Month: June 2021

NFTs are either over, or NFTs are forever; it can only be one, so the only safe thing to do right now is mint everything you own. Fortunately, you’ll soon be able to fire off a doodle, mint it, and put it up for auction within minutes. Mint mint mint!

This is thanks to an augmented reality drawing app SketchAR, which, among other things, converts photographs to pen strokes. Yesterday, the company announced that, in the coming months, users will be able to create NFTs from their SketchAR creations and sell them on a marketplace within the app. You can already mint for free on OpenSea, but this might be the last nudge we needed to get with the program and PRESS MINT.

Possibly feeling the need to justify the move after months of art world debate over the ethics of blockchain technology, SketchAR put the bottom line right up front in a blog post yesterday, which is that artists need money.

“For over four years now, SketchAR has been helping people to start their creative journey and providing effective ways to develop their artistic skills,” they wrote. “The only missing detail on this road of growing an artist was the option for artwork showcase and monetization in the global digital space.”

SketchAR’s position is that “our future is digital, whether we like it to [sic] or not.” At the moment, the NFTs are coming as a weekly prize giveaway to a community-selected “Creator of the Week,” a person who’s published their work on the public feed, and will be awarded a free NFT [emphasis theirs] of their work and an OpenSea listing. (OpenSea doesn’t charge for minting, but it does collect a 2.5% commission. Creating and listing NFTs is pretty easy, and you can always take your images off SketchAR and do it yourself. This would also mean the image doesn’t come with a sort of SketchAR watermark, in the form of the token tracker.)

SketchAR founder and CEO Andrey Drobitko told Gizmodo via email that the larger SketchAR NFT marketplace, to come in Q3, will charge a low still-to-be-determined fee for gas prices associated with mining a token on the Ethereum blockchain. Like OpenSea, it’ll also collect a 2.5% sales commission. Users will need to make their work within the SketchAR app in order to get them on the platform in order to authenticate the artist (fair). When asked about the carbon emissions pumped out by computing power necessary to mine crypto tokens, Drobitko wrote that SketchAR is “deeply concerned about that and believe the actual incentives for all the participants are the same.”

He added that SketchAR is incentivized to find more energy-efficient mining options to save on gas costs, so they’re looking at more energy-efficient “layer-2 solutions for scaling.”

SketchAR will also incorporate the most promising part of the NFT marketplace, which is a contractual assurance that artists get 10% in resale royalties.

Supposing that we didn’t have to worry about the problem of accelerating earth’s destruction, I like the idea of thousands if not millions of amateur drawings flooding a marketplace of equally amateur collectors. It’s an opportunity to challenge the whales’ taste for animated 3D Blender gifs, aesthetic cost payoffs, cultivate a child prodigy, just do the damn Elons and Shiba Inus, take pride in crude stick figures. Whether the new massive wave of art collectors stick around til fall, we have yet to see.

The 2022 Ford Maverick is the pickup buyers have been clamoring for since the last-generation Ford Ranger was killed off a decade ago. While it is fundamentally different in basically every way, Ford is hoping the Maverick will recapture some of those lost shoppers while drawing in new ones who are attracted to its frugal hybrid powertrain, refined unibody road manners and bargain-level entry price – just $21,490 ($19,995 + $1,495 for destination).

What is it?

Maverick will be a true compact pickup in the vein of the old Ranger – the one Ford discontinued in 2011 – but with an entirely different underlying platform. The Maverick is based on a unibody, front-wheel drive chassis. It’s about almost a foot shorter than a Crew Cab Ranger and nearly three feet (32 inches) shorter than a Super Crew, short-box F-150. Pricing matches up, with the top-trim Lariat starting just under $25,000 before destination — a couple grand cheaper than the Ranger. 

The entry-level XL comes standard as a front-wheel drive hybrid with 191 total horsepower. From there, you can upgrade to a 250 hp turbocharged gasoline engine with 277 pound-feet of torque and available all-wheel drive. Ford expects the hybrid model to be rated at 40 mpg city, 33 mpg highway and 37 mpg combined. Yes, those figures are for the base model. Front-wheel-drive models are paired to a semi-independent twist-beam rear suspension, while the AWD turbo gets a fully independent rear setup. The keen-eyed reader will observer that we seem to be skipping at least one critical configuration there; we’ll come back to that.

What can it do?

The Maverick’s towing and payload specs slot in neatly beneath the Ranger’s, too. Base towing is 2,000 pounds, with up to 4,000 available on the gas-engine model with a supplemental towing package. Maximum payload for both models is 1,500 pounds – not too shabby. Absent here are any of Ford’s advanced new bed features, such as the Pro Power Onboard or tailgate work surface options offered on the F-150. The Maverick does have pre-wired 12-volt pickups behind grommets in the bed for those who want to add powered aftermarket accessories, and there’s an optional 400-watt 110V hookup available in the bed for those who need to power basic tools or tailgating accessories. 

The 4.5-foot bed is wide enough to fit a 4×8 sheet of plywood above the wheel wells, and has formed-in supports to accommodate just that. The tailgate can be dropped completely or locked at 45°, at which angle its height aligns with the aforementioned supports to keep your 4x8s flat. In this position, the tailgate can support up to 400 pounds. With the tailgate flat, the load floor of the bed extends to 6’.

Inside, the Maverick is a blend of Escape and Bronco Sport styling cues, with a few unique touches to set it apart. Materials are on the hard-wearing and plasticky side, but the design is interesting and attractive. The standard infotainment system is an 8-inch widescreen unit which is retained in upper trim levels, albeit with more capability (navigation, advanced Sync features) backing it up. The interior is replete with storage bins and cubbies, and there’s even a large under-seat storage bin beneath the second row with an easy-to-clean finish for items that are too precious for the bed, but too dirty for the floor. 

Wait a minute, where’s the AWD hybrid?

A-ha, the elephant in the room. Ford will not offer the Maverick hybrid with all-wheel drive at launch. If that seems like a huge miss to you, you’re not alone, but if there’s anything we’ve learned from pickup builders as a whole, it’s that they listen to their customers. If you want that configuration, say so. Use the comments here, in fact. Trust us. Ford is reading.

The reality is that Ford can do a lot more than what we see here thanks to the platform underpinning the Maverick. It’s the same global compact architecture found in the Escape, Bronco Sport, Kuga and Focus (RIP), and anything bolted to one of those could feasibly make its way into Ford’s new pickup, from the Bronco Sport’s available twin-clutch rear differential to the Escape’s available plug-in hybrid powertrain, it’s all on the table.  

But what about right now?

But even as it sits, the Maverick’s list of superlatives is impressive. It will be the cheapest vehicle in Ford’s lineup and the cheapest hybrid in the market, period. It should go without saying that it will also be the cheapest pickup money can buy – at sticker, anyway – which should help Ford attract not just truck buyers, but those who want something inexpensive from a domestic dealership. In that sense, the Maverick not only replaces the old compact Ranger, but the Focus and Fiesta too, and Ford hopes it will recapture some of those buyers who may have followed the company’s compact four-doors out the door. 

Ford is betting big on going small. Maverick is cheap and a hybrid; that’s noteworthy on spec, but there’s more to it than that. Hybrids have established themselves as frugal vehicles to own, but they’re often more expensive to buy up front, at least compared to their equivalents. Maverick, being in a class of one, has no such contemporaries. The Maverick isn’t alone in this, necessarily, but it’s the sole example with a starting price under $19,995 (before destination) and certainly the only one with a pickup bed.

This year’s Fuji 24 Hours endurance race saw a bit of an outlier on the starting grid. Among the many Nissan GT-Rs and Toyota GR Supras in the field was a small Corolla hatchback. At first glance, this wouldn’t seem to be a significant car to watch. But a closer look reveals its intrigue — it is powered by hydrogen.

The first vehicle we think of when considering Toyotas and hydrogen is typically the Mirai fuel-cell vehicle now in its second generation. However, it’s important to note that this Corolla Sport (the Japanese-market name for what we in the U.S. know as the Corolla Hatchback) is not equipped with a hydrogen fuel cell, a complex device that breaks down hydrogen to generate electricity. This Corolla instead uses the same 1.6-liter, three-cylinder internal combustion engine as Toyota’s firecracker GR Yaris that’s unavailable in the United States. The only modifications to make it run on hydrogen were the fuel delivery system, fuel injectors and ignition system.

In fact, the team could have run a GR Yaris instead, but utilizing the Corolla’s extra cargo capacity allowed them to stuff four tanks of compressed hydrogen in the rear. These tanks were plucked from the Mirai (two were modified for this application and two were stock), and they were secured in a special brace made of carbon fiber reinforced plastic and designed to withstand high-energy crashes should the worst happen.

Some of the hydrogen components, like the piping and fuel management system, had already been developed and were transplanted directly from the Mirai as well. There was no need to reinvent the wheel. However, the fuel injection system is new.

“Controlling combustion was our biggest challenge,” the Corolla’s chief engineer, Naoyuki Sakamoto, told us via a video call from Japan. “Hydrogen combusts very fast and that sometimes causes pre-ignition.”

The fuel injection system was developed in conjunction with Denso. “They have been a huge support for us,” Sakamoto said.

The Fuji 24 Hours was 2021’s third round in Japan’s long-running Super Taikyu endurance series. Despite a slate of big name drivers like former F1 and Le Mans driver Kamui Kobayashi, SuperGT wheelmen Hiroaki Ishiura, Takuto Iguchi and Takamitsu Matsui, and even Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda himself, the Corolla ran for only 12 hours, completing 358 laps or 1,634 km (1,015 miles). The winning Nissan GT-R NISMO GT3 put more than double that distance under its belt.

Super Taikyu veteran Masahiro Sasaki put down a fastest lap time of 2 minutes, four seconds. According to chief engineer Sakamoto, that’s pretty good, considering a Toyota 86 averages around 2 minutes flat. Drivers reported that the Corolla drove more or less like a normal race car, but that the faster-burning hydrogen fuel made the throttle a bit more responsive.

However, that faster burning fuel was also the car’s downfall. With a combustion rate of seven times that of gasoline, the car could only run about 10 laps before it needed to be topped off. The Corolla refueled 35 times, with 5-6 minutes spent gassing up at each instance. Adding for driver changes and other activities, the car spent a total of four hours in the pits. The Corolla also encountered electrical problems not related to the hydrogen fuel system.

“The purpose of our entry is not racing,” Sakamoto explained. “We were constantly checking data from fuel injectors and such, maintaining the engine and mobile refueling.” That last item referred to special hydrogen tanker trucks that had to be brought in and staged in a special area just outside of pit lane.

So with performance advantages that don’t outweigh the setbacks, why would Toyota spend the time and effort to develop a hydrogen-fueled race car? This seems especially fruitless in the U.S., where battery electrics have taken the lead while pundits question Toyota’s dogged devotion to hydrogen, in FCVs and otherwise.

“Plug-in hybrids and battery electrics are just part of the solution, and Toyota believes it needs to provide several options,” Sakamoto told us. “We need to study another option of achieving carbon neutrality using internal combustion engines.”

“In Japan, fossil fuels are used to make electricity,” he continued. “The hydrogen we used, however, is produced from a solar plant.”

He went on to point out that even if battery electrics are the ultimate end point, there are many parts of the world that will rely on ICEs for many years to come. Sakamoto even suggested that a gasoline-hydrogen combo fuel might be a possibility for mass-production vehicles. Existing ICE cars might even be able to be converted to use hydrogen fuel, as long as the fuel tank, fuel delivery, and injectors are changed.

For now, he only knows is that Toyota must pursue all avenues and alternatives to achieve carbon neutrality as soon as possible.

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Over the past year, I’ve heavily relied on Google’s Nest Hub Max in the kitchen. This 10-inch smart display has helped me remember important ingredients while I cooked, and it’s entertained me with music as I waited for the water to boil. I’ve enjoyed my time with it so much that when Google unveiled a new version of its 7-inch Nest Hub, I was excited to see if bringing it into my bedroom could upgrade my sleep too.

Sleep Sensing is the hot new feature in Google’s smaller smart display. As the name suggests, it can monitor your sleep—without the need for a camera—and offers suggestions to improve sleep quality. I love pulling my weighted blanket over me and relaxing for the night, but sleep doesn’t always come easy. I toss and turn, my allergies block my nose from breathing normally, and my mind recalls an awkward memory from years past. 

After more than a month with the second-generation Nest Hub on my nightstand, I can’t say I’ve slept any better, but it has enlightened me to a few sleep habits I wasn’t aware of.

Sleep Tight

The new Nest Hub can do everything its predecessor could do. That includes playing movies and music, walking you through recipes, cycling through your photos, controlling smart home devices, and answering all your Google Search queries. There’s not much new in this department, except for the various Assistant-related updates Google typically rolls out in a year.

Visually, you’ll hardly notice a difference. It comes in a few new colors, like “mist,” a pale blue, and Google says it’s made of 54 percent recycled plastic. If you’ve tried other Google smart displays, you know exactly what you’re getting here. 

The first Nest Hub, originally called the Google Home Hub, didn’t have a camera, and neither does the new one; I like that. I never use the video chat function on my Nest Hub Max, though it can be useful if you already use Duo, Google’s default video chat app on Android phones. But considering this Nest Hub is meant for the bedroom, one of the most private places of the home, I’m glad the camera didn’t make an appearance.  

There are now three far-field microphones instead of two, and I haven’t had any issues with it picking up my commands. The speaker has been slightly improved as well, and for something that sits on the nightstand, it’s pretty good! But it’s not going to be my first choice for DJing a party.

The 7-inch screen itself isn’t any different, and unfortunately, performance hasn’t improved all that much either over the first-gen model. It always takes a second or two to trigger actions after I’ve tapped the screen. This is a problem with the larger Nest Hub Max as well. They’re all just a bit laggy. It’s still just as compact as before though. It should easily fit on most bedside tables with room for other items like your phone and a glass of water.  

Sixth Sense

Twice a year, the #PitchYaGame Awards puts a call out for independent game developers around the world to share their latest creations, with cash prizes awarded to the best entries. The latest call for entries was yesterday, and it included a wonderfully original game called Viewfinder that’s part Portal, part Inception, with a dash of Pokémon Snap, and I’ll raise hell if it doesn’t win.

Describing how Viewfinder is played isn’t easy, it’s best explained by simply watching a video of it in action, so please feel free to skip down to the clip embedded below. In its current form, players are dropped into abstract 3D worlds and are challenged with navigating their way across a level from a first-person perspective, but countless obstacles lie in their way, including seemingly impassible gaps and unclimbable structures.

The players aren’t equipped with traditional weapons or building tools to assist them, but they do have access to a Polaroid-like instant camera that can be used to snap 2D photos of the game world itself. That’s great for souvenir collectors, but the instant photos they take can also be held up and overlaid on what the player is seeing in the game, at which point the 2D image will become physical structures incorporated into the game as part of the explorable 3D world.

Viewfinder is also reminiscent of another puzzle game called Scribblenauts which similarly relied on a player’s ingenuity by having them conjure up nearly any object or tool to solve a challenge by simply writing its name in a notebook. In Viewfinder, the instant camera takes the place of that notebook but offers almost an infinite number of ways to solve a challenge, although at the same time it can potentially introduce new ones depending on what you end up adding to that 3D world.

Watching videos of Viewfinder in action, even though the game isn’t finished yet, brings back fond memories of our first exciting glimpses of Valve’s Portal years ago, which brought some much-needed innovation to the first-person shooter genre that didn’t simply involve bigger guns and bigger, badder enemies to blast. Completing Viewfinder won’t require a fast trigger finger, but ingenuity, imagination, and passable photography skills.

Its creator, Robot Turtle, is a game studio founded by Matt Stark’s company, Fern Turtle Games, in collaboration with Robot Teddy. For the time being Viewfinder is the game’s working title, which may or may not change once the game is officially released for PCs and consoles. Unfortunately, there’s no definitive launch date yet, but given the game appears to be breaking new ground, at least in terms of gameplay, we’re happy to let its creators take as much time as they need to deliver what will hopefully be an amazing experience.