“Walmart’s problem isn’t Amazon — it’s a lack of interest in who its customers are” plus 11 more VentureBeat
“Walmart’s problem isn’t Amazon — it’s a lack of interest in who its customers are” plus 11 more VentureBeat |
- Walmart’s problem isn’t Amazon — it’s a lack of interest in who its customers are
- LG V30S ThinQ features hardware upgrades, Vision AI, and Voice AI
- Why Ethereum weathered the cryptocurrency downturn better than Bitcoin
- Behind the Magic Leap and Weta Workshop alliance
- How Cuphead came to be and what it means for games
- Pluto’s goal: becoming the Discord of VR
- Microsoft releases new Windows 10 preview with more proactive Windows Update
- California could see self-driving cars with ‘remote drivers’ in April
- Blockchain could transform in-game economies
- AI Weekly: AI is hunting the world’s deadliest killer
- People are using glitches in Super Mario Odyssey’s Balloon World
- Somewhere: The Vault Papers’s conspiracy plays out in texts and on Google Maps
| Walmart’s problem isn’t Amazon — it’s a lack of interest in who its customers are Posted: 24 Feb 2018 12:10 PM PST  GUEST: This week investors held a collective freakout over the fact that Walmart's online sales grew at just 23 percent over the fourth quarter of 2017, down from 50 percent the previous quarter. They tanked Walmart's stock by 10 percent, its biggest one-day decline in several decades. While I also happen to be bearish on Walmart, I think its investors are missing the bigger picture here. E-commerce accounts for less than four percent of Walmart's business. This is a company with much bigger problems. Unlike the rest of Wall Street, I do not agree that Walmart's problems begin and end with Amazon. The Walmart-versus-Amazon battle is typically framed as a clash between an ascendant e-commerce business and a dying retail industry, but that's nonsense. Selling products to strangers doesn't cut it anymore. To succeed in retail today you need to start with the customer, not the product. You need to flip the script. Let me explain. Nearly every American spent money at a Walmart last year. The vast majority of us live within 20 minutes of a Walmart store. The company has almost 5,000 retail locations, over two million employees, and over 140 million customers. But let me ask you a simple question: What was the last thing you bought at Walmart? Walmart certainly can't tell you. Got any receipts handy? Once you walk past the cash register at Walmart, you're gone. Walmart is still essentially a product company. It has decades of institutional experience with supply chains, transport logistics, and inventory management. It knows how to buy and sell products. That worked fine for a long time. It doesn't anymore. In the old product model. You built a product, put it into as many channels as possible, and hoped there were customers waiting at the end of those channels. In the new service-based model. You start with the customer, understand their wants and needs, and then wrap your service around that customer via relevant channels. No more pushing units to strangers. Now let me ask you another question: What was the first thing you bought on Amazon? It's sitting right there in your order history. Go ahead, open up a new browser tab and look it up. I bought "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" and "Inside the Tornado: Marketing Strategies from Silicon Valley's Cutting Edge" on January 11, 1997. Amazon is beating Walmart because it knows its customers. That's the reason. Plain and simple. So does this mean e-commerce is bound for glory, and retail is doomed to failure? Will it be all retail apocalypse and zombie malls from here on out? Of course not. Right now, there are at least a dozen new companies in the midst of opening hundreds of new retail stores. And why are they doing this? Because the stores they currently have are making money hand over fist. You've probably heard some of the names: Allbirds, Casper, Birchbox, Boll & Branch. According to real-estate data company CoStar Group, these online-first stores have increased their retail space tenfold over the last five years. Warby Parker is averaging $3,000 per square foot of retail space, which is almost as good as Tiffany's (!). Why is this happening? Well, one reason is that it's really hard to operate as a standalone e-commerce vendor. Almost two thirds of all online sales are owned by just 15 giant e-commerce marketplaces. RetailNext CEO Alexei Agratchev recently told me: "As an ecommerce vendor, you have really high variable costs around shipping and returns. On the other hand, Amazon is an amazing logistical machine, and they're not even running at a profit most of the time. … And the other question is, how do you really differentiate yourself online? Anything you do on your website, a competitor can steal pretty easily. But you can actually create really cool experiences in stores." As a result, retail is changing in all sorts of interesting ways. Take a look at b8ta, a new personal technology chain. It has hip, minimalist stores that let you try out the latest gadgets. What’s even more interesting is that b8ta doesn't make any money from product sales. Product manufacturers pay a subscription fee for access to its customer base. And as for those malls? Well, the ones that are doing well are doing really well. As old retailers are replaced by new online-first stores that are doing two to three times more business, the malls benefit from the increased foot traffic and attract better brands. Everyone wins. Again, it's never been just about e-commerce versus retail. It's always been about flipping the script — starting with the customer as opposed to the product sale, and wrapping both your e-commerce and your retail channels around that customer experience. Walmart is a product company that still views its e-commerce efforts as a distinct channel, a separate line of business. That's not too surprising, considering the vast majority of its e-commerce business has been bought, not built: Jet.Com, Bonobos, ShoeBuy.Com, Moosejaw.Com, etc. Walmart tried to buy its way in. But it doesn't seem to be working out. The leopard can't change its spots. Tien Tzuo is Founder and CEO of Zuora. |
| LG V30S ThinQ features hardware upgrades, Vision AI, and Voice AI Posted: 24 Feb 2018 11:28 AM PST  At Mobile World Congress 2018 in Barcelona this weekend, LG will be unveiling the LG V30S ThinQ. We got a peek at the release a bit early — here is everything we know, minus pricing and release details. As the name implies, the new device does not look significantly different than the LG V30 it succeeds. Instead, the company is making internal hardware upgrades and emphasizing artificial intelligence features named Vision AI and Voice AI. This year, LG is making a point to shun the smartphone industry’s annual release cycles, retaining existing models for longer. Indeed, its next flagship that will succeed the LG G6, codenamed Judy, is not being unveiled at MWC. The company is focusing instead on variant models with the same look and feel, upgrading only a handful of aspects. The V30S ThinQ is the first instance of this strategy.
Hardware changesWhen LG unveiled the V30, the company called it “the lightest among smartphones in the 6-inch and over category.” LG is meanwhile saying the V30S ThinQ is “still the thinnest and lightest among smartphones with displays of 6 inches or more.” Fans will be happy to hear that RAM has been upgraded from 4GB to 6GB. There are still two storage variants, and both have been doubled: 128GB for the V30S ThinQ and 256GB for the V30S+ ThinQ. And yes, there’s still a microSD slot. Here are the phone’s official specs:
Just like its predecessor, the phone has IP68 certification (water- and dust-resistant), is MIL-STD 810G compliant, and features voice recognition, face recognition, and a fingerprint sensor. Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0 Technology and wireless charging are also both included. Vision AI and Voice AIThinQ is LG’s brand for home appliances, consumer electronics, and services that feature artificial intelligence. The V30S ThinQ is LG’s first ThinQ mobile device, which will set the bar for its AI efforts in smartphones. In a nutshell, Vision AI means a smarter camera and Voice AI means more spoken commands. Vision AI can be broken down into three camera features — AI CAM, QLens, and Bright Mode:
Voice AI meanwhile consists of a tool called QVoice that includes over 50 functions (there are 32 LG-exclusive commands). It works in conjunction with Google Assistant to access popular smartphone options without having to tap through multiple menus. LG has been toying with augmenting Google Assistant for a while now, and Voice AI on the V30S ThinQ is merely the latest evolution. While the V30S ThinQ ships with these “AI features,” LG is promising to bring (some of) them to the LG G6 and LG V30 via over-the-air updates. Additional LG smartphones could also get future AI upgrades, but LG isn’t committing to any other models just yet. |
| Why Ethereum weathered the cryptocurrency downturn better than Bitcoin Posted: 24 Feb 2018 10:25 AM PST  GUEST: If 2017 was a dream for cryptocurrency enthusiasts, 2018 has been a swift return to reality. The value of Bitcoin, which increased over 1,000 percent last year, has decreased by close to 30 percent so far this year, and many other coins have followed suit. The crypto market has begun a modest recovery, but investors have nonetheless been given a stark reminder that cryptocurrency's volatility is a double-edged sword — if you want to try and make it "to the moon," you've got to risk crashing down to earth. One coin that has stayed relatively stable throughout the recent crash, though, is Ethereum. In fact, the value of 1 ether has actually increased by 4.9 percent since January 1, 2018, and its value relative to Bitcoin has grown by nearly 50 percent. So what is it about Ethereum that has allowed it to weather the storm and come out ahead? The short answer: Ethereum is backed by real utility that many other cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin included, simply don't have. Ethereum cofounder, Vitalik Buterin, realized that blockchain technology was capable of supporting far more than just electronic cash systems. Rather than prescribing a narrow range of functions for which users could use the blockchain, he saw the potential for a blockchain platform on which developers could build any application they like. This would allow software designers to get all the benefits of blockchain technology — decentralization, inalterability, security, etc. — without having to build their own personal blockchains. That's the vision behind Ethereum, and so far it's been a tremendous success. Since its release in 2015, Ethereum's network has become home to thousands of decentralized applications, or dapps. Many of these dapps are still in the development stage and have yet to go live, but Ethereum has set itself up to be the foundation for a huge software ecosystem. Here are a few dapps already live on the Ethereum platform that should give you an idea of the near-infinite range of possibilities:
Ethereum not only provides developers with a blockchain on which to build their applications; it also gives them a convenient way to fund their projects natively on the network in the form of tokens. These tokens, often referred to as ERC-20 tokens — which means they are compatible across the Ethereum platform — function similarly to shares of a company. Users buy tokens to help fund software projects, while also receiving investment incentives like financial rewards or voting rights. These tokens have become some of the most valuable cryptocurrencies in the world, even before the release of their associated dapp. In fact, 17 of the top 50 cryptocurrencies by market cap, not counting Ethereum itself, are ERC-20 tokens. This means there is a tremendous amount of money invested — directly or indirectly — into the Ethereum platform. Ethereum's own cryptocurrency, Ether, serves less as an electronic cash system and more as a source of fuel for the Ethereum network. Ownership of Ether is therefore an investment in the Ethereum platform rather than an investment in a pure storage of value. All of this means Ethereum is more resistant to devaluation than other cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. Bitcoin is similar to fiat currency in that it has value because people agree it has value. This gives Bitcoin some stability, because everyone who has invested in Bitcoin is also invested in keeping it valuable. But it also makes Bitcoin vulnerable to possible crashes if investors begin to lose faith. If the faith goes away, there's nothing else keeping it afloat. Ethereum doesn't fall prey to these same pitfalls because it is more than a currency; it's a platform that provides a valuable service. As long as Ethereum continues to see investment from developers who want to build on the network, the value of Ether is supported by meaningful capital. If Bitcoin is like fiat, Ether is like gold; its value is more stable because it's partially backed up by an intrinsic usefulness that Bitcoin doesn't have. This is at least part of the reason Ethereum proved more resilient during the recent crash. All that said, it is important to note that Ethereum is still a very young platform and is a long way away from realizing its full potential. It has only a handful of very popular dapps, and developers are still getting used to programming for the network. Therefore much of Ethereum's value is still speculative. But its 's recent stability compared to other coins should inspire confidence in its future. As more and more dapps take advantage of the Ethereum blockchain in new and interesting ways, its value should continue to increase. And assuming it can continue to fend off the dramatic swings that dominate the space, it may be setting itself up to become the industry leader. Full disclosure: I own a small holding in Ether and various other cryptocurrencies. The above article should not be taken as investment advice. Matthew Godshall is Editor-in-Chief of Unhashed.com, a cryptocurrency information resource. |
| Behind the Magic Leap and Weta Workshop alliance Posted: 24 Feb 2018 09:10 AM PST  Little by little, Magic Leap is pulling back the veils on the mixed reality technology that it has been developing since 2011. The Florida company has raised more than $1.4 billion for its technology from investors like Google and Alibaba. Rony Abovitz, CEO of Magic Leap, said in December the company will ship its first augmented reality glasses in 2018. And this week, the company disclosed that it has an alliance with Weta Workshop, a mixed reality and game studio that is working on applications for the Magic Leap glasses. Weta Workshop is part of Peter Jackson’s New Zealand special effects studio, Weta, which created the dazzling effects for The Lord of the Rings films.  Above: Left to right: Greg Broadmore and Hayley Gray of Weta Workshop, and Andy Williams of Magic Leap. I sat down with the team that made the announcement at the DICE Summit, the elite gaming event in Las Vegas this week. I spoke with Andy Lanning, executive creative director at Magic Leap Studios, which is a maker of applications within Magic Leap. Lanning previously worked at Marvel Comics and DC Comics on titles such as Nova and Legion of Super-Heroes. I also spoke with Greg Broadmore, game director, writer, and artist at Weta Gameshop, which is part of Weta Workshop. He worked on the worlds in the films District 9 and King Kong, and he is creating his own sci-fi universe Dr. Grordbort. Broadmore is working on an alternate reality title dubbed Dr. G’s Invaders for Magic Leap, slated for release this year. And I talked with Hayley Gray, executive producer at Weta Gameshop. She has spent the past five years building Weta’s first gaming division, and she manages the 50-person team working on Dr. G’s Invaders. She previously worked on a wide variety of projects such as The Hobbit and The BFG. Here’s an edited transcript of our conversation.  Above: Weta Workshop in New Zealand. Image Credit: Weta Workshop GamesBeat: Tell me about what you’re announcing. Greg Broadmore: Weta Workshop is most famous as a design studio and a physical effects studio. We're famous for making physical props, that kind of thing. But we've also been in a relationship with Magic Leap for five years now. Rony Abovitz brought us on board through his creative project he was developing before Magic Leap. Today we've finally crystallized that five-year ambition into a new studio, which we're calling Weta Gameshop. It's a division of Weta Workshop focused completely on video games for Magic Leap and mixed reality. We have around 50 people at the moment, and we've custom-built a new facility for mixed reality. It has testing spaces that are designed to solve the problem of making mixed reality content. Hayley Gray: Richard Taylor, who's the managing director of Weta Workshop, actually met Rony in 2009. That's when Rony first contacted him about a creative property that he wanted to develop. This is before Magic Leap even existed. Weta Workshop worked on some concept design and creative work for Rony at the time. Then it was about five or six years ago when Rony founded Magic Leap and came to us with the idea that we would create a mixed reality experience for the new Magic Leap platform. That's when the Dr. Grordbort's IP kicked off. Broadmore: Rony had started this relationship working with us at things like Comic-Con. He became aware of the science fiction world that I'd been building. At the time, quite randomly, he suggested that he'd love for us to make a game for this new mixed reality platform he was making. He didn't call it "mixed reality," because the terminology didn't exist then, but he described this very science-fiction vision. We were at the point with Dr. Grordbort's, with the work I was doing at Weta Workshop, that we wanted to branch into making video games. Rony presented this opportunity to make a game on a totally new platform. We've jumped in with both feet and built a facility around that. Gray: We've had the opportunity to work on the Magic Leap platform longer than any other developer. We've been working on it for five years, before the technology even existed and we could test on the technology. At the time we were just conceptualizing what we thought some of the potential opportunities could be for mixed reality. Since then we've grown to 50 people, comprised of both Magic Leap employees — software engineers and technical staff — as well as Weta Workshop employees – creatives, designers, storytellers, writers, set designers, artists. We have all of those 50 people housed within our Weta Gameshop facility in Wellington, New Zealand. Broadmore: From a developer point of view we have a kind of twofold function. We're making a game, Dr. Grordbort's Invaders, for the launch of Magic Leap this coming year. The idea is to make an exemplar of what the platform and mixed reality can do. At the same time, it's a forcing function for what the platform should be. Our requirements feed into what the various hardware and SDK features of the platform are. We've been in that dialogue since the start. A game is a great way of solving a technical problem. Our device is capable of many different things, but a game is a great way to crack the problem, if you like. If you can solve games you can solve anything. Gray: We've had a very integrated partnership with Magic Leap. Greg and I have been traveling to Florida seven or eight times every year, staying in tune with the development of Magic Leap's platform. Our team in Wellington have been doing, essentially, a lot of the hard work to help provide that feedback to Magic Leap in the development of the platform, from a developer's perspective. That's been one of our primary objectives at the studio.  Above: Weta Workshop spun out of Peter Jackson’s Weta special effects firm. Image Credit: Weta Workshop GamesBeat: Why are you a second or third party when you could be part of Magic Leap? Broadmore: I think Rony came to us—he started by exploring this creative world, which was called Hour Blue. That was the first part of the relationship. Of course he identified that we're renowned for building worlds for storytelling. He saw that he had a technical problem to solve with Magic Leap, primarily. But really that's just a vehicle for creative visions. Having a company like Weta Workshop come in and yield that expertise—we have almost 30 years of experience building worlds for Peter Jackson, James Cameron, Neil Blomkamp, films like that. That world-building is something he saw and gravitated toward. That marriage is what makes both of us work so well together. Gray: The core concept and opportunity within mixed reality is the overlap between the physical and the digital. That's where the partnership between Magic Leap and Weta Workshop is that perfect match. Weta Workshop can bring the expertise they have building physical effects and environments and characters and worlds. Magic Leap, with their technology expertise, now has a team that's collaborating in Wellington to build those physical and digital and experiences. Andy Lanning: Richard Taylor is on the board of directors of Magic Leap as well. He's one of the founding members. At that time, it was all about a creative vision, as opposed to looking at a proper piece of hardware and saying, "This is what you can and can't do." Rony wanted to bring a lot of creative thought processes to those early days, to help shape what that vision could be. Beyond the technology to really dig deep into what those possibilities are. Weta, with their hands-on approach, in terms of making objects and working within spaces, is exactly the sort of partnership that's led to where we are now, which is actually doing the things we were thinking up on the back of napkins back in the day. We can actually substantively produce those things.  Above: Magic Leap One comes with a hand controller and a puck. Image Credit: Magic Leap Broadmore: Even though this is a division of Weta Workshop, it doesn't feel like a second party. A bunch of our team, almost half, are Magic Leap employees. We're sort of joined at the hip. That relationship, as we say—we travel back and forth all the time. We're in constant communication. To me it doesn't feel like two companies. It feels like one. Under the hood it's not, but that's how it functions. Lanning: It's a relationship born from a shared creative vision, a symbiosis between those two worlds. The amount of time we've been doing this now, you don't think of it like that at all. Continue Reading ... |
| How Cuphead came to be and what it means for games Posted: 24 Feb 2018 08:02 AM PST  The fairy tale of Cuphead and its developer Studio MDHR continued this week as the debut game from a debut studio won three major awards at the prestigious DICE Awards in Las Vegas. Maja Moldenhauer humbly said on stage during a talk that she didn’t know what she could teach veteran game developers, except to offer a fresh perspective on making games. It’s a wonder that the run-and-gun action platformer game — which has a deceptively whimsical 1930s cartoon art style and yet is deliberately very hard to play — sold 2 million copies (as of December 1) and became one of the most talked about games of 2017. It has three hours of jazz ensemble music and 60,000 frames of hand-drawn images for its fiendishly difficult boss battles. “What could an indie developer from Canada possibly talk about that might captivate an audience with the most colorful resumes in the industry,” she said. “Then I thought, maybe it’s just that. As such, I’m not standing here as an industry leader with a wealth of experience. But more as a fresh set of eyes to help remind you of what it was like to operate with a limited resources from time, staff, definitely budget — but we never let those stand in our way.”  Above: Maja Moldenhauer with an illustration of Cuphead designers Chad and Jared Moldenhauer. Image Credit: Dean Takahashi Moldenhauer said in an interview at the DICE Summit gaming event that the success has given the team — staffed by former web page designers, construction workers, and financial analysts — the financial stability to continue making games for the long term. I couldn’t finish the game, but it has a rabid base of fans who appreciate its difficulty, which was born from the desire of Studio MDHR cofounders Chad and Jared Moldenhauer to make a game that reminded them of the platform games they grew up with. The game’s difficulty meant that a lot of players couldn’t finish it, but that helped create an aura of attention around Cuphead, and skillful players appreciated how it took precise control of the analog controller sticks to master the moment-to-moment, variable gameplay. Cuphead’s designers had a vision that they never compromised, even though the company was always low on both money and experience, Moldenhauer said. They had a relentless focus on making a difficult game that required skill to beat, and it turned out this idea resonated with all of the fans who long for retro games, admire the skill of speed runners and elite players, and appreciate old-style games where gameplay was king. A lot of people made fun of how I was terrible at the game, and Moldenhauer and I talked about that — and the problem of cyberbullying — as well. Here’s an edited transcript of our interview.  Above: Cuphead’s aniimated backgrounds are positively Street Fighter-inspired. Image Credit: Studio MDHR GamesBeat: Was there a main message or a theme you wanted to get across in your talk? Maja Moldenhauer: The theme of DICE this year is "Made Better." You'll probably hear this repeated in my talk. When I got the call to be a keynote here, I was a bit confused. What am I going to teach these people? I'm a student here still. The way we looked at it — from a fresh lens, from a fresh perspective, not having made 20 games before, how did we pull this off? Where did we invest in making sure the game was up to par in terms of where we saw quality and how we got there? I'm going to be taking a view from the trenches, giving some color to that. GamesBeat: I remember your talk in Montreal, where you said it wasn't a fairy tale. Is it important to get that across to people, that it's not an automatic success? Moldenhauer: I'll be touching on that, yeah. It's been so romanticized in the media. It's not wrong. We did re-mortgage our homes and quit our jobs. But it was never as if we woke up one morning and it happened. There were baby steps. There were pulse checks. We weighed risk and reward. We knew what we were doing as we went along. There were checkpoints we had to hit before we ever made the next step. GamesBeat: It seemed like, at some point in the process, you started organizing things. I don't know if you'd describe it as taking control of the process, but you didn't start that way, right? You graduated into this role. Moldenhauer: Exactly. Initially, I just started on the art side. Then every time we missed a target date or a timeline and we realized how horrible Chad is at projecting timelines, I said, "No, I have to take the reins here." That's how my role evolved, from the art side to a lot of the production side.  Above: Jared and Chad Moldenhauer, leaders of Studio MDHR, maker of Cuphead. Image Credit: The Game Awards GamesBeat: Was that any tougher because it was a family thing? Moldenhauer: Um, yeah? GamesBeat: "Chad, you're fired." [laughs] Moldenhauer: And then when it came to art, he'd be like, "No, you're fired!" [laughs] I think we were balanced evenly. Chad is like a sponge. He takes a lot. He's a really good guy. There were days where I would be a little bit more stressed than he was, while he's so even-keeled. It's a good balance. GamesBeat: Keeping everyone on time that you developed a skill for, then? Moldenhauer: I tried. I don't know if I got there. From an education perspective, for Chad — he would never pay attention to timelines. We would project, "Okay, this boss is going to take four weeks. A week to concept, a couple of weeks to animate, a week to color and ink." If, in that first week, we didn't get the concept of what that boss was going to look like down pat, he didn't just pick the best one. It would be another take, another take, another take. If that turned into three weeks, it took three weeks. We never compromised or settled. That's where the bulk of our delays were rooted. In hindsight, it was the right decision, rather than settling. It was unfortunate for the people who were disappointed in the delays, the vagueness and the black of hole that was Cuphead for a couple of years. But hopefully it was worth it.  Above: Maja Moldenhauer at the DICE Summit in Las Vegas. Image Credit: Dean Takahashi GamesBeat: What are some of the other hindsights you have? Moldenhauer: When we were in the thick of it, it never felt like — in hindsight I look back and think, "How did we pull that off?" I look at the bank boxes of paper all around our basement and I wonder if I'd have been as eager about doing it if you told me I would have to ink 60,000 frames of animation. I don't know. Maybe I would always be thinking, "I only got 100 done today, 60,000 to go." But in the thick of it you're just focusing on that 100. You don't know how many more there are to come. That's a big one. GamesBeat: All hand-drawn? Moldenhauer: I know! On paper. It's crazy. Probably a horrible idea. [laughs] GamesBeat: I saw that you had some reinforcements come in for the last couple of months? Moldenhauer: There's a company based out of Montreal called Illogika. They were life-savers in terms of — they did a lot of support for us. As you're going through the final stages of testing and things like that, the last three-four-five months, and realizing precision wasn't here, or something wasn't programmed perfectly there — being able to pull in that team to help us with development, testing, support….  Above: Cuphead Fun House. Image Credit: Studio MDHR GamesBeat: Did you find them, or did Microsoft find them? Moldenhauer: We found them, I think just through a Google search? We found almost everyone that way. A lot of our animators said, "How did you find me?" Because we hand-picked our people. But usually we just googled it. Continue Reading ... |
| Pluto’s goal: becoming the Discord of VR Posted: 24 Feb 2018 03:34 AM PST  If I'm not playing a game that I'm supposed to write about then chances are I'm either playing something for fun, talking about games with friends, or thinking about games while I do other things. This goes for both VR and non-VR. Point being: gaming is a huge part of my life. As a result, I've got Discord installed on my PC and phone so I can stay connected to my friends while in and out of games. Often while I'm playing something, even if it's a single player game, a friend will message me or start a call so we can chat while playing separately. VR does not have its equivalent of this feature. Or rather, it didn't until today. With the launch of Pluto, VR is finally getting its own version of a Discord-like social app. Pluto works by adding itself as a background app that runs alongside SteamVR when you're using your headset. You make an avatar, curate a contact list, and just go about your business as usual. If a friend sees you online they can start a call — with or without avatars — that runs concurrently with your current VR app. This means that while you're gunning down Super Mutants in Fallout 4 VR or getting in some exercise with Soundboxing, Pluto exists as an overlay between your VR world and your friend's. If you toggle on your Pluto avatar they will see your head-tracked face and hands moving around, mimicking the actions you're doing in your own VR world, but it's superimposed into their environment. In fact, Pluto even adds an overlay icon from the SteamVR menu (right down at the bottom next to Steam, Desktop, and Settings.) This makes it super easy to adjust settings (such as avatar opacity) on the fly while you're still in your other VR experiences. Luckily it really, really works well. A well-known blemish on the report card of VR right now is that it's an inherently isolating experience unless you're in a dedicated social VR app like VRChat, Rec Room, or even Bigscreen. Now with Pluto, anything can be social. Worth nothing though is that Pluto is not intended to help you meet or find people in VR — this is to stay connected with people you already know. The developers likened it to a telephone call with avatars, or in other words, you can only dial numbers that you know, hence the contact list. As of now there are no public rooms or ways to just meet people that also use Pluto. I first tried Pluto over a year ago when it was still in very early Alpha testing. Everything worked well back then, but it lacked polish and some key features — all of which have been added for its Early Access debut today. But honestly, as cool as Pluto is, part of me thinks that one of the platform manufacturers (such as Sony, Oculus/Facebook, and Steam) are either working on their own more streamlined solution that will emulate these features, or are planning to buy the impressive startup outright. This type of integration feels too crucial to be left to a third-party application like Pluto.
For more information you can check out the official website or download the app, for free, in Steam Early Access right now for Rift, Vive, and Windows VR. This story originally appeared on Uploadvr.com. Copyright 2018 |
| Microsoft releases new Windows 10 preview with more proactive Windows Update Posted: 23 Feb 2018 10:52 PM PST  Microsoft today released a new Windows 10 preview for PCs with a small but important change to Windows Update. This build is from the RS4 branch, which represents the next Windows 10 update the company has yet to announce (but is likely to ship soon). There is no new build from the RS5 branch. Windows 10 is a service, meaning it was built in a very different way from its predecessors so it can be regularly updated with not just fixes, but new features, too. Microsoft has released four major updates so far: November Update, Anniversary Update, Creators Update, and Fall Creators Update. There is only one major addition in this release: Windows Update has been tweaked to be more proactive at keeping PCs updated. When Windows Update scans, downloads, and installs updates on a PC that is plugged in, it will prevent the PC from going to sleep when it has not been in active use for up to 2 hours. The goal is to “give Windows Update more opportunity to succeed,” the team explains. This desktop build includes the following general bug fixes and improvements:
Today’s update bumps the Windows 10 build number for PCs from 17101 (made available to testers on February 14) to build 17107. This build has four known issues:
As always, don’t install this on your production machine. |
| California could see self-driving cars with ‘remote drivers’ in April Posted: 23 Feb 2018 09:55 PM PST  (Reuters) — Self-driving cars that back up their computerized system with a remote human operator instead of a fallback driver at the wheel could be tested on California roads as early as April, the state department of motor vehicles said. Relying on a remote human operator – who could control multiple autonomous vehicles from miles away – is a step that would allow a path to profitability in the nascent field of self-driving technology by eliminating California's requirement for in-car minders. Experts believe early adopters of the technology will include ride-hailing services seeking to maximize paying passengers while eliminating paid backups traveling with them. The race to develop autonomous vehicles includes such global automakers as General Motors and technology giants like Alphabet’s Waymo unit. If they are ready to deploy the remote monitor technology by April, it would be the first time they could test their cars on public roads in the state without physical drivers present. The remote control technology, already used by NASA and the military, is seen as a way to more quickly usher in the commercial rollout of self-driving cars. The new regulations are expected to be approved later this month, and take effect in April after a month-long public notice period. Companies like Nissan, Waymo and startups Zoox, Phantom Auto and Starsky Robotics have been working on the technology, which allows for a remote operator to take control of a vehicle if the underlying autonomous system inside the car encounters problems, known in the industry as difficult-to-solve "edge" cases. "We think we have the ultimate backup system – which is a human," said Elliot Katz, co-founder of Phantom Auto, which last month at the CES technology conference demonstrated how cars driving in Las Vegas could be remotely controlled from Mountain View, California, over 500 miles away. The presence of a remote operator also helps companies reassure lawmakers and the public, said Katz, who said he expected companies to deploy such technology on California roads soon after April. Getting rid entirely of drivers capable of taking the wheel in case of problems has concerned some lawmakers. U.S. Senators Dianne Feinstein of California and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut have questioned the safeguards in an autonomous vehicle bill currently stalled in the Senate. During a January Senate hearing, Zoox Chief Executive Officer Tim Kentley-Klay testified that "teleoperations" technology would play a role in the overall system of the Silicon Valley startup. "When your model is to have autonomous vehicles deployed as a for-hire service in cities, you are still going to need a command center in that city that has a human-in-the-loop oversight of the fleet, both to deal with vehicles if they have an issue but also to deal with customers if they need help," Kentley-Klay said. The new regulations are expected to be approved on Feb 26 by California's legal compliance agency, with the DMV then opening a 30-day public notice period beginning March 1. During that period, companies planning to test would prepare their applications, with the first permits potentially being issued on April 2, DMV spokeswoman Jessica Gonzalez told Reuters. "It will be interesting to see which manufacturer is the first," she added. |
| Blockchain could transform in-game economies Posted: 23 Feb 2018 04:40 PM PST  GUEST: I've always been fascinated by a game's ability to replicate real-world systems. Social interactions, weather systems, and even nuanced economies are re-created digitally with almost alarming accuracy. This has always been a part of a game's appeal: the opportunity to safely play around in a world that feels so real. Today, games are inching closer to reality. Massively multiplayer online games replaced computer-controlled NPCs with real people, making room for massive online communities to grow organically. Now developers have infused in-game economies with real-world currency in an effort to better monetize their products. Instead of using virtual money earned in-game, you might just be asked to fork over real dollars for that next armor upgrade or level-up. This is the new in-game economy. As the line between what's real and what's becomes further blurred, players take on more risk. Whenever a game invites players to buy items with their money, the game also inevitably (and inadvertently) invites scammers, item dupers, and fraud. Suddenly, a fake world is fraught with real dangers. So what's to protect player-driven economies in a largely unregulated environment? Blockchain technology may be the solution we're looking for, due to the decentralized network and capability to record each transaction to combat fraud. How in-game economies workEconomies (virtual or otherwise) are governed by the law of supply and demand. The availability of an item affects the demand for that same item. Generally speaking, the lower the availability, the higher the price. In the real world, items of value are finite. They require time and resources to create which influences their market value. Games attempt to simulate this. Developers set the attributes and rarity of an item in order to incentivize players to spend more time and money to acquire it. There are three main economic models in games:
Acquiring items, such as new weapons and armor, is often what progresses players forward and unlocks new content for them to consume. In short, it's a rewards system that keeps the game alive and profitable. But progress can be expensive in some games. As the free-to-play model becomes more popular, players continue to shell out more real-world money. In 2016, Game of War: Fire Age developer Machine Zone drew an astonishing average of $549.69 per paying user. On average, mobile gamers are paying nearly $10 a month on in-app purchases. All of these economies mix scarcity with real money, a combination that leads to problems — which can be remedied by blockchain. Beware scammers, fraudsters, and dupersWhenever there's people forking over real money, there's always a few nefarious types looking to take advantage. It's estimated that "for every legitimate virtual item sold and downloaded, there are 7.5 virtual items downloads lost to fraud." That's an astounding ratio that works to corrupt in-game economies and rip off gamers. Much of the problem exists due to item duping. Fraudsters find exploits within the game that allow them to duplicate what were originally rare and expensive items in high demand. Similar to the real economy, item duping increases inflation while diluting item value.Then there's identity theft. Criminals use stolen credit cards to purchase in-game items that they sell at discount. The blockchain economyThe blockchain, or more specifically, proof of ownership, can fix this. Luckily, proving ownership is one of the things blockchain does really well, and is being used in multiple industries outside of video games. To quickly review, blockchain became famous as the technology behind cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum. In short, it's a decentralized ledger that records an action (in the case of Bitcoin, it's a transaction). Once recorded, the record is encrypted and publicly accessible. If the creation and sale of items — whether via the developer or the player — is what fuels the growth and balance of in-game economies, then proving the source of ownership for those items is essential to fighting fraud. The blockchain would act as the official record of the in-game economy. It would store information about which items were created, when they were created, who created them, and any transactions that occurred involving those items. Duping would be impossible, inflation wouldn't occur (at least not due to fraud), and gamers wouldn't be ripped off. Blockchain is already starting to percolate through the gaming industry for these very reasons. CryptoKitties, perhaps one of the more famous (and adorable) examples, allows gamers to buy, sell, and trade digital cats. But unlike other collectible games, CryptoKitties allows players to track ownership of every cat on the blockchain, removing any concern that a player could be victim to the fraudulent sale or trade of these digital felines. As games become more sophisticated in their rendering of real-world systems, they need to also become more knowledgeable about the risks involved. Historically, the gaming industry is always among the first to adopt new technologies. Blockchain should not be an exception. Sam Kim is CEO and co-founder of KR8OS. |
| AI Weekly: AI is hunting the world’s deadliest killer Posted: 23 Feb 2018 04:35 PM PST  Earlier this week Google and Verily Life Sciences shared the latest advance in computer vision to identify signs of heart disease. With an accuracy of 70 percent, early results from the AI trained on retinal scan images from more than 200,000 patients is as precise as methods that require blood tests for cholesterol, said Google Brain product manager Lily Peng. It's the latest example of AI being used to tackle the biggest killer in the world: heart disease. It takes more lives than any other cause of death — 800,000 in the United States alone, according to the American Heart Association. To save lives, an AI army is joining the fight. Corti uses pattern recognition in language to identify heart attack calls to emergency services. In trials being run in Copenhagen now, the AI is able to identify a call in which the victim is having a heart attack 95 percent of the time, or more than 20 percent more often than trained human emergency operators. Working with General Electric Healthcare, Arterys uses the cloud and MRI scans to create multidimensional images of blood flow through the heart in 15 minutes. There's also HeartFlow, which makes detailed images with CT scans, an approach that can reduce the need for angiograms and lower healthcare costs. All of these solutions are designed to improve detection or save time, increasing the likelihood of survival from cardiovascular disease or a heart attack. Taken together, AI applied to matters of the heart is shaping up to be one of the clearest cut examples of AI being used to improve the lives of human beings. That's not just terribly poetic irony, it also represents an instance of AI in which machines seem to routinely outperform humans. The advancement of AI to solve problems of the heart also reflects the duality of this technology. As recent deepfakes drama and a report from a number of experts from earlier this week makes clear, malicious applications of AI can threaten human values of equality, freedom, and even our collective sense of reality. One of the recommendations of the report from EFF, OpenAI, and other reputable organizations is that people recognize the good and bad ways AI can be used. For professionals in the field, the report argues, this is important for creating common standards, finding ways to evaluate potential malicious applications of AI, and educating policymakers. Acknowledgement of this duality is good advice for the rest of the world too in order to ensure you're getting a more complete picture of how AI is changing lives. So next time you hear someone reference our inevitable slip into dystopia where we will bow to our robot overlords, talk to them about the heart. As challenging as it is to do so in a world full of filter bubbles, you have to acknowledge these perpendicular trends. To truly grasp their impact, they deserve to be considered alongside one another. Thanks for reading, Khari Johnson P.S. Enjoy this conversation about issues facing AI as a field featuring astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson talking about how his view of AI has changed over time. From VB
Xiaomi and Microsoft team up on AI, cloud computing, and PCs Xiaomi and Microsoft announced today that they're deepening a previously established partnership to encompass work on cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and PC hardware. Thus far, the two companies have signed a memorandum of understanding, pledging to evaluate future avenues of collaboration. It's good news for Microsoft, since Xiaomi is a fast-growing company with a strong […]
Google launches ARCore out of preview, will expand Lens to Android and iOS devices Ahead of Mobile World Congress 2018 in Barcelona, Google today launched ARCore 1.0, letting developers create AR experiences on Android. Releasing ARCore out of preview means developers can publish apps that can understand your environment, and place objects in it, on the Google Play store. Google today also announced plans to expand its Google Lens […]
Google Assistant to add over 30 languages and multilingual support by the end of 2018 Google Assistant will soon be able to complete multiple tasks with a single command, speak more than 30 languages, and allow people to use more than one language with their AI assistant. The news comes days before Mobile World Congress, which begins Monday in Barcelona, Spain. "The Assistant is already available in eight languages, and by […]
Google's DeepMind wants AI to spot kidney injuries Google subsidiary DeepMind announced today that it's working with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to use machine learning in an attempt to predict when patients will deteriorate during a hospital stay. Deterioration (when a patient's condition worsens) is a significant issue, since care providers can miss warning signs for potentially lethal conditions that arise […]
Hypergiant launches AI product incubator and seed stage fund Hypergiant is launching out of stealth today to help large companies develop an AI strategy to meet their business goals. The startup is also launching Hypergiant Ventures, an AI investment fund, and Hypergiant Applied Sciences, a product incubation studio. Hypergiant raised a seed round of an undisclosed amount last August and currently has 24 employees, with […]
Chris Messina: Alexa leads the 'god bot' wars because Amazon gets the most interest from developers A little over two years ago, before Facebook Messenger or iMessage opened to third-party bots, and before the arrival of Google Assistant, conversational AI champion Chris Messina helped coin the term "conversational commerce." Messina, who is perhaps best known as the creator of the hashtag, has since 2015 examined trends like chat apps surpassing social […] Beyond VBWhy AI researchers at Google got desks next to the boss If you want to understand the priorities of a technology company, first look at the seating chart. At Google's Silicon Valley headquarters, the chief executive, Sundar Pichai, now shares a floor with Google Brain, a research lab dedicated to artificial intelligence. How the UAE’s new minister of AI views the future of tech in his desert nation Can you actually have a state “minister of artificial intelligence”? Yes: The United Arab Emirates has actually appointed one. He is State Minister of AI Omar bin Sultan Al Olama. And, during an interview, he told me he is confident about the future of artificial intelligence in his desert nation and the civic benefits that will emerge from these advancements. Tech companies should stop pretending AI won't destroy jobs I took an Uber to an artificial-intelligence conference at MIT one recent morning, and the driver asked me how long it would take for autonomous vehicles to take away his job. I told him it would happen in about 15 to 20 years. He breathed a sigh of relief. "Well, I'll be retired by then," he said. Good news: AI is getting cheaper. That's also bad news. A Silicon Valley start-up recently unveiled a drone that can set a course entirely on its own. A handy smartphone app allows the user to tell the airborne drone to follow someone. Once the drone starts tracking, its subject will find it remarkably hard to shake. The drone is meant to be a fun gadget — sort of a flying selfie stick. But it is not unreasonable to find this automated bloodhound a little unnerving. |
| People are using glitches in Super Mario Odyssey’s Balloon World Posted: 23 Feb 2018 02:46 PM PST  Nintendo updated Super Mario Odyssey with new, free content yesterday. This introduced the Balloon World online mode that enables players to have fun with an asynchronous hide-and-seek mode. Players can either hide a balloon and earn coins as other players take turns failing to retrieve it, or they can try to find other players’ balloons before the timer runs out. This is a fun end-game mode that enables players to use their knowledge of the level maps and how to control Mario to earn a lot of extra coins. You can then use that in-game currency to unlock new costumes or moons. But this mode has also exposed some of Super Mario Odyssey’s seams because players are using glitches to hide balloons out-of-bounds. For example, here is one in the Mushroom Kingdom level:
Other players have noticed balloons hidden in this wall, and they are talking about it on Super Mario Odyssey forums. To get this balloon, you’d have to empty out the pond by pulling the four stoppers, and then you’d have to perform some precise movements with Mario to get him to slide through the geometry. For this wall, you’d need to ground pound into a roll toward the wall. As Mario first touches the wall, you need to press Y and B at the same time to throw your hat and to exit the roll simultaneously. This should put Mario inside of the wall. That’s not impossible to do, but this favors the hider. If you are seeking, you have to wager your coins. So you could easily run out of money before you succeed at this challenge. The hider doesn’t have to risk anything, and they can try as many times as they want without losing any coins. And the more people who fail at your balloon, the more coins you get — so the game encourages this kind of cheating. Finally, when you go to seek balloons, the highest-risk/highest-reward missions are these kinds of nearly impossible balloons. But you can’t see if they are using a glitch or not until after you pay. And even then, you may have to pay a couple of times to understand that a particular balloon is impossible unless you understand how the glitches work. Thankfully, this is just a distraction, but I hope Nintendo addresses this mode — because it’s one that I want to use to earn the coins I need to get to 999 moons and 100-percent the game. |
| Somewhere: The Vault Papers’s conspiracy plays out in texts and on Google Maps Posted: 23 Feb 2018 02:15 PM PST  Somewhere: The Vault Papers teases the possibility of an immense conspiracy unfolding — but the only way you can find out more is through texting. French developer Norseman Interactive has teamed up with publisher Playdius on its debut messaging-based narrative mobile game. It launches March 8 on iOS for $3, with an Android release to come at a later date. The player must guide Cat, a journalist who’s been investigating a whistleblower’s claims. At the start of Somewhere, she texts you on accident and from then on, you must help her make decisions to stay alive when people begin pursuing her. Depending on your choices, the game has six different endings to unlock. The story progresses in real-time, much like other mobile games that have mimicked text conversations such as The Pixel Hunt’s Bury Me, My Love, which details the struggles of Syrian refugees escaping to Europe, and Three Minute Games’s astronaut thriller Lifeline. However, Norseman Interactive has added another mechanic to the mix: You’ll also have to open up Google Maps to help Cat at certain points in the game. Mobile texting games evoke a certain sense of true immersion. The games’ user interfaces often imitate real messaging apps, which can make the stories feel even more intense. Somewhere’s inclusion of Google Maps adds yet another parallel to the way folks commonly use their phones. It also incorporates some elements from alternate reality games (ARGs) as players will occasionally have to search for clues on the internet to solve puzzles. |
835 Mobile Platform
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