Every year, Bill Gates goes off-grid, leaves friends and family behind, and spends two weeks holed up in a cabin reading books. His annual reading list rivals Oprah’s Book Club as a publishing kingmaker. Not to be outdone, Mark Zuckerberg shared a reading recommendation every two weeks for a year, dubbing 2015 his “Year of Books.” Susan Wojcicki, CEO of YouTube, joined the board of Room to Read when she realized how books like The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate were inspiring girls to pursue careers in science and technology. Many a biotech entrepreneur treasures a dog-eared copy of Daniel Suarez’s Change Agent, which extrapolates the future of CRISPR. Noah Yuval Harari’s sweeping account of world history, Sapiens, is de rigueur for Silicon Valley nightstands....

Back in high school, my favorite teacher said to me: ”Jonathan. Remember to die a little every day.” Back then, I thought it was a strange thing to say. Both him and I were and are generally optimistic people, so why even bother thinking about such a sad thing as death? And why did he mention it to me, when I shared my passion for starting new projects with him?Today, I understand what he meant. Hans Oluf, which was the name of my high school teacher, officially taught Danish literature to me, but ending up giving me one of the most important insights into entrepreneurship and life.Jumping forward from high-school to today, around 20 years later, I’ve become a quite well-known entrepreneur in Scandinavia. I’ve founded five companies, and I’ve had businesses with offices in Paris, London, Amsterdam, Munich, and Palo Alto. I’ve been named Entrepreneur of the Year, and I’ve lived entrepreneurship in both body and soul....

To begin with, Samsung would be competing for a narrow slice of a small market. While 4K Blu-ray disc sales have been , they're part of a declining industry. Overall disc sales fell 11.5 percent in the third quarter of 2018. It's a tough space to be in, and even brands like Oppo Digital have . It didn't help that Samsung's players didn't support Dolby Vision (just HDR10 and HDR10+), ruling them out for home theater enthusiasts who either don't have HDR10 TVs or simply prefer Dolby's approach to HDR video.There's also an elephant in the room: streaming. While many will tout Blu-ray's higher quality compared to streaming services, there's no doubt that there's a larger audience of people who would rather subscribe to Netflix or Amazon than buy physical movies. The Digital Entertainment Group noted that 2.3 million 4K Blu-ray devices sold in US during the first nine months of 2018, but those included game consoles that might never play a disc-based movie. Netflix, meanwhile, had over 148 million global subscribers by the end of 2018. Samsung might not want to pour money into disc players when they have an uncertain future, especially not when its TVs now have access to movie purchase and rental services ....

Shanghai-based artificial intelligence company Yitu Technology announced this month that is launching its first R&D center outside of China in Singapore. The move is part of a larger trend among Chinese tech companies hoping to achieve two goals: Access top foreign engineering and scientific talent by setting up R&D centers in key global knowledge hubs, and embed themselves deeper in local ecosystems to spur new long-term growth engines — most notably in Southeast Asia.The ultimate goal for many of China’s leading tech companies is to become true multinationals. Their strategy is to build a significant presence in their huge home market and then leverage that to branch out internationally. However, they face a steep learning curve: The free-for-all ethos and Darwinian natural selection that guide their modus operandi in China often prove to be counter-productive in smaller, more insulated markets....

Although it’s not the sexiest of industries, the hefty construction sector in 2018 attracted not only the attention but, more importantly, the dollars of investors.Historically, the multi-trillion-dollar sector has been slow to adopt new technologies, as builders rely on a variety of disparate systems to manage projects, traditional building methods to construct homes and non-smart materials.But a wave of startups is looking to capitalize on opportunities within the sector. Companies that have developed software solutions aimed at streamlining processes and increasing efficiencies are increasingly common. Prefab construction has evolved thanks to innovation in that space, and 3D printing technology can create homes in a matter of days....

The humble honeybee can use symbols to perform basic maths including addition and subtraction, shows new research published today in the journal Science Advances. Despite having a brain containing less than one million neurons, the honeybee has recently shown it can manage complex problems – like understanding the concept of zero.Honeybees are a high value model for exploring questions about neuroscience. In our latest study we decided to test if they could learn to perform simple arithmetical operations such as addition and subtraction.As children, we learn that a plus symbol (+) means we have to add two or more quantities, while a minus symbol (-) means we have to subtract quantities from each other....

Recommended Reading showcases the best long-form writing on technology and more on the web.

According to a report from the WSJ, Visa and Mastercard are considering raising interchange fees on card transactions in the U.S. Visa and Mastercard generate most of their revenue from these small processing fees, and it could have implications for merchants and fintech startups.When you pay with a credit or debit card, merchants pay a small fee to the bank that issued this card. Your bank then pays an even smaller fee to the company that operates the card network.In most cases, card issuers and card networks are separate companies. For instance, Chase issues a Visa card, Chase gets an interchange fee on every card transaction, and Chase pays a tiny fee to Visa. Some companies also operate a network and issue cards themselves, such as American Express....

You might be familiar with the concept of the uncanny valley, but a brief refresher: The more realistic a human simulation like an android or CG character becomes, the more we notice the small differences. Eventually we become repulsed. Sometimes we can't even articulate what's bothering us; we just know something feels off, and it makes us uneasy. An often-cited example is the dead eyes of Tom Hanks' various characters in Polar Express.For the most part, filmmakers are aware of this problem and try to avoid it, making their characters more cartoony or not human at all: Think Caesar from the most recent Planet of the Apes films or the cast of pretty much any Pixar movie. And Alita might initially seem to be another nonhuman character, given that she's a cyborg with a completely machine body: The only part of her that's fully biological, from the start of the film, is her brain. But the movie reminds us constantly that underneath those mechanical parts, she's still an emotionally fragile human girl....

Uber filed a lawsuit against New York City, The Verge reported. The company wants to overturn New York City’s rule that caps the number of new ride-hailing drivers. Last summer, the city approved legislation that halts the issuing of new licenses to drivers for 12 months.It has been a multi-year fight between Uber and New York City. NYC mayor Bill de Blasio has been in favor of new legislation to regulate ride-hailing companies for years. And the NYC Council finally voted in favor of such a new rule back in August 2018.Uber has had a strong stance against the new regulatory framework. Before the vote, the company even called loyal customers to ask them to call local council members and support Uber....

If you’ve read some of the less-than-stellar content you find splattered on the web, you’ve probably developed the opinion that literally anyone can crank out a blog post. While there might be some truth in that assumption, there’s a big difference between writing a blog post and writing a blog post that actually demands attention.It’s safe to say Darren Murph knows the difference. Now, you can find out what he knows about building digital audiences with his How to Write a Blog Post That Drives Traffic course. For a limited time, you can get it on sale for only $19.99 from TNW Deals.If you don’t know Murph, all you have to understand is that he’s the real deal. He holds the Guinness World Record as the planet’s most prolific professional blogger, hopscotching the globe and melding the worlds of marketing, editorial and public relations into work that garners audiences for some of the biggest brands on Earth....

Welcome back to Transportation Weekly; I’m your host Kirsten Korosec, senior transportation reporter at TechCrunch. This is the second edition and seriously people, what happened this week? Too much. Too much!Never heard of TechCrunch’s Transportation Weekly? Catch up here. As I’ve written before, consider this a soft launch. Follow me on Twitter @kirstenkorosec to ensure you see it each week. (An email subscription is coming).Off we go … vroom.There are OEMs in the automotive world. And here, (wait for it) there are ONMs — original news manufacturers. (Cymbal clash!) This is where investigative reporting, enterprise pieces and analysis on transportation lives....

We're closing things out with a teaser from Amazon, as well as a preview of Samsung's big Galaxy S10 event.

The AI icon Andrew Ng is quoted as saying, “Artificial intelligence is the new electricity.”  For anyone reading this, that’s a powerful analogy. Electricity empowers our surge in science and globalization over the past 100+ years, but the analogy falters in one overlooked regard.  Few of us know how the electric revolution began, and like all revolutions, it was dirty. Many are unaware, but those of us who forget history are condemned to repeat it. The sins of electricity are buried in the history books. You might know a fraction about the feud between Tesla and Edison. Fewer discuss the fires of houses with poor electrical conduit and insulation, and even fewer are told about Topsy the elephant, who was electrocuted for entertainment with 6,600 volts before a crowd.  ...

Greetings from Chittorgarh, one of my stops on a two-week excursion through Goa and Rajasthan, India. I’ve been a little too busy exploring, photographing cows and monkeys and eating a lot of delicious food to keep up with *all* the tech news, but I’ve still got the highlights.For starters, if you haven’t heard yet, TechCrunch launched Extra Crunch, a paid premium subscription offering full of amazing content. As part of Extra Crunch, we’ll be doing deep dives on select businesses, beginning with Patreon. Read Patreon’s founding story here and learn how two college roommates built the world’s leading creator platform. Plus, we’ve got insights on Patreon’s product, business strategy, competitors and more....

"It's over," said Mayor Bill de Blasio in an interview with WNYC on Friday. "And it's astounding, and it's disappointing and it's disrespectful to the people of New York City."The news caught many off guard. Amazon clearly didn't want officials to know ahead of time. According to reports, the company had still been in talks with officials as of Wednesday afternoon, with little sign that an about-face was about to happen. In , Bishop Mitchell Taylor — co-chair of New York's HQ2 Community Advisory Committee — said that nothing seemed out of the ordinary during meetings he had with Amazon liaisons on Thursday morning, just hours before the announcement."To get a call out of the blue saying 'See ya, we're taking our ball, we're going home' — it's absolutely inappropriate," the mayor said of how he was informed. "I've never experienced anything like this."...

Who decides the difference between threatening and newsworthy?

This article was originally published on SEXTECHGUIDE, an independent publication that looks at the intersection between sex and technology in a non-explicit, as close to a ‘safe for work’ way as possible – including app reviews, adult VR info, sextech devices, privacy, security issues, and much more. It was founded by ex-TNW European Editor Ben Woods, and can be found on Twitter and Facebook.  Cunni, a Hong Kong-based sextech startup, is aiming to close the orgasm gender gap with what it claims is the world’s first smart oral sex toy.It might not surprise you to hear that, on average, heterosexual women have fewer orgasms than any other group during sex. Researchers from US universities put it down to an number of things, from evolutionary factors to turn-taking in straight relationships, with this year’s Archive of Sexual Behaviors report concluding that 95 percent of heterosexual men regularly orgasm, compared to just 65 percent of straight women....

In 2018, face recognition technology (“FRT”) stumbled from childhood into adolescence in commercial applications. It evolved from being used primarily as a gimmick to unlock your phone or retrieve pictures of specific persons within your 60K pictures, to being used in an almost infinite number of commercial applications on a local scale (mostly in China, a frontrunner in FRT).Examples are checking in to hotels, buying chicken wings, monitoring signs of distraction or fatigue while driving, detecting problem gamblers in casinos and scanning for unwanted guests in a Taylor Swift audience.What does this mean for the EU? Will you be scanned too at the next concert you attend and have your face end up in one or more databases without you even knowing it? ...

If you have multiple Android devices or you're planning on purchasing a new smartphone in the near future, you know that all of your Google contacts will be viewable by any Android device you associate with your Google account. But what about those contacts isolated to your phone's local storage? Since those aren't stored in your Google cloud, they won't be available to other devices. So, how do you solve that conundrum? Easy... you migrate you contacts from the local storage to your Google account. I'll show you how to do that in two easy steps. (This tip assumes that you have a device associated with a Google account, and it contains a number of contacts on the local storage.)SEE: Job description: Android developer (Tech Pro Research)...

The results are imperfect (look at the area below the woman's eyes as proof), but when everything falls into place, it's disconcertingly realistic -- you sometimes wouldn't know a person is imaginary. It doesn't require much computational power, either. Wang Motherboard that he's using an NVIDIA GPU on a rented server to create a random face every two seconds. This isn't so much a technological breakthrough as a bid to raise awareness of AI's ability to manipulate images.The system in question isn't limited to faces. NVIDIA's technology can cars, cats and even bedrooms.It's a simple project on the surface, but it does illustrate the potential advantages and pitfalls of the technology. You could use this to create plausible characters for a story, but could also use it for scams that rely on bogus IDs and testimonials. Ideally, a website like this prompts discussion about the ethics of AI image manipulation before it goes too far....

As a part of the settlement, Niantic will agree to field any complaints from homeowners who claim Pokémon Go players have wandered into their yard in pursuit of a virtual pocket monster. Residents will have the right to file a removal request anywhere within 40 meters of their property if necessary. Niantic will have to maintain a database of complaints and will produce an in-app warning that will remind players to be respectful of peoples' property any time a group of 10 or more players gather in the same area.As a part of the agreement, Niantic will pay for an independent audit to make sure it is complying with all requirements. The company will also pay out $1,000 awards to the plaintiffs named in the lawsuit. All other property owners and renters who joined the class action will be given a 100-meter buffer between their property and any PokéStop or gym. (The biggest winner, as is often the story with class action lawsuits, is the law firm behind it. It will be able to seek up to $8 million in attorney's fees for work on the case.)...

Steve Jurvetson is staging a comeback, disclosing today that his new San Francisco-based, early-stage venture firm Future Ventures, has raised $200 million for its debut fund.“It’s good to be back in the saddle again,” says Jurvetson, whose career was somewhat famously derailed in the fall of 2017 when a former girlfriend wrote a Facebook post, accusing DFJ — the firm Jurvetson cofounded in 1985 — of “predatory behavior.” DFJ said publicly the next day that it was already investigating “indirect and secondhand allegations” about Jurvetson, and within weeks, the firm and Jurvetson seemingly had enough of each other, mutually deciding that it was time to part ways. (Jurvetson, who was recently wed for the second time, has since said he poorly handled his love interests, some of which he acknowledges were extramarital.)...

Far Cry New Dawn looks like it should be a big shakeup to the series, but once you peel back the outer layer of neon-pink paint, it’s the same old Far Cry underneath. If you like the series’ trademark open-world busywork, then it’ll scratch your itch. But, while it does show flashes of potential, the crazy post-apocalyptic mayhem it promises never really materializes.Far Cry 5 ended (at least canonically) with nuclear bombs wiping out most of the United States. New Dawn has absolutely no problem spoiling that, so I don’t either. After two decades, the nuclear winter has come and gone, and Hope County is in bloom once more. Society now consists of loose settlements, who must be saved from the tyranny of criminal overlords known as the Highwaymen....

CBS is now upgrading its forecast to target 25 million domestic streaming subscribers by 2022. Comparably, Netflix hit 60.55 million domestic subscribers in its fourth quarter last year, though it's been around much longer, has a larger library and the biggest streaming content .But CBS shouldn't have any issues stockpiling more content. Looking ahead, the broadcaster says its online and cable TV service will compliment each other. The example CBS boss Joe Ianniello used on its Q4 earnings call was taking season one of The Good Fight -- a CBS All Access exclusive -- and possibly putting it on CBS broadcast network. "They're are not leaving the ecosystem; they just want more," Ianniello said of streaming viewers, reports . "So let's give it to them."...

The Super Soaker crowd has multiple tools at its disposal as well. Fortnite's tactical shotgun is available as a pump-action water blaster for $20, while the rocket launcher shows up as the $20 RL (thankfully, you aren't actually firing water-filled projectiles). And if you're just looking for a Fortnite take on the classic squirt gun, the HC-E hand cannon will be available for $10.The lineup officially reaches shelves on March 22nd, with pre-orders available both through Hasbro as well as Amazon and Walmart.Check out the rest of our coverage from Toy Fair 2019 ....

Recovering from a network crash isn't as simple as it used to be, given the modern complex arrangements of hybrid cloud computing, security, and virtual servers. A systems administrator who wants to stay employed should consider the latest-and-greatest network recovery advice from Todd Matters, co-founder and chief architect of RackWare, and Scott Saunders, principal recovery solutions architect at Sungard Availability Services. "Having a recovery plan for your network is really just a part of a comprehensive disaster recovery plan," Matters said. "It's always a good idea to have some resiliency built-in. Of course there's cost-benefit tradeoffs there. Increasingly it's very economical to do some disaster recovery in the cloud."...

Apple has just bought up the talent it needs to make talking toys a part of Siri, HomePod, and its voice strategy. Apple has reportedly acquired PullString, also known as ToyTalk, according to Axios’ Dan Primack and Ina Fried. The company makes voice experience design tools, artificial intelligence to power those experiences, and toys like talking Barbie and Thomas The Tank Engine toys in partnership with Mattel. Founded in 2011 by former Pixar executives, PullString went on to raise $44 million.Apple’s Siri is seen as lagging far behind Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant, not only in voice recognition and utility, but also in terms of developer ecosystem. Google and Amazon has built platforms to distribute Skills from tons of voice app makers, including storytelling, quizzes, and other games for kids. If Apple wants to take a real shot at becoming the center of your connected living room with Siri and HomePod, it will need to play nice with the children who spend their time there. Buying PullString could jumpstart Apple’s in-house catalog of speech-activated toys for kids as well as beef up its tools for voice developers....

Hotel chain giant Marriott will now let you check if you’re a victim of the Starwood hack.The company confirmed to TechCrunch that it has put in place “a mechanism to enable guests to look up individual passport numbers to see if they were included in the set of unencrypted passport numbers.” That follows a statement last month from the company confirming that five million unencrypted passport numbers were stolen in the data breach last year.The checker, hosted by security firm OneTrust, will ask for some personal information, like your name, email address, as well as the last six-digits of your passport number....

Ever since Snapchat launched its Lens Studio in 2017, it has spent the past 13 months making a , and this is the first time it has partnered with another company to showcase its AR-making software. Nike, meanwhile, is using the collaboration as an opportunity to market its star NBA athletes. That means you'll see elements related to LeBron James, Kyrie Irving, Russell Westbrook, and others turned into part of augmented reality filters on Snapchat.Inside the Snapchat Workshop, which is located at pop-up in Charlotte, people can come in choose between four different templates from a custom version of Lens Studio: Sunglasses, Segmentation, Hat and Headband. Once you select one of these, the software populates virtual assets from Nike and Jordan Brand, like an inspirational quote from LeBron James that you put on your AR filter. If you're not a fan of LeBron, you can put the name of Wesbrook's signature shoe line ("Why not?") on your augmented reality glasses, or just pick a Nike headband with confetti....

To outsiders, President Trump’s brazen speech and unconventional style may make him seem like an outlier, the sum of leftover parts assembled by a pissed-off populace. But for one group of researchers, Trump’s idiosyncrasies aren’t so much a departure from societal norms as they are a continuation of a trend dating back more than a century.As a paper published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences explains, Trump is actually the culmination of a century-plus long trend in Presidential communication.Researchers came to this conclusion by studying campaign speeches and those that followed, relying on text analysis to measure Trump’s (and other world leaders) thinking, as made apparent by the things he says....

PowerUp Toys' flagship device is the PowerUp paper airplane kit, and it's been reimagined for its fourth iteration. Version 4.0 of the motorization kit features two propellers, providing additional power and maneuverability for your flights. The kit connects with a mobile app via Bluetooth to offer you control. It now features an autopilot feature, enabled by new onboard sensors that collect real-time flight data, that helps to stabilize your craft in windy conditions. The latest version of PowerUp will be available this fall for $59.99.If flight isn't your thing, PowerUp Toys has a new motor kit that offers some more flexibility. PowerUp Racers allows you to attach a motor to an origami car, boat or airplane and take control. The pack of tools includes a clip-on propulsion motor, three different folding templates to create a vehicle, wheels and fastening clips to complete the vehicle of your choice. PowerUp Racers will also drop this fall for $24.99. ...

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of death worldwide. About 610,000 people die of heart attacks and strokes in the U.S. every year, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, and worldwide, the number stands at about 17.9 million. CVD isn’t impossible to predict, fortunately — there’s a strong risk factor in coronary artery calcium (CAC) deposits that restrict blood flow. Unfortunately, measuring CAC requires experts who can closely inspect computerized tomography (CT) scans for worsening signs and symptoms.But there’s hope yet for a more automated approach.A newly published paper on the preprint server Arxiv.org (“Direct Automatic Coronary Calcium Scoring in Cardiac and Chest CT“) proposes an artificially intelligent (AI) system that can evaluate and score CAC without human supervision. That’s not especially novel — automated CAC tests have been around for a while. However, the coauthors claim that their system is up to hundreds of times faster than state-of-the-art methods....

Spreadsheets are part of the modern business world, and that means someday you're going to have to look at one. The kinds of features you need from your spreadsheet application can vary, though, with many users never coming close to needing the robust features of Microsoft Office's Excel. For those of us that aren't accountants crunching numbers every day, Microsoft Office, which includes Excel, can be prohibitively expensive. You're looking at paying $99 a year for a business user, $6.99 a month for home use, or $149.99 for an Office Home and Student 2019 license. If you don't have that kind of money, or don't need those kinds of features, or simply want to save cash, there are plenty of viable alternatives to Microsoft Excel that are available in the cloud and installed on your computer. Best of all, these alternatives are free....

There are restrictions beyond the timing. The Church wants missionaries to initiate any conversations, and asks them to use "good judgment" on the length of calls and chats. They're also told to be respectful of how this affects their missionary companions.The Church is direct in explaining why it's loosening the rules: the widened communications should help keep families in touch and give a boost to missionaries who are feeling homesick. Indirectly, it's also an acknowledgment that communication technology has changed -- there's a whole generation of missionaries that has grown up with smartphones and may prefer a video call to an email....

Watch out, starwhales. There’s a new weapon for the interstellar dwellers whom you threaten with your planet-crushing gigaflippers, undergoing testing as we speak. This small-scale version may only be good for removing dangerous orbital debris, but in time it will pierce your hypercarbon hides and irredeemable sun-hearts. However, it would be irresponsible of me to speculate beyond what is possible today with the technology, so let a summary of the harpoon’s present capabilities suffice.The space harpoon is part of the RemoveDEBRIS project, a multi-organization European effort to create and test methods of reducing space debris. There are thousands of little pieces of who knows what clogging up our orbital neighborhood, ranging in size from microscopic to potentially catastrophic....

I tried it out at the show, and it turns out a lot of the game is still the Pictionary we all know and love: You take a paper card with a list of things on it, and once the timer is started you draw those items, one at a time, moving on to the next as the other players successfully guess each one. But the timer has been moved to the app and the drawings will only appear on its screen. The game can be broadcasted to a nearby TV via Chromecast or Airplay, so the entire room can join in on the fun from the couch, rather than everyone crowding around a small tablet or phone display. One person will still need to hold the device to manage the timer and point the camera at the current artist.Instead of a pencil, the artist has a wand they wave in the air, sketching out the card prompts as best they can without the ability to see what they're drawing. It's tough, but it turns out I'm pretty good at it — I managed to successfully sketch out a camel, a baseball and eyelashes, though I was a bit less successful with more complex ideas like "Beauty and the Beast." It's sort of weird to see the finished drawings at the end though: turns out I didn't really attach a pair of wings too well on my fairy, and her wand looked more like a sparkler. You're gonna need good spatial recognition for this, and people who are usually excellent at drawing may find it a real challenge....

Welcome to TNW Basics, a collection of tips, tricks, guides, and advice on how to get the most out of your gadgets, apps, and other stuff.Of all the things you want to do after losing a loved one, cleaning up their social media profiles will probably be at rock bottom on the list. And even when you do get around to it, it can be needlessly complicated, requiring your loved ones to provide proof of your death, deleting your accounts, and possibly downloading your information so as not to lose it.If you want to avoid that, you can use Facebook’s legacy system. Doing so allows one trusted person to look after your account after your death,  and it also turns your profile page into a memorial to your life....

Each week, the NBA will host a watch party in the hope fans will check out recaps and videos together in real time and discuss them. The WNBA, NBA G League and NBA 2K League will have watch parties too, but those will take place monthly. The NBA has an extensive reach on Facebook, with more than 400 million followers across various player, team and league pages.The deal expands the on Watch as Facebook tries to draw fans to watch games there. Facebook has streamed (or will soon offer) and ....

Thanks to environmentally conscious young buyers, throwaway culture is dying not only in the U.S., but also in Latin America — and startups are poised to jump in with services to help people recycle used clothing.GoTrendier, a peer-to-peer fashion marketplace operative in Mexico and Colombia, has raised $3.5 million USD to do just that. And investors are eyeing the startup as the digital fashion marketplace growth leader in Spanish-speaking countries. GoTrendier, founded by Belén Cabido, is a platform that lets users buy and sell secondhand clothing. Cabido tells me that the new capital will enable GoTrendier to expand deeper into Mexico and Colombia, and launch in a new country: Chile. ...

It’s been an eventful week in tech. Amazon announced it would abandon plans to open one of its two HQ2 locations in New York City, and the company also acquired Wi-Fi mesh network startup Eero for an undisclosed sum — a hint at Amazon’s future smart home ambitions. The California Department of Motor Vehicles released reports from companies currently testing self-driving cars — like Apple, Alphabet’s Waymo, and GM Cruise. Google pledged to spend $13 billion on U.S. datacenters and offices in 24 states this year, and driverless truck startup TuSimple raised $95 million at a $1 billion valuation, joining the ranks of Aurora and Nuro as one of the best-funded companies in the autonomous vehicle industry....

Similar to Lenovo's augmented reality game , Lightsaber Academy comes with a standard, extendable lightsaber base. Once connected to the accompanying smartphone app, the device starts to stand out. It features walk-through on how to fight like five different characters, including Yoda, Rey, Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker and Kylo Ren. The guide explains each character's poses and attack styles and uses motion tracking to record progress. The app evaluates the user's ability to master each style and scores them as they play through different challenges. Like foam lightsaber toy , the Lightsaber Academy also lets you go head-to-head and battle with other players.Hasbro's Star Wars Lightsaber Academy lightsabers will retail for $49.99. Versions of the sabers that don't include Bluetooth connectivity will be available for $7.99 and will come in red, blue and green. Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader models will also be available for $19.99. While they won't be able to connect directly with the mobile app, they can still access some content via QR code. All of the lightsaber models will be available on October 4th....

Reinforcement learning — a machine learning training technique that uses rewards to drive AI agents toward certain goals — is a reliable means of improving said agents’ decision-making, given plenty of compute, data, and time. But it’s not always practical; model-free approaches, which aim to get agents to directly predict actions from observations about their world, can take weeks of training.Model-based reinforcement learning is a viable alternative — it has agents come up with a general model of their environment they can use to plan ahead. But in order to accurately forecast actions in unfamiliar surroundings, those agents have to formulate rules from experience. Toward that end, Google in collaboration with DeepMind today introduced the Deep Planning Network (PlaNet) agent, which learns a world model from image inputs and leverages it for planning. It’s able to solve a variety of image-based tasks with up to 5000 percent the data efficiency, Google says, while maintaining competitiveness with advanced model-free agents....

When does “delete” really mean delete? Not always or even at all if you’re Twitter .Twitter retains direct messages for years, including messages you and others have deleted, but also data sent to and from accounts that have been deactivated and suspended. Security researcher Karan Saini found years-old messages found in a file from an archive of his data obtained through the website.Saini told TechCrunch that he had “concerns” that the data was retained by Twitter for so long.Direct messages once let users to “unsend” messages from someone else’s inbox, simply by deleting it from their own . Twitter changed this years ago, and now only allows a user to delete messages from their account. “Others in the conversation will still be able to see direct messages or conversations that you have deleted,” Twitter says in a help page. Twitter also says in its privacy policy that anyone wanting to leave the service can have their account “deactivated and then deleted.” After a 30-day grace period, the account disappears and along with its data....

Apple strives for refined operation, which is one of the reasons Macs don't even have disk activity lights. But what should Mac users do when they wish to monitor memory usage, disk and network activity, CPU performance, and other system information? Sure, the macOS Activity Monitor tracks such metrics, but what if users wish to receive custom notifications and monitor activity unobtrusively without stealing screen real estate needed for other programs? That's where the iStat Menus app comes into play. The $9.99 Bjango Pty Ltd.iStat Menus 6 app delivers customizable performance monitoring that displays corresponding metrics within a Mac's menu bar. With the third-party utility, Mac users can, at a glance, confirm network, disk, memory, CPU, sensor, battery, and power performance metrics. Figure A provides an example in which the iStat Menus app is customized to display just CPU, memory, disk, and network status....

The housing market is predicted to cool this year, but the market for startups selling houses? It seems to be heating up. Opendoor, the company that aims to bypass real estate agents and brokers by providing an online platform — by way of a mobile app — for people to buy and sell properties direct, has filed papers in Delaware indicating that it would like to raise around $200 million more, at a valuation of about $3.7 billion.The raise comes just one month after Knock, an Opendoor competitor, raised $400 million.Eric Wu, Opendoor’s CEO and co-founder, did not respond to a request for comment, and a spokesperson for Opendoor declined to comment....

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.1. Did New York lose anything with Amazon’s rejection? It’s complicated.Amazon announced yesterday that it’s taking its ball and going home, rather than dealing with mean, pushy New Yorkers (warning: not an exact quote). As a result, some outside observers are painting a picture of a city and its politicians losing out for their recalcitrance.Jon Shieber acknowledges that there’s plenty to criticize on both sides. But for those who think New Yorkers are idiots for not giving Amazon billions in tax incentives, he has a simple message: You’re wrong....

NYC and Boston were handed huge setbacks this week when Amazon and GE decided to bail on their commitments to build headquarters in the respective cities on the same day. But it’s worth pointing out that while these large tech organizations were pulling out, Google was expanding in both locations.Yesterday upon hearing about Amazon’s decision to scrap its HQ2 plans in Long Island City, New York City Mayor De Blasio had this to say: “Instead of working with the community, Amazon threw away that opportunity. We have the best talent in the world and every day we are growing a stronger and fairer economy for everyone. If Amazon can’t recognize what that’s worth, its competitors will.” One of them already has. Google had already announced a billion dollar expansion in Hudson Square at the end of last year....

Amazon posted a trio of tweets about the upcoming project, the first of which is an apt quote from Tolkien: "I wisely started with a map." Amazon also released an "interactive" map of Middle-earth, but so far all you can do is zoom in and out and scoot around the landscape.The map doesn't include any named locations as yet, but there's every chance that Amazon will update it to tease out more details of the show. For now, it remains as mysterious as the series' synopsis. This is the part of the post where we'd normally tell you when you can start streaming a show, but all we can offer for now is a hearty shrug....

Ahead of its anticipated initial public offering this year, Uber reported a net loss of $865 million in the fourth quarter. That figure, however, was aided by a tax benefit that saved the company from reporting a $1.2 billion net loss in the period. On an adjusted, pro-forma basis, Uber’s net loss in the final quarter of 2018 was a slimmer $768 million.The figures are an improvement of sorts. The firm reported a pro-forma net loss of $939 million in the preceding, third quarter of 2018, but also reported a smaller pre-tax net loss of $971 million. Regardless, Uber’s stiff losses continued in the quarter....

"Dubai Airports has worked closely with the appropriate authorities to ensure that the safety of airport operations is maintained at all times and to minimize any inconvenience to our customers," the airport said.As in the US, Dubai's laws clearly prohibit the flying of drones in "near, around and over airports." Today, the country's media office reiterated the legal implications of operating a drone without first obtaining a license.Back in December, flights at were stopped for around 36 hours over a suspected drone sighting. The chaos impacted more than 140,000 passengers as law enforcement to confirm the UAV sighting. Just weeks later, the UK's busiest airport was forced to delay flights for around an hour for the same reason. Both Gatwick and Heathrow later revealed that they'd spent millions of pounds on "military-grade" in the wake of the incidents....

Samsung has released a new version of its popular Galaxy tablets with the introduction of the Galaxy Tab S5e. This Android tablet follows the Galaxy Tab S4 that came out in August last year, and whereas the S4 targets business users, the Galaxy Tab S5e has more of a consumer focus with a push for users who want a premium entertainment experience. Samsung hasn't forgotten the enterprise with this tablet, however, in that it still can be used with a keyboard, sold separately, coupled with Samsung DeX for a PC-like environment. It's also more functional than the entertainment-focused Galaxy Tab A. The new tablet is at a lower price point than its predecessor. The Galaxy Tab S5e has a starting price tag of $399.99, compared to the starting price of $649.99 for the Galaxy Tab S4. The Galaxy Tab A Wi-Fi version is $299.99....

In a November presentation given to parent company Alphabet and seen by the Star, Sidewalk Labs reveals that it doesn't intend to construct buildings on the majority of the land but does plan to attempt to benefit from other developers building on the property. In one slide, the company claims to be "entitled to ... a share in the uptick in land value on the entire geography ... a share of developer charges and incremental tax revenue on all land."The area subject to development, located in Port Lands, is expected to generate an estimated $6 billion over 30 years. That money would typically go to the city's coffers, but Sidewalk Labs intends to lay claim to at least some share of it. The company has walked back some of the claims in the leaked presentation....

Facebook has revealed additional details about the development of Portal, its first in-house video calling device, including the tidbit that early prototypes included a motor that let Portal swivel to face video subjects.If the plan was to sell lots of video calling devices, it’s probably best that a swiveling Portal was never released. Following Facebook’s persistent parade of controversy, privacy concerns raised by Portal were bad enough without the device turning to face you when it senses your presence.A motorized camera was also seen as impractical because it did not improve Portal’s reliability, Facebook engineers said in a blog post today.Work to build Portal began two years ago as part of the secretive Building 8 project for exploring hardware products at Facebook’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California, Portal team lead and Facebook VP Rafa Camargo told VentureBeat ahead of the device’s debut last fall....

When Facebook's AI research group (FAIR) began working on the systems that would eventually become the Portal two years ago, the team asked itself, "How do we create an automated a camera that will feel natural, will feel engaging and would actually not get in the way," Camargo explained to Engadget. "The key thing for us, is really invoking that we are connected in the two rooms and making you feel like you're there and just hanging out."In order to create that effect, the Portal team designed the device's Smart Camera to mimic the movements and judgements of human camera operators. That involved collaborating with "award winning film directors, documentary producers, and camera people," Camargo said. Their feedback helped steer development until "we're essentially to the point where literally the camera disappears because it becomes so natural that you just don't notice the camera. You just see the scene and what's happening."...

The highest performing managed services providers (MSPs) are increasing cloud adoption and addressing security concerns, in order to find high-margin avenues to deliver infrastructure, according to Kaseya's annual MSP Benchmark Survey released on Thursday. The eighth annual survey analyzes the strategies MSPs use to stay ahead of the game. SEE: Vendor comparison: Microsoft Azure, Amazon AWS, and Google Cloud (Tech Pro Research) Current IT industry trends pose many challenges for MSPs; these trends include the management of hybrid and multi-cloud environments, increased security, and the demand for data backup and protection, the report said. Top MSPs hold an average annual monthly recurring revenue growth of more than 20%, by focusing on the cloud and security....

Enterprise software firm Atlassian has released a survey of software developers, revealing a changing landscape in the modern world of software development. The seeds of this change can be found in new priorities that developers say they have: "Modern software teams are now shifting their focus away from the traditional measurements of speed, velocity, and efficiency in favor of goals around increasing customer satisfaction and quality code," said Sean Regan, Atlassian's head of growth for software teams, in a blog post.SEE: System update policy template download (Tech Pro Research) In order to accomplish those goals, the survey found, developers are turning to four strategies that are likely to be growing trends in the development world....

"We are excited to have Amazon with us on our journey to create products, technology and experiences that reset expectations of what is possible," Rivian's CEO RJ Scaringe said.Rivian revealed its and in November, and shipments are expected to start next year. It's not entirely certain what Amazon's end game is with the investment. That said, it's clearly taking a deeper interest in transportation (which makes sense for a company that has ) as it ...

Online social game Roblox has reinstated PewDiePie's account after banning the popular YouTuber over an "inappropriate username".PewDiePie revealed the ban in a video on his YouTube channel to his more than 85 million subscribers.Other users then reported that they had received bans or warnings simply for mentioning the YouTuber's name.PewDiePie's account was eventually reinstated, with Roblox calling the ban "incorrect". "Roblox is committed to providing a safe and civil platform for our players, including blocking memes that represent or are synonymous for behaviour that falls outside of our community standards," it said in a post on its developer forums."In December, 'pewdie' became one of these negative memes on Roblox. As such, we began blocking the creation of new usernames that incorporated the term....

Charging output: 100 W ACTotal capacity: 22,000 mAh, or roughly 81 WhWeight: 26.7 ounces (756 grams)Dimensions: 7.5 by 4.5 by 1.1 inches (19 by 11.4 by 2.8 centimeters)The is the most affordable charger we tested and has power on par with the Mophie, but it feels less refined overall. The RAVPower feels much bulkier and has a more finicky interface, and its unwieldy charging cord and power brick are a chore to haul around. It's also about a quarter of a pound heavier, and its grippy rubber finish collects fingerprints. These details aside, the RAVPower offers great performance for its price. Its maximum power output is just 4 watts lower than that of our pick, and it can fully recharge a MacBook Air once. It has the same output-port options as our pick too, plus an extra USB-A port. It's the one we'd get if we needed one of these in a pinch and the Mophie wasn't available....

Larry Sanger, one of Wikipedia’s co-founders along with Jimmy Wales, has ironically been globally blocked from editing Wikipedia — so he took to Twitter to remedy it.We reached out to Sanger, who has no idea why his account has been locked. “Possibly someone logged in as me and did some damage, but I think I would have learned about that,” Sanger told TNW.In the nine hours since the account was blocked, Wikipedia hasn’t responded to Sanger — nor replied to our questions on the matter — to explain what caused the block. And Sanger seems like an unlikely person to commit any of the ‘lockable’ offenses listed in the platform’s policy, like:Larry Sanger and Jimmy Wales haven’t been on the best of terms since Sanger left Wikipedia back in 2002. They’ve clashed over a range of things, like how to manage an open online encyclopedia. Sanger even wrote an 8,000 word essay here on TNW, detailing how to make a better Wikipedia and has started a new blockchain-based encyclopedia called Everipedia....

Clarification hasn’t always been Twitter’s strong suit. Fittingly, there’s a bit of confusion around the longstanding suggestion that the service could add an “edit” button in order to save users from silly typos and, well, much, much worse. At a Goldman Sachs event this week, Jack Dorsey clarified that, rather than adding a controversial edit function, Twitter might just let people “clarify” earlier statements. The feature, it seems, is less aimed at the typo part of the equation than the whole ongoing thing with people living to regret some horrible thing they said to the world years prior. ...

The audio and video were sometimes garbled in individual player streams. The commentators (or casters in eSports parlance) occasionally sounded and the gameplay at points looked like an incomprehensible, trippy kaleidoscope of color. There were framerate issues as well, particularly with the multiviewer streams that combine a player's perspective with the main broadcast feed, an overhead map and way too many stats to comprehend at once.The multiviewer streams had some of their own, like the casters' volume to hear. Blizzard's Overwatch League team (which is than last year's in the wake of ) that issue, but the poor framerate was more of a persistent problem.Beyond the technical issues, which should hopefully be fixed by the next broadcast, the lack of deeper customization was disappointing. Each of the streams and presets (the broadcast stream, player feeds, overhead map and the multiviewer that combines all three) are set up as individual Twitch streams. That means people who find the links to said streams (and they're ) won't necessarily have to pay for the All-Access Pass to watch a player's individual perspective....

Rivian, the electric automaker that debuted its first two vehicles just three months ago, has raised $700 million in a round led by Amazon .The news follows a report earlier this week by Reuters that GM and Amazon were in talks to invest in the electric vehicle company.“We’re inspired by Rivian’s vision for the future of electric transportation,” Amazon CEO Worldwide Consumer Jeff Wilke said in a statement. “RJ has built an impressive organization, with a product portfolio and technology to match. We’re thrilled to invest in such an innovative company.”Rivian says it will remain an independent company. The equity round also includes participation from existing shareholders. ALJ is the company’s primary investor. Rivian and Amazon are not disclosing additional details about this investment....

But, perhaps the craziest difference between Nike's two self-lacing models is the price: the HyperAdapt 1.0 cost $720 at launch, whereas the Adapt BB are priced for less than half that, . That's still a lot of money for shoes, sure, but Nike hopes that all the tech inside them will be enough to appeal to many consumers -- . , the BB's auto-lacing system consists of a custom motor that senses the tension needed by your feet and adjusts itself accordingly to keep each foot snug in the shoes. If you need to tweak the comfort levels, you can do so with the companion Adapt app or the two physical buttons on the BB's midsole.Nike is calling FitAdapt its "most advanced fit solution to date," adding that it is designed to provide a "truly customized fit for every basketball player." As someone who has worn the Adapt BBs before, I can definitely say that they are more comfortable than I expected them to be. They feel like normal sneakers, which wasn't the case for the HyperAdapt 1.0. Those felt clunky and, in my case, I had to get a bigger size than I normally would in order to feel comfortable wearing them....

For homeowners that want to go green, but have trouble figuring out how to do it, Palmetto Clean Technologies has the answer.The company has an army of salespeople to pitch the benefits of solar power and energy efficiency, and will connect would-be clean energy consumers with financing options, installers, and software to monitor and manage their equipment.What Palmetto lacked, until the new $20 million credit line it has received from the utility-backed investment firm, Energy Impact Partners, is a way to smooth its revenues while it fronted the costs of solar panel acquisitions and installation....

Every network admin knows what DHCP is. Simply put, it's a means of handing out dynamically-assigned IP addresses to client machines. Most administrators tend to defer the dolling out of those dynamic addresses to a Windows server machine or a provider-deployed router or other pieces of hardware. But what if you want to make Linux your one-stop-shop for IP addresses on your network? Believe it or not, it's actually quite easy.I'm going to walk through the process of setting up DHCP on Ubuntu Server 18.04. The process is quite simple, so it shouldn't take much time at all (about five minutes).SEE: Server deployment/migration checklist (Tech Pro Research)The only things you need for this are a running instance of Ubuntu Server 18.04 and a user account with sudo privileges. That's it. Let's work....

If my house was on fire and I could only pick up one bit of technology, it might just be the UE BOOM 3 that I grab first. God, I love it.

By applying AI and machine learning to multiple data sources—genetic data, EHRs, sensor data, lifestyle data—researchers are taking first steps.

Required reports by the California Department of Motor Vehicles from companies testing out autonomous vehicles on California's public roads show major deficiencies in self-driving automobile functionality, according to calculations by Consumer Watchdog. These autonomous vehicles, on average, require one human takeover for every 14 miles tested, the report found. In total, 28 companies—including Uber, Apple, Toyota, Waymo, and GM Cruise—racked up over 2 million miles of testing, and more than 145,402 disengagements, the report said. Most of the disengagements were due to the inability of autonomous cars to handle unpredictable situations that human drivers deal with on a daily basis, the report added....

Earlier today, Dubai’s International airport shut down flights for roughly half an hour, owing to the sighting a drone flying nearby. Departures were halted from 10:13 a.m. and 10:45 a.m over  “suspected drone activity,” those arriving flights were still able to land. The airport’s social team took to Twitter to update the situation, while noting, “Authorities warned that flying drones without obtaining permission is subject to legal liability as per UAE laws.”DXB consistently ranks among the top three busiest airlines by passenger volume. In 2018, the airport saw more than 88 million passengers. It’s the latest in a recent string of scares involving personal drones flying too close to commercial airport. At the height of the holiday season last year, London’s Gatwick airport was closed for a day and a half over similar concerns....

Netflix signed a multi-year deal with Transformers toy-maker in 2012 that brought its golden oldies to the streamer. The new spinoff should feel at home alongside Netflix's other '80s toon revivals, including and ....

We rarely think too much about noises as we’re listening to them, but there’s an enormous amount of complexity involved in isolating audio from places like crowded city squares and busy department stores. In the lower levels of our auditory pathways, we segregate individual sources from backgrounds, localize them in space, and detect their motion patterns — all before we work out their context.Inspired by this neurophysiology, a team of researchers shared in a preprint paper on Arxiv.org (“Enhanced Robot Speech Recognition Using Biomimetic Binaural Sound Source Localization“) a design devised to test the influence of physiognomy — that is, facial features — on the components of sound recognition, like sound source localization (SSL) and automatic speech recognition (ASR)....

By Lance Eliot, the AI Trends Insider Here’s an age-old question for you, do the ends justify the means? Some trace the origins of this thorny question to the Latin collection Heroides as reportedly written by Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso), namely it states “Exitus acta probat,” which loosely translated could be interpreted as to whether …

Three cities, three dead urban unicorn renewal projects.In just the past few days, we’ve had Foxconn renege on Wisconsin, Amazon renege on NYC, and GE renege on Boston. Each followed the Anna Karenina principle that every unhappy economic development deal is unhappy in its own way: for Foxconn, it was trade tariffs and slowing iPhone sales; for Amazon, it was populist protests plus the usual NYC corruption; for GE, it was the reality of looking at a mirror and finding that you’re staring at a dumpster fire.Yet, there are eerie similarities, other than the fact that I have practically lived next door to every single one of these projects (if you call Wisconsin next door to the better-looking state of Minnesota)....

The current generation of AI self-driving cars does not have a certification process akin to standards in the aviation industry,

Parental leave in the US leaves a lot to be desired. A 2017 survey conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that only 13% of private-industry employees had access to paid family leave (PFL) through their employer. Currently, New York, California, New Jersey, and Rhode Island—with more states to follow—are the only states to offer Family Leave Insurance Program Provisions, which grant eligible employees paid leave for the arrival of a new child by birth, adoption, or foster care; however, there is no federal law requiring private-sector employers to offer PFL, making the US the only developed country in the world that does not offer the benefit to its citizens. Under the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA), certain employees are allowed 12 weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave per year, but only if their employer meets specific requirements....

"One thing that we're seeing right now," said Dorsey, "is people 'being canceled' because of past things that they said on Twitter." That's probably a nod to , who lost his gig hosting the 2019 Academy Awards after homophobic tweets from 2011 were surfaced. "There's no credible way to go back and clarify, or have a conversation to show the learning and transition since," added Dorsey.So, rather than just deleting the original tweet (which people could still do), Dorsey and his team is looking at a way of keeping it up. But attached to that would be a clarification, or rebuttal, resembling a quote tweet, to help explain the prior statement. Dorsey added that the clarification in whatever form couldn't be removed, so people couldn't quote-tweet the original and potentially misrepresent it out of context....

McAfee and really the whole industry has embraced AI as a key tool to help develop a new set of cyberdefense technologies

If the question is whether the tech industry doing enough to address AI algorithmic biases, the straightforward response is no.

The best audio you’ll find in true wireless earbuds is offset by features that are annoying to use.

If you’re a Coinbase user, you may have seen some new tokens on your account. The Bitcoin Cash chain split into two different chains back in November. It means that if you held Bitcoin Cash on November 15, you became the lucky owner of Bitcoin SV and Bitcoin ABC. And Coinbase just started handing out Bitcoin SV to its users if you’re involved in the split.The split happened because Bitcoin Cash developers couldn’t agree on an upgrade. Some developers backed an upgrade to the code called Bitcoin ABC while others defended a more conservative update dubbed Bitcoin Satoshi Vision (Bitcoin SV)....

The Green New Deal has burst onto the American stage, spurring more conversation about – and aspiration for – ambitious climate policy than at any point in at least a decade.I’m glad to see it. Suddenly, climate is on the agenda, and ambitions for climate policy are higher than perhaps at any point in US history. The Green New Deal is a resolution right now. It’s a statement of intent. It hasn’t yet progressed to the point of detailed policy proposals or legislation, which means now is the time to help craft its details.For the last decade I’ve written about and publicly spoken about innovation in clean technology and ways to address climate change. I’ve helped to lead a climate-fighting citizen ballot initiative in my home state of Washington, invested in clean energy startups, and advised on climate and clean energy policies of other nations. ...

There's way around this for there not to be a fire raging somewhere at Samsung HQ. All fingers point to the company announcing a total of . In addition to the S10 and S10+, which will be the natural successors to last year's , we'll also be welcoming the S10E to the family. The S10E is expected to be the of the trio: A slightly scaled-back flagship with a price tag that hovers an attractive distance below the that's become all too familiar of late. Same branding, fewer Benjamins.We're not completely clear yet as to what inevitable compromises the S10E will make compared to the S10 and S10+ proper, but a smaller screen size seems a dead cert. Case-centric leaks and other sources peg the S10E as having a 5.8-inch display, while the S10 and S10+ will bump that to 6.1 and 6.4 inches, respectively. The S10E is also expected to feature a flat display where the other two will retain a curvature to the screens at their sides....

Aggressive chatbots. Autoplaying video. Slow-loading images. Pop-ups. If we were playing “$20,000 Pyramid,” your answer to those clues would likely be something like, “Stuff that makes me hate a website.”Intrusive, irritating or just downright incompetent site elements are a great way to drive away users in droves. Crafting sites that take user experience into account is paying some web developer specialists annual salaries approaching six figures. You can learn what UX design is all about (or even become a UX specialist yourself) with the Intro to UX Design with Jamal Nichols course on sale now for only $9.99, 65 percent off from TNW Deals.Even if you’ve never built web pages or apps before, industry expert Jamal Nichols breaks down the principles of UX design and, more importantly, explains how and why those elements connect with a user....

Most of us learned “the rule” in high school.  If you ran with the cool kids (or better yet, if you WERE the cool kid), you were popular. As all the in-crowd hangers-on knew so well, finding yourself in the orbit of what’s hip, trendy and the center of attention has some unquestionable spillover effect.This principle also applies to the current belle of the social media ball Instagram. Instagram gets attention — and for a brand, that can translate into sales. You can find out how to turn IG into substantial revenue with the Sell More With Instagram with Sue B. Zimmerman course, now $9.99 (89 percent off) from TNW Deals.If you want to learn the real ins and outs of capitalizing in the social media sphere, Sue B. Zimmerman is the right person to turn to for answers. Known as #InstagramGal and #TheInstagramExpert, she’s made a career consulting brands on messaging and, more specifically, tailoring that messaging to the Instagram audience....

The world of blockchain and cryptocurrency is rather confusing for those looking in from the outside. Granted, it’s a tight-knit circle – but it won’t be for long. While there are still plenty of unanswered questions, blockchain technology opens doors for our future that we never thought possible.At TNW2019’s Hard Fork track, we’ll explore how we’ll use blockchain in the next five to 10 years, and how we can achieve mass adoption in the face of uncertainty. Here are some of the themes that our lineup of speakers will explore on stage: These days, transparency in king when it comes to business. Finding ways to build trust with clients and customers goes a long way in differentiating yourself from the competition. Many organizations are already doing this successfully, but technologies like blockchain can enhance integrity and trust even further. So how can companies use it effectively?...

If you administer containers, chances are you've been on the lookout for a solid client tool to help with management tasks. One of the more popular GUI tools is Kitematic. With Kitematic, you can:For the longest time, Kitematic was only available for macOS. Now, however, support for Ubuntu Linux has been added. I'm going to show you how to install Kitematic on System 76's own Pop!_OS (although the process will work on any Ubuntu derivative).SEE: Vendor comparison: Microsoft Azure, Amazon AWS, and Google Cloud (Tech Pro Research)I usually hold this for last, but this particular caveat can be a bit of a deal breaker for some users. Kitematic cannot connect to a remote machine running Docker. In other words, you have to install Kitematic on the machine deploying the containers. This, of course, runs a bit counter to the thinking of most Linux server admins, as it tends to run their servers sans GUI. But if you want to use Kitematic, you need to do so with a GUI....

"With this deal, we saw an opportunity to increase player exposure to our own store while at the same time supporting a partner that greatly values our games and provides better terms," said Guillemot. "Early indications are supportive, as PC pre-orders are higher than for the first Division, and pre-orders on the Ubisoft store are six times higher. We believe this deal is a long-term positive for Ubisoft."It's clear who Guillemot is subtweeting in that statement. And the spike in sales is a notable side-effect of its shift to Epic's store that could cause more upheaval in the industry. Of course, Epic's chief selling point is a than most of its competitors, which sees it take a 12 percent cut of sales, with devs pocketing 88 percent....

3DEN is building spaces for what it calls the “in-between moments” of your day.The name (pronounced “Eden”) comes from the idea of the “third place” — a space that’s neither home nor work. Founder and CEO Ben Silver told me the idea is to create a space that people can use if, say, they’ve got 45 minutes to fill between meetings, or if they’ve just gotten off a red eye flight and need somewhere to freshen up.Coffee shops, coworking spaces, gyms or hotels might serve some of those functions, but Silver said 3DEN is “aggregating many different services” and bringing them together into “a very reliable space.” He suggested that the closest analogue might be a members-only clubhouse — except that instead of charging a steep membership fee, 3den requires no commitment, with pricing start at $6 for each 30 minutes of your visit....

OpenAI has decided not to publish its latest research fearing its potential misuses and the negative societal impact that would have. The institute, backed by the likes of Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, developed an AI which can produce convincing ‘fake news’ articles. Articles produced by the AI writer can be on any subject and […] The post OpenAI withholds its latest research fearing societal impact appeared first on AI News.

Instead of a regular pen or pencil, players use a jumbo-sized light up pen to doodle their word in thin air, and their drawing is simultaneously cast to a mobile or TV screen using or AirPlay -- it doesn't require any data use once downloaded, either. All the other components of the game remain the same, although you can video the artist in action and share drawings with friends on social, too, making it a cool spin on a classic game that'll keep it appealing for a long while yet. It'll be on the shelves in Target from June 1st and other retailers globally by July 1st, on sale for $20/£15....

Alfonso Ribeiro, star of early '90s sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, was one of the plaintiffs arguing for a slice of Epic's cash. Ribeiro claimed to be the creator of the "Carlton Dance," a goofy routine that Epic sold as a Fortnite emote -- unsubtly named "Fresh" -- inside the game. Sadly, documents uncovered by reveal that Ribeiro's application to copyright his sway has been denied.According to the US Copyright Office, Ribeiro's claim to copyright the "Carlton Dance" has failed because it is just a "simple dance routine." That puts it beyond the protections of , which to be "a related series of dance movements and patterns organized into a coherent whole." Not to mention that, if basic motions were copyrightable, nobody would be able to walk down the street without facing a potential lawsuit....

Kenyan communications hardware company BRCK has acquired the assets of Nairobi based internet provider Surf and its U.S. parent EveryLayer in a purchase deal of an undisclosed amount announced Friday.Based in Nairobi, Surf is a hotspot service provider aimed at offering affordable internet to lower income segments. BRCK is a five year old venture that pairs its rugged WiFi routers to internet service packages designed to bring people online in frontier and emerging markets.With the acquisition, BRCK gains the assets of San Francisco based EveryLayer and its Surf subsidiary, including 1200 hotspots and 200,000 active customers across 22 cities in Kenya, according to BRCK CEO and founder Erik Hersman. EveryLayer CEO Mark Summer confirmed these details with TechCrunch....

Bixby’s been on a bunch of phones and several appliances. Until now, however, Samsung’s smart assistant has been largely MIA on the company’s tablets. Of course, I’ve never pretended to have the faintest idea of the company’s strategy here. Anyway, just ahead of MWC and its own Unpacked (S10) event, the company just dropped a bunch of info about the Tab S5e, its first slate to sport Bixby 2.0. A key part of the feature’s arrival is Samsung’s plan to make its mobile products a centerpiece of its smart home play. As the company notes, “Tab S5e offers a smarter and more convenient way to interact with your device, and serves as an ideal hub to control your connected home devices. Switch on your TV and your lights at the same time with Quick Command, which allows you to customize several actions under one command—making voice control of your home environment even quicker, simpler and more tailored to you.”...

Samsung is also introducing an interesting new feature it's named Call & Message Continuity that lets you make and receive your phone's calls and texts on the tablet. Throw in support for , a Super AMOLED screen and four AKG-tuned speakers, and the Tab S5e has a lot to offer for its $400 price. That's a sweet deal, but there are, of course, some trade-offs. The "e" in the device's name stands for "essential," according to Samsung, and it sits in the middle of the company's lineup of tablets. Although it features a premium-sounding metal unibody, the Tab S5e isn't as high-end as , which costs $650. The Tab S4 has a faster Snapdragon 835 CPU that can better handle multitasking, while the Tab S5e uses a Snapdragon 670 that's less powerful. That means it might only be able to manage one or two tasks simultaneously, compared to the up to 10 simultaneous processes that the S4 can smoothly execute....

Samsung’s newest product launch happens next week, but already the Korean tech giant has revealed its entire upcoming range of wearable devices that will seemingly be unveiled alongside the Galaxy S10.That’s because the company’s Galaxy Wearable’s app was uploaded today with support for a range of unreleased products which include wireless earbuds, a sports-focused smartwatch, and a new fitness band.First reported by The Verge — and originally noticed by @SamCentralTech on Twitter — the new wearables include a Galaxy Sport smartwatch, fitness bands Galaxy Fit and Galaxy Fit e, Galaxy Buds, Samsung’s take on Apple’s AirPods. The devices have all been teased in various leaks in recent weeks but this confirmation from the Samsung app, deliberate or inadvertent, appears to all but confirm their impending arrival....

Ads are responsible for making webpages slow to a crawl, suggests analysis of the most popular one million websites. The research by developer Patrick Hulce looked at which chunks of code take longest to load.About 60% of the total loading time of a page was caused by scripts that place adverts or analyse what users do, he found.But using ad-blockers may not be the best way to avoid delays and speed up the loading of webpages, he said. Mr Hulce gathered data from both desktop and mobile versions of popular sites on which he sampled programs written in the Javascript language. This is typically used by developers to make sites interactive and also helps them display ads or log what users click on....

What makes it so valuable? A foil sticker on the top of the black box that indicates it's among the very first run of 17 NES games produced in America. These were released in test markets across New York and Los Angeles between October, 1985 and March, 1986, back when the NES came bundled with Duck Hunt and Gyromite. Other titles in the esteemed lineup include Hogan's Alley, Wild Gunman, and Baseball.Due to its popularity, Super Mario Bros. would be reprinted in 11 different box variations from 1985 to 1994, according to gaming collectibles authenticator . And as production began ramping up in 1986, Nintendo ditched the sticker seals and began shrink wrapping its games.This copy of Super Mario Bros. is now jointly owned by three buyers: Jim Halperin, the founder and co-chairman of the collectibles auction company Heritage Auctions, game collector Rich Lecce, and video game store owner Zac Gieg. It marks a big leap over the previous record holder -- another sealed copy of Super Mario Bros. that sold on in 2017 for over $30,000....