Backpage Pulls Its Adult Ads Section, Leading to Lonesome Nights for Some

Veteran podcast personality Bronx Johnny has a message for the “fucking prudes” who forced Backpage to remove its adult classified ads section: you’ve broken my heart.

Johnny, who co-hosts the “High Society Radio” news and current events podcast, said he was “horrified” after Motherboard informed him that Backpage had finally bowed to legal pressure to remove the section of its website where escorts and other sex workers were once able to post advertisements offering their services. The podcast co-host (who asked Motherboard not to reveal his full name) had regularly browsed these ads since October 2014, saying he “knew what he was paying for,” and that what happened between “consulting adults” was nobody’s business but their own.

“Backpage was straight to the point no strings attached,” he told Motherboard by text message.

The shutdown follows years of mounting political and legal pressure against Backpage, which launched in 2004 and hosts a wide assortment of classified ads having nothing to do with the sex industry. That pressure reached a crescendo on Monday, after the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs concluded that the site instructed employees to “edit the text of adult ads to conceal the true nature of the underlying transaction.”

Beyond adult ads, Backpage users can posts ads for things like used furniture for sale, ads looking for prospective roommates, or even ads looking for short term loans, similar to Craigslist or Facebook’s Marketplace.

When reached for comment, a representative for Backpage referred Motherboard to a statement released on Monday, which blamed the adult ads shutdown on “new government tactics,” including targeting the site’s credit card payment processors.

“CENSORED,” a message on the site’s adult classifieds section now reads, in large, bright red letters. “The government has unconstitutionally censored this content.”

While the average person’s first-hand experience with Backpage’s adult section is likely minimal, its shutdown raises critical questions about the nature of free speech online and to what degree, if any, section 230 of the Communication Decency Act should continue to shield publishers and technology companies from being held responsible for messages and other user-generated content created and posted by their users.

Backpage previously operated under the assumption its adult ads were protected under 230, but repeated litigation culminating in a Tuesday committee hearing finally appears to have caused the company to remove this user-generated content. If Backpage is held responsible for its users’ posting ads soliciting money for sex, then what’s to stop the likes of Facebook or Twitter or YouTube from being held to the same standard?

Section 230, according to Emma Llanso, the director of the Center for Democracy & Technology’s Free Expression Project, “is what has enabled the digital economy to take off in the US. So much of what is strong about the internet in the US is not something that should be tweaked or opened up or revised lightly,” she said by phone.

To Llanso and other advocates, holding Backpage responsible for the salacious ads marks a dangerous escalation in the threat posed to free speech online. “If you take this out of the Backpage context, what you’re really talking about is content moderation practices that all user-generated content websites use, or have the ability to use under our current legal framework,” she said. “These issues are really core to the whole framework that underpins free speech online.”

“No human society has successfully eliminated prostitution, but we are setting precedents that are troubling,” Noah Feldman, a professor of constitutional and international law at Harvard University, told Motherboard by phone, adding that strongmen like Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan highlight the danger to free speech posed by repressive regimes.

“Long before there was an internet or social media, there was prostitution,” he added.

As for Bronx Johnny, the podcast co-host “will now have to resort going on dates and pretending to give a fuck” following the removal of Backpage’s adult ads.

“On a date you are paying to pretend and if you don’t hit it off or don’t spend enough or listen enough you might spend north of $80 and not get any action,” he said. “Having to go over the ‘wooing process’ another two or three times… The fact that you can order anything and everything online yet this line of work is still frowned upon is silly to me.”

from Backpage Pulls Its Adult Ads Section, Leading to Lonesome Nights for Some

The Next Stage In Digital Activism Is Brought to You By Fancy Soap

Last night, nuzzled in between narrow aisles stocked with high-end shampoo, conditioner, and body lotion with names like Jersey Bounce, Jungle, and Snow Fairy, a few dozen Midtown Manhattan cosmetics shoppers and I witnessed an impassioned defense of internet freedom.

Just another wild Tuesday evening in New York City for yours truly.

The occasion for this rather aromatic discussion of internet policy was the launch, at the 34th Street location of cosmetics retailer Lush, of a special edition “bath bomb” called Error 404. A bath bomb, for those unaware, is about the size of a baseball and is dropped into a full bathtub to add color and scent to the water. Sales of this particular bath bomb will go toward Access Now, a digital rights group that Lush partnered with in order to raise awareness among topics like state-sponsored internet shutdowns, online privacy, and digital security among a group of people that may not regularly pay attention to these issues.

The Error 404 bath bomb before it’s placed into water . Image: Nicholas Deleon / Motherboard

“I would love to say that, you know, I’m like fighting for this every day because it’s a very important cause, but no,” shopper Kayleen Peña told me, apologizing for not being more active in the fight for digital rights. “It does cross my mind, though, every once in while, what if these vital communication lines were cut off? But I’m not going to lie: Lately I’ve been thinking about it more after Doomsday—you know, Election Day!”

Peña noted that the Error 404 bath bomb, while perhaps somewhat out of left field, could help issues related to internet freedom reach more people like herself.

“If even just one more person is motivated to take up this cause,” she said, “that’s another soul in the fight.”

Error 404, after being dumped in water. Image: Nicholas Deleon / Motherboard

Access Now, for its part, will readily take all the souls it can get.

“We need to protect the internet all over the world,” said Access Now Executive Director Brett Solomon, who noted that while the average American may not be worried about things like an internet shutdown, other people around the world are not so lucky, pointing to an ongoing shutdown in Ethiopia. “I think we all take the internet for granted—like, we just pick up our phone or look at our desktop—but in many countries around the world the internet is not to be taken for granted. People go to access their phone and there is nothing there.”

So, want to help? The Error 404 bath bomb will be available from November 25-30 online and in Lush retail stores. The bath bomb will cost $7, with Lush donating 100 percent of the profit to create a Digital Fund. Lush's goal is raise 250,000 GBP (around $310,000), a portion of which will go to Access Now.

This article was updated after initial publication to clarify where proceeds of Error 404 would go.

from The Next Stage In Digital Activism Is Brought to You By Fancy Soap

The Future Is People Waiting in Line to Buy $130 Glasses From a Cyclops Box

My pair of Spectacles. Image: Nicholas Deleon/Motherboard

Like every other weekday, this morning I woke up at 6am, fed my dog Winston, took a shower and got dressed, and sat on the couch for about 20 minutes watching the local news. Then Motherboard staff writer Jason Koebler tweeted me, shattering any notion of an ordinary Monday.

Yes, Spectacles had arrived in New York City. The first gadget to be released by Snap Inc. (the company formerly and better known as Snapchat), Spectacles are a pair of glasses with two built-in cameras for recording wide-angle “spherical” video that you upload directly to the Snapchat app. Snap the company has created an ingenious marketing strategy for rolling out its $130-per-pair glasses, making them available so far only in limited quantities through a bright yellow cycloptic vending machine called a Snapbot, which it has installed in a few other seemingly random locations around the US, appearing suddenly and inspiring lines of thirsty early-adopters. (There’s even a countdown clock on the Snapchat website for when the next Snapbot vending machine will appear—where, again, is anyone’s guess.)

To be totally honest, my initial reaction was, “Oh ffs, do I really have to go wait in line now for these damn glasses?” So I sat there on the couch for a few more minutes, slouching as my friends at News Channel 4 told me to bundle up because it was going to be a cold and windy day. Great.

Follow the Snapchat Story of my adventures in buying Spectacles by scanning our Snapcode:

My second reaction was, “I don’t even know where that is,” referring to the location of the photo that Jason tweeted me. Luckily one of my friends, who also covers the tech beat, had figured it out: near the famed glass cube Apple Store on Fifth Avenue.

“Fine,” I eventually said to myself. “Might as well have some fun this morning.”

I quickly packed up my things, said goodbye to my loved ones—“I have to leave early because I have to wait on line for a pair of Snapchat sunglasses,” I confessed to my confused girlfriend—and rushed over to the Queensboro Plaza subway stop, about a three minute walk from my apartment in Long Island City. The stop I needed, 5 Avenue/59 Street, was just two stops away, or about five minutes if the subway was operating on time (which, well, doesn’t always happen).

What luck! As soon as I arrived on the platform a W train pulled into the station. I was on my way.

I got off the subway, emerged on the south side of Central Park, and started walking east toward Apple. Keep in mind, at this point I still had no idea where the heck I was actually going, only that the Spectacles pop-up store was vaguely near the Apple store. Also keep in mind that it was pretty cold—not exactly ideal weather for urban exploration. But off I went, and within just a few paces I was able to see the Spectacles banner in the distance. Phew!

A Spectacles lens is available at the pop-up store. Image: Nicholas Deleon/Motherboard

When I got to the pop-up store it was about 7:20am and there was maybe 10 people ahead of me outside the store. But inside the store was a much longer line, maybe around 50 people deep, that snaked around in on itself like an airport security line. The wait was… weird? In my experience very few people were talking to each other, despite being united in our quest for cool sunglasses, and were instead zeroed in on their phones. I personally felt very old while waiting because the music was so hip (I know for sure I heard the song that’s in the opening credits of Portlandia) and everyone seemed so young; the crowd definitely averaged no later in age than their late 20s (I’m 30).

The wait inside the store took right around two hours. I spent the time tweeting out updates and talking to people who were desperate for more information. One youngster, who said he’d be graduating college next year, asked me on Twitter if he should take a three-hour bus to New York to pick up a pair. I don’t remember what that kind of earnestness feels like.

What probably didn’t help matters was that fact that so many people, including myself, had their attempted purchases denied by their banks. The word going around the line was that the vending machine was registered to Los Angeles, the home of Snap, Inc. so when people went to buy the sunglasses it triggered a fraud warning. I know that as soon as I attempted to buy a pair my bank (Citi) called me warning me of a possibly fraudulent transaction. So I had to move off to the side of the main line, hugging a wall, and approve the transaction with Citi on the phone. This snafu added about 10 minutes to the buying process. (My advice to people who plan to buy Spectacles from the NYC store: Call your bank ahead of time to get them to pre-clear the transaction.)

A word on the Snapbot vending machine: It’s big and yellow, as if Spongebob SquarePants had come to life. You merely approach the machine, tap the big round button on the Spectacles you want (I bought two black pairs), insert your card, and wait. The vending machine then makes a bunch of bleeps and bloops, and then spits out your glasses, which come in a plastic tube.

The pop-up store in New York City will be up and running through New Year’s Eve, with Snap, Inc. telling people to keep checking the Spectacles.com website to get exact hours.

For someone who’s sent maybe three snaps in his life (outside of the Motherboard account) I actually am looking forward to trying these things out. At least they look good.

from The Future Is People Waiting in Line to Buy $130 Glasses From a Cyclops Box

What.cd Admin: We’re Sad to Say the Site Is Not Coming Back

Members of What.cd were plunged into sadness Thursday following its sudden closure, believed to be at the hands of a French law enforcement agency, bringing to end a nine-year run as the premier pirated music community online. The website, which was founded in October 2007, allowed members to swap music files with one another using the BitTorrent protocol long before services like Spotify introduced the world to the concept of a virtually bottomless, on-demand streaming music library.

“This is as heartbreaking for us as it is for the rest of the users,” a What.cd administrator told me in an online chat. The administrator, who wished to remain anonymous, made it clear that What.cd as we know it—or knew it, rather—will not be coming back. “What.cd is simply gone,” the administrator added.

A message on the What.cd homepage now reads: “So long, and thanks for all the fish.”

Were you a member of What.cd? Would you like to share what made the site so special to you? Then feel free to email me at nicholas.deleon@motherboard.tv or contact me via Twitter (my DMs are open).

What.cd launched in October 2007 shortly after the closure of Oink’s Pink Palace, a similar online music community where users swapped music also using the BitTorrent protocol. The site’s had analagous visions for what an online music community should look like: users had to be invited by an existing member to gain access, and then had to maintain a strictly enforced ratio of uploaded data to downloaded data in an effort to prevent “leeching,” or the practice of downloading files without uploading files in return.

“What.cd was the Library of Alexandria of music,” a former member who wised to remain anonymous told me, “and it was just burned down by a bunch of fanatics terrified of the knowledge contained within its hallowed halls.”

In February 2016 What.cd noted that more than 1 million unique “music releases” had been uploaded to the site. The site’s administrator estimated that it had 480,000 registered members in total, but that only around 150,000 were active users whose accounts were in good standing.

The administrator, who declined to reveal where the site’s servers were located, claimed that members of the site should not worry about their data falling into the hands of law enforcement because all potentially “dangerous” data, like user names or torrent data, is now “gone.”

“We’d like to thank [the members] for all the wonderful work they did to make this place what it was, and we're sad we had to part on these terms,” the administrator said, adding that former members shouldn’t expect to hear much from the team in the future. “We’ll be off the radar for the time being,” he said. “I hope.”

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from What.cd Admin: We’re Sad to Say the Site Is Not Coming Back

Here’s How to Print Out Your Vines to Save Them From an Uncertain Future

The Lifeprint printer and a collection of Winston Vines—and me in a weird Snapchat filter. Image: Nicholas Deleon/Motherboard

Twitter poured salt on the gaping wound that is 2016 last week when it announced it was shutting down Vine, the beloved app, first introduced in January 2013, that let smartphone users create and share delightful six-second videos. A fun, quirky culture developed on the platform, leading to all sorts of Vines that made us laugh, love, and appreciate the fact that not everything on the internet has to be a giant dumpster fire of nonsense.

And now, one app that launches today, wants to make it that much easier to permanently save these Vines before they’re inevitably wiped from the internet for good.

Called Lifeprint, it’s a free iOS app (an Android version should be ready by early 2017) that connects via Bluetooth to a small, $130 thermal imaging printer that will be sold in Apple retail stores as well as Lifeprint’s website. Once set up, which is no more difficult than connecting your iPhone to a pair of Bluetooth headphones, you can then sync the app to your various social media accounts, including Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, and the soon to be departed Vine.

You can then print static images of your Vines (or Instagram photos/videos, etc.) on small pieces of paper that are about the size of a business card. There’s no ink to buy (though you do have to buy compatible paper, which starts at $20 for a pack of 30); the printer technology is essentially an evolution of what Nintendo used with the GameBoy Printer in the late 1990s.

This is when things get interesting.

By holding your iPhone up to the static image you just printed out, the Vine will then play inside the app. You read that correctly: Lifeprint is able to take a Vine, encode the entire six-second video into a static image, and then play back the video on your iPhone. This animated GIF—you can see the printed image below my iPhone—shows a Vine of Motherboard’s unofficial corgi Winston as brought to life with Lifeprint.

Twitter has not said exactly when it plans to shut down Vine, nor has it said what exactly will happen to the individual Vines currently stored on the company’s servers. While there’s already a few apps floating around out there than can save them digitally (you can also just view the source of a Vine on the web to save them to your computer), being able to print them out almost certainly helps with the grieving process.

from Here’s How to Print Out Your Vines to Save Them From an Uncertain Future

There’s Still A Whole Lot We Don't Know About DirecTV Now

For the past year or so, two services, Sling TV and PlayStation Vue, have dominated the conversation amongst cord cutters, people so fed up with paying through the nose for cable or satellite TV that they’ve said goodbye to all that. In just a few weeks, however, AT&T-owned DirecTV will give cord cutters yet another option to choose from with a streaming service of its own called DirecTV Now.

What follows is a brief primer on what we know and don’t know about this service.

What we know:

We know, for a fact, that the service is called DirecTV Now, and that it’s an over-the-top streaming service. “Over-the-top” merely means all content is delivered via your internet connection without the needed for any other cable or satellite subscription. It's coming next month

We also know the service will launch next month and will carry 100 channels at a cost of $35 per month. AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson, still glowing from his $85 billion deal for Time Warner over the weekend, admitted as much during a media and technology conference yesterday.

As far as cold hard facts are concerned, that’s all AT&T has confirmed so far.

What we don’t know:

Here’s where things get interesting, and what my fellow cord cutters are discussing the most.

For one, while we know that the service will carry 100 channels, we don’t know what channels those are exactly. “This isn’t the junk that nobody wants,” Stephenson said, later describing the channels as “premium content.” Variety has reported, however, that deals are in place with the likes of Disney, NBC Universal, and Viacom, which theoretically means the service would likely carry channels like ESPN, USA, and Comedy Central. AT&T declined to confirm a channel lineup when I asked.

Another thing we don’t know: if that $35 price tag will be available to everybody or if that’s merely a bundled price available only to AT&T’s existing wireless and cable (U-verse)customers. (One of the big selling points to consumers for the AT&T-DirecTV deal was that it would lead to lower prices if you subscribed to multiple AT&T services.) At $35 for 100 channels, DirecTV would represent a better value than Sling TV, which starts at $20 per month for 25 channels, and PlayStation Vue, which starts at $40 per month for 60 channels. (And these are live channels, of course, without any sort delay: If you want to watch Monday Night Raw on PlayStation Vue you’re looking at an 8pm USA Network appointment.) Both Sling TV and PlayStation Vue include vital channels like ESPN and the ability to add HBO as an additional option, so I’d expect much the same from DirecTV Now.

We also don’t know what, if any, bells and whistles DirecTV Now will come with. For example, PlayStation Vue is a little more expensive than Sling TV, but PlayStation Vue also includes a cloud-based DVR, meaning you can record your favorite shows to watch them later. (To be fair, Sling TV has limited on-demand programming, but its selection isn’t the best in my experience.) Will DirecTV Now offer the same capability? Just another unanswered question at the moment.

The last big unknown is device support. While we can assume DirecTV Now will support all the usual suspects like Android, iOS, and Amazon’s Fire TV, we don’t know for sure. Considering Randall Stephenson has stressed that DirecTV Now is aimed at the 20 million US households that don’t currently have cable or satellite, he has every motivations to support as many devices as possible.

For now, though, it’s a case of hurry up and wait, with a skeleton website for DirecTV Now offering the ability to sign up for an email newsletter—or “the deets,” as the not out-of-touch-at-all behemoth puts it.

from There’s Still A Whole Lot We Don't Know About DirecTV Now

‘Red Dead Redemption 2’ Looks Like My Next Staycation

Yesterday I admitted to spending $150 pre-ordering a game based entirely on a reveal trailer.

I’m ready to do that again right now.

First teased by Rockstar over the weekend, the first trailer of Red Dead Redemption 2, the company's open world western game that should feel familiar to anyone who's played a recent Grand Theft Auto, was just published, and while we haven’t learned a whole lot about the game I’m already completely blown away. Fall 2017 is much too far away; I need this in my life, like, right now.

And what did we learn? The game appears to take place in the American West, with plenty of big open spaces extending into the horizon to make this native New Yorker incredibly jealous. (What is that? Oh, grass! How novel.) Bison freely roam the plains. You can see the Milky Way sitting next to a campfire.

Oh, and and there’s a dog, all filled with mud, barking at vultures picking away at a carcass!

The only narration we hear is: “Listen to me. When the time comes, you got to run and don’t look back. This is over.”

As someone who has never lived more than an hour outside of New York City, all of this is very appealing to me. It’s as if Rockstar said, “Look, we know you’re stuck in that concrete cesspool, but at least now you can find some joy.”

This is why I’ve never been a big fan of the Grand Theft Auto series. I don’t need to escape to an urban hellscape. I’m practically living in it. But the idea of pulling up some virtual boots and exploring the American wilderness as it existed 100 years ago? That to me looks like an extraordinary staycation.

from ‘Red Dead Redemption 2’ Looks Like My Next Staycation

Pre-Ordering ‘Battlefield 1’ for $150 Is a Bad Idea But I Did It Anyway

Image: Electronic Arts

According to my Gmail account, on September 5 I gave Electronic Arts permission to charge my credit card $141.52 for the “Ultimate Edition” of Battlefield 1, a video game that normally costs half as much. Why?

Image: Nicholas Deleon

Was I attempting to fill some void in my workaday life, a void that could have only been filled by playing pretend Great War soldier? Maybe! But I didn’t need to give EA nearly $150 to do so.

Did I desperately need to play the game on October 18, three days before people who bought the standard edition get to play? (Noobs!) That was a small part of my calculus, yes, but given that most of my gaming time occurs on the weekend, it doesn’t quite explain why I launched a $150 mortar round into my bank account. (I do, however, have a hot date planned for Friday night with my PC, some Red Bull, and a new Mexican place that recently opened in my neighborhood.)

Or maybe it was the promise of the future? Laying out for the “Ultimate Edition” gives day one access to all of the game’s upcoming DLC packs, ensuring that I’m able to play on new multiplayer maps the minute they’re released—and, crucially, when server populations are still healthy. “I’ve never gone the premium route of buying any [Battlefield] or any other game,” said Motherboard UK staff writer Ben Sullivan, “but I always regret it when dat DLC comes out.” Sullivan added that he “just wish” he’d paid for all the DLC upfront to maximize his enjoyment of Battlefield 4, which was released in October 2013.

And while timely DLC access is as good a reason as any, I think if I’m honest with myself the answer is pretty simple: I am a dork.

When DICE, the game’s developers, debuted the first Battlefield 1 trailer last May, my jaw just about hit the floor. “Holy smokes it’s happening,” I thought to myself. “Someone’s actually doing it.”

Doing it, of course, refers to creating a game set during World War I, a critically important period of time that’s hardly mentioned in popular culture. While it’s not a one-to-one historical simulation, Battlefield 1 takes the series’ solid mechanics—I don’t know how many hours I’ve sunk into the series since 2010’s Bad Company 2—and applies them to this completely ignored setting. Popping small arms fire at a German zeppelin flying over the charred remains of the French countryside is, to me, a lot more interesting than fighting vague “ultra nationalists” in the present day and pulls my should-have-been-a-history-major heart strings in a way that abstract, zero-gravity fighting in space never can.

And yes: I know you’re not “supposed” to pre-order games these days, given that publishers are evil faceless corporations that like nothing more than to over-promise and under-deliver, but as far as I’m concerned, shelling out nearly $150 for the “Ultimate Edition” of Battlefield 1 is no different than tipping your favorite Twitch streamer or contributing to your favorite podcaster’s Patreon: It’s a way to say thanks for finally making something happen that I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time waiting to happen.

It’s a nice feeling.

from Pre-Ordering ‘Battlefield 1’ for $150 Is a Bad Idea But I Did It Anyway

Samsung’s Note 7 Is Circling the Drain

The Samsung Galaxy Note 7. Image: Shutterstock

This is what a disaster looks like.

Three of the four largest wireless carriers in the US have confirmed that they are temporarily halting sales of the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 following a string of recent reports suggesting that replacement devices are overheating and catching fire. The carriers, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon Wireless, are not expected to sell the smartphone again until Samsung concludes an investigation into these latest reports.

How did we get here? Critics praised the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 when it was released in August, with a handful outright calling it the best Android smartphone ever. Shortly after its release, however, at least 35 devices (according to Samsung at the time) exploded or caught fire, leaving a trail of photos and videos of gnarled Note 7’s posted to social media. Samsung recalled the device in all markets in early September (totaling some 2.5 million devices in all), saying it would fix the problem (believed to be related to a single battery supplier) and re-release the device when everything was sorted out.

This, however, is exactly the problem: the wireless carriers have pulled their support of the Note 7 because we’re now getting reports that replacement devices are overheating and exploding, leading to speculation that Samsung will be forced into a second recall.

“At this point, Samsung should scrap the Note 7 altogether and move on,” Jan Dawson, chief analyst at technology research firm Jackdaw Research, told Motherboard. “The longer this lingers on, the longer the brand impact will stick around too, and the harder it will be to move on from it.”

For Samsung, the Note 7 disaster could hardly have come at a worse time. Apple’s iPhone 7 launched to strong reviews, with particular praise for the dual-camera setup in the larger iPhone 7 Plus, and remains difficult to find in stores one month after its release (I feel like I’ve been constantly refreshing Apple’s website to buy a 128GB iPhone 7 Plus for the past two weeks). LG’s V20, which similarly targets the high-end Android market, should reach stores by the end of October, with pre-production models demoed for the press last month showing promise. And of course, Google itself is getting into the high-end Android smartphone game with its Pixel line—backed by a large ad campaign and prominent placement right on Verizon Wireless’ homepage:

The Verizon Wireless homepage on Oct. 10. Screenshot: Nicholas Deleon/Motherboard

As for what comes next—the outlook is not so good. Android enthusiast blogs are now openly telling their readers to avoid the Note 7, while the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that Samsung will temporarily halt production of the device altogether while it investigates, again, what could still be causing the smartphone to overheat and explode, calling “into question Samsung's whole product testing methodology and its scrutiny of its suppliers,” said Dawson.

“To paraphrase Oscar Wilde,” added Dawson, “to lose one version of a product to a battery issue may be considered misfortune; to lose two begins to look like carelessness.”

Update: Monday, October 10 at 6:48 pm ET: The US Consumer Product Safety Commission has instructed all Galaxy Note 7 owners to power off their devices and stop using them, according to a statement given to USA Today.

Update: Monday, October 10 at 1pm ET: Sprint now tells Motherboard that it, too, is halting sales of the replacement Note 7 pending an investigations from the US Consumer Product Safety Commission and Samsung. Sprint customers can exchange their Note 7 for any other device it carries.

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from Samsung’s Note 7 Is Circling the Drain

How the NBA and Oculus Brought Sports Documentary Filmmaking Into VR

King James. Image: Image: Keith Allison/Flickr

When I walked into the NBA Store on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan Tuesday afternoon, I wasn’t really sure what to expect. For one, I didn’t expect to be greeted with an enthusiastic high-five by a store employee as soon as I walked through the front door (though I suppose it beats awkward eye contact). And I sure as heck didn’t expect to walk away from my hour-or-so in the bowels of the building as optimistic as I am now about the future of virtual reality filmmaking.

Alongside a handful of other reporters, I strapped a Samsung Gear VR onto my face for a screening of Follow My Lead: The Story of the 2016 NBA Finals, a 25-minute documentary shot entirely in virtual reality (360 video, to be specific) that recaps the improbable comeback victory last June of the Cleveland Cavaliers against the Golden State Warriors. Unless you somehow managed to spend that week on Neptune you likely already know what happened: Led by the otherworldly good LeBron James, the Cavs managed to outfox Steph Curry and the Warriors in seven games to finally end Cleveland’s 52-year championship drought. At long last, the city on the lake had its trophy.

“The Finals are so iconic,” Eugene Wei, Oculus’s head of video, told Motherboard after the screening. He said he initially considered pitching the NBA on a virtual reality livestream before concerns over broadcast rights convinced him to instead pitch a documentary film. “I was like, ‘Let’s not walk away and just let this pass and wait another year to figure out what to do,’” he added.

As Wei explained, Oculus wanted Follow My Lead, which debuts today for Gear VR (a version for the Oculus Rift will be released in the future), to recapture the sleek aesthetic of critically acclaimed sports documentaries like ESPN’s 30 for 30 and HBO’s Hard Knocks even giventhe quirks of virtual reality filmmaking, including the inability to use zoom lenses and that fact that viewers may not always look in the exact direction the director would like them to. He turned to production company m ss ng p eces (yes, the letter “i” is intentionally missing from the name) to help make that happen.

“We’re focused on what’s in front of you but you also have to always be cognizant of what’s around,” said Gabe Spitzer, the film’s co-director who explained the challenge of deft 360 degree camera placement. To Spitzer, whose CV includes traditional, non-VR sports documentaries, the lack of a zoom lens meant he had to get creative about camera placement. “It was really pushing the boundaries of access [to the players],” he said, noting how close to his subjects he often had to get. “Trying to get as close to the action was key… to give fans a perspective that they’ve never seen before.”

As a longtime fan of similar documentaries, including UFC’s various Countdown specials and HBO Boxing’s 24/7, I’d say Follow My Lead not only recaptures that this is serious business feeling, but perhaps even improves upon it by giving the viewer a genuine sense of presence that can’t be replicated on a static, two-dimensional plane like a TV or laptop—even if the visual fidelity is still somewhat soft.

“I was a little worried because it’s longform,” m ss ngp eces founder and executive producer Ari Kuschnir told Motherboard, who explained that virtual reality filmmakers are still unsure of how long the average viewer will tolerate wearing a head-mounted display (HMD) in a single sitting—at 25 minutes, Follow My Lead is most definitely on the far end of the length spectrum. “But every time we watched it,” he said, “we were like, ‘It’s good! It holds up!’ You follow the story and it’s a comeback story. We let it be whatever length it needed to be.”

That the NBA readily agreed to provide Oculus & co. unfettered access to the likes of James and Curry shouldn’t be too surprising given its rather progressive view of technology, with Cavs owner Dan Gilbert telling Wired last May that clips of players like Zach LaVine dunkin’ on fools ricocheting around the likes of Facebook, Instagram, and Vine are effectively “free commercials” for the league. A deal announced in July will let Twitter (already no stranger to the NBA’s legions of fans) livestream original content (though, crucially, not full games), and early experiments in 2015 with a company called NextVR taught the league that this VR thing just may be an avenue worth pursuing.

“There are many technical hurdles to [a live VR broadcast], there are many practical and production/editorial choices that we need to make in order to make that work, but we’ve been very active in exploring” live VR, Jeff Marsilio, vice president of global media distribution, told Motherboard, referencing the league’s 2015 VR livestream experiment. “Taking it from a livestream to a broadcast production is not a small task. It is one that we think is really important and one that we’re working on. And one that we’re confident will come soon and probably sooner than you think.”

Until that time comes, however, we’ll have to make do with fully produced, pre-recorded video formats like documentaries. Luckily, VR appears to be a good fit for the format, giving viewers the ability to simultaneously see things like LeBron’s game-saving block and the audience’s reaction to it in game seven, and 360 degree views of the city of Cleveland’s subsequent celebration. Once the last remaining technical hurdles (primarily the low resolution of HMDs and phones, resulting in a sometimes fuzzy picture) are overcome, it wouldn’t surprise me to see more efforts like Follow My Lead populate a VR app store near you.

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from How the NBA and Oculus Brought Sports Documentary Filmmaking Into VR

Everyone Can Now Use Instagram’s Tool That Combats Offensive Language

Kevin Systrom doesn’t want Instagram to collapse under the weight of a gaggle of anonymous online trolls.

On Monday, a new tool was added to the photo-sharing app that allows all Instagram users, from big brands to the average Joe, to automatically block offensive comments from appearing in the photos and videos they share. Systrom, Instagram’s co-founder and CEO, claimed the development of anti-harassment tools was his responsibility to ensure that the app remains “a positive place to express yourself.”

“We know tools aren't the only solution for this complex problem, but together, we can work towards keeping Instagram a safe place for self-expression,” he said in a blog post.

Image: Instagram

Actually enabling the anti-harassment filter is as simple as clicking the “gears” icon in your profile, then tapping the “comments” button. Words and phrases commonly associated with harassment will automatically trigger the filter, thus preventing the comment from appearing in your profile. Custom words and phrases can also be added to the filtering tool.

Instagram rolled out a similar tool over the summer, but was at the time limited only to high-profile users. By making the tool available to all users, argued one expert, Instagram is proving that it’s not merely paying lip service to the idea of combating harassment on the service.

“This is now a feature that isn’t just reserved for high-profile accounts,” Jamia Wilson, executive director of Women, Action, and the Media, told Motherboard, adding that she’s “glad” to see it. Wilson compared the tool’s expanded rollout to a similar move that Twitter recently made, enabling the use of a tweet quality filter for all users. “It’s a power, privilege, and access issue,” she said.

While Wilson praised Instagram and other technology companies for developing tools to fight harassment, she noted that the problem of online harassment will likely fester until more women and people of color are in positions of power in Silicon Valley, a place with a dismal record in that regard.

“It is very helpful to have diverse perspectives in all levels of the organization, from user experience to safety to decision-making on the board and to people who are moderating,” she said. “The people who are being targeted [by online harassment] the most are women and people of color. So even when people come in with the best intentions [to develop anti-harassment initiatives], they don’t always understand or really have the same level of experience and engagement with these issues.”

In his blog post, Systrom said that the new comments tool isn’t intended as the be-all, end-all solution to harassment on the platform, but rather it’s the first step toward a more equitable community—a goal, said Wilson, that’s worth pursuing, but one that still requires plenty of hard work.

“This is an issue of free speech and free expression,” she said, noting that President Obama, at SXSW earlier this year, directly spoke out against online harassment, particularly of women and people of color. “It’s something we want to continue to push,” she said, “and something we want to see platforms [like Instagram] continue to deepen” their commitment to.

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The 6 Things You Need to Know About the iPhone 7

While Motherboard covered Apple’s iPhone 7 in real time earlier today, we wanted to take a moment to present the crucial information of the day in an easier-to-scan format. Hope this helps!

The EarPods. Image: Apple

Yes, the headphone jack is gone.

This was the big rumor heading into the event today; it’s no longer a rumor. The iPhone 7 ditches the traditional analog headphone jack, with Apple now including a pair of headphones in the box that use the Lightning port instead (above). You can still use your existing headphones by using the included dongle—which costs $9 to replace if you lose it. Phil Schiller, Apple’s head of marketing, claimed the move to drop the headphone jack required “courage.” That’s one way to put it.

iPhone 7 and 7 Plus. Image: Apple

The New iPhones are the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus. They look very familiar.

One of the questions heading into today was whether or not Apple would call the new iPhones “iPhone 7” or something else, with the speculation being that maybe Apple would keep the iPhone 7 moniker for next year’s model, which will be the 10th anniversary of the first iPhone.

Nope, you’re looking at the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus, the design language of which is largely similar to last year’s model—well, with the exception of the removal of the headphone jack, the dual-camera setup on the 7 Plus, and the new placement of the antenna bands on the back. Pre-orders begin this Friday, with a September 16 release data on the books. One change of note: storage capacities have doubled from last year, so the cheapest model you can buy now has 32GB of storage (the others are 128GB and 256GB).

The AirPods. Image: Apple

Wireless headphones are in the spotlight.

Wired analog headphones are yesterday’s news, according to Apple, which took the opportunity to develop a pair of wireless headphones called AirPods. These things will cost you $159 when they’re released in “late October” and last five hours on a single charge. (Apple claims 15 minutes of charge time in the included battery case will power the headphones for 3 hours.) Apple claims the AirPods “automatically” connect to nearby devices, but this video from the Financial Times’ Tim Bradshaw shows that that connection process really isn’t that much faster than my Bose Bluetooth headphones that I use every day.

Image: Apple

The dual camera is Real

Both the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus now support optical image stabilization (only the Plus had it before), which should cut down on blurry photos, particularly in low light (like at a bar, say). Only the 7 Plus gets a dual camera setup. One camera is a standard wide angle lens (28mm equivalent) and the other is more for zoomed-in portraits (56mm equivalent). The two cameras can also work in tandem, letting users take a photo with the camera app automatically blurring the background to create a field effect (also known as “bokeh”) that’s typically reserved for more expensive SLRs.

Image: Apple

The Apple Watch is still kicking.

Apple’s smartwatch was given a few minutes to shine today, but like the iPhone 7, the overall design hasn’t changed too much. The Apple Watch Series 2, as it’s called, increases the speed of the processor, which should make operation a little less sluggish. Apple also says it’s improved the battery life, addressing yet another common complaint, and has added a dedicated GPS radio to the watch for more accurate run-tracking. Series 2 is also now water resistant up to 50 meters, which is enough to get you through a trip to the beach or the pool.

Image: Nintendo

Mario is coming.

This one came out of left field. Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto came on stage to introduce Super Mario Run, an “endless runner” (think Temple Run) that’ll be available for the iPhone and iPad in December. Nintendo’s first mobile app, Miitomo, which was released earlier this year, is kind of a weird chat app, but Super Mario Run is more of a traditional gaming experience.

Nintendo has at least two other mobile games coming up, including versions of Animal Crossing and Fire Emblem, but it’s safe to say just about no one was expecting an endless runner starring Mario to be featured today.

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from The 6 Things You Need to Know About the iPhone 7