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DeepMind forms an ethics group to explore the impact of AI
Google's AI-research arm DeepMind has announced the creation of DeepMind Ethics & Society (DMES), a new unit dedicated to exploring the impact and morality of the way AI shapes the world around us. Along with external advisors from academia and the charitable sector, the team aims to "help technologists put ethics into practice, and to help society anticipate and direct the impact of AI so that it works for the benefit of all".
MechWarrior Online launches the Clan Invasion
MechWarrior Online has moved forward the internal game timeline to the year 3049, and with the change of date comes a long awaited event: the Clan Invasion. This fictional event in the BattleTech universe will now play out in the online game, as players will fight in notable battles with new 'Mechs on different planets. With the Clan Invasion begun, the team has begun work on creating Units for the game. Units are MWO's version of guilds and will include ranks and chat channels when they arrive in the game proper.
The Instacube displays your Instagram pictures with class
Usually, I'm a little leery of not-yet-funded Kickstarter projects like this, but what the heck, it's Friday, and the Instacube seems pretty awesome. It's just a few thousand dollars away from being funded anyway, so the odds are pretty good that if you order one, you'll get it without a problem. And yes, it's a digital photo frame, designed especially to grab your great photography work on Instagram. You get to see the photos taken at full resolution, and the unit, once hooked up to your wifi, will even connect up to a few different Instagram feeds, so you can follow more than one set of pictures. Plus, the whole thing is encased in a pretty snazzy Instagram-inspired casing. Unfortunately, the $99 intro price is sold out, but you can still grab one for $149 (and the whole thing runs on Android, so there could be extra functionality later, too). Seems like a great way to show that growing collection of classic Instagram photos off in person.
What classes should WoW have been designed with?
One of the interesting things about converting a real-time strategy game series into a MMO is how the units of the game are converted to playable classes -- or aren't converted, in some cases. While some heroes or units are folded into the classes like Far Seers into shaman and others make it straight into the game like paladins or death knights, others will make it in more as components or abilities sometimes not even given to the thematically suitable class. Such was the case when mages gained the signature Mirror Image from the blademaster hero class instead of warriors, who would seem to be the most appropriate match. Reading over this post on Scrolls of Lore about the Demon Hunter got me wondering again about these elements' making it into the game. Several posters mentioned that quite a few demon hunter-themed abilities have made their way into the warlock toolkit, making a separate demon hunter class redundant and unlikely. It's a fair point, and it's mirrored in other places. Mages in WoW make a specific archmage class unlikely. Paladins have pretty much absorbed the knight unit into themselves. Warriors are getting abilities reminiscent of the Mountain King and Tauren Chieftain heroes. At this point in the game's existence, with 11 classes come Mists of Pandaria, are we likely to see any more introduced? Is it better that the trappings of the RTS make it into the MMO at all, or do they have to come packaged with the heroes and units that made us love them?
Friday Favorites: Unit Converter
Welcome to Friday Favorites! Every Friday, one of us will get all sloppy over an app, web service, or Mac feature that we feel is indispensable. To me, Dashboard feels like the forgotten relative of OS X, the one that sits quietly in the back of the room during the family reunion that has surprisingly good stories. There's some amazing widgets for Dashboard, and Unit Converter is one of them. It can convert a number of categories including area, currency, power, pressure, speed, weight, volume and more. It's a free converter that might not have all the units you're looking for (compare more than 130 currencies in Currencies to 40 in Unit Converter). I'm in a marriage that requires regular translation of meters to inches, stone to pounds (weight), Celsius into Fahrenheit and pounds (currency) into dollars, and the Unit Converter widget is an indispensable tool in sorting out what my husband is telling me. If you need a quick converter, Unit Converter is free and already on your Mac.
Case-Mate's Hug allows induction charging on the iPhone
There are a few features that I'd love to see added to the iPhone's hardware (an IR transmitter would be nice, for one thing), but first and foremost among those is probably an induction charger. It's a little lame to have a device that so easily goes wireless, and then have to come back and plug it in again after usage. Of course, Apple will take their sweet time adapting new technologies, so until then, I might have to make do with Case-Mate's Hug solution. It's a $100 case that slides on the back of your iPhone and allows the unit to charge without ever plugging in a cable -- just stick it on and wait. Which sounds good, but then you notice that the case actually blocks the iPhone's dock completely, so you have to take the case off anyway to do your regular syncing. And of course it also adds size and heft to the phone, which is probably more than you want to pay to just have a phone you can stick on a charger. Looks like Apple's reasoning in leaving the technology out of the hardware is pretty solid. Nevertheless, if you can't wait to "give your iPhone a Hug" (clever but cloying), the case is available now.
New Gran Turismo 5 trailer shows Toyota FT-86 concept driving through your dreams
It's time for another edition of Expensive and Awesome Stuff That You'll Never Be Able to Do! Over at the Tokyo Auto Salon 2010, Polyphony Digital showed off a "GPS-track day unit," which is a little box with a card slot in it that you install in a very expensive car like, say, the Toyota FT-86G Concept, as seen above in the new trailer for Gran Turismo 5. That unit will then record your likely very expensive real-life run around a driving track like the famous Nürburgring lap, at which point you'll be able to pull a card out, plug it in your PS3, and then see the real-life run simulated inside the video game itself, where you can watch or even ghost race against it. It was also mentioned at the Auto Salon that there will be a 3D version of GT5 out "as soon as 3D TVs become available on the market," so presumably later this year. Thanks for watching! Next time on Expensive and Awesome Stuff That You'll Never Be Able to Do: land your very own helicopter on your very own superyacht. [Thanks, Steliosco!]
Apple files patent for collapsible ports
Apple Insider is reporting that Apple has filed a patent for collapsible ports, supposedly for use inside a coming ultraportable computer. I didn't quite get the idea at first (because supposedly the ports collapse in order to give the innards more room to spread out), but apparently the ports actually sit on the hinge at the back of the unit-- by opening the thing up, you also open up the ports, and can then plug the cords in. So while the system is in storage position, you don't actually need to have a whole port on there-- it can fold up and make for less space.Ingenious. But does it mean an ultraportable is right around the corner? Seems unlikely to me-- with the iPhone at $600, and the MacBook at $1100, Apple would have to squeeze a 13" display portable in at around $800-900. What's the point? I love my 12" Powerbook, but if I was spending that much on an portable, I'd go with a MacBook anyway.[ via Mac Rumors, thanks Brian! ]
Lifesigns schedules operations for June
We hadn't heard anything about the US localizations of the two Tendo Dokuta games since November. Siliconera is reporting today that the two games, called Lifesigns: Hospital Affairs and Lifesigns: Surgical Unit are being published by Dreamcatcher Interactive and released on May 15 and June 28 respectively. A quick jaunt over to EBGames' webpage confirms this information for Surgical Unit (if EB is to be trusted), but Hospital Affairs is nowhere to be seen.Tendo Dokuta was a launch title for the DS in Japan. It's amazing that someone's just now getting around to localizing it!
Ten minute run-through with the Wii interface
Matt must have slept with Perrin or something, because IGN got their grubby mitts on a Wii debugging unit and a few games, to boot. On the latest IGN Weekly, Matt spends around ten minutes going through the Wii interface (mainly, the options menu) in detail. The menu seems to confirm the existence of one Wii code per system, as opposed to per game, which should make matchmaking at least slightly more convenient. He goes through Sound, Screen, Parental Controls, Sensitivity Options, and pretty much everything you'll see come November 19th. It's worth a watch, so check it out.
