Hulu snags documentary series on the Fyre Festival fiasco

Last year’s ill-fated Fyre Festival (almost) took place in the Bahamas; it also ended up with seven fraud and negligence class-action lawsuits. Co-founder Billy McFarland (above), who co-created the festival with rapper Ja Rule, was also arrested and charged with wire fraud. He ultimately pled guilty to misleading investors. Now Hulu has picked up a multi-part documentary series about the debacle, which is being jointly developed by Billboard, Mic and production company The Cinemart.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the series will explore what exactly went wrong, the ongoing investigation into the failure and who, exactly, is to blame. It will also reportedly use in-depth interviews from local Bahamians, stranded music fans who paid to be there, vendors and investors. There will apparently also be hours of exclusive footage, along with leaked documents, emails and sound recordings. The Fyre Festival sold attendees on a glamorous experience that was promoted without disclosure by models like Kendall Jenner on Instagram, who were reportedly paid for their influence.

Via: The Verge

Source: The Hollywood Reporter

The updated Stylophone Gen X-1 synth comes to the US

The little Stylophone toy synth has made the rounds since it was first manufactured in 1968. David Bowie used one on “Space Oddity,” Kraftwork played one on “Pocket Calculator” and They Might Be Giants had one on The Else. An updated version of this cult classic, battery-powered synthesizer — the Stylophone Gen X-1— was announced last year, and is now available in the US for $70.

The new version of this tiny synth has a built-in speaker and a headphone jack, making it so you can connect it to recording systems or a PA. It’s iconic metallic keyboard/sound strip can be used with the included stylus, and a second one can be played with your fingertip. There are various dials and buttons that can shape the sound, including controls for LFO square and triangle waves, a low pass filter cutoff, sub octaves, envelope attack and delay, delay time and feedback and an X button pulse with modulation.

This is the second revival of the Stylophone; when the manufacturer Dubreq reopened in 2003, it released the Stylophone X2 and the Stylophone Beatbox. This new Gen X-1 is a bit smaller than those versions, with a new layout for a more compact form. If you’re interested in what little box can do, check out the video below.

Source: Dubreq

Google made an AR microscope that can help detect cancer

In a talk given today at the American Association for Cancer Research’s annual meeting, Google researchers described a prototype of an augmented reality microscope that could be used to help physicians diagnose patients. When pathologists are analyzing biological tissue to see if there are signs of cancer — and if so, how much and what kind — the process can be quite time-consuming. And it’s a practice that Google thinks could benefit from deep learning tools. But in many places, adopting AI technology isn’t feasible. The company, however, believes this microscope could allow groups with limited funds, such as small labs and clinics, or developing countries to benefit from these tools in a simple, easy-to-use manner. Google says the scope could “possibly help accelerate and democratize the adoption of deep learning tools for pathologists around the world.”

The microscope is an ordinary light microscope, the kind used by pathologists worldwide. Google just tweaked it a little in order to introduce AI technology and augmented reality. First, neural networks are trained to detect cancer cells in images of human tissue. Then, after a slide with human tissue is placed under the modified microscope, the same image a person sees through the scope’s eyepieces is fed into a computer. AI algorithms then detect cancer cells in the tissue, which the system then outlines in the image seen through the eyepieces (see image above). It’s all done in real time and works quickly enough that it’s still effective when a pathologist moves a slide to look at a new section of tissue.

So far, the Google team has demonstrated the scope’s abilities with breast and prostate cancers, showing the system is pretty accurate in its assessments. But Google says such a set up could be used to detect other cancers as well as infectious diseases like tuberculosis and malaria. It could also be used to display other data or annotations into the view. “Of course, light microscopes have proven useful in many industries other than pathology, and we believe the Augmented Reality Microscope can be adapted for a broad range of applications across healthcare, life sciences research and material science,” says Google.

This proof of concept study is also described in a paper that’s currently still under review. Google says that a more in-depth study is required for more robust assessments of the system’s performance and shortcomings. It concluded, “We’re excited to continue to explore how the Augmented Reality Microscope can help accelerate the adoption of machine learning for positive impact around the world.”

Source: Google (1), (2)

Apple Maps Lane Guidance Expands to Czech Republic, Finland, Hungary, Ireland and Poland

Introduced in iOS 11, lane guidance in Apple Maps is designed to let Maps users know which lane they should be in to avoid missing an upcoming turn or exit.

The lane guidance feature was initially limited to the United States and China when iOS 11 was first released in September, but Apple has been working to expand it to additional countries. Recently, the feature was introduced in Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Poland, and Czech Republic.

With the addition of these five countries, lane guidance is available in a total of 19 countries: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, China, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, South Africa, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK, and the United States.

The other major iOS 11 Maps feature, which adds speed limit information to the Maps app, remains limited to the United States and the UK at the current time.

A full list of Apple Maps feature availability by country can be found on Apple’s website.
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Facebook Outlines What Data it Collects From Other Apps and Websites

When Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified in front of Congress last week about the ongoing Cambridge Analytica scandal, he was asked a question about what kind of data Facebook collects from people when they use various apps and websites that have Facebook tools and integrations installed.

Zuckerberg promised to share more information on that topic at a later time, and today Facebook made good on that promise with a detailed article on what data Facebook gets from third-party apps and websites.

Facebook has several plug-ins and tools that allow Facebook to gather data on users even when they’re not using Facebook, including social plugins (Like and Share buttons), Facebook login (which lets you log in to services with a Facebook account), Facebook Analytics, and Facebook ads (allows apps and websites to show ads from Facebook advertisers, run ads on Facebook, and measure ad effectiveness).

Facebook says that whenever you use an app or a website that has one of these tools installed, the company receives information even if you’re logged out of Facebook or do not have a Facebook account.

According to Facebook, the information collected offline is used to “make [app and website] ads better,” with Facebook receiving data that includes IP address, browser, operating system, cookie information, and which app or website you’re using, all of which is common information collected when you use an app or a website.

Facebook provides detailed information on how the data collected from each of these tools is used:

• Social plugins and Facebook Login. We use your IP address, browser/operating system information, and the address of the website or app you’re using to make these features work. For example, knowing your IP address allows us to send the Like button to your browser and helps us show it in your language. Cookies and device identifiers help us determine whether you’re logged in, which makes it easier to share content or use Facebook to log into another app.
• Facebook Analytics. Facebook Analytics gives websites and apps data about how they are used. IP addresses help us list the countries where people are using an app. Browser and operating system information enable us to give developers information about the platforms people use to access their app. Cookies and other identifiers help us count the number of unique visitors. Cookies also help us recognize which visitors are Facebook users so we can provide aggregated demographic information, like age and gender, about the people using the app.
• Ads. Facebook Audience Network enables other websites and apps to show ads from Facebook advertisers. When we get a request to show an Audience Network ad, we need to know where to send it and the browser and operating system a person is using. Cookies and device identifiers help us determine whether the person uses Facebook. If they do, we can use the fact that they visited a business’s site or app to show them an ad from that business – or a similar one — back on Facebook. If they don’t, we can show an ad encouraging them to sign up for Facebook.
• Ad Measurement. An advertiser can choose to add the Facebook Pixel, some computer code, to their site. This allows us to give advertisers stats about how many people are responding to their ads — even if they saw the ad on a different device — without us sharing anyone’s personal information.

App and website usage habits are also used to determine the content and ads that are shown on Facebook. A person who visits a lot of sports related sites, for example, will see more sports-related news stories and ads.

To control what data Facebook is collecting, the company directs users to its News Feed preferences and Ad preferences to remove unwanted advertisers and opt out of certain types of ads. You can disable the feature that lets Facebook provide targeted ads based on your browsing habits, and you can disable the option that lets other apps and websites use your Facebook interests to provide ads.

Facebook says that it will address additional questions that were raised during Zuckerberg’s testimony in future posts.

Tag: Facebook
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Yolla aims to help users make international voice calls on the cheap [Review]

Making international calls no longer needs to be such an expensive activity. Whether you have family living abroad with who you want to keep in touch or you’re traveling a lot, you can keep your sanity (and wallet) at ease by using apps for making international calling.

The good news is that you can make international calls for free (or at very affordable rates), as there are many viable options which don’t require you to pay an arm and a leg to wireless carriers. It’s another case for free apps to the rescue.

In what follows, we’ll talk about one such app. It’s called Yolla International Calling App and it’s free to download from the Google Play Store, although while using it you might have to do some additional spending.

Setup

Just download Yolla from the Play Store and install it on your device. Then give the app permission to access your phone app, contacts and verify your phone number (Yolla will call you, but you don’t need to answer). After this is done, you’ll be able to get started.

Interface & Use

Once you dive into the app, probably the key highlight is its easy-to-use, modern-looking interface. You’ll find it’s clear as it can be and is not plagued by ads or overstuffed with more or less useful features. Even non-techies will get the hang of how of it in no time.

Basically, when you open the app you’ll see a list of all your contacts. Contacts who have the Yolla app installed on their device will have the Yolla logo listed next to their names and you can call them for free.

Yolla also allows you to call people who don’t have the Yolla app installed on their device. You can actually make calls to any mobile or landline phone worldwide, but obviously, you’ll be asked to pay a fee for this service.

Like with other VoIP apps, international calls are free between app users. But when it comes to calling people who don’t have internet on their phone or the Yolla app installed, you will have to buy credit. Rates are pretty decent and don’t come with hidden fees. You can also earn additional credits by inviting friends to join the app. Here are some examples of rates for calling mobile numbers:

• USA from $0.008/min
• Canada from $0.005/min
• UK from $0.015/min
• Australia from $0.033/min

However, you need to make sure you’re on a stable Wi-Fi/4G/3G connection or you risk your call falling through. Almost 70% of the calls I placed (free or otherwise) or received failed after 2-3 minutes due to apparent Wi-Fi instability issues.

On the bright side of things, one of the best parts of the app is that it lets you keep your original phone number, so you’ll friends and family will always see your personal phone number when you call. And they won’t even know you’re calling using an app (unless they have and use Yolla too).

Furthermore, I was pleasantly impressed with the sound quality in calls. I could hear the other party very crisply at the other end, regardless of whether I was making a local or international call. What’s more, the app doesn’t appear to be a battery hog either.

But unlike alternative apps like Viber, Yolla does not allow you to text and send photos. It’s only for making calls and nothing else.

By the way, if you’re looking to place a phone call to a certain country, but you don’t know the country code, Yolla includes a database of all country codes. Which is quite handy.

Overall

Yolla offers a clean and easy-to-use app and excellent in-call quality. However, you need to make sure you’re on a stable Wi-Fi connection (or 4G/3G) to ensure your calls won’t fail. But if this happens, another concern is that your credit will get depleted without you actually getting to talk to the person you want to reach.

Luckily, Yolla thought of this. If you are having network issues, you can request customer service right from the app. A Yolla customer service agent will check the network and make it up to users in no time. Even if the issue is on the customer’s end.

You can download Yolla in the Google Play Store

Most of Toyota’s cars will talk to each other by 2025

Toyota’s first vehicles that communicate with each other will be up for sale in the US starting in 2021. By the mid-2020s, “most” of Toyota and Lexus’ lineup will feature Dedicated Short-Range Communications (DSRC) the company says. Since 2015, the automaker has installed the tech in around 100,000 cars in its native Japan, according to Reuters. The automaker pointed toward its automatic emergency braking systems pledge from 2015 as proof of intent. Now, Toyota says 92 percent of its US sales are cars with its Toyota Safety Sense or Lexus Safety Sense braking tech as standard equipment.

Toyota is a bit late on the announcement though. And by the time its chatty rides hit the road, others will have already been deployed for a bit. Volkswagen specifically said its communicative cars will be on the road by 2019. A grid of cars that can talk to each other is something that’s been tossed around for awhile, with the government granting the auto industry a block of spectrum in the 5.9 GHz band specifically for vehicle-to-vehilce (V2V) systems back in 1999. Toyota’s implementation will use seven channels of that for its DSRC tech.

The idea is to start blanketing the roads with cars equipped with V2V and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communications, hopefully reducing collisions and traffic bottlenecks. But we’re still a ways out from that. Three years ago, legislation was announced to make V2V systems standard equipment. But, that still hasn’t happened yet. Ford recently announced its CoPilot 360 driver-assist suite will be standard equipment by 2020, but didn’t explicitly disclose if it had V2V communications systems onboard as well.

Source: Toyota, Reuters

Robot bees on Mars — NASA funding a swarm of drones to explore the Red Planet

The Curiosity Rover has done its share of exploring Mars by land, but now, NASA is looking to take to the skies above the Red Planet. A team of Japanese and American engineers is hoping to send a team of drones inspired by bees, aptly named “Marsbees.”

NASA has granted the innovative researchers funding as part of its “Innovative Advanced Concepts” program, which selects a few early concept ideas for space exploration to support on a yearly basis. The scientists hope that with NASA’s blessing, they’ll be able to create a swarm of robo-bees capable of autonomously exploring our neighboring planet. The Marsbees would still be dependent upon a rover, which would serve as a central command station and a charging port. The rover would also download the information collected by the Marsbees, and would help transmit it back to Earth.

As for the bee-inspired drones, scientists describe them as “robotic flapping wing flyers of a bumblebee size with cicada-sized wings.” These disproportionally large wings, Fast Company explains, will help the drones compensate for the much thinner atmosphere of Mars (as compared to Earth).

But why would bees be better than rovers? According to the researchers, having a swarm of flying robots is much hardier than a singular rover. If one of the bees falls from the swarm, there will be plenty of others who can make up for its absence. Similarly, each bee can perform independent of its compatriots, but when needed, would be able to take on a team-based mentality to cover a wider swath of the planet. Researchers also believe that they’ll be able to program the bees to perform as various types of sensors. And of course, the Marsbees’ ability to fly will give scientists a new vantage point on the Mars’ surface.

But don’t get too excited about this concept. As it stands, it is still very much in concept stage. The team still needs to solidify the wing design, and determine exactly how these bees will fly and how much power they’ll require. Currently, the scientists are testing their prototypes in a special chamber that reflects the air density of the Martian atmosphere. In later testing phases, they’ll also look into the Marsbees’ maneuverability, takeoff and landing capacities, and establish a potential mission.

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We’re waiting! 7 technologies that sci-fi films promised us, but aren’t here yet

In a previous list, we discussed the technologies that were once science fiction, now turned science fact. But there are still plenty of other sci-fi dreams that have yet to land in the real world. Here are the seven pieces of future tech that would change life as we know it.

Laser guns

Come on science, where are all the laser guns? You can’t throw a DVD in a video store (or whatever the 2018 version of that sentence would be) without hitting a sci-fi flick in which lasers being used as offensive weapons. Unfortunately, despite some pretty cool laser-related technologies we’ve covered here at Digital Trends, we’re still not living in a world in which laser guns are a mainstream technology. Star Trek-style phasers, a.k.a concentrated pulse of high frequency sound waves, are disappointingly M.I.A., too.

Will it happen? It’s already happening — kind of. Lockheed Martin has developed a giant laser blaster designed to blow autonomous drones out of the sky. The U.S. Air Force is also convinced about the possibility of future aerial laser battles involving fighter jets.

While there have been DIY handheld laser guns, so far none of them quite resemble the ones in the movies. Maybe it’s the lack of “pew-pew” sounds!

Artificial general intelligence

YakobchukOlena/Getty Images

If you’ve been keeping your eyes and ears open over the past several years, you can’t help but have heard about the amazing advances in artificial intelligence. As astonishing as those advances have been, however, we’re still not at the point of artificial general intelligence, or AGI.

AGI, also known as strong AI, refers to a more generalized intelligence that isn’t limited to one single domain. One definition of AGI refers to the coffee test, in which a robot should be able to go into the average American home and work out how to make a coffee. That means navigating to the kitchen, identifying the coffee machine, figuring out how it works, finding a cup, and then making a hot cup of joe without problem.

According to researchers like Nick Bostrom, AGI could be the start of an exponential intelligence boom that will result in superintelligence. After that? For better or worse, life as we know it will never be the same.

Will it happen? Today’s A.I. is made up of single purpose systems that can do one thing really well. There’s a massive gulf between that and true intelligence, a concept that neuroscientists still don’t fully understand. Simply making neural networks bigger and smarter won’t necessarily result in a true thinking machine.

Nonetheless, the exponential increase in computing ability, and advances in fields like goal-forming reinforcement learning, suggests a breakthrough could be imminent.

Quantum computers

D-Wave

Quantum computers were first proposed in 1982 by the American theoretical physicist Richard Feynman. Quantum computers represent the next evolution of computing from the binary digital electronic computers we use today. Instead of encoding data into bits which are either 0 or 1, quantum computing deals with quantum bits, which can be 0, 1 and both 0 and 1 at the same time. The results promise to be exponentially faster and more efficient computers than we can possibly imagine today.

Already there have been some advances in making early quantum computers — so it’s not wholly accurate to say they don’t exist yet. Nonetheless, true quantum computing is not here. When it does arrive, everything from modern cryptography to our ability to model amazing complexly problems, such as the behavior of atomic particles, will shift overnight.

Will it happen? Almost certainly. With fears about the end of Moore’s Law, plenty of funding from giants like Google and Microsoft, and lots of interest in the field, quantum computing seems assured. The bigger question is how many of the other items on this list it could open up.

Teleportation

Star Trek

The Star Trek dream of “Beam me up, Scotty!” is the ultimate form of transportation: long-distance travel minus the travel. There have been numerous scientific advances in real life teleportation since a 1993 paper titled, “Teleporting an Unknown Quantum State Via Dual Classical and Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Channels.”

Despite that, teleporting humans — or even everyday objects — has yet to become a reality. We’d totally chip in for a crowdfunding campaign that would guarantee we’d never again be stuck in the middle seat on a long-haul flight to get where we’re going!

Will it happen? When it comes to speeding up transportation over long distances, there will almost certainly be far better short term options than waiting on teleportation. In theory it’s possible, but you shouldn’t expect to be transporting to work in this manner in your lifetime.

Then there’s always that David Cronenberg fear of what happens if a fly happens to buzz into the teleportation system at the same time you do!

Invisibility cloaks

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone

Whether it’s H.G. Wells’ Invisible Man or Harry Potter’s cloak of invisibility, people have long been dreaming of technology that will allow us — and certain selected objects — to disappear from sight. In recent years, Digital Trends has covered some intriguing projects related to real life invisibility capes.

Sadly, as of this writing we’re still waiting for the metamaterial that will make honest-to-goodness invisibility a reality. Maybe we’re being punished for all those mean comments about James Bond’s invisible car in the awful Die Another Day.

Will it happen? We’re not banking on a Harry Potter-style invisibility poncho popping up next year’s catwalks, but there will certainly be more and more invisibility projects by the military. As new ways to sense individuals, equipment and vehicles are invented, so too will the number of technologies designed to render them useless.

3D printed organs

Singapore Economic Development Board

Imagine if medical science had the ability to replace a worn out or diseased organ with a brand new one, with no risk of your body rejecting it. That’s the long term dream of 3D bioprinting, which aims to one day give regenerative medical experts the ability to 3D print fully functioning organs like the kidney, liver or even heart using a patient’s own cells.

Such a feat will end transplant organ shortages, alongside related issues like the black market for organ. Right now, bioprinting is still at the level of printing basic tissues, with complete vascular organs still a couple decades away.

Will it happen? Fully 3D bioprinted organs are still a way off. But organoids for personalized drug testing or implantable tissues for repairs are coming in the next decade.

Colonizing Mars

Nisian Hughes/Getty Images

Colonizing Mars has been a science-fiction dream for years. With a growing Earthbound population and the technology to reach Mars now a reality, it’s only going to be so long before the likes of SpaceX’s Elon Musk fulfill their goal of colonizing the Red Planet.

Will it happen? We sure think it will. And we’d love to be among the intrepid first generation of inhabitants, too. So long as it doesn’t all go a bit Total Recall-style dystopia, that is.

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Noninvasive brain zapping can make your hands feel things in VR

There are all kinds of interesting controllers and haptic feedback experiments designed to make the virtual world feel more lifelike and immersive. One recent piece of research, from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, could help out in this regard — and all thanks to a bit of trusty brain-zapping action.

It’s a twist on the so-called “rubber hand illusion,” in which a subject can be made to feel a connection with a fake rubber hand when they see one being touched at the same time as their own real hand is touched. The result is both a feeling of ownership and agency over the rubber hand. In this case, neuroscience researchers were able to re-create the effect without actually touching a volunteer — by instead zapping their brain using a safe process called transcranial magnetic stimulation.

“We showed that in healthy volunteers it is possible to induce the illusory feeling that a virtual hand belongs to them and that they can control it,” researcher Michela Bassolino told Digital Trends. “This has been obtained by stimulating the motor cortex so that it was possible to activate subjects’ hand muscles and to induce involuntary short movements in the subjects’ hand. If during this stimulation, subjects observed a virtual hand moving at the same time and in the same way as their own movements, participants [achieve] the illusory sensation that the virtual hand is part of their body and that they can control it. The illusion does not work if the virtual hand moves out of synchrony with respect to the subjects’ movements.”

Out of a total of 32 volunteers, 80 percent experienced the effect during two minutes of stimulation. Bassolino said that the effect may be achievable with video, instead of virtual reality, but that VR has the benefit of being a more immersive experience. Were this to be applied to mainstream applications, she suggested that it could be used for everything from video games to helping patients with sensory and motor deficit after a stroke, who have a reduced perception of their body.

A paper describing the work was recently published in the European Journal of Neuroscience.

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