Scientists put mouse embryos in suspended animation for a month
A team of scientists from the University of California, San Francisco only wanted to slow down mice embryos’ cell growth in the lab. Instead, they managed to completely pause their development, putting the blastocysts (very early embryos) in suspended animation for a month. What’s more, they found that the process can put stem cells derived from the blastocysts in suspended animation, as well.
Okay, let’s face it: that doesn’t sound nearly as cool as putting humans in suspended animation. But their finding still has huge implications for various fields of medicine. Doctors could develop a way to suspend embryos for IVF and scientists could find a method to slow down aging, among other possibilities. Helps that the researchers were able to prove that the embryos can develop normally even after a pause in their growth.
Team member Ramalho-Santos from the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regeneration Medicine and Stem Cell Research said:
“It was completely surprising. We were standing around in the tissue culture room, scratching our heads, and saying wow, what do we make of this? To put it in perspective, mouse pregnancies only last about 20 days, so the 30-day-old ‘paused’ embryos we were seeing would have been pups approaching weaning already if they’d been allowed to develop normally.”
So, what exactly did the team do that led to their finding? They used a drug that inhibited the activities of a protein called mTOR, which regulates different cellular processes. By inhibiting the protein, they also inhibit the cells’ activities.
In the future, the researchers want to explore mTOR inhibitors’ capability to pause stem cells’ activities in the late stages of their development, which could be used to repair or replace organs. And since other studies already showed that mTOR inhibitors can extend the lives of mice, the researchers want to explore their possible uses in aging research.
Source: University of California, San Francisco
Separating art from the artist
December 2012. That’s the last time I listened to a Lostprophets song. It was never my favorite band, but a few tracks were in my regular rotation until that month, when The Guardian broke news that the band’s frontman, Ian Watkins, had been charged with child sex offenses. As the terrible nature of his crimes slowly unraveled, I came to associate every drum, every chord, every lyric, with the horrors I had read about.
The question — Can you detangle creativity from its creator? — is an old one. It’s often argued that we should judge a work on its own; that to tie it into an author’s views or politics is wrong. But I’ve always struggled to separate the two. Recently, that struggle was brought into sharp focus. Since July, I’ve put 71 hours into the sci-fi colony simulation game RimWorld. It is far from perfect, and aspects have frustrated me, but as a whole I deeply enjoyed it. Until, that is, an article, a response and a few tweets made me stop playing.
It started when Rock, Paper, Shotgun published an article by Claudia Lo, an academic and journalist, titled “How RimWorld’s Code Defines Strict Gender Roles.” In it, she pulls apart the game’s underlying code to reveal issues with how its relationships function. Lo claims that, rather than being realistic or neutral, the game is imbued with the beliefs of its developer, Tynan Sylvester. Bisexual men don’t exist in RimWorld, and all women are either bisexual or gay, she said. There are also issues with how women and men react to romantic advances, and how colonists perceive disabilities. Sylvester has disputed almost all of the claims, both publicly via a Reddit post and through an interview with Engadget.
Combing through Lo’s analysis and Sylvester’s response, It’s entirely plausible that some of the things Lo found are not accurate. Sylvester said the lack of bisexual men was an issue that “will be fixed in the next release,” and that to say there are no straight women in the game was “a naive reading” of the code. “From the player’s point-of-view, most women in the game are straight, since they never attempt romance with other women,” he said.
Sylvester added that the code is a “half-finished attempt to make an engaging game system based on a quick non-judgemental survey of research data.” This research appears to be the root of the game’s issues with sexuality — Sylvester read survey data on sexual orientation that showed “women are substantially more likely than men to identify as bisexual,” and vice versa. He also cited research from a Notre Dame sociologist that indicated a larger proportion of women who identify as straight have engaged in bisexual behavior. The study’s preliminary findings were presented to the American Sociological Association (ASA) last fall. A spokesperson for the ASA said the study has not been peer reviewed.
It’s difficult for me personally to reconcile the argument of code being cobbled together with the argument that the code is backed up by research. And I suspect confirmation bias was at play with the research that was found and implemented. The figure Sylvester highlighted to show the huge gulf between male and female gay and bisexual rates was an estimation for the US. The international studies highlighted in the same paper put the split between bisexual and gay women at around 42-58. Some studies suggest there are more bisexual men than gay men, another suggested there are more gay women than bisexual women.
The point is that these are all just estimations, and not something on which to base your worldview. Sylvester told Reddit last month that he “made an honest attempt to understand the reality, and applied that to the game as [he] learned it.”
This back-and-forth goes on for almost every point in Lo’s article. Lo said colonists with disabilities are found less attractive; men are eight times as likely as women to attempt a romance; physical beauty is the only trait that governs attractiveness; there are no bisexual men; there are only bisexual or gay women; women find men younger than them unattractive; men consider women 15 years older than themselves unattractive; no matter how old a man, a non-gay woman can find them somewhat attractive.
A chart from Lo’s article showing how women view attractiveness.
Sylvester typically said the issues raised by Lo were the result of code being misunderstood or misrepresented, a symptom of a game in development, or a bug. The full counter-argument is on Reddit for anyone to read, but regardless, Sylvester told me that to try and derive his “personal real-life moral beliefs” from reading decompiled code “would not be reasonable,” adding that “those who have tried so far have been radically off the mark.”
I’m not sure if, on its own, a developer’s naivety when it comes to gender and sexuality is enough to put me off playing a game, especially if they’re committed to fixing many of the issues. But, as tends to happen on the internet, tweets from Sylvester soon began circulating, highlighting what appears to be the developer defending Gamergate idols and, more upsettingly, an abhorrent game that involves gunning down members of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, which it “satirically” calls a terrorist group.
Sylvester categorically denied supporting either GamerGate or the alt-right when I asked him. Regarding the BLM game, he said he “never expressed support for its content.” Instead, he said he was expressing “the belief that mega-corporations like Google should not shut down unpopular speech.”
I told Sylvester that my home country (the UK) has laws that, while supporting free speech generally, restrict the use of racist, hateful or threatening communication. He said that restricting freedom of speech “sounds great when it’s controlled by people you agree with,” pointing to Donald Trump’s election win as evidence that this won’t always be the case.
“Speech controls sound great when you imagine they’ll be controlled by people you agree with — but when you realize they’ll also someday be wielded by people on the other side, they sound very, very bad.”
The result of all these events is that I don’t know exactly what or who to believe. As a big RimWorld fan, Lo’s article was very disconcerting, as were the tweets that surfaced. Also worrying was Sylvester’s initial reaction. Prior to the more-measured Reddit post, he had commented quite combatively below Lo’s article, calling it an “anger-farming hit piece,” a “moralistic witch hunt” and “the worst kind of click-bait.” While I accept that, due to my line of work, I’m overly sensitive to this kind of attack, I feel strongly that this is not an appropriate response to criticism.
I understand that, for many people, the behavior or opinions of a developer, or indeed the political content of a game, are inconsequential. But my opinion of RimWorld was tarnished by Lo’s article, the furor that followed it and especially his standing up for the makers of a horrifically upsetting game. Tarnished to the point where I no longer wanted to play the game. As Sylvester explained to the alt-right publication Breitbart last month, while discussing developer trust: “There’s the old adage, right? Don’t listen to what people say. Watch what they do. And that’s how you really get to know who people are.”
But why shouldn’t I play RimWorld? Sylvester is accused of no crime. He simply created a game with a flawed portrayal of sexuality, and holds some views I disagree with. Do I really need to like a person to enjoy something they’ve made?
RimWorld, in so many ways, is an equalizing game. Sure, I have been frustrated by aspects of its relationship mechanics, especially regarding bisexuality, but given that it’s still in active development, I figured these were things that would be fixed. In general, I saw RimWorld as a game where a person’s gender and sexuality is often inconsequential. Indeed, unimportant enough that I often lost track of which of my colonists were male or female, gay or straight.
But I think that’s where my problem lies: I played this game, believing that it offered a neutral outlook on society, and it didn’t. While I would never claim that this was Sylvester’s intention, I worry that I misled myself. I worry that the game was indoctrinating me to change my views.
I’ve held that fear before. I was eight years old, and entirely unaware of Vanity Fair’s existence, when “Mia’s Story,” an article examining the private life of Woody Allen, was published. Over the following fifteen years, I probably watched Annie Hall, Manhattan, and other Allen movies dozens of times. By the time I came across the allegation that Allen had sexually abused his adopted children, I had venerated him as a director, writer and actor.
Initially, I didn’t see an issue with enjoying Allen’s films. Then, the doubt started to creep in.
Initially, I didn’t see an issue with enjoying the films while despising the man. Then, the doubt started to creep in. That throwaway dialog about finding underage women attractive; the scene that blends sexuality and a father role; or seeing “the Allen character” dating someone far his younger; it all began to make me extremely uncomfortable. None of these things really stood out for me before I knew of the allegations. But now, I feel like, at least a little, Allen normalized these behaviors for me. I don’t recall the last time I watched one of his movies.
While writing this article, I reached out to Lo, whose background is in comparative media study including queer and feminist theory as it applies to video games, to see if she could help me make sense of things. I wanted to know if it was unreasonable to struggle to separate creator and creation.
“Knowing what I now do about the romance system in RimWorld does affect my enjoyment of the game,” Lo said. What she could once write off as curiosities or quirks, she now interprets “as a reminder of systems that have been designed in order to make certain situations more common than others.” The quirks of the random number generator were just a system working as expected. “And what the system has been designed for,” Lo continued, “is a world in which stories and experiences that I value do not exist.”
“With the knowledge that the code of the game limits the scope of possible scenarios, it’s harder for me to excuse those uncomfortable phenomena as just a quirk of the random number generator.”
Like myself, Lo bought the game without knowing about the developer or his views. She argues that RimWorld “serves as a very clear example that the biases of the author can, and do, influence how their work is produced.”
Lo, however, said it was important to not dismiss works off-hand just because you disagree with their creators. She talked of studying Martin Heidegger, a philosopher who was a member of the Nazi Party, of watching the films of D. W. Griffiths, and of reading texts by early suffragettes who were homophobic or racist. “The point was not to automatically dismiss everything they said or did, but to see if there was anything worth salvaging, or if there were any points made that were worthwhile in spite of their various political affiliations.”
I struggle with that. Griffiths’ The Birth of a Nation, Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will; these are perhaps the two most important films of their era, and yet both are full of hateful ideology. I can’t fully appreciate Riefenstahl’s innovative techniques because I know what she used them for.
There is a reason why I can watch Riefenstahl’s Olympia, however uncomfortable it makes me, but not be able to listen to Lostprophets. It comes down to knowledge. Ian Watkins, Woody Allen, Bill Cosby and every recent fallen idol — their disgraces and infractions came after I’d been introduced to their work. I felt cheated. Duped into accepting the creation without understanding the creator.
Time makes a big difference. H. P. Lovecraft’s works contain a worldview that is deeply troubling. There are brilliant tales in there, though, and ideas that have birthed a generation of fantasy writers. The Lovecraftian stories that are being written today are typically not driven by racism and classism, but by an appreciation of the original concepts. Modern authors are using his art to build their own stories that represent their own ideals.
RimWorld is not a book, nor does it have a narrative. Like Lovecraftian mythos today, it’s more of a sandbox for people to shape their own tales. But while authors are able to excise Lovecraft’s outmoded archetypes from their stories, Sylvester’s misconceptions of gender and sexual orientation actively restrict the scope of the fiction that you can build within the game. As Lo put it to me, “RimWorld is telling stories about a certain vision of the world, and the code is the way it is because its writer believes that this is an accurate reflection of how the world works.”
Ian Watkins, Woody Allen, Bill Cosby and every recent fallen idol — their disgraces and infractions came after I’d been introduced to their work. I felt cheated. Duped into accepting the creation without understanding the creator.
Sylvester disagreed that RimWorld limits players’ abilities to experience a full-breadth of human relationships through their colonists. “There are a full range of gay and straight lovers, marriages, breakups, divorces, cheating and reconciliation, family loyalty and rivalry, and so on, and there are no limits as to which character can take which actions,” he said. “Of course there are some things we don’t have the time or technology to simulate. But if you’re looking for the breadth of human relationships I struggle to think of a game that provides more, and we are always improving.”
This man clearly isn’t a monster, and there are many (perhaps even a majority) who wouldn’t find his views even remotely offensive. But the internet, and in particular sites like Twitter and Reddit, gives us a window into the minds of the creator that we haven’t had before. It shows us the flaws in our idols, and forces us to either brush them aside, or disconnect.
RimWorld won’t be the last game that pushes me away, and Sylvester won’t be the last creative to disappoint me. So can you detangle artist from their art? That’s an intensely subjective question. With time, and enough separation, I do regain some ability to objectively judge things on their own merits. But in the here and now, I find it almost impossible.
A full transcript of the Q+A with Tynan Sylvester is available here.
Image credits: Andrew Benge / Redferns via Getty Images (Ian Watkins photo), United Artists (Manhattan still), Ludeon Studios (RimWorld screenshots).
History Between Steve Jobs and Pixar Highlighted in New Book ‘To Pixar and Beyond’
Steve Jobs’ history with the now-acclaimed animation studio Pixar began in 1986 when the former Apple CEO purchased The Graphics Group, which was one third of the Computer Division of Lucasfilm, renamed it Pixar Animation Studios, and began guiding it into a burgeoning feature film production company. In a new book called To Pixar and Beyond, written by former Pixar chief financial officer Lawrence Levy, the history between Jobs and Pixar is highlighted and deepened by looking at the struggling early years of the studio (via Bloomberg).
With the subtitle “My Unlikely Journey With Steve Jobs to Make Entertainment History,” Levy’s financial knowledge of Pixar’s early days helps to put the struggles that Jobs had in the mid-nineties with the company into context. By 1994, Jobs was said to have spent $50 million investing in Pixar, and his workings with some of the company’s employees was reported as being “frayed.”
Pixar executives circa 1995: Lawrence Levy, CFO; Ed Catmull, CTO; Steve Jobs, CEO; John Lasseter, VP of Creative; Sarah McArthur, VP of Production
Working in 1994 as a technology executive within Silicon Valley, Levy said he received a call from Jobs that November and soon after became Pixar’s CFO due to viewing rough footage of what would eventually become Toy Story, which was one year from debuting in theaters. Following the success of that movie, Levy remembered looking into the original deal Jobs made with Disney, and much of his new book describes the lengths the two went through to validate Pixar’s worth within the larger context of Disney, eventually leading to the 2006 purchase of Pixar by Disney.
The book isn’t all business, however, with a few sections apparently offering “more insight” into the world of Steve Jobs when he wasn’t working at Apple.
For those who can’t get enough of Jobs, Levy offers more insight into his world. A neighbor of Jobs in Palo Alto, California, back in the day, Levy describes a surprisingly laid-back scene where he could simply stroll through the entrepreneur’s back door and go on long weekend walks with him, chatting about the business. The more controlling side of the future billionaire also comes across, as Levy describes a carefully choreographed Fortune profile in 1995 that rankled Pixar staffers because it focused mostly on Jobs.
Levy’s book ends at the sale in 2006, with Bloomberg noting that “readers looking for more of Pixar’s recent history won’t find it here.” The history of the studio within the book accounts for movies ranging from Toy Story to The Incredibles, but doesn’t include any behind-the-scenes knowledge of more recent releases, like last year’s Inside Out and The Good Dinosaur.
To Pixar and Beyond can be purchased on the iBooks Store for $14.99. [Direct Link]
(Image via This Day in Pixar)
Tags: Disney, Steve Jobs, Pixar
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Target to Offer 15% Off All Apple Products on Sunday and Cyber Monday
Target has announced it will be offering 15% off all Apple products, including the iPhone and Apple Watch, online and in stores on Sunday, November 27 and Monday, November 28. The two-day Cyber Monday event will begin on early Sunday morning.
The 15% discount will be automatically applied at checkout both online and in stores during the sale. No promo code or in-store coupon will be required. Target.com orders ship for free in the United States throughout the holidays.
Target will be offering additional discounts during Cyber Week, between November 27 and December 3, including deals on the Xbox One and Samsung smart TVs.
Tags: Target, Cyber Monday
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Microsoft Launches Classic Solitaire Game on iOS
Microsoft today launched the “Microsoft Solitaire Collection” on iOS and Android, a package of classic Solitaire games that include Klondike, Spider, FreeCell, Pyramid, and Tripeaks. As noted by The Verge, Microsoft’s version of Solitaire has been available on Windows for more than 25 years, but this marks the first time that the game has been extended to other platforms.
The app will offer daily challenges for players, with four varying levels of difficulty, and Xbox Live integration will let anyone with a subscription to Microsoft’s console service sign into their account, compete with friends, and earn achievements. Cloud saves will allow for multi-device use as well.
The World’s #1 Solitaire game is now on iPhone and iPad! For over 25 years, Microsoft Solitaire Collection remains one of the most played games of all time and is now available FREE for your iPhone or iPad! The Microsoft Solitaire Collection offers FIVE of the best Solitaire card games in one app!
Microsoft Solitaire Collection is available to download for free from the iOS App Store [Direct Link], and there’s also a premium upgrade that gets rid of ads, includes double rewards bonuses, and offers other incentives for $1.99 per month.
Tag: Microsoft
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Lenovo Phab 2 Pro review: Tango should keep the ‘project’ tag for now
Few of Google’s “projects” have been as fascinating to watch take shape like Tango, but now that the first phone with the AR equipment baked in has hit store shelves it’s not entirely clear who should invest in this tech.
The quick take
Tango remains an impressive collection of cool ideas, but the Phab 2 Pro is nowhere near ready to be considered a serious consumer product. Aside from being huge and awkward, Neither Lenovo nor Google’s software is fully baked enough for this to be a complete thought.
The Good
- Decent display
- Solid build quality
- Great battery life
The Bad
- Huge and awkward
- Camera isn’t great
- Tango is half baked
- Lenovo’s notifications are awful
It’s very easy to think about Tango in individual contexts. We’ve seen it used as an incredible tour guide for museums, deployed on the International Space Station inside NASA’s SPHERES satellites, and even used as the eyes of an autonomous drone. The individual possibilities for using the computer vision tech in Google Tango has demonstrated itself as highly useful in very specific situations, but what happens when you put all of that tech in the hands of a consumer?
Lenovo’s Phab 2 Pro is the first retail product with Tango onboard, a massive smartphone with all the computer vision potential. You won’t find it in a carrier store next to the Moto Z, though. It’s available to purchase in Lowe’s hardware stores as a phone that gives users the ability to measure objects in space and even place objects in augmented reality so you can “see” the product in the home or office before you buy it. The suggestion here is that the phone isn’t really built for the Facebook generation, but is instead a smarter tool for contractors or interior designers to show their customers what their house could look like with a bit of help.
At the same time, Lenovo makes sure everyone knows this phone is also an entertainment powerhouse. A massive high resolution display with a quality audio system and a rich gaming experience thanks to the Tango Core, but it is lacking support for Google’s new Daydream VR platform. Lenovo’s selling points differ from what you see on the shelf at Lowe’s, which differs again from Google’s initial vision for Tango.
So, who is this phone for? Is this a massive media and gaming powerhouse? Will this become standard issue for contractors and interior decorators? Should eager tinkerers prepare little robots for this phone to power? Maybe all of the above? Read on to find out.
About this review
I’m writing this review after six days with a retail Lenovo Phab 2 Pro (model PB2-690Y) in Glen Burnie MD on T-Mobile. This review unit, which was provided by Lenovo, was using software version PB2-690Y_S100020_160924, based on Android 6.0.1 with the August 1, 2016 security patch.
You’ll need two hands
Lenovo Phab 2 Pro Hardware
As the name suggests, Lenovo’s Phab 2 Pro is a big phone aimed at people who want to do a lot on the go. As much as I despise the word phablet, it really does apply here. This behemoth gave me flashbacks to the Sony Xperia Z Ultra, only thicker and a lot more solid. Make no mistake, this is is only a phone for people who like massive screens and the batteries that drive them.
The outer casing isn’t anything special when it comes to design, but checks all the right boxes for a quality build. The aluminum body feels solid and has just the right amount of grip, with a nicely textured power key and a tactile volume rocker with very little wiggle. The edges of the phone have a slight chamfer that catches light well, but offers little towards making the phone comfortable to hold with one hand. Across the top of the phone you’ll find the headphone jack off to the left, and on the bottom of the phone you’ll find what looks like stereo speaker grilles on either side of a Micro-USB port. In reality, it’s a single Dolby Atmos speaker firing down with the other side for what Lenovo calls a 360-degree microphone array.
The front of this Phab 2 Pro is a single sheet of 2.5d curved Gorilla Glass. It’s not curved like the Galaxy S7 edge or LG G5, but the edges of the glass slope away into the bezel connector in a way that makes this phone a little easier to grip by the sides. Instead of software navigation keys like most Android phones, Lenovo went with the old school soft keys under the display. You only see those keys when lit up, which isn’t all the time, so when the display is off the only thing you see on the face of this phone is the camera off to the right of the top speaker. Toss in a couple of antenna lines on the top and bottom and a fingerprint sensor dead center of the back, and you’ve got a fairly generic looking phone. You know, as long as you ignore the three cameras taking up the top half of the phone.
This phone should have been an early Christmas present for nerds.
In order for Tango to work, Google uses a standard RGB sensor, and infrared sensor, and a fisheye lens. The standard 16MP sensor and infrared sensor work together to “see” things, and the fisheye lens adds human-style depth perception, among other things. All three of these cameras work together with the specially optimized Snapdragon 652 processor to give this phone the information needed for a successful Tango experience. You hold the phone up with two hands, look at the QHD IPS display as though you were peering into another world, and in theory Tango does the rest.
It’s difficult to imagine this phone with a case on it. The Phab 2 Pro is not fun to carry around in your pocket, both because it weighs more than half a pound and because the 6.4-inch display is noticeably larger than any phone I’ve tested over the last year. People using this phone for commercial reasons, like consulting on hardware installations, are going to want a case — which is going to make this phone even larger. It’s possible there are people out there who would buy this phone because it’s fairly inexpensive and gets you a massive display and a 4050mAh battery, but either way dropping this phone is not going to be fun for anyone.
No, really. When does this get good?
Lenovo Phab 2 Pro Software
This is the part where I, the VR and AR nerd, am supposed to tell you how much better your life would be if you had the ability to look through your phone and see another reality. Having followed Tango and drooled over the potential for years, this phone should have been an early Christmas present for nerds like me. Instead, Lenovo and Google seem to have tried their best to make this phone one of the least enjoyable experiences I’ve had in 2016.
Lenovo’s Android has never been great. Previous iterations of their software have been visually uninspiring and on several occasions included bloatware that bordered on offensive. After the purchase of Motorola and the release of the fairly impressive Yoga Book, it seemed as though Lenovo’s software was finally getting the overhaul it needed.
While Lenovo has worked hard to stay close to something that more closely resembles stock Marshmallow with this release, it all falls apart with the notifications. They’re transparent with either black or white text, which means no matter what wallpaper you’re using the notifications are often difficult to read in the best of lighting. Out in daylight, forget about it.
Lenovo and Google seem to have tried their best to make this phone one of the least enjoyable experiences I’ve had in 2016.
This phone does dial it way back on added software though. The only nonstandard apps installed are Accuweather, McAfee Security, Sound Recorder, and SYNCit for people who want a third-party backup tool for their phone. Sound recorder makes sense, given the special microphone array this phone has. The purpose is to offer a more complete 360-degree recording solution, and it works noticeably better than just sticking a recording app on a Pixel and leaving it on a table to record while you talk. This is a great feature for talking through something in an interview format, but there aren’t a ton of other uses for this microphone setup.
Obviously the big software feature here has basically nothing to do with Lenovo. Google Tango already has more apps in the Play Store than Google Daydream does, and only two are actually made by Google. These apps can be broken out into three basic categories:
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Games take a look at the environment around you and overlay some kind of activity for you to interact with. This can be a small simulated city like Towers for Tango, a firing range where you point your phone and tap to shoot like Tango Targets, or a table full of puzzle pieces for you to walk around the real world and interact with. Most of these require fairly low accuracy and so work fairly well. There’s also some surprisingly big names, like Crayola Color Blaster and Hot Wheels Track Builder Tango.
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Shopping apps let you browse Amazon, Wayfair, Lowe’s, and others for a variety of products and then show you what those products would look like in your home. The measurements offered in the product description and Tango’s computer vision work together to place objects in augmented reality so they don’t clash with anything in the real world, and as long as your room is well lit and you have a fairly open space this method of shopping works well.
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Tool apps let you measure 2D and 3D spaces with an app, and allow you to store those measurements for later. This can be physical measurements or a way to observe things like signal strength for Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and cellular networks in the real world. These apps require accuracy to be effective, which means wide open spaces and proper lighting to “see” everything clearly. Even in perfect conditions, tool apps still have a high failure rate.
Very little in this software experience works the way it should.
While games are a great way to show someone Tango and give a starting idea for what computer vision is all about, it’s a serious problem that these are the most accurate apps in the Tango arsenal. Not only is this setup only useful indoors, but even in ideal conditions the software isn’t reliable. Google’s Measure app starts with a warning that it’s meant for estimation and not for accuracy. Shopping apps are more reliable when you’re in a well lit room, but fail quickly in low light and handles collision poorly if your goal is to see how well a corner table would look with two real couches on either side.
Very little in this software experience works the way it should. Between the frequent failure rate of individual apps to Lenovo’s aggressively mediocre implementation of Android, it’s not entirely obvious who would enjoy this experience enough to justify spending money exclusively for playing with Tango. I say playing because that’s basically what you’re doing with these apps. The tools aren’t accurate enough to be considered useful by real contractors. The shopping apps would only be useful to interior designers in an empty, well-lit home. The games are only fun if you happen to have a ton of free space in you home to enjoy them, which isn’t a ton of people.
Dragons are cool, I guess.
Lenovo Phab 2 Pro Experience
You know how some phones just sort of disappear in your pocket? This is not one of those phones. The good news is I don’t think I’d ever misplace this phone, regardless of how long I used it. The less good news is I can’t take this phone anywhere without either putting it in my jacket pocket or wearing a belt. It’s not that the phone is big — though really, this is such a huge damn phone — it’s the weight. Some of that is top be expected with a huge battery and a metal body and the additional hardware, but comparing the weight of this phone to every other on my desk is incredible.
Speaking of that big battery, if I don’t touch the Tango features at all, I can get through a normal 16 hour day with 55% battery remaining when I go to sleep. With Quick Charge 2.0 on board, I can recharge this phone in minutes and basically never worry about it dying. Unless, of course, I start a Tango app. On average, Tango apps drain 10% of the battery for every 15 minutes of use, which is insane. It’s no shock that three cameras and the act of processing that information while displaying content on the screen consumes battery, but you can crush almost half of the battery on this phone with an hour of Tango use. There aren’t a lot of situations that call for an hour of Tango use though, so it’s unlikely to be a huge deal in day to day use.
There’s a lot of promise in tech like Tango, but this phone was not ready for primetime.
It cannot be overstated how poorly Tango operates in less than ideal situations. The Signal Mapper app failed 16 out of the 18 times I tested it. Between Google Measure and the measure tool in the Lowe’s app, I got a mostly accurate measurement twice after using both apps every day for nearly a week. The number of time I’ve seen “Unfortunately, Tango Core has stopped” is embarrassing. In no way should this experience be on a store shelf right now.
But at the same time, the promise of Tango remains. This tech is so damn cool, and now that it’s in a form factor that can generously be called a phone at a reasonable price it’s accessible to way more people. This may not deserve to be a consumer product yet, but Project Tango as a concept is something incredible and powerful. Right now it just only works when you’re inside a big empty room and conditions are perfect.
Some of that may be due to Lenovo’s primary camera. It’s not the best sensor for grabbing detail, and in low light the sensor struggles a lot. I found myself frequently wondering what would happen if a Tango Pixel existed, with a sensor that handled low light like a champion and could combine powerful AR with Google Daydream VR. That’s obviously not happening anytime soon, but it’s a cool thought. In the mean time, Lenovo’s camera does include a cute AR mode that lets you overlay some animals for you to take some photos. Here’s a quick look at some of the shots I grabbed this week.
There’s a lot of promise in tech like Tango, but usually that promise is in contained experiences. A detailed 3D guide of a store is cool, but only if enough people own something that justifies the experience. This could be great when specialized for specific things, but on its own it’s difficult to imagine wanting this phone in my pocket every day.
The bottom line
Should you buy the Lenovo Phab 2 Pro? Probably not
Is it possible that Tango will improve with time? Sure. At one third the cost of Google Glass — that’s $499 for the uninitiated — it’s the kind of thing we’ll see show up at hacker spaces for cool one-off ideas over the next two years. It’s difficult to imagine this being the kind of thing you see someone casually using in public, and it’s even more difficult to imagine a professional using this to enhance their work and being satisfied with the results right now.
But as a daily driver, even if you’re really hyped about Tango and Augmented Reality? This isn’t what you want, at least not yet.
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HTC kicks off Black Friday deals with $200 off HTC 10, RE Camera for $75
Other offers include 40% off accessories, A9 for $275.
HTC is the latest phone maker to given an early launch its Black Friday deals, with a wide range of offers on some of its high-profile phones and accessories. The flagship HTC 10 is down to $499 unlocked, $200 off the standard price, in all four color options. The RE camera — HTC’s fun, if underappreciated little action cam — is yours for a mere $75, while the UA Band gets slashed to $79.
Other accessories are on sale for 40% off — including the HTC Ice View case for $29.99, and HTC’s Quick Charge 3.0 charger for $20.99.
See at HTC
Elsewhere, the HTC One M9 is on sale for $300, while the One A9 drops to $275. We’d think twice before spending that kind of money on the almost two-year-old M9. An A9 for $275 isn’t spectacular value, but you could certainly do worse.
The deals are only live on HTC’s U.S. site right now; we’re expecting similar offers in Canada and the UK later this week.
More: Black Friday 2016 deals
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Google Cast is becoming ‘Chromecast built-in’
New branding should make it clearer that standalone dongles, and devices with integrated casting, all belong to the same ecosystem.
Google is phasing out the “Google Cast” brand for devices with casting support built in, Variety reports. The move comes shortly after the launch of Google Home and Chromecast Ultra, the company’s latest products with casting support. Right now the Google Cast site refers to both names — the old Google Cast and the new Chromecast built-in.
Yesterday the official Google Cast Twitter account became “Google Chromecast” — @Chromecast.
@GoogleCast is now @Chromecast.
The branding change won’t alter how Google Cast Chromecast works, but it will make it clearer to consumers that their existing Chromecast dongle, and their fancy new TV with Cast built-in, and that Google Home they might be thinking about buying, all belong to the same ecosystem. It’s the latest move in a branding back-and-forth that’s been going on since the first Chromecast dongle was first unveiled back in 2013.
It’s understandable how Google might have resisted including “Chrome” in the name, since the Chrome browser is no longer central to how many people cast stuff. (It’s way easier to control what you cast with a phone or tablet.) Getting rid of the “Google” in Google Cast might seem counterproductive to the firm’s recent efforts to establish itself as a big player in hardware. Nevertheless, it makes sense to push “Chromecast” — already the name of a highly successful product — as the single brand for everything using the technology.
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Samsung Galaxy S7 Android 7.0 Nougat release date: When to expect the GS7’s biggest software upgrade
It’s possible — but by no means guaranteed — that updates for some models could arrive by the end of the year.
The Galaxy Beta Program is allowing some Galaxy S7 and S7 edge owners to get an early taste of Android 7.0 Nougat. But as for anyone who doesn’t want to use potentially buggy pre-release software, we’re left waiting on an official rollout for what’s turning out to be a substantial update.
So when’s it due out? Officially, Samsung’s not saying. But there are a few clues out in the wild.
Firstly, there’s Samsung’s GS7 Nougat beta program, which the firm says will run until “mid-December.” Earlier this year, the Galaxy S6 Marshmallow beta ran until late January, having begun in late December. The official GS6 Marshmallow updates then began from early February, starting in Korea.
South Korea will probably see the update first, followed by unlocked European GS7s.
So if the timings line up for Nougat, it’s possible we’ll see the first stable Nougat updates for the GS7 series arriving in late December 2016 or early January 2017. If history is any indication, Samsung’s home market of South Korea will get updates first, followed by unlocked European devices.
For carrier-locked variants, particularly in the United States, you could be waiting another month or more. (Spring 2017 might be a more realistic estimate for the GS7 on U.S. carriers.) That said, T-Mobile, Sprint and Verizon have participated in the Galaxy Beta program this year, and Samsung has been relatively timely in its rollout of Android’s monthly security patches for its 2016 flagships.
We probably won’t know for sure until the updates are almost ready to roll out. But depending on where you live, your carrier, and which model you have, there’s at least a fighting chance you could be seeing in the new year with Android 7.0 Nougat on your Galaxy S7.
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Samsung brings Gear S3 and Blue Coral Galaxy S7 to Canada
Canadians can now get in on the Blue Coral GS7 love.
Samsung is bringing more of its highly-awaited mobile products to Canada this week with the Gear S3 classic and frontier, and the Blue Coral Galaxy S7.
The former, the Gear S3 series, is a successor to the popular Gear S2, featuring bigger displays, larger batteries and GPS connectivity for more accurate tracking. While Canadians won’t have access to the LTE-enabled version of the Gear S3, the improvements in battery life alone should be worth the price of admission. Both models, the streamlined classic and more rugged frontier, retail for $469 CDN; the smaller, aging Gear S2s are still on sale for between $319 and $369.
More: Samsung Gear S3 preview
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The Blue Coral Galaxy S7 is also available in Canada, both through Samsung’s Experience stores and online, and via pre-order from Rogers. It’s the same phone, just in a new color, but it proved extremely popular with the Note 7, so Samsung should find considerable success with it here.
More: Samsung Galaxy S7 review
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Anyone jumping on these two new products? Let us know in the comments!
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