Uber CEO and co-founder Travis Kalanick. Picture: Paul Sakluma

UBER boss Travis Kalanick has been a very naughty chief executive at times.

The CEO of the world-conquering ride sharing app has seen no shortage of controversies in his rise to the top. He was filmed berating one of his drivers over a fare, been compelled to hire a former US Attorney General to carry out an investigation into sexual harassment at the company, and penned an open letter to employees admitting that he needs to grow up.

But perhaps nothing captures the turbulence of his leadership better than a tense meeting Mr Kalanick endured with Apple CEO Tim Cook in 2015.

The previously unreported meeting was a moment the Uber boss was dreading and when the two Silicon Valley heavyweights were in the room together it was fraught with tension, according to an in-depth feature by The New York Times.

“So, I’ve heard you’ve been breaking some of our rules,” Mr Cook said in his calm, Southern tone, the paper reported.

The problem was Uber had deliberately broken Apple’s rules when it comes to the App Store in a plan that was destined to come unstuck but was nonetheless impressive in its audacity.

Apple CEO Tim Cook reportedly gave Uber CEO a serious dressing down over its app shenanigans. Picture: Bernd ThissenSource:AFP

Uber was pulling a fast one on Apple and using software to identify iPhones even after their owners deleted the app, or even wiped the phone completely. It’s known as fingerprinting and it’s not an overly uncommon technique in the tech world and is often used in anti-fraud measures. But it does breach the rules Apple sets out for clients using its App Store.

If you uninstall an app that uses fingerprinting, it leaves behind a small piece of code that can be used as an identifier if the app is ever reinstalled on the device.

In order to prevent Apple from finding out, Mr Kalanick ordered a his engineers to “geofence” Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, California, the Times reported.

He had them set up a way to digitally identify when someone was reviewing Uber’s software in a specific location and obfuscate the code they were looking at, effectively creating something akin to a force field of deception.

Eventually Apple cottoned on, hence the uncomfortable 2015 meeting.

In the session, Apple CEO Tim Cook played the ultimate trump card. He told Mr Kalanick to cut it out or he would yank the Uber app from the Apple Store — a move that would all but cripple the service.

Of course, the Uber CEO acquiesced.

It’s better to beg for forgiveness than ask for permission, as the old adage goes. And it’s clearly a philosophy that Mr Kalanick has embraced during his time turning Uber into arguably the most disruptive global company in the iPhone era.

Uber has spread to more than 70 countries and achieved an eye-watering market valuation of $92 billion, as it continues to grow.

During that time Mr Kalanick has shown a willingness, if not an eagerness, to flout laws and government regulations, exploit legal grey areas and even deceive law enforcement agencies for his own benefit.

In some cases it has paid dividends, but in others like the run in with Apple, it has brought the company to the edge of potential disaster.

From sexual harassment allegations to social media opposition, Uber’s steered off the road. WSJ’s Lee Hawkins explains the company’s missteps. Photo/video: Drew Evans/The Wall Street Journal.

It’s quite common for humans – especially those who work in manufacturing – to tie a knot, strip the casing off a cable, insert a pin in a hole or use a hand tool such as a drill. They may seem like simple tasks, but are really very complex and involve extremely fine finger and hand motions.

Though robots are getting more and more involved in factory work and in a wide range of other types of jobs – including in the service industry and health care – their dexterity is not nearly as impressive. Since people first brought them to work in automotive factories more than 50 years ago, we have built robots that can weld, paint and assemble parts quite well. Today’s best robotic hands can pick up familiar objects and move them to other places – such as taking products from warehouse bins and putting them in boxes.

But robots can’t orient a hand tool properly – say, lining up a Phillips head screwdriver with the grooves on a screw, or aiming a hammer at a nail. And they definitely can’t use two hands together in detailed ways, like replacing the batteries in a remote control.

Human hands are excellent at those tasks and much more. To even come close to rivaling what our hands are easily capable of, robot hands need better agility, reliability and strength – and they need to be able to sense more accurately and move even more finely than they do now, to figure out what they’re holding and how to grip it best. For robots to be able to work alongside humans, we’ll have to figure out how to make robots that can literally lend us a hand when our own two are not enough.

My research group at Northeastern University is working on doing just this, in particular for humanoid robots like NASA’s Valkyrie, which has three fingers and a thumb on each hand. Each digit has knuckle-like joints, and each hand has a wrist that can rotate easily. We’re working on creating motions – combinations of arm, wrist, finger and thumb movements that collectively accomplish a task, like moving a wrench in a circle to tighten a bolt, or pulling a cart from one place to another.

The importance of hands

Rather than making each robot a custom machine tailored for a very specific task, we need to design multi-use robots, or even such capable machines that they might be called “general purpose” – good for almost any task. One key to the success of these types of robots will be excellent hands.

Our work focuses on designing a new class of adaptable robot hands capable of precise fine movements and autonomous grasping. When robots are able to hammer in nails, change batteries and make other similar movements – basic for humans but very complex for robots – we’ll be well on our way to human-like dexterity in robotic hands.

Achieving this goal also involves inventing new designs that incorporate hard and soft elements – the way human bone gives strength to a grip, with skin spreading the pressure so a wine glass doesn’t shatter.

Faster development and testing

Modern technological improvements are making the development process easier. With 3D printing, we can make prototypes very quickly. We can even make low-cost disposable components to try different arrangements of mechanisms, like two- or three-fingered grippers for simple pick-and-place tasks or anthropomorphic robot hands for more delicate operations.

As electronic cameras and sensors get smaller, we’re able to incorporate them in new ways. For instance, if we put pressure sensors and cameras in a robotic hand, they can give feedback to the robot controller (whether human or automated) when a grip is secure, or if something starts to slip. One day they may be able to sense which direction the slipping object is moving, so the robot can catch it.

These abilities are already second nature to humans through vision and proprioception (the ability to sense the relative positions of body parts without looking or thinking about it). Once we’re able to achieve them in robots, they’ll be able to do things like detect if a grasp is too strong and is squeezing an object too hard.

Planning coordinated movements

Another milestone will be developing methods for robots to figure out what motions they need to make in real time, including sensing what’s going on in their hands at each moment. If a robot hand can detect changes in objects it is handling, or manipulate items while holding them, they could help with those common manual tasks like knot-tying and wire-stripping.

Working with two hands together is even farther into the future, though it would provide a significant boost, particularly for manufacturing. A robot that can operate a drill with two hands or pass machine parts from one hand to the other would be big improvements, allowing factories to automate even more steps in their processes.

We humans haven’t developed these systems yet. Achieving human-like autonomous robot dexterity will keep robotics researchers, technologists and innovators busy in the foreseeable future. It won’t slow down the ongoing robotics revolution in manufacturing, because current processes still have lots of room for automation to improve safety, speed and quality. But as we make robots even better, they’ll be able to give us a hand.

Photo of a bull shark caught at Swansea Channel, NSW, according to Offshore Fishing NSW Facebook page.

A PHOTO of huge bull shark caught near Lake Macquarie has created a social media storm.

Facebook page Offshore Fishing NSW shared an image of the dead shark after it was “gut hooked and a huge fight” at Swansea Channel near the NSW city of Newcastle.

“There must be plenty around,” the post said.

The shark towered over the man it was strung up next to and looked to be twice his height but not everyone was impressed with the catch, saying it was a waste of an awesome animal.

“This is pretty sad. Such a magnificent creature. They should be left alone,” one woman posted.

“Unless that shark left HIS HOME and came knocking on your door, he should still be alive and swimming. RIP,” another said.

Others defended it saying people wouldn’t be upset if it was a tuna or marlin.

“So sick of all the shark huggers these days!!!” one man posted.

Another wrote: “the guy caught a fish, it died during the fight … sharks are edible and very tasty at that”.

The Kitty Hawk flying car, a project of Google co-founder Larry Page, is expected to go on sale later this year. Picture: AFP PHOTO / Davis ELEN

AFTER years of rumours, Google co-founder Larry Page has finally unveiled his flying car — and the news is a bit of a shock.

Those imaging Page was fine tuning a futuristic flying family vehicle for the past few years will be in for a surprise with the revelation that the Kitty Hawk looks like the hybrid of a drone and a jet ski and could have the worst features of both.

For now you can forget about those dreamings of beating the morning rush hour and prepare for yet another noisy device to attack the serenity of a day on the water.

The driver, or pilot, sits on what is similar to a jet ski seat on top of a grid of netting that, presumably, protects the pilot from injuring themselves on the four-spinning propellers keeping the unit above the ground.

Page, in a statement to The New York Times, said “We’ve all had dreams of flying effortlessly. I’m excited that one day very soon I’ll be able to climb onto my Kitty Hawk Flyer for a quick and easy personal flight.”

This first version of the Kitty Hawk, that Page hopes might be available for sale by the end of a year, is a one-person vehicle that can only be flown over freshwater and in uncongested areas — so no buzzing people down a crowded beach and, also, no flying around on the school run or down to the shops for milk.

The good news for those hoping to one day have a flying car of their own is that the Kitty Hawk Flyer is, at least technically, an ultralight and does not require a pilot’s license.

At the Kitty Hawk FAQ site, the company says the price for the first commercially available vehicle will be announced closer to the expected launch date later this year.

In the meantime, it is selling membership at US$100 a pop to receive exclusive behind-the-scenes content and a US$2000 discount off the sales price when it is released.

The April 4, 2017 chemical attack on the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun in Syria led to at least 70 deaths and more than 100 people requiring medical attention, prompting an outcry from the international community. It led to the April 7 US bombing of the Shayrat air base.

It is alleged that sarin was used in the Khan Sheikhoun attack. This particular chemical became famous in 1995 with the Tokyo subway attack, launched by members of the cult movement Aum Shinrikyo.

Was it sarin?

Sarin is an organophosphorus compound and was first synthesised in 1938 in Germany as part of a pesticide research program.

Sarin is a moderately volatile substance – that is, it readily forms a gas – which can be taken up by inhalation or skin contact. It is an inhibitor of the enzyme acetylcholinesterase, which is critical in regulating nerve function.

When exposed to a low dose of a nerve agent such as sarin, people experience increased production of saliva, a running nose and a feeling of pressure on the chest. The pupils of the eye becomes contracted, so-called “pin-point” pupils.

Pin point pupils, which have been recorded in video footage of the Khan Sheikhoun attack, are a characteristic consequence of acetylcholinesterase inhibitors like sarin. This clinical sign is quite different from the irritating effects of chlorine and mustard gas.

Medium to higher dose exposure to sarin and other nerve agents can result in difficulty in breathing and coughing, abdominal cramps and vomiting, and sometimes involuntary discharge of urine and faeces. Increased saliva production, running eyes and sweating may occur, as well as muscular weakness, tremors or convulsions. Loss of consciousness, and death due to respiratory failure may be seen at higher doses.

Survivors of the Tokyo subway sarin attack recovered reasonably well but experienced some clinically detectable neurological effects, and some evidence of brain changes.

Although sarin use is suspected in Khan Sheikhoun, there are many organophosphorus insecticides that would exert the same effect (in sufficient quantity). It is possible that an organophosphate pesticide or a simple organophosphate (not normally classified as a chemical weapon) was used in this attack.

The production of sarin requires special facilities and is expensive, perhaps running into the tens of millions of dollars. Similar chemicals, such as tabun, are less expensive to make.

Will we ever know what was used?

In order to establish the identity of the substances used in Khan Sheikhoun, a combination of information needs to be gathered and assessed. In particular the results of chemical tests on wipe samples, soil and clothing samples must be determined and verified.

The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) Fact Finding Team would be the most authoritative source to reveal the nature of the chemical(s) used, and we will await their report. However, in the past these reports have been inconclusive owing to the time taken to gather chemical samples, limits of detection, specificity and the presence of mixtures.

The conflict in Syria involves the government military forces, the rebels, ISIS and the Kurds. It is sometimes hard to know where the chemicals might be coming from (for example, from neighbouring countries), or whether they have been produced or sourced locally.

Local history of chemical attacks

This experience in Syria may lead to improved medical responses in the case of future attacks. But in the absence of detailed knowledge of the substances involved, the treatment of casualties is unlikely to be optimal.

With so many individual chemical substances, and improvised mixtures, only generic decontamination and treatment procedures can be used. However, it may be feasible to have chemical specialists attached to hospitals collecting and storing specimens for subsequent analysis.

Sadly, the use of chemicals in Khan Sheikhoun is not an isolated incident. After all, a recent report of the OPCW Fact Finding Mission for the period December 2015 to November 20, 2016, recorded 65 potential incidents of the use of chemical weapons reported in open sources.

The use of chemical weapons has a long history in the region. On March 16, 1988, Iraq dropped bombs containing multiple toxic chemicals on the Kurdish city of Halabja, killing thousands.

It’s been the scientific equivalent of a never ending soap opera. The pygmy human species Homo floresiensis (aka ‘the Hobbit’), discovered in 2003 in a cave on the island of Flores, has been bogged down in a mire of controversy for almost 15 years.

Is it a new human species or just a diseased Homo sapiens? If it’s a new kind of human, where does it fit into the evolutionary tree? How old is it? How did it get to Flores in the first place? These are just a few of the questions that have befuddled anthropologists, and the reasons we’ve lacked satisfactory answers to them are three-fold.

First of all, we don’t yet have a lot of bones from the Hobbit’s kind, despite the valiant efforts of Indonesian, Australian and American archaeologists to find them. From Liang Bua 1 (LB1), the most complete individual found so far, there is a skull, shoulder, arm and forearm bones, wrist bones, close to half of its pelvis, and thigh, leg and foot bones.

Additional bones were found during excavations in 2004 from different individuals to LB1 and include an adult lower jaw and upper and lower limb bones, and even some limb bones from a Hobbit child.

Not a bad sample really, but there’s not nearly enough evidence to fully resolve its place in human evolution. And for many other species, like say Homo erectus from Indonesia, we don’t have many limb bones to compare with the Hobbit’s in the first place.

Bits of modern human here, pieces of Lucy’s kind there, chimpanzee resemblances everywhere! The Hobbit’s the weirdest looking human we’ve found so far, and its strange appearance is the second major reason why it’s been at the heart of one of the nastiest squabbles I’ve witnessed in anthropology.

The overall picture we get from the bones is of a creature that had a very small brain, large teeth and walked about on two-feet but in way very different to our own style of moving. Yet, strangely, it also had very short legs and long arms like a chimpanzee, and probably spent a lot of time living in the trees as well as toddling about on the ground.

Finally, the Hobbit was first believed to be just a mere 18,000 years old, though its age has now been revised to between 100,000 and 60,000 years old. This is way too young given the way the Hobbit looks! And while I don’t doubt it’s accuracy, it’s still shockingly young.

What we might expect to find at this time is something more akin to say a tropical Neanderthal. But instead, with the Hobbit, we have something much more primitive, more like Homo habilis or even Australopithecus afarensis, which both lived millions of years ago in Africa.

One researcher who has made it her life’s mission to resolve the Hobbit’s identity is Debbie Argue from the Australian National University. Argue has claimed to have finally solved the riddle of the Hobbit in a new study published in the Journal of Human Evolution.

According to Argue and her team’s findings the Hobbit is indeed a very primitive species and one closely related to Homo habilis. This fits with my own impressions of Homo floresiensis, but one must always keep an open mind and go where the data take you!

Now, if they’re right, then early humans must have migrated out of Africa more than 2 million years ago and spread right across Asia into the far reaches of oceanic Indonesia. Until the Hobbit came along we thought this region had only been settled by Homo sapiens perhaps 50,000 years ago. So this is a very big shift in our thinking!

Question is, are they right? Well, their work is detailed and undoubtedly well executed, and the results are pretty clear-cut. But there will always be uncertainty with these kinds of studies, and with the Hobbit in particular, for the reasons I’ve outlined.

Still, their broad findings are identical to another study published in 2015 by Mana Membo and her team which concluded the Hobbit to be one of the most primitive members of Homo found so far.

But I find it a little troubling that yet another study published only last year by Valeray Zeitoun and his team, using a similar method to both Argue and Membo, concluded the Hobbit could confidently be placed within Homo erectus.

Implication? The Hobbit isn’t a new species at all, but just a dwarfed version of Homo erectus. But I think it’s too soon to jettison the name Homo floresiensis just yet. For a start, only Argue’s study has accounted for the Hobbit’s weird limb bones, and these must surely weigh heavily on any decision we make about how to classify it?

For me, the Hobbit continues to be best understood as a very primitive member of Homo, with all of the implications this brings for us. And wow! What implications they are!

On a final note, despite the disagreement among these studies, they do mark a maturing of discussions surrounding the Hobbit. We seem to have finally said goodbye to the destructive personal attacks of the past and moved onto figuring out what the Hobbit really is.

There?s no excuse for mobile phone distraction either on the field or behind the wheel. When you?re driving, you?re four times more likely to crash when you hold and use a mobile phone. Courtesy Transport NSW.

Ignoring your partner in favour of looking at your phone is becoming an increasing problem, relationship experts say.

The behaviour, which has been dubbed “pphubbing” or partner phone snubbing, already affects almost half of all relationships and causes conflict for one in every five couples, according to a recently published study.

Couples therapist Melissa Ferrari said the damaging habit had spiked in Australia “particularly over the last six months”.

Two studies show more smartphone users are ignoring their partners in favour of their screens.Source:Supplied

“It is happening more and people are turning away from being in relationships and living more through their phones,” Ms Ferrari said.

“You potentially could lose your partner over this — it’s something to be aware of.

“If your partner is not feeling that engagement and response from you, it could deeply affect the relationship.”

The Baylor University study, which surveyed more than 450 people, found snubbing your partner to look at your phone created conflict in 22 per cent of relationships, and more than 46 per cent reported being “pphubbed” by their partner.

RELATED: How smartphones can ruin relationships

The bad behaviour included glancing at your smartphone while talking to your partner, checking your phone during lulls in conversation, and placing your smartphone where you could see it during time together.

Authors Dr James Roberts and Dr Meredith David said the study showed smartphones may “ironically impede rather than cultivate” communication in relationships and users should put their phones down while talking to loved ones.

“Developing the self-control to put away your (smartphone) in favour of meaningful, distraction-free interactions with your romantic partner will yield benefits that far outweigh that one missed call, unread email, or unchecked listing,” the study found.

Experts say smartphone etiquette is still developing.Source:Supplied

Another study published by Yalova University this month found pphubbing was a particular issue in long-term partnerships, where it led to greater relationship dissatisfaction.

Social researcher Mark McCrindle said the research proved smartphone users were still working out how to balance technology use with their relationships.

“It’s been less than a decade that we’ve had these devices and the etiquette and relationship rules are still forming,” he said.

“What should happen even when we’re having a family meal has not been worked out yet. Some people will be people second and put technology first.”

Ms Ferrari said she advised couples to hide their smartphones on date nights, and spend more time “gazing at one another … even if your relationship is decades old”.

“If it’s planned time with your partner, put the phone away,” she said.

TOP PARTNER PHONE SNUBBING ANNOYANCES

— Looking at your smartphone while talking to your partner

— Checking your smartphone during lulls in conversation

— Keeping your smartphone in your hand while with your partner

— Placing a smartphone in view while spending time with your partner

— Pulling out a smartphone when it pings during a conversation

Flipkart is again back with its Apple Days Sale, the e-commerce website offers an iPhone, MacBook Pro, Apple Watch, and more Apple devices.

The three-day sale which began on Monday will end on Wednesday, April 26, and the biggest deal is a flat Rs. 20,000 discount on the iPhone 7 256GB variant.

The iPhone 7 256GB in Silver, Black, Jet Black, Gold and Rose Gold can be picked for Rs. 59,999 on Flipkart in these three days.

There is a further exchange discount which is applicable upto Rs. 19,000 depending on the phone you exchange it with. It also provides the extra 5 percent off on Axis Bank Buzz Credit Cards as well.

The other storage variants of iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus have also got discounts and exchange offers. The iPhone 6 16GB gets Rs. 26,010 off, and can be bought for as less as Rs. 25,990.

The same exchange and Axis Bank offer apply here as well. Varying discounts are also offered on the iPhone 6s, iPhone SE, and iPhone 5S.

The Apple MacBook Air is priced at Rs. 54,990 with the Axis Bank Buzz Credit Card offer applicable. There is also a 10 percent discount of up to Rs. 1,500 on other debit and credit cards.

The Apple Watch smartwatches are also listed with a discount of up to 35 percent with varying bank offers. The new Apple MacBook Pro range has the exchange offer of up to Rs. 15,000 listed on Flipkart with additional discounts on purchase through cards.

Other Apple products listed include iPod and iPad devices, Beats headphones, and other accessories. You can view all of them here.

It means the e-commerce giant Flipkart is on sale for next three days and customers can grab the deals as soon as possible and buy their favorite products.

So now all the customers has to start buying their favorite products because they got the best opportunity for buying any Apple product.

This hardware is not needed to actually make the cold-pressed juice. Picture: Juicero

WHEN an internet-connected juice machine gets $A160 million in funding from Silicon Valley heavyweights, you would expect the device to be an absolute game-changer.

After growing tired of the effort and wastage related with making a fresh beverage at home, product founder Doug Evans set about creating something capable of delivering cold-pressed juice without the need of a large, commercial set-up.

And the Juicero was born.

Customers received organic fruit and vegetables already washed and chopped in a packet that could then be placed into the Juicero Press. With the push of a single button, a fresh glass of cold-pressed juice is made in just two minutes.

“The Press itself creates three to four tons of pressure — enough to lift two Teslas — and enough to squeeze out every drop of organic fresh kale, spinach, apples, and other fruits and vegetables into your glass,” the product description read.

All this goodness didn’t come cheap. The Juicero Press cost $A530 — plus the cost of individual juice packs delivered weekly.

Now customers are asking exactly what they get for their money, with suggestions the product wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, with the $A530 press not actually required — the same result could be achieved by squeezing the juice packets with bare hands.

Okay okay everyone is trying to be woke about Juicero 🤔 secrets revealed on my Instagram story tho ‼️ pic.twitter.com/gyTzEkCWW9

— Trizzy Womack (@atrak) April 21, 2017

Juicero investor Doug Chertok was one person to raise doubts about the concept.

“There is no doubt the packs can be squeezed without the machine,” he told Bloomberg.

Following reports of people hacking the product, Juicero chief executive Jeff Dunn came to the defence of the product.

“Our connected Press itself is critical to delivering a consistent, high quality and food safe product because it provides:

“The first closed loop food safety system that allows us to remotely disable Produce Packs if there is, for example, a spinach recall. In these scenarios, we’re able to protect our consumers in real-time.

“Consistent pressing of our Produce Packs calibrated by flavour to deliver the best combination of taste and nutrition every time.

“Connected data so we can manage a very tight supply chain, because our product is live, raw produce, and has a limited lifespan of about eight days,” he wrote in a blog.

If you don’t buy the spin Mr Dunn has put on the product and think you will just buy the bags without the press, there is some bad news: The juicer bags are limited to owners of Juicero hardware, meaning you still need to drop $A530 to take advantage of the pre-prepared fruit and veg.

While it’s probably not the start the company was after, there still might be hope it can survive.

Continue the conversation in the comments below or with Matthew Dunn on Facebook and Twitter.

Star-Lord Peter Quill and the gang are back as Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume 2 opens in cinemas from today in another outing of the galactic blockbuster.

It’s one of the most fun films I’ve seen in years, combining hilarity with characters you care about, and spectacular visuals that trump the first instalment, Guardians of the Galaxy in 2014.

With the awesome music of “Awesome Mixtape #2”, the team unravel the mystery parentage of Quill (played by Chris Pratt) and meet several new characters (watch the credits carefully). Old foes become new allies and there are treats in store for fans of the comics.

But what about the actual science in the film, how does that stack up?

I’m going to start by giving the film a very generous allowance for being a blockbuster made for entertainment, not an educational documentary. That being said, it’s always fun to get stuck into some of the maths- and science-filled scenarios in the film.

Be warned though, there are some mild spoilers ahead.

Maths fail as humour

It was fantastic to see the film uses explicit maths fails as an integral part of the humour.

Not surprisingly, some of the villain characters in the film aren’t particularly bright, and one memorable scene has them screwing up (in several different ways) elementary maths – basic fractions and percentages – when arguing about a juicy cash bounty.

Maths fails have been used as humour in other films and television shows; William Shatner’s tongue in cheek maths in Star Trek being one good example:

These were pretty simple maths fails though and there was a lot of other maths and science in the rest of the film.

Escaping a quantum asteroid field

In one of the many starship chase scenes in the film, the ships have to navigate through what is called a quantum asteroid field.

Asteroids come and go. 123rf.com/Tom De Spiegelaere/Michael Milford

Asteroids randomly appear and disappear as the ships navigate through the field, making it a very dangerous way to escape (a nice twist on traditional asteroid fields where you can see all the asteroids).

So what are the chances of a ship making it through the quantum asteroid field?

The field looks to be mostly empty space. So let’s say that each second the ship spends in the field, there’s a 1 in 100 chance that an asteroid will suddenly materialise on top of the ship, destroying it.

If a ship spends 3 minutes navigating the length of the field, we can calculate the chances of any one ship making it through:

= (survival chance per second)^{number of seconds}

= (1 – destruction chance per second)^{number of seconds}

= (1 – 0.01)^{3 × 60}

= (0.99)¹⁸⁰

= 16.38%

That’s pretty high actually, a 1 in 6 chance. From watching the film, it looks like not many make it through (apart from the heroes of course).

If we know how many of the ships actually make it through, we can work out the survival rate per second. Let’s say 1 (just the heroes’ ship) out of 100 ships make it through, then the chance of surviving the field per second becomes:

= (Chance of surviving field)^{1/number of seconds}

= (Chance of surviving field)^1/180

= (0.01)^1/180

= 0.9747

= 97.47%

Which would suggest a higher danger from the asteroids – a 2.53% chance of being destroyed by a quantum asteroid in any second.

Elevation grenades

Rocket Raccoon (again voiced somewhat unrecognisably by Bradley Cooper) gets to kick some butt in this film too.

Yet another unique weapon is some sort of electrical effect mine, which chucks aliens high up into the air only for them to fall back to earth again (see the trailer):

Elevating the aliens. 123rf.com/Beata Kraus, Chastity/Michael Milford

To chuck aliens so they reach the top of the pine trees (say 30m), we can work out the velocity of the blast:

2 × gravity × height-change = v-final² – v-initial²

At the top, the alien’s velocity (v-final) is zero, so:

2 × -9.81 × 30 = 0² – v-initial²

v-initial² = 2 × 9.81 × 30

v-initial = square root (2 × 9.81 × 30)

v-initial = 24.26 m/s

So to knock the aliens up to the treetops, the mine would have to propel them upwards at an initial speed of about 24m/s.

This is actually a very low blast velocity (possibly to reduce harm), compared to typical conventional explosives that can travel faster than the speed of sound (although objects hit by the blast don’t necessarily travel as fast).

Visiting every planet

One of the characters, the awesomely named Ego (Kurt Russell), has spent many years visiting many, if not all of the planets in the galaxy.

Visiting every planet. 123rf.com/Viktar Malyshchyts, Vadim Sadovski/Michael Milford

This, one can imagine, is not a trivial feat.

According to a recent study, there might be approximately 100 billion planets in our Milky Way galaxy.

To work out how long it normally takes to visit all these planets, you’d have to solve the infamous travelling salesman problem. This problem is about calculating the fastest way to visit a number of locations.

Luckily for us, this particular character regularly has to return to home base. We can simplify the calculation a little by assuming they only visit one planet per trip away from their base.

We also need to know how big the Milky Way is. Best estimates are that it’s between 100,000 and 180,000 light years in diameter. We can simplify this by saying it’s a circle of uniform diameter 140,000 light years.

We can also simplify matters by assuming that the home base is optimally positioned at the centre of the galaxy.

Our traveller is going to need to make 100 billion trips out to a planet and back.

Stars (and associated planets) are generally more densely distributed near the centre of the galaxy, and more sparse further out. A rough approximation we can use is that the average distance from home base to a planet is one quarter of the galaxy diameter – 35,000 light years. That’s a return trip of 70,000 light years, so the total trip distance is:

= average trip distance × number of trips

= 70,000 light years × 100,000,000,000

= 7,000,000,000,000,000 light years

That’s 7 quadrillion (7×10¹⁵) light years. The universe is estimated to be only about 14 billion years old, which is nowhere near enough time to visit all those planets one by one.

With some more calculations, it turns out even visiting all the planets in one go takes longer than the age of the universe.

So, even with speed of light transportation, this is stretching what might be possible for Ego.

Yondu kicks butt

Yondu Udonta (Michael Rooker) is the morally ambiguous rogue and leader of a group of outlaw mercenaries called the Ravagers. He kidnapped Peter as a boy in the original Guardians film, and raised him into adulthood, resulting in a complex relationship to say the least.

Yondu is armed with one of the most unique of weapons in recent film history, a lethal arrow that he can control by whistling. He uses it to great effect in the first film, but steps up his game even further in Volume 2.

Shooting the enemy, one arrow at a time. 123rf.com/mik38, Chastity/Michael Milford

In one scene, he clears out an entire ship of bad guys. It’s not clear how fast Yondu’s arrow can go, but let’s say it can go faster than a car but slower than a plane, say maybe 275kmh, like a conventional arrow.

A large spacecraft might have a couple of kilometres of corridors and various rooms spread out within it, so the time to clear out the baddies is:

= total distance / speed

= 2km / 275kmh

= 0.0073 hours

= 26.3 seconds

Most fight scenes involving Yondu don’t last more than a few seconds, so that sounds about right.

The verdict

Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume 2 is a lot of fun. Hats off to the scriptwriters and director for the explicit maths fail jokes, and for all the other science- and math-filled content.

Some of the fantastical situations in the film could happen mathematically, but at least one of them would be tough.

Still, films are made to be entertaining, and Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume 2 delivers in an epic way.

To commemorate his 88th birth anniversary on Monday, Google honoured late Kannada superstar Rajkumar with a special doodle which features the veteran actor staring at audiences from a movie screen.

Born in 1929 as Ambrish Singanalluru Puttaswamayya Muthuraju, he was renamed Rajkumar for his on screen avatar.

With a career spanning over four decades and 200 films, he made his acting debut with 1954 Kannada film “Bedara Kannappaa”.

He dedicated his career to Kannada cinema and was known for starring in lone Telugu film “Sri Kalahastiswara Mahatyam”, a remake of his debut film.

Some of his best films include “Ranadheera Kanteerava”, “Kaviratna Kalidasa”, “Jedara Bale” and “Gowri” among others.

He was also a very popular singer and has reportedly crooned nearly 300 songs. Some of the films in which he crooned include “Sampathige Saval”, “Operation Diamond Racket”, “Jeeva Chaitra” and “Om”.

A recipient of Padma Bhushan and Dada Saheb Phalke Award, his sons Shivrajkumar and Puneeth Rajkumar are also popular Kannada actors.

Humans are visual creatures. Objects we call “beautiful” or “aesthetic” are a crucial part of our humanity. Even the oldest known examples of rock and cave art served aesthetic rather than utilitarian roles. Although aesthetics is often regarded as an ill-defined vague quality, research groups like mine are using sophisticated techniques to quantify it – and its impact on the observer.

We’re finding that aesthetic images can induce staggering changes to the body, including radical reductions in the observer’s stress levels. Job stress alone is estimated to cost American businesses many billions of dollars annually, so studying aesthetics holds a huge potential benefit to society.

Researchers are untangling just what makes particular works of art or natural scenes visually appealing and stress-relieving – and one crucial factor is the presence of the repetitive patterns called fractals.

Pleasing patterns, in art and in nature

When it comes to aesthetics, who better to study than famous artists? They are, after all, the visual experts. My research group took this approach with Jackson Pollock, who rose to the peak of modern art in the late 1940s by pouring paint directly from a can onto horizontal canvases laid across his studio floor. Although battles raged among Pollock scholars regarding the meaning of his splattered patterns, many agreed they had an organic, natural feel to them.

My scientific curiosity was stirred when I learned that many of nature’s objects are fractal, featuring patterns that repeat at increasingly fine magnifications. For example, think of a tree. First you see the big branches growing out of the trunk. Then you see smaller versions growing out of each big branch. As you keep zooming in, finer and finer branches appear, all the way down to the smallest twigs. Other examples of nature’s fractals include clouds, rivers, coastlines and mountains.

In 1999, my group used computer pattern analysis techniques to show that Pollock’s paintings are as fractal as patterns found in natural scenery. Since then, more than 10 different groups have performed various forms of fractal analysis on his paintings. Pollock’s ability to express nature’s fractal aesthetics helps explain the enduring popularity of his work.

The impact of nature’s aesthetics is surprisingly powerful. In the 1980s, architects found that patients recovered more quickly from surgery when given hospital rooms with windows looking out on nature. Other studies since then have demonstrated that just looking at pictures of natural scenes can change the way a person’s autonomic nervous system responds to stress.

For me, this raises the same question I’d asked of Pollock: Are fractals responsible? Collaborating with psychologists and neuroscientists, we measured people’s responses to fractals found in nature (using photos of natural scenes), art (Pollock’s paintings) and mathematics (computer generated images) and discovered a universal effect we labeled “fractal fluency.”

Through exposure to nature’s fractal scenery, people’s visual systems have adapted to efficiently process fractals with ease. We found that this adaptation occurs at many stages of the visual system, from the way our eyes move to which regions of the brain get activated. This fluency puts us in a comfort zone and so we enjoy looking at fractals. Crucially, we used EEG to record the brain’s electrical activity and skin conductance techniques to show that this aesthetic experience is accompanied by stress reduction of 60 percent – a surprisingly large effect for a nonmedicinal treatment. This physiological change even accelerates post-surgical recovery rates.

Artists intuit the appeal of fractals

It’s therefore not surprising to learn that, as visual experts, artists have been embedding fractal patterns in their works through the centuries and across many cultures. Fractals can be found, for example, in Roman, Egyptian, Aztec, Incan and Mayan works. My favorite examples of fractal art from more recent times include da Vinci’s Turbulence (1500), Hokusai’s Great Wave (1830), M.C. Escher’s Circle Series (1950s) and, of course, Pollock’s poured paintings.

Although prevalent in art, the fractal repetition of patterns represents an artistic challenge. For instance, many people have attempted to fake Pollock’s fractals and failed. Indeed, our fractal analysis has helped identify fake Pollocks in high-profile cases. Recent studies by others show that fractal analysis can help distinguish real from fake Pollocks with a 93 percent success rate.

How artists create their fractals fuels the nature-versus-nurture debate in art: To what extent is aesthetics determined by automatic unconscious mechanisms inherent in the artist’s biology, as opposed to their intellectual and cultural concerns? In Pollock’s case, his fractal aesthetics resulted from an intriguing mixture of both. His fractal patterns originated from his body motions (specifically an automatic process related to balance known to be fractal). But he spent 10 years consciously refining his pouring technique to increase the visual complexity of these fractal patterns.

Fractal complexity

Pollock’s motivation for continually increasing the complexity of his fractal patterns became apparent recently when I studied the fractal properties of Rorschach inkblots. These abstract blots are famous because people see imaginary forms (figures and animals) in them. I explained this process in terms of the fractal fluency effect, which enhances people’s pattern recognition processes. The low complexity fractal inkblots made this process trigger-happy, fooling observers into seeing images that aren’t there.

Pollock disliked the idea that viewers of his paintings were distracted by such imaginary figures, which he called “extra cargo.” He intuitively increased the complexity of his works to prevent this phenomenon.

Pollock’s abstract expressionist colleague, Willem De Kooning, also painted fractals. When he was diagnosed with dementia, some art scholars called for his retirement amid concerns that that it would reduce the nurture component of his work. Yet, although they predicted a deterioration in his paintings, his later works conveyed a peacefulness missing from his earlier pieces. Recently, the fractal complexity of his paintings was shown to drop steadily as he slipped into dementia. The study focused on seven artists with different neurological conditions and highlighted the potential of using art works as a new tool for studying these diseases. To me, the most inspiring message is that, when fighting these diseases, artists can still create beautiful artworks.

My main research focuses on developing retinal implants to restore vision to victims of retinal diseases. At first glance, this goal seems a long way from Pollock’s art. Yet, it was his work that gave me the first clue to fractal fluency and the role nature’s fractals can play in keeping people’s stress levels in check. To make sure my bio-inspired implants induce the same stress reduction when looking at nature’s fractals as normal eyes do, they closely mimic the retina’s design.

When I started my Pollock research, I never imagined it would inform artificial eye designs. This, though, is the power of interdisciplinary endeavors – thinking “out of the box” leads to unexpected but potentially revolutionary ideas.

With no physical home button, Apple will remove the TouchID to the rear of the device. Picture: ConceptsiPhone

APPLE seems certain to announce three iPhones later this year, with a premium model having a 5.8-inch, curved OLED display.

The premium model, dubbed the iPhone Edition, is also tipped to have a full-glass body.

Similar to the Samsung S8, Apple is tipped to remove the physical home button from the phone to allow for an edge-to-edge display with little to no bezels.

Last week, a leaker with a proven record of getting accurate information about Apple products shared a schematic of the forthcoming device, which showed the fingerprint scanner had been moved to the rear of the phone — a necessity given the removal of the home button.

While Android phones have used this feature for years, Apple users have been outraged about the relocated fingerprint scanner.

And they have very good reason to be, if the schematic is indeed accurate.

News.com.au tech editor Matt Dunn talks iPhone 8 rumours

iPhone 8 looks to be taking a new direction pic.twitter.com/mG19bcDYiC

— Sonny Dickson (@SonnyDickson) April 19, 2017

After the picture was leaked last week, iPhone users were fast to point out just how ridiculously impractical the positioning of the new fingerprint scanner was.

With most Android devices, the scanner is located at the rear of the device, but at the top where it is natural for your finger to sit.

Even though the S8 has been criticised for placing it next to the camera, at least it is located in a comfortable position.

One Reddit user explained why the button’s new position would be a terrible move from Apple.

“Just try holding your iPhone now and reaching your index finger that far below the Apple logo. If this is true, it is a disastrous placement of touch ID, even worse than the S8 in my opinion,” they wrote.

The physical home bottom will be replaced with virtual controls, meaning the fingerprint scanner will be relocated to the rear of the device.Source:Supplied

Other Reddit users saw the negatives in the placement, but remained optimistic.
“I have faith that if Apple were to use the non-optimal solution of placing touch on the back, they’d put it in a more ergonomically friendly location than so far below the Apple logo. So I think that, if this render is legit, the hole is for something else,” one wrote.

“It isn’t the end of the world, but as far as that specific functionality is a downgrade. However, the trade-off is worth it. A much bigger screen for the same dimensions,” added another.

A common theme on the thread was users questioning why Apple would not make its logo double as the fingerprint scanner.
“The Apple logo should be Touch ID. That would look badass,” wrote one user.

“The logo is in almost the perfect location for one handed use. If it was in the middle of the screen that would be pretty awkward,” added another.

What are your thoughts on the location of the fingerprint scanner in the sketch? Comment below or continue the conversation with Matthew Dunn on Facebook and Twitter.

Our world view and resultant actions are often driven by a simple theorem, devised in secret more than 150 years ago by a quiet English mathematician and theologian, Thomas Bayes, and only published after his death.

Bayes’ Theorem was famously used to crack the Nazi Enigma code during World War II, and now manages uncertainty across science, technology, medicine and much more.

So how does it work?

Bayes’ Theorem explained

Thomas Bayes’ insight was remarkably simple. The probability of a hypothesis being true depends on two criteria:

1. how sensible it is, based on current knowledge (the “prior”)


2. how well it fits new evidence.

Yet, for 100 years after his death, scientists typically evaluated their hypotheses against only the new evidence. This is the traditional hypothesis-testing (or frequentist) approach that most of us are taught in science class.

The difference between the Bayesian and frequentist approaches is starkest when an implausible explanation perfectly fits a piece of new evidence.

Let me concoct the hypothesis: “The Moon is made of cheese.”

I look skywards and collect relevant new evidence, noting that the Moon is cheesy yellow in colour. In a traditional hypothesis-testing framework, I would conclude that the new evidence is consistent with my radical hypothesis, thus increasing my confidence in it.

But using Bayes’ Theorem, I’d be more circumspect. While my hypothesis fits the new evidence, the idea was ludicrous to begin with, violating everything we know about cosmology and mineralogy.

Thus, the overall probability of the Moon being cheese – which is a product of both terms – remains very low.

Admittedly, this is an extreme caricature. No respectable scientist would ever bother testing such a dumb hypothesis.

But scientists globally are always evaluating a huge number of hypotheses, and some of these are going to be rather far-fetched.

For example, a 2010 study initially suggested that people with moderate political views have eyes that can literally see more shades of grey.

This was later dismissed after further testing, conducted because the researchers recognised it was implausible to begin with. But it’s almost certain that other similar studies have been accepted uncritically.

The Bayesian approach in life

We use prior knowledge from our experiences and memories, and new evidence from our senses, to assign probabilities to everyday things and manage our lives.

Consider something as simple as answering your work mobile phone, which you usually keep on your office desk when at work, or on the charger when at home.

You are at home gardening and hear it ringing inside the house. Your new data is consistent with it being anywhere indoors, yet you go straight to the charger.

You have combined your prior knowledge of the phone (usually either on the office desk, or on the charger at home) with the new evidence (somewhere in the house) to pinpoint its location.

If the phone is not at the charger, then you use your prior knowledge of where you have sometimes previously left the phone to narrow down your search.

You ignore most places in the house (the fridge, the sock drawer) as highly unlikely a priori, and hone in on what you consider the most likely places until you eventually find the phone. You are using Bayes’ Theorem to find the phone.

Belief and evidence

A feature of Bayesian inference is that prior belief is most important when data are weak. We use this principle intuitively.

For example, if you are playing darts in a pub and a nearby stranger says that he or she is a professional darts player, you might initially assume the person is joking.

You know almost nothing about the person, but the chances of meeting a real professional darts player are small. DartPlayers Australia tells The Conversation there are only about 15 in Australia.

If the stranger throws a dart and hits the bullseye, it still mightn’t sway you. It could just be a lucky shot.

But if that person hits the bullseye ten times in a row, you would tend to accept their claim of being a professional. Your prior belief becomes overridden as evidence accumulates. Bayes’ Theorem at work again.

The one theory to rule them all

Bayesian reasoning now underpins vast areas of human enquiry, from cancer screening to global warming, genetics, monetary policy and artificial intelligence.

Risk assessment and insurance are areas where Bayesian reasoning is fundamental. Every time a cyclone or flood hits a region, insurance premiums skyrocket. Why?

Risk can be tremendously complex to quantify and current conditions might provide scant information about likely future disasters. Insurers therefore estimate risk based on both current conditions and what’s happened before.

Every time a natural disaster strikes, they update their prior information on that region into something less favourable. They foresee a greater probability of future claims, and so raise premiums.

Bayesian inference similarly plays an important role in medical diagnosis. A symptom (the new evidence) can be a consequence of various possible diseases (the hypotheses). But different diseases have different prior probabilities for different people.

A major problem with online medical tools such as webMD is that prior probabilities are not properly taken into account. They know very little about your personal history. A huge range of possible ailments can be thrown up.

A visit to a doctor who knows your prior medical records will result in a narrower and more sensible diagnosis. Bayes’ Theorem once again.

Alan Turing and Enigma

Bayesian approaches allow us to extract precise information from vague data, to find narrow solutions from a huge universe of possibilities.

They were central to how British mathematician Alan Turing cracked the German Engima code. This hastened the allied victory in World War II by at least two years and thus saved millions of lives.

To decipher a set of encrypted German messages, searching the near-infinite number of potential translations was impossible, especially as the code changed daily via different rotor settings on the tortuously complex Enigma encryption machine.

Turing’s crucial Bayesian insight was that certain messages were much more likely than other messages.

These likely solutions, or “cribs” as his team called them, were based on previous decrypted messages, as well as logical expectations.

For example, messages from U-boats were likely to contain phrases related to weather or allied shipping.

The strong prior information provided by these cribs greatly narrowed the number of possible translations that needed to be evaluated, allowing Turing’s codebreaking machine to decipher the Enigma code rapidly enough to outpace the daily changes.

Bayes and evolution

Why are we so interested in Bayesian methodology? In our own field of study, evolutionary biology, as in much of science, Bayesian methods are becoming increasingly central.

From predicting the effects of climate change to understanding the spread of infectious diseases, biologists are typically searching for a few plausible solutions from a vast array of possibilities.

In our research, which mainly involves reconstructing the history and evolution of life, these approaches can help us find the single correct evolutionary tree from literally billions of possible branching patterns.

In work – as in everyday life – Bayesian methods can help us to find small needles in huge haystacks.

The dark side of Bayesian inference

Of course, problems can arise in Bayesian inference when priors are incorrectly applied.

In law courts, this can lead to serious miscarriages of justice (see the prosecutor’s fallacy).

In a famous example from the UK, Sally Clark was wrongly convicted in 1999 of murdering her two children.

Prosecutors had argued that the probability of two babies dying of natural causes (the prior probability that she is innocent of both charges) was so low – one in 73 million – that she must have murdered them.

But they failed to take into account that the probability of a mother killing both of her children (the prior probability that she is guilty of both charges) was also incredibly low. So the relative prior probabilities that she was totally innocent or a double murderer were more similar than initially argued.

Clark was later cleared on appeal with the appeal court judges criticising the use of the statistic in the original trial.

This highlights how poor understanding of Bayes’ Theorem can have far-reaching consequences. But the flip side is that Bayesian methods with well justified, appropriate priors can provide insights that are otherwise unobtainable.

Mass Effect 3 was popular and didn’t get as much bad feedback as the latest.

SCIENCE Fiction and computer games go together like phones and charger cables, bacon and eggs, or social media and recreational outrage.

While most of us have probably accepted we’re not getting our very own robot butler or flying car anytime soon, that hasn’t stopped us dreaming about what to might be like to be a heroic space adventurer commanding a star ship and boldly going into the unknown.

One of the best known space RPGs is the Mass Effect series, which has recently welcomed a fourth instalment — Mass Effect Andromeda.

Developed by BioWare and published by Electronic Arts on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, Mass Effect Andromeda is the space RPG we need and the one we deserve, at least until Bethesda make a Fallout game set on Mars or something.

Mass Effect Andromeda veers towards “assuming you’ve played at least one of the other games” (in that for example, alien races just show up and you’re expected to know they exist and be unsurprised by this) but overall the game does an good job of walking that fine line between “being accessible to newcomers” while also building on the rich lore the series is well known for.

There is a lot of lore in this game, some of which is old news to series veterans but will be appreciated for newcomers, particularly those wondering why there’s a variety of alien races wandering around the Andromeda Initiative’s space station, how come N7-insignia armour is kind of a big deal, and what a Mass Effect Relay actually is.

Put on the uniform of the Pathfinder as Sara Ryder and fight for humanity’s new home. Explore dangerous worlds, keep your crew alive, and unravel the mysteries of Andromeda. The journey begins now. How far will you go?

Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 are rightfully regarded as genre-shaping masterpieces, with Mass Effect 3 also acclaimed but widely criticised for its disappointing ending which was later changed via DLC.

When facial animations are bad, use side shots.Source:Supplied

The latest entry in the space saga shifts it focus to an entirely new location: The Andromeda galaxy, which is about 2.5 million light years from Earth. The game posits a future where mankind (along with several sentient alien races inhabiting the Milky Way galaxy) have launched an extensive colonisation mission to the region, sending 100,000 colonists on a one-way trip into the unknown with a promise that a new life awaits them in the offworld colonies.

Your character — last name Ryder, first name, gender, ethnicity and appearance up to you — is one of the specialists on the Human ark spaceship Hyperion. No word on how many of the 20,000 colonists aboard are telephone sanitisers or advertising executives, though.

The game opens in 2785, following a 600 year voyage (in cryosleep) from the Milky Way and things almost immediately turn to custard and curdle from there. Your character ends up being made a Pathfinder (a combination of explorer, ranger, SAS commando and Captain Picard) and put in charge of un-smegging the situation everyone has found themselves in.

Pretty much everything that could go wrong with an undertaking of the Andromeda Initiative’s magnitude has gone wrong — from space-storms to mutiny to hostile aliens to supposedly ideal planets which actually look like they’ve hosted a Disaster Area concert.

The backdrops are amazing and some of the space depictions are breathtaking — you really do feel like you’re in a different galaxy among the stars. Standing on the bridge of your spaceship for the first-time is an awe-inspiring experience.

As excellent as all this is, Mass Effect Andromeda isn’t perfect. There’s a serious uncanny valley effect with the cutscenes, with some of the models looking more like animations than actual people (or aliens) — they’re still well below what most people would expect from a AAA title nowadays.

Mass Effect 3 was popular and didn’t get as much bad feedback as the latest.Source:Supplied

The writing in the opening states of the game isn’t great either, but once you’ve got past the prologue and the world starts to open it, it improves very markedly as your character develops.

The space station you first arrive at is in a dire state — you’re told there’s been a terrible mutiny, lots of people are dead or exiled and supplies are dwindling below critical levels — yet apparently you’re deemed awesome enough to be almost immediately given a seriously pimp spaceship, experienced crew, supplies and a cheery wave before being let out into the universe — despite having been on the space station for maybe an hour or so and no-one there having any idea who you are besides “Not the guy we were told would be coming”.

There’s also a few of the inevitable “I know you’re the most awesome person in the universe and you’re terribly busy fighting the Omnicronians or whatever, but would you mind going to somewhere inconvenient and talking to someone for me? I’d do it myself but I’m Le Tired”-type quests which appear in pretty much every RPG ever.

It’s a testament to the incredible worldbuilding and story of Mass Effect Andromeda that these issues are easily overlooked or handwaved away.

The combat isn’t anything to write home about either, being your standard cover-shooter fare, but to the designer’s credit, the shooting-to-talking to people ratio feels right and more of the game is about problem solving and discovery than blasting aliens. Somehow an optional multiplayer mode has been shoehorned into the game too, in the form of “Apex strike team missions”, but Mass Effect Andromeda is otherwise a single-player affair and rightly so.

It’s hard to describe but the game has that something which makes it so hard to put down. I constantly found myself wanting to do just one more thing, to explore another planet, to craft another upgrade.

It’s a game that ticks all the boxes; there’s just so much to do in the game and most of it feels like it has a point rather than being empty filler. There are reportedly more than 1200 speaking characters in the game (one of which is voiced by Natalie Dormer from Game of Thrones) and you’ve got numerous star systems to explore and discover.

In short, Mass Effect Andromeda is a masterpiece. It’s a game you cannot only sink your teeth into, but shovel it into your mouth while noisily making “Om nom nom” sounds and embarrassing your significant other in the process.

If you’ve got any interest at all in science fiction, space games or RPGs, then do yourself a favour and buy a copy of Mass Effect Andromeda sooner rather than later.