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Thursday, May 28, 2015

Google Intensifies Focus on Its Cardboard Virtual Reality Device

from nytimes

By CONOR DOUGHERTYMAY 28, 2015

SAN FRANCISCO — Google has seen the future, and it is littered with cardboard boxes.

At its Google I/O developer conference here on Thursday, the search giant announced several programs that aim to put its virtual reality viewer, called Cardboard, at the center of a growing online world in which people can use their smartphone and YouTube to watch videos rendered in 3-D.

Google introduced its virtual reality viewer — a cardboard box, with some lenses and a magnet, that looks a lot like a plastic View-Master toy — as a gift at last year’s I/O conference.

The idea was to create an inexpensive virtual reality device that allowed anyone with a smartphone to do things like fly through a Google Earth map of Chicago or view personal pictures in three dimensions.

It is a comically simple contraption: A smartphone slips into the front so it sits just inches from a user’s eyes. Peering through a pair of cheap, plastic lenses renders the images on the phone’s screen in 3-D. It costs around $4.

Google's virtual reality viewer, a cardboard box with some lenses and a magnet, was introduced as a gift at last year’s I/O conference. CreditPeter Earl McCollough for The New York Times

Typical of the Google playbook, the company put Cardboard’s specifications online so hobbyists and manufacturers could build them.

In the year since, people have made viewers from foam, aluminum and walnut, and the Cardboard app was downloaded a million or so times.

“We wanted the viewer to be as dumb as possible and as cheap as possible because we basically wanted to open VR for everyone,” said David Coz, an engineer in Google’s Paris office who developed Cardboard.

At this year’s I/O, Google is doubling down on Cardboard with initiatives meant to expand virtual reality to as many phones as possible. First of these is a new software kit that will make it easier for developers to build Cardboard apps for iPhones. The company also redesigned the cardboard hardware so that it is easier to fold and can now accommodate any smartphone, including popular, larger-screen, so-called phablets.

The Cardboard update is a modest offering compared with the product splashes of previous Google conferences, which have included a spherical entertainment system that was never released and Google Glass, the much hyped and now discontinued computerized eyewear that caused significant privacy concerns.

With Cardboard, Google’s virtual reality is decidedly low cost and low frills, but, as in other Google efforts, like the free Android software that is the most widely used operating system in the world, it seems meant more to amass an audience than make money.

Over the last year, Google has developed a 360-degree camera that looks like a chandelier rigged with 16 GoPro video recorders, and currently has about a dozen of them filming sights around the world. When run through Google’s software and processors, the footage will turn into a virtual reality rendering that tries to mimic the view from a human eye. Google said it would allow people to start uploading virtual reality videos to YouTube this summer.

During a recent demonstration at Google’s Mountain View, Calif., campus, Clay Bavor, vice president for product management for Google’s virtual reality efforts, demonstrated a video of a courtyard at the University of Washington. The video felt like an immersive version of the company’s Street View mapping product that displays street-level views of city streets and historical sites.

Over time, the company is hoping this real-life version of virtual reality will grow into a vast collection of videos and experiences similar to how YouTube videos are shared now.

Google also said on Thursday it had formed a partnership with GoPro to develop a version of its virtual reality recorder that anybody could buy. The companies did not list a price for the recorder, but given that it has 16 cameras that retail for $400 each, it is likely to be expensive.

Where any of this goes is anyone’s guess. One might imagine videos from the front row of a concert or a television channel filming breaking news in 3-D. At the same time, one might remember that Google has a history of announcing new products and initiatives that flop, like Google Glass.

And virtual reality has for decades been the next big thing that never actually happened.

Now companies like Facebook, Sony and Microsoft are placing big bets on both virtual reality, a computer-generated version of the world, as well as augmented reality, or AR, in which real-world experiences are enhanced with computer-generated images.

Analysts expect the first applications will be in video games. But in time they say virtual reality experiences could feature in everything from business meetings to doctor’s appointments.

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, has on several occasions said he believed virtual reality could be the next computing platform. That belief is enough to drive significant investment.

“The shift from desktop to mobile caught so many off guard and so dramatically impacted the competitive landscape, every tech and media company is going to have to be prepared for just the possibility that VR/AR will become the next platform,” wrote Ben Schachter, an analyst with Macquarie Securities.

At its conference, Google also announced Google Photos, a photo app that comes with free, unlimited storage of the uncountable numbers of photos that people amass on their devices. There were new search features that allow people to do things like use their thumb to search for a restaurant in their text messages, instead of opening a new application.

In addition, the company outlined a new operating system, Brillo, that is based on Android and will allow household devices like refrigerators and thermostats to talk to one another and their owner’s phone. Sundar Pichai, Google’s senior vice president for products, suggested that users could use it to turn on their oven with a voice command.

Cardboard was the final act of the show, which featured a giant screen that wrapped around a San Francisco auditorium as if to mimic the experience of being immersed in a deep, three-dimensional world.

Beyond the virtual reality videos it plans on putting on YouTube, Google is also using its Cardboard device in its growing education efforts. Over the last year, the company has been running a trial called Expeditions in about 100 classrooms, in which teachers can use the viewers to take their students on a tour of world sites.

Last year, Google invested $542 million in Magic Leap, a Florida company that is developing augmented reality technology that creates imaginative images like an elephant that can fit in one’s hand. And Mr. Bavor said the company had made “a significant investment” in virtual reality that goes well beyond the efforts presented at I/O.

He would not say how much money or how many full-time employees are dedicated to these efforts, but virtual reality has grown to occupy a small building on Google’s sprawling Mountain View campus.

“The upshot is we are making a big investment in VR and this whole space well beyond Cardboard,” Mr. Bavor said. “This reality-capture system and amazing software that powers it, that has been a yearlong investment and is just one of the many things we have brewing.”

Tuesday, May 19, 2015

Here's the Latest Sign Bernie Sanders Is Changing the Course of the 2016 Election

from mic.com

By Gregory Krieg May 15, 2015

Is there an echo in here?

According to the Washington Post, Democratic 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton told a group of donors on Thursday she would only nominate potential Supreme Court justices who promised to overturn its decision in Citizens United v. FEC, the 2010 ruling that paved the way for billions of dollars in outside and mostly unregulated spending on political campaigns.

One anonymous attendee informed the Washington Post that Clinton's statement drew "major applause" from the gathering, which included wealthy Democratic financiers and top political aides.

If any of this sounds familiar, that's because it is. On Sunday, Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent and Clinton's top primary challenger, made a similar declaration on CBS's Face the Nation.

Source: Mic/CBS News

"If elected president, I will have a litmus test in terms of my nominee to be a Supreme Court justice," Sanderstold host Bob Schieffer. "And that nominee will say that we are all going to overturn this disastrous Supreme Court decision on Citizens United, because that decision is undermining American democracy. I do not believe that billionaires should be able to buy politicians."

This isn't the first time Clinton has embraced long-held liberal positions since she announced her candidacy on April 12. But her campaign's quick turnaround time — just four days — underlines the significant effect Sanders is having on Clinton's policy platform. Whether he pulls off the historic primary upset or not, Sanders' voice will be heard through the general election campaign and into Election Day 2016.

Taking her cues: Though a tactical necessity in the Democratic contest, Clinton's race to the left on a number of hot-button issues could complicate her likely general election campaign. For now, at least, she doesn't seem worried.

Her early focus on economic equality appears to have been pulled from the playbook of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who has emerged as the most powerful liberal voice on Capitol Hill. Promising to be a "champion" for "everyday Americans" and, at her first formal campaign event, calling out corporate executives and hedge fund managers as the drivers of the growing wage gap, Clinton has doubled and tripled down on popular progressive causes.

"I think it's fair to say that if you look across the country, the deck is stacked in favor of those already at the top," Clinton said at an April 14 roundtable in Monticello, Iowa. "There's something wrong when CEOs make 300 times more than the American worker."

On May 7, just hours after a federal court ruled that a controversial NSA surveillance program was not authorized under the post-Sept. 11 Patriot Act (which Clinton voted for twice during her time in the Senate, first in 2001 and again in 2006, and which Sanders opposed twice, during his time in the House of Representatives), the candidate offered her support for a new bill that would place tighter restrictions on domestic snooping. Her tweet dropped a few hours after Sanders expressed a similar, if less ambiguous, response to the court's bombshell ruling.

Sanders took the lead:

A little less than six hours later, Clinton followed:

Is this winning? Clinton's promise to employ the Citizens United "litmus test" promised by Sanders earlier in the week is undermined by her own decision to accept the aid of a super PAC made possible by the same ruling she now promises to see overturned. In fact, one week before she told donors in Brooklyn, New York, about her new thinking on Supreme Court nominees, Clinton was, according to multiple reports, huddling with potential big money contributors to her chosen Priorities USA Action group.

Despite the apparent cognitive dissonance — others might explain it in less kind terms — there is no indication, even after Thursday's comments, that Clinton has any plans to step back from the super PAC game. But her quick response to the pressure applied by Sanders suggests that the "democratic socialist" from Vermont is going to be a force throughout the Democratic primary season.

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Sunday, May 17, 2015

Louis C.K. jokes about child molesters on 'SNL,' things get uncomfortable

from usatoday

By Carly Mallenbaum May 17, 2015 1:14 pm

Louis C.K. went there on Saturday Night Live. During his monologue on this weekend’s Season 40 finale, the comedian talked about his “mild racism,” how his kids fight the same way as Palestine and Israel do and how child molesters are “very tenacious people.” He went on:

“They love molesting childs, it’s crazy. It’s like their favorite thing.”

He then compared a pedophile’s love for children to his passion for Mounds Bars.

“If someone said to me, you eat another Mounds Bar and go to jail everyone will hate you… I’d stop doing it. … There’s no worse life available to a human than being a caught child molestor … you could only really surmise that it must be really good … for them to risk so much.”

You could hear the audience go “Ohhh!”

“How do you think I feel? This is my last show, probably,” he joked.

Of course, some viewers voiced their disapproval of the bit on Twitter. But if you asked Louis C.K. about the reaction, he’d probably say people are responding too quickly.

What do you think about the monologue?

It went too far.It was uncomfortable, but funny.It was great!

VoteView Results Polldaddy.com

Meanwhile, there was another sketch on the show about Louis C.K. wanting to dominate elves:

The funniest bit, however, was probably this police lineup:

Or, this digital extra about stolen jokes that didn’t make the broadcast:

louis c.k., SNL, TV

Saturday, May 16, 2015

George Harrison - The Last Performance (John Fugelsang)

from youtube

McLaughlin Group May 15, 2015

from youtube

Thursday, May 7, 2015

Edward Snowden fans see vindication for leaker

from politico

Edward Snowden hasn’t had his day in court, but he’s already finding some vindication in the U.S. judicial system.

A U.S. appeals court’s ruling on Thursday that bulk collection of telephone metadata by the National Security Agency is illegal has given fresh hope to supporters of the former government contractor, who say the judgment proves he was right to reveal the program.

Story Continued Below

Stephen Kohn, executive director of the National Whistleblowers Center, said the ruling is “a vindication for Snowden and the importance of whistleblowing.”

“Maybe someone who reveals a secret program that multiple federal judges say is ILLEGAL is a whistleblower who deserves gratitude — not prison?” tweeted Glenn Greenwald, the journalist whom Snowden turned to to help him reveal the bulk collection program.

Still, it’s unlikely Snowden, who is living in Russia to avoid U.S. prosecution, will decide to buy a plane ticket home anytime soon, since the material he handed over to news organizations concerned many government programs, not just metadata collection.

“This ruling would not have been possible and would not have occurred if his disclosures had not taken place,” noted Steven Aftergood, a specialist on government secrecy. But it “doesn’t address the larger issues in the scope of all that he disclosed.”

There was no hint Thursday that the Obama administration had softened its stance toward Snowden.

“Mr. Snowden is accused of leaking classified information and faces felony charges here in the United States,” said Ned Price, a spokesman for the National Security Council. “He should return to the U.S. as soon as possible, where he will be accorded full due process and protections.”

The ruling came from a three-judge panel of the New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The judges decided that the NSA’s collection of information about billions of phone calls made or received by Americans was not allowed under an anti-terrorism law passed by Congress, but they did not rule on whether the program violated the Constitution.

The court’s main opinion, written by Judge Gerard Lynch and joined by Judges Robert Sack and Vernon Broderick, only briefly mentioned the young man now living in Moscow and considered a fugitive by the U.S.

“Americans first learned about the telephone metadata program that appellants now challenge on June 5, 2013, when the British newspaper The Guardian published a [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court] order leaked by former government contractor Edward Snowden,” Lynch’s opinion noted.

However, Sack penned a separate concurring opinion that dealt more directly with the implications of Snowden’s actions and painted him as part of a long American tradition of whistleblowing.

Sack — a former attorney for The Wall Street Journal — placed the term “leak” in quotes when discussing Snowden’s actions and referred to at least 40 news articles comparing Snowden to Daniel Ellsberg, the defense analyst who leaked the so-called Pentagon Papers about the Vietnam War to The New York Times and The Washington Post.

The judge also referred to an opinion he wrote nearly a decade ago in a separate case involving leaks to the Times.

“The use of the term ‘leak’ to identify unauthorized disclosures in this context may be unhelpful. It misleadingly suggests a system that is broken. Some unauthorized disclosures may be harmful indeed. But others likely contribute to the general welfare,” Sack wrote. “Secretive bureaucratic agencies, like hermetically sealed houses, often benefit from a breath of fresh air.”

Despite the comparisons, Sack insisted the court was not judging the merits of Snowden’s actions.

“Although the ‘leak’ led to this litigation, our decision is not about the Snowden disclosures themselves,” the Clinton-appointed judge said in a footnote.

Jesselyn Radack, a member of Snowden’s legal team, demurred when asked if his lawyers had been in touch with him about the ruling.

“Obviously everybody in the transparency, accountability and anti-surveillance community is thrilled with this ruling,” Radack said.

She also insisted the ruling’s implications for Snowden’s situation go well beyond one set of revelations.

“The same defective legal theory that underlies the phone-records program underlies many of the government’s other mass-surveillance programs,” she said. “Today’s ruling merits reconsideration of all of those programs, and it underscores the need for comprehensive systemic reform.”

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