New releases in fiction, nonfiction and comics that caught our attention.
Sacrificial Animals by Kailee Pedersen
There’s something about the idea of coming home and reawakening dormant familial trauma that just makes for great horror stories, andSacrificial Animalsis no exception. In the novel, brothers Nick and Joshua Morrow return to their family’s farm in Nebraska after many years estranged from their abusive father, reopening old wounds and allowing supernatural forces to take root. Sacrificial Animals bounces between “Then” and “Now” perspectives, painting a picture of the boys’ childhoods under the violent and racist man, and the gravity of returning once they learn he is dying.
The slow burn horror story weaves in Chinese mythology, using flowery language and a Cormac McCarthy-like lack of quotation marks (and McCarthy-like brutality) to really give it a folkloric feel. But do yourself a favor and skip the blurb if you plan on reading this one, as it betrays a bit too much about the direction the story will go.
Trash Talk: An Eye-Opening Exploration of Our Planet's Dirtiest Problem by Iris Gottlieb
Humanity’s trash problem is one so massive and complex it can be difficult to even comprehend, especially for those of us who are more or less removed from the reality of it. I mean, it feels like every other week I learn that an item I’ve long been told is recyclable is, in fact, not recyclable, and garbage is even piling up in space. Iris Gottlieb’s Trash Talk: An Eye-Opening Exploration of Our Planet's Dirtiest Problem breaks the whole issue down, diving into the many facets of global trash production and management, and exploring how we got to where we are.
It’s filled with illustrations and insight to help contextualize a problem that, unfortunately, isn’t going away any time soon, and is a great read for anyone who wants to know more about what really happens to your garbage when you throw it “away.”
Convert by John Arcudi, Savannah Finley
The first thing that popped into my mind when I saw the cover for issue #1 of Convertwas Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach Trilogy. A man in a space suit — with the helmet removed — stands in a field holding a huge gun, surrounded by strange flora that almost seems like it’s trying to consume him. The mental comparisons to the Area X of VanderMeer’s series only continued as I read through it, but a development its final few panels affirms that Convert has its own unique story to tell.
The first issue of the new science fiction/fantasy series from Image Comics was released this week, and visually, it’s stunning. In the opening pages, “Science Officer Orrin Kutela finds himself stranded on a distant planet, starving and haunted by the ghosts of his dead crew,” per the description. “On the verge of death, he makes an astonishing discovery.” Convert was written by John Arcudi, with art by Savannah Finley, colors by Miguel Co and lettering by Michael Heisler. The second issue drops September 25.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/what-to-read-recommendations-new-horror-sacrificial-animals-trash-talk-science-fiction-comics-convert-173001712.html?src=rss
It feels like The Plucky Squire has been popping up at game events forever. It first came onto my radar during one of publisher Devolver Digital’s bizarre showcases in 2022, and was instantly appealing. Yesterday, Devolver announced it would be coming out in just over a month, on September 17. After playing through a few hours of the game over two sessions, I’m happy to say this is one to keep an eye out for.
The Plucky Squire is the first game from All Possible Futures, a studio founded by Jonathan Biddle and James Turner. Turner is an artist best known for his work on Pokémon at GameFreak — if you know what a Vanillite is, you have Turner to thank for that. Biddle previously created the 2017 ARPG Swords of Ditto, and the pair have brought other developers who worked on Ditto onto the team.
All Possible Future’s debut mixes classic 2D and 3D gameplay styles into a unique whole. You play as Jot, the character in a series of kids’ books who defeats evil and saves the day. When the series’ antagonist figures out that he can change the story, it’s your job to stop him. A large chunk of the game takes place on the 2D plane of the book, from the same classic birds-eye-view as in Ditto. The “cut scenes” are also book pages, and there are a few interstitial side-on platforming segments, à la Mario, thrown in for good measure. There’s a real sense of whimsy weaved through everything, aided by the game’s narrator, who is telling your story with each page turn.
Devolver Digital
Jot is able to slash, jump, roll and everything else you’d expect, and you will unlock more combat skills as you go, such as a sword throw or Zelda-spinny-sword-attack™. There are twists to the formula, though, with a variety of puzzle mechanics thrown in. The first you’ll come across is word puzzles: With a swipe of his sword Jot can dislodge certain words that you can then move around the page. At its most rudimentary, you might swap the words “closed” and “open” from a pair of sentences to make your way past a gate. There are some playful elements to this that reminded me of Scribblenauts — making something “huge” will never not be fun.
The real unique thing here is Jot’s ability to leap out of the flat plane of the storybook and into a fully 3D world. Whenever you come across a green swirly icon, you’re able to jump out of the book and onto its owner’s desk. Often this is a quick hop-out-hop-in move to solve a puzzle, but you’ll also go on longer desktop adventures.
Devolver Digital
While they’re not quite as charming as the in-book segments, I loved exploring the desk and seeing the wider world of the game. The 3D gameplay feels like a throwback, somewhere between the classic mascot games of the PlayStation era and the LittleBigPlanet series. On a high-end gaming PC, the environment of the desk was gorgeous, with hyper-detailed textures and realistic lighting that contrasted against the cartoony figure of Jot. There are also 2D elements within the 3D sections, where you can jump onto a surface to progress, similar to the mechanic in The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds.
The reason for this jump into 3D also plays into the game’s larger story: By breaking the confines of his 2D world, Jot discovers the influence his tales have and will have on the child who owns the storybook. If the game’s antagonist succeeds in changing the story, Jot will no longer inspire the child.
“You’re fighting for your own land, and also fighting for the owner of the book and his future,” Turner explained to me earlier this year at Summer Game Fest.
I’ve played through the first few chapters of the game, as well as a chunk of chapter six, and am starting to get an idea of how its disparate worlds fit together. In one segment, my progress in the book was brought to a halt, and I had to jump out onto the desk and navigate across the clutter to find a single (unbranded) Magic: The Gathering card. This gave me the item I needed to defeat the enemy I was stuck on. Turner said that items later in the game will allow you to modify the book in more ways, which suggested more mechanics and degrees of complexity will be introduces as progresses.
Devolver Digital
Breaking up proceedings further are minigames. These are fairly frequent, and generally pull liberally from well-known properties. My favorites so far were a Punch-Out!-style boxing game and a shoot ‘em up inspired by one of my all-time favorites, Resogun. In a nice accessibility move, these minigames can be skipped if you’re not up for the challenge. I’m sure there are more delightful things to come from the 2D and 3D exploration, but as of right now these minigames are the highpoint of my experience.
None of the individual elements in my playthrough were wild, unique things, but the way they connected and the level of polish to everything made me very excited to play the full game. It felt like, behind each turn of a page, there was a new little surprise just waiting to make me smile. The Plucky Squire was originally slated for a 2023 release, but is now due out on September 17. It's coming to Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S, and will be free on PlayStation Plus’ Extra and Premium tiers.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/the-plucky-squire-expertly-transforms-old-ideas-into-something-new-160012926.html?src=rss
New releases in fiction, nonfiction and comics that caught our attention.
Hum by Helen Phillips
Robots have become a regular fixture of the workforce, and humans are losing their jobs to AI. Climate change is wreaking havoc on the planet. It’s getting harder and harder for the average person to make ends meet. Facial recognition technology is being used for surveillance. Sound familiar? In her new novel, Hum, author Helen Phillips paints a picture of what our near-future could look like.
Its main character, May, has lost her job after technology made her role obsolete, and, desperate for money to support her family, she agrees to participate in an experiment that alters her face to make her undetectable to facial recognition. With the extra cushion from the payment, she takes her husband and children on a short, technology-free vacation to the Botanical Garden — but things go dangerously awry. Hum is a captivating, unsettling work of dystopian fiction that makes it impossible not to draw parallels with our current reality.
Life as No One Knows It: The Physics of Life's Emergence by Sara Imari Walker
There’s so much we don’t know about the origins of life on Earth, and how it could appear on other worlds. Arizona State University theoretical physicist and astrobiologist Sara Imari Walker tackles the enduring question, “What is life?” and so much more in her book, Life as No One Knows It: The Physics of Life's Emergence. It explores assembly theory, which, as Walker explained recently as a guest on the Event Horizon podcast, states that “life is the only mechanism the universe has for generating complexity. So complex objects don’t happen spontaneously, they only happen through evolution and selection.”
It’s an endlessly fascinating topic that’s spurred a lot of debate over the years, and Walker’s book presents its case in a way that is compelling and readable even for us non-scientists. It’ll definitely give your brain a bit of exercise, though... and maybe spark some (friendly) arguments. Kirkus called it, “Ingenious, but not for the faint of heart.
Cruel Universe #1
EC Comics’ comeback continues with the release of another new series, Cruel Universe. The recently resurrected publisher dropped the first issue of the science fiction series this week, featuring stories by Corinna Bechko, Chris Condon, Matt Kindt and Ben H. Winters, with art by Jonathan Case, Kano, Artyom Topilin and Caitlin Yarsky. Cruel Universe #1 takes us to an interstellar battle arena, face-to-face with a black hole, on a quest for eternal life and more.
It’s a great followup to last month’s Epitaphs of the Abyss, the new horror anthology from EC. If you liked the old Weird Science comics and EC’s other science fiction series, this is definitely one to check out.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/what-to-read-this-weekend-near-future-dystopian-fiction-and-a-new-approach-to-explaining-lifes-origin-194355528.html?src=rss
New releases in fiction, nonfiction and comics that caught our attention.
Toward Eternity by Anton Hur
Toward Eternity does not waste any time in getting to the drama. The novel by Anton Hur begins in the not-so-far-off future, and opens with a moment of crisis: a patient in a nanotherapy research clinic has seemingly vanished into thin air. This patient had been undergoing a new type of treatment that uses android cells (dubbed “nanites”) to cure cancer by replacing the body’s own cells. In doing so, however, it transforms the body entirely into a nanodroid, giving rise to “nano humans” that are no longer subjected to mortality.
The story jumps through time and different perspectives, exploring what it means “to be human in a world where technology is quickly catching up to biology.” From the second I started reading this one, I did not want to put it down.
Into the Clear Blue Sky: The Path to Restoring Our Atmosphere by Rob Jackson
It can be hard not to get swept up in the doom and gloom of climate change, especially amid reports marking Earth’s hottest years on record and still-rising emissions from fossil fuels. Stanford climate scientist Rob Jackson’s new book Into the Clear Blue Sky: The Path to Restoring Our Atmosphere aims to foster a more optimistic outlook by calling attention to the courses of action that could lead us to a better future for our planet and its inhabitants.
“I view my book as a home repair manual for the planet,” Jackson said in a recent interview published by the scientific journal ACS Central Science. “It highlights the people and the ideas needed to solve the climate crisis. I want most of all to give people hope, a sense of optimism. Yes, climate change is already bad, but we can still fix this problem.”
Epitaphs from the Abyss #1
Legendary comic book publisher EC Comics, which brought us series like Tales from the Crypt and Weird Science more than 70 years ago, is making a comeback with its first new series in decades: Epitaphs from the Abyss. The first issue of the horror series was released at the end of July and features four tales — which are introduced by a ghoulish narrator dubbed The Grave-Digger.
Epitaphs from the Abyss #1 has stories by Brian Azzarello, J. Holtham, Stephanie Phillips and Chris Condon, with art by Lee Bermejo, Phil Hester, Peter Krause and Jorge Fornés. There’s something about those old EC Comics that just hits different, and Epitaphs faithfully slips back into that vibe to deliver spooky new stories that have a classic feel.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/what-to-read-books-existential-sci-fi-ai-technology-climate-crisis-solutions-ec-comics-horror-183058573.html?src=rss
New releases in fiction, nonfiction and comics that caught our attention.
The Book of Elsewhere by Keanu Reeves and China Miéville
A few years ago, Keanu Reeves took a dive into the world of comics with a series called BRZRKR, which he wrote with longtime comic creator Matt Kindt. The limited series, which played out over 12 issues, follows a half-mortal, half-God warrior known as B who lives a violent existence but cannot die. And after 80,000 years of being alive, he really wants to. Eventually, he ends up working as a killing machine for the US government.
Netflix has plans for a film and anime spinoff of the series, and the BRZRKR universe is still growing even beyond that. This week, Reeves and author China Miéville — known for his works of “weird fiction” that blend sci-fi, fantasy and other genres — released The Book of Elsewhere, a novel that returns to the story of B in a pulpy, blood-soaked epic. It’s written with a unique style, starting off choppy in the prologue before shifting into something else entirely. If there’s one thing reviewers seem to agree on, it’s that this book is not afraid to get weird.
Why Machines Learn: The Elegant Math Behind Modern AI by Anil Ananthaswamy
AI is all around us, and these days, conversations about the Big Tech race to build better and better systems sometimes feel almost escapable. But how often do we on the outside stop and take a look at how we got here in the technical sense, down to the math that made it all possible?
In Anil Ananthaswamy’s new book, Why Machines Learn: The Elegant Math Behind Modern AI, the award-winning science journalist and author explains the history and mathematics underlying machine learning as we know it today. It’s not exactly light reading, but sometimes it’s nice to put your brain to work a little. You don’t need to be a math whiz to keep up with it — Ananthaswamy has said a basic understanding of calculus should be enough.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2024) #1 by Jason Aaron, Joëlle Jones
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are back in another new comic series from IDW, written by Jason Aaron (Batman: Off-World, Thor, Scalped), with art by Joëlle Jones (Lady Killer, Catwoman). The first issue was released this week — and it finds Raphael behind bars.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2024) celebrates the 40th anniversary of the franchise that we as a society just cannot seem to get enough of (no complaints here). In it, the turtles have all split off on their own and left New York, and it looks like the first few issues will each focus on one of the brothers. But, they’ll eventually be brought back together to do what they do best — fight bad guys and eat pizza. It’s meant to be something that even people who haven’t kept up with the many series over the years will be able to get into without feeling lost.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/what-to-read-this-weekend-keanu-reeves-book-of-elsewhere-ai-math-teenage-mutant-ninja-turtles-173909519.html?src=rss
New releases in fiction, nonfiction and comics that caught our attention.
The Book of Elsewhere by Keanu Reeves and China Miéville
A few years ago, Keanu Reeves took a dive into the world of comics with a series called BRZRKR, which he wrote with longtime comic creator Matt Kindt. The limited series, which played out over 12 issues, follows a half-mortal, half-God warrior known as B who lives a violent existence but cannot die. And after 80,000 years of being alive, he really wants to. Eventually, he ends up working as a killing machine for the US government.
Netflix has plans for a film and anime spinoff of the series, and the BRZRKR universe is still growing even beyond that. This week, Reeves and author China Miéville — known for his works of “weird fiction” that blend sci-fi, fantasy and other genres — released The Book of Elsewhere, a novel that returns to the story of B in a pulpy, blood-soaked epic. It’s written with a unique style, starting off choppy in the prologue before shifting into something else entirely. If there’s one thing reviewers seem to agree on, it’s that this book is not afraid to get weird.
Why Machines Learn: The Elegant Math Behind Modern AI by Anil Ananthaswamy
AI is all around us, and these days, conversations about the Big Tech race to build better and better systems sometimes feel almost escapable. But how often do we on the outside stop and take a look at how we got here in the technical sense, down to the math that made it all possible?
In Anil Ananthaswamy’s new book, Why Machines Learn: The Elegant Math Behind Modern AI, the award-winning science journalist and author explains the history and mathematics underlying machine learning as we know it today. It’s not exactly light reading, but sometimes it’s nice to put your brain to work a little. You don’t need to be a math whiz to keep up with it — Ananthaswamy has said a basic understanding of calculus should be enough.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2024) #1 by Jason Aaron, Joëlle Jones
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are back in another new comic series from IDW, written by Jason Aaron (Batman: Off-World, Thor, Scalped), with art by Joëlle Jones (Lady Killer, Catwoman). The first issue was released this week — and it finds Raphael behind bars.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2024) celebrates the 40th anniversary of the franchise that we as a society just cannot seem to get enough of (no complaints here). In it, the turtles have all split off on their own and left New York, and it looks like the first few issues will each focus on one of the brothers. But, they’ll eventually be brought back together to do what they do best — fight bad guys and eat pizza. It’s meant to be something that even people who haven’t kept up with the many series over the years will be able to get into without feeling lost.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/what-to-read-this-weekend-keanu-reeves-book-of-elsewhere-ai-math-teenage-mutant-ninja-turtles-173909519.html?src=rss
According to the Prison Policy Institute, the US has a higher incarceration rate per 100,000 people in its population than any other NATO country and it’s even higher than the next five member states combined (the UK, Portugal, Canada, France and Belgium).
So what’s the solution? Hashem Al-Ghaili, a molecular biologist and science communicator from Yemen, claims he’s got it in an interview with Wired: build a virtual prison instead. He’s not talking about stapling a bunch of Meta Quest 3’s to prisoners' heads for years at a time, but it’s also not far off from that concept.
Al-Ghaili is proposing a new neurological prison system that he calls Cognify. He posted a proposal video of the virtual justice system on his Instagram and YouTube channel and it looks downright horrifying.
Here’s how Cognify works in a theoretical nutshell — Instead of locking prisoners up for long periods of time, prisoners would be subjected to artificial memories in a virtual environment. The system creates customized AI-generated content that’s converted to visual information and delivered to the prisoner’s brain as well as the parts of their DNA and RNA linked to memory formation to establish a long term memory pattern.
Currently, such technology does not exist and Cognify is only a proposal. However, Al-Ghaili claims that experiments conducted on animals prove this process could work on humans at some point in the future. For instance, a study published in March in the scientific journal Nature in March that used mice as its test subjects found that memories are possibly formed by broken and repaired strands of DNA.
Of course, there are ethical implications and effects that would need to be addressed if such a system were to become a reality. Al-Ghaili says Cognify could happen within a decade from now but only “if we could overcome the ethical restrictions that limit testing such technology.”
If that doesn’t send a shiver up your spine, then check your wrist for a pulse. Horror anthology fans like me will remember an episode from the 1990s reboot of The Outer Limits on Showtime called “The Sentence” in which a scientist played by David Hyde Pierce invents a very similar virtual prison system that simulates an entire life sentence within a matter of minutes. He, of course, subjects himself to his own invention that makes him believe he committed a murder and served an entire lifetime in prison. He wakes up only to start denouncing the very system he championed just a few minutes earlier.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-ai-prison-of-the-future-is-just-an-outer-limits-episode-200937257.html?src=rss
This is your periodic reminder that AI-powered chatbots still make up things and lie with all the confidence of a GPS system telling you that the shortest way home is to drive through the lake.
My reminder comes courtesy of Nieman Lab, which ran an experiment to see if ChatGPT would provide correct links to articles from news publications it pays millions of dollars to. It turns out that ChatGPT does not. Instead, it confidently makes up entire URLs, a phenomenon that the AI industry calls “hallucinating,” a term that seems more apt for a real person high on their own bullshit.
Nieman Lab’s Andrew Deck asked the service to provide links to high-profile, exclusive stories published by 10 publishers that OpenAI has struck deals worth millions of dollars with. These included the Associated Press, The Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, The Times (UK), Le Monde, El País, The Atlantic, The Verge, Vox, and Politico. In response, ChatGPT spat back made-up URLs that led to 404 error pages because they simply did not exist. In other words, the system was working exactly as designed: by predicting the most likely version of a story’s URL instead of actually citing the correct one. Nieman Lab did a similar experiment with a single publication — Business Insider — earlier this month and got the same result.
An OpenAI spokesperson told Nieman Lab that the company was still building “an experience that blends conversational capabilities with their latest news content, ensuring proper attribution and linking to source material — an enhanced experience still in development and not yet available in ChatGPT.” But they declined to explain the fake URLs.
We don’t know when this new experience will be available or how reliable it will be. Despite this, news publishers continue to feed years of journalism into OpenAI’s gaping maw in exchange for cold, hard cash because the journalism industry has consistently sucked at figuring out how to make money without selling its soul to tech companies. Meanwhile, AI companies are chowing down on content published by anyone who hasn’t signed these Faustian bargains and using it to train their models anyway. Mustafa Suleyman, Microsoft’s AI head, recently called anything published on the internet “freeware” that is fair game for training AI models. Microsoft was valued at $3.36 trillion at the time I wrote this.
There’s a lesson here: If ChatGPT is making up URLs, it’s also making up facts. That’s how generative AI works — at its core, the technology is a fancier version of autocomplete, simply guessing the next plausible word in a sequence. It doesn’t “understand” what you say, even though it acts like it does. Recently, I tried getting our leading chatbots to help me solve the New York Times Spelling Bee and watched them crash and burn.
If generative AI can’t even solve the Spelling Bee, you shouldn't use it to get your facts.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/please-dont-get-your-news-from-ai-chatbots-000027227.html?src=rss
Kobo isn’t the first on the color-ereader scene; Boox and Pocketbook have had color ereaders and tablets for years. Both of those companies make beautiful, premium devices that are highly capable and customizable — but they don’t offer the plug-and-play ereader experience of a Kindle or Kobo. Of all the ereaders I’ve tried over the past year, I’ve found Kobos do the best job of combining a user-friendly interface with quality hardware. And now that hardware has a new trick with a color screen on the Clara Colour.
It’s noteworthy that Kobo beat Kindle to the punch in getting a color ereader out the door. To be fair, Amazon is busy doing, well, everything, but it’s safe to bet that a color Kindle will be coming soon. For now, though, Kobo’s Clara Colour is the consumer-friendly color ereader to beat. A beefier processor makes it zippier than its already-fast predecessor, and the addition of color looks lovely, without detracting from the crisp and easy-to-read text. I’ll admit, I’m not an ereader diehard; I often return to my first love, print. But a few weeks with Kobo’s latest has me more excited than ever about reading on this cozy, effortless machine.
Design and display
Most e-paper devices rely on a display made by E Ink. The Clara Colour uses the company’s new Kaleido 3 panel, which adds a printed Color Filter Array (CFA) layer on top of the existing black-and-white microcapsule layer. The color layer can display around 4,000 colors, with a resolution of 150 dpi. To be clear, a full color page on the Clara Colour looks nothing like what you’d get from the most basic LED screen. E-paper colors are muted and saturated, reminiscent of ‘70s comic book covers. But, also unlike LED, E Ink color panels actually look better under bright light.
Comparing the two generations at the same settings. Kobo Clara Colour (left) is warmer and slightly dimmer at 100% than the Kobo Clara 2E (right).
Photo by Amy Skorheim / Engadget
The monochrome microcapsule layer creates sharp, 300 dpi text, same as the previous generation. But set side-by-side with the Clara 2E, the Clara Colour’s page does look less sharp. Get close to the screen and you’ll notice noise in the white parts of the page. The warm front light is more amber, too. That’s the nature of the color filter array: since it’s always there, any text you read is filtered through that layer. I have to stress that it’s only something I noticed because I’m writing this review and digging deep into the performance as compared to the previous generation. When it comes to actually reading, I found I preferred the softer, warmer effect of the Colour. It reminds me of the pulpy mass-market Stephen King and Anne Rice paperbacks I grew up reading.
Kobo’s customization options aren’t overly involved, but they grant enough control so you can change things like the typeface, font size, line spacing and margin width, as well as brightness and light warmth. On the outside, the Kobo Clara 2E and the Clara Colour look nearly identical. The screen is slightly more recessed on the Colour model and the soft-touch plastic is more textured, which is actually a benefit because it shows fewer fingerprints. The centimeter-wide bezels are just big enough for your thumb, which, along with the textured back, makes the reader easy to hold from different positions. It’s small enough I can grip it around the back, but I have larger hands, so that might not work for everyone.
With an IPX8 rating, the Clara Colour can handle full submersion in water. I haven’t gone that far with this review unit, but I did survive when I accidentally splashed water on it when washing my hands in the bathroom. Why was it in the bathroom? Because I stash my book near the toilet so I don’t sit there and stare at my phone. It’s the tactic that got me reading again after I had a kid and was temporarily convinced I’d never finish another book. I heartily recommend it, particularly with a reading device like this one that can handle the watery environment of a restroom.
Photo by Amy Skorheim / Engadget
Reading experience
The Clara Colour’s new chip makes loading menus, performing searches and flipping pages a touch faster than with the previous generation. The speed increase doesn’t amount to a drastically different experience, but quicker page turns keep the action going. Like if Murderbot is protecting its humans from HostileSecUnit1 and suddenly there’s another SecUnit at the bottom of the page, you need to know as fast as technologically possible what goes down next. Browsing for a new book and checking out previews is speedier, too, something I appreciate when everything on my dutifully curated TBR list looks like broccoli and I want ice cream.
The UX is the same as all Kobos that don’t support stylus input, with just four options along a bottom menu bar: Home, My Books, Discover and More. Discover takes you to the Kobo store, where you can look for ebooks, audiobooks and titles from KoboPlus, the company’s monthly subscription for unlimited access to a selection of books (aka Kobo’s answer to Amazon Unlimited).
Discover’s recommendation section has a running list of titles called Just for You and, under Related Reads, suggests books you might like based on works you’ve finished. The connective threads between the titles isn’t anything surprising, but they offer a good place to start if you’re noodling on what to read next.
Photo by Amy Skorheim / Engadget
Kobo’s deep integration with OverDrive lets you borrow any title your local library has available with just a few seconds of setup and a library card. Clicking the three dots near the Buy button on any book brings up the option to borrow (or place a hold on) the ebook from your library. I admire how deeply Kobo supports the feature, placing something free and public on par with paid books and subscriptions.
Other features are nice to have, like gathering your Pocket articles from the web so you can read them later in the more focused environment of your Kobo. There’s also a beta web browser that I used to look up the Wikipedia entry on the Mason-Dixon line when I read Percival Everett’s James and the one for rook (the bird) when reading Tana French’s The Hunter. The browser’s not equipped for heavy surfing, but that’s a good thing. The extra effort it takes to browse keeps me on target with my reading. At the same time, I’m happy to dig up a little background info without picking up my phone, where the distractions are plentiful and compulsive.
The competition (aka Kindle vs Kobo)
There’s no escaping the fact that a Kobo ereader is not a Kindle. But the advantages Kindle has over Kobo are mostly in the availability of titles, not in hardware. The Kobo Clara Colour is most directly comparable to the standard Kindle. They have the same basic shape, the same size screen with 300 dpi text and 16GB of storage. But the Kindle is $50 cheaper.
However! Amazon’s device will serve you ads on the lockscreen and it costs $20 extra to remove them. It’s also not waterproof and has no warm light. No Kindle has a color display yet, but there are plenty of rumors suggesting that move is (pretty obviously) on the horizon. For now, though, color is another point in Kobo’s favor.
That said, if you’ve spent the past decade amassing a small library on Amazon, you won’t be able to access it on a Kobo without some major, quasi-unlawful finagling. I only have a few Kindle titles from my past, so starting over with Kobo didn’t feel like a loss.
Amazon’s ebook store is larger than Kobo’s, boosted by Kindle Direct Publishing exclusives and self-published books. Kobo has its own self-publishing program, but it’s far smaller. That said, every in-print book from a major publisher will show up in both the Kindle and the Kobo store. Every title I’ve searched for in the Kobo store was readily available.
Photo by Amy Skorheim / Engadget
Amazon’s subscription program, Kindle Unlimited, is bigger too, with four million combined audio- and ebook titles available. Comparatively, Kobo Plus currently claims 1.5 million ebooks and 150,000 audiobooks. Kobo’s plan is a tad cheaper at $10 per month to both read and listen, or $8 for ebooks only. Kindle Unlimited is $12 monthly and gives you access to both formats. Neither subscription includes bestselling titles from major authors, but there’s still plenty to choose from.
However, Kobo’s ebook access does outmatch Kindle's in two ways: the ability to shop third-party outlets and an easier OverDrive experience. Amazon uses its own digital rights management (DRM) technology, whereas most everyone else relies on Adobe’s DRM. That means if you buy a book from most major publishers on a third-party site (like ebooks.com or Google Books), you won’t be able to read the ePub file on your Kindle. There are a few extra steps for reading those titles on a Kobo, but it's easy enough. As for OverDrive, reading public library books on a Kindle isn’t hard, but you have to first go to OverDrive’s or your library’s site, find your book and select “read on Kindle” as the delivery option. With a Kobo, you click the three dots next to Buy, select Borrow and start reading seconds later on the same device.
Wrap-up
The big question is whether the addition of color makes the Kobo Clara Colour better and worth the $10 over the previous generation. The faster processor alone makes up for the price hike and the waterproof build, warm front lights and lack of ads makes for a more premium ereader that justifies the $50 price disparity between the Clara Colour and the basic Kindle.
As for the color screen, it doesn’t make much difference when you’re reading a typical ebook. And the extra layer does add some noise to the whitespace and gives everything a warmer glow. But I didn’t mind the minute drop in clarity and actually preferred the softer, cozier appearance of the page. Colors look lovely on the book covers in my collection and recommended titles draw me to them with their muted blues and washed out reds.
You’ve probably heard of that trick where you switch your phone’s screen to grayscale to reduce its appeal. It seems to actually work, so I have to imagine the opposite is true, too. Anything that makes reading material more attractive — and better able to compete with the technicolor onslaught of digital distraction — is a win in my book.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/kobo-clara-colour-review-judging-books-by-their-covers-is-now-more-fun-130013382.html?src=rss
Twitch has updated its filtering tools to allow the exclusion of livestreams that feature mature themes, like sexual, violent and profane content. In other words, you won’t have to sift through hundreds of gross streams just to find someone innocently drinking soda pop and playing through Hades 2.
These new filter settings let people opt out of specific content labels, per the platform’s recently-introduced Content Classification Guidelines. These guidelines require creators to appropriately label livestreams if they include stuff like sexual imagery, depictions of violence, gambling, excessive profanity and drug use. These labels also apply when streaming mature-rated games.
This will allow for a more curated experience, as people will be able to hide entire categories when searching for something to watch. Previously, these content labels were only used as data points to help Twitch users make informed viewing decisions.
Twitch
The content classification filters are found in profile settings under Content Display Preferences. Once turned on, the filters will apply to all recommendations and search results, in addition to streams that pop up when aimlessly browsing. The system will remember preferred filter adjustments, so it should be a one-and-done trip to the settings page. For those under 18, Twitch automatically applies the vast majority of these filter settings.
There’s also another semi-related tool rolling out today. Preview thumbnails can now be blurred for streams labeled as having sexual themes. This feature will be turned on by default and can be toggled on or off via settings. However, if you follow a channel the thumbnail won’t be blurred, even if your classification labels rule out sexual content.
Twitch has been trying to nail down its policies regarding sexual content for a while now. It recently opened up the platform to nudity, as long as it was properly labeled, before changing its mind. Currently, the platform requires streamers to cover up their buttocks, genitals and (for female-presenting streamers) the nipples and underbust areas. Visible outlines of genitals are also prohibited, though all of this is liable to change.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/twitch-introduces-new-filtering-tools-that-lets-you-exclude-sexual-and-violent-content-185219488.html?src=rss