Microsoft's AI future is rooted in its gaming past

The Kinect will never die. Microsoft debuted its motion-sensing camera on June 1st, 2009, showing off a handful of gimmicky applications for the Xbox 360; it promised easy, controller-free gaming for the whole family. Back then, Kinect was called Pr...

Amazon's 'Transparent' will return for fifth and final season

The future of Amazon hit Transparent seemed murky after lead actor Jeffrey Tambor left the show amid sexual harassment and assault accusations laid against him. But fans of the show may be glad to hear there is a fifth (and final) season on the way,...

Volvo cars and trucks can now share traffic alerts with each other

Volvo Cars announced today that some of its models will begin sharing real-time data with certain Volvo trucks. When drivers of Volvo cars with the Hazard Light Alert system switch on their hazard lights, an alert is sent to all other nearby cars wit...

Self-learning robots may soon inspect nuclear sites

Some jobs are simply too dangerous for humans. Near the top of that list is nuclear cleanup -- so to keep us mere homo sapiens safe, we're sending in robots. To help improve the bots' decision making skills, scientists at the University of Lincoln ha...

PUBG’s third map will open for all players to test this weekend

PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds has been teasing its upcoming third map for a month now, and this weekend, players on all platforms will be able to test it out -- no invite required. The newly-named Sanhok (formed from the Thai word for 'fun' and the T...

Facebook and Instagram videos can now be played in WhatsApp

A new WhatsApp update includes a feature that will allow Facebook and Instagram videos to play directly in WhatsApp itself. So now, when someone you're chatting with in WhatsApp sends you a video link from either of the other two platforms, you won't...

Instagram may soon offer a soundtrack for your Stories

With recent music licensing deals between Facebook and record labels like Sony, Warner Music, Universal and other European publishers, it would seem as if Facebook, and by extension Instagram, is uniquely poised to bring soundtracks to shared videos....

The first principles of programming

I recently wrote a 80-page guide to how to get a programming job without a degree, curated from my experience helping students do just that at Springboard. This excerpt is a part where I focus on getting all the way to the first principles of programming, a skeleton that will help you learn more effectively. This is the approach to learning that Elon Musk favors — and it’s something that can help you get back to the foundation of learning programming effectively.  1- Programming is about manipulating data At its core, programming is about moving data and playing with it.…

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Microsoft Pay comes to Outlook, integrating Stripe, Braintree, Sage, Wave and more

Microsoft Pay — Microsoft’s answer to Android Pay and Apple Pay that was originally launched in 2016 as Microsoft Wallet — is getting a little more useful today. At Build, Microsoft announced that it will be integrating its digital wallet service into Outlook. This means that, for the first time, when a company sends you […]

Democrats to release 3,000 Russia-bought Facebook ads

You're about to get more than a small sample of the Russia-connected Facebook ads purchased during the 2016 presidential election. Wall Street Journal sources have learned that Democrats from the House Intelligence Committee are planning to release 3...

Drive.ai is launching an autonomous ride-hailing network in Texas

Drive.ai, the self-driving car startup with roots in Stanford’s Artificial Intelligence Lab, has partnered with Frisco, Texas and the Hall Group to deploy the first autonomous ride-hailing platform in the state of Texas. Initially, the platform will be available to more than 10,000 members of Hall Group’s commercial and residential communities. Through the service, people will […]

Uber vehicle reportedly saw but ignored woman it struck

The cause of the fatal crash of an Uber self-driving car appears to have been at the software level, specifically a function that determines which objects to ignore and which to attend to, The Information reported. This puts the fault squarely on Uber's doorstep, though there was never much reason to think it belonged anywhere else.

Live Share in Visual Studio lets you code and debug together

At its Build developer conference, Microsoft today announced that Live Share, its previously announced collaborative development feature for Visual Studio and Visual Studio code, is now available to developers who want to give it a try. Until now, this feature, which allows developers to better work together, was only available in a private preview — […]

Microsoft teases Alexa/Cortana team-up again

At today’s Build show, Microsoft finally showed off what it would look like if Cortana and Alexa would sound like if they worked together. Microsoft and Amazon have been teasing the team-up since last August, when they announced their agreement to get their voice assistants to work together by the end of the year. That didn’t happen, but it’s nice to see Microsoft hasn’t completely forgotten its promise, especially considering there have been no major updates up to this point. In order to summon the voice assistant on its non-native device, you need to ask the resident voice to open…

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Microsoft shows off Alexa-Cortana integration, launches sign-up website for news

Microsoft still isn’t giving a timeline as to when its virtual assistant, Cortana, will support integration with Amazon Alexa – something the companies had announced last year. But the company at its Build developer conference today did show off how that integration will work, in an on-stage demo with support from Amazon, and it launched a new […]

Microsoft overhauls its conversational AI chatbot tools

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella talked briefly about a major update to the company’s conversational AI tools. You can now more easily create, test and improve bots that run on Azure or your own servers and work across multiple platforms. “At this conference, we’re launching a hundred plus features for the bot framework so that you […]

Microsoft brings Kinect back from the dead… for Azure

Kinect was the coolest gadget Microsoft made that no one actually used, but now the company is bringing it back with an all new focus: AI and the cloud. At its Build conference today, Microsoft announced Project Kinect for Azure. Azure, if you’re not familiar, is Microsoft’s cloud computing service, and the star of Microsoft’s show this year. Project Kinect basically takes the depth-sensing prowess of the Xbox accessory, shrinks it to a tiny frame with new sensors for developers to use with AI and Internet-of-Things via Azure. Microsoft says it’s used some of the advances made through HoloLens –…

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China closing in on massive new chip fund in bid to dominate US semiconductor industry

China’s government has made technological independence from the United States one of its highest priorities. And now it appears to be putting its money where its messaging has been. According to The Wall Street Journal, China is close to finalizing a $47 billion investment fund that would finance semiconductor research and chip startup development. The […]

Microsoft introduces a pair of new enterprise apps for HoloLens

Today at Microsoft’s Day 1 Build keynote, AR and VR has definitely been a sideshow so far, but the company did have some announcements related to enterprise apps on the HoloLens. The company detailed two new apps, Remote Assist and Layout, which will be coming May 22. The new Remote Assist app from Microsoft is […]

Instagram code reveals upcoming music feature

Instagram is preparing to let you add music to your Stories, judging by code found inside its Android app. “Music stickers” could let you search for and add a song to your posts, thanks to licensing deals with the major record labels recently struck by Facebook. Music stickers would make Instagram Stories much more interesting […]

Printify, a new marketplace for custom printing, raises $1 million seed

Printify, a startup all the way from Riga, Latvia, has raised $1 million in seed funding led by Google AdSense pioneer Gokul Rajaram as it looks to expand its services in the U.S. and build out its team in Latvia. Today, roughly 50,000 e-commerce stores use Printify’s services for printing-on-demand, according to the company. Together […]

Vegan meal kit startup Purple Carrot raises $4M from Fresh Del Monte

Purple Carrot announced this morning that it has raised $4 million in strategic funding from Fresh Del Monte Produce. The company, which delivers completely plant-based (vegan) meal kits to subscribers, was founded in 2014. It has, in part, gotten attention through celebrity involvement, first by enlisting food writer Mark Bittman as its chief innovation officer […]

Oculus Research is now the ‘Facebook Reality Lab’

Oculus Research is getting a new name. As the AR/VR-focused research group grows more instrumental to the future of Facebook at large, the group will now be called Facebook Reality Labs. The announcement was made by Oculus Chief Scientist Michael Abrash in a post on his personal Facebook page. It’s just a name change, but […]

Google’s Android Things IoT platform comes out of beta

Android Things, Google IoT platform for developers who want to build connected devices, is now out of beta, as the company today announced. After eight release candidates, the last of which launched less than a month ago, Google now deems Android Things ready for primetime. Despite its beta status, quite a few companies started building […]

Android Things 1.0 fixes the biggest pain points in building IoT devices

Google announced its internet of things (IoT) operating system, Android Things, almost three years ago. Now, it’s ready for the prime-time, with the launch of Android Things 1.0. This major update brings increased hardware compatibility, and long-term support for production devices. But before we start diving into the news, it’s probably worth talking what Android Things actually is. As I mentioned, Android Things is an operating system for IoT devices — so, stuff like smart lightbulbs, thermostats, Wi-Fi enabled cameras. You get the idea. Unlike the mainstream version of Android, it runs on the most austere of hardware, and can…

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