Hardlight VR Suit adds vibration for more realistic gameplay

This vest contains multiple vibrational elements and can add an extra kick as you play VR games. It has 16 vibrational nodes and haptic sensors and is completely sweat proof so you can work up a lather kicking alien butt.

Is this taking things too far? If you are killing a zombie or person in the game and you feel that, how will that impact your brain?

This article originally appeared at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwirdYAQSr4.

Tiny child mistakes broken water heater for a robot

Humans are suckers when it comes to anthropomorphizing and, subsequently, caring for robots. Some of us want to love robots so badly that we wind up shedding tears over a hunk of metal that went hurtling through space millions of miles away. But love is messy and blind, and so often we look past a cold, rigid truth like “that robot is, in fact, just a broken water heater.”

That’s the case in the radioactively adorable video seen above, which is titled “Rayna meets a “robot”.” It’s early, but it’s a sure viral hit, and it also just so happens my pick for Best Short Film at the 2018 Oscars. (That is, if the Academy doesn’t find some obnoxious way of disqualifying it in the first place. My guess is the downfall will be that errant punctuation.) It’s got just about everything you could hope for in a 24-second clip: a darling main character (she calls it “wobot!”), wonderful rising action, and just the right amount of existential dread.

Kids today are going to know a world more full of robots than any of us old saps like me can imagine. The real question is: will they still love wobots when wobots start taking our jobs?

This article originally appeared at: http://www.theverge.com/tldr/2017/3/27/15079052/girl-hugs-robot-water-heater-tears.

These AI bots created their own language to talk to each other

It is now table stakes for artificial intelligence algorithms to “learn” about the world around them. The next level: For AI bots to learn how to talk to each other — and develop their own shared language.

New research released last week by OpenAI, the artificial intelligence nonprofit lab founded by Elon Musk and Y Combinator president Sam Altman, details how they’re training AI bots to create their own language, based on trial and error, as the bots move around a set environment.

This is different from how artificial intelligence algorithms typically learn — using large sets of data, like to recognize a dog by taking in thousands of pictures of dogs.

The world the researchers created for the AI bots to learn in is a computer simulation of a simple, two-dimensional white square. There, the AIs, which took the shape of green, red and blue circles, were tasked with achieving certain goals, like moving to other colored dots within the white square.

But to get the task done, the AIs were encouraged to communicate in their own language. The bots created terms that were “grounded,” or corresponded directly with objects in their environment and other bots and actions, like “Go to” or “Look at.” But the language the bots created wasn’t words in the way humans think of them — rather, the bots generated sets of numbers, which researchers labeled with English words.

You can get a sense in this demonstration video:

The researchers taught the AIs how to communicate using reinforcement learning: Through trial and error, the bots remembered what worked and what didn’t for the next time they were asked to complete a task. Igor Mordatch, one of the authors of the paper, will join the faculty at Carnegie Mellon in September. And Pieter Abbeel, the other author, is a research scientist at OpenAI and a professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

There are already AI assistants that can understand language, like Siri or Alexa, or help with translation, but this is mostly done by feeding language data to the AI, rather than understanding language through experience.

“We think that if we slowly increase the complexity of their environment, and the range of actions the agents themselves are allowed to take, it’s possible they’ll create an expressive language which contains concepts beyond the basic verbs and nouns that evolved here,” the researchers wrote in a blog post.

Why does this matter?

“Language understanding is super important to make progress on before AI reaches its full potential,” said Miles Brundage, an AI policy fellow at Oxford University, who also notes that OpenAI’s work represents a potentially important direction for the field of AI research to move toward.

“It’s not clear how good we can get at AI language understanding without grounding words in experience,” Brundage said, “and most work still looks at words in isolation.”

This article originally appeared at: https://www.recode.net/2017/3/23/14962182/ai-learning-language-open-ai-research.

Twitter Considering Paid Subscription Tier for Professional Users on TweetDeck at $20/Month

Twitter is looking at providing a professional experience for people on TweetDeck that would pack in advance tools and features not found anywhere else on the service. The premium package would cost $19.99 per month, be accessible on both desktop and mobile, and include the following features:

– Exclusive news/alerts summaries personalized for you
– Content management tools like bookmarks, to-do lists, and ‘save for later’
– Cross posting to other social media platforms
– Advanced custom trend analysis and alerting tools
– Exclusive content on social media best practices and strategy
– Enhanced tools for managing and creating custom audience lists (e.g., by interest, customer, or region, etc.)
– Exclusive priority customer support
– The ability to manage multiple Twitter accounts
– Advanced publishing features (e.g., scheduling, collaboration, drafting, etc.)
– Advanced tools for sorting or filtering searches
– An ad-free experience
– Analysis tools for understanding topics or conversations on Twitter
– Ability to access this experience on both desktop and mobile devices
– Ability to securely manage the account across multiple team members
– Twitter customization such as color themes and layouts
– Access to pre-populated lists of users and influencers by interest topic (e.g., industry or subject experts)
– Additional account activity details (e.g., influence scores, account unfollows, or ability to see who is looking at your profile page)
– Ability to import user lists from outside sources
– Advanced analytics on my own content performance

The news was shared by The New York Times affiliated journalist Andrew Tavani, and in addition to the detailed list of features, he tweeted out an overall summary of what the service is said to encompass. With the premium additions, Twitter is aiming to help journalists, marketers, and other such professionals “get even more out of Twitter.”
“Twitter is considering offering a more advanced TweetDeck experience, with more powerful tools to help marketers, journalists, professionals, and others in our community find out what is happening in the world quicker, to gain more insights, and see the broadest range of what people are saying on Twitter. Whether you use Twitter for work or just want to be more informed on the latest news, sports, entertainment, political viewpoints, and information in today’s world, this more advanced TweetDeck experience will be designed to help you get even more out of Twitter.

This premium tool set will provide valuable viewing, posting, and signaling tools like alerts, trends and activity analysis, advanced analytics, and composing and posting tools all in one customizable dashboard.

It will be designed to make it easier than ever to keep up with multiple interests, grow your audience, and see even more great content and information in real-time. It would also offer extra features such as advanced audience insight and analytics, tools to monitor multiple timelines from multiple accounts and from multiple devices, including mobile, all in an ad-free experience. Twitter confirmed that it is conducting a survey “to access the interest” in this premium version of the service, so no official decision has been made as of yet. It should also be pointed out that the company’s wording strictly stuck to the added value proposition for “professionals,” with no apparent intention to make a monthly subscription version of Twitter for its casual users.

In the past few years, Twitter has struggled to convince users to stay with the service, as well as faced difficulties in enticing new users to adopt Twitter over its competitors like Snapchat and Facebook. Changes to the service have done some good in improving certain annoyances users had with it — like removing handles and media attachments from the character count limit and improving anti-harassment tools — but Twitter has seen little growth from these initiatives. Twitter’s total worldwide users currently sit at 319 million, compared to Facebook’s 1.86 billion.

 

This article originally appeared at: https://www.macrumors.com/2017/03/24/twitter-paid-subscription-tier/?utm_source=Daily%20Email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=170324.

SoftBank’s self-driving bus project push for 2020 commercialization

SoftBank is doubling down on its self-driving bus project in Japan. SB Drive, an entity created last year to develop autonomous vehicle technology for public transport, just got a cash windfall after Yahoo Japan led a 510 million JPY ($4.6 million) investment.

Yahoo Japan, the Yahoo affiliate which is one of Japan’s most influential tech companies, provided 490 million JPY ($4.4 million) with SoftBank itself ponying up the remaining capital to retain a majority share. Post-investment, SoftBank’s stake in the business stands at 51.1 percent, Yahoo Japan owns a 48.6 percent share, and founding partner Advanced Mobility retains 0.3 percent.

SB Drive is a self-driving project with a focus on making public transportation options, particularly in more rural areas, smarter. The company is aiming to conduct tests on public roads next year with the eventual target of a commercial service by 2020.

Already, it said, it has run “social trials” and testing using fixed-route public buses and freighter trucks that make use of autonomous driving tech. SB Drive has also struck partnerships with four municipalities in Japan.

Beyond adding capital to the business, Yahoo Capital has the potential to be an important strategic partner. Yahoo Japan plans to link SB Drive with its popular Yahoo Maps service, and use related data — such as weather, vehicle congestion, foot traffic, and events — to help with bus planning and deployment.

While there haven’t been major self-driving bus initiatives of this scale in the West, Japan has different social issues to contend with. SB Drive is focused on offering some support in response to Japan’s aging population problem. Today, one-quarter of the country’s population is over 65. That figure, which is higher in some rural regions, is forecast to reach 40 percent nationwide by 2060 meaning that, particularly outside of urban areas, many citizens will require additional help.

This article originally appeared at: https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/24/softbank-self-driving-bus/.

Enemy number one is Netflix: The monster that’s eating Hollywood

Tara Flynn, a rising star at a TV production unit of 21st Century Fox, walked into her boss’s office last August and told him she was quitting and joining streaming-video giant Netflix Inc.

The news was not well-received.

“Netflix is public enemy No. 1,” said Bert Salke, the head of Fox 21 Television Studios, where Ms. Flynn was a vice president, according to a Netflix legal filing.

When Netflix finalized Ms. Flynn’s hire a few weeks later, Fox sued, accusing it of a “brazen campaign” to poach Fox executives. In response, Netflix argued Fox’s contracts are “unlawful and unenforceable.”

The ongoing legal battle is just one sign of the escalating tensions between Netflix and Hollywood as the streaming-video company moves from being an upstart dabbling in original programming to a big-spending entertainment powerhouse that will produce more than 70 shows this year. It is expanding into new genres such as children’s fare, reality TV and stand-up comedy specials—including a $40 million deal for two shows by Chris Rock. The shift has unnerved some TV networks that had become used to Netflix’s original content being focused on scripted dramas and sitcoms.

Netflix’s spending on original and acquired programming this year is expected to be more than $6 billion, up from $5 billion last year, more than double what Time Warner Inc.’s HBO spends and five times as much as 21st Century Fox’s FX or CBS Corp.’s Showtime. It spent close to $10 million an episode on “The Crown,” a lavish period drama about a young Queen Elizabeth II.

Its shock-and-awe spending—combined with that of Amazon and other new players—is driving up costs industrywide and creating a scarcity of people and equipment.

“You just can’t compete with someone coming in with fresh money, low overhead and a lot less baggage than you,” said Darrell Miller, an entertainment lawyer at Fox Rothschild LLP. One veteran television executive likened Netflix’s onslaught to Genghis Khan’s.

TV stars are demanding “movie star” salaries of some $250,000 per episode when they previously were content with half that, according to studio executives. Competition for “A” team camera crews, sound engineers and postproduction specialists is fierce.

“It’s a feeding frenzy to get the best people,” said Jeff Greenberg, a prominent casting director.

TV networks and studios helped fuel the rise of what is now a competitor. When streaming video led to a plunge in DVD sales about a decade ago, licensing shows to Netflix was seen as a new way to cash in and extend the financial life of expensive programming. With Netflix now seen as a direct rival for original programming, some media companies are cutting back on those licensing deals, including Discovery Communications Inc. and Scripps Networks Interactive.

“We of course have flare-ups because we compete for people, we compete for projects,” said Netflix Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos. But “we are in this together” with media companies, he said.

About 20 other 21st Century Fox employees not under contract have recently jumped to Netflix, a person familiar with the matter said. Netflix also recently plucked away Stacey Silverman, a senior executive at Comcast Corp.’s NBCUniversal Television, as well as executives from Sony Corp. and Walt Disney Co., among others. (21st Century Fox and Wall Street Journal-owner News Corp share common ownership.)

Faced with spiraling costs, TV chiefs are redoubling efforts to discover new writers, show creators and less-expensive stars. Scripps created an HGTV show called “Home Town” starring a fix-it couple found on Instagram, and it has several in the works with YouTube stars. NBCUniversal said it would make shows with BuzzFeed based on popular web video and news content.

Producers and agents are beginning to talk about the downsides for talent of being on Netflix shows and movies—for example, by saying they don’t get the promotion they deserve on Netflix’s crowded shelf of content—but many Hollywood stars still relish the chance to be in a Netflix original. Netflix tends to offer more money up front along with a more flexible filming schedule due to fewer episodes, and several of its shows have won critical accolades and industry buzz.

Some TV industry executives and Wall Street skeptics question whether the company can add enough subscribers, especially in international markets, to support its breakneck spending pace and justify a $60 billion market capitalization that values Netflix at more than 300-times its 2016 earnings. Netflix’s overall subscriptions grew 25% in 2016 from the previous year to nearly 94 million.

MoffettNathanson analyst Michael Nathanson estimates Netflix this year will have negative free cash flow—a measure of profitability—of about $2 billion due to elevated spending on original shows, which require a higher upfront outlay than library deals.

Netflix has financed the spending by borrowing money, increasing its debt burden more than 17-fold since 2012 from $195.8 million to $3.4 billion.

Investors and Netflix executives are focused on subscriber growth over any other metric and have been encouraged by a surge in international customer additions over the past couple of quarters. Last quarter, it added 5.12 million subscribers abroad, beating expectations. Shares are up 44% in the past year.

Netflix’s desire for domination is on display in its push into comedy. It has gone after big name stand-up comics that used to call HBO home, including Mr. Rock, Louis C.K. and Amy Schumer, with an aggressiveness not seen since CBS’s famed talent raids on NBC in the late 1940s, when it wooed away radio stars such as Jack Benny and Edgar Bergen. Mr. Rock’s $40 million payday is more than double what he was getting at HBO, according to people familiar with the terms.

Mr. Sarandos, the content officer for Netflix, declined to comment on Mr. Rock’s deal.

This article originally appeared at: http://www.business-standard.com/article/international/enemy-number-one-is-netflix-the-monster-that-s-eating-hollywood-117032600023_1.html.