Month: November 2017
Apple acquired augmented reality headset startup Vrvana for $30M
As Apple reportedly ramps up work to ship an augmented reality headset in 2020, it has acquired a startup from Montreal, Canada that could help it get there. TechCrunch has learned that Apple has acquired Vrvana, maker of the Totem headset — which had rave reviews but never shipped. The deal was for around $30 million, two sources […]
Man makes app to erase your makeup in photos but insists it isn’t sexist
Artificial intelligence-based photo editing tools, in their brief existence in the history of humanity, are off to an immensely painful start. Selfie-editing tool FaceApp clumsily took the torch earlier this year, setting fire to the product’s intriguing face-altering premise by whitening users’ photos under an ill-intentioned “hot” filter. The same app continued to offend with […]
It doesn’t look like it, but it’s China’s latest AI smart speaker
Image: baidu Google Home and the Amazon Echo have new competition. Baidu, which runs China’s most popular search engine, has produced the Raven H, a voice-activated speaker that runs on an artificial intelligence platform. SEE ALSO: Baidu plans to put a driverless bus on Chinese roads next year and cars by 2021 The Raven H […]
Las Vegas launched a self-driving shuttle, and it crashed an hour later
If driverless vehicles are gonna take over the world, it should feel about as natural as taking an elevator, and, say, less risky than playing a slot machine. And yet. On the first day of Las Vegas celebrating the historic launch of its new self-driving shuttle bus pilot program, said shuttle bus promptly collided with […]
Alan Turing’s school report reveals little of his genius
Items from codebreaker’s life and death go on display at Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. In 1929, a teenager’s end-of-term report noted that his English reading was weak, his French prose was very weak, his essays grandiose beyond his abilities, and his mathematical promise undermined by his untidy work. The report gave few clues that […]