Florida man says his Apple AirPod exploded

A man in Florida claims that one of his Apple AirPods began smoking and later exploded. Florida’s WFLA TV reports that the man, Jason Colon, was working out at a gym when he noticed smoke coming from the AirPod in his right ear. He immediately took both AirPods out and placed them on a piece of gym equipment while he sought help, but when he returned, the AirPod in question was charred and broken apart. “I didn’t see it happen, but I mean, it was already fried. You can see flame damage,” he told WFLA.

We’ve seen reports like this before. Last year, a woman reported that her headphones exploded while she was wearing them on a plane and of course there was the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 debacle in 2016. Lithium-ion batteries are known to overheat and explode, but while AirPods do contain batteries, it’s not at all clear that they were the cause of whatever happened to Colon’s.

We reached out to Apple but it declined to comment on the situation. A company spokesperson told WFLA that it would investigate the claim and would reach out to Colon.

Via: CNET

Sonos Makes a Spotify Playlist for Apple’s HomePod With Hidden ‘We’re Going to Be Friends’ Message

To celebrate the official launch of the HomePod, Sonos, one of Apple’s major competitors in the speaker market, made a “Welcome to the Party” playlist for the new device with a hidden message.

Shared on Twitter, the playlist features 21 songs, with each song selected for its title to send a secret note to Apple. Here’s the song list:

Hello / Apple / Something About Us / Together / Feels Right / Even Though / You’re Crazy / For This / Home / POD / Remember / Two Is Better Than One / Just Playing / It’s a Party / Everybody’s Coming To My House / Even You / Come As You Are / Fruit Machine / No Matter What You’re Told / We’re Going To Be Friends / Over Everything

Sending messages through Spotify playlists is a phenomenon that was popular for a brief time right around April of 2017, due to the way Spotify playlists can be arranged and displayed linearly on both the web and within Spotify’s apps. The practice is less common now, and though Sonos is using it to send what appears to be a friendly message, it’s also a jab at Apple.

Good luck with your #homepod launch @Apple. We made you a playlist. https://t.co/zh8KctGAJe

— Sonos (@Sonos) February 9, 2018

The Sonos Spotify playlist made for Apple can’t be played natively on an Apple HomePod because the HomePod is limited to content played from Apple Music or iTunes. It can, of course, be played using AirPlay from a connected Mac or iOS device, but that’s less convenient than the native playback available via Sonos speakers.

Sonos hasn’t had much competition in the high-end connected speaker market, and for years, it’s been the go-to brand for high-quality multi-room sound, so it’s not surprising that the company feels somewhat threatened by the HomePod.

The launch of devices like the Amazon Echo and the Google Home likely didn’t concern Sonos because of the lack of focus on audio quality, but many new HomePod owners have discovered that the HomePod sounds just as good or better than Sonos speakers.

Back in October, Sonos launched its Sonos One, a speaker that directly competes with the HomePod thanks to the combination of Sonos sound and Amazon Alexa smarts.

Sonos kept the price of the Sonos One low at $199, and when the HomePod went on sale, as an attempt to lure Apple customers, Sonos kicked off a deal offering two of its Sonos One speakers for $349, the same price as a single HomePod.

While Sonos and Apple are now direct competitors, the HomePod and the Sonos One can peacefully co-exist once Apple’s AirPlay 2 protocol officially launches. Sonos has promised to add AirPlay 2 support to the Sonos One, and with AirPlay 2, a person who owns both a Sonos One and a HomePod will be able to play music to both devices at the same time over-the-air.

Related Roundup: HomePodTags: Spotify, SonosBuyer’s Guide: HomePod (Buy Now)
Discuss this article in our forums

Uber settles with Waymo over allegations of stolen trade secrets

The case between Uber and Waymo is over, and Uber is settling with Waymo over claims that the former stole trade secrets. The payout is a 0.34 percent equity stake in Uber to Waymo which totals around $245 million, according to CNBC. Waymo’s accusation was that Uber stole trade secrets (some 14,000 files, allegedly) after engineer Anthony Levandowski left Uber to start Otto, the self-driving truck company that was then purchased by Uber in 2016 for $680 million.

Levandowski was last on the witness list today, when Lidar and lasers were to be discussed, making the settlement announcement’s timing all the more suspect. In a statement, Uber’s new CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi apologized, saying that his company’s acquisition (under previous leadership) “should have been handled differently.”

“There is no question that self-driving technology is crucial to the future of transportation — a future in which Uber intends to play an important role,” he writes. “Through that lens, the acquisition of Otto made good business sense. But the prospect that a coupe of Waymo employees may have inappropriately solicited other to join Ott, and that they may have potentially left with Google files in their possession, in retrospect raised some hard questions.”

Khosrowshahi didn’t admit guilt, however, saying he doesn’t believe any trade secrets made their way from one company to another. “We are taking steps with Waymo to ensure our Lidar and software represents just our good work.”

Waymo’s response? That it’s going to work with Uber to make sure its data isn’t being used with Uber’s Advanced Technologies Group. “We are committed to working with Uber to make sure that each company develops its own technology,” a spokesperson said. “We have always believed competition should be fueled by innovation in the labs and on the roads, and we look forward to bringing fully self-driving cars to the world.”

Source: Uber, CNBC

Researchers grew a fully mature human egg in a lab

Researchers in the UK and the US have taken human eggs in their most early stage and developed them to maturity in a lab for the first time. It’s a big achievement that could open up new avenues for infertility treatment and give scientists a better understanding of how the egg development process works and how it can go wrong. While this has been done before in mice, experiments of which have resulted in live offspring, this is the first time it has been done with human eggs.

The research team had previously developed a protocol wherein they could take eggs in later stages of development and bring them to maturity, and they expanded that protocol in an attempt to develop eggs from start to finish in the lab. They took samples of ovarian tissue from 10 women while they were undergoing caesarean section surgery and cultured sections of that tissue that have the ability to release an egg, structures known as follicles. The follicles were cultured in a multi-step procedure that allowed for eggs to develop. At the end of each step, follicles, and eventually eggs, that had successfully matured further were moved to the following step. The team initially isolated 87 follicles and by the end of the 21-day procedure, nine eggs reached a stage of maturity that would in theory allow them to be fertilized with sperm and develop into an embryo.

While only 37 percent of the early-stage follicles resulted in a fully grown egg and only 10 percent achieved levels of maturity that could allow for reproduction, it’s still an important step in the study of egg development, or oogenesis. Ali Abbara, an endocrinology senior lecturer at the Imperial College of London who wasn’t involved with the study, told Reuters, “The technology remains at an early stage, and much more work is needed to make sure that the technique is safe and optimized before we ascertain whether these eggs remain normal during the process, and can be fertilized to form embryos that could lead to healthy babies.” Evelyn Telfer, a researcher at the University of Edinburgh and the leader of the study, told Reuters that the team is now working on optimizing this process and evaluating how healthy the resulting eggs are. One next step is to try to fertilize the eggs with sperm to see if they can result in a viable embryo — work that requires a licence that the team doesn’t yet have.

This work could help improve IVF treatments in the future and could particularly help girls with cancer. They typically have pieces of their ovaries removed and preserved prior to receiving cancer treatments that might damage their follicles. However, if there’s a chance that the tissue has cancer cells, it can’t be reimplanted later on. If doctors could mature those eggs outside of her body, those eggs could still be used without introducing risk to the woman. Additionally, in cases where women have a condition that prevents the development of their eggs, this type of research could help scientists understand why that happens. “There are several conditions in which women lose their eggs much earlier in life, or they don’t grow,” Telfer told New Scientist. “If we could understand the process…we could develop treatments for that.”

The research was published in Molecular Human Reproduction.

Via: Reuters

Source: Molecular Human Reproduction

YouTube found ‘no interference’ from Russia during Brexit vote

YouTube says that it hasn’t found any evidence of Russian interference during the UK’s Brexit vote in 2016. Members of parliament aren’t satisfied, however, and are asking for the video network to examine clips of Russian origin, not just ads, according to The Guardian. For its part, YouTube says it will do a more comprehensive review.

“There is no constraint on the resources we will put into getting this right,” YouTube’s global head of public policy Juniper Downs said. Google’s video wing has 10,000 people examining and filtering offensive videos and is spending a boatload of cash (“tens of millions”) on the effort — which one member of parliament estimated to be around 0.1 percent of YouTube’s $10 billion in ad revenue.

The sticking point for Parliament was YouTube’s auto-play feature that queues successive videos on the platform. A recent investigation by The Guardian found that the algorithm used favored “extreme and sensationalist” videos and that YouTube was six-times more likely to present pro-Trump clips than not.

That’s apparently based on what a viewer “wants to see” and how long someone has been watching. Downs said that people watch what they want to, and putting videos in that they don’t want results in “abandonment of the service” when it does. “It’s hard to insert something they don’t want,” she said. “The press coverage over the past week shows that we still have work to do,” Downs conceded after mentioning Facebook’s moves to link out to trustworthy news sources for context.

This is on the heels of Twitter’s report from last night that 49 Russian accounts tried swaying Brexit voters nearly two years ago. In October, it was revealed that Russian agents purchased ads that appeared in Gmail, Google Search and YouTube. Google began an investigation of ad buys under $100,000 to see if the ads came from trolls or state-sponsored means. To watch the full hearing, hit the source link below.

Via: The Guardian

Source: Parliament TV (UK)

Under Armour’s HOVR smart running shoes are more than just a gimmick

As fascinating as shoes like Nike’s “PlayStation” PG2s or Adidas’ “4D” Futurecrafts are, those particular models don’t offer many (if any) benefits to avid runners. They’re more geared toward sneakerheads than anyone else. But, that doesn’t mean there aren’t any tech-oriented pairs designed for people who enjoy running, be it casually or on a regular basis. That’s exactly the demographic Under Armour is going after with its HOVR connected shoes, which consist of two different versions: a low-top (the Sonic) and a mid-top (the Phantom, pictured here).

Both of these come with a sensor built in that can track your cadence, distance, pace, stride and, of course, steps — all the important metrics runners care about. Under Armour developed this Record sensor in-house, and it has been drastically improved since it debuted on the SpeedForm Gemini 2 running shoes in 2016; it’s now able to track more data than before, such as stride length. The Bluetooth-powered sensors are located inside the thickest part of the midsole, which ensures that they can work even during your rainy-day runs.

As far as power goes, you don’t need to worry about charging the HOVRs, since the batteries in the sensors are self-contained. According to Under Armour, the Record chip is designed to outlast the life of the running shoes themselves, so longevity will depend on each individual and how much they work out. That said, the company is confident that you won’t ever have to worry about running out of power.

Of course, you’ll need an app to digest all the data captured by the shoes. For that, you’ll use Under Armour’s Map My Run application, available for iOS and Android. Pairing the Phantoms to my iPhone was surprisingly quick and seamless: I took the pair out of the box, placed my phone near them, opened the Map My Run app and, within seconds, a message popped up prompting me to connect my shoes. After I accepted and hit continue, the app pushed an update to them, added them to my “Gear Tracker” tab in Map My Run and then the setup process was complete.

Altogether, it only took about four minutes before my Phantoms were paired to the app. If, for some reason your iOS or Android device doesn’t automatically pick up the Bluetooth signal from the HOVRs, Under Armour says it’ll give customers a walkthrough of how to connect the shoes to the Map My Run app, which may include telling you to turn on Bluetooth or having to shake the right shoe to wake it up from its sleep mode.

One of the main differences between Under Armour’s latest Record sensor, compared to the previous version, is that it now lets you go on smarter untethered runs. This means you don’t need to have your phone with you and the Map My Run app open to track your stats, since the HOVRs measure your data as soon as you start running. You can then sync that to your app when you get back home if, say, you forgot to take your phone with you. It’s a great option for those who like to be as light as possible during their training or workout, or if you simply want to use the HOVRs as an unobtrusive step counter.

Later this month, Under Armour plans to roll out a coaching feature that will add more functionality to the HOVRs and the Map My Run app, both for iOS and Android users. You’ll be able to monitor your gait/stride length mile after mile, and the application will show you how that impacts your pace and cadence. Under Armour says that, by interpreting that data, Map My Run can offer you tips on how to improve your pace and splits by changing your form, like if you should be taking shorter or longer strides as you run.

Comfort-wise, the Phantom HOVRs are bouncy yet stiff enough to reduce the amount of impact you feel every time your feet hit the ground. Under Armour says its HOVR foam tech is meant to provide a “zero gravity feel,” an element that’s complemented by an Energy Web material that’s spread through various areas of the shoe’s midsole and a knit upper that wraps around your foot like a sock. It’s definitely one of the most comfortable running shoes I’ve tried on, right up there with Adidas’ popular Ultra Boost.

The Sonic and Phantom HOVR connected sneakers are available now for $110 and $140, respectively. And if you like the shoes but don’t care about making them work with the Map My Run app, Under Armour also has versions without the Record sensor for $10 less per pair.

Intel put on an Olympic light show with 1,218 drones

The Winter Olympics’ opening ceremony took place today in Pyeongchang and it featured a light show from a record-breaking 1,218 drones, Wired reports. The display was created with Intel’s Shooting Star drones, the same ones used in Lady Gaga’s Super Bowl halftime show last year and Intel’s CES keynote in January, and featured drone murmurations that depicted images like a snowboarder and the interlocking Olympic rings.

The Shooting Star light show was pre-recorded, just like Lady Gaga’s American flag, but that’s because Pyeongchang can get very cold and very windy. Neither of those conditions are great for drone performance and the city’s weather caused Intel to cancel the planned live version of the display. However, the company is planning on doing smaller-scale, 300-drone shows during the medal ceremonies and it has tweaked the Shooting Star’s design a little in order to accommodate South Korea’s weather conditions. The rotor cages were changed for more stability in high winds and the drones were tested in Finland prior to the Games in order to make sure they could function in low temperatures.

For the remainder of the Olympic Games, Intel will have weather monitoring and air traffic stations determining whether the drone shows can go ahead, Wired reports. So while they may not happen every night, there’s a good chance you’ll get to see a few light shows if you’re watching the Winter Olympics.

Via: Wired

New tech ‘addictions’ are mostly just old moral panic

The World Health Organization took an unprecedented step in January when it decided to include “gaming disorder” in its 11th International Classification of Diseases (IDC). Though doctors and researchers have examined the effects of heavy internet usage since the days when access arrived on AOL CDs, this marks the first time that the organization has listed this disorder as a mental health condition. Doing so could have far-reaching, and potentially negative, implications for how the disorder is diagnosed and treated.

But video games aren’t the only aspect of internet society that has people concerned. A 2016 study by Common Sense Media, a nonprofit that helps teens and their parents navigate modern media, found that nearly half of the teens surveyed described themselves as “addicted” to their phones. In August of the same year, British media watchdog Ofcom’s survey found that 60 percent of people in the UK felt themselves similarly addicted. Even Selfitis — the compulsive need to take and post pictures of yourself to social media — is now considered a genuine mental health disorder.

😝

A post shared by Kim Kardashian West (@kimkardashian) on Feb. 2nd, 2018, at 12:56pm PST

But is it really? Not everybody in the medical community is on board with such an assessment. Some researchers have argued that this is simply another example of “moral panic”: a remarkably common phenomenon in our culture, arising repeatedly in our history seemingly whenever a new generation asserts its values (which are often at odds with the previous generation’s) on society.

The IDC’s characterization of “gaming disorder” includes a variety of symptoms such as impaired control over gameplay, prioritizing gaming over other interests and continuing the behavior even after negative consequences. These criteria are similar to what the American Psychiatric Association (APA) proposed in 2013 for inclusion in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5). Dubbed Internet Gaming Disorder (IGD) by the APA, its nine characterization criteria include the inability to self-regulate game playing at the expense of other interests.

In fact, a group of more than two dozen doctors and researchers sent an open letter to the WHO in 2016, arguing that formalizing the disorder lacked scientific merit and could cause real harm to patients.

“Our main concerns are the low quality of the research base, the fact that the current operationalization leans too heavily on substance use and gambling criteria, and the lack of consensus on symptomatology and assessment of problematic gaming,” the group wrote. “The act of formalizing this disorder, even as a proposal, has negative medical, scientific, public-health, societal, and human rights fallout that should be considered.”

Dr. Michelle Colder Carras, a postdoctoral fellow at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, takes issue with characterizing it as an addiction at all. “Addiction is not a good term to be using with video games, because I would say unlike substance problems there is no substance that we’re ingesting that directly affects your brain chemistry,” Colder Carras told Engadget. “It makes more sense to talk about problematic video gaming.

“Playing video games is an enormous experience that has to be taken in context,” she continued. “Because if we think of video games as a potential threat of addiction, then it’s going to be hard to figure out exactly who has problems and who needs help.”

For a study published in the February edition of the journal Computers in Human Behavior, Colder Carras and her team recruited a pair of focus groups at a recent video game convention. These groups were asked to define what they felt constituted symptoms of gaming “addiction,” then discuss and rank their criteria in order of importance. A team then compared this ranked list against the proposed DSM-5 criteria for IGD. The study found that the strongest agreement between participants’ rankings and IGD characterizations were functional impairment, continued use despite problems, unsuccessful attempts to stop and the loss of interest in other hobbies. The other five DSM-5 criteria did not overlap as strongly.

This follows a previous study that Colder Carras and her team published last year, again in Computers in Human Behavior. After grouping study participants by their gameplay, social network and IM habits as well as symptoms of “problematic” gaming, Colder Carras discovered that gamers (especially heavy-usage male players) who had better online social interactions exhibited fewer symptoms of problematic play as well as a lower prevalence of loneliness and social anxiety compared to players who interacted less effectively.

In male gamers with close friends both online and off, Colder Carras found that the association with depression disappeared completely. “People are quick to attribute causal influences,” Antonius J. van Rooij, another author of the paper, writes. “These games aren’t necessarily causing the problems; it might just as well be the other way around. People are not functioning, they suffer from social anxiety, they’re lonely, and they flee into the games because it’s an excellent coping mechanism.”

The kids are all right, according to Chris Ferguson, a psychology professor at Florida’s Stetson University. The issue may instead lie within society’s existing power structure: the so-called moral panic. This is “a situation in which society or elements of society decide to find a scapegoat to explain a pressing societal problem which may be real or imagined,” he explained to Engadget.

For example, “you still have people claiming that Adam Lanza, who was the 2012 Sandy Hook shooter, was an avid Call of Duty or violent video game player,” Ferguson explained. “Odds are that he probably played occasionally.” (Not surprising given that the franchise has sold more than 260 million units since 2003.) However, the official investigation report points out that the only game he played regularly was Dance Dance Revolution.

“And then people stop talking about it, and they move on to whatever the next new thing is that older adults don’t use and don’t like.”

“There doesn’t seem to be this link at all between violent video game consumption in society and violent crime,” Ferguson said. If anything, the current body of evidence suggests that gaming might actually reduce the rate of violent behavior rather than instigate it.

The issue is a generational one and is exacerbated because of unequal access to societal influence. “Elderly adults tend to have most of the leverage of power in society. They vote more than young people do, they have more money and donate to scientific grants more than young people do. And they buy newspapers more than young people do or subscribe to online news outlets more than young people do,” Ferguson said. So, youth of America, put down your avocado toast and pick up a newspaper. Modern society is depending on you.

Luckily, moral panics don’t last far beyond the lives of those who are outraged by them. “If you look back in history, there were more panics over comic books in the 1950s, Elvis Presley and the Beatles,” Ferguson said. “And then rock music like Twisted Sister and AC/DC in the ’80s and stuff. Most people look back on these sorts of issues and don’t take them remotely seriously anymore. The idea that Elvis Presley was a danger to society is laughable.”

Elvis Presley, national security threat, punching Jeremy Slate.

“The group of people who believe in the dangerousness of whatever they put on media eventually dies off,” Ferguson remarked. “And then people stop talking about it, and they move on to whatever the next new thing is that older adults don’t use and don’t like.”

That’s not to say that the fears of older generations are simply the results of old men yelling at clouds. Moral panics can serve a potent, albeit misguided, function for society, especially related to gaming.

“Columbine really anchored this idea that video games and mass shootings were related to each other in the public sphere,” Ferguson said. “So when you have that kind of sense of helplessness, a key to a lot of this stuff is that people want a fast and easy explanation of something that they think that they can fix, and preferably something they don’t like already.”

And in the case of the Columbine shootings, video games — Doom, specifically — became the scapegoat. Never mind the fact that an entire generation of young men and women grew up pumping shells into cacodemons without long-term psychological damage. “That was enough to cement this view for a while, at least in the public consciousness, that violent video games and mass shootings were invariably tied to each other,” Ferguson concluded.

Thus, it would appear that the newly defined diagnoses of Internet Gaming Disorder or Selfitis may be rooted in a modern-day moral panic. “It looks like from the data that some people probably do overdo gaming like they overdo a lot of other things — like food or exercise or work or religion. There are even papers on dance addiction, of all things,” Ferguson said. “But that seems to be more of a symptom of other underlying mental illness rather than a mental illness by itself.”

That said, treating the underlying mental illness can be tricky. As Colder Carras pointed out, simply limiting screen time may often backfire, as it eliminates access to one’s online social structure. “Saying, ‘You need to play fewer video games,’ is not taking into account what kids are doing with their time on the video game — whether they’re spending it with friends, whether they’re building magnificent block structures in Minecraft,” Colder Carras wrote in her 2017 study. “You just have to take a more nuanced approach.”

Image: Bettmann via Getty (Elvis)

How to watch the 2018 Winter Olympics

With the opening ceremonies completed and the torch lit, the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea are officially underway and will run through February 25th. Viewers have plenty of options to stream events this time around — and while you can watch almost everything on NBC with your cable subscription, there are several internet TV providers that include some or all of the network’s coverage through their own service subscriptions.

NBC is livestreaming almost every event through its site and iOS and Android apps. You’ll need to log in with your cable subscription info to watch its coverage, but as the network announced last March, they’re finally ditching tape delays and airing everything live. Starting tomorrow, you’ll be able to watch clips and original programs on Snapchat until the games end.

Comcast Xfinity TV subscribers get access to NBC’s coverage alongside 50 Olympics virtual channels — sort of playlists full of short clips — with daily highlights and athlete features. Users can also watch select programming (ski jumping, figure skating, and snowboard big air) on-demand in 4K HDR with Dolby sound. DirecTV is offering much of the same for the games, including 4K HDR and Dolby Atmos on-demand, though only subscribers of its higher $60 tier get access to Olympics content.

Many Internet TV providers are piping in NBC’s content for subscribers, though you’ll want to check whether your service provides a live feed or stores content. Fortunately, all of them have free trials of varying lengths (YouTube TV’s is the longest at 14 days, while PlayStation Vue’s is the shortest at 5).

Hulu Live TV is going about their Olympic coverage in a different way, prompting users to choose their favorite sports/events to make them a personalized UI. They’ll have access to all of NBC’s Olympics content, but it’ll be presented based on their preferences. Sling TV subscribers with the Sling Blue package can get most of the big events on the NBC, NBCSN, USA and CNBC channels. Note that NBC is only available for Sling Blue users in a dozen big city markets, their website points out. Lastly, subscribers of the sports-focused service FuboTV will have access to all 2,400 hours of NBC’s Olympics content.

Source: NBC Olympics site

‘The Red Strings Club’ explores the morality of transhumanism

If you had the ability to turn off all the negative emotions in your mind — depression, anxiety, rage — would you do it? Would you eagerly implant a device in your body that eliminates these feelings, or would you pause and consider the consequences? Without anxiety, would your drive to succeed stagnate? Without rage, would your body be primed to fight or flee in a sticky situation? Without depression, would you appreciate joy?

Think about it for a moment. We’ll wait.

Now, how would you feel if a massive corporation — say, Google or Apple — planned to remove every “negative” emotion from your psyche in a simple software update, with no warning and without your explicit consent?

The Red Strings Club, the latest game from indie studio Deconstructeam, doesn’t just ask these questions — it demands answers. The Red Strings Club is a narrative adventure game that looks like a pixelated sidescroller from the ’90s, though the story takes place in the indeterminate future: AI-powered androids roam the streets, and people upgrade their bodies and lives with implants. Implants to make the user sexier, more successful on social media, better with money, or less concerned with other people’s opinions, for example.

The company that makes these implants, Supercontinent Ltd., has a secret plan to eliminate “negative” emotions in the majority of the population, arguing the result would benefit society as a whole. As a bartender who deals in the city’s secrets, players attempt to thwart this program by mixing drinks specifically designed to bleed information from patrons, exploiting their unique character traits via assorted spirits.

Essentially, The Red Strings Club has players fight the specter of large-scale technological manipulation with small-scale chemical manipulation. It turns players into hypocrites — and then calls them out for it.

“All the mechanics in the game are about manipulation,” creator Jordi de Paco said. “You have these corporations which do implants and alter the lives of other people, and you have this bartender’s ability to [modify] the feelings of other people. You are manipulating them, making them feel sad or happy. … And the game actually makes you face these questions, it calls you a hypocrite.”

It isn’t just players that get called out in The Red Strings Club. In a moment that rattles the game’s fourth wall, de Paco pokes fun at himself, the designer forcing players to grapple with these ridiculously complex moral decisions.

“There’s a line in the game, towards the end, where an AI says that game design is the most powerful form of manipulation,” he said, punctuated by a laugh.

De Paco doesn’t have the answers. Instead, he’s made a living asking moral and ethical questions in video games, and then watching thousands of people grapple with his twisted scenarios. His first game, Gods Will Be Watching, presented players with clear moral decisions, such as whether to kill a robot, a dog or a human in order to keep a group of people alive as they’re stranded in the frigid wilderness.

“Gods Will Be Watching was really visceral, about eating your friends and killing people, stuff like that,” de Paco said. “I find that the dilemmas in The Red Strings Club are more important to us, because we’re not usually in front of this situation of having to actually eat someone, but we are every day in the situation of having to think what’s good and bad — to what limits it’s okay to go to be happy and where our liberty or freedom ends, and where other people stand.”

With Gods Will Be Watching, I wasn’t really aware of the power of video games as a storytelling medium.

Jordi de Paco, Deconstructeam

Gods Will Be Watching was de Paco’s first attempt at infusing a video game with ethical and moral dilemmas, and it was a resounding success when it landed in 2014. Deconstructeam was thrust into a broader conversation about the power and creativity of indie games, and there was enough money in the bank to start working on the next thing. This time around, de Paco wanted to be more deliberate — Gods Will Be Watching was unfiltered, and in the end, its message got away from him.

“With Gods Will Be Watching, I wasn’t really aware of the power of video games as a storytelling medium or maybe as communicating a message, so I kind of just made the game and put a lot of my instinctive philosophy in there,” de Paco said. “I realized that I accidentally made an anti-system game, in which you have to go against any form of authority, so this time I tried to actually be aware of what I am telling and what I’m doing with the game.”

The result is a concise yet branching cyberpunk story about the awful power massive technology companies can assert over people’s daily lives (and bodies and minds). Through this lens, de Paco asks players how far they would go to obtain or sustain happiness, and what it truly means to be human. When we lose our emotions, do we lose our humanity?

Though the game offers a range of answers in its dialogue trees, it doesn’t actually wrap all of these questions up in a nice, ethical bow. They’re not meant to be answered; they’re de Paco’s grand social experiment, designed to provoke thought and conversation. And here, it seems The Red Strings Club has succeeded.

De Paco said the game itself takes about three or four hours to complete on a standard playthrough. However, many Twitch streamers end up playing for something like 10 hours because they spend most of the time talking through the game’s direct questions with the live chat.

“It comes in really lengthy conversations about what if it’s good or not to get rid of emotions, or how it might benefit society,” de Paco said. “It’s really great.”

Some of the game’s questions are far-fetched scenarios specific to this particular future, but others feel relevant to life today. Scientists may not have developed implants that can alter our character yet, but we enjoy a common stimulus in caffeine and a depressant in alcohol. We have pills that promise to calm, excite and otherwise change our moods. We play with our emotional states every day.

This is a harsh reality for de Paco: Two years ago, some close friends and family members started taking antidepressants, and the experience made him question the essence of humanity on a grand scale, sparking the theme of The Red Strings Club.

“It makes you wonder if they’re still the same person or if they’re happier or not,” de Paco said. “For me, writing this kind of magic technology that is able to remove depression and everything was a way for myself to explore, to cope with the idea of people close to me being changed.”

De Paco isn’t on a mission to end the antidepressant industry. In fact, he wishes the effects of these drugs could be streamlined like in The Red Strings Club, allowing people to alter their moods like code. “I wouldn’t mind to change that for an implant or maybe just changing a variable instead of having to go through the process of taking pills or being medicated,” he said.

If he were given the option, de Paco wouldn’t choose to remove any of his own negative emotions, arguing that would also eliminate a core part of his humanity. He’s more into to the idea of digitizing his consciousness and ditching his body altogether.

“I would totally love to digitize myself,” de Paco said. “I wouldn’t mind not having this body, if I can feel pleasure, and, I don’t know, take digital craps or something like that. I would like to be digitized but I wouldn’t like to lose any of the aspects of my mind. I don’t like being depressed, but usually being depressed is a way to know something is wrong and you have to do something about it. If I take those things from me, it’s like I would lose my ability to discern what’s good and bad.”

Not that de Paco knows what’s good and bad now — he’s still asking questions about the essence of humanity and observing his social experiments across Twitch, Steam and social media. He’s still figuring it out. So is everyone else.