The $375 ‘Inside’ special edition features a RealDoll ‘creation’

Iam8bit, purveyors of gaming soundtracks on vinyl and other cool tchockes, is teaming up with RealDoll and developer Playdead for its next project. Details for the Inside special edition are scarce, but it’ll include a PlayStation 4 disc with the game, and Steam codes for Inside and Limbo. Oh, and it’ll cost $375. From the pre-order page: “Iam8bit x Playdead x RealDoll are collaborating on a mysterious collector’s edition for Inside. We will NOT tell you what it is. Maybe it’s what you’re thinking… maybe not. We can confirm that there are several items included, one of which is a PlayStation 4 game disc. The rest is up for speculation.”

The item will ship “when it’s done,” and its contents won’t be revealed until then. Pre-orders are open until June 8th and will not be accepted after that. Further down the page there’s another clue. “This edition weighs a surprising amount, hence associated shipping feed and tariffs.”

Spoilers for Inside reside below. You’ve been warned.

So, let’s do some speculating. The pre-order page has a GIF of a present box (above), wrapped in paper with what looks like the monster from the game’s ending. RealDoll is known for making lifelike human replicas, replete with the softest skin you’ll feel this side of the uncanny valley. It stands to reason that what’s in the box could be a replica of that creature.

How big is it? Will you be able to climb inside and freak out your friends and loved ones? Is the thing just going to be a giant lint magnet you can roll around in? It’s anyone’s guess at this point, but if you’ve got a few hundred bucks burning a hole in your checking account, pre-orders open at 10am Eastern on Thursday. We reached out for more information and were promptly told by an iam8bt spokesperson that any further details would spoil the mystery.

Source: iam8bit

Sony’s latest PS4 Pro bundle is an ode to ‘God of War’

If you were a fan of the original God of War, then chances are you’re pretty hyped about the reboot. If you’re planning on playing the Sony-exclusive game but haven’t picked up a PS4 yet, then you may want to check out the Limited Edition God of War PlayStation Pro bundle. This will launch on the game’s release date, April 20th, and retail for $400 in the US and $500 in Canada. You can pre-order it now.

The bundle will contain a customized PS4 Pro console, a matching Leviathan Gray DualShock wireless controller, a physical copy of the game and extra digital content. It’s a good looking console, and it’s hard to beat that price considering it matches the cost of the regular PS4 Pro without a game.

The road to God of War has been long. Sony announced almost two years ago that the stagnant franchise would receive a much-needed refresh in the form of a sequel. You can see a trailer for the game here; pre-orders for the game include a $130 collector’s edition, a $150 Stone Mason edition and a $70 digital deluxe edition, in addition to the regular ol’ game edition for $60, so clearly Sony is expecting a lot of interest.

Source: God of War

Amazon taps ‘BoJack Horseman’ duo for new animated series

Amazon hasn’t had much of an answer to Netflix’s numerous animated shows, but that should change in the near future — and it’s even ‘borrowing’ from Netflix in the process. The internet giant has ordered its first half-hour animated series, Undone, with BoJack Horseman alumni Raphael Bob-Waksberg and Kate Purdy at the helm. It’ll also have the executive production work of BoJack’s Noel Bright and Steven Cohen, with A Scanner Darkly’s Tommy Pallotta rounding things out.

The series will revolve around Alma (played by The Maze Runner’s Rosa Salazar, above), who discovers a “new relationship with time” after a near-fatal car crash and uses this to learn more about the truth behind her father’s death. Life in Pieces’ Angelique Cabral is also signing on as Alma’s sister. The show is characterized as a “dramedy,” so you can expect a somewhat more serious tone than BoJack’s tale of a washed-up anthropomorphic horse actor.

Undone will premiere on Prime Video sometime in 2019. That’s not exactly a timely response to Netflix (BoJack arrived in 2014), but it’s apparent that Amazon is eager to fill out its catalog and appeal to a wider audience than it has in the past.

Source: Variety

BlackBerry sues Facebook for violating messaging patents

BlackBerry has filed a lawsuit against Facebook for infringing the patent on its messaging technology in a Los Angeles Federal Court. The lawsuit calls out Facebook, WhatsApp as well as Instagram for their use of instant messaging. To be clear, the suit has been filed by BlackBerry and not TCL, the maker of BlackBerry-branded handsets since 2016.

Developing…

Source: Reuters

Apple Donates $250K to Sponsor ‘Innovation Zone’ in Accessibility-Focused Playground Coming to Sunnyvale

The Magical Bridge Foundation, which helps build playgrounds for children and adults with disabilities and special needs, this week announced that Apple will help fund the foundation’s latest playground, located in Sunnyvale, California’s Fair Oaks Park. Magical Bridge Foundation’s playgrounds are located in select communities in the Bay Area, including Mountain View, Morgan Hill, Palo Alto, and Redwood City.

Apple’s contribution to the playground will come in the form of a $250,000 donation and mark the company as a sponsor of an “Innovation Zone” section of the park. Magical Bridge Foundation describes this area as “a dynamic space within the Sunnyvale playground for people of all ages and abilities to meet, learn, explore, create and build new and diverse relationships.”

Clockwise from top left: The Innovation Zone, Kindness Corner, Playhouse + Playstage, and Tot Zone
Apple’s sponsored Innovation Zone is said to lie “at the heart” of the new playground’s leading edge concepts.

Capturing the innovative spirit of Silicon Valley, the Innovation Zone provides unique and interactive play experiences utilizing technology, art and design that stimulates the full array of human senses in an entirely new way.

“The dream to build magical spaces where people of all abilities can feel freedom of play has become a reality because companies like Apple and our other partners are so committed to this community, its residents and visitors,” Magical Bridge co-founder Olenka Villarreal said. “The joy is contagious. Magical Bridge Playgrounds are changing neighborhoods, cities, and soon, the country through truly inclusive play.”

Magical Bridge Foundation is still collecting contributions for the playground, and if it raises its goal of $3.3 million it will begin construction on the Sunnyvale location in fall 2018, with a public opening aimed for 2020. Other tech companies have also announced sponsored areas in the playground, including LinkedIn’s $150,000 sponsorship of the “Kindness Corner.” Other play zones, like a Tot Zone, Spin Zone, and Playhouse + Playstage, are still available for sponsorship.

Apple has long been a proponent of accessibility within its software and through the selling of hardware accessories in its online and retail stores. The company has annually celebrated events like Autism Acceptance Month and Accessibility Awareness Day, and in 2015 was honored as a recipient of a Helen Keller Achievement Award from the American Foundation for the Blind for the company’s accessibility efforts, particularly VoiceOver’s ability to give vision-impaired users access to iOS devices.

Tag: accessibility
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Twelve South’s Hardwood BookArc Möd Stand Now Compatible With 2016 and Newer MacBook Pro

Twelve South today announced that its BookArc möd stand is now compatible with MacBook Pro models released in 2016 and later.

The stand now ships with two interchangeable silicone inserts that can hold 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Pro models with Thunderbolt 3 ports, older 2012-2015 era MacBook Pro models, any 12-inch MacBook, and any MacBook Air.

BookArc is a popular stand for docking a MacBook vertically in closed-display mode. The aluminum version is already compatible with the 2016 and later MacBook Pro, and now the hardwood version is too after a much longer wait.

BookArc möd is on sale for $49.99, down from $59.99, via Twelve South’s online store. The aluminum BookArc is $49.99.

Related Roundup: MacBook ProTags: Twelve South, BookArcBuyer’s Guide: MacBook Pro (Don’t Buy)
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Apple Seeds Fourth Beta of watchOS 4.3 to Developers With Portrait Nightstand Mode, iPhone Music Controls

Apple today seeded the fourth beta of an upcoming watchOS 4.3 update to developers, two weeks after seeding the third beta and a little over two weeks after releasing watchOS 4.2.3, a minor update focusing on bug fixes.

Once the proper configuration profile has been installed from the Apple Developer Center, the new watchOS beta can be downloaded through the dedicated Apple Watch app on the iPhone by going to General –> Software update.

To install the update, the Apple Watch needs to have at least 50 percent battery, it has to be placed on the charger, and it needs to be in range of the iPhone it’s paired to.

watchOS 4.3 introduces support for Nightstand mode in portrait orientation, a feature that was previously only available when the watch was placed in landscape orientation. There’s also a new charging animation when the Apple Watch is placed on the charger, a new app loading animation, your Activity data is now displayed on the Siri watch face, and the battery complication more accurately reports battery life.

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The watchOS 4.3 update also brings the return of a much-desired feature that allows music playing on the iPhone to be controlled using the Music app on the Apple Watch.

In prior versions of watchOS, starting with watchOS 4, the Music app could only be used to control music playing on the watch itself. With the tvOS 11.3 beta installed, there’s also an option to control music playing on the Apple TV with the watch.

Apple plans to release watchOS 4.3 to the public in the spring, and until then, it will be limited to developers. Apple offers public betas of tvOS, iOS, and macOS, but watchOS betas are not available for public beta testers because there’s no way to revert to an earlier version of watchOS once an update is installed.

Related Roundups: Apple Watch, watchOS 4Buyer’s Guide: Apple Watch (Neutral)
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Biotech startup is creating genetically engineered ‘superblood’ to battle cancer

cgtoolbox / 123RF Stock Photo

Rubius Therapeutics, a biotech startup that is creating “superblood” to treat a range of conditions including cancer, has raised an extra $100 million to make its dream a reality. Previously, the company raised $120 million from investors, thereby bringing its total haul close to the one quarter of a billion dollars mark — all in less than one year.

Rubius is developing Red-Cell Therapeutics (RCT). These are genetically engineered, enucleated red cells which have been engineered to carry therapeutic proteins. Depending on the requirements, they can be loaded up with the necessary proteins to replace missing enzymes, kill tumors, and regulate the immune system for the battling of cancer and autoimmune diseases. They can then be transfused into patients to apply their healing powers.

A couple of things make the technology neat. For one thing, the fact that the cells have no nucleus means that they are not recognized by the immune system. Red blood cells are also transported all over the body, which will allow the “superblood” to reach whichever tissue or organ it needs to reach. Between these two abilities, the idea is that Rubius is creating an off-the-shelf solution that wouldn’t need to be personalized to each patient.

The extra $100 million in funding will help speed up the development of these genetically engineered red blood cells so that they can reach us, the end user, more rapidly.

“The addition of this funding further strengthens our foundation and enables us to accelerate the development of our first wave of RCT products that are targeting treatment of enzyme deficiencies, cancer, and autoimmune disease,” Torben Straight Nissen, president of Rubius Therapeutics, said in a statement. “We have assembled an extremely talented team of investors, leadership and advisers, which all share the long-term vision of bringing novel cellular therapies to patients.”

Here at Digital Trends, we’ve previously covered projects such as micro-scale robots which could be used as drug delivery systems inside the human body. The idea of being able to help treat diseases — potentially ranging from cancer to diabetes — using targeted drug delivery is certainly an exciting one. It’s great to see that investors clearly think so, too!

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‘Mind-reading’ A.I. produces a description of what you’re thinking about

Think that Google’s search algorithms are good at reading your mind? That’s nothing compared to a new artificial intelligence research project coming out of Japan, which can analyze a person’s brain scans and provide a written description of what they have been looking at.

To generate its captions, the artificial intelligence is given an fMRI brain scan image, taken while a person is looking at a picture. It then generates a written description of what they think the person was viewing. An illustration of the level of complexity it can offer is: “A dog is sitting on the floor in front of an open door” or “a group of people standing on the beach.” Both of those turn out to be absolutely accurate.

“We aim to understand how the brain represents information about the real world,” Ichiro Kobayashi, one of the researchers from Japan’s Ochanomizu University, told Digital Trends. “Toward such a goal, we demonstrated that our algorithm can model and read out perceptual contents in the form of sentences from human brain activity. To do this, we modified an existing network model that could generate sentences from images using a deep neural network, a model of visual system, followed by an RNN (recurrent neural network), a model that can generate sentences. Specifically, using our dataset of movies and movie-evoked brain activity, we trained a new model that could infer activation patterns of DNN from brain activity.”

Before you get worried about some dystopian future in which this technology is used as a supercharged lie detector, though, Kobayashi points out that it still a long way away from real-world deployment. “So far, there are not any real-world applications for this,” Kobayashi continued. “However, in the future, this technology might be a quantitative basis of a brain-machine interface.”

As a next step, Shinji Nishimoto, another researcher on the project, told Digital Trends that the team wants to use it to better understand how the brain processes information.

“We would like to understand how the brain works under naturalistic conditions,” Nishimoto said. “Toward such a goal, we are planning to investigate how various forms of information — vision, semantics, languages, impressions, etcetera — are encoded in the brain by modeling the relationship between our experiences and brain activity. We also aim to investigate how multimodal information is related to achieve semantic activities in the brain. In particular, we will work on generating descriptions about what a person thinks.”

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With a neat physics trick, this desk toy levitates water droplets in midair

Whether it is gravity-defying phone chargers or human-floating tractor beams, we’re suckers for levitating technologies. A new Kickstarter campaign therefore hits our sweet spot with an “executive novelty” (read: a high-priced desk toy) that levitates water droplets entirely for your viewing pleasure.

Called LeviZen, the retro-styled device itself is crafted out of high grade walnut wood and precision-machined aluminum with the necessary audio technology to float drops of liquid using high frequency sound waves not audible to regular ears. It also boasts some in-built LEDs to make sure the water droplets are properly illuminated so as to look their best. No, it doesn’t have any practical applications, but it certainly promises to be an attention-grabbing conversation starter.

Unlike the majority of levitating gadgets we’ve written about in the past, LeviZen doesn’t use magnetic levitation to achieve its effect, due to the fact that this would not work with a liquid like water. Instead, it opts for sound-based acoustic levitation, which adds an unusual element to a product that’s joining a crowded levitating marketplace.

“With LeviZen, we want to bring the ability to levitate liquids by acoustic levitation to the masses,” a spokesperson for Simplistyk told Digital Trends. “Acoustic levitation is a complicated phenomenon, but to explain it in simple words, it is achieved by having two inaudible sound sources facing each other and outputting the same frequency at each other, which causes the waves to collide and form a standing wave. [As a result], we get the stationary nodes with high amplitude waves above and under them. This causes water to be trapped in the node sections.”

As with any crowdfunding campaign, there are risks attached to backing LeviZen. If you do fancy adding an extra gadget to your home, though, you can pledge money for a unit on Kickstarter. The inventors have already more than doubled their $15,000 funding target, with more than 40 days still remaining on the clock as of this writing.

The price set for a single unit is $199, which includes the LeviZen Liquid Levitating Machine, a power adapter with both U.S. and international plugs, and a custom liquid dispenser. Shipping is set for July 2018.

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