Ultra HD group outlines next generation of 4K TV broadcasts

The concept of 4K TV broadcasting is only just getting off the ground, but its overseers are already planning for what comes next. The Ultra HD Forum has published its first “Phase B” guidelines detailing what companies should aim for with future 4K broadcast tech. Not surprisingly, high frame rates should play a major role — the group is hoping for 100FPS and 120FPS video (depending on the region) with a fallback for 60FPS. It’s also pushing for dynamic HDR video through formats like Dolby Vision and SL-HDR, while Dolby AC-4 and MPEG-H would provide audio that could adapt from elaborate 3D sound setups to a plain set of headphones.

All these additions are going to hike bandwidth demands, but the Forum is betting on Content Aware Encoding (where encoders reduce data use in relatively stationary scenes) to lower the requirements. Providers and broadcasters that can already handle 4K TV might not have to plan another upgrade just to adopt high frame rate video, especially if their content involves a lot of still shots (think golf or talk shows).

This is a set of guidelines, so it’s going to be a while before you see TV providers and equipment makers rolling out the hardware and services needed to make this happen. Your brand new 4K set won’t be obsolete for a while yet. However, the Forum’s criteria gives you an idea of what you can anticipate in the years to come.

Via: BusinessWire

Source: Ultra HD Forum

What is ‘Soap Opera Effect’ in TV and how to turn it off

LCD TV

You just got a new TV, got it all set up, and excitedly fired it up for the first time. But suddenly, disappointment. The picture looks funny. Sitcoms and dramas look “too real.” Movies appear as if they were shot on an early 2000s camcorder. What is wrong with your new TV?! Don’t sweat it. It isn’t 4K resolution, HDR, or even the panel technology in the TV. What’s more, it’s extremely easy to fix.

What you’re witnessing is actually just a picture setting that creates a phenomenon commonly known as the “Soap Opera Effect.” Below, we’ll tell you what it is, how it works, and most importantly, how to turn it off.

Understanding the Soap Opera Effect

From the way people talk about it, you might think the Soap Opera Effect is some sort of bug, but it’s actually a purpose-built feature found in many modern TVs. It goes by many names, as we’ll detail later, but the technology behind it is known as motion interpolation, or more simply, motion smoothing. While it is a feature deliberately added to most modern LCD/LED TVs, it actually arose as a way to solve a problem, not create one.

Unlike older CRT and plasma TVs, LCD displays have problems with motion blurring. Some are more sensitive to it than others, but when an LCD TV has to display fast motion — quick-moving sports or video games, for example — the blur can be excessive, obscuring image detail. To help combat this problem, LCD TV manufacturers started using displays with higher refresh rates, moving from native 60Hz refresh rate used in older TVs to more modern 120Hz panels. Since TV isn’t delivered at this frame rate, though, motion smoothing came along as a way to “fake” a higher frame rate by inserting images in between the actual 30 or 60 frames per second that come from your cable box, game console, or antenna. These new images are created when your TV analyzes the picture and digitally guesses at what new images could be inserted. This is called frame interpolation, and it’s even used on some OLED TVs.

Motion smoothing works fine for sports programming and video games because of the way that content is recorded and/or produced, but we’re actually used to seeing lower frame rates in many TV shows and movies, most of which are at 24 frames per second. This is why people were unnerved watching The Hobbit at 48 frames per second as opposed to the 24fps we’ve been seeing from film reels for decades, later mimicked by digital cameras and projectors. Many people who saw the film thought it looked unnatural, and frequently referred to it as looking too real. Sound familiar? What’s more, showing 24fps content with frame interpolation for 120Hz displays messes with the cadence, as it’s adding in frames that never existed. It is literally fake and removes the judder between frames we actually expect to see. That’s why it can be so annoying.

That said, motion smoothing is not always a bad thing.

The benefits of motion smoothing

As mentioned above, motion smoothing can be great for watching sports and video games, as it leads to smoother looking action. As a matter of fact, as long as the Soap Opera Effect doesn’t bother you (some people are more sensitive to it than others) you may well find it preferable for sports.

Not everyone is bothered by motion smoothing, either, and some people even like it for watching TV shows, depending on how cinematically they’re shot. There are even some people, rare though they may be, who prefer watching movies with motion smoothing turned on. Then, there are people who — for one reason or another — simply don’t notice it. If you’re reading this article and wondering why you’ve never seen this so-called Soap Opera Effect, you may be one of them, and that’s OK too.

If you don’t notice motion smoothing, or if you happen to prefer it, then, by all means, leave it on. Motion smoothing doesn’t damage your eyes or anything like that (as much as those who are bothered by it might believe otherwise). If, on the other hand, you can stand it, here’s how to turn it off.

Kill the smoothing

In virtually all cases, all you need to do is adjust one setting on your TV and the Soap Opera Effect will be long gone. The hardest part will be finding exactly what that setting is called then making sure it’s disabled for all sources.

The name game

Every TV manufacturer seems to use its own term for motion smoothing. LG calls it TruMotion, Samsung calls it Auto Motion Plus, Sony calls it MotionFlow. Outside of a few edge cases, the setting for your TV probably has the word “motion” somewhere in the name. Two notable exceptions are Hisense, which calls its motion smoothing UltraSMR.

The next step is to find the setting on your TV. It’s almost certainly under the picture settings, but exactly where it’s located is going to change from manufacturer to manufacturer. You might even have a dedicated button to turn motion smoothing on or off on your remote, but with the general trend of simplifying TV remotes, this likely won’t apply if you’ve got a newer TV.

To find motion smoothing, you’ll need to go in the Settings menu and find the Picture settings sub-menu. In many cases, motion smoothing will be listed toward the bottom, after you’ve passed more traditional settings like Brightness, Contrast, and Sharpness. In some cases you may have to go into a separate settings section, sometimes called Advanced Picture Settings or similar.

Some TVs only use motion smoothing in certain picture modes, so it’s possible that your TV might use it in the Sports or Vivid picture setting, but automatically turn it off in the Cinema setting to avoid the Soap Opera Effect. This can make things easier, but if you’re the type that likes to adjust your own TV settings for the best possible picture for your environment, you’ll need to hunt down the setting and turn it off.

In addition, if you’re using a smart TV’s on-board apps, your adjusted Picture setting may not apply to streaming content on apps like Netflix or Hulu. In this case, you may have to once again turn off the setting while inside the app. In some cases you may find a “Global” option for all settings adjustments, which we recommend, as it should apply any settings you make across all sources.

Clean the blur, lose the soap

So you’ve gotten rid of the dreaded Soap Opera Effect, but now you’re finding things look a little blurrier than they used to. For some TVs, this is just a trade-off and you’ll have to deal with it. Others, however, especially on the higher end, offer blur-reducing technologies that don’t rely on motion smoothing, so you can have the best of both worlds. In a nutshell, the more settings your TV offers, the higher the chances that you’ll be able to reduce blur and judder (a stuttering effect most noticeable in camera pans) without dealing with unpleasant side effects. In some cases, turning the motion smoothing down to a lower level will get rid of most of the Soap Opera Effect, and offer better motion for just the right balance.

Are you reading this as part of your research for buying a new TV? Make sure to take a look at our TV buying guide and our list of the best TVs you can buy.

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How to build a cheap VR-ready PC

Bill Roberson/Digital Trends

It’s been a couple years since the VR renaissance kicked off in earnest, and things are looking up for VR. The HTC Vive and Oculus Rift are both close to releasing their next-gen hardware, Sony’s PlayStation VR offers an excellent entry point for console-gamers, and there are hundreds of VR titles on the Steam store alone. VR is growing, and it’s not going anywhere, it’s certainly proved to be more than just a fad. But there are still some steep barriers to entry keeping interested enthusiasts from taking the plunge.

The biggest barrier is a simple one: Price. PC gaming is an expensive hobby, and as the $800-for-just-the-headset Vive Pro illustrates, VR gaming is even more expensive. But it doesn’t have to be. Headsets are cheaper than ever, not counting the Vive Pro, and you don’t need a monster PC just to enjoy a little VR. Once you get past the sticker shock of picking up a headset, the rest of the hardware you’ll need for a basic VR rig is relatively inexpensive, with one major exception.

We won’t go through the step-by-step process of actually piecing your system together, but check out our suggestions below to see what you need to get started in PC-based VR.

Bare bones

First off, let’s look at the bare minimum you’re going to need for your VR build. We’re going to try and stay away from specific pricing for this guide, since hardware prices go up and down so frequently, but luckily VR headset prices are pretty static. The HTC Vive starts at $500, and the Oculus Rift starts at $400 — and both include touch controllers.

We’ve reviewed both headsets, and even though the HTC Vive offers a better room-scale VR experience, the Oculus Rift’s touch controllers and overall less-expensive package make it the obvious choice for our build here. Both headsets also have the same minimum spec requirements, so the following suggestions should apply regardless of which you go for.

Next we’re going to need a PC, and here’s where things get tricky. Should you go for a pre-built machine or build one yourself? That’s not an easy question to answer, especially right now, so let’s just look at what hardware you’re definitely going want to look for no matter which path you take.

The most important part of your VR rig, next to your VR headset, is going to be the graphics card. This is the component that does most of the heavy lifting when you’re playing games in or out of VR. It’s also going to be the most expensive component other than the headset. Right now, the graphics card market is experiencing a shortage, so graphics cards are more expensive than they should be — you should carefully weigh which one you want to go with. We benchmarked a handful of high-end, mid-range, and entry-level graphics cards with VRMark to help you decide.

Usually when we put together a performance guide we try to stick with actual in-game performance, but VR is a special case. VR games aren’t designed with ultra-fast framerates in mind, they just need to maintain 90 FPS in both of the head-mounted displays inside your VR headset. That’s because the refresh-rate of their internal displays is typically locked to 90 Hz. VR games and experiences will do whatever they can to maintain a constant 90 FPS to keep things looking smooth. Spiking too high or too low an affect the experience in unpleasant ways. Usually some plain old nausea. So let’s look at the numbers.

Each score here represents a graphics card’s performance in the VR benchmarks. The Orange Room is the easiest benchmark, the Cyan Room is the intermediate benchmark, and the Blue Room is the most demanding. What we’re looking for is a graphics card that performed well in the Orange Room, and got a decent score in the Cyan Room. Those two benchmarks best represent the entry level and mid-range graphics we’re going for. In a perfect world, we’d just recommend the graphics card that performed the best, but this isn’t a “how to build the most expensive VR rig possible” guide. Frugality is a concern here.

For reference, a score of 5,000 in the Orange Room is considered a passing grade for most VR experiences, for the more demanding Cyan Room a passing score is 3,088, and for the high-end 5K Blue Room a passing score is just 1,082. We’re looking for a couple graphics cards that achieve at least 5,000 in the Orange Room, and come close to passing in the Cyan Room.

Looking at our results here, that means the cards we’d recommend are the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060, AMD Radeon RX 570, and RX 580. All three of these graphics cards achieved passing grades in the Orange Room, and Cyan Room. The GTX 1060 and RX 580 passed all three benchmarks so they should be our top contenders.

Now, let’s talk price. A quick Google search returns some wildly different prices for these two graphics cards, and you’re probably going to see some fluctuation day-to-day, and based on your location. For instance, at the time of writing, we’re seeing prices in the $350 to $390 range for the GTX 1060, and $400 to $460 for the RX 580 — all at NewEgg. Doing the same search in just a few days might return wildly different results. Like we mentioned, the GPU market is suffering a shortage right now so prices are a bit complicated.

Your CPU and RAM are also important, but with regard to both of these components you should look at how to prevent bottlenecks. Having a 32GB of RAM and a top-of-the-line AMD Ryzen Threadripper isn’t going to have as big an impact on your performance as having a capable GPU will. For your CPU and RAM you’re going to want to cleave pretty close to the hardware recommendations for the Oculus Rift. That means, at least a 7th-generation Intel Core i5 processor — something like an i5-7500 — or an Intel Core i3-8100, which is roughly equivalent to Oculus’ recommended processor, the i5-4590. Plus, at least 8GB of RAM, though bumping that up to 16GB in the future wouldn’t be a bad idea.

For the Core i3-8100 processor you’re probably looking at about $112, and maybe $70 to $100 for the RAM. But, as we mentioned, PC component pricing is a bit complicated at the moment. That’s why we need to make a rather large caveat before we go further.

Buy, don’t build

Bill Roberson/Digital Trends

That’s right. Due to the current state of GPU prices, you may want to consider buying a system with the GPU you want and upgrading other components later. Hear us out. Most PC manufacturers out there all offer a desktop computer with the hardware we’d recommend at a better price than you’re likely to get buying the components yourself — at least right now. Dell and Asus, in particular, have affordable systems that meet our criteria.

Manufacturers can benefit from wholesale prices, so what they paid for the right GPU — an RX 580 or GTX 1060 — is likely less than what you’d pay at a retailer like NewEgg. The Asus G11CD for instance, starts at $1,000 and features a GTX 1060, a 7th-generation Intel i5 processor, 8GB of RAM, and 1TB of hard drive space. It’s a bit expensive, but it’s the whole package. For a clean $1,400 you have your VR rig, your headset, and you’re good to go. If that’s still a little too expensive, there are other options, let’s take a look at them.

The Dell Inspiron 5680 gaming desktop is an appealing alternative. Starting at $750, you get a GTX 1060, an 8th-generation Intel Core i3 processor, 8GB of RAM, and 1TB of hard drive space. Looking at the recommended specs for most VR games, you might notice something amiss with this option though: Recommended specs include an Intel Core i5-4590 or equivalent. That’s just the thing, the 8th-generation i3-8100 is equivalent to the i5-4590 in every way that matters, meaning it’s a killer choice for VR.

Looking at current GTX 1060 prices, getting this exact build below $850 is difficult without seriously skimping on important components — like the power supply, case, or RAM. But if you’re good at keeping an eye on sales, and you really want to build a VR rig yourself, both of these desktops serve as excellent templates to build off of. Don’t go lower than a GTX 1060, or an RX 580, pick up at least 8GB of RAM, and try to get your hands on one of Intel’s latest Core i3 processors. That should serve as a good foundation for your entry-level VR PC.

An inconvenient truth

As we mentioned, pricing is the biggest problem you’re likely to encounter putting together a VR-ready PC right now. Putting one together on your own, you’re going to end up paying more than you should for a decent graphics card — and that’s the one component you really can’t skimp on. Your best choice right now is probably going with one of these desktop options or waiting out the market — maybe prices will go down once Nvidia finally releases their cryptocurrency-centric cards, but we won’t know for sure until that actually happens.

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Looking for a good read? Here are the best, most eye-opening books about tech

Sometimes it’s sensible to put down the gadgets and pick up a good old-fashioned book — to read about the latest gadgets, of course. But with so many tech-themed books around, which should you check out first?

Whether it’s finding a thought provoking tome to take on your next vacation or selecting the right gift for your geeky significant other, here are our picks for the best tech books available right now.

iGen: Why Today’s Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy — and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood — and What That Means for the Rest of Us

What has happened to the first generation who grew up with always-on connectivity and smartphones? That’s the broad premise of American psychologist Dr. Jean Twenge’s latest book, which acts as a survey of the so-called “iGen” or Generation Z: the kids born around the turn of the millenium.

While tech and its more damaging aspects is a theme that runs throughout iGen, however, (an excerpt published in The Atlantic was titled “Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?”) this isn’t a polemic, and nor is it narrow focused. Instead, Twenge examines everything from iGen’s attitudes to work, life goals, development, relationships and politics: much of which winds up being filtered through their constant use of screens. If you’ve ever read Sherry Turkle’s books (a nice companion piece for iGen may be her 2011 book Alone Together), you’ll be right at home with Twenge’s work.

Although other books on this list focus on tech’s innovators and the business strategies of its movers-and-shakers, iGen looks at those who use its technologies every day. And how they’re changing the world as a result.

Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley

Antonio García Martínez is a previous advisor to Twitter, product manager at Facebook, Goldman Sachs employee and startup founder and CEO. Those credentials make him sound like your typical tech business strategy author, ready to impart some gems of wisdom about how to make it in Silicon Valley — and how the tech bigwigs could be doing a little bit better if they’d only listen to his advice.

In fact, Chaos Monkeys is a riotous portrait of life in the tech trenches, complete with crazy anecdotes and an outsider’s cynicism regarding an industry which is often more about luck than skill. If you enjoy TV’s Silicon Valley and want to read the real thing, this should certainly be on your list.

Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future

We’ve done our best to avoid overloading this list with tech biographies since, chances are, they’re the ones you’ve already read. After all, what self-respecting geek didn’t find a copy of Walter Isaacson’s colossal Steve Jobs biography under their Christmas tree back in 2011?

We’re including one recent tech bio, however, and that’s Ashlee Vance’s brilliant biography of Space X and Tesla (and a growing assortment of other companies) founder and CEO Elon Musk. As perhaps the most fascinating entrepreneur working today, Musk has lived an amazing life and reinvented more industries than the most of us could hope to have a halfway detailed knowledge of.

The fact that Vance enjoyed great access to Musk and other tech heavy-hitters makes this an authoritative entry on our list.

What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry

Steve Jobs liked to sometimes style himself as a hippy, talking about dropping acid, despite being a ruthless capitalist who wasn’t always the most “peace and love” guy around. If you ever wanted to understand where this conflation of hippy idealism and tech innovation comes from, check out John Markoff’s brilliant 2005 book, What the Dormouse Said.

It deals with the pre-Jobs Silicon Valley generation, who experimented with all kinds of psychedelics, while dreaming utopian dreams about reclaiming computers from the military-industrial complex — and helped invent the modern tech industry in the process. It’s rare that you read a book that claims to be a “secret history” of a subject you know well, and manages to surprise you on almost every page. This is one such book.

The Soul of a New Machine

Do you remember the Data General Eclipse MV/8000? No, chances are that you don’t. But that doesn’t matter. Tracy Kidder’s 1981 Pulitzer Prize-winning non-fiction book could very well be the greatest piece of tech reportage ever published.

It follows the challenges of Data General Corporation’s attempts to design and build what was then its next-generation computer. The book follows the work of many of the folks who worked on the computer to design and debug it en route to completion. It makes no difference that the machine itself is now many, many generations outdated, or that Data General Corporation has been dead and buried since 1999.

With the possible exception of Steven Levy’s brilliant Insanely Great (about the making of the original 1984 Macintosh 128K), this is the best narrative history of a computer’s creation from start to finish — complete with all the triumph and frustration that entails.

Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies

Probably the hardest book on this list to read, Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom’s 2014 book Superintelligence still manages to be immensely rewarding and provocative. It hypothesizes that, at the point at which machine brains surpass human brains in terms of general intellect, humanity will be overtaken as the dominant life on Earth.

That sounds like science fiction, but Bostrom breaks down a number of the big advances in artificial intelligence, and argues his case convincingly. Not always a fun read (both in form and the warning of its subject matter), this may nonetheless be the single most important book on this list — particularly as we navigate the challenges of the years to come.

Machine, Platform, Crowd: Harnessing Our Digital Future

MIT researchers Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson previously wrote the excellent book The Second Machine Age, painstakingly detailing how modern technology is changing business, work, and the economy.

Their latest book, Machine, Platform, Crowd picks up where that last title left off. They examine three trends — machine intelligence, products and platforms, and the ability to harness the crowd — and make a case for how these are shaping life as we know it. McAfee and Brynjolfsson have a great understanding of technology, and a good knowledge of history, which informs their work.

If you’re looking for a business primer on life in 2018, this should be your starting point.

Future Crimes: Everything Is Connected, Everyone Is Vulnerable and What We Can Do About It

As a former FBI futurist and current cybercrime consultant, author Marc Goodman is the perfect guide to the dark side of technology. This lengthy, but consistently compelling book covers a myriad of threats that we face in today’s hyper-connected world — from cyberattacks targeting companies and online identity theft to hacking smart devices and, yes, the ultra relevant topic of digital surveillance.

Highly readable, full of surprising tidbits, and with some practical advice thrown in for good measure, Future Crimes is a tech book which deserves a place on everyone’s bookshelf.

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‘PUBG’ moves beyond battle royale with War Mode

The PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds team is now clearer about their plans to add game modes beyond the signature battle royale and zombie games. The developer has revealed that it’s experimenting with a War Mode that behaves more like the conventional deathmatches in other games rather than PUBG’s last-one-standing formula. You get a submachine gun right off the bat, and it’s not over when you die — teams keep respawning until one of them reaches 80 points through a combination of kills, knockdowns and revives. It shouldn’t be as frustrating for rookies (who may die seconds into a battle royale if they’re not careful), and could be faster-paced given that players won’t have to scramble for guns to start fighting.

War Mode is only available for custom servers (which can only be created by PUBG Partners on Windows PCs at the moment), but there are plans to bring it to the public through Events.

As for Xbox One players? There’s some news for you, too. PlayerUnknown himself (aka Brendan Greene) and Microsoft’s Larry “Major Nelson” Hryb have confirmed that the Xbox One version of PUBG will finally get the game’s second map, Miramar, in May. This won’t necessarily be good news to everyone (critics have argued that Miramar’s expansive desert landscape leads to too many sniper battles), but it’s good news if you’ve grown bored of playing on Erangel and wish you had the variety of your Windows counterparts. Not that the parity will last for long when the smaller Savage map is right around the corner.

ICYMI: During our #PAXEast @Xbox Live Session with @deadmau5, @PLAYERUNKNOWN and @majornelson shared that Miramar is coming to Xbox One in May. More information coming soon. pic.twitter.com/6CdBRcKrn1

— PLAY BATTLEGROUNDS (@PUBG) April 7, 2018

Via: PC Gamer

Source: PUBG Forums, Play Battlegrounds (Twitter)

‘Ghost Recon Wildlands’ is getting a ‘Splinter Cell’ crossover

Ubisoft’s latest bid to keep Ghost Recon Wildlands in the spotlight: bring in one of the Tom Clancy universe’s other stars. The developer has teased “The Call,” a special mission that appears to bring in Splinter Cell’s legendary protagonist, Sam Fisher (apparently voiced by original actor Michael Ironside). You’ll get full details on April 9th, but there are already hints that the Ghosts and Fisher will team up to tackle a situation involving a leak at the CIA.

The mashup would represent a revival of sorts for Splinter Cell. The last full game in the series, 2013’s Blacklist, sold relatively poorly (Ubisoft had expected 5 million sales, but sold just 2 million in its first few months). This is clearly an attempt to keep the franchise in gamers’ minds and prime them for the potential of a new game. Ubisoft chief Yves Guillemot has not-so-subtly hinted that his company was “not forgetting Splinter Cell” — we’d expect a lot more than a Wildlands collaboration in the years ahead.

Source: Ubisoft (YouTube)

A luxury space hotel is now taking reservations — if you’ve got $10 million

Orion Span

Looking for accommodations that are out of this world? Then you’ll be happy to hear that Houston-based startup Orion Span has plans for an extraterrestrial luxury space hotel that it hopes to launch in 2021 and have ready for occupancy the following year. The announcement was made recently at the Space 2.0 Summit in San Jose, California.

The modular hotel, dubbed “Aurora Station,” will house six people at a time, as well as two crew members, while orbiting 200 miles high and circling the Earth every 90 minutes. It’s not a destination for the budget traveler, however — wealthy space tourists will need to pony up $9.5 million per person, or about $791,666 per night, for a 12-night stay. Room service and a minibar are probably not included.

“We’re selling the experience of being an astronaut,” CEO Frank Bunger told Bloomberg. “You reckon that there are people who are willing to pay to have that experience.”

Potential guests will need to undergo a three-month training regimen prior to launch, beginning with online courses and progressing to contingency training in Houston. The company says it has “taken what was historically a 24-month training regimen to prepare travelers to visit a space station and streamlined it to three months, at a fraction of the cost.”

The spacecraft itself will be approximately 34 feet long and 14 feet wide, or about the size of a private jet. Guests will be able to experience zero gravity, watch the sun rise 16 times per day, participate in research experiments, and even kick back in a virtual reality holodeck.

Several companies have expressed interest in plans for space tourism, so hotels in orbit can’t be too far off. Orion Span has no contract yet with a launch provider, leading to questions about the aggressive timeline of the venture. Analysts suggested to Bloomberg that the announcement could be an effort to attract publicity and funding, rather than an outline of a realistic time frame.

Executives at the company are former NASA employees who worked on the International Space Station. Bunger said the Aurora Station design will work with current launch configurations such as those used by SpaceX. He also suggested the possibility of partnering with a government space agency.

The company didn’t disclose how much it’s planning to raise for the Aurora Station project, but Bunger predicted that costs will decline rapidly in the near future. “Everybody’s forecasting that they’re going to fall,” he added. “Almost every week, there’s another rocket launch company that’s starting up with a new way to get to orbit cheaper, faster, better.”

You can reserve your spot now by making a fully refundable $80,000 deposit on the company’s website.

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Documentary ‘Do You Trust This Computer?’ free to stream courtesy of Elon Musk

A new documentary from the director of Who Killed the Electric Car? is now available to stream for free this weekend, courtesy of entrepreneur Elon Musk. Do You Trust This Computer? explores the rise of artificial intelligence in all aspects of modern society, and features commentary from industry figures such as Stanford University professor Jerry Kaplan, director Johnathan Nolan, and journalist John Markoff. The film premiered recently at the Laemmle’s Monica Film Center in Los Angeles.

“[Director] Chris [Paine] and his team have done an amazing job with this movie. It’s a very important subject that will affect our lives in ways we can’t even imagine — some scary, some good. It’s a subject that I feel we should be paying close attention to,” said Musk in an announcement. “I think it’s important that a lot people see this movie, so I’m paying for it to be seen to the world for free this weekend.”

Nothing will affect the future of humanity more than digital super-intelligence. Watch Chris Paine’s new AI movie for free until Sunday night at https://t.co/WehHcZX7Qe

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 6, 2018

Musk, who has a rather dark outlook on the future of artificial intelligence, is one of the many prominent figures interviewed by director Chris Paine. He cautions that evil tyrants of the past were limited by the fact they were human, a problem not shared by intelligent supercomputers. “You would have an immortal dictator from which we can never escape,” he says in the film.

Science fiction has certainly embraced that philosophy, as some of the most sinister villains in the genre have been artificial intelligent entities run amok.

Musk says that we need to assimilate machine learning before we get overtaken by it. That’s the premise behind Neuralink, a startup venture that wants to implant chips in people’s brains.

Nolan, one of the creators of HBO’s Westworld, has a more nuanced take on the subject. When Nolan shared the stage with Musk at a South by Southwest Q&A session last year, he said some of Musk’s fears were overblown, and he had no plans for a chip implant. “I’m keeping my brain air-gapped,” Nolan quipped.

After the free premiere weekend, the film will be available to purchase or rent at the company’s website, as well as through various streaming video providers.

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Homeland Security database would track bloggers, social media

Fears about the potential effects of propaganda and fake news remain high, and American officials are determined to keep track of media outlets in a bid to curb these misinformation campaigns. The Department of Homeland Security has put out a call for companies that could create a database tracking over 290,000 “media influencers” around the world, including online news outlets, bloggers and prominent social network accounts. The system would identify contributor details (such as contact info and their employers), and would allow searching for individuals and outlets through categories like their locations, the focuses of their coverage and their sentiment.

DHS expects responses to its request by April 13th.

This isn’t the first time the US has tracked the media (the FBI used to be notorious for it), and there’s no indication this would collect information that isn’t already public. However, the database’s very existence (provided it goes forward) could be problematic. It could help gauge how Russia and other countries try to skew discussions. At the same time, though, there’s concern this could be used to exert pressure on domestic journalists and internet personalities who challenge the official line.

As Gizmodo noted, the DHS’ vagueness is also a concern. It leaves itself an opening for collecting “any other information that could be relevant” about these influencers, and there’s no hint as to what that could be. Is it strictly functional information like work histories, or sensitive data that could be abused? Either way, the database could be troublesome for bloggers and social media stars who aren’t usually under such close government scrutiny.

Via: Bloomberg Law, Gizmodo

Source: FedBizOpps.gov

YouTube may handpick videos for its Kids app

Over the past months, it became increasingly clear that YouTube isn’t the friendliest place for kids even with filters on. It doesn’t just have a problem with vile videos pretending to be family-friendly content, but also with conspiracy theories popping up as suggestions in its Kids app. According to BuzzFeed, the platform plans to take a more hands-on approach going forward by releasing a new version of the Kids app that only shows videos and channels handpicked by a team of YouTube curators.

To be fair, the platform has been trying to clean up the website and had already pulled hundreds of thousands of child-exploiting and predatory videos and comments. But if its algorithm still recommends conspiracy theories (including flat Earth and fake moon landing) and disturbing videos to children, then its cleanup efforts are wasted. An app that only shows curated content can assure parents that their kids won’t come across anything inappropriate.

YouTube will still reportedly give parents the freedom to choose, though: BuzzFeed says they’ll be able switch between the standard version of the app with algorithmically recommended videos and the curated version. The platform neither confirmed nor denied the report, but the publication’s sources said the app’s whitelisted version could be available in the coming weeks.

Source: BuzzFeed