Why People Won’t Shut Up About VR
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| Why People Won’t Shut Up About VR | |
| Number | 2733 |
| Broadcast Date | APRIL 11, 2016 |
| Episode Length | 39:52 |
| Hosts | Tom Merritt |
| Guests | Allison Sheridan, Travis Falstad |
Is virtual reality good for anything but games? Industry vet Travis Falstad talks with Allison Sheridan and Tom Merritt about what VR is good for.
Guest
Headlines
- When Google Fiber launched in Kansas City, it encouraged neighborhoods to sign on by offering free 5Mbps Internet to anyone who paid the one-time $300 construction fee. Google Fiber is dropping that incentive now. In its place new subscribers can get 100Mbps for $50 a month with no construction fee. Gigabit fiber is $70 a month. Google Fiber is also broadening its efforts to connect underserved neighborhoods for free.
- Nikkei Asian Review reports Hitachi unveiled a robot Friday that will compete with SoftBank’s “Pepper” in the area of customer service. The “Emiew3” (Em-you-three) is smaller and faster than Pepper, and expected to hit the market in 2018. Pepper went on sale last June targeted at elderly assistance in households, though a Microsoft partnership will sell to retail. Emiew3 will be sold to corporations.
- An accidentally published page on Tmall gave an early look at Amazon’s Kindle Oasis as well. It has a large bezel on one side, a 300ppi screen weighs 131 grams, 3.4 to 8.5 mm thick. The page also described a rechargeable battery case that attaches with magnets and comes in three colors, providing 20 months of standby time. No mention of it being waterproof.
- HTC is expected to announce its new flagship HTC 10 phone at an event tomorrow, but a promo video leaked online gave an early sneak peek. The video shows a phone much like the HTC A9 with much chamfering of edges and a camera bump similar to the iPhone and USB-C connectivity.
- BlackBerry CEO John Chen told Abu Dhabi newspaper The National that Blackberry will launch two mid-range Android phones this year. Chen gave no details on the exact release date but said one phone will come with a physical keyboard and the other a touchscreen. Chen said the $700 Priv “was too high-end a product”. During the three months to the end of March the Priv sold 600,000 units instead of the 850,000 anticipated by analysts.
- Ars Technica notes the US Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit overturned a decision that halted the Mississippi Attorney General’s investigation into how Google deals with links to illegal things including copyright violations. The appeals court noted Google could decline to comply with a subpoena so didn’t need injunctive relief given by the lower court. The MPAA has worked closely with Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood on the case. The MPAA is pushing to strengthen the DMCA and focusing on Google in particular.
- Singapore’s carrier, StarHub is partnering with Huawei to bring gigabit LTE to Singapore in the spring of 2017. The 4.5G service which promises will roll out in the central business district. Devices that can take advantage of the speed have yet to hit the market. StarHub is currently rated as the world’s fastest LTE operator with average speeds of 38 Mbps.
- Reddit user midwesternhousewives posted a discovery of a visual clue in Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out for the NES which came out in 1987. A face in the crowd ducks in the second Piston Honda and Bald Bull fights. If a punch is timed with the duck the opposing fighter will be taken out with one punch.
- Submitted by habichuelacondulce
- Tech in Asia reports that Ai, Alibaba’s Artificial Intelligence, predicted all the winners for the Chinese TV Talent show “I’m a Singer”. Alibaba Cloud’s chief scientist for artificial intelligence, Dr. Min Wanli, said after the show “The results demonstrated that Ai is making significant progress to understand human emotions and how people make decisions”. Dr. Wanli had previously worked on IBM’s AI Watson. Ai made its predictions based on data culled from social media, song popularity, and contestant ability.
- Tesla is voluntarily recalling 2,700 Model X vehicles to fix a flaw in the third-row seat. Strength tests ahead of a European release found that the locking hinge could fail causing the seat to go down in a crash. Owners will be contacted to schedule replacement over the next five weeks.
- Submitted by pcguy8088_
- Strategy Analytics predicts global revenues from VR headsets will reach $895 million this year. Oculus, HTC and Sony will account for 77% of that number, while only making up 13% of the 12.8 million units. The rest will be made up of lower-cost smartphone based VR systems.
Discussion
Pick of the Day
- After listening to Tom and Veronica talk about bots, my pick is a 2015 book by Pedro Domingos, a leading researcher in machine learning.
In "The Master Algorithm: How the Quest for the Ultimate Learning Machine Will Remake Our World", Domingos provides a history of machine learning and describes the five different approaches to it, and how the Holy Grail of machine learning is a "master algorithm" -- a single universal learning algorithm that could derive all past,present, and future knowledge and change the world.
It's a fascinating read for anyone with an interest in AI, and Domingos even provides some resources for those interested in entering the field of machine learning. - Submitted by Bruce from Peterborough, Canada
- After listening to Tom and Veronica talk about bots, my pick is a 2015 book by Pedro Domingos, a leading researcher in machine learning.
Messages
- Voicemail by Meachamus Prime from lovely Huntsville, Alabama
- Further proof of IP address doesn't equal physical address.
Came across this article posted today about many people who are getting harassed and having trouble with law enforcement because people are using services to tie an IP address to a physical location.
One 80 year old lady has over 6 million IP addresses tied to her physical address because of the way a default in a database was set up.
Thank you for all the great content! Always look forward to the next episode."
Here's what's going on
In 2002, when a Massachusetts-based digital mapping company called MaxMind decided to point unresolved IP addresses to the center of the country. The geographical center of the US is in northern Kansas. It rounded the coordinates off. To the front yard of Joyce Taylor’s house.
5,000 companies rely on MaxMind’s IP mapping information. - Sent by Justin
- Further proof of IP address doesn't equal physical address.
YouTube
Links
| Preceded by: "When Technology Becomes Boring" |
Why People Won’t Shut Up About VR |
Followed by: "Alibaba is a Fickle Genie" |