Weekly Roundup: Ubers Hell-ish week, Teslas plans for trucking

Just as Uber is under fire once again, Lyft confirms a huge new funding round, Elon Musk reveals plans forelectric trucks and Apple is divinginto secret special projects. These are the top tech stories of the week. You can also get this post as the Weekly Roundup newsletter delivered to your inbox on Saturdays, if thats more your style.

1. Ubers Hell-ish week

A report surfaced claiming that Uber secretly tracked Lyft drivers using an internal software program called Hell. Hell not only let Uber see how many Lyft drivers were available for rides and what their prices were, but also figure out which of its drivers were also driving for Lyft. Once Uber knew when and where they tended to log onto Lyft, the company was able to offer drivers financial incentives convincing them to use only Uber. Some lawyers are saying Uber could face civil legal claims related to its use of the software. It was also announced this week that Rachel Whetstone, Ubers head of communications and policy, is leaving the company. We know that her reason for leaving is complex, butthere was some tension between Whetstone and Uber CEO Travis Kalanick over bad press.

2. Apple may have hired biomedical researchers to work on a secret project

Apple seems to be on a special projects hiring spree. A new report is claiming thatApplehas hired a group of biomedical researchers to work on a secret project to monitor diabetic patients using sensors.Normally, patients monitor their glucose by pricking themselves to get a blood sample, so not having to do that any more would be a real game-changer for peopleaffected by diabetes. It was reported that Apple is also putting together a team to design its own battery management chip for the iPhone. By designing its own chips, Apple could go a bit further than the standard power management chip, making the iPhone slightly more efficient inpower usage. This way, the company could get a leg up onAndroid makers when it comes to battery life.

In other Apple news, the California DMV released a list of companies allowed to test autonomous vehicles on the roads of California. The last name of the long list is Apple.It doesnt necessarily mean that youre going to see an Apple car on the road tomorrow but it means that the company has the green light tostart real-world tests at some point in the future.

3. Teslas plan for trucks

Tesla CEO Elon Musk revealed on Twitter that Tesla plans to show off an electric pickup truck sometime within the next two years. Musk also announced that Tesla will reveal its electric semi truck, the Tesla Semi, in September of this year.

4. Lyft confirms major $600million raise, bringing total funding to $2.61 billion

Lyft confirmedon its blog that it has raised a total of $600 million in new funding, with a post-money valuation of $7.5 billion. The funding brings Lyfts total funding to $2.61 billion, which is a gigantic amount unless you consider the incredibly competitive space within which they operate, which includes Uber, with $8.8 billion invested across 13 rounds.

5.Instagram Stories is now bigger than Snapchat

Instagram Stories hit 200 million daily active users, surpassing Snapchat Stories 161 million users it reported in March when the parent company, Snap, went public. Instagram is also getting faster at copying Snapchat features; it also added Instagram Direct and an AR Stories feature this week.

6. Yext sees successful IPO on the NYSE

This week saw another tech IPO as Yext, the company that helps businesses power their location data, went public on the New York Stock Exchange. After pricing shares above the expected range at $11, the price rose 21 percent to $13.29 by the end of the first day of trading.

7. Nintendos NES Classic shipments come to a close

All good things must come to an end. This week Nintendo saidthat it will be sunsetting the short-lived but beloved NES Classic Edition the $60 console that gave us 30 classic Nintendo games. However, the language was not so clear, indicating room for apotential release in the future: Throughout April, [Nintendo of America] territories will receive the last shipments of Nintendo Entertainment System: NES Classic Edition systems for this year. So if you dont have one yet, theres still hope. But getready to pay big bucks in the meantime.

8. Flipkart has a fresh$1.4 billion raise

Amazon and Alibaba had better watch out. Following months of rumors, Indian e-commerce giant Flipkart has confirmed that it has raised $1.4 billion in new funding at a post-money valuation of$11.6 billion. The deal includes some big-name strategic investors: Chinas Tencent, eBay and Microsoft, whichjoin existing Flipkart backers that include Tiger Global, Naspers, Accel and DST Global.

9. Hulus live TV to cost $39.99 per month

More details emerged on Hulus play to kill the cable box. The pricing for Hulus live TV service, a competitor with cable television as well as a host of other streaming TV services like Sling TV, DirecTV NOW and YouTube TV will likely be $39.99 per month, with ads and access to Huluson-demand library.

10. Andre Iguodala spills Magic Leap secrets

Magic Leap had some of its secrets spilled by Golden State Warriors small forwardAndre Iguodala.In an interview, Iguodala talked aboutaugmented reality and undoubtedly skated the lines of violating his Magic Leap NDA as he described his demo with the product, which he called a disruption of life. Iguodala gave some interesting insight into what a Magic Leap interface might look like, saying that in one demonstration he stuck his hand out and a character appeared in his hand that acted as a digital assistant for the device, something Iguodala compared to Apples Siri. He referenced the characters ability to control smart-home devices, as well as other aspects of the operating system.

11. Qualtrics is holding on IPO

Utah-based SaaS company Qualtrics IPO many have beenexpecting is on hold for now. The online market research platform has just raised its third round for $180 million at a whopping $2.5 billion valuation.

Weekend reads

Why do airlines overbook their flights?

You may have seen an airline offer someone $500 to voluntarily give up their seat on a flight because they are overbooked. If you are going to a funeral, to an important meeting or if youre a doctor on your way to see a patient, that may not work. If youre on vacation, however, and you figure that $500 to spend on another flight later in the year means a free trip to visit the family, you may be willing to let yourself be bumped off the flight. But why do airlines overbook flights? Heres a detailed explanation.

How I made my own VPN server in 15 minutes

People are (rightfully) freaking out about their privacy as the Senate voted to let internet providers share your private data with advertisers. While its important to protect your privacy, it doesnt mean that you should sign up to a VPN service and tunnel all your internet traffic through VPN servers. Heres how one writer made their own VPN server in 15 minutes.

Read more: https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/14/weekly-roundup-ubers-hell-ish-week-teslas-plans-for-trucking/

Journalism faces a crisis worldwide we might be entering a new dark age | Margaret Simons

Almost anyone can use the worldwide web to be a media outlet, so how will we differentiate between truth, myth and lies?

Australias two largest legacy media organisations recently announced big cuts to their journalistic staff. Many editorial positions, perhaps up to 120, will disappear at Fairfax Media, publisher of The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, and News Corporation announced the sacking of most of its photographers and editorial production staff.

Both announcements were accompanied by corporate spin voicing a continuing commitment to quality journalism. Nobody in the know believes it. This is the latest local lurch in a crisis that is engulfing journalism worldwide.

Now, partly thanks to Donald Trump, many more people are turning their mind to the future of news, including fake news and its opposite.

How, in the future, are we to know the difference between truth, myth and lies?

Almost too late, there is a new concern for the virtues of the traditional newsroom, and what good journalists do. That is, find things out, verify the facts and publish them in outlets which, despite famous stuff-ups, can generally be relied upon to provide the best available version of the truth.

As this weeks announcements make clear, the newsrooms that have traditionally provided most original journalism are radically shrinking.

News media for most of the last century appeared to be one relatively simple business. Gather an audience by providing content, including news. Sell the attention of the audience to advertisers.

The internet and its applications have brought that business undone. As any householder can attest, the audience no longer assembles in the same concentrations. The family no longer gathers around the news on television. Most homes have multiple screens and news is absorbed as it happens.

Appointment television is nearly dead, at least for those under 50.

At the same time, technology has torn apart the two businesses advertising and news that used to be bound together by the physical artefact of the newspaper. Once, those who wanted to find a house, a job or a car had to buy a newspaper to read the classifieds. Now, it is cheaper and more efficient to advertise and search online, without needing to pay a single journalist.

Publishers and broadcasters have moved online, but the advertising model fails. Ads on websites earn a fraction of the amount that used to be charged for the equivalent in a newspaper or during a program break.

All this is last centurys news but over the past five years the landscape has shifted again because of the dominance of Google (which also owns YouTube) and Facebook. These social media engines have quickly become the worlds most powerful publishers. Besides them, Murdoch looks puny. Yet Google and Facebook dont employ journalists. They serve advertisements and news to the audience members on the basis of what they know about their interests.

For advertisers, its all gravy. Why pay for a display ad in a newspaper when you can have your material delivered direct to the social media feeds of people who you know are likely to be interested in buying your product?

It is now estimated that of every dollar spent on advertising in the western world, 90 cents ends up in the pockets of Google and Facebook.

Today, just about anyone with an internet connection and a social media account has the capacity to publish news and views to the world. This is new in human history.

The last great innovation in communications technology, the printing press, helped bring about the enlightenment of the 1500s and 1600s.

The optimists among us thought the worldwide web and its applications might lead to a new enlightenment but as has become increasingly clear, the reverse is also possible. We might be entering a new dark age.

Fake news isnt new. The place of Barack Obamas birth was about as verifiable as a fact gets with the primary document, his birth certificate, published online. But the mere publication of a fact did not stop a large proportion of US citizens from believing the myth that he was born overseas.

It is very hard to say how many Australian journalists have left the profession over the last 10 years.

This is partly because the nature of journalistic work has changed. Many now work aggregating or producing digital content, never leaving their desks.

Institutions such as universities and NGOs are now producing journalistic content, published online, but the people employed to do this task rarely show up in the figures compiled by unions and the Australian Bureau of Statistics, because their employers are not classified as media organisations.

Nevertheless, the big newsrooms have shrunk beyond recognition. This weeks announcements were the latest in a 15-year trend. In 2013, industry commentators estimated that more than 3000 Australian journalists had lost their jobs in the previous five years. Since then, there have been further deep cuts, and last weeks announcements were merely the latest. In the US, it is estimated that 15 per cent of journalistic jobs disappeared between 2005 and 2009, and the cuts havent paused since then.

At the same time, and offsetting this, there are new participants in the Australian media. We now have online local versions of the British Daily Mail, the youth-oriented news and entertainment outlet Buzzfeed, the New York Times, (which has just launched) and the Huffington Post, which operates in partnership with Fairfax. Not least, there is this outlet an Australian edition of the Guardian.

There are also many small, specialist outlets that exist because the economics of online publishing beat the cost of buying broadcasting licences or printing on bits of dead tree, trucking the papers around the nation and throwing them over the fences.

For the same reasons, almost any large organisation can, if it chooses, use the worldwide web to be a media outlet though whether the output classes as journalism or public relations is another matter.

Most of the new entrants to the business employ only a few local journalists. The reputable ones struggle to perform miracles each hour with hardly any reporters.

So what does the future hold?

I think it is clear we will have many more smaller newsrooms in the future including new entrants, non-media organisations touting their wares and the wasted remains of the old businesses.

Some of these newsrooms will operate on the slippery slopes that lie between news, advocacy and advertising.

Some of them will be the fake news factories, devoted to earning an income from spreading clickable, outrageous lies.

If it were only the decline of businesses, we would not need to worry so much. It is rare in history for those who have profited from one technology to go on to dominate the next. Cobb and Co ran the stagecoaches, but not the steam trains.

The Fairfax Media building in Sydney. Big newsrooms everhywhere have shrunk beyond recognition. Photograph: Paul Miller/AAP

But it is more serious than the decline of private businesses.

The future is far from clear, but here are some things we can expect to see delivered more quickly than we might think.

First, social media companies will begin to invest in quality content, because otherwise they will lose their audiences.

This is not merely wishful thinking. In China, WeChat, owned by Tencent Corporation, is the dominant social media engine and has functionality that makes Facebook and Twitter look old-fashioned. If you want to know whats coming next in social media, look to China.

As I found on a recent research trip to China, WeChat is investing a lot of money in original journalism. Many of the most interesting journalists in China including some who have been jailed in the past for their work are now earning better salaries than those available on party media outlets by freelancing for Tencent, which actively supports and encourages them in multiple ways.

Its counterintuitive, given Chinas record on freedom of speech, but then the country is changing so fast and is so complex that preconceptions can only be challenged. China might have begun by copying the social media activity of the west, but it has long since outstripped it.

Not that the future dominance of Tencent-like operations is entirely reassuring. WeChat is also a cashless payment system, earning money from transactions. It knows absolutely everything about its users, to a much greater extent than Facebook and Google. It surpasses all previous means of citizen surveillance.

Second, governments will have to take some responsibility for news and information. In Europe and Canada, they are experimenting with methods of helping bolster journalism.

Meanwhile, international research confirms that countries blessed with a strong tradition of publicly funded media are more cohesive, better informed and less polarised. Our own ABC is one of the main reasons we can hope that the trajectory of our democracy will be better than that of the United States.

Lastly, there are citizens. The experience of the last decade tells us that citizen-journalism cannot replace the work done by properly resourced and trained professionals, but it will be a permanent part of the news ecology.

For the foreseeable future, we will be only a few minutes and clicks away from a citizen leaking information, publishing a bare account of a news event or providing a subversive point of view.

In fact, being a responsible consumer, funder and purveyor of news and information is now best understood as one of the many duties of good citizenship. If we can hold firm to that notion, we will come through the crisis.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/apr/15/journalism-faces-a-crisis-worldwide-we-might-be-entering-a-new-dark-age

Facebook again under fire for spreading illegal content

An investigation by a British newspaper into child sexual abuse content and terrorist propaganda being shared onFacebook has once again drawn critical attention to how the companyhandles complaints about offensive and extremist contentbeing shared on its platform.

And, indeed, how Facebooks algorithmically driven user generated content sharing platform apparently encouragesthe spread of what can also be illegal material.

In a report published today,The Timesnewspaper accuses Facebookof publishing child pornography after one of its reporters created a fake profile and was quickly able to find offensive and potentiallyillegal content on the site including pedophilic cartoons; a video that apparently shows a child being violently abused; and various types ofterrorist propaganda including a beheading video made byan ISIS supporter, and comments celebrating a recent attack against Christians in Egypt.

The Times says it reported the content to Facebook but in most instances was apparently told the imagery and videosdid not violate the sites community standards. (Although, when it subsequently contacted the platform identifying itself as The Times newspaper it says some of pedophilic cartoons that had been kept up by moderators were subsequently removed.)

Facebook says it has since removed all the content reported by the newspaper.

A draft law in Germany is proposing to tackle exactly this issue using the threatof large fines for social media platforms that fail to quickly take down illegal content after a complaint. Ministers in the German cabinet backed the proposed lawearlier this month, which could be adopted in the current legislative period.

And where one European government is heading, others in the region might well be moved to follow. The UK government, for example, has once againbeen talking tougher on social platforms and terrorism, following a terror attack in London last month with the Home Secretary putting pressure on companies including Facebook to build tools to automate the flagging up and taking down of terrorist propaganda.

The Times says itsreporter created a Facebook profile posing as an IT professionalin his thirties and befriending more than 100 supporters of ISIS whilealso joining groups promoting lewd or pornographic images of children. It did not take long to come across dozens of objectionable images posted by a mix of jihadists and those with a sexual interest in children, it writes.

The Times showed the material it foundto a UK QC, Julian Knowles, who told it that in his viewmany of the images and videos are likely to be illegal potentiallybreaching UK indecency laws, and the Terrorism Act 2006 which outlaws speech and publications that directly or indirectly encourage terrorism.

If someone reports an illegalimage to Facebook and a senior moderator signs off on keeping it up, Facebook is at risk of committing a criminal offense because the company might be regarded as assisting or encouraging its publication and distribution, Knowles told the newspaper.

Last month Facebook faced similar accusations overits content moderation system, after a BBC investigation looked at how the site responded to reports of child exploitation imagery, and also found the site failed to remove the vast majority of reported imagery.Last yearthe news organization also foundthatclosed Facebook groups were being used by pedophiles to share images of child exploitation.

Facebook declined to provide a spokesperson to be interviewed about The Times report, but in an emailed statement Justin Osofsky, VP global operations, told us: We are grateful to The Times for bringing this content to our attention. We have removed all of these images, which violate our policies and have no place on Facebook. We are sorry that this occurred. It is clear that we can do better, and well continue to work hard to live up to the high standards people rightly expect of Facebook.

Facebooksays it employs thousands of human moderators, distributedin officesaroundthe world (such as Dublin for European content) to ensure 24/7 availability. However given the platform has close to 2 billion monthly active users (1.86BN MAUsat the end of 2016, to be exact) this is very obviously just the tiniest drop in the ocean of content being uploaded to the site every second of every day.

Human moderation clearly cannot scale to review so much content without there being farmore human moderators employed by Facebook a move it clearly wants to resist, given the costs involved (Facebooksentire company headcountonly totalsjust over 17,000 staff).

Facebookhas implemented MicrosoftsPhoto DNAtechnology, which scans all uploadsfor known images of child abuse. However tackling all types of potentiallyproblematic content isa very hard problem to try to fix with engineering; one that is not easily automated, given it requires individual judgement calls based on context as well as the specificcontent, while also potentially factoring in differences in legal regimes in different regions, and differing cultural attitudes.

CEO Mark Zuckerbergrecently publicly discussedthe issue writing thatone of our greatest opportunities to keep people safe isbuilding artificial intelligence to understand more quickly and accurately what is happening across our community.

But he alsoconceded that Facebookneeds to do more, andcautioned that an AI fix for content moderation is years out.

Right now, were starting to explore ways to use AI to tell the difference between news stories about terrorism and actual terrorist propaganda so we can quickly remove anyone trying to use our services to recruit for a terrorist organization. This is technically difficult as it requires building AI that can read and understand news, but we need to work on this to help fight terrorism worldwide, hewrote in February, before going on toemphasize thatprotecting individual security and liberty is also a core plankofFacebooks communityphilosophy which underscoresthe tricky free speech vs offensive speech balancing act the social media giantcontinues to try to pull off.

In the end, illegal speech may be the driving force that catalyzes a substantialchange to Facebooksmoderating processes by providing harder red lines where it feels forced to act (even if defining what constitutes illegal speech in a particular region vs what is merely abusive and/or offensive entailsanother judgement challenge).

One factor is inescapable: Facebook has ultimately agreed that all of the problem content identified via various differenthigh profilemedia investigations does indeed violate its community standards, and does not belong on its platform. Which rather begs the question why was it not taken down when it was first reported? Either thats systemic failure of its moderating system or rank hypocrisy at the corporate level.

The Times says it has reportedits findings to the UKs Metropolitan Police and the National Crime Agency. Its unclear whether Facebook will face criminal prosecution in the UK for refusing to remove potentially illegal terrorist and child exploitation content.

The newspaper also calls outFacebook for algorithmically promoting some of the offensive material by suggesting that users join particular groups or befriend profiles that had published it.

On that front features on Facebook such as Pages You Might Known automatically suggest additional content a user might be interested on, based on factors such as mutual friends, work and education information, networks youre part of and contacts that have been imported but also manyother undisclosed factors and signals.

And just as Facebooks New Feed machine learning algorithms have been accused of favoring and promoting fake news clickbait, the underlying workings of its algorithmic processes for linking people andinterests look to bebeing increasingly pulledinto thefiring line over how they might beaccidentally aidingand abetting criminal acts.

Read more: https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/13/facebook-under-fire-for-spreading-illegal-content/

Instagram Stories hits 200M users, surpassing Snapchat as it copies its AR stickers

Move last and take things seems to be Facebooks new motto.

Now the parent companys top Snapchat clone Instagram Stories has hit 200 million daily active users, surpassing the last count of 161 million that Snapchat announced alongside its IPO. Instagram Stories launched in August, hit 100 million dailies in October, and 150 million in January, so its hardly slowing as it grows. Meanwhile, Instagram is getting faster at copying even Snapchats most technologically advanced features with a series of global iOS and Android updates.

Exactly one year ago, Snapchat launched augmented reality 3D stickers and text you can stick to objects in videos, which then stay stuck to them and grow or shrink as they move around. Today Instagram launches a clone of this feature called Pinning for stickers and text, with an added improvement of a video timeline for scrubbing back and forth for picking when to Pin something and demoing how it looks.

Snapchat launched these augmented reality stickers a year ago; Instagram added them today

Instagram tells me Pinning relies on fairly standard region tracking technology, and was built because we see people frequently sharing their lives through videos, so we wanted to enable our stickers to move through videos as one more way to mix your personality with the moments youre capturing.

Instagram also now has its own version of Snapchats Scissors feature that launched in December for cutting out a part of an image, turning it into a sticker and pasting it on whatever youd like. Instagrams Selfie Stickers lets you open a camera from the Stickers dock, shoot a mini-selfie, add a fade or circle frame to it and then paste it into your images from then on. But you cant just cut something out of your already shot content.

Instagram is adding Custom Geostickers drawn by local community members for Tokyo, Madrid, London and Chicago. It launched this copy of Snapchats illustrated geofilters last month in New York City and Jakarta. Just like Snapchat, your recently used stickers now show up at the top of the tray. And Instagrams hands-free camera now includes a countdown to recording, so you know when to ham it up.

Instagram rolls out more custom geostickers

You can see that Instagram is getting faster and faster at cloning Snapchats features as we recap the timeline:

• Stories: Snapchat October 2013, Instagram August 2016, Lag 2 years 10 months
• Location Filters: Snapchat July 2014, Instagram March 2016, Lag 1 year 9 months
• AR Stickers: Snapchat April 2016, Instagram April 2017, Lag 1 year
• Create-Your-Own-Stickers: Snapchat December 2016, Instagram April 2017, Lag 4 months

At this point the only major feature left for Instagram to copy is Snapchats animated selfie masks, which Facebook already has in its app and Messenger thanks to its acquisition of MSQRD. And with Instagrams Stories reaching more users per day than Snapchats whole app, Instagram may be able to get preference from advertisers seeking maximum scale.

Snaps share price sank slightly on Tuesday when Instagram launched its new Direct feature that unites Snapchat-style ephemeral messaging with traditional permanent text messaging. And today the stock dropped another 1.25 percent after the news that Instagram Stories has eclipsed Snapchats size.

Snapchats growth sank 82 percent after Instagram Stories launched. Now all eyes will be on whether Snapchat can get user growth back on track when it has its first earnings call next month. Slow growth could make Wall Street fear its being left in the dust, while strong growth could show it will continue to battle Instagram for dominance of the new sharing medium.

Read more: https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/13/instagram-stories-bigger-than-snapchat/

Get Your Keychains Ready: The Original Tamagotchi Is Back

Its official: 2017 is the year the 90s came full circle.

Just like chokers, crop tops and platform sandals, the original Tamagotchi, a 90s kid staple, is back on the market.

Bandai, the Japan-based toy company responsible for the pocket pet craze, this year releasedon Amazon Japana game modeled after the original Tamagotchi (the one with the basic, green-tinted LCD display), but people in the U.S. are just catching on now.

Bandai first debuted its pixelated pet game in Japan in 1996, and in the U.S. in 1997.

From then on, kids, teenagers and, lets be honest, a few easily distracted adults, would eagerly wait for their Tamagotchi eggs to hatch into a pet made of the most basic digital graphics (read: literal pixels). Users had to feed their pet, play with it and pick up its poop with the help of three tiny rubber buttons.

And if anyone slacked in their parenting responsibilities, their digital darling would eventually die.

This isnt the first Tamagotchi revival. In fact, the handheld classic toy never disappeared from the toy market.

Bandai has released a number of updated Tamagotchi products over the years, including models with multicolor displays,devices that allow users to raise entire families of Tamagotchiand a Tamagotchi game app for your iPhone. Katy Perry and Orlando Boom even wore the digital eggs to the tech-themed Met Gala in 2016.

Despite a few missing icons and its slightly smaller size, the re-released Tamagatchi stays true to the original, with its monochromatic display andsix original Tamagotchi characters, according to The Telegraph.

Theyre currently only available in Japan, but if you need to satisfy your #TBT vibes sooner, we suggest searching through your childhood closet for your old (and probably dead) pocket pet. Or you can buy one of the newer models on Amazons U.S. marketplace.

Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/original-tamagotchi_us_58effd4ae4b0bb9638e2bba9

Why go on safari when you can feed an African lion live, via VR

One of the main uses of VR that has emerged since the technology experienced a resurgence is the ability to make you empathise with what you are experiencing. This happened to me the first time I ever did VR, when I watched Clouds Over Sidra, a short VR documentary that put you in the shoes of a Syrian refugee girl, living in a camp in Jordan. I dont mind admitting that it actually made me cry on my video about the film. Its this empathy effect that new startup Fountain Digital Labs is is trying to tap into with its Virry VR platform (now nominated for a Webby Award) which allows people to virtually engage with real African animals up close and in their natural habitat. Not all of us can go on a safari, but this just-released immersive virtual reality experience has now launched on PlayStation VR.

Filmed in 4K VR at the Lewa Wildlife Conservancy in Kenya, using strategically placed high-definition cameras, Virry VR creates a safari-like experience which also allows the user to control aspects of the narrative.

You can feed lions and even share mud baths with rhinos. Players can also take a trip down an African river and learn about endangered animals.

The initial release of Virry VR for PlayStation includes 35 minutes of experiences with wildlife.

Virry VR users can learn interesting facts, answer questions, and interact with the animals through the virtual experience.

For Virry VR it costs $9.99 and the Live Camera Subscription is $1.50/mo. You can also subscribe for $2.50/mo and thus to donate $1 to the Lewa Wildlife Conservancy.

For those who dont have PS4, Virrys original BAFTA award-winning app for iOS mobile devices is also an option. Subscriptions costs $19.99 a year.

Svetlana Dragayeva, Fountain Digital Lab CEO, says: Virry immerses players in the lives of real animals, encouraging discovery, empathy, and problem solving, while helping them to better understand nature, conservation, and the world around them.

The experience has won plaudits from Founding Director of The Virtual Human Interaction Lab at Stanford University, Jeremy Bailenson. He says I have seen thousands of spherical videos and the footage from Virry VR is the most stunning nature scenes I have ever seen in any medium, said Bailson. Seeing a big rhino in its natural home from the perspective of a mud puddle inches away, or having a lion literally lick my face to test if I am edible, were among the coolest things I have done in VR to date. I predict this project will be a huge success in motivating people to learn more about nature and ecosystems.

Dragayeva is a passionate about the capability of VR to awaken us out of our senses which have been deadened by imagery which is shocking or unusual: As Sontag observed back in the 70s, At the time of the first photographs of the Nazi camps, there was nothing banal about these images. After 30 years, a saturation point may have been reached. In these last decades, concerned photography has done at least as much to deaden conscience as to arouse it. So I am in this search for something new. Something that moves, touches, tickles an empathic impulse, creates a bond. VR seems to be well-suited for this at this current moment.

Read more: https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/12/why-go-on-safari-when-you-can-feed-an-african-lion-live-via-vr/

Justin Kans new startup Atrium is raising $10 million to disrupt the legal industry

Justin Kan wants to changethe legal industry, and has gathered a team together to do just that.According to sources his newest startup, called Atrium LTS, is looking to raise $10 million for its initial round of funding.

As the eponymous founder of Justin.tv, Kan has had a fair amount of success over the last few years. While Justin.tvwasnt a huge hit as a life-casting or live-streaming platform,itended up spawning Twitch, which sold to Amazon for just under$1 billion. Hes also been a prolific angel investor, which includes investments in Cruise Automation, which sold to GM for more than$1 billion.

More recently, Kan announced plans for a new incubator, called Zero-F. He clearly has a lot going on, but sources say Kanwill be leading Atrium as CEO.

Kan himself has never worked in the legal industry, but as a serial entrepreneur hes been a customer of legal services over the years. Hes also surrounding himself with otherswho have worked in the industry and created startups to change it.

Key among the team is Orrick startup lawyer Augie Rakow, who is well connected in the tech space due to a number of high-profile companies hes worked for, as well as amonthly founder meetup he organizes. Joining them also is BeBe Chueh, who was the founder of a company called AttorneyFee, which sold to LegalZoom a couple of years ago.

On the technical side of things Kan has recruited Chris Smoak, who was an early AWS employee, Y Combinator alumand founder of a company called Gambit Labs, as the companys CTO. Rounding out the team is Nick Cortes, who is also working with Kan on his Zero-F incubator and handling operations for the group.

Atrium is seeking to raise a total of $10 million, and sources tell us General Catalyst has committedto leading the round. In addition to rounding out its financing with other VCs, Atriumis also looking to getbuy-in from some tech companiesas strategic investors and potential clients.

Kan and General Catalyst declined to comment on the financing, of course.Were hoping to learn moreonce Atrium isa further along and the team is more willing to talk about what theyre building and how exactly theyre looking to tackle the legal industry.

Read more: https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/12/justin-kan-atrium-10m-general-catalyst/

Googles AutoDraw uses machine learning to help you draw like a pro

Drawing isnt for everyone. I, for one, am definitely not very good at it. But with AutoDraw, Google is launching a new experiment today that uses machine learning algorithms to match your doodles with professional drawings to make you look like you know what youre doing.

You can use AutoDraw on your phone or desktop and the experience is pretty straightforward. You simply start drawing your best version of a pizza, or house, ordog, or birthday cake and the algorithms try to figure out what it is that youre trying to draw. It then tries to match your squiggles with drawings in its database, and if it finds any possible matches, itll show them in a list at the top of your virtual canvas. If you like one of those options, you simply click on it and AutoDraw replaces your amateurish creation with something a bit slicker.

Artists who want to donate their drawings to the project can do that here, by the way.

This project actually uses the same technology as Googles QuickDraw experiment.QuickDraw is more of a game, though, where youre trying to draw a given object and hope that the AI algorithms recognize it within 20 seconds. With AutoDraw, you getmore freedom to experiment, and, while you could read all about it here, its probably best you head over to AutoDraw.com and give it a try.

Read more: https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/11/googles-autodraw-uses-machine-learning-to-help-you-draw-like-a-pro/

Gravity Jacks PoindextAR tracks objects smallest details for augmented reality anywhere

Augmented reality is a difficult proposition, both in the methods used to do it right and the resources required to do it at all. A new AR system from Gravity Jack makes some serious advances in the field, tracking real-world objects and their components in true 3D, not via tags or trickery. The company thinks it could figure prominently in industrial applications and spread from there.

Like any other task, AR can be done in easy ways and hard ways. Sometimes the easy way is also the best way, like when you have a game that pops up 3D avatars for cards you dont need to track the real world much, just enough to see a certain symbol and put a 3D model on top of it. Theres no real benefit to adding hard tasks like tracking the table, dice, etc.

But if you were, for example, using AR to help you find the spark plugs in your car, you cant put a little AR sticker on every component, and even if you did, they go in and out of view, the angles of the parts and viewer must be considered, and so on.

If the AR software, however, knows the exact 3D shape of the engine and can match that to the real-world image, it always knows from which angle youre viewing, which parts obscure other parts and where those dang spark plugs are. Thats the promise Gravity Jack is making with PoindextAR (named after its CTO, Shawn Poindexter).

Armed with a 3D model of the object in question (created live or downloaded), the app tracks the position of the real-life object down to a fraction of an inch, whether the user or the object itself is moving. No patterns, textures or special lighting (for instance IR blasters) are needed.

This lets the app highlight, for example, the location of a fastener that needs to be taken out, and superimpose the location, tool needed, orientation and so on. A PCB could be labeled with the appropriate leads, or a battery system with polarities. Or perhaps youre learning your way around a new piece of industrial equipment; the app could show safety mechanisms, charging ports, disassembly instructions, all that stuff. Much better than a user manual when youre right there in front of the thing.

The method is of course proprietary, and the company declined to reveal their patent-pending secrets to me. Its not extracting a silhouette (my first guess) or using any kind of depth mapping unlike something like Microsofts HoloLens or Googles Project Tango, it works with ordinary RGB cameras on ordinary smartphones and tablets.

A lot of that covers the usual promises made on behalf of AR, but being able to do it without markers, in a variety of lighting conditions, with very low latency and high accuracy thats something plenty of companies could use today in everyday applications like maintenance and training.

Thats why Gravity Jack is focusing on industry to start: plenty of companies have heard about the potential benefits of AR, but those benefits tend to be in the hand-wavy near future. PoindextAR appears to provide them now, and Gravity Jack hopes to shoo customers in with a partnership program.

Not NASA or GM yet (although they have applications from household names), but think utilities, manufacturers or perhaps military, where the tech could help speed up routine maintenance or inspections. Gravity Jack will work with them (and cover costs) to develop a solution that addresses their needs, then use that as a foothold from which to reach others in the space that might (perhaps rightfully) be wary of adopting the technology.

The AR space has overpromised and underdelivered for years, even with breakout apps like Pokmon GO bringing attention to the space. PoindextARs versatility and ease of deployment may help break the ice with industries that have hitherto treated the technology with skepticism.

More details on the tech and Gravity Jacks existing partners can be found inthe press release.

Read more: https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/11/gravity-jacks-poindextar-tracks-objects-smallest-details-for-augmented-reality-anywhere/

Apple Clips scored up to 1 million downloads in its first 4 days

In its first four days on the market, Applesnew social video editing app Clips reached between 500,000 and a million downloads, according to estimatesfrom app store analytics firm App Annie. However, despite heavy press coverage and featured positions in the App Store, Clips hasnt yet broken into the top 20 apps by ranking in the U.S. App Stores Top Charts.

The day after its debut on Thursday, the app climbed to No. 28 in the App Store, its highest rank so far, per App Annies data. To put that in perspective, Apples Music Memos app a fairly niche app aimed at musicians reached No. 29 that day.

Music Memos, we should note, no longer registers on the Top Overall Charts, as App Annie doesnt track rankings below No. 1750.

But according to data from two firms, Sensor Tower and App Annie, Clips alreadybeat Music Memos in terms of downloads, if not rankings.

Another point of comparison for Clips is Instagrams Layout. While the former is focused on video and the latter is for photos, both apps are broadlyabout editing media for the purpose of social sharing. During Clips first four days, it was ranking in the No. 5 to No. 6 range in the competitive Photo & Video category on the App Store, while Instagrams Layout was in the No. 17 to No. 35 range, and as low as 80, in its first days, App Annie said.

But Clips is slipping in the U.S. charts already. Over itslaunchweekend a time whenthe app could have gotten a boost from curious users looking to play with Apples latest toy Clips instead continued to drop. By Saturday, it was No. 39 in the U.S. By Sunday, 40. Today, its 53.

U.S. rankings dont tell the full story of downloads, of course Clips is available worldwide. But in this case,the U.S. accounts for around a quarter of its total downloads, so its performance in this market matters.

The U.S. is currently thelargest market for Clips downloads (25% share), saysApp Annie, followed by China (roughly 16%), with Japan, Russia and Hong Kong rounding out the top five.

Beyond Clipssimply being a new app from Apple, the appwill ultimately succeed or fail based on its ability to tap into the network effects that come with social sharing.

The average user is not yet aware of it, notes Danielle Levitas, Senior Vice President, Research & Professional Services at App Annie.Theyll start to become more aware of it through thatnetwork effect as people share these clips in Facebook, in Instagram, in WeChat, she says. Clips does not have its own built in social network, so it will rely on these shares.

The question for Apple will be not only where this is in terms of downloads which is obviously important when a new app launches butwhat is the network effect?, saysLevitas.

Those effects will be tied to Apples ability to get the app onto peoples devices. In this area, it has an advantage: it owns the platform. With a 42 percent share of smart devices in the U.S. and the App Store as thesingle point of entry to the world of mobile applications, Apple can heavily promote its own apps if it chooses. And it certainly is doing so with Clips.

The company placed Clips in featured banners both on the homepage and in the Photo & Videocategory pagein its App Store, and it gave Clips the number one positionon ApplesNew apps we love list.

Plus, theres the accompanying onslaught of press coverage from not only the typical array of technology news sites and Apple blogs, but also a slew of mainstream media outlets like The Wall St. Journal, Reuters, Time, CNN, CNBC, and many others. Its kind of impossible to not know that Apple launched a new app, if you spend any time online at all.

That being said, not all iOS device owners read the news, or launch the App Store regularly.

It seems like Clips is catching on with those whove tried it, however, leading to a 4-star rating and many rave reviews on the App Store. The appseems to appeal to those who are already familiar with video editing, and find Clips to be a less bloated alternative to iMovie for iOS. But those with less experience complainedthe app doesnt feel that intuitive or has poor navigational elements, among other things.

As TechCrunchs own review noted, many of Clipsfeatures are buried, with the goal of keeping it simple. This could have the side effect ofmaking them hard to find. Andits clearnot everyone agrees that Apple has built a straightforward app. The user interface is not as simpleas it could be, some reviewers said, leading to a bit of learning curve to getting the hang of it. These are areas Apple may need to iterate upon in the future.

In the meantime, Apple couldgain real-world insight into what people want to do with their videos. Eventually, it could choose toport a feature or two from Clips like its filters, overlays or other live editing tools to its main Camera app.

But Clipsreal test wont be rankings or downloads, butin the number of clips the app ends up producing, and their distribution. Those numbers wont be visible for at least a month out from launch, at the earliest.

Read more: https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/11/apple-clips-scored-up-to-1-million-downloads-in-its-first-4-days/

How Free Code Camp has attracted 1 million students and harnessed coding education for nonprofits

Ruben Harris Contributor

Ruben Harris is a professional cellist and a recovering investment banker who now leads partnerships in San Francisco for Honor, a healthcare startup focused on seniors. He is also a founder of the Breaking Into Startups podcast.

More posts by this contributor:

• How Everette Taylor went from a homeless college dropout to chief marketing officer at Skurt
• At 50, Dev Bootcamp’s Michael Jay Walker quit his day job to learn coding with kids in their twenties

Education teaches you skills and skills give you power.And these days, a mastery of technology can bethe difference between personal liberty and job security and a permanent instability.

While there are several traditional and non-traditional educational programs that are available to get these skills, most of them require tens of thousands of dollars in tuition just to join.

On todays Breaking Into Startups episode, Harrisinterviews Quincy Larson, the founder of Free Code Camp.

Free Code Camp has created a tuition-free, open-source curriculum that has attracted 1 million students, placed 5,000 entry-level developers, empowered 6,000 experienced developers to level up into better jobs and created the top technical publication on medium.

His remote team of three people did this in two years and also allow schools to use their curriculum free of charge.

Read more: https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/11/how-free-code-camp-has-attracted-1-million-students-and-harnessed-coding-education-for-non-rofits/

Popular Pays raises $3.1M in new funding to connect marketers and creators

How can Popular Pays stand out in the influencer marketing crowd? The key, according to co-founder Corbett Drummey, is to focus on content.

The approach seems to have convinced investors, with Popular Pays announcing that it has raised an additional $3.1 million, which it rolled up with the funding it raised after participating in Y Combinator into a Series A of $5.2 million. The round was led by GoAhead VC with participation from Pallasite Ventures and Hyde Park Angels.

Drummey told me that when he started Popular Pays, he assumed that the main valuethe service could provide was connecting marketerswith social media influencers topromote their brands and products. That wasnt entirely wrong, but he said, The real value of what were doing is in the content itself. Brands realized that, too they wanted the impressions, but they were staying for the content.

After all, brands need an increasing amount of videos, photos and blog postsif theyre going to keep posting and engaging online, a trend thats only going to increase as social media shifts toward more Snapchat Stories-style formats.

To be clear, Popular Pays hasnt abandoned the influencer marketing model entirely. Drummey said most of the companys campaigns involve a combination of generating content for a brand and publishing promotional messages on users accounts.

However, he said the company has switched from calling those users influencers instead, it calls them creators, to reflect the fact that for many of them, Their value isnt necessarily that theyre famous or a celebrity, but that theyre professional content creators.

Drummey also noted that Popular Pays offers tools that help marketers manage many creators at once (hundreds, in the case of some campaigns), and to A/B test the content that they produce. And the company is expanding the way it makes money by licensing the technology to other businesses and also working with resellers in fact, he said resellers already account for nearly one-third of the companys revenue.

Read more: https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/10/popular-pay-series-a/

Broadband prices penalise loyal customers – Citizens Advice – BBC News

Image copyright Getty Images

Image caption Citizens Advice says many customers are unaware of price rises

The cheapest broadband prices shoot up by an average of 43% or 113 a year, after introductory deals end, Citizens Advice has said.

The charity said more than a third of customers were unaware of the price increases.

The rises amount to a “loyalty penalty” for customers who stay with the same provider, Citizens Advice said.

It has urged broadband providers to be more transparent about prices and said government should scrutinise the firms.

The 113 figure represents a five-fold rise on what customers were paying on average in 2011 to stay on the same broadband deal.

Five of the biggest internet service providers had “loyalty penalties” as follows, according to Citizens Advice:

• BT 12 month contract: 198 (67% increase)
• Sky 12 months: 120 (53% increase)
• EE 18 months: 90 (36% increase)
• TalkTalk 24 months: 66 (28% increase)
• Virgin Media 12 months: 0 (0% increase)

“Loyal broadband customers are being stung by big price rises once their fixed deal ends,” Gillian Guy, chief executive of Citizens Advice, said.

“The government has rightly put energy firms on warning for how they treat loyal customers – the actions of broadband firms warrant similar scrutiny.”

The Citizens Advice research also found that older people and poorer customers were more likely to be hit by such charges as they generally stayed with the same supplier for longer than other customers.

In the survey of 3,000 consumers, broadband users aged 65 and over were more than twice as likely as younger users to have been on the same contract for more than 10 years.

In March, an Ofcom report revealed that elderly people with a landline and no broadband at home had been hit the hardest by rising line rental charges.

BT announced price rises in January for many of its services, including regular and super-fast broadband.

Sky, Virgin Media and TalkTalk had also all put up their prices in the past 12 months.

Related Topics

• Broadband

Read more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-39555140

University Challenge: Professor Stephen Hawking presents winners’ trophy – BBC News

Image caption The teams – Wolfson on the left, Balliol on the right – met Professor Hawking in Cambridge

Professor Stephen Hawking has presented the winning University Challenge team with their trophy – and revealed he is a long-time fan of the show.

Oxford’s Balliol College beat Wolfson College, Cambridge, by 190 to 140 in the final of the BBC Two show.

The series was a hit on social media, in large part due to fan favourite Eric Monkman, who captained Wolfson.

Despite his team’s loss some took to Twitter to describe the 29-year-old as the “people’s champion”.

Host Jeremy Paxman told Wolfson they had been “entertaining”.

• Why University Challenge contestants go viral

Professor Hawking told the two teams: “I have said in the past that it is not clear whether intelligence has any long-term survival value – bacteria multiply and flourish without it.

“But it is one of the most admirable qualities, especially when displayed by such young minds.

“Many congratulations to both teams but especially to Balliol College Oxford on becoming series champions on University Challenge, a programme I have long enjoyed.”

Image caption The teams – and their mascots – faced off in the final, broadcast on Monday night

It was only the second time in the quiz’s 55-year-history that the trophy presentation had taken place outside the studio.

In the segment, Paxman congratulated the winners and told Wolfson there was “no shame in being runners-up”.

Balliol then toasted their win with glasses of port.

Oxford colleges had lost to Cambridge for the past three years – until the 2017 final, broadcast on Monday night.

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Could you answer these University Challenge questions?

Image caption The winning team from Balliol with their trophy and host Paxman

Here is a selection of some of the questions Balliol answered correctly to beat Wolfson. Answers at the bottom of the story.

1. In which city of the Eastern Roman empire did Hypatia teach philosophy?
2. Associated with the philosopher Plotinus and the supreme principle known as the one, which late school of Greek philosophy did Hypatia espouse?
3. Which German philosopher applied Newtonian principles to the Nebular hypothesis in his 1755 work Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens?
4. In Earth science what four-letter term denotes the zone that separates the Earth’s crust from the mantle?

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Image caption Eric Monkman also became known for wearing the same outfit on each episode

Monkman, from Canada, was applauded by fans for his enthusiastic performances and the encyclopaedic knowledge he displayed.

He had scored 120 of his team’s 170 points in a previous round, with the hashtag #Monkmania springing up for fans to praise his prowess.

But in the end, the Balliol team captained by Joey Goldman proved too strong for Monkman and his teammates.

Answers: 1. Alexandria 2. Neoplatonism 3. Immanuel Kant 4. Moho

Related Topics

• Television

Read more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-39560545

Bill Gates joins VR drone army, and he wants to take you along for the ride

Bill Gates, VR super nerd.

Image: bill gates via twitter

“Hello, my name is Bill Gates, super nerd. Join me as I use these technology goggles to take you into the feeeeeewchaaaaah!”

Of course that’s what the co-founder of Microsoft was thinking when he posted Sunday what might be his nerdiest photo yet (and he has a bunch), all in the service of promoting his new Samsung Gear VR channel.

SEE ALSO: Finding your chill in VR is easy when you can meditate on Mars

This pic of Gates donning a VR headset while looking wistfully into the distance, mouth agape and mind enchanted by the awe and wonder of VR is the latest unintentionally embarrassing photo to involve a celebrity looking unnatural while using tech to make the rounds. But Gates is no stranger to VR.

The Featured section on Samsung Gear.

Last year, he took one of his favorite science fiction writers, Neal Stephenson, for a ride in a Tesla and let us all come along via the magic of VR technology. But this new Gear VR promotion hints that we can expect Gates to get a lot more serious about the emerging platform.

When you open the Samsung VR app, Gates now appears prominently in the Featured section, where you can immerse yourself in his geek adventures and conversations with the likes of his fellow billionaire Warren Buffett.

Interact with Bill and Warren.

Aside from Gates’ tweet, we don’t know how often his Gear VR channel will be updated, but it has to be a bit awkward for the Microsoft HoloLens team to watch their co-founder promote a competing platform.

But that’s their problem. In the meantime, if you have a Gear VR and a Samsung phone, you can check out Bill’s adventures in VR here.

WATCH: Someone made VR shoes and it’s as weird as it sounds

Read more: http://mashable.com/2017/04/09/bill-gates-samsung-gear-vr/