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Inside Uber’s plan to take over city life with CEO Dara Khosrowshahi
Andrew J. Hawkins,
The Verge
This week, ride-sharing giant Uber announced a test that puts both its car and food services in the same app. It’s part of a larger plan CEO Dara Khosrowshahi describes as becoming the “operating system for your everyday life in a city.” The Verge details the challenges to doing so in an interview with the chief executive.
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Although Fortnite is without a doubt the most popular free-to-play battle royale game, that doesn’t mean you won’t have a great time with the rest of the bunch. Apex Legends is the perfect example of that. From the studio that brought you Titanfall, Apex is a 60-player deathmatch with teams consisting of three people each. The goal is for your team to be the last one standing in Kings Canyon, where you’ll have to loot and fight your way to survival using characters like Octane, an adrenaline junkie whose ultimate move is deploying a jump pad that catapults you into the air for sneak attacks.
You can download it and use the majority of Apex‘s characters without having to spend any money. That said, you will have to shell out some cash to access to certain content, including weapon skins and new characters such as Wattson, the savvy electrical engineer who was added in Apex Legends season two on July 2nd. If you don’t like the cartoonish aspect of Fortnite, and if you’re a fan of the action-packed Titanfall gameplay, it doesn’t get much better than Apex. EA
Doki Doki Literature Club looks like any other dating sim. It plays like any other dating sim. Until it doesn’t, and then you’re rocking yourself to sleep and trying to get images of damaged schoolgirls out of your head. There’s a creeping sense that something is terribly wrong and even though we’ve already spoiled one of the major twists — that this supposedly innocent story of a bunch of book-loving teens is, in fact, a horror title — you’ll still find yourself dreading every new development and wondering what the game will do to them (and you) next. KN
Dota 2 has one of the steepest learning curves of any game. Only after sinking hundreds upon hundreds of hours into the five-on-five MOBA can you even begin to understand the deep game mechanics, 100+ unique characters and team strategies. But the fact Dota 2 is so challenging makes those big plays and hard-fought victories all the more satisfying. The sky-high skill ceiling means there’s always something to learn, and if you eventually make it into the pro ranks, one tournament win can turn you into an overnight millionaire. JR
Eve Online proves there’s a game for everyone, even fans of dynamic spreadsheeting. OK, that take might be a little stale, but it’s a testament to Eve Online‘s incredible staying power — this interstellar MMO has been around since 2003 and still supports a robust, active audience. Eve Online is much more than an economic and inventory-management simulator, with layers of player-on-player subterfuge, collaboration and scheming. There’s a robust economy here, too, and epic space battles where players can lose billions in a single click. High stakes, high reward. JC
Fallout Shelter takes the popular action RPG series and transforms it into… a game that doesn’t have very much role-playing. And a very different kind of “action.” This mobile sim places you in charge of a vault — you know, one of those places you usually have to leave before your regular game of Fallout gets exciting and dangerous. If you’ve ever wondered what it was like to live in one of those vaults, turns out it’s lots of resource management, real estate and uh, eugenics, as you get to pair off your workers and hope their induced union will produce an even better worker to run your plants, do research and fight off the occasional giant rat. KN
Fortnite is a cultural phenomenon. It’s responsible for popularizing a new shooting-game genre and doing it in a way that has millions playing across mobile, PC and games consoles, like the Switch — you’ll see this particular game appear in several of our lists. It all started with a simple idea: survive. (Actually it started with a tower-defense-esque game where you built a fort to protect human survivors against zombies, but hey, it evolved.) Fortnite has a low barrier to entry (it’s free!), and the sheer momentum behind the fact that everyone is playing it makes resistance futile. Parachute into the field, grab supplies, guns and ammo, build some defensive protections if you like and make it to the end. Sounds simple, but the best game ideas are. PUBG, Apex and the rest have a tough fight on their hands. MS
Understanding the basics of Blizzard’s collectible card game Hearthstone takes just a few minutes, but don’t let the pick up and play simplicity fool you. The strategic depth of the Warcraft-themed title is one of the reasons it still has a thriving casual community and potent competitive scene five years after launch. Blizzard continues to update the game with new cards, balance tweaks and single-player campaigns that are enjoyable alternatives to the standard one-on-one showdowns. Though players can spend money to grow their card collection, the game is generous when it comes to free booster packs, and there isn’t a single card that can’t be unlocked, one way or another, for free. JR
League of Legends represents one of the most exciting landscapes in gaming today. On top of supporting a monthly player base of roughly 100 million people, League is the most popular esports scene in the world. When you’re not watching pro matches, LoL itself is perfect for all-night gaming sessions, playing with a team of friends or solo. There are a few different roles to best match your preferred play style, and Riot Games consistently rolls out updates, new champions and visual upgrades. Plus, the studio has built a character roster 143 deep (and counting). JC
When Pokémon Go launched in 2016, there were some obvious omissions, such as trading and player-versus-player trainer battles. In early 2019? Almost every problem and missing feature has been addressed. The game isn’t perfect, but the fundamentals — walking around outside, spinning Pokéstop signs and catching critters — make this a truly unique and health-beneficial experience for Pokemon fans. The daily “research” quests and timed events, which boost the appearance of certain monsters, are a great excuse to log in every day. Niantic is slowly expanding the Pokédex, too, so that your collection is never quite finished. NS
Do you like space? Do you like potatoes? Do you like extremely strange games? If you answered yes to all three of those, boy do we have the game for you. Spaceplan Prototype is an intensely strange idle game with a twist. Like most idle games — or clickers, as you might know them by — gameplay comes down to clicking buttons to unlock things to click more buttons to unlock more buttons to — you get the point, it’s not exactly Tri-D Chess. Where it’s unique is in its story and lore, which is about humanity, life, love, death and… potatoes. Lots of potatoes.
Honestly, we’d tell you more, but it’s free, and we don’t want to spoil it for you. If you do enjoy it, though, we’ll point you in the direction of the $3 full game, which is available for PC, Android and iOS. AS
Contributors: Jessica Conditt (JC), Kris Naudus (KN), Jamie Rigg (JR), Mat Smith (MS), Aaron Souppouris (AS), Nick Summers (NS), Edgar Alvarez (EA).
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Most of the time when we hear about AI, they’re taking our jobs or putting us in jail or inflicting some other autonomic horror upon humans. But there’s a second side to that AI coin. One in which machine learning algorithms show us skin suits the beauty of the natural form, even if it has been procedurally generated.
In this excerpt from The Artist in the Machine by Arthur I. Miller highlights the work of artist Eduardo Miranda. He’s melded the minds of a slime mold and a CPU to create, well, music.
Eduardo Miranda and His Improvising Slime Mold
What will be the central processing unit of the future? —Eduardo Miranda
Eduardo Miranda wants to shake up musical composition. At the moment, he is interested in central processing units (CPUs). In today’s computers, CPUs are silicon chips with circuitry that enables them to perform arithmetical, logical, and control operations. But supposing we go beyond silicon, beyond digital, beyond even a quantum computer? What about, for example, a bioprocessor that powers a biocomputer? Or a hybrid computer, powered by silicon plus a bioprocessor?
A bioprocessor processes biological material. Miranda’s chosen bioprocessor is a slime mold called Physarum polycephalum, the “many-headed slime,” a huge, yellow, single-cell organism packed with millions of nuclei. It is a mass of creeping, jelly-like protoplasm that is sensitive to light and spreads out over forest floors, eating fungal spores, bacteria, and microbes.
Physarum polycephalum has extraordinary electrical properties. Passing an electrical current through it makes it behave like an electronic component called a memristor. Memristors have a memory for current; their electrical resistance depends on the amount of current that has passed through them in the past. For Miranda, the most interesting thing about biological memristors is that they are not as precise as silicon-based digital ones. The mold’s electrical output is related to the input but in ways that can be hard to predict. He considers it a “creative processor.” Turn the pitch of a sound into electrical impulses and the slime mold will produce its own electrical response, which can then be turned back into music.
Miranda plays duets with the slime mold, which responds with enigmatic sounds produced on his piano. The piano is the interface between himself and his biocomputer. He entitled the first piece that emerged “Biocomputer Music: A Composition for Piano and Biocomputer.” There is no electrical connection between the slime mold and the piano. Notes played on the piano are converted into voltage oscillations that are fed through the slime mold in its petri dish. The vibrations cause it to change shape, producing energy that is turned into electrical energy and sent to electromagnets above the piano’s strings. The charged electromagnets attract the strings and make them hum, as if the mold is plucking them. Miranda has performed two pieces in collaboration with mold: “Biocomputer Music” in 2015 and “Biocomputer Rhythms” in 2016, in which the mold provided percussion.
Miranda grew up in Brazil and discovered computers as a teenager when his father brought home a Sinclair. He also studied the piano from the age of seven. He found it hard to juggle these two interests, AI and music. One hot and humid summer day, he visited the cool confines of the campus library and came across an article by Greek composer Iannis Xenakis, in which music was embedded in Venn diagrams, set theory, and logic, familiar to him from his studies in computer science. This, he realized, was the way to combine his interests in music and computers.
For his early research, he studied the way cellular automata behave in the Game of Life, a cellular automata system invented by the English mathematician John Horton Conway in 1970. In this game, a mathematical grid of cells follows simple rules about when a cell is “alive” or “dead.” The result is a riot of patterns. Besides its mesmerizing powers, the Game of Life turned out to have multiple unexpected uses—as a tool for exploring the evolution of spiral galaxies; calculating pi; investigating how ordered systems emerge from complex systems; and looking into why, in a multiverse scenario, only certain universes are capable of supporting life. Conway had hit on something universal.
Miranda was enthralled by the patterns and how they evolved. “This is very musical,” he thought. “It’s how certain composers explore variations on a theme.” He invented rules for how the patterns of a melody evolve over time, like the patterns in the Game of Life. “But,” he thought, “instead of visualizing these patterns as mathematics, how about listening to them?” This he accomplished by looking for patterns in musical ideas: phrases, rhythms, and harmonic structure. The machine encodes them and turns the results into lead sheets or MIDI files. Miranda had to curate the raw musical ideas to render them more playable. The computer, he feels, can only be “an assistant to generate ideas.”
Miranda notes that although neural networks can imitate musical styles, AI has not as yet produced any truly original compositions. This he feels is the next great step and perhaps can be accomplished with the help of his unpredictable slime mold collaborator. He is also interested in creating human-machine interfaces in which brain waves replace keyboards and voice commands to help the disabled express themselves musically.
In the introduction to his very personal book, Thinking Music: The Inner Workings of a Composer’s Mind, Miranda contrasts composing music using AI systems (neural networks) with algorithmic approaches, generating music from mathematical descriptions of fractals or of chaos. He writes, “Aesthetically, the algorithmic approach tends to generate highly novel and unusual music, whereas the AI approach tends to generate imitations of certain known types of music. … Both approaches have their own merits and pitfalls, but I tend to adopt the algorithmic one.” The biocomputer is one such innovative algorithmic approach.
Looking back over the interaction between music and technology in the twentieth century, he muses, “Cage and Stockhausen explored technology which they didn’t really understand. Now my generation understands technology and can use it to express our thoughts. It’s experimental music but we now understand what the experiments are telling us. So let’s make art now that is twenty-first- century music.” Miranda adds that he is not interested in reading about how a walk on a sunny day inspired someone to write magnificent music. Rather, he writes, “what I want to know is how he composed it. How did such inspiration become music?”
Excerpted from The Artist in the Machine: The World of AI-Powered Creativity by Arthur I. Miller (The MIT Press, 2019).
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I didn’t have a set of binoculars when I was a kid; no wonder I was so bad at birding. You’re going to need a pair, as most birds have this pesky habit of living in tall trees. In most situations a 8x42mm or 10x42mm set like those from Carson will do nicely, since you’re going to mostly be looking at nearby trees. If you’re into shorebirds you might want something a bit more powerful that can see across lakes. You can get pairs for under $100 but many well-known optics brands like the Nikon usually run north of that.
To get the most out of your binoculars make sure to keep them clean (lens wipes are a great help) and make sure you adjust them properly before you leave the house lest you end up missing some good sightings. Pull out the eyecups and fold the pair until it fits the width between your eyes; it’s easier to start with one eye closed and get it in focus, then make further adjustments when you have both eyes open. Jason Ward of YouTube show The Birds of North America can explain it to you better than I can:
You can always lean on that trusty can of OFF! but it’s a pain to have to reapply and can clash with your sunblock. A Thermacell is a handheld device (or a wearable one, though it’s a little big) that heats a pad containing a scentless chemical repellent — you don’t apply anything to your skin and it can protect a larger area around you. That’s great when you’re traveling with companions, since it can protect more than one person. However, it’s less effective on windy days, and won’t help when your friends keep wandering away from you to look at random deer. You could try an audio-based repellent, but I’ve found them to be even more hit-and-miss than chemical methods.
Buy Thermacell MR300 on Amazon – $20
So you’re going to be using your phone a lot — not just for apps, but for the GPS in your phone lest you get lost. And chances are, if it’s a sunny day, you’ll need to run the screen at full brightness. While my Pixel 3 has never run out of battery on a hike, your phone might be a little less long-lasting, and packing a portable battery like the will ensure you don’t miss out on logging a sighting. Mophie’s Powerstation line is particularly good, as its batteries aren’t too bulky but still offer plenty of connection options for modern phones.
Audibon released its free dedicated app on Android and iOS last year, and it’s the probably the best way for beginners to get into identifying and logging the birds they see on the trail. The “Bird ID” feature lets you search birds by various criteria, like color, size, habitat and behavior. Then you can check in… er, I mean log your sighting of that species, adding location and quantity. The app keeps track of how many species you’ve seen, so it can feel a bit like filling out a real-life Pokédex.
Once you’ve got the basics down and can tell your sparrows, towhees and juncos apart, you might be ready to step up to some serious bird tracking. Cornell University’s ornithology department put out two apps to help birders identify and log wild birds. It didn’t release these apps out of pure altruism, though: The scientists at Cornell use the data submitted by users to track avian populations across the world. So you’ll be contributing to a higher cause. But casual birdwatchers might find it a bit much, as the identification and logging options are split between the two apps, and eBird assumes you already know what you want to enter. But if you’re looking for a serious community of birders, this is the place to go.
The more you walk through parks and forests you will eventually realize that Google Maps is very, very bad at outdoor spaces, so you’re going to need a backup. We’re particularly fond of Cairn, which has more trails marked than Google, but also lets you know where you can expect to find cell coverage — and will also notify your loved ones where you’re going just in case something goes wrong. It’s also worth noting that the newest Apple Watch now has a built-in compass, so you can keep track of your directions in a (slightly) more old-fashioned way.
Now that you’re all packed and have downloaded all the apps you need, it’s time to head out and start looking for birds. Fall migration is one of the best times to look for birds, as our feathered friends will be headed south from September to November. Both eBird and the Audibon app list “hotspots” near you, while eBird’s app will list all the sightings of a particular species. And check out the site for your local Audibon society, as they’ll offer plenty of tips for your particular region. (For example, the NYC Audibon site lists all the parks you can visit and when you can expect the most sightings.)
Look, you’re outdoors and you’re walking around a lot. You’re gonna need water. As you’re likely to be in places that don’t have garbage cans scattered around, a reusable bottle is your best bet. We’re particularly fond of the Hydroflask or a widemouth Nalgene.
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Autoblow AI is a sex toy that promises ‘surprise’
The phrase “artificial intelligence” conjures all sorts of ideas about a synthetic consciousness that knows us better than we know ourselves. But it’s more often hollowly used as a buzzword, providing a little excitement to systems that just identify patterns. This pattern recognition has been, apparently, harnessed by the Autoblow AI, a $259 device that claims to use AI to offer users the “perfect blowjob.”
Why are there so many TV streaming services?
A decade ago, if you wanted to cut the cord, your options were limited to on-demand services like Hulu and Netflix. Now that streaming is all the rage, everyone wants a piece — and the networks and companies that own attractive content want a bigger slice of the pie.
Libraries of movies and shows are being divided up, with any company that owns the rights to something people want to watch considering keeping them as exclusives for a new service. All of which is to say: Streaming isn’t the great deal it once was, and more options arrive all the time to entice us to spend even more.
These are all of the Alexa devices Amazon unveiled
Amazon’s annual hardware deluge enveloped us Wednesday, as it revealed a slew of Echo devices, Alexa-powered wearables, Ring’s first indoor security cam and a new smart oven. Oh, and that’s not all — now Alexa can speak to you using a celebrity’s voice, and Samuel L. Jackson is first on the list. This is the quick and thorough roundup you’ve been looking for.
Boston Dynamics’ humanoid Atlas robot is now a gymnast
Over the past few years, we’ve seen Atlas navigate uneven terrain and even jump around a parkour course. This latest video is on another level, though. The bipedal robot does a handstand, rolls around and also does a few jumping twists — all without losing its balance.
Separately, enterprise customers interested in one of the company’s dog-like Spot robots can apply to purchase one. According to Boston Dynamics, the versatile bot is useful for going places a wheeled machine can’t reach; like inspecting construction sites or serving as a remotely-controlled camera for public safety.
Xiaomi’s Mi Mix Alpha has a ‘180.6-percent’ screen-to-body ratio
Forget edgeless phones — the Mi Mix Alpha is practically frameless, with a “Surround Screen” that covers nearly the entire device on all sides. Xiaomi hasn’t revealed all of the details about its phone but said it’s already in production with plans to launch in December for 19,999 yuan (or about $2,810).
Controls are activated using the pressure-sensitive sides since there are no physical buttons other than a power switch on top. The fingerprint reader and acoustic tech are tucked underneath the screen too. Inside, there are 5G radios, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 855+ chipset, 12GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. Finally, it’s packing a 108-megapixel camera in the small amount of space that isn’t screen, plus lenses for ultra-wide and telephoto shooting. Forget a front-facing selfie camera though — you can see yourself in the part of the screen that’s on the back of this phone.
SpaceX’s Starship halves come together ahead of a big event
Ten days after we got a peek at the construction of SpaceX’s first Starship in Texas, CEO Elon Musk tweeted out a picture of the craft’s two halves coming together. It’s a timely post, as Musk is planning a press conference Saturday evening with updates on the company’s programs, including its Starships.
iOS 13.1.1 arrives to address battery drain and Siri issues
Apple has released an iOS 13.1.1 update (plus a corresponding iPadOS 13.1.1 version) that tackles several glaring problems. The most notable is a fix for a battery drain issue plaguing users across the board, but there’s also a solution for Siri’s problems recognizing requests on the iPhone 11, iPhone 11 Pro and iPhone 11 Pro Max.
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In case you forgot, the iPhone 11 and Apple Watch weren’t the only new hardware Apple showed off at its big event a couple of weeks ago, it also upgraded the base iPad line. Now in its seventh generation, the “most popular” iPad that Apple sells has grown from 9.7- to 10.2-inches, ships with iPadOS and added a connector to support the company’s still-pricey keyboard add-on.
The folks at iFixit attacked the new model with their assortment of tools, and found that despite the new size, inside it’s still very similar to the previous model. Unlike the iPhone 11 Pro Max, for example, which made room for a larger battery than ever before, this new iPad has a unit that’s the same size as its predecessor at 8,827mAh or 32.9 watt hours, and presumably relies on other tweaks to the hardware and software to achieve its extra hour of estimated battery life.
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Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy said in a statement:
“We really wanted to select a director who is able to explore both the quiet determination and rich mystique of Obi-Wan in a way that folds seamlessly into the Star Wars saga. Based on her phenomenal work developing our characters in The Mandalorian, I’m absolutely confident Deborah is the right director to tell this story.”
The director’s other work includes episodes for Marvel’s Jessica Jones and Iron Fist, as well as for Amazon Prime’s The Man in the High Castle, among other shows. While the Obi-Wan series doesn’t have a premiere date yet, Disney previously revealed the launch date and pricing for its streaming service. Disney+ will be available starting on November 12th for $7 a month, and it has already started taking sign-ups. Aside from the Obi-Wan series and The Mandalorian, the service will be home to one other Star Wars show: a Rogue One prequel about Rebel Alliance officer Cassian Andor.
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Ten days after we got a peek at the construction of SpaceX’s first Starship in Texas, CEO Elon Musk tweeted out a picture of the craft’s two halves coming together. It’s a timely post, as Musk is planning a press conference Saturday evening with updates on the company’s programs, including its Starships. Last year Musk revealed that Japanese billionaire will be the first lunar space tourist, so who knows what’s in store now.
This 10-story-high Mk1 will provide a perfect backdrop for his comments, but that’s not all. It’s also fitted with three of SpaceX’s Raptor engines, that should be enough to power a test flight soon. NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said he’s looking forward to the event, but also noted that Commercial Crew efforts are behind schedule.
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Alien was the perfect blend of science fiction and horror. Not only was the 1979 film a visual masterpiece, but it was also infused with sub-surface meaning, exploring themes from corporate exploitation to Freudian birth trauma. 40 years later, it still stands as one of the best sci-fi films ever made. Tickets are available for October 13th at 1PM and 4PM, October 15th at 7PM and October 16th at 7PM. Moviegoers will also get some insight into the making of Alien — commentary before and after the movie will be provided by Turner Classic Movies, purveyors of vintage and exemplars of film.
To lure in more viewers, studios have been bringing older movies back to theaters: A 4K restoration of The Shining was screened this week, and Ghostbusters will also hit the screens and cross the streams in October. Fathom Events hasn’t mentioned a 4K print being used for the upcoming screenings of Alien — but 4K versions of the film do exist, so it is possible that we’ll get a high-res experience.
Grab tickets from Fathom Events and prepare your talking points on how Alien is better than Aliens.
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Netflix hasn’t said why the series is ending now, although it has been winding down shows left and right in recent months. Orange is the New Black wrapped up this July after seven seasons, for instance, while GLOW will end with its fourth season. Although viewership can play a role in cancellations, there are other factors to consider. Netflix and showrunners might not want a series to drag on unnecessarily (there’s no channel time slot that needs filling, after all), while Netflix might also worry about the rising costs of talent for a given show. And then there’s the simple matter of a desire to explore other projects. BoJack‘s Raphael Bob-Waksberg and Kate Purdy recently produced the critically acclaimed Undone, while Aaron Paul has his hands full with everything from Netflix’s Breaking Bad movie through to HBO’s Westworld.
You may find it easy to relive the show, at least. BoJack was born in Netflix’s early days of original programming, when the service didn’t control all distribution rights — the production company will syndicate the show through Comedy Central and international TV networks. It’s entirely possible that you’ll catch a favorite episode while you’re channel surfing, and that’s unlikely to happen for most newer Netflix originals.
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