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Watch SpaceX’s Crew Dragon in-flight abort test at 8 AM ET on Saturday

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Last March, Crew Dragon successfully flew to the ISS and back, and if all goes well, a crewed flight could occur later this year. SpaceX is competing with Boeing’s Starliner in the NASA Commercial Crew program, so every test flight counts.

Come back here just before 8 AM ET on January 18th, and if the weather holds then you should see the Crew Dragon separate from its Falcon 9, then eventually land in the Atlantic Ocean. Even if you wake up a little late, keep an eye out — according to SpaceX, weather data suggests their best opportunity may be toward the end of the four-hour launch window.




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Valve is definitely not working on ‘Left 4 Dead 3’

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The company speculated that people were “having fun creating misinformation” to fire up the community. There have been other rumors, including Valve News Network’s claim that it had leaked L4D3 concept art and screenshots.

This is bound to be disappointing news if you have fond memories of L4D‘s desperate escapes, last-minute rescues and valiant last stands. Valve clearly sympathized with gamers by saying that it “unfortunately” wasn’t working on a sequel, though. And look at it this way: you’re probably doing pretty well if you have to ‘make do’ with a new Half-Life game.

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Steve Martin and Martin Short will team up again in a new Hulu series

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There’s currently no release date, although each episode should be half an hour.

This isn’t the first streaming project Martin and Short have done together. They received Emmy nominations for their Netflix one-off An Evening You Will Forget for the Rest of Your Life. This is a considerably more ambitious undertaking, though, and it could help Hulu get attention at a time when rivals like Amazon and Netflix are landing comedy mega-deals of their own.

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Help Australian wildlife with Humble’s latest 29-game bundle

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The excellent Hollow Knight headlines the collection. Other highlights include Void Bastards, The Stillness of the Wind and Machinarium. In all, there are 29 games in the bundle, with a total value of more than $400. Each of the titles has some connection to the country. Hollow Knight, for instance, was developed by Team Cherry, a three-person studio based out of Adelaide, South Australia. Paperbark, meanwhile, stars a cute wombat who makes their home in the country’s iconic outback.

Humble will donate 100 percent of the money it makes off the collection to RSPCA Australia, WIRES, the World Wildlife Fund and the Australian Red Cross. If you haven’t bought a Humble Bundle in the past, $25 is the minimum you need to donate to get access to the games in the package. You can pledge more if you have the means and desire to do so. At the time of writing, Humble has sold approximately 25,000 bundles.

As of January 8th, the bushfires in Australia have scorched approximately 10.7 million hectares of land, a total area that’s bigger than all of South Korea. Additionally, at least 28 people and an estimated one billion animals have died directly from the disaster. The koala population in New South Wales, in particular, has suffered grievously from the fires.

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This machine keeps transplant livers alive for a week

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In a paper published in Nature Biotechnology, researchers from University Hospital Zurich, ETH Zurich and the University of Zurich, explain how the perfusion machine mimics core bodily functions in order to keep livers alive. The device injects insulin and glucagon to control glucose levels, a function usually overseen by the pancreas. In place of the kidneys, a dialysis membrane provides waste removal. An oxygenator fills the role of the lungs. Nutrient infusions replace the bowels, and a pump serves as a stand-in heart. The machine moves the liver continuously to mimic movements that would be caused by the diaphragm.

The researchers first tested the perfusion machine using pig livers. Then, they obtained 10 human livers that were declined for transplantation by all hospitals in Europe and would have otherwise been discarded. Six of the 10 livers recovered to full function and were successfully preserved for one week. That’s much longer than is possible with the current methods, which entail cooling a liver to reduce metabolic function. The six livers also showed a decrease in injury and inflammation markers, usually after one or two days in the machine.

There is plenty of work to do before livers preserved in this machine can be transplanted into humans, but the technology could make more livers available for transplantation. That could save the lives of many patients suffering from liver disease and various cancers.

Going even further, because livers are known to regenerate, the technology might one day make it possible to remove a small piece of healthy liver from a patient, grow it in a perfusion machine and transplant the regenerated liver back into the original patient, while removing the remaining diseased portion. Or, a healthy donor liver might be split apart. Each piece could then be grown in the perfusion machine, yielding more than one transplantable organ.

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Your online activity is now effectively a social ‘credit score’

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Despite that, Instagram kicked her off all three accounts, saying her behavior on Twitter violated Instagram’s sexually suggestive content guidelines. On Twitter, Ms. Ward — as The Naked Philanthropist — offered a privately-sent nude photo to those who provided verifiable proof of donation to organizations including Australian Red Cross and The Koala Hospital. Her fundraiser complied with Twitter’s Terms of Service.

If the thought of companies stalking you online and denying you services because they think you’re a sinner gives you the Orwell Anti-Sex League chills, you should know that Airbnb just asked Instagram to hold its beer.

The same day Ms. Ward launched her fundraising campaign, reports emerged detailing Airbnb’s new “trait analyzer” algorithms that compile data dossiers on users, decides whether you’ve been bad or good, gives you a score, and then “flag and investigate suspicious activity before it happens.”

The Evening Standard reported on Airbnb’s patent for AI that crawls and scrapes everything it can find on you, “including social media for traits such as ‘conscientiousness and openness’ against the usual credit and identity checks and what it describes as ‘secure third-party databases’.”

They added, “Traits such as “neuroticism and involvement in crimes” and “narcissism, Machiavellianism, or psychopathy” are “perceived as untrustworthy.” Further:

It uses artificial intelligence to mark down those found to be “associated” with fake social network profiles, or those who have given any false details. The patent also suggests users are scored poorly if keywords, images or video associated with them are involved with drugs or alcohol, hate websites or organisations, or sex work.

It adds that people “involved in pornography” or who have “authored online content with negative language” will be marked down.

When reached for comment, Airbnb provided Engadget two different responses from two different people. The first was boilerplate, describing its “trait analyzer” patent that Airbnb sent to press: the company claimed it did not “necessarily implement” all or part of its patent filings.

Engadget also asked Airbnb for comment regarding its profiling users based on their offsite behaviors and its denial of services to customers who work in legal adult entertainment.

Airbnb’s second response (via email) was to ask to speak off the record (on the phone). Engadget declined off-the-record comment. This Airbnb spokesperson emailed again, stating:

Regarding your question on sex work, we do not allow sex work in Airbnb listings and have policies in place to enforce this rule… We take action to remove accounts that we believe to be associated with sex trafficking and child exploitation regardless of whether the activty [SIC] is occuring [SIC] in Airbnb listings, and we also work cooperatively with law enforcement authorities in such cases.

Yeah, that wasn’t our question on sex work. But the statement is revealing in that it looks like Airbnb is bending over backwards to not say it’s indiscriminately discriminating against sex workers — while it’s becoming widely documented that Airbnb does exactly that.

“Airbnb for everyone” (not)

Adult performer Cadence Lux’s Airbnb account was suddenly terminated this month. Last week she went to create a new account under her legal, non-performer name, yet Airbnb knew it was her. The company denied her an account, saying Lux’s ” information is associated with activities that pose a risk to the Airbnb community.”

Guilt by association, certainly. But it’s also the direct opposite of what Airbnb told local press when bragging about its profiling and surveillance tools this week.

It’s no wonder The Observer recently reported that Sex Workers Are at the Forefront of the Fight Against Mass Surveillance and Big Tech. “Algorithms are affecting people, and disproportionately they’re going to affect people at the margins,” Analyst and researcher Bardot Smith said. “So queer people, people of color, sex working people. Obviously, the intersections of all these identities, and basically it comes down to people that they have determined don’t deserve access to money and resources.”

Needless to say, Lux was not using Airbnb for anything other than having a safe place to sleep. It’s almost like everyone forgets porn is a legal job in the United States. Okay Airbnb, we get it! You like to refuse service to adult women who engage in consensual activities of bodily autonomy that have nothing to do with your service because you don’t approve, or you don’t believe women, or whatever. But hey, I digress.

They don’t need to. According to Bloomberg, Silicon Valley startup Trooly began working with Airbnb in 2015; in 2017 Airbnb purchased Trooly’s intellectual property and engineering team. Airbnb’s email to Engadget confirmed that its problematic patent making headlines this month was part of the Trooly acquisition.

At the time, Trooly had two serious competitors in the AI-powered, big data “background check” space: UK startup Onfido and US-based Checkr.

Night Bangkok social media backdrop

Trooly was late to the game and raised less funding, but the three men who created it offered something TechCrunch described as “drastically different.” Namely, scraping everything about you online, letting AI decide if you’re good or bad, and applying predictive policing.

“The way we do that is we use public and legally permissible digital footprints,” Trooly co-founder and CEO Savi Baveja told press in 2016. “In about 30 seconds — using very little input information about the individual or business — we return a scorecard that does three things: it verifies whether the input information is authentic; it screens for any relevant and seriously antisocial or pro-social prior behavior; and then it runs a series of predictive models on that footprint to say what is the propensity of this individual or small business for future antisocial or pro-social behavior.”

The most famous social credit system in operation is that used by China’s government. It “monitors millions of individuals’ behavior (including social media and online shopping), determines how moral or immoral it is, and raises or lowers their “citizen score” accordingly,” reported Atlantic in 2018.

Black Mirror Nosedive

Black Mirror: Nosedive (Season 3 / Netflix)

“Those with a high score are rewarded, while those with a low score are punished.” Now we know the same AI systems are used for predictive policing to round up Muslim Uighurs and other minorities into concentration camps under the guise of preventing extremism.

Trooly — nee Airbnb — is combining social credit scores with predictive policing. Tools like PredPol use AI that combines data points and historical events, factors like race and location, digital footprints and crime statistics, to predict likelihood of when and where crimes will occur (as well as victims and perpetrators). It’s no secret that predictive policing replicates and perpetuates discrimination.

Combine this with companies like Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and yes, Airbnb deciding what legal behaviors are acceptable for service, and now we’re looking at groups of historically marginalized people being denied involvement in mainstream economic, political, cultural and social activities — at scale.

This week AP reported that Facebook and Instagram are doing exactly that. “Activists, sex therapists, abuse survivors, artists and sex educators,” are being unfairly censored by both services. “And it’s no small matter for them. Artists can be suddenly left without their audience, businesses without access to their customers and vulnerable people without a support network … it means that a company in Silicon Valley, whose online platforms have become not only our town squares but diaries, magazines, art galleries and protest platforms, gets final say on matters of free speech and self-expression.”

The point is, we can write this all off as Instagram and Airbnb being shitty and sexist (spoiler: they are), and being a big bunch of hypocrites about stated values (also true). But also not actually caring about whom they harm and how they’re trading our future freedoms and rights and chances at equality for their selfish entitlement to live out their lives of repressed and eventually volatile desperation in luxury (yep).

Or we can grab every chance we can to hold them to account.

Last year I marched in the 2019 SF Pride Parade with the Transgender Law Center. In early morning downtown San Francisco, we assembled on the same block as Airbnb — their float was across the street.

The sun was beginning its morning arc, and we were cold in the shadows of condo and office towers belonging to Salesforce, others occupied by Facebook, Google, and more. I live in the Castro; I’d looked at Airbnbs in my neighborhood for friends visiting for the celebration. The listings I got were monthly. Rentals that, to me, belong on the open, competitive market offering tenant-protecting agreements.

But I was thinking about a queer friend of mine who is a sex worker, recently driven out of SF by the high rents and scarcity. One year after Airbnb started working with Trooly she was banned from Airbnb after three years of stellar reviews from hosts. She is a sex worker and queer activist, and had never done sex work in any Airbnb. Airbnb did not respond to requests for comment on her expulsion.

I was preparing for the Pride march, my group was making sure everyone had sunscreen, taking selfies, and not gonna lie, in today’s political climate we were low-key stressed someone would try and pull a mass-shooter situation. We were there because it mattered more than all the things any shooter might believe in.

I looked at the Airbnb float and stuck a pin in it.

I realized that by Airbnb’s presence in San Francisco Pride and doing old-school discrimination against queer sex workers, that Airbnb didn’t know the ground they walked on in a terrible way. Airbnb’s presence in SF Pride was either harmfully ignorant or disgustingly repudiating the fact that sex workers were a critical part of Stonewall and Compton. The two riots indisputably critical to the advancement of LGBTQ rights leading to the fact that there are any Pride parades in the US at all.

So this year I’m going to find Airbnb’s float and ask: which is it?

Images: peshkov via Getty Images (City with social badges / count); David Dettmann/Netflix (Nosedive episode photo still)



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Björk and Microsoft use AI to create music that changes with the sky

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The composition is the second in a larger series of “lobby soundscapes” created with the help of Microsoft and Sister City. The first was a piece from experimental artist Julianna Barwick that launched alongside the hotel itself in April 2019.

AI-based generative music isn’t new. Arca (a Björk collaborator, we’d add) has produced an ever-evolving soundtrack for NYC’s Museum of Modern Art, while Holly Herndon used AI as a virtual collaborator for her Proto album. However, Björk’s involvement might just draw attention to the technology, both for artists looking for inspiration and fans who want to see how AI can shape a favorite artist’s tunes. We’ll have an in-depth look at Kórsafn in the near future.

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‘Life is Strange 2’ and the reality of gun violence in games

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Dontnod developers didn’t make it a point to infuse Life is Strange 2 with a message about gun violence. Instead, the ever-present threat is a result of their research. The team traveled for two weeks across the United States talking to drifters, hitchhikers and everyday folks, and then rolled those stories into the game. Guns are simply a part of the real world, so they’re also in the game’s reality.

“After just talking with them, hearing some of their stories, we knew that it was important for us to talk about some of the things they told us just because it felt real,” Koch said. “It was important for us to somehow talk about those people that were maybe not represented enough in video games.”

Guns are a staple of the video game industry. Shooting is by far the most popular mechanic around, especially when it comes to multi-million-dollar AAA games. Best-selling franchises like Call of Duty, Battlefield, Counter-Strike, Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption are built around the idea of shooting enemies and customizing an arsenal of high-powered firearms. In any given year, it’s far easier to list the games that don’t feature guns than the ones that do.

Life is Strange 2

“We also don’t want to be the French guy who gives lessons to everyone.”
– Cano

Life is Strange is a narrative-driven series, offering players decisions and dialogue options as the story plays out. The first game focuses on Max and Chloe, two high school girls navigating a complicated friendship while supernatural forces invade their seaside town. This isn’t a pew-pew kind of franchise, but guns are a factor in both games.

“When a gun was involved or even, for example, the death of someone in Life is Strange 1, it’s rare compared to Life is Strange 2,” Koch said. “This is a lot of discussion we had, to not trivialize the presence of guns and violence links to them. And yeah, to show that it has some consequences.”

In Life is Strange 2, guns are a shortcut to high-stakes drama. They’re a known factor, something that developers can add to the story and instantly create tension or force a gut decision out of players.

“It’s about making a game and telling good stories,” Cano said. “But this difficult stuff happened to people in real life, so we really took care to talk about this subject very consciously. We have done a lot of research to be as accurate as possible. We also don’t want to be the French guy who gives lessons to everyone.”

Life is Strange 2

The fifth and final episode of Life is Strange 2 landed in December, and no matter which ending players receive, it tells a sensational, heartbreaking story. Part of its power stems from its foundation in real-world crises, tackling subjects like family separation, police brutality and violent racism. Though the franchise may rely on guns to manufacture tension like other titles, it tells stories often overlooked by the video game industry. Stories about young women coming of age and discovering their power, or that of two young brothers traversing the US on their own, relying only on each other to survive.

Cano, Koch and series co-director Raoul Barbet don’t have any concrete plans for the next installment of Life is Strange, but they’re brainstorming new game ideas now. Whatever they choose, it’ll likely be character-driven, highly emotional and tied to the real world in a tangible way. It might also include guns — but that could apply to basically any game.

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Finally: A guitar pedal you’re supposed to spill beer on

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Inside the container is a green LED that’s part of the “liquid analyzer.” See, what you put inside determines the sound of your distortion. How easily it conducts your guitars AC signal determines the amount of gain and the opacity of the liquid determines the amount of treble and bass. So, depending on what you put in there, you could get a full throated roar or a narrow telephone like distortion.

Otherwise there’s not really any controls to be found on the Minibar. There’s an on off switch and a volume knob and… that’s it. All your other typical distortion controls are determined entirely by your choice of liquid. Want to know what your favorite whiskey sounds like? Or perhaps you’re partial to a nice root beer. Or, maybe, you want to get as metal as possible and buy some pigs blood from your local butcher.

The Rainger FX Minibar is available now for £99.17 or around $129.

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GoPro’s Media Mod is an upgrade for vloggers on the go

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If you ever used GoPro’s Karma grip, the Media Mod will give you deja-vu. Aesthetically, it’s similar to the part that housed the camera. Including the fact you’ll have to remove the GoPro’s battery cover to connect to the USB-C port. That makes sense, but it also means you don’t have easy access to the memory card, which was a prime perk of the Hero 8’s new design (as you no longer needed a “frame” mount).

There are two other quirks that you’ll instantly encounter. The Media Mod has a cutout at the bottom so you can access the camera’s built-in mount fingers, but the thickness of the mod means you don’t have much room to access/tighten the mounting pin below it — especially if it’s a shorter style one. It’s even worse if you have the pin on the right as you look at the camera, as the mod appears to be designed for the pin to go on the left. It took me almost five minutes to remove a mount the first time I did it the “wrong” way. Thankfully, most pins can be tightened with a screwdriver/penny/key, but it makes for a slower, clumsier experience if you’re changing the mount on the fly.

GoPro Media Mod

The second thing you’ll notice, if you have the light accessory and want to add it to the top cold shoe on the Media Mod, is that you then won’t be able to remove the GoPro without removing the light mod first. Its position up top prevents the latch door from fully opening. There is, however, another cold shoe on the side, so using that one would avoid that situation.

The mod also adds a little bit of weight and heft, but the setup is still easily pocketable, especially if you’re using a small mount like the Shorty. Take note: the Media Mod isn’t waterproof in any way, so this is a dry land only gig. I’m not sure who was planning to use this while surfing exactly, but at least know you can’t leave it on if your vlog takes you into the water.

And vlogging very much is what the Media Mod is about. People have always used GoPros for video blogs, but they came with certain challenges. Challenges GoPro has been steadily squashing — most notably with the addition of HyperSmooth stabilization in the Hero 7. With that one feature, the newer GoPros became more viable self-shooting options for those looking for a small setup.

One trade-off that remains (until now?) was audio. The GoPro’s internal microphones do a decent job for ambient sound, but if you wanted better audio for your monologues you needed to use an external mic. This either meant recording into something else entirely (and synching it later in post), or buying a mic connector accessory. Not only was this an extra spend, but it also hung out the side of your GoPro in an ungracious manner.

With the Media Mod, you actually get two solutions to this problem. First, there’s a built-in microphone. GoPro says it’s actually two mics in a cardioid array, so you can choose whether to record from in front of the camera or behind it. You’ll need to dive into settings to swap, but it’s good to see both options here — especially for those of us who prefer to remain behind the camera.

The second option is the aforementioned 3.5mm jack. It’s placed around the back, so the cable won’t get in the way of the lens, and you can wear your favorite lav mic as you run and gun. I guess, technically, you could feed other 3.5mm sources in here (like music) if you’re feeling experimental.

GoPro Media Mod

For the most part, the built-in mic is going to be your go-to option. It’s a serious upgrade from a GoPro’s internal microphone and doesn’t require you bring a mic (one with a cable at that). With the mod connected, you’ll dive into settings and choose whether to record from the front or the back. There’s an option for “stereo,” too, but that’s just putting you back to the camera’s microphones (but good to have the choice should you need it).

In my testing, the difference between the mic on the mod and the GoPro’s native mics is stark. I might stop short of saying you won’t need your expensive Rode mic (or similar), but for a solid upgrade with a tiny footprint, it’s really going to make your video blogs sound less “roomy” and more professional.

When I recorded the same audio using a GoPro in the mod and one without the difference is clear. The recording from the mod has more focus on the voice, and more gain, but there’s also more noise — it’s not a lot, but it’s there. With the native GoPro audio, my voice was muddier and roomier, but with less noise. This was while testing at home at my desk.

If you venture outside, the difference is even more pronounced. The same characteristics carry over (more gain, a bit more noise but also fuller, thicker voice recording). I took it to a supermarket (I don’t know why, but I had to start it… somewhere). As I moved around talking to my friend, our voices remained clear, while background noise seemed to be pushed further away. In the mod-free GoPro, the level of our voices was much lower and thinner.

GoPro Media Mod

In one final test, I did the walky-talky vlogger thing in the street. It’s here where I feel the mod really shined. When you listen to the native GoPro audio first, it sounds fine, but switching to the Mod’s audio and closing your eyes, it sounded much more professional.

The difference is also (maybe even more) apparent when testing the same setup, but speaking from behind (with the Media Mod set to “rear”). With the mod, audio is clear as if someone is narrating the clip. Without, it’s more like someone is speaking in the room… somewhere.

Despite the wealth of third-party accessories for GoPro, most shotgun mics are designed for DSLRs or cameras with a shoe mount. To work with a GoPro, they’d also need the aforementioned mic adapter accessory. In this context, the Media Mod is an elegant solution that comes with added perks (that 3.5mm port or HDMI output, for example).

There are a few practical quirks, but you’ll likely get used to them soon enough. But if you frequently swap your GoPro between mounts, or want fast access to the memory card, you’ll want to factor that in. Most of all, the Media Mod sets the stage for the GoPro becoming much more versatile, as the other two mods (display and light) rely on it to mount to the camera. If you’re curious about expanding the functionality of your Hero 8, therefore, this is the logical place to start. Or at least once it starts shipping later this month (January 23rd).

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