Each time Microsoft rolls out a major upgrade to Windows 10, you have the option to wait a few months before you install it on PCs running Windows 10 Pro or Enterprise. But you have to act quickly.
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Sunday 21 April 2019
Upgrade your old Mac with the OWC Aura Pro X2 SSD
Give your old Mac a new lease of life with OWC's new Aura Pro X2 SSD.
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Ultimate Tech: ChargeTech 124,800 mAh portable power station can charge up much more than your smartphone
While most portable power banks are great for keeping your smartphone or tablet topped up when you are out and about for the day, if you truly want to go off-grid you need something beefier. You need the ChargeTech 124,800 mAh portable power station.
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Una cronología de los hitos en las imágenes generadas por ordenador para películas, series y documentales
La evolución de las animación de imágenes generadas por ordenador (más conocidas simplemente como CGI) abarca ya tantas décadas como los ordenadores mismos. Se han usado en el mundo del entretenimiento para películas, series de televisión, documentales, videojuegos, anuncios y con todo tipo de propósitos científicos.
En este vídeo de Vashi Nedomansky se muestran tan solo algunos ejemplos, pero lo mejor es la megalista del autor: History of Computer animation 1950's-2010’s. Allí están ordenadas cronológicamente todos los hitos o «primeras veces» que se usó alguna técnica, desde la creación de objetos 3D a los fluidos o la captura de movimientos.
Lo más interesante es encontrarse ciertas sorpresas, como que los títulos de crédito de Saul Bass para Vértigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958) ya estaban generados por ordenador, por lo que se considera la primera película en usar CGI. También resulta que el efecto bullet time de The Matrix (Hermanos Wachowksi, 1999) se había visto antes en un anuncio de Smirnoff (1966). Y la primera animación mediante un sistema de partículas se viera en Cosmos (Carl Sagan, 1979).
La lista completa es una delicia (aunque termina en 2017), con cientos de técnicas, ejemplos y enlaces a los vídeos en donde pueden verse en acción. En casi todas ellas también hay una breve descripción muy interesante sobre cómo se hizo o lo que supuso. Las de las últimas décadas son casi todo «avances» más que nuevas técnicas: más realismo, mayor escala, mejor resultado. La más reciente de la lista es la simulación de una deformación viscoelástica en tiempo real: jugar con plastilina en realidad virtual. Si Saul Bass hubiera podido hacer esto…
Relacionado:
- Los efectos especiales y «gráficos de ordenador psicodélicos» en el cine
- La ciencia aplicada a conseguir imágenes fotorrealistas en el cine
- Los mejores efectos especiales desde 1977, según los Premios Óscar
- Efectos especiales a la antigua usanza
- Los efectos especiales y gráficos de ordenador de «La llegada»
- Por qué los efectos especiales de hoy en día son menos creíbles
- Más teorías sobre el problema de los efectos especiales: Jurassic World
- ¿Por qué parece que no molan los efectos especiales de algunas películas?
- Cómo se rodaron algunas de las escenas con efectos de First Man
- Los CGI de las películas de David Fincher: discretos e invisibles
- Cómo es el proceso de creación de los efectos visuales en cine y televisión
- Todas las películas ganadoras del Óscar a los mejores efectos visuales
- Algunas escenas de cine hechas con croma antes y después de los VFX
- Los efectos visuales de «Marte»
- Karel Zeman, maestro de los efectos especiales antes de los ordenadores
- Los secretos tras la escena inicial de Blade Runner
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DIsponible el código fuente de Zork y otras aventuras conversacionales de texto de Infocom
Nuestro arqueólogo digital favorito, Jason Scott; ha subido a una zona de Github bajo el título de Historial Source el código fuente de diversas aventuras conversacionales de Infocom, la famosa expresa de software especializada en esos mundos imaginarios en los que se jugaba leyendo y tecleando. Un archivo tan interesante como el hecho de que guardar el código resulta educativo y de gran valor histórico al mismo tiempo.
Hasta ahora existía un trabajo bajo el título de Web Adventures que permitía jugar a estos juegos online, pero poder examinar el código fuente es tanto o más interesante. Entre otras están Zork, Infidel, Hollywood Hijinx, Enchanter (Zork IV), The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Deadline, Border Zone, Abyss (basada en la película) e incluso una versión preliminar de El restaurante del fin del mundo, segunda parte de la saga basada en las novelas de Douglas Adams, que no llegó a ver la luz.
Estas aventuras están escritas en escritos en ZIL, un lenguaje de la familia del Lisp similar al MDL que funcionaba en la Z-Machine, una máquina virtual que Infocom creó para estas tareas. Se puede aprender más aquí: Learning ZIL, by Steven Eric Meretzky (1995),
El código no sólo se puede bajar y ejecutar (hay intérpretes de Z-Machine para Windows, MacOS, Linux, iOS y Android) sino que además se puede acceder a las diversas versiones, de modo que se puede ver cómo los bugs de las primeras versiones se fueron corrigiendo con el paso del tiempo. Los bugs eran tan comunes y molestos como hoy en día, pero en aquella época no se podían descargar actualizaciones al instante como ahora; era un proceso bastante más complicado eso de solucionarlos.
Relacionado:
- Una breve historia de Zork
- Adventure y Zork: los legendarios juegos conversacionales, online
- Todos los juegos de Infocom disponibles en línea
- The Hitchhiker Adventure Game: el juego retro online
- El juego de la guía del autoestopista galáctico en la web de la BBC
- Wikitext, un «juego conversacional» a modo de aventura con Wikipedia
- La historia de Sierra On-Line
via Microsiervos http://bit.ly/2IKjB5b
Un viaje interactivo y muy didáctico al conjunto de Mandelbrot
Es difícil explorar los conjuntos de Julia o el conjunto de Mandelbrot y no sentir una absoluta fascinación por las matemáticas que encierran en usu interior, una mezcla de repeticiones infinitas de procesos simples, que convertidos en dibujos siguiendo unas reglas relativamente sencillas resultan tan bellos como enigmáticos.
En este vídeo de Numberphile el matemático Ben Sparks hace un estupendo recorrido por estas maravillas matemáticas paso a paso, comenzando por los ejemplos más simples y añadiendo nuevas ideas y detalles paso a paso. Lo mejor es que lo va dibujando según lo explica, de modo que casi se pueden «tocar las matemáticas», algo que no siempre es posible pero que aquí resulta especialmente útil.
Es predecible pero no es predecible, a veces es estable y un poco más allá es inestable.
Para las explicaciones utiliza GeoGebra, un software especializado pero no demasiado complicado de utilizar, donde de hecho las «órbitas interactivas de Mandelbrot» que se enseñan en el vídeo se pueden descargar. Estas fórmulas utilizan la recursión para ir generando un dibujo (llamado «órbita») sobre el plan de los números complejos.
Parte de la recreación [a partir de 10:00] consiste en simular lo que Mandelbrot pudo intuir, comenzando por imágenes en blanco y negro muy sencillas –que originalmente creyeron que estaban mal debido a algún bug o problema de impresión– y posteriormente logrando más detalles al aumentar la potencia de cálculo.
La pregunta del millón suele ser: ¿de dónde salen los colores? El original tenía sólo dos colores (blanco y negro) que mostraban cuándo uno de los puntos generaba una órbita estable o inestable. Los colores son totalmente arbitrarios; se eligen de una paleta para indicar cuándo una de esas órbitas a partir de un punto dado se vuelve inestable (tras dos, tres o más interacciones). Y porque hacen bonito.
Relacionado:
- El hombre que descubrió patrones matemáticos donde no los había
- Mandelmap, un póster estilo antiguo sobre el conjunto de Mandelbrot
- Un fractal de Mandelbrot programado en Python ofuscado
- B de Benoit B. Mandelbrot
- El monje de Mandelbrot
- Música para los fractales de Mandelbrot
- ¿Qué longitud tiene la costa de Inglaterra?
- Un viaje por las intrincadas dimensiones de los fractales
- Un zoom con música barroca sobre el Conjunto de Mandelbrot
- Los sonidos del conjunto de Mandelbrot
- Exploración fractal
- Viaje fractal por los «Mandelbox»
- Fractales en superalta definición
- Buddhabrot: un fractal nebuloso animado en colores a 4K
- El conjunto de Mandelbrot en 3-D
via Microsiervos http://bit.ly/2Uw0L42
La cápsula de carga Cygnus 11 ya está en la Estación Espacial Internacional tras dejar unos ThinSat por el camino
El Antares 230 en acción durante el lanzamiento – John Kraus
La Cygnus NG-11 tras su captura por el Canadarm 2 – David Saint-Jacques/CSA
Después de ser capturada por el Canadarm 2, el brazo robot de la Estación Espacial Internacional, a las 11:28, hora peninsular española, del 19 de abril de 2019 la cápsula de carga Cygnus NG-11 era acoplada al módulo Unity de la Estación a las 13:31. Con esto ahora mismo hay cinco naves «de visita» en la EEI: las cápsulas tripuladas Soyuz MS-11 y 12, las cápsulas de carga Progress MS-10 y 11 y la propia Cygnus 11.
La S.S. Roger Chaffee lleva a bordo unos 3.450 kilos de hardware para la Estación, suministros para sus tripulantes, material para llevar a cabo investigaciones, y varios CubeSat. Entre su carga figuran también los dos primeros Astrobee y dos nuevos Ice Cubes.
Los Astrobee son unos pequeños robots en forma de cubo diseñados para moverse de forma autónoma por el interior de la EEI para tomar muestras e imágenes allá donde sea necesario. La idea es evitar que la tripulación tenga que hacer estas tareas, lo que le dejará más tiempo libre para «acer la cencia». En total habrá tres Astrobee a bordo, que reposarán en una base de carga cuando no estén en uso.
Los Ice Cubes definen un estándar al estilo CubeSat de forma y de alimentación eléctrica y de conexiones de datos para poder mandar módulos con experimentos a la EEI. Igual que los CubeSat un Ice Cube de una unidad mide 10×10×10 centímetros, aunque se pueden diseñar experimentos de más unidades e incluso de formas irregulares tipo piezas de Tetris siempre que no «choquen» con otros módulos. De los dos recién llegados uno es un demostrador de un nuevo espectrómetro y el otro tiene que ver con técnicas criptográficas.
La Cygnus 11 permanecerá acoplada a la Estación hasta el 23 julio. Ese día partirá en una misión de demostración de nueve meses en la que se intentará validar su utilidad como laboratorio de microgravedad; al principio de esta misión extendida pondrá en órbita tres CubeSat, los AeroCube 10A y 10B y Seeker.
Al final de la misión, si todo va según lo previsto, será, con diferencia, la Cygnus que más tiempo haya pasado en espacio. Se destruirá, junto con el material de desecho que lleva en su interior, en una reentrada controlada en la atmósfera.
***
La segunda etapa del cohete Antares que puso en órbita la Cygnus 11 llevaba además dos cargas secundarias a bordo: el CubeSat de tres unidades SASSI2 y los 63 picosatélites de la misión ThinSat-1 construidos por estudiantes del estado de Virginia.
Con unas medidas de 11,1×11,4×1,25 cm y una masa de 280g los ThinSat son aún así capaces de recoger datos y mandarlos a a Tierra desde una órbita terrestre extremadamente baja. La idea es que sirvan para enganchar a los estudiantes en los campos de ciencia, tecnología, ingeniería y matemáticas. Se lanzan plegados pero una vez en órbita se despliegan en «tiras» de varias unidades que viajan juntas hasta el final de su misión.
Lanzar tantos picosatélites a la vez –aunque vayan en grupos– es un poco una locura, ya que es prácticamente seguro que no habrá forma de identificarlos todos una vez en órbita, igual que ha sucedido con aproximadamente la cuarta parte de los 64 lanzados por la misión SSO-A. Pero la diferencia es que los ThinSat están en una órbita mucho más baja –203×250 kilómetros– con lo que en pocas semanas reentrarán en la atmósfera, proceso en el que serán destruidos. Así que no debería ser mayor problema el no poder seguir sus órbitas con mucha exactitud; casi no hay nada más tan abajo.
via Microsiervos http://bit.ly/2UKZdrT
Ready for 6G? How AI will shape the network of the future
With 5G networks rolling out around the world, engineers are turning their attention to the next incarnation.
from Top News - MIT Technology Review http://bit.ly/2GkMDpk
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Landowners are earning millions for carbon cuts that may not occur
A new analysis finds California’s cap-and-trade program may vastly overestimate emissions reductions.
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Troll Watch: What We Learned From The Mueller Report
Clint Watts of the Foreign Policy Research Institute tells NPR's Sacha Pfeiffer what he learned about how Russian Internet trolls operate from the redacted Mueller report.
from Technology : NPR https://n.pr/2IL6CAm
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Helvetica, The Iconic Font Both Loved And Loathed, Gets Its 1st Redesign In 36 Years
The updated font even has a new name: "Helvetica Now." But like many changes, some people are skeptical.
(Image credit: Jim Davis/Boston Globe via Getty Images)
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How Squishy Robotics created a robot that can be safely dropped out of a helicopter
If you want to build a robot that can fall hundreds of feet and be no worse the wear, legs are pretty much out of the question. The obvious answer, then, is a complex web of cable-actuated rods. Obvious to Squishy Robotics, anyway, whose robots look delicate but are in fact among the most durable out there.
The startup has been operating more or less in stealth mode, emerging publicly today onstage at our Robotics + AI Sessions event in Berkeley, Calif. It began, co-founder and CEO Alice Agogino told me, as a project connected to NASA Ames a few years back.
“The original idea was to have a robot that could be dropped from a spacecraft and survive the fall,” said Agogino. “But I could tell this tech had earthly applications.”
Her reason for thinking so was learning that first responders were losing their lives due to poor situational awareness in areas they were being deployed. It’s hard to tell without actually being right there that a toxic gas is lying close to the ground, or that there is a downed electrical line hidden under a fallen tree, and so on.
Robots are well-suited to this type of reconnaissance, but it’s a bit of a Catch-22: You have to get close to deploy a robot, but you need the robot there to get close enough in the first place. Unless, of course, you can somehow deploy the robot from the air. This is already done, but it’s rather clumsy: picture a wheeled bot floating down under a parachute, missing its mark by a hundred feet due to high winds or getting tangled in its own cords.
“We interviewed a number of first responders,” said Agogino. “They told us they want us to deploy ground sensors before they get there, to know what they’re getting into; then when they get there they want something to walk in front of them.”
Squishy’s solution can’t quite be dropped from orbit, as the original plan was for exploring Saturn’s moon Titan, but they can fall from 600 feet, and likely much more than that, and function perfectly well afterwards. It’s all because of the unique “tensegrity structure,” which looks like a game of pick-up-sticks crossed with cat’s cradle. (Only use the freshest references for you, reader.)
If it looks familiar, you’re probably thinking of the structures famously studied by Buckminster Fuller, and they’re related but quite different. This one had to be engineered not just to withstand great force from dropping, but to shift in such a way that it can walk or crawl along the ground and even climb low obstacles. That’s a nontrivial shift away from the buckyball and other geodesic types.
“We looked at lots of different tensegrity structures — there are an infinite number,” Agogino said. “It has six compressive elements, which are the bars, and 24 other elements, which are the cables or wires. But they could be shot out of a cannon and still protect the payload. And they’re so compliant, you could throw them at children, basically.” (That’s not the mission, obviously. But there are in fact children’s toys with tensegrity-type designs.)
Inside the bars are wires that can be pulled or slackened to cause to move the various points of contact with the ground, changing the center of gravity and causing the robot to roll or spin in the desired direction. A big part of the engineering work was making the tiny motors to control the cables, and then essentially inventing a method of locomotion for this strange shape.
“On the one hand it’s a relatively simple structure, but it’s complicated to control,” said Agogino. “To get from A to B there are any number of solutions, so you can just play around — we even had kids do it. But to do it quickly and accurately, we used machine learning and AI techniques to come up with an optimum technique. First we just created lots of motions and observed them. And from those we found patterns, different gaits. For instance if it has to squeeze between rocks, it has to change its shape to be able to do that.”
The mobile version would be semi-autonomous, meaning it would be controlled more or less directly but figure out on its own the best way to accomplish “go forward” or “go around this wall.” The payload can be customized to have various sensors and cameras, depending on the needs of the client — one being deployed at a chemical spill needs a different loadout than one dropping into a radioactive area, for instance.
To be clear, these things aren’t going to win in an all-out race against a Spot or a wheeled robot on unbroken pavement. But for one thing, those are built specifically for certain environments and there’s room for more all-purpose, adaptable types. And for another, neither one of those can be dropped from a helicopter and survive. In fact, almost no robots at all can.
“No one can do what we do,” Agogino preened. At a recent industry demo day where robot makers showed off air-drop models, “we were the only vendor that was able to do a successful drop.”
And although the tests only went up to a few hundred feet, there’s no reason that Squishy’s bots shouldn’t be able to be dropped from 1,000, or for that matter 50,000 feet up. They hit terminal velocity after a relatively short distance, meaning they’re hitting the ground as hard as they ever will, and working just fine afterwards. That has plenty of parties interested in what Squishy is selling.
The company is still extremely small and has very little funding: mainly a $500,000 grant from NASA and $225,000 from the National Science Foundation’s SBIR fund. But they’re also working from UC Berkeley’s Skydeck accelerator, which has already put them in touch with a variety of resources and entrepreneurs, and the upcoming May 14 demo day will put their unique robotics in front of hundreds of VCs eager to back the latest academic spin-offs.
You can keep up with the latest from the company at its website, or of course this one.
from Gadgets – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2DkalkI
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Next iPhone could feature an ultra-wide lens
A new report from Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo obtained by 9to5Mac details the cameras in the next-generation iPhones. The report confirms previous rumors — the successors of the iPhone XS and XS Max will have three camera sensors on the back of the device.
In addition to the main camera and the 2x camera, Apple could add an ultra-wide 12-megapixel lens. Many Android phones already feature an ultra-wide lens, so it makes sense that Apple is giving you more flexibility by adding a third camera.
Kuo thinks Apple will use a special coating on the camera bump to hide the lenses. It’s true that pointing three cameras at someone is starting to look suspicious.
OnLeaks and Digit shared the following render (without any special coating) a few months ago:
The iPhone XR update will feature two cameras instead of one. I bet Apple will add a 2x camera.
On the front of the device, Apple could be planning a big upgrade for the selfie camera. The company could swap the existing camera sensor with 4 layers of glass with a camera sensor that has 5 layers of glass.
Apple could also be giving the camera a resolution bump, jumping from 7 megapixels to 12 megapixels. All three models should get the new selfie camera.
from Gadgets – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2vaLLOP
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Google Home’s Philips Hue integration can now wake you up gently
Maybe you love the sound of your alarm clock blaring in the morning, heralding a new day full of joy and adventure. More likely, though, you don’t. If you prefer a more gentle wake-up (and have invested in some smart home technology), here’s some good news: Google Home now lets you use your Philips Hue lights to wake you up by slowly changing the light in your room.
Philips first announced this integration at CES earlier this year, with a planned rollout in March. Looks like that took a little while longer, as Google and Philips gently brought this feature to life.
Just like you can use your Home to turn on “Gentle Wake,” which starts changing your lights 30 minutes before your wake-up time to mimic a sunrise, you also can go the opposite way and have the lights mimic sunset as you get ready to go to bed. You can either trigger these light changes through an alarm or with a command that starts them immediately.
While the price of white Hue bulbs has come down in recent years, colored hue lights remain rather pricey, with single bulbs going for around $40. If that doesn’t hold you back, though, the Gentle Sleep and Wake features are now available in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia, Singapore and India in English only.
from Gadgets – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2KKI5Ov
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Meet the first judges for The Europas Awards (27 June) and enter your startup now!
I’m excited to announce that The Europas Awards for European Tech Startups is really shaping up! The awards will be held on 27 June 2019, in London, U.K. on the front lawn of the Geffrye Museum in Hoxton, London — creating a fantastic and fun garden party atmosphere in the heart of London’s tech startup scene.
TechCrunch is once more the exclusive media sponsor of the awards and conference, alongside new “tech, culture & society” event creator The Pathfounder.
Here’s how to enter and be considered for the awards.
You can nominate a startup, accelerator or venture investor that you think deserves to be recognized for their achievements in the last 12 months.
*** The deadline for nominations is 1 May 2019 ***
For the 2019 awards, we’ve overhauled the categories to a set that we believe better reflects the range of innovation, diversity and ambition we see in the European startups being built and launched today. There are now 20 categories, including new additions to cover AgTech / FoodTech, SpaceTech, GovTech and Mobility Tech.
Attendees, nominees and winners will get discounts to TechCrunch Disrupt in Berlin, later this year.
The Europas “Diversity Pass”
We’d like to encourage more diversity in tech! That’s why, for the upcoming invitation-only “Pathfounder” event held on the afternoon before The Europas Awards, we’ve reserved a tranche of free tickets to ensure that we include more women and people of colour who are “pre-seed” or “seed-stage” tech startup founders. If you are a women founder or person of colour founder, apply here for a chance to be considered for one of the limited free diversity passes to the event.
The Pathfounder event will feature premium content and invitees, designed be a “fast download” into the London tech scene for European founders looking to raise money or re-locate to London.
The Europas Awards
The Europas Awards results are based on voting by expert judges and the industry itself.
But key to it is that there are no “off-limits areas” at The Europas, so attendees can mingle easily with VIPs.
The complete list of categories is here:
- AgTech / FoodTech
- CleanTech
- Cyber
- EdTech
- FashTech
- FinTech
- Public, Civic and GovTech
- HealthTech
- MadTech (AdTech / MarTech)
- Mobility Tech
- PropTech
- RetailTech
- Saas/Enterprise or B2B
- SpaceTech
- Tech for Good
- Hottest Blockchain Project
- Hottest Blockchain Investor
- Hottest VC Fund
- Hottest Seed Fund
- Grand Prix
Timeline of The Europas Awards deadlines:
* 6 March 2019 – Submissions open
* 1 May 2019 – Submissions close
* 10 May 2019 – Public voting begins
* 18 June 2019 – Public voting ends
* 27 June 2019 – Awards Bash
Amazing networking
We’re also shaking up the awards dinner itself. Instead of a sit-down gala dinner, we’ve taken feedback for more opportunities to network. Our awards ceremony this year will be in the setting of a garden lawn party, where you’ll be able to meet and mingle more easily, with free-flowing drinks and a wide-selection of street food (including vegetarian/vegan). The ceremony itself will last approximately 75 minutes, with the rest of the time dedicated to networking. If you’d like to talk about sponsoring or exhibiting, please contact dianne@thepathfounder.com
Instead of thousands and thousands of people, think of a great summer event with the most interesting and useful people in the industry, including key investors and leading entrepreneurs.
The Europas Awards have been going for the last 10 years, and we’re the only independent and editorially driven event to recognise the European tech startup scene. The winners have been featured in Reuters, Bloomberg, VentureBeat, Forbes, Tech.eu, The Memo, Smart Company, CNET, many others — and of course, TechCrunch.
• No secret VIP rooms, which means you get to interact with the speakers
• Key founders and investors attending
• Journalists from major tech titles, newspapers and business broadcasters
Meet the first set of our 20 judges:
Brent Hoberman
Executive Chairman and Co-Founder
Founders Factory
Videesha Böckle
Founding Partner
signals Venture Capital
Bindi Karia
Innovation Expert + Advisor, Investor
Bindi Ventures
Christian Hernandez Gallardo
Co-Founder and Venture Partner at White Star Capital
Kaidi Ruusalepp
CEO & Founder
Funderbeam
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Xbox One does away with discs in new $249 All-Digital Edition
Discs! What are they good for? Well, they’re nice if you don’t want to be tied to an online-only ecosystem. But if you don’t mind that, Microsoft’s latest Xbox One S “All-Digital Edition” might be for you. With no slots to speak of, the console is limited to downloading games to its drive — which is how we’ve been doing it on PC for quite some time.
Announced during today’s “Inside Xbox” video presentation, the Xbox One S All-Digital Edition — honestly, why not just give it a different letter? — is identical to the existing One S except for, of course, not having a disc slot in the front.
The Xbox One X (left) and S (center) are missing this valuable feature exclusive to the All-Digital Edition (right)
The impact of the news was lessened somewhat by Sony’s strategically timed tease of its next-generation console, revealing little — but enough to get gamers talking on a day Microsoft would have preferred was about its game ecosystem. But to return to the disc-free Xbox.
“We’re not looking to push customers toward digital,” explained Microsoft’s Jeff Gattis in a press release. “It’s about meeting the needs of customers that are digital natives that prefer digital-based media. Given this is the first product of its kind, it will teach us things we don’t already know about customer preferences around digital and will allow us to refine those experiences in the future. We see this as a step forward in extending our offerings beyond the core console gamer.”
The CPU and GPU are the same, RAM is the same, everything is the same. Even, unfortunately, the hard drive: a single lonely terabyte (imagine saying that a few years ago) that could fill up fast if every game has to be downloaded in full rather than loaded from disc.
It’s also the exact same shape and size as the S, which seems like a missed opportunity — they couldn’t make it a little smaller or thinner after taking out the whole Blu-ray assembly? Well, at least the original is a nice-looking little box to begin with. (“Changes that affect the form of a console can be complex and costly,” said Gattis.)
At $249 it’s $50 cheaper than the disc-using edition, and comes with copies of Sea of Thieves, Minecraft and Forza Horizon 3. That’s a pretty decent value, I’d say. If you’re looking to break into the Xbox ecosystem and don’t want to clutter your place with a bunch of discs and cases, this is a nice option. Sea of Thieves had kind of a weak start but has grown quite a bit, FH3 is supposed to be solid and Minecraft is of course Minecraft.
You may also want to spring for the new Xbox Game Pass Ultimate service, which combines Xbox Live Gold and Xbox Game Pass — meaning you get the usual online benefits as well as access to the growing Game Pass library. There’s enough there now that, with the games you get in the box, you shouldn’t have to buy much of anything until whatever Microsoft announces at E3 comes out. (There’s even a special offer for three months of Game Pass for a buck to get you started.)
You can pre-order the All-Digital Edition (which really should have been called the Xbox One D) now, and it should ship and be available at retailers starting May 7.
from Gadgets – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2GrhiT6
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Amazon launches a certification program for Alexa skill developers
Developers building voice-enabled applications for Amazon Echo and other Alexa-powered devices will now have a new way to validate their abilities, with Amazon’s launch of a new AWS Certified Alexa Skill Builder – Specialty certification. This is the first time Amazon has offered a certification program for Alexa developers, the company says.
Certification programs are standard in the technology industry — and AWS already offers a training program and certifications of its own that allow organizations to identify professionals with cloud expertise and an understanding of AWS.
The new Alexa certification will be a specialty within the AWS program, and will validate those with an understanding of all aspects of Alexa voice app development.
This includes the more practical matters — like how to develop, test, validate and troubleshoot skills, the use of the Alexa Developer Console, how to manage skill operations and life cycles, and more. But it will also get into more high-level concepts, like the “value of voice” and how a voice user experience should flow — something that many Alexa developers today still seem to struggle with.
To get started, developers can review a new exam guide, which helps them learn about Alexa skill building through tutorials, technical documentation and more. Amazon is also making self-paced training courses available online.
When ready, developers aiming to get certified can create an AWS Training account and schedule their exam.
The goal, says Amazon, is to open up “more opportunities to build engaging voice experiences” that can reach customers across the more than 100 million Alexa-enabled devices on the market today.
In other words, Amazon wants those Alexa developers dabbling with skill building to learn not only the basics, but also the industry best practices — then use this knowledge to create more skills that will actually resonate with customers.
The certification program arrives at a time when smart speakers have hit critical mass in the U.S., but the ecosystem of third-party skills has not had its “app store moment” with a breakout hit, as Bloomberg recently noted.
Arguably, music, timers and smart home controls are the breakout hits for smart speakers, but these are native functions. It’s unclear how many of Alexa’s 80K+ third-party skills have a long-term future if consumer adoption continues to struggle.
In the meantime, however, businesses are still keen on the platform, given the sizable installed base for Alexa. Every day, some organization is announcing the launch of its skill. (Today, for example, it’s the Red Cross.)
“The demand from organizations for skilled professionals who can build skills for emerging voice-enabled workloads is increasing,” says Kevin Kelly, director, AWS Certification and Education Programs, in a statement. “This new certification validates those skills with the only credential in the industry focused on Alexa skill building,” he added.
from Gadgets – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2GiqvMd
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