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Disney+ warns viewers of ‘outdated cultural depictions’ in old movies

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As The Washington Post noted, the company’s decision not to censor those titles was met with both praise and criticism. (You won’t find the notorious Song of the South, criticized for glorifying plantation life and slavery, on the service, though.) Some think that Disney is taking accountability for its past by showing those titles as they were shown back then with a warning attached. But critics point out that the wording used is vague at best — Gayle Wald, head of American studies department at George Washington University, said the company should’ve been more explicit about its intended message.

To emphasize his point about Disney’s “dismissive” warning, Twitter user @unicornmantis posted the company’s notice right next to Warner Brothers’. While Disney kept it vague and used the word “may,” WB’s warning acknowledged the ethnic and racial prejudices depicted in old cartoons like Tom and Jerry. “These depictions were wrong then and are wrong today,” it reads.



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Google demos Stadia UI and lists several missing launch features

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So many key features will be missing when Stadia first arrives that you have to wonder why Google didn’t push the launch date back a week or two. For instance, your existing Chromecast Ultra will be useless when the first Founders Editions ship. Instead, only the Chromecast Ultras that ship with the the controllers will have the required firmware to play the games. “We will be updating the existing CC Ultra’s over the air soon after launch,” Doronichev said.

Also MIA will be Stadia Connect, State Share and Crowd Play, features that let players join other games and place content into games. The first Stream Connect game won’t come until the end of the year, and State Share and Crowd Play games “will be released next year,” said Doronichev.

Family Sharing won’t come until early next year, and in the meantime, Google said that you’ll have to buy a second copy of a game for your kid’s account. However, you can at least control what they play using the parental dashboard.

Founders Edition buyers will be disappointed to know that they won’t have any friends to play with, either, as Buddy Passes won’t be sent out for weeks after launch. Those would have allowed you to give your friend a three-month Stadia subscription and were a key selling point of the Founders Edition.

It could take a few days after the November 19th launch to get your controller, so you’ll have to play with a keyboard or mouse to start with. Finally, you won’t see your achievements until shortly after launch, though you will be able to earn them. (For a more complete list of missing features, see this tweet thread from @russelholly.)

Google said it’s taking the same gradual rollout approach it did with other products like Search and YouTube. “We always start with nailing the key user-journey and then proceed with releasing extra features. YouTube started with ‘watch video.’ For Stadia it’s ‘Play the Game on your biggest screen,'” said Doronichev.

On the plus side, the team also gave some demos demos of the home screens, setup, friends lists, settings and more. From the Home tab, you can choose to play games on your phone or via Chromecast, much as you can with Netflix, for instance. A menu system lets you choose stream quality and data usage, with “Best visual quality” at 4K HDR resolution consuming up to 20GB per hour, and “Limited data usage” using 4.5GB per hour at 720p. The “Balanced” setting, meanwhile, lets “Stadia determine the best experience, based on your internet connection speed,” according to the screens.

Google also showed off the “friends list” that slides up from the bottom of the screen when you tap the people icon next to your profile. Your own status is displayed as online, idle, busy and offline. It also demonstrated how you’ll connect to the Stadia controller via your phone the first time you use it. After that, you’ll just need to click your controller’s Stadia button.

Finally, the AMA revealed a few more details about the TV home screen, showing your avatar, last game played and a “your games” carousel. A side drawer shows the connection quality and how to access friends. All told, Google made the Stadia interface pretty easy to follow, borrowing liberally from other consoles. All that remains to be seen now is how well the streaming system will work, and we’ll know the answer to that very soon.



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Opera’s latest browser update will show you how much you’re being tracked

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The aim is to increase awareness of the pervasiveness of tracking, as if you didn’t already know. However, it might be interesting to see exactly who is tracking you to avoid particularly skeevy sites. You can turn the setting on globally from the “easy setup” menu and then toggle it on or off from each website, much as you do with a typical ad blocker.

Opera’s tracker blocker can detect specific scripts in order to block them, and when paired with the ad-blocker, speeds up sites by up to 76 percent, it said. On the other hand, many websites detect ad blockers and will refuse to load if you don’t disable them, and they may catch on to tracker blocking, too.

Opera also unveiled a redesigned address bar that shows suggestions based on your browser history when you start to type in a link or search. It also redesigned the bookmarks and history bar, moving them over to a sidebar. The latest release (version 65) is now available on Opera’s website.

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Stanford publishes its massive Apple Watch heart-rate study

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The study, which was sponsored by Apple and started back in 2017, garnered enough interest to enlist 400,000 volunteers with access to an iPhone and a Watch Series 1, 2 or 3. Apple’s newer smartwatches weren’t included, because it was before their time. The Heart Study app monitored the participants’ heart rhythm to look for the presence of an irregular pulse. Researchers sent electrocardiography patches to the participants who did register irregular heartbeat, so they could get a week’s worth of data and confirm if they have atrial fibrillation.

In all, only 0.5 percent of the participants got notifications about having irregular heartbeat — a results researchers categorized as a “key finding,” since concerns were raised about over-notification. After comparing data from the Watch and the ECG patches they sent out, the researchers found that 34 percent of the participants who received a notification really did have atrial fibrillation. Further, the ECG patches confirmed 84 percent of the atrial fibrillation Apple Watch detected during the patch-monitoring phase. While 34 percent may sound like a small percentage, the researchers said it’s not surprising that ECG patches wouldn’t detect anything unusual. Atrial fibrillation is an intermittent condition, and the participants only wore the patches for a short period of time.

In addition, the paper notes that 76 percent of those who got an irregular notification contacted a healthcare provider. The researchers say that shows how digital alerts can “enhance engagement with the healthcare system overall.” Mario Perez, the study’s lead author, said in a statement:

“The performance and accuracy we observed in this study provides important information as we seek to understand the potential impact of wearable technology on the health system. What the Apple Heart Study shows us is that atrial fibrillation is just the beginning. We can look ahead to other areas of preventive medicine. Further research will help people make more informed health decisions.”

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SpaceX successfully completes Crew Dragon engine tests without an explosion

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The company conducted the tests near Landing Zone 1 on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, starting with two one-second burns for two of the Crew Dragon’s 16 Draco thrusters. Those thrusters will be used for maneuvering and attitude control, as well as for re-orientation of the spacecraft. The Crew Dragon team then fired up eight SuperDraco engines, which will be in charge of accelerating the spacecraft away from its launch vehicle, for nine seconds.

After that, the Draco thrusters and SuperDraco engines fired in the same sequence they would if the spacecraft needed to reorient itself in-flight to be able to deploy its parachute and close its flaps prior to atmosphere reentry. These tests will help SpaceX and NASA validate Crew Dragon’s launch escape system before a planned in-flight demonstration. Before that demonstration happens, though, both NASA and SpaceX need to review the data from these tests, perform hardware inspections and establish a date for the in-flight abort test.



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Walmart’s early Black Friday deal: 512GB 10.5-inch iPad Pro for $599

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Black Friday is still a couple of weeks away but retailers are doing everything they can to get and keep your attention right now. For Walmart, that means releasing its ad now to tease Black Friday offers like a $129 Apple Watch Series 3, $99 Samsung Chromebook Series 3 or a 1080p 40-inch Roku Smart TV from its house brand onn. for $98.

Deals you can jump on starting today include a 512GB 10.5-inch iPad Pro for $599 — the lowest price we’ve seen. This is the 2017-era second generation model, so while it doesn’t come with newer features like FaceID or a USB-C connector, it still packs impressive power to multitask with Apple’s new iPad OS, and at this price its performance is hard to beat. At the time we originally reviewed it, two problems were that it was expensive and iOS 11 wasn’t out yet — those have now been addressed.

Buy 10.5-inch 512GB iPad Pro on Walmart – $599

If you have milder tablet aspirations, there’s also a 7-inch 8GB Samsung Galaxy Tab A available now for $78. Walmart has more pre-Black Friday deals planned for next Friday too, so stay tuned.

Buy Samsung Galaxy Tab A on Walmart – $78

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Motorola’s revived RAZR is a fashion-forward foldable

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Even so, I can’t help but wish Motorola had cooked up a few more ways to get things done on a RAZR without having to open it. That external screen is too small to fully display apps, so that’s out, but I’d love to access quick controls for say, my Hue lights, or sift through the first few tweets in my timeline. In fairness, though, Motorola says it’ll continue to evaluate which apps could be coaxed into working well on that secondary screen, and that’s really all I can ask for. Foldables are still so new that companies don’t have a crystal clear sense of how people will actually want to use them. In other words, expect a lot of trial and error across the industry for a while.

So far, the camera seems pretty decent too: It has an f/1.7 aperture so it handled even low light without much fuss, and you can use it to shoot standard photos and selfies when the RAZR is closed. (If you insist on shooting selfies while looking at the full-size screen, there’s a 5-megapixel camera above it that’ll get the job done.) I haven’t been able to review any of my sample photos on a bigger screen so I’ll hold off on the judgment, but let’s face it: If you really care about getting great smartphone photos, this probably isn’t the way to go.

By now, it’s clear that Motorola’s first foldable has its share of limitations, perhaps too many for some people. $1,500 is a lot of money to ask for a phone that won’t deliver the latest and greatest performance or battery life or cameras, after all.

Even with all that said, I can’t help but feel optimistic about Motorola’s work here. The RAZR is the first foldable I’ve ever used that I could hand to my parents or my non-phone-nerd friends and feel good about it. Its design is first-rate. It’s easy to understand. It’s more durable than I expected it to be. And perhaps most important, Motorola’s take on foldable design seems more broadly appealing. (Samsung seems to think so, too.) We’re not looking at a smartphone that morphs into a tablet; it’s just a more pocketable kind of smartphone. Who wouldn’t want one of those?

At the end of it all, it’s too early to tell whether Motorola’s attempt will be the first to really make foldables A Thing for people. If nothing else, though, the new RAZR is proof that Motorola still has what it takes to make ambitious, iconic hardware, and with any luck, its foldable plans won’t end here.

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Mark Wahlberg is poised to join the ‘Uncharted’ movie

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Besides, there appears to be a history behind the move. Wahlberg was originally slated to play Drake himself years ago, when David O. Russell was expected to direct a more straightforward Uncharted adaptation. He reportedly still wanted in on the movie in some form, and this keeps him involved while acknowledging that time has passed.

There’s still a lot of work left before the movie is ready. There’s no Elena yet, let alone clear plot details or a release date. With that said, things are shaping up. With Tom Holland as Drake and Bumblebee‘s Travis Knight slated to direct, it’s evident that PlayStation Productions and Sony Pictures want their first real collaboration to be a big one.

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John Carmack takes a step back at Oculus to work on human-like AI

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Six years ago John Carmack left the company he founded, iD Software, to join Oculus VR as its Chief Technology Officer and push forward the future of virtual reality tech. Today the engineer behind many developments in 3D gaming has announced that a new “consulting CTO” role at Oculus “will only be consuming a modest slice of my time.”

Instead, he’s turning his focus to Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), or AI that can pick up intellectual tasks like a human being does. That’s in contrast to the “AI” you see today, which is usually a very narrowly focused set of algorithms built for a specific task.

Developing….

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NASA renames Kuiper Belt object following controversy

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NASA’s nickname for the distant Kuiper Belt object 2014 MU69, Ultima Thule, has been more than a little contentious. While it has innocuous meanings, Ultima Thule is also the term white supremacists use to refer to a mythical homeland. The agency is sidestepping that controversy, however. It just officially named the object Arrokoth, or “sky” in the Powhatan/Algonquian language. NASA received the consent of the Powhatan tribe before making the change.



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