‘Wave’ ring is the latest to turn your hands into MIDI controllers

Ring-shaped music controllers aren’t anything new. IK Multimedia released the iRing back in 2014, and the Enhancia made its debut at CES this year. Now we’ve got the Wave, an adjustable MIDI controller ring that can adjust sounds and effects with gestures and taps. Genki Instruments has a working prototype of the device, and is looking to fund a final version on Indiegogo.

The device has been in development for the past three years in collaboration with design firm Anamaly and product development company Haltian. The final version looks slick and futuristic, with five controller buttons, haptic feedback and little lights to let you see what you’re controlling, from guitar effects to DJ filters to synthesizers. You can pan, tilt, roll and tap to adjust and generate sounds with Wave; it connects music-making apps on the desktop and mobile via Bluetooth. You can even connect Wave to a compatible Eurorack synth module with a provided adapter.

Wave has been tested with a wide variety of digital audio apps like Ableton Live, Logic Pro X, Pro Tools, Reaper, Bitwig, Studio One, FL Studio, Garage Band and G-Stomper Studio/Rhythm and even visual VJ software like VDMX5. Genki Instruments claims that Wave is water resistant and will last for four hours of continuous use. The usefulness to musicians seems clear; wearing the controller lets you play your instrument or tweak your software while gesturing to control various effects or sounds on the fly.

Via: Fact Mag

Source: Genki Instruments/Indiegogo

Motorola’s next Moto Mod may be a VR headset

New Moto Mods are becoming rather de rigueur lately, with tons of interesting if not completely practical gadgets made to snap onto the company’s compatible phones. Moto Z users have had keyboards, snap-on Polaroid photo printers, 360-degree cameras and Alexa speakers to add on to their phones. Now the company is reportedly set to release a VR rig as a Moto Mod. VentureBeat’s Evan Blass tweeted out what looks like a render of a new “Virtual Viewer” Moto Mod headset.

Details are scarce, and Motorola declined to comment when we reached out for more info. Still, it makes sense for the phone maker to join the mobile VR scene to compete with the likes of Samsung and Google, especially since they already have a system that only requires you to slide in your phone.

This is a hell of a Mod… pic.twitter.com/Mah61AYIZr

— Evan Blass (@evleaks) March 9, 2018

Source: Evan Blass/Twitter

MoviePass: The new face of unbridled data greed

In a presentation during the Entertainment Finance Forum last week, MoviePass CEO Mitch Lowe bragged to the attendees about his company’s app saying, “We know all about you.”

“We know your home address, of course; we know the makeup of that household, the kids, the age groups, the income,” he continued. Once more, we’re reminded that every app on our phones has the potential to pool various data on us, enough to paint a remarkably accurate portrait of our life. As if to drill that point home, Lowe added: “We watch how you drive from home to the movies. We watch where you go afterward.”

This wasn’t backstage bravado among peers, this was his keynote in front of an audience. A keynote titled, without one ounce of shame, a sliver of self-reflection or any indication he’d ever heard the word “consent” whispered on the wind: “Data Is the New Oil: How Will MoviePass Monetize It?”

How, indeed.

Perhaps no one told him about the backlash against the NSA over the past few years, where people were not so happy to find out about all that nonconsensual surveillance and stuff. Or he somehow missed how angry and freaked out Uber’s customers were after the company bragged about tracking people with its in-app, consent-free “God view” spying mode.

Or it might just be that the National Association of Data Mining App Psychopaths (not a real thing… we hope) forgot to tell him that the first rule of Scary Data-Clown Club is not to talk about it in public.

Anyway, everyone freaked out when actual human beings found out about his remarks.

With the sensitivity of a Facebook PR flack pretending that actually doing awful things to your users is just a temporary reputation issue, a MoviePass representative sent the following statement to press:

We are exploring utilizing location-based marketing as a way to help enhance the overall experience by creating more opportunities for our subscribers to enjoy all the various elements of a good movie night. We will not be selling the data that we gather. Rather, we will use it to better inform how to market potential customer benefits including discounts on transportation, coupons for nearby restaurants, and other similar opportunities.

Calm down, everyone. They say they won’t sell you. I mean, it. Your data. Not now. And definitely not in the way you make money from oil, which requires drilling first. They’re not drilling people. Maybe. But oil needs to be refined. Deals need to be made. You can’t just sell it. Plus, data is better than oil, which can be spilled in embarrassing tanker crashes with drunk sea captains. Data can’t be spilled and have to be scrubbed off birds. Unless you mean hacking, which is kind of like a spill. But let’s not mention that.

Anyway.

The MoviePass app gives its users “unlimited access to movies in theaters” for the monthly fee of $7.95 a month. Plus a $9.95 processing fee, and the data equivalent of your firstborn child, which won’t be sold. According to the MoviePass Privacy Policy, the company does also “supplement the personal information you provide with publicly available information about you as well as information from other sources.” Tres mysterious.

Interestingly, its policy states that your location is requested only once “when selecting a theater.”

Which is a little different than what MoviePass CEO Mitch Lowe was talking about.

But what can we do? Nothing, that’s what. This is normal. We are 10 years into living with phone apps that literally tell us one thing about our privacy and security, and arrogantly do something else when they feel like it. It’s how the app world works.

Case in point: Onavo Protect. Facebook’s app recently added a “Protect” button, compelling users to install Onavo Protect via the App Store. It’s a cute little VPN app for mobile devices that Facebook owns.

You’re not going to believe this (or maybe you will), but Onavo used to be a data-mining app. Researcher Will Strafach recently looked into the app to see how it ticks, and along the way, he revealed its history.

He wrote:

In April 2011, Onavo [is] positioned as a data-saving tool … (“We will not sell the data or introduce ads to Onavo”). In late 2012, initial citations attributable to “Onavo Insights” appear in the press, regarding app download and usage statistics.

In early 2013, Onavo Insights is publicly launched, enabling subscribers to find out market share, usage data, and Monthly Active Users for different iOS apps (This data is most certainly derived from analysis of Onavo user network traffic).

In summer of 2013, Onavo Acquisition Insights is publicly launched, enabling subscribers to attribute app downloads to specific methods of advertising (This data is also most certainly derived from analysis of Onavo user network traffic). In October 2013, Onavo is purchased by Facebook for an undisclosed sum, estimated to be between $100 million and $200 million.

Onavo’s data wasn’t for sale either! It was just like oil. Slippery yet profitable. This sounds like a false equivalency, but it’s not. Bear with me, I’m a million years old in internet years. Sex blogger grandma (me) is going to tell you a story.

When the general public started switching over to smartphones and the app ecosystem, I had been using a connected phone for years. I saw the way apps were taking over people’s experience of the internet — replacing it — and how the people making apps (mostly here in San Francisco, some in the circles I ran in) were greedy, dishonest, conservative and extremely entitled. I thought, once people understand how horribly these apps are spying on them and lying about it, they won’t suffer through this bullshit anymore.

And then everyone just went along with it. Major press outlets didn’t hold any of the app barons accountable. Also, everyone was either trusting, or arrogant, or naive, or just trapped when they needed a safe ride home and Uber was there.

But once the Pandora’s Box was opened, of what was really happening with apps data mining and collecting and spying on things we really don’t want them to, we were all suddenly citizens of a different world. One where no one was on our side, and the gods were capricious assholes, and awful things happen with our locations, our private moments and our identities, for no reason.

All of this, these egregious consent violations and the endless doublespeak statements about privacy and security when caught? It all happened while companies like Palantir and Google and Facebook gathered up the data and made it weaponizable. Psychopaths got very rich. Women, people of color, poor people and LGBTQ people were targeted online and doxxed with data collected by the offshoots of this industry — thanks to things like “people finder” websites. Then data collectors like Equifax were hacked because they were negligent, and real people got hurt, lost their identities.

Basically, the absolute worst happened.

So when fatcat CEOs of greedy, consent-violating apps like MoviePass brag about profiteering on our data oil, then try to backtrack when people take them at their word, we can’t be expected to take them seriously.

Because the word “privacy” in any app’s policy at this point is so cynical a euphemism that we can only say it now with a smirk. I mean obviously, they must be joking.

Images: Paul Thomas Anderson / Miramax (There Will Be Blood movie still); Getty Images for MoviePass (CEO Mitch Lowe)

Norm Macdonald is the latest to host a Netflix talk show

Netflix isn’t done with its talk show spending spree just yet. The service has ordered 10 episodes of Norm Macdonald Has A Show (E-I-E-I-O?), a guest-oriented talk show from its namesake Saturday Night Live veteran. There’s no mention of an air date, but Macdonald’s podcast co-host Adam Eget will serve as a sidekick, while fellow Netflix host David Letterman will act as an advisor. This has been in the works for a while, it seems: Macdonald had hinted at the Netflix deal in a Reddit AMA from late January.

Combined with earlier recruiting efforts (including two Daily Show alumni), it’s clear what Netflix is doing: it’s hoping to directly compete with the late night shows you find on conventional TV. Ideally, that keeps you coming back to Netflix on a regular basis instead of waiting for the next season of your favorite drama.

Source: Variety

MIT embarks on ambitious plan to build nuclear fusion plant by 2033

MIT announced yesterday that it and Commonwealth Fusion Systems — an MIT spinoff — are working on a project that aims to make harvesting energy from nuclear fusion a reality within the next 15 years. The ultimate goal is to develop a 200-megawatt power plant. MIT also announced that Italian energy firm ENI has invested $50 million towards the project, $30 million of which will be applied to research and development at MIT over the next three years.

Nuclear fusion offers quite a few benefits over other energy production methods, including nuclear fission. Nuclear fusion stands to be more efficient, cleaner and safer than other methods, but it has been rather hard to put into action. The process generates incredibly high temperatures and requires a lot of energy input — an amount that has outweighed outputs so far — and those issues have prevented nuclear fusion from becoming a viable energy source to date.

The extremely high temperatures require that magnetic fields, rather than solid materials, confine the hot plasma in which the fusion reactions take place. MIT and CFS plan to use newly available superconducting materials to develop large electromagnets that can produce fields four-times stronger than any being used now. The stronger magnetic fields will allow for more power to be generated resulting in, importantly, positive net energy. The method will hopefully allow for cheaper and smaller reactors. The research team aims to develop a prototype reactor within the next 10 years, followed by a 200-megawatt pilot power plant. “If MIT can do what they are saying — and I have no reason to think that they can’t — this is a major step forward,” Stephen Dean, head of Maryland-based advocacy group Fusion Power Associates, told Nature.

The team sees their work as being complementary to what will take place at the ITER tokamak fusion reactor currently being built in France. That project has attracted a lot of attention and funding, but it has also gone way over budget and has hit a few delays. It reached its construction halfway point last year — after beginning in 2013 — and those behind it are aiming to starting running experiments in the facility by 2025.

“This is an important historical moment: Advances in superconducting magnets have put fusion energy potentially within reach, offering the prospect of a safe, carbon-free energy future,” MIT President Rafael Reif said in a statement. “As humanity confronts the rising risks of climate disruption, I am thrilled that MIT is joining with industrial allies, both longstanding and new, to run full-speed toward this transformative vision for our shared future on Earth.”

Via: Gizmodo

Source: MIT

Trump’s video game meeting may not lead to any further action

Early this week, Trump at last announced that he would meet with leaders of the video game industry. Not to discuss the rising frustration with loot boxes, but to rehash the exhausted and research-debunked notion that playing games causes people to become more violent. Predictably, Trump invited zero scientists or respected researchers to the summit, instead stacking it with outspoken video game critics and a trio of Republican lawmakers. And surprising nobody, the hour-long meeting produced very few actionable results.

Trump opened the meeting with a highlight reel of clips from the last decade of gaming, ranging from goofy to excessively bloody violence. Some attendees didn’t expect any significant resolution, Glixel reported, and saw the meeting as an opening foray into a larger conversation…on gun violence in America. Critics of the industry called for regulations that would make it difficult for youths to buy violent games, and some asked Trump to widen the discussion to include violent movies and TV shows. But beyond sharing opinions during the closed-door summit, there was no commitment from attendees or the White House on concrete action.

Instead, it seemed a stage to reframe the post-Parkland debate around video games’ influence on school shootings. Which, again, is zero: Only one-eighth of the 41 school shooters surveyed by the US Secret Service in a 2004 review were interested in violent video games (twice as many liked violent movies or books, which was still only a quarter of that sample). More studies disproving the faulty link between violence and games can be found in Engadget’s long write-up on the topic here. Yet, the unsupported-by-science narrative prevailed at the summit:

“Today’s meeting was an opportunity to learn and hear from different sides about concerns and possible solutions to violence in schools,” Congresswoman Vicky Hartzler (R-MO) said in a prepared statement following the meeting, according to Glixel. According to reports (no press were allowed), Trump went around the table listening to various concerns from critics of the industry and opinions from video game company CEOs. The pro-industry Entertainment Software Association (ESA), also in attendance, released a statement after the meeting defending video games and politely denouncing the meeting’s premise:

“We welcomed the opportunity today to meet with the President and other elected officials at the White House. We discussed the numerous scientific studies establishing that there is no connection between video games and violence, First Amendment protection of video games, and how our industry’s rating system effectively helps parents make informed entertainment choices. We appreciate the President’s receptive and comprehensive approach to this discussion.”

This meeting rehashed the moral panic around video games that plagued the industry after the Columbine shootings in 1999 and, before that, in Congressional hearings back in 1994. That was when the ESA formed the Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB) to disclose objectionable material on game packaging, which forestalled Congressional calls for the government to regulate the video game industry.

Melissa Henson of the Parents Television Council said that yesterday’s summit was “respectful but contentious,” she told The Washington Post, and that her side of the debate emphasized that the “steady diet of media violence is having a corrosive effect on our culture.” Similarly, president of the Media Research Council Brent Bozell told Trump that the vidoe game industry should have much tougher regulation, and that violent games “needed to be given the same kind of thought as tobacco and liquor,” he remarked to The Washington Post.

Source: The Washington Post, Glixel

Despite layoffs, Motorola says Moto Z line is alive and well

There were rumors this week of a 50 percent reduction in Motorola’s Chicago workforce and that the Moto Z line was finished. Given that we’re still hearing about upcoming products for Moto Z phones like a VR headset Moto Mod, the news is confusing at the least. We reached out to parent company Lenovo, and a spokesperson confirmed that while there have been some layoffs, both rumors are incorrect.

“In late 2017, Lenovo announced a worldwide resource action that would occur over the next several quarters, and impacting less than two percent of its global workforce,” a Motorola spokesperson told Engadget. “This week’s employment reductions are a continuation of that process. We are reducing our Motorola operations in Chicago however this did not impact half of our workforce there and our Moto Z family will continue.”

Back in January, Motorola’s entire 2018 lineup was tipped in a series of leaks, including the next Z-series devices. If that info holds true, this year’s handset will feature a curved display and, of course, be a key vessel for all of those Moto Mods. Either way, we should find out soon enough what the company has planned for the immediate future.

Source: TheLayoff

We’re live from SXSW 2018!

We have arrived in Austin, Texas for the 2018 edition of SXSW, the festival that showcases some of the best things in the tech (interactive), film and music industries. This year, we’ll be taking a look at HBO’s Westworld installation here on the ground, which promises to be one of the most exciting events at the show. We’ll also attend panels featuring Apple’s Eddy Cue and YouTube’s CEO Susan Wojcicki, among others, as well cover new gadgets like Bose’s audio-focused augmented-reality glasses. You can keep up with all the news from SXSW by bookmarking this page here.

Netflix test turns kids into binge scouts, rewards TV time with badges

Netflix is currently testing a feature that lets kids collect “patches” for watching shows, Variety reports. Those included in the test see red locks on children’s shows that can get them a patch, which they can then earn by watching episodes of those titles. A Series of Unfortunate Events, Trolls: The Beat Goes On and Fuller House are among the titles through which viewers can earn patches. Netflix told us, “We are testing a new feature on select kids titles that introduces collectible items for a more interactive experience, adding an element of fun and providing kids something to talk about and share around the titles they love.”

The patches don’t actually get you anything — there’s no additional content to be gained from collecting them — and Netflix sees them more as a way to promote conversation and foster personal interactions between those watching the shows. But naturally, there are concerns that offering a sort of reward for watching TV isn’t good for children. Facebook has attracted similar concern recently over its Messenger Kids app, with advocacy groups speaking out over its encouragement of more screen time and social media engagement. Netflix is sure to see some pushback over its feature.

However, for now, patches are just a test and there’s no guarantee they’ll be rolled out. Netflix said, “We learn by testing and this feature may or may not become part of the Netflix experience.”

Via: Variety

New McLaren hybrid hypercar will be company’s fastest ever

By Antti Kautonen

We’ve reported earlier that the upcoming McLaren Ultimate Series “Hyper-GT” BP23 will be a seriously fast machine. Today, McLaren set a top speed target for it: The limited-edition hybrid hypercar will surpass the legendary McLaren F1 from the 1990s. That car reached the top speed of 243 mph, or 391 km/h; it appears the manufacturer wants the new car to hit or exceed 400 km/h. Maybe it’ll even top 250 mph. The indicated 243 mph speed illustrated in the teaser sketch is a nice touch.

The BP23 will hit the highest top speed of any McLaren yet. It will feature nods to the original McLaren F1 in several ways, including the centrally mounted driver seat flanked with passenger seats. That 106-unit production run also refers to the original F1 road car’s sales figure.

The finished vehicles will all be done to any specific customer’s taste, as they will be seen through by McLaren’s Special Operations division. McLaren is still keeping a few surprises to itself, as the actual top speed along with the BP23’s actual name will be revealed closer to the car’s unveiling. McLaren also hints the name will be something more special “rather than an alphanumeric nomenclature.”

McLaren Automotive today confirms that its forthcoming new ‘Hyper-GT ‘, codenamed #BP23, will achieve the highest top speed of any McLaren yet with the capability to exceed the 243mph peak speed of the legendary McLaren F1 road car. pic.twitter.com/rePHJkLCVJ

— McLaren Automotive (@McLarenAuto) March 9, 2018

This article originally appeared on Autoblog, the complete authority for news, reviews and car-buying research.