Nature, one of the most prestigious scientific journals in the world, has just announce plans to create a Machine Intelligence imprint, and researchers are not happy. The field has been doing fine with open-access journals — why clog it up with the paid-access model everyone has been trying to escape for decades? Over two thousand have signed a statement saying they won’t publish in it. Academic publishing is a tumult right now, with open-access journals and proponents thereof battling with the old-guard prestige of the likes of Science and Nature — along with the fees from jealous keepers such as…
Author: geekfenceblogger
Oculus says that its new Go headset already boasts support for more than 1,000 titles out of the gate as of today. One of the most interesting of the small subset of those that I’ve taken a look at today has been the latest update for Bigscreen, which brings the previously PC-only VR desktop streaming platform to mobile with Oculus Go (Gear VR too). The free app is launching in beta and there are still some performance issues to be sorted out, but the app ultimately does what it claims, streaming your PC’s display to the $200 Oculus headset, effectively…
Beauty-in-a-box brand Birchbox has changed up its ownership structure. The New York-based startup, which has raised almost $90 million in funding from noted venture firms like Accel Partners and First Round Capital, has a new majority owner in hedge fund Viking Global, sources confirm to TechCrunch. First reported by Recode, Birchbox made some changes to its cap table after failing to find a suitable buyer. We are told that the details are still getting finalized, but that Viking is expected to take on a majority stake after investing about $15 million. Viking previously led Birchbox’s $60 million funding round in 2014. Birchbox did…
Snapchat neglected the international market in its early years, and now WhatsApp has snatched that growth opportunity. WhatsApp’s clone of Snapchat Stories, ‘WhatsApp Status’, now has 450 million daily active users. That’s compared to just 187 million daily users on all of Snapchat. This update comes after Facebook said WhatsApp Status and Instagram Stories had 300 million daily users as of November. WhatsApp is getting stickers Group video calling is coming to WhatsApp Rather than rest on its laurels, WhatsApp just announced stickers and Group Video calling to make the lean communications utility more fun. Users already spend 2 billion minutes…
It goes without saying that getting dressed is one of the most critical steps in our daily routine. But long practice has made it second nature, and people suffering from dementia may lose that familiarity, making dressing a difficult and frustrating process. This smart dresser from NYU is meant to help them through the process while reducing the load on overworked caregivers. It may seem that replacing responsive human help with a robotic dresser is a bit insensitive. But not only are there rarely enough caregivers to help everyone in a timely manner at, say, a nursing care facility, the…
We’ve already got a star-studded lineup prepped to speak at Disrupt SF, running September 5 to September 7. So far, we’ve announced appearances by Sophia Amoruso, Carbon’s Dr. Joseph DeSimone, Adidas’ Eric Liedtke, Ripple’s Brad Garlinghouse, Michael Arrington, and Drew Houston. But given that today is the last day to purchase early bird tickets, we thought we’d let slip a couple more stellar speakers joining the agenda. We’re thrilled to announce that Roblox CEO and cofounder David Baszucki and Goldman Sachs CFO Martin Chavez will be joining us on the Disrupt SF stage. (Not together, to be clear.) David Baszucki…
Facebook today announced that Instagram, its popular photo sharing platform, is getting support for video chats, among a couple of other new features. As Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg noted in his F8 keynote today, quite a few Instagram users already use the platform’s live video feature to chat with friends. “People use live video to just hang out,” he said. “It’s amazing how many of these tools are about brining us together.” We haven’t seen the new video chat in action, but chances are it’s a pretty straightforward feature that will expand on the existing messaging tools in…
Facebook is recruiting help to make its Stories more interesting than Snapchat’s. Starting with Spotify, SoundCloud, and GoPro, third-party apps can now let their users share to Facebook Stories and Instagram Stories. Rather than screenshotting, users will be able to hit a button to share a photo or video of a playlist, song, or mini-movie from another app into Facebook or Instagram’s Stories camera, where they can embellish it with effects and post it to their friends. GoPro’s integration actually lets you edit your movies inside Facebook’s apps, while you can immediately start listening to songs shared from Spotify and…
Facebook is rolling out a new Groups tab and plugin, announced CEO Mark Zuckerberg during his opening keynote at Facebook’s F8 developer conference this morning. The addition of the new Groups tab on Facebook will make groups a more central part of the Facebook experience, the CEO explained. “In a community, you can meet new people who share your values – for some, this might be a support group for new parents. For others, it might be about a disease you have. Fo others, it might be about finding people to come together and volunteer,” he said. “People want to…
A group of European and international publishers have accused Google of using an incoming update to the European Union’s data protection framework to try to push “draconian” new terms on them in exchange for continued access to its ad network — which many publishers rely on to monetize their content online. Google trailed the terms as incoming in late March, while the new EU regulation — GDPR — is due to apply from May 25. “[W]e find it especially troubling that you would wait until the last-minute before the GDPR comes into force to announce these terms as publishers have…