Month: March 2016

It's been almost a year now since Oculus announced that the consumer version of the Rift virtual reality headset would only support Windows PCs at launch—a turnaround from development kits that worked fine on Mac and Linux boxes. Now, according to Oculus co-founder Palmer Luckey, it "is up to Apple" to change that state of affairs. Specifically, "if they ever release a good computer, we will do it," he told Shacknews recently.

Basically, Luckey continued, even the highest-end Mac you can buy would not provide an enjoyable experience on the final Rift hardware, which is significantly more powerful than early development kits. "It just boils down to the fact that Apple doesn’t prioritize high-end GPUs," he said. "You can buy a $6,000 Mac Pro with the top-of-the-line AMD FirePro D700, and it still doesn’t match our recommended specs."

"So if they prioritize higher-end GPUs like they used to for a while back in the day, we’d love to support Mac. But right now, there’s just not a single machine out there that supports it," he added. "Even if we can support on the software side, there's just no audience that could run the vast majority of software on it."

IBM is pushing big Internet companies to pay patent licensing fees in part because IBM invented the Prodigy service, a precursor to the modern Web.

Yesterday, Big Blue filed a lawsuit (PDF) against Groupon, saying the company has infringed four IBM patents, including patents 5,796,967 and 7,072,849. Each of those relates to the Prodigy service. IBM inventors working on Prodigy "developed novel methods for presenting applications and advertisements," and "the technological innovations embodied in these patents are fundamental to the efficient communication of Internet content," according to the company.

The Prodigy patents were filed in 1993 and 1996, but they have "priority dates" stretching back to 1988. That's because they're based on "divisional" and "continuation" patent applications, which were abandoned but first filed in that year.

On February 14, something called the Apple Worldwide Developer Relations Intermediate Certificate expired. This sort of thing is typically routine; it was renewed and developers were advised to update their certificates so their Apple Wallet Passes, Mac apps, extensions, Safari push notifications, and App Store submissions would continue working properly.

There's one edge case for people who frequently troubleshoot and fix Macs, as pointed out by TidBits: old OS X installers downloaded from the Mac App Store before the certificate's expiration date will no longer work. This includes not just installers for El Capitan, but also downloaded installers for Yosemite, Mavericks, Mountain Lion, and Lion—every OS X installer issued using the Mac App Store. It also affects any USB install disks you've created using the downloaded installer.

You can easily re-download any installers you want using the Mac App Store, though for older OS X versions you'll need to make sure that the installer is listed in your purchase history. Also, note that you can't download a version of OS X that isn't compatible with the Mac you're downloading it on; my 2012 iMac can download everything back to Mountain Lion, but it refuses to download Lion. Keep this in mind if you have an extensive back catalog of old installers for archival reasons—as a workaround, setting your Mac's date to before February 14 should also allow older installers to work properly.

We've got our first glimpse of the new Ghostbusters reboot, which takes place 30 years after the last film and gives us a whole new generation of weird scientists battling the ghosts of New York City. So far, it looks promising.

The first Ghostbusters movie became an iconic piece of 1980s pop culture for two simple reasons: the cast was a comedy dream team, and the concept was a new take on the old-school monster hunter story. Plus, it was a horror fantasy set in a city, which was also a relatively new idea in the early 1980s. That decade was a milestone in the popularization of urban (and suburban) paranormal horror, a genre-busting phenomenon that became its own genre. It's going to be hard for the updated Ghostbusters to reinvent a story that was beloved for being a reinvention.

But is it a sequel or a reboot? Here's what's weird. Director Paul Feig and writer Katie Dippold have repeatedly emphasized that this movie is not a sequel. It's a complete reboot, set in a universe where nobody in New York has seen a ghost before and the city was never destroyed by a giant marshmallow. Yet, the trailer absolutely presents it as a sequel by saying that "30 years ago four scientists saved New York." That seems to disagree with Feig and Dippold's interpretation of the movie as a reboot or re-imagining and appears to sell it as a sequel. Or maybe the text is just a reference to the previous movie and not the plot of this movie? Either way, it's a confusing way to introduce the trailer if the creators want us to be clear on the fact this isn't a sequel.

The Television Academy has made some small changes that could mean big things for online video content creators. The organization announced that it has expanded the criteria to be considered for an Emmy, making it easier for Internet-exclusive shows to win awards.

Content that will fall under the new "short-form" award categories are defined as "series with a minimum of six episodes running an average of 15 minutes or less per episode, exhibited over-the-air and/or via cable, satellite or Internet." Specifically, the three award categories are Outstanding Short Form Series—Comedy or Drama, which replaces the Short Format Live Entertainment category; the new Outstanding Short Form Series—Variety category; and the Outstanding Short Form Series—Reality/Nonfiction, which replaces the Short Format Nonfiction category.

While online video creators still struggle to gain the same recognition as traditional media creators (and the big budgets that follow), this change to the Emmys is a step in the right direction. It provides more validity for online content like the shows on YouTube and YouTube Red, which is already showing content from PewDiePie, Lilly Singh, and Rooster Teeth. The main awards show for Internet video until this point has been The Webbys, which are big awards for Internet creators but nowhere near as well-known as the Emmys by the general public and media. If nothing else, this could give Web video creators the chance to show traditional media that online video can be just as artistic and legitimate as regular television shows.

Making gene knockouts has long been one of researchers’ favorite ways to determine the function of a gene. If you eliminate a particular gene and it kills the organism, the thinking goes, then that gene must be pretty darn important. Less dramatic ramifications can be equally informative; knockouts have identified genes involved in things like growth, DNA repair, and limb formation.

Knockouts are usually generated in species that are laboratory standbys, like mice and yeast. Creating human knockouts has not really been done for the obvious ethical reasons, not to mention the technical ones (you have to wait 17 years between generations). But ultimately, the whole goal of these studies is to figure out what these genes are doing in humans.

Now a group of geneticists has decided that if you can't make them, you can find them. They've collected and studied human knockouts that have occurred naturally and reported the results in Science.

Earlier this week, my flight to Los Angeles—for a very fun, math-loaded games event—had a nice surprise beyond the flight attendant sneaking me an extra baggie of peanuts. The in-flight entertainment system on the seat-back in front of me was loaded with a ton of free, full-length movies, and one of those was Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

This was remarkable beyond the fact that I could chill with BB-8 at 30,000 feet. Previous Star Wars films took their sweet time to trickle out anywhere outside of a theatrical run, and lord knows how long we waited for the original trilogy to show up on DVD. The House of Mouse appears to have a much more proactive take on getting home versions of Star Wars to fans, and if my Delta flight wasn't proof enough, then consider Thursday's announcement of the impending Force Awakens Blu-ray, DVD, and digital download launch in early April.

The film will first reach homes by way of "digital HD" services on April 1, followed by Blu-ray and DVD versions on April 5. The disc versions will be packed with bonus featurettes, including a "feature documentary" about the film's creation, a recording of the actors' first table read, deleted scenes, and other short clips detailing specifics like droids and battle sequences. (We're particularly interested in whether the table read video captures Harrison Ford or Carrie Fisher in their typical off-the-cuff, zero-f###s-given modes as of late.) The announcement warns that "digital bonus offerings may vary by retailer," so completists should probably plan on grabbing the Blu-ray.