Month: March 2022

Google Glass may have been a failure, but the company hasn’t given up on the concept. However, it seems that it hasn’t had much success in developing a new design itself, so it has turned to acquiring startups to bring in new talent and technology.

Two years ago it acquired North, a maker of AR glasses, now it has picked up Raxium, which is developing microLED displays for AR and VR applications. The cost of the acquisition wasn’t announced, but previous valuations were reported to be around the $1 billion mark.

microLED is similar to OLED in that it doesn’t use a backlight, instead each pixel emits its own light. The difference with OLED is in the materials used – microLED promises to be brighter, more energy efficient and to fix longevity issues (like burn-in).

Making microLEDs tiny enough for head-worn devices has been a challenge, however. And they need to be small, since a small, light display needs to fill a significant portion of your field of view. Raxium claims its has achieved pixels as small as 3.5 µm, much smaller than a typical OLED pixel.

Raxium hasn’t produced a mass market device yet, which is probably for the best. North did have a product on the market, the Focals 1.0, a $600 pair of AR glasses (they were $1,000 at launch but swiftly got a price cut). After the acquisition Google shut off the service that the glasses relied on, rendering them unusable.

Anyway, Google is in a race – Apple and Meta have also been acquiring startups that work in the field of AR glasses. Smart glasses have the potential to replace smartphones as the way most users interact with the digital world, but none have caught on yet, perhaps because the technology isn’t ready yet.

Source (paywall) | Via

Flickr is continuing to nudge users toward paid accounts under SmugMug’s ownership. The photo host has told users they’ll soon need Pro accounts to share “restricted and moderate” content. The company claimed the move would help Flickr provide “safer spaces for everyone” (including not-safe-for-work creators) and free up “resources” to improve Pro communities.

The service also wants to steer its more introverted users toward subscriptions. Flickr plans to restrict free users to 50 non-public shots (limited to private, friends or family). Any photos beyond that cap are “at risk of deletion,” Flickr said. The firm characterized this as a way to encourage sharing and socialization, but was quick to suggest Pro memberships to anyone affected.

Flickr said it would share timelines and other details as the relevant terms of service rolled out. The company also noted that deletions aren’t guaranteed. It hasn’t deleted a single over-the-limit image since it instituted the 1,000-photo cap for free users in 2018.

The paywall might have its advantages by discouraging spammers and others who might dump racy content on Flickr without caring about quality. However, it also raises barriers for newcomers looking to post risqué photography — they’ll have to shell out for Pro (ranging from $8.25 per month to $133 for two years) just to make their content available. This is, effectively, a bet that the increased number of paying customers will make up for anyone who leaves for alternative platforms.

NASA’s megarocket designed to carry humans to the Moon has reached historic Launch Pad 39B at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Standing 322 feet tall, the Space Launch System is an impressive sight—one we’ve waited ages to finally see—as these striking photos attest.

Space Launch System, NASA’s biggest-ever rocket, began its crawl from the Vehicle Assembly Building to the launch pad yesterday. This is the critical centerpiece of NASA’s Artemis program, which seeks to land the first woman and first person of color on the lunar surface later this decade. The uncrewed inaugural mission, Artemis 1, is set to launch this spring or summer.

Google’s latest update to the Android Auto app (version 7.5.121104) brings a new USB Startup Diagnostic tool that tells users if their connection cable is faulty. The new tool automatically checks whether data transfers between connected phones and the car’s infotainment are functioning properly and will send a message if it detects any issues.

Android Auto USB Startup Diagnostic tool

Google’s support page also recommends you use the bundled USB cable that came with your phone. Google also suggests said cables should ideally be under 1m in length and adheres to the USB-IF standard. You should also skip out on using USB hubs, cable adapters or extensions. You can check out the feature by going to the Android Auto app’s connection help menu. The new diagnostic feature will follow a gradual rollout schedule.

Source | Via

When a shonen anime releases its first movie, it’s always a big deal. These debuts are often thrilling adventures of debatable canon that have the potential to bring in new audiences and give fans the rush of seeing beloved characters in a new medium. It doesn’t matter what the plot ultimately is, it’s just fun to see these characters we’ve spent weeks watching stretch their animated legs and get into some beautiful chaos with the help of a bigger budget.

So it was inevitable that Jujutsu Kaisen would get a movie after its great debut as an anime thanks to Studio MAPPA. But Jujutsu Kaisen 0 manages to surprise, thanks to its cast, and how effortlessly it showcases the best of what creator Gege Akutami’s supernatural world has to offer.

The film, a prequel set before the events of the anime adaptation, follows the series’ familiar premise: an endless secret battle through Japan between powerful energy-manipulating Jujutsu sorcerers, and sinister supernatural “Curse” spirits that lurk just outside of human perception. But in shifting protagonists from Jujutsu Kaisen’s primary hero—the overpowered, lovably stupid Yuji Itadori—to 0’s meek, timid Yuta Okkotsu (voiced in Japanese by Neon Genesis Evangelion legend Megumi Ogata, and by Kayleigh McKee in English), the new movie plays up the already disturbing and tragic elements of its world in a more personal way that Yuji’s hyperconfident viewpoint doesn’t always allow. In the anime and manga, Yuji eagerly jumped into the Jujutsu world from the proverbial deep end after a chance encounter with the powerful Curse spirit Sukuna. In 0 we meet Yuta after he’s already lived in fear of the supernatural for years, following the traumatic death of his childhood love Rika (Kana Hanazawa/Anairis Quiñones), which also transformed her into a Curse bonded to Yuta—one that viciously attacks anyone who brings him harm.

Yuta and Rika’s relationship is the heart of Jujutsu Kaisen 0, and it’s the key thing that sets him apart from Yuji. In just a handful of scenes, their romance feels very real in a way that love plots in shonen series rarely do, and both the writing and performance of the characters give the chance for Yuta and Rika to play off each other extremely well. Seeing them together in flashbacks makes the present day scenes where Rika monstrously defends Yuta all the more tragic, making you feel for their cut-short romance. For a series that’s never afraid to suddenly take an absurd tone shift at random moments, there’s a surprising amount of warmth and tenderness that Jujutsu Kaisen 0 offers for its two leads and their doomed love.

Afraid as Yuta is to let Rika out and tear apart anything in her way, there’s something cathartic in watching him channel the power she wields to cut Curses to pieces. As a Curse, Rika’s a sight to behold, and the moments where she’s unleashed highlight how striking and gross Akutami and MAPPA’s Curse designs really are. Once you see her rip another Curse to shreds, there’s no question as to why Suguru Geto, the film’s villain, would want her power for himself. 0 stages Geto’s presence in such a way that he can’t help but appear like a god to both his followers and Yuta and his allies, and both his actors—Takahiro Sakurai and Lex Lang—give him a perfectly haughty, arrogant voice that shines through in a chilling performance.

Akutami created what would become known as Jujutsu Kaisen 0 in 2017, a year before Kaisen proper released and took off as one of the biggest manga series around right now. Under the title Tokyo Metropolitan Curse Technical School, the four-part miniseries introduced characters who would later become important heroes in their own right in Jujutsu Kaisen, that now play similarly important connective roles in 0. Primarily in the movie, this connection is made through three senior students we met in the anime series’ first season, where they were leveraged as something of a comic relief effort during a time when levity was sorely needed for Yuji and his friends. There’s Maki Zenin (Mikako Komatsu/Allegra Clark), who sees Curses with empowered glasses and fights them using magically imbued weapons; Toge Inumaki (Koki Uchiyama/Xander Mobus), whose powerful Curse-enhanced voice means he can only safely speak when he lists out rice ball ingredients; and Panda (Tomokazu Seki/Matthew Rudd) rounds out the trio with his loud, dumb charm, and is, well, long story short… a talking Panda.

The film treats these characters like a big deal given their importance to the anime at large, but they really shine when they’re just allowed to be goofy teenagers, and Yuta begins to bond with them when he’s thrust into this strange new world. While their appearances here won’t completely dazzle fans of the series like their debuts in the anime, the moments these characters do have are still pretty great, and each of them gets plenty of time to prove why they’re so lovable and compelling. Maki in particular brings a fun, abrasive energy to all of her scenes and has such confidence that it’s hard not to like her even more.

The most important returning character of all, however, is fan favorite Satoru Gojo, an absurdly powerful Sorcerer who, when we meet his slightly younger self in 0, has decided to take Yuta under his wing. Like in the anime itself, Goji is a lot of fun in 0; actors Yuchi Nakamura and Kaiji Tang effortlessly make Gojo both extremely confident in his ability while also hilariously aggravating because of that—and he gets one of the film’s best, most sumptuously animated fights. More importantly, Nakamura and Tang succeed in making this younger version of Gojo still feel somewhat vulnerable once he crosses paths with his old friend Geto. It would’ve been easy to just make this prequel all about them rather than Yuta, but Kaisen 0 wisely keeps the two men apart for much of the film, and the moments where they get to interact carry a sad longing for the simple days when they were just a couple of dudes who had the potential to be great together, had they not both gone down such tragically different paths.

At the end of the day, “confidence” really is the word to describe Jujutsu Kaisen 0. Beneath its stylish action and gross monsters, there’s a infectiously good energy that makes it easy to love and hard to dislike, even when it gets extremely gory or just completely over the top. It loves itself, and Jujutsu Kaisen 0 does enough with its characters and world to rekindle (or begin) that spark of falling in love with the franchise all over again.

Jujutsu Kaisen 0 hits theaters on March 18.

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Gran Turismo 7‘s dependence on an internet connection is coming back to haunt the developers. Eurogamer notes players are review bombing the PlayStation racing sim on Metacritic after Polyphony Digital and Sony extended maintenance beyond 24 hours to deal with the faulty 1.07 patch. As you need online access to play the core GT mode, some gamers are furious — the average Metacritic user review score sat at 3.6 as of this writing.

This isn’t the only gripe. Some players are less than thrilled with the presence of microtransactions in Gran Turismo 7, and have accused the creators of making it harder to obtain new cars and upgrades without spending real money. Other players have asked for full refunds.

It’s not clear when GT7 will go back online. Polyphony said only that it would provide a completion time “as soon as possible.” We’ve asked Sony for comment. It’s safe to presume the producers will want to restore service quickly, though. While the review bombing will only do limited damage to a well-known game that has already been available for weeks, it won’t look good if one of the PlayStation 5’s marquee games isn’t even playable during the weekend.

Update 3/18 12:33PM ET: Gran Turismo 7 is back online after the company released a 1.08 update. Polyphony’s Kazunori Yamauchi explained that a bug in 1.07 prevented the game from starting properly for some PS4 and PS5 users, and that the extended maintenance helped protect users’ save data.

Tile has largely dodged the criticism Apple has received for the privacy concerns its AirTag trackers pose, quietly staying in the background as the tech giant scrambles to release features that could mitigate the risk of stalking. Tile has taken similar steps to stop fingers from following it.

Tile is pushing out a “Scan and Secure” feature to its app this week, which will allow users to scan and view any unwanted trackers hiding nearby. This feature will be available as an addition to both the iOS and Android Tile apps. It is very similar to the Apple app.

The app should, to some extent, prevent its small tracking devices from being used for illegal activity, like stalking or stealing. However, the scan feature doesn’t come built-in to your phone so users will need to download the app and initiate a scan. That applies even to non-Tile customers who might want nothing to do with these trackers. You don’t even need to have a Tile account.

“If you ever feel concerned that someone could be tracking you, we now offer a feature that allows you to determine if that tracking could be through a Tile product. Scan and Secure is now available to all Tile users, even if they don’t have an account. This will allow you to search for Tile-enabled devices or unknown Tiles that might be travelling with you. Tile

wrote in a blog post.

To use the feature, you will need Bluetooth, Location Services, and Precise Location set to “On.” You can then initiate the scan but will have to walk or drive away from your original location before the feature starts to work. The scan will produce a report that includes any suspicious tracking devices.

Privacy concerns around these helpful lost-item finders hit a fever pitch after the release of Apple’s AirTags. The company was criticized for failing to consider appropriate safeguards, and within months, reports sprouted of AirTags being used for stalking. Recent reports have also shown how AirTags are being used to steal cars.

The AirTags’ built-in notification system meant to alert users when a mysterious tracker is following them around failed in our own simulated stalking scenario. We didn’t receive any notification, despite the fact that the AirTags’ owner was away from the device and tracking our poor victim’s location (they knew about this, FWIW) the entire time.

As part of its effort to prevent AirTags from aiding in illegal activity, Apple now says it will partner with law enforcement to provide paired account details should police issue a subpoena or “valid request.” It now augments a beeping sound with an alert sent to your device, an addition made after AirTags were being sold on Etsy with their speakers removed.

We’re glad Tile is taking Apple’s lead, but users still need to be proactive about downloading these apps. For that reason, tracking devices like Tile and AirTags remain a serious privacy concern.