Month: June 2016

The smartphone app Miitomo is but one aspect of the rapidly changing face of Nintendo. (credit: Nintendo)

As Nintendo gears up for its next console generation, the hardware and software guessers have focused on patent leaks and rumor mills, looking for any juicy hints and scraps as to the company's future. Maybe we'll get a crazy controller, a hybrid home/portable device, or a few retro-throwback features.

But if you want to understand the Nintendo of the future, the writing is already on the wall, and that wall is a very public one, revolving around social media and player interconnectivity. Nintendo is rapidly redefining its take on being a "family friendly" entertainment company, setting the table for a very weird Nintendo NX generation.

Forget the Wii's "blue ocean" strategy of winning over new players with gimmicks. Nintendo may very well be eyeing an even more intense way to capture new fans' minds and hearts with fully interconnected, online-focused products that will need constant tending by, and public responses from, a company that came to prominence in a much more conservative era.

You can check out any time you'd like, but you can never... well, you know the song. (credit: Aurich Lawson)

Comcast and Charter yesterday told US senators how they're trying to fix their poorly rated customer service. Executives from the nation's two largest cable companies testified in a hearing in response to a Senate investigation detailing the industry's shortcomings.

Comcast Cable Senior VP of Customer Service Tom Karinshak detailed some customer service initiatives, mostly ones that are already in progress. Transcripts of the companies' testimony along with Senate investigative reports are available here. AT&T (owner of DirecTV) and Dish also testified.

"At Comcast, we understand why we are here," Karinshak said. "We and the industry as a whole have not always made customer service the high priority it should have been. We regret that history and have committed to our customers that we will lead the way with initiatives to change it; we are committed to making every part of our customers’ experience better, and we have already begun to do so."

See 3DNES' conversions in action in our video review. (video link)

A few months ago, we took note of 3DNES, a surprising new emulator that automatically adds depth to the flat, blocky pixels of classic Nintendo Entertainment System games. The Web-based beta version of the emulator from March is getting a full release as a $30, downloadable Windows executable later today via itch.io.

Ars Technica got exclusive access to the near final version of that standalone emulator earlier this month. Our time testing 3DNES reveals a promising new direction for classic game emulation, but there are still many rough edges.

(credit: Marco Arment)

With the rise of standing desks, office workers hope to brush off the health risks linked to prolonged sitting, including obesity, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and early death. But they might do well to walk them off instead, a new study suggests.

In one of the few studies to carefully count the calories people burn while sitting at a desk, standing, or taking a leisurely stroll, researchers found little difference between being plopped down or upright. Standing for an hour might burn off an extra nine calories or so, about the amount in a single gummy bear. Slow walking, on the other hand, incinerated 2.4 to 2.7-fold more calories than standing or sitting, respectively. If office workers fit in an hour of strolling throughout each day—tallying trips to the bathroom, walks to the printer, or strides on a treadmill desk—they could easily burn through an extra 130 calories. That’s a little more than what previous research suggests could help people keep pounds off, the authors report in the Journal of Physical Activity and Health.

“If you’re looking for weight control or just solely at the energy expenditure, standing isn’t that much more beneficial than sitting,” Seth Creasy, an exercise physiologist at the University of Pittsburgh and lead author of the study, told Ars. Of course, calorie burning isn’t the only reason people might choose a standing desk. Being upright could be beneficial for productivity or posture, Creasy said. However, more research is needed to know if those benefits are real because the studies that have been done so far have come up with mixed or inconclusive results.

Elle Cayabyab Gitlin

Tajima-san's car, the 2016 Tajima Rimac E-Runner Concept_One.

17 more images in gallery

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.—Racing at Pikes Peak starts early, really early. At this point I'm no stranger to the fact that a day at the track means leaving the house before dawn. But here at the mountain, the road is reopened for two-way traffic at 8:30am—so 4am it is. We're here because Giti Tires and Team APEV with Monster Sport invited Cars Technica to embed with them as Nobuhiro "Monster" Tajima attempts to become "King of the Mountain" for the eighth time.

Tajima-san runs in the Electric Modified class for purpose-built machines. On Thursday morning, we got our first look at his 1.1MW (1,500hp) Tajima Rimac E-Runner Concept_One as well as some of the cars from other classes. Acura is here with three NSXes. There's an almost-stock NSX in Time Attack 2 Production, a second NSX—minus its AC and some interior trim—running in Time Attack 1 and silhouette NSX with four electric motors and torque vectoring in Electric Modified. There's even a Tesla Model S that is being campaigned by Blake Fuller.

Later in the day, the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb inducted its 2016 Hall of Fame. On the way in we were greeted by Arrow's latest Project SAM—a Corvette Z06 that Sam Schmidt will drive on Sunday after the final race up to the top and back to lead the entire field back to the start line. Between this and Frédéric Sausset at Le Mans, it's inspiring how motorsports is using technology to make itself more accessible, particularly because it's leading to real-world applications.

YouTube's live mode.

YouTube is finally ready to take on Periscope, Facebook Live, and other livestreaming mobile services, as the company is building live mobile video broadcasting right into the core YouTube app. Firing up a livestream seems pretty simple, according to the introductory blog post. "You won’t need to open anything else, just hit the big red capture button right there in the corner, take or select a photo to use as a thumbnail, and you can broadcast live to your fans and chat in near real time," YouTube says.

Like most existing YouTube livestreaming functions, the blog post says these live videos will "have all the features your regular videos have" including search, recommendations, and controls for who can view them. Live video alerts will be sent to your subscribers when they view your profile, and creators can enable a chat function if they want to hear from viewers. YouTube promises that because this is on YouTube, "it’ll be faster and more reliable than anything else out there."

The feature launched at "VidCon," a conference for online video producers. For now, live mobile broadcasting from the core app is only available to a few VIPs, but YouTube promises it will be "rolling out more widely soon."