Adidas will release shoes made from ocean plastic this year
Adidas is committing to integrating recycled ocean waste into a general-release shoe this year. The sportswear company showed off a shoe with a 3D-printed midsole made from up-cycled ocean plastic late last year, as part of a collaboration with Parley, an anti-ocean-pollution organization. That was a one-off concept shoe, but off the back of that the company is now showing off a product titled Adidas x Parley.
The new limited-edition shoe’s upper is made from Parley Ocean Plastic and illegal deep-sea gillnets retrieved by the non-profit Sea Shepherd during a mission to protect sea life in the Southern Ocean. Announced to coincide with World Oceans Day, only fifty pairs will be made available, and they’ll be given away through an Instagram contest.
A video posted by Parley for the Oceans (@parley.tv) on Jun 7, 2016 at 7:30am PDT
More exciting than the limited-edition shoe is the promise of a bonafide commercial product coming soon. Adidas says it’ll be a world’s first, integrating Parley Ocean Plastic into one of its “top footwear franchises” in the second half of this year. That release is apparently possible due to the inroads Adidas and Parley have made in turning ocean plastics into “technical yarn fibres” that can easily be integrated into products.
The new shoe will be one of an ongoing series of changes Adidas has made in an attempt to be friendlier to the environment. It’s already announced it’ll stop handing out plastic bags in its stores and end the use of microbeads in products like shower gels.
If you’re interested in trying to snag a pair of Adidas x Parleys, the competition will run through to July 31st on Parley and Adidas’ various social media channels, where the rules will be shared in due course.
Via: The Verge
Source: Adidas
‘The Beano’ is being reimagined for the YouTube age
The world’s longest-running weekly comic, The Beano, is to become the latest brand to get an online reinvention. According to The Guardian, parent company DC Thomson has set up Beano Studios, a new digital arm which will see the comic’s biggest stars — including Dennis the Menace and Bananaman — find new homes on YouTube and popular children’s website PopJam.
Beano Studios is already plotting an autumn launch for the new Beano.com website, but there are also discussions over the possibility of making a new Dennis the Menace TV series that will forego traditional animation for CGI. “We are taking the Beano spirit, we aren’t simply trying to transfer the comic online,” says Beano Studios’ Emma Scott. “We will marry it with the best of the web, commissions from independent producers, YouTube, user-generated content — whatever fits with the Beano ethos.”
The Beano is the latest in a long line of older-generation brands that are getting a modern facelift. The BBC brought back popular 80s cartoon Dangermouse last year and ITV ditched puppets in bringing Thunderbirds back to screens. While Beano Studios’ new “digital entertainment hub” may lure in new audience, bringing the characters to YouTube may help breathe new life into Minnie the Minx, Billy Whizz and Rodger the Dodger.
Source: The Guardian
Magic Leap offers a glimpse into its headset design process
Magic Leap is an enigmatic augmented reality firm that’s worth $4.5 billion on the basis of some very limited demonstrations. Now the firm has been awarded a design patent for a “virtual reality headset” that offers us some idea of what it’s thinking. The company’s Andy Fouché has already shot down the idea that this is what the finished device will look like, but there’s plenty to glean. In a distinct contrast to Microsoft’s slender Hololens, the sketch features a shell that covers the top half of the user’s face. Robocop comparisons aside, the headset is then held on with a solid strap running over the top of their head.
As you can see from the internal view, two eyepieces protrude forward, although it’s not clear if the shell is transparent or not. If not, then the shell will need some sort of aperture, since CEO Rony Abovitz says that the technology uses “wafer-like” components that manages “the flow of photons” to create a “digital light-field signal” in your eyes. Which sounds exactly like the sort of buzzfeed-filled jargon you use when you don’t want to tell people how your device works. Given how much money respected investors, such as Google, Qualcomm, Warner Bros. and Alibaba, have put in to the business, presumably there’s something very real behind all the fluff.
Via: The Verge, Quartz
Source: USPTO
Slack finally opens up work calls to everyone
After testing voice calls for the past few months, Slack is now opening up the feature to all of its workaholic users. It works as you’d expect: you can initiate calls with a new telephone icon in Slack’s desktop offerings, or by clicking through a dropdown menu on its iOS and Android apps. Then you can chat with coworkers using your voice, just like olden times. Any Slack user will be able to make individual calls, and teams who pay for the service can also initiate group calls for any Slack channel or group chat.
Sure, it’s a feature Slack competitors like Hipchat have had for years, but it’s still nice to see it finally showing up. You’ll also be able to throw up emojis during work chats, which is surely something someone, somewhere, has wanted for a while.
Registration for EU referendum vote extended after site meltdown
The window for online registration to vote in the upcoming EU referendum has been extended after the portal crashed late last night. Many tens of thousands of visitors hit the site shortly after David Cameron and Nigel Farage were finished airing their respective views on the referendum live on ITV. The huge influx brought the website down around 10.15PM, and normal service did not resume until after the registration deadline of midnight. However, thanks to emergency legislation, registration remains open and the Prime Minister is encouraging people to keep signing up. The extension will last until midnight tomorrow (June 9th), so head over to the site when you get a chance if you want your say in the referendum on June 23rd.
If you aren’t registered & you want to vote in this EU referendum you should continue to register at https://t.co/9e1gQX5vGM
— David Cameron (@David_Cameron) June 8, 2016
Source: Electoral Commission, David Cameron (Twitter)
‘Kingdom Hearts 2.8’ sets up ‘Kingdom Hearts 3’ this December
Kingdom Hearts 3 is still a long way off. In the meantime, fans of the Disney and Final Fantasy mashup are being treated to another remaster-compilation called Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue (yep, that’s the official name.) The games comes with a HD version of Dream Drop Distance, originally released for the 3DS, and two new experiences called Back Cover and A Fragmentary Passage. Confused yet? Don’t worry, Kingdom Hearts is known for its convoluted storyline. Today, Square Enix announced that the PS4 game — already confirmed for Japan — will also be coming to the West. It’ll be out “globally” sometime this December.
To whet your appetite, the publisher has released a new trailer. It starts with Dream Drop Distance before switching to Fragmentary Passage, a new playable chapter following Aqua in the realm of darkness. The latter half teases Back Cover, a new movie exploring a mysterious group called the “Foretellers” and “the earliest parts of the series’ history.” It’s tied to Unchained X, a smartphone game that recently launched in the US.
Source: PlayStation (YouTube)
‘Injustice 2’ will make more dream superhero brawls reality
If you enjoyed watching your favorite DC superheroes and villains duke it out in NetherRealm Studios’ Injustice: Gods Among Us, get ready to do it all over again. A sequel, simply titled Injustice 2, is ready to swoop in and deliver a swift beatdown.
Fresh off the momentum of the superbly gory Mortal Kombat X, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment and NetherRealm have teamed up to deliver another dose of the fighter with a set of new characters, features and other additions that should please DC Comics fans. Taking place in a world shattered by Superman’s actions in the previous game, players will take up the mantle of heroes like Batman and Superman to rally against newly-included villains like Atrocitus and Gorilla Grodd.
The newly-unveiled Gear System should be a step up from the previous game as well. The new mechanic utilizes RPG-lite mechanics that offer loot drops each time you play so you can customize the hero of your choice with the equipment you see fit. This way, you’re able to create a wholly different Aquaman or Supergirl than your opponent. You know, if there ever happened to be two versions of Aquaman in battle for some reason.
Injustice 2 is scheduled to drop for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in 2017.
Adidas uses robots to bring shoe production back to Germany
Years ago, clothing manufacturers started moving production to developing nations where the labor costs were cheap and employees were plentiful. Proponents of globalization said that jobs going to poorer regions was a great thing, but sportswear firms paying workers pennies to make $100 shirts certainly isn’t. But now, the robot revolution is likely to cause a retreat from the days of fashion houses opening sweatshops in far-flung lands. And Adidas, which has often come under fire for its use of unethical labor practices, is leading the charge.
The Financial Times is reporting that Adidas is going to bring back production to its native Germany for the first time in 30 years. It’s spent the last six months testing a robotic factory with automated production lines creating soles and uppers separately before stitching them together. Spurred on by the results, the company is working on a large facility near Ansbach which will begin making sneakers for sale at some point next year. Another facility will be built in the US, although both are expected to produce just a tiny fraction of the 301 million pairs the firm made last year.
The paper explains that a robot production line takes about five hours to create each pair of sneakers from scratch. By comparison, it apparently takes “several weeks” to do the same job in an Asian factory with human workers. Efficiency and cost savings may be the name of the game, but there are other perks for companies toying with robot production. Adidas will become more nimble when it comes to creating new sneakers, and can cut costs by only manufacturing a shoe when demand is high enough. That will end the days of unwanted stock being sold off on the cheap at the end of the season, reducing waste and boosting profits.
Of course, the end goal is surely to end the days of buying a sneaker off the shelf and simply have a custom-made kick sent to your home days after ordering. It’s another benefit of localization, since Adidas will be able to get product into the hands of consumers far faster if factories are located nearer to its audience. With advances in 3D printing likely to come in the future, the idea of things you want to buy being made in a far-flung land may be a thing of the past in three or four decades time.
But there’s a dark side to all of this, which is what’s going to happen to those communities when the sweatshops eventually close. In 1992, US Senator Tom Harkin proposed legislation that would block imports of goods produced by children under the age of 15. A year later, the Bangladesh garment industry dismissed 50,000 children in anticipation of the bill, which was never passed. A 1997 report by UNICEF tracked those children, and found that their situation had gotten worse, not better. As the report explains, the children wound up in “hazardous situations” where they were “paid less, or in prostitution.”
Source: Financial Times
Prosthetic arms inspired by ‘Deus Ex’ are coming next year
Remember that Metal Gear-inspired prosthetic arm that Konami developed? Well, it’s not the only publisher keen to recreate artificial limbs from video games. Square Enix and Eidos-Montréal have teamed up with Open Bionics, a specialist in low-cost prosthetics, to develop new designs based on the world of Deus Ex. The franchise delves deep into a possible future where human augmentation is commonplace, changing society and warfare in equal measure. Two arms — one based on Adam Jensen, the hero of Mankind Divided, another on the wider Deus Ex universe — will be released next year as royalty-free designs that anyone can use.
Open Bionics has already made prosthetic arms inspired by Iron Man, Frozen and Star Wars. The new designs look more impressive, however; the Adam Jensen arm (below) is full of detail, from its flexing fingers to the rotating wrist. The Titan arm (above), meanwhile, is more stylized with sharp, geometric shapes and angles. Both are colored in gunmetal grey and gold, reflecting the series and its augmented superhero.
Eidos-Montreal and Open Bionics will be showing the arms at multiple game shows including E3 and Gamescom, with a little help from Razer. The company, most known for its gaming keyboards and mice, will be using its Stargazer webcam to track people’s movements and show them what it would be like to control an artificial limb. They might not be as lethal as those used by Adam Jensen, but they look the part — if they perform half as well, they could be attractive to amputees with a passion for the franchise.
‘Deus Ex Go’ makes puzzles out of hacking and augmentation
Square Enix Montréal is back with another touch-friendly “Go” puzzler for mobile devices. After tackling Hitman and Tomb Raider, the studio is taking on the futuristic augmentations of Deus Ex. Unsurprisingly, it’s called Deus Ex Go, and will be launching sometime this summer to coincide (roughly) with Mankind Divided, the next core entry in the franchise. It keeps the premise of the previous Go games — simple, stylized graphics and node-based stages that you have to traverse — but mixes up the formula with some new power-ups and enemy types. Success is dependent on understanding and manipulating every element on the board.
I was able to try an early build containing the first six levels. Swiping around with Adam Jensen, the hero of Mankind Divided, I could trigger items that granted invisibility for a couple of spaces. A terminal allowed me to disable a turret or tap into a node which was previously inaccessible or didn’t offer a safe path forward. Drawing a line with my finger meant I could activate the space, raise a platform and create new paths.
These basic mechanics were easy to grasp but quickly produced a few head-scratching problems. How do I trigger my invisibility in a way that will get me past the next turret? Can I change the map to the hack the turret, thereby saving the power-up for another hurdle up ahead?
“We create complexity in a simple way,” Etienne Giroux, a game designer at Square Enix Montréal explains. “You’re not constantly learning new rules, it’s just that you realise these rules talk to each other. That they work together. And that’s really the complexity that we go for in these games, because they have to be simple, they have to be graspable, and we like that anyone can think that it’s easy for them to get into it.”
“We want to make the best experience possible in a level editor. One that people are going to remember.”
Deus Ex Go will be a larger game than its Hitman and Tomb Raider predecessors. Square Enix Montréal is designing more levels this time around and is also working on a level editor — a first for the Go franchise. It won’t be ready in time for launch though, as the team is still working on the “metagame,” or mechanics — such as those found in Little Big Planet and Super Mario Maker — that will drive players to make new stages.
“One of the reasons why it’s coming later is that we don’t just want to put a button there that says ‘you can also make stuff.’ We want to make the best experience possible in a level editor. One that people are going to remember, that will be the best editor you see on the App Store, and that will be actually usable,” Giroux says.
The editor will also help the team to speed up its own level production. Before, creating a new level pack meant pulling developers away from other projects. Now, with the tools it’s developed for the community, the same work should require fewer people and less time.
“The idea was to make the decision easy for us,” Giroux says. “It’s easy to take a decision to create more levels when 30 puzzles takes a couple of weeks with two guys. That’s an easier decision for the studio than it is thinking about five or six guys working for three months.”
In the future, that could include not just new levels, but also mechanics. Giroux says he’s confident the community will find new, creative ways to use these elements, far beyond what the developers originally intended. “We know for sure that it’s not going to be a long time before someone finds a way to use something in a way that we didn’t, but that’s cool!”
The Go games are designed for mobile devices, but their success has led to wider platform support. Hitman Go started on iOS and Android but has since come to PS4, Vita, PC and VR. Lara Croft Go has remained on phones and tablets, but that’s not due to lack of demand elsewhere. The team says countless people have asked for a Vita version — but similar to the new content conundrum, it has to decide when to move on and prioritize new projects. Similarly Deus Ex Go, at least at launch, will be mobile only.
As for the future? The studio is staying tight-lipped. With Hitman, Tomb Raider and Deus Ex, the Go franchise has covered all of the main Western properties owned by Square Enix. The developer’s pedigree is attracting fresh talent too — last month it picked up Teddy Dief, who developed Hyper Light Drifter, and Renaud Bédard, one of the programmers behind Fez. If the team wants to try something new, now would seem the perfect time to do it. Or rather, as soon as Deus Ex Go is out of the door.
