Deals: Exclusive Twelve South HiRise Duet Discount, Nest at Best Buy, and More

MacRumors and Twelve South have partnered up again this week, offering our readers the chance to get the accessory maker’s HiRise Duet charging stand for $30 off its original price of $119.99. The HiRise Duet is a combination charging stand that supports both the iPhone and Apple Watch, with an integrated Lightning charger for iPhone and iPad, as well as a Magnetic Charging Disc for the Apple Watch, all of which are powered by a single AC cable.

Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with some of these vendors. When you click a link and make a purchase, we may receive a small payment, which helps us keep the site running.

To get the discount, head over to Twelve South’s official Amazon page for the HiRise Duet, add the dock to your cart, and enter the promo code 30DUET during checkout. For Amazon Prime members with free two-day shipping, this marks the stand down to $89.99 from $119.99, excluding tax. The MacRumors exclusive HiRise Duet code will run through Saturday, April 28, so be sure to take advantage of the deal before that date if you’re interested. Twelve South notes that this is the largest discount it has ever offered on the HiRise Duet.

In other deals happening today, Best Buy is discounting both the Nest Learning Thermostat and lower-cost Nest Thermostat E, but only for My Best Buy members. If you have an account, you can get the third-generation Nest Learning Thermostat for $199.99, down from $249.99, and the Nest Thermostat E for $139.00, down from $169.00. Best Buy’s sale prices are some of the best deals online for Nest’s thermostats this week, coming in about $10 to $20 cheaper than Amazon and Walmart.

Also notable is Belkin’s first discount on the Boost Up Wireless Charging Pad, compatible with Apple’s iPhone X, 8, and 8 Plus. United States users can get the Qi mat for 20 percent off through May 12, with the accessory priced at $47.99, down from $59.99. Sales on the device are also hitting Amazon, where Belkin’s official store has the Boost Up mat for $44.99 as of writing. Belkin’s Qi accessory was one of the devices promoted by Apple following the debut of the new iPhones last year, along with Mophie, but on Apple.com the Boost Up device remains $59.95.

For more information on the latest sales happening this week — including $200 off select MacBook Pro models at Best Buy — be sure to visit our full Deals Roundup.

Related Roundup: Apple Deals
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Facts about the masters tournament

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Musk’s SpaceX helps NASA get busy testing human and bull sperm in space

“Do sperm squirm the same in space?” Forget birds and bees — NASA’s California Ames Research Center wants to know if human sperm measures up to bull sperm in space, and Elon Musk’s SpaceX is helping.

The sperm squirm project is called “Micro-11,” a missed opportunity for space science chuckles.

On April 2, 2018, NASA launched freeze-dried samples of human and bull sperm on SpaceX CRS-14, the transport company’s fourteenth cargo resupply mission. The giant rocket blasted off from Cape Canaveral for the approximately 41-hour flight to the International Space Station (ISS).

You can watch the bull and human sperm being launched in the SpaceX video below — no need for concern about the video rating, despite the transport company’s name.

NASA plans to compare male reproductive material from the two mammals to see how human sperm measures up to bull matter — additional fodder for a catchy project name.

Why test sperm from both humans and bulls? It makes sense to study the effects of space travel and reduced gravity on human reproductive health, but what about bulls? Is NASA considering suiting up astronaut bulls for bovine booty calls in space?

It turns out bull ejaculate scores higher on motion consistency than human sperm, which is often varied. As a side note, NASA’s news release is mum on testing male commitment in space. No such tests have been successful on earth.

All hands busy at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center preparing sperm samples for launch to the International Space Station. NASA

Sperm needs to be activated to start swimming when it arrives on site, in space and on Earth. With no species imperative-style activation, sperm squirms around randomly, possibly trying to answer a call for a smoke.

To kick off the reproductive process, deposited sperm must start swimming faster toward an egg and then fuse with the egg’s surface. While a sperm cell swims, its membrane has to become more fluid to facilitate fusion.

In earlier experiments with bull sperm and sea urchins, astronauts discovered swimming activation happened faster in space’s microgravity than on Earth, so that’s a good thing, disregarding any concerns about premature activation. In the same tests, however, the pre-fusion membrane fluidity changes were slower up there than on Earth, if they occurred at all. So the sperm got busy faster but often swam with no final purpose.

Sea urchins aren’t mammals, but they set a high bar for reproductive excitement and commitment. The prickly ocean creatures turn themselves inside out like socks as the respective genders release clouds of sperm and eggs.

At the International Space Station lab, the crew will thaw the bull and human sperm samples, add chemicals to trigger activation and fusion, and record the activity on video. The samples will then be preserved and shipped back to the Ames Research Center, where scientists will analyze the results of the microgravity hookups and compare them with similar tests on Earth.

Editors’ Recommendations

• Prolonged time in space literally changes the structure of astronauts’ eyes
• Watch NASA test fire a giant rocket engine for its mighty Space Launch System
• SpaceX is blazing a trail to Mars, one milestone at a time
• NASA delays James Webb Space Telescope, pushes launch to 2020
• SpaceX nails another mission, sends a used Falcon 9 rocket to resupply the ISS

‘Humans are underrated’ — Musk admits that Tesla was too reliant on robots

In a recent interview with CBS, Elon Musk discussed the future of Tesla and the problems the manfucturer was having producing enough Model 3 vehicles to meet growing demand. One of the issues that Musk touched on was the company’s over-reliance on robotics, saying that they had slowed the company down.

“Yes, they did … ” Musk said in response to questions regarding whether or not the company’s use of robots delayed production. “We had this crazy, complex network of conveyor belts … And it was not working, so we got rid of that whole thing.”

Musk followed up these statements on Twitter by admitting that “humans are underrated.”

Yes, excessive automation at Tesla was a mistake. To be precise, my mistake. Humans are underrated.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 13, 2018

Tesla has been under an increasing amount of pressure due to its failure to produce enough units of the Model 3 to meet demand. While Musk did admit that the company’s over-reliance on robots had led to delays, he said that customers should not be worried about getting their cars. He said it might take up to nine extra months, but customers would get them.

“There shouldn’t be a question mark as to whether somebody’s gonna get their car, it’s just, yes, you’ll definitely get your car,” Musk told King. “It’s gonna be six to nine months longer than expected.”

Musk also pointed out that three of those months have already passed, so customers don’t have too much longer to wait. That being said, he did admit that some customers had canceled their orders. He believes that most of them did so simply because they needed a car right then and there, and Tesla didn’t have it.

The low production levels have taken a toll on Tesla’s stock. Last month, share prices fell from $340 t0 $252, but things are improving according to Musk, who noted this in a tweet to the Economist.

The Economist used to be boring, but smart with a wicked dry wit. Now it’s just boring (sigh). Tesla will be profitable & cash flow+ in Q3 & Q4, so obv no need to raise money.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 13, 2018

Editors’ Recommendations

• Elon Musk wants to whisk you from NYC to DC in 30 minutes with a new Hyperloop
• Elon Musk proposes name changes to his flamethrower in order to appease customs
• Here’s the ‘last pic’ of Starman as he motors off into outer space
• Elon Musk teases plan for a record-breaking Hyperloop speed test
• After delays, the SpaceX Falcon Heavy is set to launch on February 6

Hackers broke into a casino’s high-roller database through a fish tank

In an anecdote that illustrates how our increasing reliance on the Internet of Things (IoT) has compromised the security of confidential information, a cybersecurity executive revealed how a high-roller database of gamblers was accessed by hackers — through a thermometer in an aquarium in the lobby of the casino.

According to Business Insider, Darktrace CEO Nicole Eagan told attendees at an event in London how cybercriminals exploited a vulnerability in a connected thermostat in the unnamed casino. “The attackers used that to get a foothold in the network,” she explained. “They then found the high-roller database and then pulled that back across the network, out the thermostat, and up to the cloud.”

With so many connected devices in our houses, we rarely consider the security flaws that might be present in each individual unit. “There’s a lot of internet of things devices, everything from thermostats, refrigeration systems, HVAC [air conditioning] systems, to people who bring in their Alexa devices into the offices,” said Eagan. “There’s just a lot of IoT. It expands the attack surface and most of this isn’t covered by traditional defenses.”

Israeli researchers recently tested some off-the-shelf smart home devices and found that they were able to access most of them by simply using default factory passwords. Some phone applications designed to monitor household appliances have likewise been found to contain serious security flaws. Your robot vacuum could even be giving hackers a guided tour of your home using their on-board cameras.

The former head of the British government’s digital spying agency, Robert Hannigan, said governmental oversight is probably needed. “It’s probably one area where there’ll likely need to be regulation for minimum security standards because the market isn’t going to correct itself,” he said. “The problem is these devices still work. The fish tank or the CCTV camera still work.”

It’s probably safe to say you won’t be attacked by your robot lawnmower any time soon, but the proliferation of cheap unregulated IoT gizmos means cybersecurity firms are responding to new threats every week. “With the internet of things producing thousands of new devices shoved onto the internet over the next few years, that’s going to be an increasing problem,” Hannigan said. “I saw a bank that had been hacked through its CCTV cameras because these devices are bought purely on cost.”

Editors’ Recommendations

• Off-the-shelf smart home devices are a lot less safe than you think, report says
• The weirdest, wildest, and most wonderful wearables in the world
• The newest weapon for the U.S. Marine Corps is a fleet of quadcopter drones
• When is your phone getting Android 8.0 Oreo? We asked every major manufacturer
• How to use Samsung’s Bixby assistant for all of your smartphone tasks

Monoprice Maker Select Plus Review

Research Center:

Monoprice Maker Select Plus

Monoprice is crushing the 3D printer game right now. Over the past couple years, the company has released a handful of printers that are not only extremely affordable, but also packed with high-end features that you typically can’t find on such inexpensive machines.

Perhaps the best example of this is the company’s $160 Mini Delta printer, which earned high marks in our review despite its outrageously low price point. Thing is, the Mini Delta is on the lowest end of the price spectrum when it comes to Monoprice 3D printers — so we got our hands on a $400 Monoprice Maker Select to see how it compares. Luckily, we weren’t disappointed.

Standout Features and Specs

The Maker Select Plus boasts an impressive set of features, and arguably the most significant one is its spacious 7.9″ x 7.9″ x 7.1″ build area. While this isn’t the biggest print envelope we’ve ever encountered, it’s much larger than what we’ve seen on other machines at similar prices. As an added bonus, the print bed is also heated, which boosts adhesion and helps prevent print warping.

In terms of print quality, the Maker Select Plus punches way above its weight class

The printer’s 100 micron (0.1mm) minimum layer height puts it squarely in the middle of the pack in terms of resolution, but it makes up for that with an absolutely massive range of material compatibility. The Maker Select Plus supports almost any type of filament that you can get your hands on, from ABS and PLA, to some stranger filaments like Jelly and Felty. This greatly expands the range of objects you can make with your printer.

To top off this already impressive package, the MP Maker Select Plus also features a built-in touchscreen LCD panel in lieu of a dial or physical buttons. This is practically unheard of on any printer under $500.

Setup and Configuration

Out of the box, the Select Plus comes almost completely assembled — but not quite. The machine comes out of its packaging as two major parts that require four screws and some plugging in to come together. Thankfully, there’s a great manual to guide the setup process, and a handy accessories bag filled with all the fasteners and tools you need to get the job done. 

After assembling the two pieces, it sets up like any other FDM printer: Plug it in, run the plate leveling wizard (also included is a super handy business card-sized leveling guide for the 1mm test), and get the included filament loaded up. After that, you’re ready to print.

Design and Build Quality

Building on the great qualities of Monoprice’s Maker Select design, the Maker Select Plus has an all-metal body and Prusa i3-inspired design — but with an all-in-one form factor that folds a 3.25 inch touch screen directly into the machine’s front. After dealing with so many knob driven controls on other printers, the simplicity of this printer’s touchscreen was incredibly refreshing.

Monoprice Maker Select Plus Compared To

SparkMaker

Monoprice Mini Delta

Ultimaker 3

Zortrax M300

Robo C2

FormLabs Form 2

NewMatter MOD-t

M3D Micro

MakerBot Replicator (5th Gen)

Pirate3D Buccaneer

3Doodler 2.0

3D Systems Cube

Ultimaker 2

Formlabs Form 1+

The Select Plus also doesn’t take up much space, and runs more quietly than almost any other FDM printer we’ve tried — which means you don’t necessarily have to hide it in your garage just to isolate the noise. You also won’t need to visit your garage if you need to work on it, as the MP Select Plus is extremely accessible and easy to repair. The included accessory bag even includes a few replacement parts for things that you’ll likely need to fix after a couple years, like the teflon tube inside the print head.

User Interface and Software

Running the Select Plus out of the box is one of the best first-time setups we’ve had, and that’s largely thanks to its simple interface. After putting it together, a satisfying click of the power switch brings the touchscreen online.

The printer’s touchscreen is a feature that we didn’t realise that we wanted until we had it. Deviating from the knob style control scheme is the best thing that Monoprice could have done, as it removes the monotony of navigating menus.

Bill Roberson/Digital Trends

When it comes to slicing software, Monoprice takes an approach that not many manufacturers do. Rather than forcing you to install a proprietary slicing program, Monoprice ships its printers with config profiles for the popular open source slicer, Cura. This is great, because Cura is arguably one of the best slicers in existence, and it’s well-suited for users of all experience levels.

If Cura isn’t your bag, the Select Plus also supports many other open source and commercial slicers, so no matter what program you’re used to working with, you can likely get this machine to play nicely with it. 

Print Performance

The first print we ran was a swan: one of the four models that came pre-loaded onto the printer’s SD card. It came out almost flawless, but that was what we expected. Oftentimes, companies will pre-load highly-optimized test prints onto their machines to show off a printer’s abilities, and for this reason these objects aren’t necessarily a good indicator of overall performance. So for our next print, we ran a standard 3DBenchy: a tugboat-shaped torture test designed to tease out a printer’s strengths and weaknesses.

Bill Roberson/Digital Trends

Much to our delight, the tugboat came out just as clean and accurate as the pre-loaded swan had. The fine details on the Benchy’s bottom and stern came through astonishingly well, and tricky elements like spans and overhangs were executed perfectly. We did notice a few vertical striations the boat’s cabin, but concluded that they were most likely slicing artefacts caused by the printer’s software, not a flaw in its hardware.

In terms of print quality, the Maker Select Plus punches way above its weight class, but print quality alone does not a good printer make. Luckily, this machine is also quite reliable. After testing a few duds in the past few weeks, we were relieved to find that this machine has a very low failure rate. You can just queue up a model, hit print, and walk away without worrying that it’s going to mess up on the first layer and waste a bunch of plastic — which we really appreciate. 

Our Take

This printer checks all the right boxes. It’s cheap, it’s well-built, it has a large build envelope, it has a heated bed, it works with tons of materials, it has intuitive software, it prints like a dream, it’s super reliable, and it costs just $400. It’s certainly not perfect, but no other printer on the market will get you this much bang for so few bucks.

Is there a better alternative?

If what you’re looking for is the highest print quality possible, you can get better results from an Ultimaker 3 or a Formlabs Form 2. Both printers offer considerably higher maximum resolutions, and are capable of printing with more detail than the Select Plus. That said, both cost over $3,000.

If what you’re looking for is build volume and the ability to print large parts, then you’d be better off with a Lulzbot Taz 6 or any Ultimaker machine. There are plenty of printers out there that have larger build envelopes than the Maker Select Plus — but again, they’re almost all over $2,500.

If you’re shopping on a tight budget, Monoprice offers other printers (like the Mini Delta and the Maker Select V2) that cost even less than the Select Plus. Just keep in mind that these machines have far smaller build envelopes and are therefore limited in what they can create.

So while the Select Plus doesn’t have the best print quality or the biggest build envelope or the lowest price tag you could possibly get on a printer, it does offer one of the best combinations of quality, size, and price that we’ve ever seen in a 3D printer.

It’s worth noting, though, that you can also opt for the non-premium Maker Select ($300), which is essentially the same printer, but with slower print speeds and without the built-in touchscreen.

How long will it last?

With proper maintenance, this printer should last a long, long time. Thanks to its all-metal construction, durable components, broad software compatibility, and regular firmware updates from Monoprice; this printer should keep on chugging along for years to come. 

Should you buy it?

Absolutely. If you’ve been holding off on buying a 3D printer due to high prices, or are tired of that Makerbot you bought four years ago and are looking for something more reliable, this is the printer you’ve been waiting for.

City of Austin is hoping the blockchain can help protect the homeless

Blockchain technology is most often discussed in terms of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, but the ledger has implications beyond a new kind of currency. Governments and private organizations are seeking to put the blockchain to work solving some of our society’s biggest problems. The city of Austin, Texas, is launching a program meant to help the homeless protect their identities in the event that their IDs are lost or destroyed.

The program is part of a grant awarded by Bloomberg Philanthropies and aims to solve one of Austin’s most pressing issues with the homeless, which is concerns keeping their identities secure.

“If you have your backpack stolen or if your social security card gets wet and falls apart, or if you are camping and the city cleans up the site and takes your possessions, you have to start all over from the beginning again,” Sly Majid, Austin’s Cheif Services Officer told Tech Crunch. “It really prevents you from going about and doing the sort of activities that allow you to transition out of homelessness.”

Unfortunately for many homeless people, the loss of an ID or Social Security card can make it impossible for them to get the help they need, because they have no way of proving who they are, and they can’t always afford to pay for new forms of identification.

The city is hoping that it will be able to use the blockchain as a replacement for paper records which can easily be stolen, lost, or destroyed. The idea is that the blockchain can provide a secure and safe way for aid workers to verify a person’s identity.

One of the examples that Majid pointed to was in the area of securing and protecting medical records, which can be difficult to verify for the homeless. Majid is hopeful that this system will make it easier for healthcare providers to keep track of a patient’s medical history and records.

Overall, Austin aims to use the technology can help solve the problem of homelessness, though Majid warned that the program is still in its infancy. However, he is hopeful that the program will grow over time.

Editors’ Recommendations

• Microsoft will use a blockchain to decentralize data for better control
• Bitcoin’s blockchain contains links to child pornography, possible illegal image
• A snail mail code will provide added security against ad fraud on Facebook
• The flu is poking holes in hospital cybersecurity, and a shot can’t save you
• Stanford’s VR experience puts you in the shoes of one of California’s homeless

Global supply chains are often murky, but blockchain may bring them into the light

Olive oil is perhaps the most common victim of food fraud. Several manufacturers have been caught thinning out their product, even deliberately mislabeling it for profit. Patrick Landmann/Getty Images

If one were to try and visualize the modern international economy, it might resemble the tangle of cables behind a computer or television.

The supply chains that carry goods from producers to consumers weave across and around each other, stretching over borders and oceans. A product may pass through several countries before it takes its place on a retail shelf, awaiting purchase. That holds true for the clothes we wear, the electronics we use, and even the food we put in our bodies.

This article is part of our series “Blockchain beyond Bitcoin“. Bitcoin is the beginning, but it’s far from the end. To help you wrap your head around why, we’re taking a deep dive into the world of blockchain. In this series, we’ll go beyond cryptocurrency and hone in on blockchain applications that could reshape medical records, voting machines, video games, and more.

Imagine ordering a cheeseburger at a restaurant: How much do you know about the ingredients? What dairy did the cheese come from? What farms the lettuce and onions? Which factory did the beef pass through to be ground up — and is it even entirely beef.

Globalization has benefits, both to developing economies and to international peace, but a consequence of global trade is that consumers often have little insight into where the goods they buy come from, or how they are made. The companies that sell those goods may not even know. These gray areas are a problem, because they provide opportunities for mishandling or even outright fraud.

There may be a technology that can solve this problem, however: Blockchain. Introduced to the mainstream as part of the cryptocurrency Bitcoin, blockchain has become synonymous with cryptocurrencies — and by extension, people getting rich quickly. Among blockchain’s key traits is the ability to render data transparent and nearly immutable, and this could make blockchain a great tool to make supply chains visible to the world and reduce opportunities for fraud, in the food industry and beyond.

Food fraud: A global problem

The food we eat travels a long distance from farms and factories to our plates, and in many cases the person eating it has no idea what winding path it took, or even what is really in it. Food fraud, in which agents somewhere along the supply chain adulterate or misrepresent their product, is a shockingly common occurrence.

A consequence of global trade is that consumers often have little insight into where the goods they buy come from.

In a paper for the Journal of Food Science, Dr. John Spink, who runs the Food Fraud Initiative at Michigan State University, defined food fraud as “a collective term used to encompass the deliberate and intentional substitution, addition, tampering, or misrepresentation of food, food ingredients, to food packaging; or false or misleading statements about a product, for economic gain.”

Food fraud is distinct from a food safety issue; while the latter can result from mere sloppiness or neglect, as in a salmonella outbreak, food fraud is intentional. “…the concern is there’s always an economic threat, but there’s not always a public health threat,” Spink told Digital Trends. As such, “it’s not that people don’t focus on it, but it’s not a priority compared to something like food safety where people are getting ill right away.” And while fraud doesn’t always lead to public health crises, when it does, it can be disastrous.

Dr. John Spink runs the Food Fraud Initiative at Michigan State University

Those incidents can range in severity. They could be innocuous, like olive oil that is falsely labeled as “extra virgin,” Spink explains. But they could also be something as scandalous as the discovery of horse meat in ground beef, as happened in Britain and Ireland in 2013. Or the 2008 incident in which Chinese dairy producers added melamine to infant formula in order to inflate its apparent protein content. Protein produces nitrogen, and as it is generally the only thing in food that produces nitrogen, agencies use nitrogen levels to determine if a product has sufficient protein. Melamine can cause kidney problems, however, and the result was more than 50,000 infants hospitalized for issues including kidney stones.

Current food safety systems respond quickly and thoroughly to food safety incidents, Spink adds. The problem is that these responses generally require a visible health threat; if people aren’t aware of adulteration in a product, there’s no cause to investigate.

Spink explains that traditional food testing is limited. “When we test for food safety, we don’t really test that the food is safe. We test that it doesn’t have the presence of about 30 to 50 bad bugs or chemicals. Because those are the ones that we really know are mostly out there. So we don’t really test for everything.” Government agencies in Europe may be on the lookout for horse meat in products after the last scandal, “but if you’re in Europe, you don’t also test for zebra.”

It’s hard to pin down exactly how common food fraud is, but Spink estimates that “for some products it could definitely be ten percent of the market, even in the U.S.”

In supply chains, criminals see opportunities

In order to better combat food fraud, authorities must shift their focus from responding to food fraud, to preventing it.

“And if we think crime prevention,” Spink says, “that’s social science — and these are human adversaries, so using social science is the right way to focus…That’s very different than food science, and food safety, where we’re chasing a microbe and we’re trying to cook it…” Spink’s work involves something called situational crime prevention. “It’s the space of crime, the physical space of crime,” he says. “And we look at vulnerabilities, to see what’s the state of being of a location — say, a building — that allows it to be a target for crime.”

According to this theory, crimes often happen because criminals see opportunities. By anticipating those opportunities and adding deterrents, authorities can prevent crime. Spink considers a bank to be an apt analogy. If your bank is simply a building with a big pile of money in it, someone might see an opportunity to stroll in and take the cash. Add an armed guard, however, and suddenly there’s an extra factor the would-be robber must consider.

Some of the more popular targets of food fraud include olive oil, milk, honey, coffee, and ground pepper.

Of course, the robber might see the armed guard and decide they can deal with them, maybe by bringing arms of their own. That big pile of cash is once again ripe for the picking, so you add security features to make the cash even harder to steal. Put the money in a vault, now they have to think about how to open it. If they would force a teller to open the vault, make it time-locked, so that “even if they had a gun to their head, literally, they couldn’t open it.” It’s almost like a chess game between the criminal and the crime fighter; one looks for vulnerabilities, the other anticipates those vulnerabilities and closes them off, trying to stay moves ahead.

Though more abstract than banks, supply chains have vulnerabilities too, and fraudsters are always looking for ways to save or make money. For authorities, the goal with supply chains is to make fraud more difficult.

“…we’re looking at the food supply chain, to look at where are all these vulnerabilities, and what can we do to prevent them,” Spink says. Being able to trace products is key. “And then we start to look at when we have known incidents…we try to figure out ‘Well, why did someone put melamine in there? How were they able to put melamine in there?’ And then we start to look at what might we have been able to do that would have led…an intelligent adversary to say ‘You know what, let’s not even try to attack this product.’”

In order to dissuade potential criminals from committing food fraud, making supply chains transparent and ensuring data is honest are crucial; blockchain might be just the tool to do both.

On blockchain, data is shared, and nearly incorruptible

Blockchain can be a confusing concept, lying as it does at the intersection of cryptography and finance, two fields known for being impenetrable. Put simply, a blockchain is an example of a distributed ledger, a record of transactions of which a copy is given to anyone who wants one, and every copy stays current.

In a typical, cashless transaction where one party is giving money to another — such as cashing a check or buying something online — no physical exchange of currency happens. A third party, such as a bank or credit card company, makes a note that one party has less money in their account, while the other has more.

Any cash-free exchange of money requires such a go-between. To some people, this is a flaw. As Adam Greenfield explains in his book Radical Technologies, “The critical vulnerability of all pre-Bitcoin digital cash schemes was that they required parties to a transaction to repose their trust in an intermediary institution, who they’d rely upon to maintain the ledger and update it every time value was passed across the network…As a consequence, there is tremendous fear that whoever controls the mint [the institution] would have the power to prevent some transactions from taking place entirely…”

With blockchain, everyone has an identical copy of the ledger. Whenever a transaction occurs via blockchain, other computers on that network verify that the transaction is valid and add it to the ever growing log that is the blockchain itself.

Imagine two people: Alice and Bob. Alice wants to give Bob some money, and they want to do so using Bitcoin. Every person on a blockchain has a unique ID called a digital signature. When Alice gives Bob Bitcoin, the transaction involves several variables: Alice’s digital signature, Bob’s digital signature, the Bitcoin leaving Alice’s account, the Bitcoin entering Bob’s account, the time and date of the transaction. These variables are plugged into a formula, which produces a string of digits called a “hash.” Each specific hash can only be produced by the specific values entered; if Bob were to try and modify the record to say that Alice gave him more Bitcoin then she actually did, the resulting hash would be different.

When the transaction occurs, it is grouped together with others in a block, and members of the network (called nodes) run through the entire record of the blockchain, verifying that the hashes in the new block line up with the already existing blocks in the chain. Once a node establishes a block is valid, it submits it to the chain.

Because everyone on the network has a copy of the ledger, everyone can see every transaction that has occurred, from first to last. If one were to try and modify data on a blockchain, the other nodes would note that the data doesn’t align with theirs, and disregard it.

Blockchain is thus decentralized, transparent, and secure. For Tomaz Levak, CEO of OriginTrail, these traits make it perfect for supply chains, where obscurity and fraud are problems, and he and his team of collaborators have developed a protocol specifically for supply chains.

A protocol “tailor-made” for supply chains

The founders of OriginTrail got their start in 2011, working with food companies to show where the ingredients in their products came from. By 2013, the company that would become OriginTrail was taking shape.

“And then two things started happening,” Levak explains. “One was that one of the most common questions that we got was about data integrity — how can we vouch for the data…” The second was their desire to unite entire supply chains on one platform. “And both of those things are connected to trust.”

Levak and his team gravitated toward blockchain, a technology built to be transparent and incorruptible. They used a blockchain platform called Ethereum, securing important data with cryptographic hashes that couldn’t be forged or manipulated.

“However, we couldn’t go much further beyond that, because it can very quickly get very expensive to play around with decentralized networks,” he says.

Despite the drawbacks, the team still believed in the potential of blockchain for brokering trust and the sharing of data. They identified three key issues that their protocol would need to address: Standardizing data between companies on a supply chain, curbing the costs to store data, and protecting company secrets on a platform intended to be transparent.

Each stop in the supply chain confirms that its data matches that of the stops before and after it.

Blockchains aren’t a cost-effective way of storing data; because it is very hard to delete data on a blockchain, nodes will need to process ever increasing amounts of data when validating, using larger amounts of energy, and thus money. To get around this, the team needed to go beyond blockchain, and built the OriginTrail network in layers. While a blockchain layer handles things like “immutably storing data fingerprints and handling transactions between users and nodes in the network,” the bulk of the data is stored on an off-chain “data layer,” trimming the fat on the blockchain itself.

To verify data on the network, OriginTrail requires a “consensus check,” wherein each stakeholder in the supply chain “has to be approved by the previous and the following supply chain stakeholder,” according to the company’s white paper. This means that each stop in the supply chain confirms that its data matches that of the stops before and after it.

Although blockchains create transparency, businesses need to feel that important data isn’t on display for the entire world; companies often have data they don’t want out in the open, since it could reveal too much about their operations. Levak uses the mass of a shipment as an example. It’s important for parties to see that the mass of a shipment hasn’t changed from one stop to the next, but you might not want the mass itself to be visible to everyone.

To guarantee that businesses can feel safe putting their sensitive data on the network, OriginTrail employs a zero knowledge proof; in this process, Levak explains, “one party (the prover) can prove to another party (the verifier) that a given statement is true, without conveying any information apart from the fact that the statement is indeed true.”

A famous example of a zero knowledge proof involves two colored balls. Imagine Diana has two balls, one green and one red, and wants to prove to her color-blind friend Charles that they are different. She places one in each of his hands, then he puts them behind his back, holds them back out, and asks if he switched them. Diana can tell if they have been switched based on the color, so even though Charles will never have that particular information, he can verify that she is correct.

Will companies get on board with blockchain?

While the OriginTrail network may enforce transparency, the question arises of how it will compel the industry’s bad actors to get onboard. Why join a network that could expose your crimes?

Levak is aware of the conundrum. “…if you’re a good actor,” he says, “then there is a clear motivation for you to be able to prove something like that using a decentralized technology.” Bad actors will naturally be resistant, so the early adopters will be businesses that value the efficiency OriginTrail can bring to their operations, and those who recognize the bragging rights that come from embracing transparency.

Data security is failing and there has to be a better system. Blockchain creates a secure, unalterable public record and is poised to dramatically improve the world around you, from voting systems to rental contracts.

Companies certainly have incentive to look into blockchain. Although many a post on Reddit has proclaimed that blockchain will liberate mankind from the control of banks and even governments, big organizations are actually intrigued by the technology. “Such complex organizations,” Greenfield says, “are currently compelled to make enormous outlays on systems that improve data quality, they are often exposed to significant liability for data errors they fail to prevent, and above all they bear the impact of these circumstances directly on the bottom line. As a ‘trusted framework for identity and data sharing,’ the blockchain promises to solve these problems all at once.”

Spink’s research echoes this; aside from the people eating the food, the most concerned parties about food fraud are the big businesses. “…one minute of production at a major food company could be a million pounds,” Spink says. “And if they just had the wrong pepper in there — they said it was a lemon pepper and it was really a szechuan pepper — then they have a million pounds that they have to destroy.”

The decentralized nature of blockchain leads to fervent support — perhaps because its users feel empowered — and Levak sees in OriginTrail’s early adopters a community eager to spread the word, describing them as “a little network of ambassadors all around the world.”

While blockchain’s potential is astonishing, it remains to be seen how effective it will actually be with supply chains. As Spink puts it, “For that horse meat incident, how would blockchain have helped? And where would it help? And what would we need to do to allow it to help reduce fraud?”

No matter how secure your walls seem, there will always be someone, somewhere looking for gaps.

If blockchain really can help, it can’t come too soon. The problems with supply chains go beyond food adulteration, to issues of labor and environmental destruction. Take consumer electronics, for example: The lithium-ion batteries found in smartphones, for example, contain cobalt. According to a report by Amnesty International, more than half of the cobalt in the world comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo, and 20 percent of that comes from miners who “mine by hand using the most basic tools to dig out rocks from tunnels deep underground…miners operating outside of authorized mining zones typically lack basic protective or safety equipment, such as respirators, gloves or face protection, and do not enjoy legal protections nominally provided by the state.” Even more alarming, “Researchers found children as young as seven who scavenged for rocks containing cobalt.”

The Amnesty report lists numerous corporations whose cobalt supplies run through a particular smelter in China. “Alarmingly,” the report continues,” the majority were unable to answer basic questions about where the cobalt in their products came from and whether there were any risks of the kind observed by researchers.”

The knowledge that blockchain can provide may empower consumer to make more informed decisions about the products they buy, and companies to make better decisions about who they do business with.

However wide blockchain spreads, it may not root out corruption entirely. Technology can’t change the hearts of men, and no matter how secure your walls seem, there will always be someone, somewhere looking for gaps.

Blockchain will turn gaming into a career, and give power to the players

Spells of Genesis

Video games are more than a game. They are, at different times for different people, a challenge, a business, a lifestyle, or all the above. While professional gamers fight for titles, and the money that goes with them, millions of others are buying, selling, gathering, grouping, chatting, and organizing. While not everyone has realized it, humanity has long passed the point of projecting real value only on tangible objects. Virtual goods can command staggering sums.

This article is part of our series “Blockchain beyond Bitcoin“. Bitcoin is the beginning, but it’s far from the end. To help you wrap your head around why, we’re taking a deep dive into the world of blockchain. In this series, we’ll go beyond cryptocurrency and hone in on blockchain applications that could reshape medical records, voting machines, video games, and more

Many games, like Fortnite and League of Legends, have built themselves on top of paid transactions for characters, items, and currency. Yet the details of how these purchases interact are often unclear.  What should players own? How should goods be traded? Who should dictate pricing? The answers depend on the game you play and can vary wildly from one game to the next, sowing distrust and confusion. Players want consistency, flexibility, transparency, and privacy. They’re not getting it.

Blockchain might be the answer – and more. The promise of ownership may be what lures gamers towards it, but they’ll get more than they bargained for.

Virtual items, real ownership

Seeing the potential for profit, companies soon appeared to ‘farm’ in-game gold and items. By the mid-2000s, gold farming was in full swing, complete with digital sweatshops that saw workers spend 12-hour days grinding away in games. Free-to-play games turned that reality into a business model, selling official virtual goods for real cash. Today, gamers find themselves hurdling down the rabbit hole. Star Citizen has raked in millions of dollars selling virtual goods for a game that’s not even complete.

Despite that, the rules surrounding these transactions, and the items themselves, are nebulous. Most games prohibit selling or purchasing in-game items, pushing transactions to the black market. Middle-man businesses like PlayerAuctions have risen in response, promising a risk-free transaction between buyer and seller.

Players often take advantage of these, feeling that they own the items they’ve earned. Scams are common – these are black market transactions, after all. Even purchases that seem to go smoothly aren’t guaranteed safe. Game developers often intervene, issuing temporary suspensions, or outright bans, to anyone discovered. Most people aren’t discovered, though, so some players are willing to take the risk. In fact, it’s not uncommon for players to feel cheated when caught. They’ve spent real money, or many hours, to earn what they’ve acquired. Why shouldn’t they feel a sense of ownership?

While players take pride in the in-game wealth they’ve gathered, they rarely have legal ownership.

That cuts to the core problem. While players take pride in the in-game wealth they’ve gathered, they rarely have legal ownership of virtual goods, no matter how they’re acquired. Blizzard Entertainment’s End User License Agreement makes that clear, declaring itself “the owner and license of all right, title, and interest […]” That includes all currency, virtual goods, even entire player accounts. Pay Blizzard $25 for a mount, or spend that same money on black market gold through ZamGold – either way, your don’t own a thing.

Blockchain turns that on its head. It’s effectively a digital ledger without a master copy. Transactions aren’t stored on any on computer, but instead stored on a network of computers, and they’re verified the same way. Transactions are recorded across the entire network through a shared record that no single computer holds. Transactions remain valid even when a PC goes offline – called ‘cold storage’ in the world of Bitcoin – making always-online game clients obsolete.

Strangely, it’s decentralization that makes true ownership possible. The database exists independent of any single person or organization, which makes its records objective, fair, and true. In blockchain circles, this is counter-intuitively labelled as “trust-less.” The implication isn’t that the blockchain can’t be trusted but, instead, that blockchain makes trust unnecessary. It doesn’t matter if you trust everyone else one the blockchain, because fraud is impossible – on the blockchain itself, at least. It’s a clever, and realistic, implementation.

Vlad Panchenko, CEO and Founder of blockchain-based item exchange DMarket, explained the advantage, saying “all the transactions will be secured by blockchain technologies, eliminating any possibility of fraud. With DMarket’s blockchain all gamers’ virtual items become real. It’s like Bitcoins or Ethereum in your wallet.”

Decentralization also gives developers a chance to put responsibility at arm’s length. A crash in value, or sudden surge, can be blamed on the whims of the market. Scams would still be possible but, because the blockchain itself is secure, attacks would focus on things well outside the developer’s control, like a player’s social media accounts or email. Today, when a weak password leads to a compromised account, players can ask the game’s developer to help restore it. Blockchain would make that difficult, if not impossible. Players would have all the responsibility that comes with ownership.

A different kind of game

The obvious implications of owning virtual goods are sure to put dollar signs in the eyes of gamers. If gamers truly own in-game items, they should also be able to sell them. It’s the Diablo 3 auction house on a whole new scale. It’s easy to envision a hardcore player defeating an enemy, walking away with a legendary weapon, and immediately selling it to the highest bidder.

“If you think about a traditional video game […] there are no inherent protections to the user.”

This could become a career on its own, and would be particularly lucrative for celebrity gamers. “Information about each item’s owner and history will be secured on the blockchain,” Panchenko explained. “This will create an additional demand for these items from rare asset collectors or celebrity gamers.” Eve Online has proven the concept with rare ships awarded only to tournament victors, and blockchain could apply that rarity to any game.

Yet profit is only the tip of the iceberg. Blockchain not only holds the power to change ownership, but also to alter how games are designed – a fact that Bryce Bladon, co-founder of viral crypto-game CryptoKitties, has experienced first-hand.

Most modern games are entirely centralized. Everything, from the graphics, to game design, to virtual goods, are owned and controlled by the developer. “If you think about a traditional video game, there’s next to nothing to stop a developer from just diving in and tweaking things, copying things, and adding other things. There are no inherent protections to the user,” Bladon told Digital Trends. He’s right. Automatic updates are frequently forced on games, and players can’t opt out. Open Steam, or boot your game console, and you’re sure to see new patches arrive. You can delay them manually, but that means can’t play online or enjoy any feature updates. Sooner or later, you’ll have to accept the patch.

That’s created tension between developers and gamers, player communities have sometimes rebelled, attempting to re-create the earlier version of a game whether the developer approves it or not. In most cases, these player projects have sputtered due to uneven support or, in many cases, legal action from a game’s original creator. Control of the game is entirely out of player’s hands, both legally and technically.

Blockchain destroys that status quo because it can’t be altered. “We don’t get to just change the block chain, as it were,” Bladon explained. “That is sort of the nature of it, it’s immutable.” CryptoKitties simply doesn’t have the power to alter the game whenever it’d like, and that immediately changes the relationship between those who make the game, and those who play it. Developers become shepards instead of gods. They can attempt to nudge the game in whatever direction they want it to go, but they can’t change the rules, or alter in-game items once awarded.

Mitchel Opatowsky, Project Manager at CryptoPets, affirmed what Bladon said, using the revolutionary aspects of cryptocurrency as a template. “If a Bitcoin’s theoretical potential value is that of a decentralized world currency,” Opatowsky told Digital Trends, “the same logic can apply to the game space, where currently individual production houses control the asset sales in a centralized way.” Whether a developer feels a moral or legal right to alter a game becomes irrelevant, because the blockchain makes altering a game technically impossible. Ownership is irrevocably shared from the moment the game goes live.

That is – pardon the pun – a game changer. Its impact is so meteoric that the consequences become difficult to imagine. Perhaps it would pave the way for the virtual worlds imagined in sci-fi novels, worlds that aren’t games but instead their own entities with rules, currency, and societies that exist only virtually, yet impact the real world. At the least, it could lead to shared social games that evolve for as long as there’s enough people to play them, and which can’t be shut down, even if the original developer desires it.

The new wild west

Blockchain’s potential is huge, in gaming and elsewhere. Yet, as Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies have already proven, its revolutionary nature makes its impact hard to predict. Five years ago, Bitcoin was a novelty. Since then, it’s surged in value, completely upset video card pricing, sent regulators scrambling, and consumed the savings of those who bought at the wrong time.

The disarming cuteness of virtual cats disguises the fact they’re in some cases worth tens of thousands of dollars.

The consequences are no less for gaming. Virtual goods are already testing the limits of state laws against online gambling, though the items bought or earned have no tangible value. Blockchain, by allowing ownership and the exchange of items for currency, would erase a legal buffer game companies have used to contend online gambling laws don’t apply.

We asked both Bladon and Opatowsky about this issue, and neither seemed concerned. Bladon told Digital Trends that CryptoKitties “strongly believe[s] in consumer protections and making sure the user is protected wherever possible. Gambling, and anything related to gambling, is something we are hyper aware of.” Still, it’s not hard to see the risk. The disarming cuteness of virtual cats disguises the fact they’re in some cases worth tens of thousands of dollars. That could make blockchain games an easy target for lawmakers who might accuse them of cashing on their appeal to children.

Whatever the future of crypto-games, it’s sure to go in directions unexpected. Like the internet, blockchain is revolutionary because the specifics of its design allow incredible flexibility. The world is already struggling to keep up with crypto-currency, but its narrow focus on currency compromises its scope. Not everyone wants to deal with playing market trends. Trading cartoon cats, though? That’s something we can all understand.

Honor 7A + 7C bring face unlock to the sub-£170 price point

New budget phones pack premium features.

When you’re selling a phone for less than £200, you need to be very careful about which corners you cut. This price point is rife with devices that choose the wrong compromises, and it’s this which Huawei’s Honor brand is set to counter with its new Honor 7A and 7C phones, selling for £139.99 and £169.99 respectively.

Both devices borrow heavily from the design language of the Honor 8 Pro and View 10 with curved metal adorning the 7C, and a metallic-effect plastic covering the 7A. And there are a few significant firsts in these phones: They’re the first Android phones we’re aware of at this price that pack 18:9 panels, giving more display real estate than rivals, and face recognition, a feature largely limited to flagship handsets at present. In our brief time testing the face unlock feature, we found it worked pretty well, though understandably it lacked the speed of high-end implementations, as found in the P20 Pro and Honor View 10.

The other big compromise is display resolution: While the screens are 18:9 panels, you’ll need to make do with HD+ resolution, meaning 720p and change, on both models. The displays actually don’t look bad considering the price point, and both were bright enough for clear daylight visibility, with vibrant colors. Still, the lack of pixel density is noticeable.

The 7C boasts extra RAM and storage, as well as dual cameras, for an extra £30.

The 7C also features a dual rear camera setup, which is common in mid-rangers, but pretty rare in entry-level phones. In some casual testing ahead of today’s launch, the 7C’s dual 13-megapixel-plus-2-megapixel setup. In the Honor 7A, you’ll miss out on the depth-sensing tricks offered by the second camera. Neither phone skimps on battery capacity, though, with 3,000mAh cells included and considering the efficient Snapdragon 430 and 450 processors used in the 7A and 7C, that bodes really well for battery life.

We’re a little more concerned about the RAM situation on the 7A — Android can run on the 2GB included, but whether it’ll run well once it gets loaded up with apps is another matter. By the same token, that 16GB of internal storage will likely have you offloading some apps to your SD card before long.

Both phones come equipped with Huawei’s EMUI 8 firmware, though, based on Android 8.0, and the software is kitted out with the same performance-saving AI features found in Huawei’s flagship devices. Out of the box, EMUI runs smoothly on both devices, and the software we played with ahead of launch seems to include some more recent fixes from the P20 as well. Specifically, the annoying “app running in background” message no longer displays for music apps, and lock screen notifications can be expanded.

Besides that, this is EMUI, just as we’ve seen it on many other Huawei and Honor phones, only now powered by a Snapdragon processor as opposed to Huawei’s Kirin line. All in all, a solid experience, though with some customizations that may upset Android purists.

The Honor 7A will sell for £139.99 outright when it launches in May, and it’ll be available through Honor’s own HiHonor.com store, as well as Three UK on contract. The 7C will launch exclusively through HiHonor the same month, priced £169.99.

Honor’s next big announcement, expected to be the Honor 10, will take place at an event in London on May 15.

An Honor spokesperson described the upcoming device as “the sexiest product ever.”