Mike Pence’s space council is big on business, small on science

Yesterday evening, Vice President Mike Pence announced the candidates asked to serve on the National Space Council’s Users Advisory Group. Members will have to be officially selected by the Administrator of NASA (a position which remains open). The selections draw heavily from the space industry, including former astronauts and executives from private spaceflight companies, and a few conservative political appointees.

The full list of appointees is as follows:

• Buzz Aldrin, Apollo 11 Astronaut
• Tory Bruno, President and CEO of United Launch Alliance
• Wes Bush, CEO of Northrop Grumman
• Dean Cheng, Scholar at the Heritage Foundation
• Eileen Collins, 4-time Shuttle astronaut, first female shuttle commander
• Steve Crisafulli, Former Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives
• Mary Lynne Dittmar, President and CEO of The Coalition for Deep Space Exploration
• Adm. Jim Ellis, Retired 4-star Admiral, former head of STRATCOM, and member of the Space Foundation Board of Directors
• Tim Ellis, CEO of Relativity Space
• Newt Gingrich, Author, former Speaker of the House
• Marillyn Hewson, CEO of Lockheed Martin Corporation
• Homer Hickam, Author of the book “Rocket Boys” and former NASA Marshall Spaceflight Center engineer
• Governor Kay Ivey, Governor of Alabama
• Fred Klipsch, Founder and Chairman of Hoosiers for Quality Education
• Les Lyles, Retired 4-star Air Force General and member of the NASA Advisory Council
• Pam Melroy, 3-time Shuttle astronaut and former Deputy Director of the Tactical Technology Office at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
• Dennis Muilenburg, CEO of the Boeing Company
• Fatih Ozmen, CEO of the Sierra Nevada Corporation
• G.P. Bud Peterson, President of the Georgia Institute of Technology
• Jack Schmitt, Apollo 17 Astronaut and former Senator
• Gwynne Shotwell, President and COO of SpaceX
• Bob Smith, CEO of Blue Origin
• Eric Stallmer, President of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation
• David Thompson, Founder and CEO of Orbital ATK
• Pamela Vaughan, Board Certified Science Teacher
• Mandy Vaughn, President of VOX Launch Company
• Stu Witt, Founder of Mojave Air and Spaceport, former Navy pilot, former Chairman of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation
• David Wolf, 4-time Shuttle astronaut and physician
• Pete Worden, Former Air Force General and NASA Ames Center Director

There are definitely some expected names on this list: Executives from Blue Origin, Orbital ATK, SpaceX, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Sierra Nevada, the United Launch Alliance and more are present to represent the interests of private spaceflight companies. There are also military interests, engineers and former astronauts. There isn’t much science represented on this list (though Jack Schmitt was a scientist-astronaut); it makes clear that the focus of this administration in space is on commercial and military applications. And of course, there are also some conservative political appointments, such as Newt Gingrich, Steve Crisafulli and Dean Cheng from the Heritage Foundation.

President Trump revived the National Space Council last year. It will advise the president on matters concerning space and coordinate different sectors, from commercial interests to exploration. The Council is chaired by Vice President Mike Pence.

Why am I so terrible at email?

Ever heard the phrase “run into an asshole and they’re the asshole, run into assholes all day and you’re the asshole?” It’s been rattling around my brain of late, after several miserable weeks caused by my apparent failure to be a good emailer. (Or maybe I’m just an asshole, but since I’m not going to tackle that existential crisis head-on, let’s focus on the emails.)

I’ve been stuck in a rut when it comes to getting responses to my emails, either for comment on breaking news or interview requests. Normally, my phone is in one hand trying to speak to someone in person, while the other is frantically typing out said emails. Several times recently, I’d fire off 30 or 40 delicately crafted missives and get absolutely zero response.

Email is my bete noire, forcing me to spend far too much time each day agonizing and piling through the thousands of digital missives I get on a daily basis. As an emotionally-repressed Brit, I can spend up to half an hour writing a mail before I send it off, so worried about coming off wrong. Is it too forward to use their first name rather than their title? What about just asking for the comment in two lines? I um and aah to myself while trying to phrase things right.

I wish that I could email “like a boss,” that short, ultra-declarative sentences that apparently open up your life to new possibilities. I wish that, in the style of BuzzFeed’s Katie Notopoulos, I could condense all of my emailing down to just a few seconds each day. It would be nice if things were just a little simpler, maybe if the whole world was on Slack, I could just bother them on there instead.

I sought help, calling up upon the experts, including world-renown etiquette expert William Hanson, who explained what I could, and should, be doing better. Hanson feels that auto-responses and platforms like Slack help you “forget the niceties,” and if you forget them here, he says that you’re more likely to “forget them elsewhere.”

Hanson thinks that the issue with most online messaging systems is that they are often designed “by people with poor social skills.” It’s a sentiment echoed by Don Norman, the interaction designer who explained the problems with email to Fast Company in 2015. “Gmail conversations are horrible,” he said, adding that “it’s the wrong mechanism, badly done.” Norman felt that email was being forced to “do everything,” even though it’s “not particularly good at anything.”

Despite email’s obvious flaws, I still need to use it on a daily basis to get folks to talk to me, so what can I do? “It’s important to remember,” says etiquette consultant Jo Bryant, “that all communications are an extension of yourself.” Bryant feels that it’s important to be mindful of “how we make other people feel, which, in itself, is the essence of good manners.” She believes that “taking time to email someone personally, including a salutation and sign off” shows that you have taken care over your correspondence.”

Hanson agrees, and as well as ensuring that you use the proper salutation and sign-off, you need to go the extra mile in your emails. For instance, he says that you should “notice the little details,” such as looking up a pleasant local news event, or the weather, in the location that the recipient lives. The aim is to convey, as Hanson puts it, the sense that “even though we’re miles apart, we’re closer than you think.”

You’ll have to balance all of this courtesy with one other fact: You shouldn’t take too much of your recipient’s time. “It’s bad to be overly verbose,” says Hanson, suggesting that you get to the point without being abrupt. It’s a fine line to walk, especially when you’re looking to make the extra effort to get folks to like you.

The last person I spoke to about my woes was closer to home, my colleague Aaron Souppouris. I showed him plenty of my electronic missives, and he noted that my lack of a “formal greeting, explaining who I am and where I’m from” could be an issue. He added that I shouldn’t look like I believe that I “deserve a response” by virtue of who I was and where I worked. Finally, he suggested that I should “make sure not to overwhelm [recipients] with information.”

I’ve started to cook up a new template onto which I shall craft my emails for the next couple of weeks. I’m hoping that with a little bit of luck, and using these experts’ tips and tricks, I can become the world’s greatest emailer. I’ll also settle for getting a response every now and again.

Thanks for your time and all the best, and I’ll be in touch shortly to apprise you of how the experiment went.

Amazon’s answer to ‘Altered Carbon’ is Iain Banks’ space opera

It appears that Amazon is looking for its answer to Netflix’s crossover sci-fi thriller Altered Carbon. Today, the online retail giant announced that it has acquired the global television rights to Iain M. Banks’ space opera series called The Culture. Amazon Studios will adapt the first novel, Consider Phlebas, for television.

The Culture novels focus on a highly advanced society that goes to interstellar war with a violent race bent on galactic domination. The first book in the series centers on a spy tasked with recovering an AI that has the ability to help win the war. The questions the series poses are the costs of victory, and whether we should use our technology to dominate others at the expense of our own humanity.

Dennis Kelly will adapt the sci-fi drama for Plan B Entertainment (World War Z). The Iain Banks’s estate will serve as an executive producer for the series. “Iain Banks has long been a hero of mine, and his innate warmth, humor and humanism shines through these novels,” said Kelly, who previously adapted Matilda for the stage. “Far from being the dystopian nightmares that we are used to, Banks creates a kind of flawed paradise, a society truly worth fighting for — rather than a warning from the future, his books are a beckoning.”

Source: Amazon

Fire Emblem Heroes Marked as Nintendo and DeNA’s ‘Most Successful Mobile Game to Date’

It’s been just over one year since Fire Emblem Heroes launched on the iOS App Store in the United States, Japan, and over 30 other countries, and this week new data researched by Sensor Tower has titled the app as Nintendo and DeNA’s “most successful mobile game to date.” Over the course of its first year, Fire Emblem Heroes earned an estimated $295 million in player spending worldwide, helped by the game’s free-to-play structure that includes in-app purchases of various items like game-boosting “Orbs.”

The other Nintendo/DeNA apps include the soon-to-be-discontinued Miitomo, Super Mario Run, and the most recent game, Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp, which has earned about $20 million across the iOS App Store and Google Play Store in the two months since release. In comparison, Fire Emblem Heroes earned $86 million in its first two months after launch, following an initial slow start in the first few days.

Nintendo’s Fire Emblem Heroes is the Kyoto-based gaming giant’s most successful mobile game to date, earning an estimated $295 million in worldwide player spend during its first year of availability, according to Sensor Tower Store Intelligence data.

With players worldwide continuing to spend more than $10 million per month on “luck of the draw” character draws, Fire Emblem Heroes is a clearly a financial success for Nintendo and DeNA. The question now is whether the publisher-developer duo can progress to the next echelon of mobile gaming revenue with future titles, including the recently announced Mario Kart Tour.

In terms of worldwide mobile game revenue, Sensor Tower reported that Fire Emblem Heroes ranked at No. 34 in January on the iOS App Store, while Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp sat at No. 190. Furthermore, Fire Emblem Heroes is said to have been successful both in the U.S. and Japan, with 30 percent of the game’s first year revenue coming from the former country and 60 percent from the latter. For Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp, 13 percent of its revenue so far has been made in the U.S., and more than 82 percent comes from Japan.

Although the games support different payment structures, Sensor Tower compared Fire Emblem Heroes with Super Mario Run, which earned $56 million across its first year in worldwide revenue. Super Mario Run was a bigger hit initially as many players downloaded the game in the first few weeks of launch — earning $8.4 million on its first day — but slacked off in subsequent months. The game is free-to-download so that users can play the first few levels, but a $9.99 payment is required to unlock everything.

Chart via Sensor Tower
During Nintendo’s quarterly earnings report last fall, the company admitted that Super Mario Run had “not yet reached an acceptable profit point” ten months after launch, while Fire Emblem Heroes was on track to meet its business and profit objectives. For Super Mario Run, the company stated that it had “learned a lot in terms of game development and deployment,” which it will “take advantage of moving forward.” Nintendo is also reportedly looking for new mobile developers to partner with in addition to DeNA.

While Fire Emblem Heroes has been successful for Nintendo and DeNA, it’s still lagging behind the breakout hits on the iOS App Store, like Clash Royale ($967 million in first year worldwide revenue) and Niantic’s Pokémon Go ($1.1 billion). Nintendo’s next mobile game Mario Kart Tour will be free-to-start, which is terminology that Nintendo has used to describe the in-app purchase model of Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp. Previous rumors have also stated the company could be working on a smartphone game set in The Legend of Zelda universe.

Tags: Nintendo, DeNA, Fire Emblem
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Things 3.4 Update Introduces URL Linking Support, App Handover and Automation Features

Popular to-do app Things reached version 3.4 today and gained a trio of additional features made possible by the introduction of all-new Things URL links. Basically, the app now supports a special kind of link that starts with “things:” and enables users to send a variety of commands to the app.

For example, it’s now possible to link to your Today list, as well as the contents of your Upcoming and Logbook lists, from anywhere, such as in another app or within Things itself. In addition, links can be tied to specific to-dos within lists.

On Mac, links can be generated within Things by right-clicking on any to-do or list in the sidebar and selecting Share -> Copy Link. On iOS, the same option can be found in the Share menu, accessed via the chevron button in the upper right corner of a list. Some examples of the new links users can generate include:

• Show Today: things:///show?id=today
• Show Upcoming: things:///show?id=upcoming

• Show Logbook: things:///show?id=logbook

• Show your “Vacation in Rome” project: things:///show?query=Vacation%20in%20Rome (This works if the project has that name).

Apart from simple navigation, more advanced users can use Things URLs to execute powerful commands from outside of the app – to create to-dos, show tag filters, perform searches, and so on – while other apps will soon be able to use the URLs to send data to Things. For example, MindNode now lets users brainstorm on an empty canvas and then “hand it over” to Things as a project via a link.

The popular Drafts app is planning support for Things URL links in its next version, and with the publication of Things’ open source Swift library, more are likely to follow suit.

Things 3.4 can be downloaded from the Mac App Store for $49.99 and from the iOS App Store. The iPad version is priced at $19.99 [Direct Link] while the iPhone version (which includes Apple watch support) is priced at $9.99. [Direct Link] A 15-day trial of Things for Mac is available on the Cultured Code website.

Tag: Cultured Code
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Facebook Messenger Streamlines Controls for Creating Group Video and Audio Chats

In December 2016, Facebook Messenger rolled out the ability for users to create group video chats with up to six members participating, and today the company has further streamlined the feature. Before today’s update, if users were already in a one-on-one video or audio call they had to hang up, start a new conversation, and choose every member to invite to the new group chat.

Now, while in a video chat or voice call, there will be a new “add person” icon so that users can simply scrub through a list of their Facebook Messenger friends, tap who to invite, and wait for them to join — all without leaving the original call.

With the ability to add more people seamlessly to your calls, you can continue your conversation in the moment, just like if you were together in real life. Never again worry about skipping a beat when sharing your BFF’s spontaneous karaoke performance on Messenger. Sharing moments like these is now a few quick taps away.

Otherwise, the feature remains the same with six total users able to video chat at once and various filters and effects still supported. After the call ends, Facebook Messenger also creates a group chat automatically in each user’s inbox, so that members can keep texting one another.

Facebook’s refinement to group video chats in Messenger comes as a similar feature has yet to debut in Apple’s FaceTime app. The long-requested, multi-person FaceTime call update is now being rumored for a potential launch within iOS 12 later this year, but Bloomberg has stated that it may not be ready for a debut in 2018.

If group video calls don’t make it into iOS 12, other improvements to FaceTime are rumored to be coming in the update this fall. Mainly, Apple is planning to integrate Animoji into FaceTime, allowing people to use the animated emoji characters when making a video call.

For Facebook, the company said that the new Messenger update will be available today on iOS and Android devices worldwide.

Tags: Facebook, Facebook Messenger
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US AG creates a new ‘Cybersecurity Task Force’

Days after the Mueller investigation revealed indictments against 13 Russian nationals for election tampering, US Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced a new Cybersecurity Task Force. Its marching orders are a bit vague — “canvass the many ways that the Department is combatting the global cyber threat” — but the AG’s first ask is for it to investigate efforts to interfere with US elections and infrastructure.

Members of the task force will come from various Justice Department entities and could extend to include reps from other federal agencies. Other tasks on its to-do list cover recent headline-grabbing incidents like mass thefts of personal information, violent ideologies spreading and recruiting over the internet or using tech to stymie law enforcement and massive computer attacks.

It’s difficult to guess what this group may achieve or identify as problems, but Sessions said in a statement that “The Internet has given us amazing new tools that help us work, communicate, and participate in our economy, but these tools can also be exploited by criminals, terrorists, and enemy governments…At the Department of Justice, we take these threats seriously. That is why today I am ordering the creation of a Cyber-Digital Task Force to advise me on the most effective ways that this Department can confront these threats and keep the American people safe.”

Source: DOJ

‘Angry Birds Champions’ lets players fling pheasants for real money

Angry Birds Champions is now available on iOS devices and through the developer’s website, allowing players to fling their feathered friends against precarious piles of pigs in a bid to win real money for the first time. The game is accessible through the WorldWinner iOS app or on WorldWinner.com, joining the studio’s other real-money tournament games like Wheel of Fortune, Solitaire, Scrabble and Trivial Pursuit.

“It’s really the original Angry Birds physics game — and obviously Rovio’s done a number of different derivatives using the iconography — but this is the core physics game of shooting birds and killing pigs,” WorldWinner boss Jeremy Shea told Engadget.

Angry Birds Champions is an officially licensed title, made in conjunction with Rovio. It uses an asynchronous multiplayer format: Someone pays to enter a tournament and completes one of the two modes, best-of-three or progression, and their highest or combined score is recorded. The game finds another similarly skilled player in the tournament and that person plays the same levels. Whoever ends up with the highest score wins the cash prize, and WorldWinner takes a little off the top of each match.

WorldWinner’s matchmaking system takes a number of factors into account, including how many games you’ve played, how well you’ve performed in specific tournaments, your win-loss ratio, and average or best scores.

These competitions are generally worth a few dollars each and cost less than a dollar to join. Shea wants to be clear that this isn’t gambling — WorldWinner has been building real-money tournament games for 18 years and it knows the laws inside and out. A handful of big-name games, including Star Wars: Battlefront II and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, have come under scrutiny in recent months over their use of loot boxes and other gambling-adjacent systems. WorldWinner argues games like Angry Birds Champions are skill-based competitions, eliminating the element of chance that would turn them into gambling.

Still, 10 states have regulations that make WorldWinner’s lawyers squirm, so cash tournaments aren’t available in those areas (Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Montana, South Carolina, South Dakota and Tennessee).

“We’re always in conversations with members of different states, and obviously there are players that want to play from certain states that we don’t allow and they’re disappointed when they find out,” Shea said. “But in terms of gambling laws and regulations on a state-by-state or country-by-country basis — we spend a considerable amount of money on attorneys and we’re absolutely in line with the regulations as they are today and will be tomorrow.”

Angry Birds Champions also isn’t trying to become the next big eSport — though Shea would forgive you for thinking so. Players do win real money by playing Angry Birds Champions, but it simply isn’t built to be a spectator sport.

“We clearly deliver competitions for money, from small two-player tournaments up to thousands of people participating,” Shea said. “We deliver the entry fee and the prize model that most of your eSports competition deliver. But… we’ve never been in the viewership model. So I think that’s the one area where we evolve our lingo from saying we are eSports to we are really on the edge of eSports.”

Angry Birds comes with a built-in player base, with 4 billion downloads (and at least one movie) since the franchise’s launch in 2009. Shea expects Angry Birds Champions to have tens of thousands of players, easily.

“That is one of reasons that we went with the partnership with Rovio, in particular at this stage of our development: In the past six months we have shifted our focus from being very committed to delivering a PC-based consumer experience where we’ve had our success for close to two decades, to trying to enter the mobile space,” Shea said. “Our expectation is that this week, we hit all of our launch targets and this will quickly scale to be one of our top-performing games, which would put it in the thousands of players playing in a given day.”

And that’s just on iOS — WorldWinner is working on an Android version of the game as well, though there’s no launch window just yet.

AI is making more realistic CG animal fur

Creating realistic animal fur has always been a vexing problem for 3D animators because of the complex way the fibers interact with light. Now, thanks to our ubiquitous friend artificial intelligence, University of California researchers have found a way to do it better. “Our model generates much more accurate simulations and is 10 times faster than the state of the art,” said lead author Ravi Ramamoorthi. The result could be that very soon, you’ll see more believable (and no doubt cuter) furry critters in movies, TV and video games.

A lot of fur rendering systems were designed for human hair, and that’s a problem. Fur fibers have a larger central section — aka, the medulla — that scatters light differently, giving a soft, yet glossy appearance. Current renderers don’t look at the medulla, but merely consider how light bounces from one fur fiber to the next. As a result, they have to do a lot of number-crunching and tend to be slow.

The UC researchers instead used a principal called subsurface scattering to see how light richocets around and through translucent fur medullas. To understand the principal, you can shine a smartphone’s flashlight through your finger in a dark room. “You will see a ring of light, because the light has entered through your finger, scattered inside and then gone back out,” the UC team explained.

Applying subsurface scattering to fur is a thorny mathematical problem, though, so the UC team turned to a neural network. After being trained on just a single scene, the AI was able to apply subsurface scattering to a variety of other scenes, including wolf, raccoon and hamster models.

The results are a clear improvement, and the technique works equally well for hair. The team is now shooting for real-time fur rendering, which could be extremely useful for game designers who want to introduce more realistic animals. Fur-covered Sonic or Pikachu, anyone?

Source: UC San Diego

‘Alto’s Odyssey’ Launches One Day Early on iOS and tvOS App Stores

Earlier in February, developer Snowman announced that “Alto’s Odyssey” would be launching on iOS and tvOS Thursday, February 22, but the game has appeared one day early on both App Stores and is available to download right now for $4.99 [Direct Link] (via TouchArcade). Alto’s Odyssey isn’t featured yet on the United States App Store, but a search for it on both iOS and tvOS should surface the correct game.

Originally set to debut in summer 2017, Alto’s Odyssey is the sequel to the original 2015 game “Alto’s Adventure” and keeps the endless runner gameplay that the original was known for while introducing new features, controls, and a new desert location. Both games feature a “one-touch trick system” that players use to control the main character to chain together combos and complete various goals.

If anyone has yet to play the original, Snowman said that Alto’s Odyssey is a standalone experience and doesn’t require knowledge of Alto’s Adventure. Other features of Alto’s Odyssey include:

– Explore Biomes. From the dunes, to the canyons, to the temples, explore a rich and diverse landscape, with each area boasting unique visuals and gameplay.
– Newfound heights. Discover secrets in the sky with hot-air balloons, moving grind rails, and wall riding.
– Meet Alto and friends. Unlock six unique characters, each with their own attributes and abilities.
– Zen Mode. Complete with its own serene soundtrack, this relaxing mode distills Odyssey down to its purest elements: no scores, no coins, and no power-ups. Just you and the endless desert.
– Photo Mode. From the pause screen, get behind the lens and take stunning photos of your trip through the desert. Pinch, swipe, pan and zoom to frame the ideal shot, and share them with friends and family.

Alto’s Odyssey is a universal app with iCloud support, so users can play the game on iPhone or iPad and have their progress synced across devices, even Apple TV. The game also supports a “purchase once, play forever” promise on its App Store description, and Snowman states that it has no ads or in-app purchases anywhere within the game. Those interested can purchase Alto’s Odyssey for $4.99 starting today [Direct Link].

Tag: Alto’s Odyssey
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