in a similar manner to real skiing.” Troy Taylor, US Ski & Snowboard’s high performance director, said that with VR, athletes are able to inspect their race courses more thoroughly and strategize how they’ll navigate through them. He said that VR is even helping injured athletes rehabilitate.

“The value of the work we do with STRIVR is confirmed in the feedback we have from our athletes and their coaches taking part in World Cup events who feel 360 video and VR increases both the confidence and performance of the athletes in events,” said Taylor. And Bailenson argues that with such repeated practice, these athletes’ preparation is more thorough than it ever could be before. “I suspect that their mental preparation will be unmatched,” he said.

The winter Olympics kick off on February 9th in Pyeongchang, South Korea.

IBM researchers use AI to predict risk of developing psychosis

IBM’s Computational Psychiatry and Neuroimaging research team has been working on a way to use machine learning to predict the risk of developing psychosis and it just published a second study that shows AI might be a valuable tool when it comes to mental health assessment.

Building off of work published in 2015, the team used AI to analyze the speech patterns of 59 individuals who had participated in a separate study. Transcripts of an interview the participants took part in were broken down into parts of speech and were scored on how coherent the sentences were. Then, the machine learning model determined, based on those speech patterns, who was at risk of developing psychosis and who wasn’t. Of those participants, 19 developed a psychotic disorder within two years while 40 did not and the model was able to predict that with 83 percent accuracy. It was also able to differentiate speech patterns of patients who had recently developed psychosis from those of healthy patients with 72 percent accuracy. The program found that those at risk of psychosis used fewer possessive pronouns when speaking and constructed less coherent sentences.

While the work is still ongoing, it shows that AI could be an effective tool and could be particularly useful when mental health professionals are in short supply or aren’t available. “We believe this is a significant step towards the goal of developing a tool for mental health practitioners, caregivers and patients themselves with a tool that can expand and multiply the reach of neuropsychiatric assessment outside of the clinic,” said study author Guillermo Cecchi in a blog post. In the video below he says that being able to predict risk of psychosis years in advance could help medical and mental health professionals better allocate their resources and provide better care to those at risk. Cecchi points out that one area where this may have an impact is with the homeless who likely don’t have the resources to seek out medical help. “Given that I feel we can do something, we should,” he says.

The study was published recently in World Psychiatry and Cecchi says the team will be sharing more work on other mental health conditions includings depression, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and chronic pain.

Source: World Psychiatry, IBM

The Google Play store is now selling audiobooks

The Google Play Store has sold just about every media type for years now, but there’s one more category the company is getting into as of today: audiobooks. As a leaked image revealed a few days ago, audiobooks are now on sale from Google Play in 45 countries and nine languages. As with most other Google services, audiobooks are available on pretty much any device you would want to use: Android, iOS, the web and Google Home speakers. To play a book on your phone, you’ll need to download the Google Play Books app, which until now has focused on text-only options.

If you’re a fan of using the Google Assistant, you can simply say “Hey Google, read my book” and your phone or speaker will continue reading the most recent book you were listening to. And your location in the book will sync across devices, so you won’t have to try and find your place when listening across multiple devices.

Aside from the expected ubiquity across devices and platforms, audiobooks will also be available without a subscription. Amazon’s Audible service lets you do the same, although the company very heavily pushes people towards its $15 / month subscription service. (With good reason; many of Audible’s books cost upwards of $20, though there are still plenty of deals to be had).

As Google’s service just launched, we can’t say yet how prices will compare to Audible; given the way book publishing and pricing works, we’d be surprised if it is much different. But we do know that Google is offering “dozens” of titles for less than $10 as part of an introductory sale. Among those options is a wild version of George Saunders’ Lincoln in the Bardo — the audiobook features a whopping 166 different participants (including Bill Hader, Megan Mullally, Nick Offerman, Don Cheadle, Julianne Moore and many more), each playing a different part as if they’re reading a seven-hour play.

If you’re interested in audiobooks but haven’t bought into Audible yet, Google’s store should be live by the time you finish reading this. Whie it’s hard to see it matching the juggernaut that Amazon has built, being able to quickly access audiobooks from the Google Assistant could be a handy feature for the many people who’ve picked up a Google Home speaker in the last few months.

Elon Musk’s new salary terms tie him to Tesla for the next decade

Today, Tesla announced a new compensation structor for its superstar CEO Elon Musk. It’s a 10-year plan that involves achieving market and operational milestones to increase Tesla’s values. This isn’t about Musk getting even more money, though that’s certainly important. It’s that he’s receiving no guaranteed compensation (no salary, in other words) — everything is incentive based. And to maximize his earnings, he has to stay with Tesla for the next 10 years and ensure that the company reaches certain goals.

The milestones are divided into market cap and operational milestones. The first market cap goal involves increasing the market value of the company’s outstanding shares by $100 billion. The following 11 milestones involve additional increases of $50 billion each, for a total of $650 billion. The operational milestones are a series of escalating targets designed to maximize Tesla’s market cap growth. The company must meet all these goals in order for Musk to receive his maximum compensation.

“For vesting to occur when the milestones are met, Elon must remain as Tesla’s CEO or serve as both Executive Chairman and Chief Product Officer, in each case with all leadership ultimately reporting to him,” says the release. “This ensures that Elon will continue to lead Tesla’s management over the long-term while also providing the flexibility to bring in another CEO who would report to Elon at some point in the future.” In other words, this is Tesla’s insurance that Musk won’t leave Tesla for one his other projects, such as SpaceX and The Boring Company.

Facebook, Twitter are under pressure to investigate #ReleaseTheMemo

The #ReleaseTheMemo social media campaign swelled last week as many, including Wikileaks and Edward Snowden, called for the memo to be released to the public. Now, two members of Congress are asking Twitter and Facebook to look into a potential Russian role in the viral spread of the hashtag campaign.

The memo in question is one written by Representative Devin Nunes, a Republican on the House Intelligence committee, that alleges the intelligence community committed abuses that impact the president. The memo claims to be based on top secret intelligence shared to a small group of Congressional leaders by the FBI. However, Representative Adam Schiff, a Democrat on the committee who was also present at the meeting with the FBI, has said that the memo is “a misleading set of talking points attacking the FBI.” Democrats have said that the memo is only meant to undermine Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into collusion between the Trump administration and Russia.

Of course not, but when the chairman of House Intel (HPSCI) claims there’s documented evidence of serious surveillance abuses, it matters. If true, the citizens must see the proof. If false, it establishes HPSCI lies and has no credibility. Either outcome benefits the public. https://t.co/IsRcR1azvP

— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) January 19, 2018

Last Thursday, the House Intelligence committee voted to make the memo available to all Representatives and the #ReleaseTheMemo campaign continued to spread. But Representative Schiff and Senator Dianne Feinstein have now written a letter to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg requesting an investigation into who is involved in spreading the campaign across their platforms. They cite evidence provided by the German Marshall Fund’s Alliance for Securing Democracy, which has said that by last Friday the hashtag was “the top trending hashtag among Twitter accounts believed to be operated by Kremlin-linked groups.” The group also said it was being used 100 times more than other hashtags used by accounts believed to be associated with Russian actors.

Of course not, but when the chairman of House Intel (HPSCI) claims there’s documented evidence of serious surveillance abuses, it matters. If true, the citizens must see the proof. If false, it establishes HPSCI lies and has no credibility. Either outcome benefits the public. https://t.co/IsRcR1azvP

— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) January 19, 2018

“If these reports are accurate, we are witnessing an ongoing attack by the Russian government through Kremlin-linked social media actors directly acting to intervene and influence our democratic process,” said Schiff and Feinstein in the letter. “This should be disconcerting to all Americans, but especially your companies as, once again, it appears the vast majority of their efforts are concentrated on your platforms.” They request that the two companies look into whether there are any Russia-linked accounts involved in the hashtag campaign and if so, how many. They also want information on the frequency and volume of their posts as well as how many others on Facebook and Twitter have been exposed to their posts. They’re requesting the two companies provide a public report to Congress by January 26th.

Source: House Intelligence Committee

Blizzard games were vulnerable to a remote hijacking exploit

Fans of Blizzard games might have dodged a bullet. Google security researcher Tavis Ormandy has revealed that virtually all the developer’s titles (including Overwatch and World of Warcraft) were vulnerable to a DNS rebinding flaw that let sites hijack the Blizzard Update Agent for their own purposes. Intruders had to do little more than create a hostname their site was authorized to communicate with, make that resolve to the target of their choice (such as the victim’s PC) and send requests to the agent. From there, they could install malicious files, use network drives or otherwise create havoc.

Thankfully, the emphasis here is on the past tense. Blizzard’s communication was inconsistent, but it applied a short-term fix in recent days. It also responded to Ormandy’s concerns with with promises of a “more robust” fix that whitelists internet hosts, so only those sites Blizzard explicitly approves will get through. We’ve asked Blizzard for comment and will update if there’s more to add.

There isn’t evidence to suggest that anyone abused the Update Agent hole. Even so, the discovery highlights the challenges for security in games. They frequently have a different set of security concerns than a bank website or browser, and there’s no guarantee that developers will (or can) account for all those differences before they release a product into the wild.

Via: Tavis Ormandy (Twitter)

Source: Chromium.org

Apple Details HomePod’s Gesture Controls for Siri and Music Playback

Apple today updated its HomePod product page with new details about the speaker’s gesture controls for Siri and audio playback.

Apple has confirmed that users can tap the top of the HomePod to play, pause, skip a song, or adjust the volume, or touch and hold to talk to Siri. A colorful, animated LED waveform will appear when Siri is listening.

A single tap plays or pauses music, a double tap skips to the next track, and a triple trap returns to the previous track. Tapping and holding the digital plus or minus sign raises or lowers the speaker’s volume respectively.

The touch and hold gesture to invoke Siri is in addition to the “Hey Siri” voice command that can be said from anywhere in a room.

Apple today announced that the HomePod will be available to order starting Friday, January 26, with in-store availability and orders arriving to customers starting Friday, February 9, in the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom.

Apple also revealed some other HomePod information today: the speaker will launch in France and Germany this spring, while multi-room audio and stereo sound support for multiple HomePods will be included in a software update later this year.

HomePod comes in White or Space Gray and is priced at $349 in the United States, £319 in the United Kingdom, and $499 in Australia.

Related Roundup: HomePod
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HomePod Works Abroad in English Only, Other Languages Coming in Future Software Updates

While the HomePod is initially launching in the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom next month, MacRumors can confirm that Apple’s smart speaker will function in most other countries around the world.

When users try to set up the HomePod outside of the those aforementioned countries, a dialogue box will appear that directs them to choose one of three English language options to proceed. We can confirm this setup process can be completed, and that the HomePod functions, in mostly any country from day one.

The setup process was leaked by Guilherme Rambo‏ back in August:

This is how the HomePod setup will look like on an iPhone. pic.twitter.com/SARqsYslL6

— Guilherme Rambo (@_inside) August 22, 2017

What this all means is that if you manage to purchase a HomePod from one of the initial launch countries, you could take it back home to a country like Canada or elsewhere in Europe and it should function properly, but until Siri gains support for additional languages, you’ll be stuck using English only.

While this information isn’t all that surprising, we decided to share it given an influx of questions we have received from our international readers.

Apple today announced the HomePod will be available to order this Friday, January 26 in the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom for $349, $499, and £319 respectively. Those orders will begin arriving to customers, alongside limited in-store availability, starting Friday, February 9.

Apple said the HomePod will launch in France and Germany this spring, marking the first countries where English isn’t the primary language spoken where the speaker will be available. As mentioned, a future software update should add French and German language support to Siri on the HomePod.

Related Roundup: HomePod
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DJI Announces Mavic Air Drone to Combine ‘Best Features’ of Mavic Series With Portability of Spark

Drone maker DJI today unveiled the “Mavic Air” at an event in New York City, stating that the new drone combines the “best features” of the Mavic series into an ultra-portable and foldable drone in line with last year’s Spark model.

Mavic Air includes a 4K camera, QuickShot and SmartCapture modes for simpler photo and video capturing, and FlightAutonomy 2.0 with Advanced Pilot Assistance Systems to ensure safer flights. DJI called the Mavic Air “the most portable DJI drone ever created” at a weight of 430 grams, and it can fold its arms and propellers to sit flush against its frame, similar to the Spark.

“When DJI introduced the Mavic Pro, it reinvented what a consumer drone could be: powerful, yet portable, accessible, but advanced,” said Roger Luo, President at DJI. “Today, with the introduction of Mavic Air, we have pushed these attributes to the next level to create our best consumer drone yet.”

The drone’s camera houses a 1/2.3″ CMOS sensor and the equivalent of a 24mm F2.8 lens, connected to a recessed three-axis mechanical gimbal for steadier shots. The final images are said to result in 12-megapixel stills that use new HDR algorithms to “preserve more highlight and low light details.”

In regards to panoramic shots, Mavic Pro can combine 25 still images to make one 32-megapixel panoramic image in under one minute. The drone also supports other panorama modes, including horizontal, vertical, and 180 degree images.

For video, Mavic Air shoots stabilized 4K video at 30 fps with a maximum bitrate of 100 Mbps, another best for DJI’s family of drones according to the company. The drone can also shoot 1080p slow-motion video at 120 fps. To store all of this footage, Mavic Air includes 8 GB of onboard storage and a new USB-C port so exporting data is easier. There’s also a micro SD card slot to further expand storage.

Taking a cue from Spark’s easy-to-use features, Mavic Air enables image and video capture in user-friendly modes like QuickShot, which lines out predefined flight paths that keep subjects in frame. SmartCapture includes various hand gestures that activate Mavic Air and command it to take pictures, follow you, record a short clip, land, and more, all without a physical remote.

More detailed controls can be found on the included remote controller, however, which has detachable control sticks that can be stored inside the remote controller for added portability.

Users will be able to fly Mavic Air for up to 21 minutes at a maximum range of 2.5 miles, and it can fly standby in windy conditions of up to 22 mph. When in the air, FlightAutonomy 2.0 helps the drone navigate complex outdoor environments using seven onboard cameras and infrared sensors, and a Sport Mode boosts speeds up to 42 mph.

DJI will sell Mavic Air in Onyx Black, Arctic White, and Flame Red starting at $799, with a package that includes the drone, battery, remote controller, carrying case, two pairs of propeller guards, and four pairs of propellers. A Mavic Air Fly More Combo will also be for sale at $999 and includes the drone, three batteries, remote controller, travel bag, two pairs of propeller guards, six pairs of propellers, a battery to power bank adapter, and battery charging hub.

Those interested can pre-order Mavic Air on DJI’s website today, and it will begin shipping in a few days on January 28.

Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with DJI. When you click the above link and make a purchase, we may receive a small payment, which helps us keep the site running.

Tag: DJI
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KGI: 6.1-Inch iPhone to Have Single-Lens Rear Camera, Aluminum Frame, 3GB RAM, and No 3D Touch, Cost $700-$800

KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo today shared additional details about the rumored 6.1-inch iPhone that he expects to launch in the second half of 2018.

Note: KGI’s image has a slight error. iPhone 8 Plus has 3GB of RAM.
We already know the device is said to have some iPhone X features, including Face ID, but with some design compromises to achieve a cheaper price point. That will include an LCD screen, as known, and now Kuo says the device will have an aluminum frame, single-lens rear camera, and no 3D Touch.

It’s unclear if the back of the iPhone will also be forged from aluminum rather than glass, a tradeoff that would inhibit wireless charging.

In a research note obtained by MacRumors on Tuesday, Kuo added that the 6.1-inch iPhone also won’t adopt the iPhone X’s stacked logic board and L-shaped battery pack. Instead, he said the device will have a standard non-stacked logic board and rectangular battery pack like the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus.

Kuo believes the 6.1-inch iPhone will be a mid-range device priced between $700 and $800 in the United States, up from his previous $650 to $750 estimate. The device is expected to be announced around September-October as usual alongside a new 5.8-inch iPhone X and a larger 6.5-inch version dubbed iPhone X Plus.

The research note reads in part:

Development schedule of new 6.1″ LCD iPhone slightly behind 6.5″ and 5.8″ OLED models, but it may enjoy extended longevity into 1H19F, boosting slow season outlook: We predict the 6.1″ LCD iPhone will differ from the 6.5″ and 5.8″ OLED models in terms of certain specs, for reasons of cost/price and product segmentation. However, this shouldn’t have any effect on key user experience. We revise up our price projection for the 6.1″ model from $650-$750 to $700-$800, and remain positive on shipments momentum.

KGI Securities expects the 6.1-inch iPhone to account for around 50 percent of the new iPhone lineup’s shipments, with sales remaining strong into 2019.

Related Roundup: iPhone XTags: KGI Securities, Ming-Chi KuoBuyer’s Guide: iPhone X (Buy Now)
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