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NVIDIA’s new Shield TVs start at $149 with Dolby Vision and Atmos

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The first thing you’ll notice is that the cheaper model looks… a bit different than your typical set-top box. It’s a cylinder that’s meant to sit among the wires behind your TV. According to NVIDIA, that helps it avoid wireless interference. And if WiFi streaming isn’t your thing, the company also included a gigabit Ethernet port. The Shield TV Pro, meanwhile, has the same case as the last model, along with two USB 3.0 ports and 3GB of RAM (the standard Shield TV has 2GB).

Both new set-top boxes feature Dolby Vision and Atmos decoding support (the last Shield only offered Atmos pass-through and HDR 10). They’re also powered by NVIDIA’s new Tegra X1+ processor, which the company claims is 25 percent faster than the X1. That doesn’t really mean much when it comes to streaming video apps, but the additional horsepower gave NVIDIA room to develop an AI-powered HD to 4K upscaler, which can help lower-resolution content look better on 4K TVs.

NVIDIA Shield TV

Sure, your TV already does HD upscaling on its own, but NVIDIA says its technique goes a step further. The company fed HD and 4K video samples to a neural network, which helped them build a model that can fill in gaps that typical upscalers miss. On a 65-inch OLED TV, NVIDIA’s AI upscaler delivered more fine detail in a Game of Thrones character’s robes. I was still looking at an HD feed from HBO Now, but it had an extra bit of sharpness that resembled genuine 4K footage.

While watching an HD stream of Coco on Netflix, the colorful City of the Dead was far sharper with NVIDIA’s upscaler. I could actually make out the houses and buildings floating in the background, whereas it looked like a muddy mess without the feature. The company did warn that the AI upscaler might not work well with older content, since it was mostly trained on high-quality modern footage. But, just like any AI model, NVIDIA plans to improve it over time.

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Spotify’s podcast strategy is starting to pay off

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The company is looking to further analyze the data about podcasts and premium sign-ups, but believes that it’s “onto something special.” If proven true, we can expect to see Spotify lean even harder in to owning the space, with more paid-for exclusive titles to lock people into subscriptions. It looks as if the music platform will look to become a Netflix for Podcasts, with a number of new and original shows being commissioned.

And Spotify will bolster this podcast push by allowing anyone to make their own podcasts from within the app. Researcher Jane Manchun Wong found a “Create Podcast” button buried inside the app, suggesting that full Anchor — the podcast-creation app Spotify bought — integration isn’t far away. And, with the purchase of SoundBetter, the company will have a thumb in the music production game as well.

Paying user totals have increased from 108 million last quarter to 113 million now, which is close to the top target Spotify set for itself in the summer. Part of that is down to a renewed focus on “winback” campaigns designed to coax people who tried premium, but didn’t pay, to give it another go. And in this quarter, it has offered a number of freebies, from Google Home Minis and long-term trials to selected AT&T customers.

In addition, the rollout of Spotify Duo, where two people can share a single, slightly pricier Premium subscription, in Latin America has been enormously popular. These giveaways do, however, cost, and Spotify is already considering increasing its prices to cover the gap.

Overall, Spotify now has 248 million users, of which 141 million are using the free, ad-supported version. That scale is even showing in the balance sheet, since it made an operating profit of nearly $60 million compared to a $6.7 million loss in 2018. And those figures could have been higher, but for an issue with some infrastructure software that wasn’t properly implemented, costing around $10 million in lost revenue.

Between the end of last quarter and now, Spotify has been the subject of some good news stories that should improve morale. A story suggesting that Amazon’s music platform was growing faster than Spotify was attacked by critics, because while Music Unlimited is growing, it’s still far smaller by comparison. And the wider music industry has seen an uptick in revenues, with streaming now contributing 80 percent of all cash.

And Spotify’s (not quite) war of attrition with Apple over Siri integration appears to have reached a happy ending. After all, Siri on iOS 13 can now let you play Spotify songs from your voice, and there is now a Spotify app on Apple’s TV boxes as well. So, all’s well that ends well — so long as you raise a complaint to the European Commission beforehand.

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Lab cultured ‘steaks’ grown on an artificial gelatin scaffold

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In the body, cells don’t just sit there in a pile. They get physical support from water, collagen proteins and nutrients, which help the cells grown and align. “To grow muscle tissues that resembled meat, we needed to find a ‘scaffold’ material that was edible and allowed muscle cells to attach and grow in 3D,” said first study author and Harvard SEAS research associate Luke MacQueen.

Our methods are always improving and we have clear objectives because our design rules are informed by natural meats. Eventually, we think it may be possible to design meats with defined textures, tastes, and nutritional profiles — a bit like brewing.

To create such a scaffold, the team elected to use gelatin, which is made from the collagen extracted from the skin, bones and connective tissue of domesticated animals. It’s not only edible, but closely mimics the way collagen adds a succulent texture to meat when it’s cooked.

The researchers dissolved gelatin powder into water and spun it into cotton candy-like fibers, then bonded those into a lattice material using enzymes. When rabbit and cow cells were placed on it, they latched on and formed about a square inch of muscle. Cooking and handling tests showed that the texture and springiness of the lab meat was somewhere between a hamburger and a beef tenderloin.

Gelatin scaffold for lab grown meats

The results are promising, but as with lab-grown burgers, you’re not likely to see alt-steaks on your plate anytime soon. Scientists and bio-engineers still need to figure out how to grow them at scale in bioreactor facilities to keep up with the expected demand. The first lab-grown meat famously produced a $325,000 hamburger, and the company that created that one said it aims to create $10, production-scale burgers by 2021. Steaks are likely to be even farther off, given the technical and regulatory challenges to come.

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China passes law regulating data encryption

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The law requires that all state secrets be stored and transmitted using “core and common” encryption, and that institutions working on cryptography have to establish “management systems” that guarantee the security of that encryption. Those managers won’t be allowed to ask private encryption developers to turn over “exclusive” info like source code, though, and any business secrets they do get will have to be kept confidential.

China’s new measure will allow and encourage commercial development and uses of encryption. However, the development, sales and use of it “must not harm the state security and public interests.” People who fail to report security risks they spot, or who offer cryptographic systems that “are not examined authenticated,” will also be punished. The country’s existing cybersecurity laws are already set to punish the use of encryption deemed to threaten the state, but there once again appears to be an asterisk next to the encryption endorsement — you can’t design something that might challenge the regime.

As it is, the law may offer only superficial protection in light of existing rules. China regularly conducts mass surveillance on digital conversations, and can force companies to both store data locally as well as turn it over on request. It likewise has the power to shut down services or entire products in response to security incidents. There’s little to stop China from obtaining data that isn’t completely encrypted, and it can block or otherwise retaliate against those services that do shield info from prying eyes.

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'Call of Duty: Modern Warfare' devs will fix frequent Xbox One X crashes

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The reborn Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is off to a rough start if you're an Xbox One X owner. Infinity Ward has identified a problem that leads to frequent crashing for some owners of Microsoft's higher-end console, in some cases rendering the game…

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Trick allows RCS messaging on virtually any Android phone

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There are some clear caveats. You’ll need a current Android Messages beta (5.2 as of this writing), an app that can see Android activities (such as Activity Launcher) and WiFi turned off. And that’s assuming the feature stays on. It’s possible that Google can shut off access to this solution with little notice.

Despite those limitations, people have had success using this method on a variety of devices, all four major US carriers and at least some international networks. It’s technically feasible to make RCS widely available, then. With that said, enabling universal RCS access may not be just a matter of flipping a virtual switch. Google’s official approach involves users’ clients pinging each other to see if the next-gen messaging is available. It may not want roll out the ability beyond France and the UK until it knows it can easily and reliably push the feature to everyone.

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‘Overwatch 2’ may debut at BlizzCon with a greater focus on story

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Not that Blizzard will leave its competitive gameplay untouched. O2 will supposedly include a major new mode, Push, introduced to sit alongside the existing Assault, Control, Escort and Hybrid options. You could expect a new map to match (Toronto) and “at least” one new hero.

There’s no mention of when the new title would arrive, although development is said to be far enough along that BlizzCon attendees will get a chance to play. At this point, though, O2‘s biggest challenge may be its creator’s reputation. Blizzard is still dealing with the uproar over its less-than-kind response to Hong Kong protest supporters, and the fallout from that may overshadow even major announcements like an Overwatch sequel.

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Air Force’s X-37B space plane lands after record 780 days in orbit

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The spacecraft completed “all mission objectives,” according to USAF Rapid Capabilities Office director Randy Walden. Just what those are isn’t clear, though. X-37B payloads are still classified, and officials have typically provided only vague hints of what was aboard. One was a thermal spreader that helped test “experimental electronics” and heat pipe cooling in long-term spaceflight, while another project may have tested a Hall-effect ion thruster. Walden did acknowledge that the space plane deployed “small satellites.”

This definitely isn’t the end for the X-37B when a sixth flight is due to take off from Cape Canaveral in 2020. It does, however, raise the bar for future trips. If the USAF is going to continue bragging about long durations in orbit, it will have to fly the space plane for substantially more than two years — that appears feasible, but it’s considerably more challenging than it was this time around.

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UK set to allow Huawei in ‘non-contentious’ parts of 5G networks

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Earlier leaks suggested that all four of the UK’s largest carriers (EE, O2, Three and Vodafone) were using Huawei gear in their 5G networks. While they’re aware of concerns that China might task Huawei with using equipment to spy on UK targets, they may also have strong business incentives to adopt Huawei gear. It could help them build more heterogeneous networks that are less likely to fail outright, and force telecom giants like Ericsson and Nokia to offer more competitive pricing.

If this is accurate, though, it sets up a conflict with the US. The American government has been pressuring allies to drop Huawei from their 5G plans over Chinese surveillance fears, and UK approval of a limited rollout would fly in the face of that policy. If the US persists with that pressure, the UK could take plenty of flak and face possible repercussions for refusing to toe the US line.

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Gothalion is the latest big Twitch streamer to switch to Mixer

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The news came just days after Shroud (aka Michael Grzesiek) switched to Mixer, and nearly three months after Ninja (Tyler Blevins) made his move.

The terms of the switch haven’t been made public, although the free subscriptions suggest that Gothalion and other former Twitch streamers are getting certain guarantees of stability for their finances and viewership. In many ways, though, the deals may be less about money and more about flexibility. Ninja’s wife and manager Jessica Blevins claimed that Twitch was limiting the potential for licensing deals and otherwise unresponsive to requests. In other words, these big-time streamers may feel like they have more room to grow on Mixer and are willing to risk a short-term loss of viewers in the process.

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