Soothing The Savage Beat: When Electronic Artists Conjure Classical

Electronic artists such as Mason Bates (pictured above), Aphex Twin and Tiësto have blended classical music into their dance beats.

Courtesy of the artist hide caption

toggle caption Courtesy of the artist

Electronic artists such as Mason Bates (pictured above), Aphex Twin and Tiësto have blended classical music into their dance beats.

Courtesy of the artist

The divide between classical and popular music is often narrower than we might think. In 1795, Joseph Haydnblended a toe-tapping Croatian folk tune into the finale of his Symphony No. 104. Two hundred years later, we find the electronic dance music artist known as Aphex Twin, overhauling one of his pulsating tracks with composer Philip Glass.

Electronic artists, be they traffickers in trance, techno, ambient or house, have turned to classical music for inspiration. Here are a few extraordinary examples of what can happen when those two worlds meet on the dance floor or chill out room.

Square Closes $150 Million Round At $6 Billion Valuation

Square just closed the Series E round it had been raising.

Filings in Septembershowed the e-commerce payments company was set to raise at least $100 million, but the deal wasn’t done just yet. Now a Square spokesman has confirmed the raises to the New York Times, led by new investor the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation(GIC). This puts Square at A $6 billion valuation. Goldman Sachs and Rizvi Traverse Management also participated in the round, according to the same source.

This last round is right on the heels of Apple’s new payments reveal and a splitbetween payment rival Paypal and eBay. There were earlier rumors that Apple and Square were in acquisition talks but that Square walked away.

As we reporteda few weeks back when the filings first popped up, Square’s valuation has fallen behind its payment processing rate. Square is expected to process $30 billion this year. It reportedly totaled $20 in 2013. The valuation at the time was at $5 billion.

The card payment processing realm may get even tighter in the next little bit. Amazon has also challenged Squarewith its own version of a card reader this year called Local Register. Eventbrite also has it’s own version of a card readerand app but says it plans to stick to just venue payments for now. That could change in the future.

Intel buys a 360-degree sports video replay specialist

It will use Replay Technologies' freeD tech to create "immersive sports" entertainment.

Image credit: Replay Technologies / Intel

Replay Technologies / Intel

Intel is already into camera technology with RealSense, but it just took a big leap into sports entertainment by acquiring Replay Technologies. That's the company behind the crazy 360-degree freeD video used during the slam-dunk competition at this year's NBA All-Star games (see the video, below). The system can freeze action from any angle then rotate all around it, much like the bullet-timeeffect used in the Matrix . Intel's grand idea is to it to create "a new category for sports entertainment that we call immersive sports, which is attracting the attention of leagues, venues, broadcasters and fans," according to its blog.

Intel was already working closely with Replay Technologies, as it supplied the servers and CPUs used to power the tech. For the NBA, it creates a 3D render of the court using 28 ultrahigh-definition cameras connected to Intel's servers. The tech produces fairly seamless 360-degree replays, despite producing the occasional bizarre artifact (like pixelated player faces). Now that it's acquired the tech (for an unknown price) Intel says it will improve the performance and add "new features like the ability to manipulate and edit personalized content." If the tech trickles down to the consumer side, expect to see all the bullet-time cat videos you never wanted.

Edit your GoPro videos on your TV with Sugarlock

Sharing sweet shreds is about to get much easier.

Right now, if you want to share GoPro videos (or any video sitting on a memory card, and not your phone), then it usually involves a PC and some effort -- or at least some time exporting and uploading it. Sugarlock describes itself as an "action cam dock," but it's perhaps better (if less sexily) described as a dedicated video editing box you plug into your TV. The aim of which is to help you sift through your footage easily, find the best parts, and export them as sharable clips, without any of the baggage of most editing software.

Stick a memory card in Sugarlock and all your videos appear by organized by date. The user interface on the TV is clean and simple, and you navigate using your phone as a remote (via an app). Video previews play when you select a clip, and a simple tap will bring that video up full screen for playback.

During the demo I received at CES, we were able to, navigate, find and share a clip in less than a minute. The process is simple: choose one, find the bit you want to share, mark your in and out edit points with a swipe gesture, and you're done. Choose the share option, and your clip is sent to Facebook (and at release, a host of other social platforms). The product I got to see was the final hardware, but the software was missing some of the features that will be available when it launches.

The box itself is about six-inches square, by an inch-or-so high -- comparable to an Apple TV. In fact, you might argues it's a mini PC, but with a single task. The specification of which we don't know, but it's capable of handling 4K footage, which is probably all most people need to know. It connects to your TV over HDMI, and you feed it your media either by SD card, or USB drive. The retail version will also auto archive your media, but that's not a feature I got to see in my demo. Previews and videos viewed through the box will be in full HD, even if the clip is 4K. There are some technical issues that prevent 4K previewing, but any edits / cuts will preserve the original resolution.

The question you might be asking is, do you really need something like this? There's definitely a problem to be solved here. We've all been on vacation and optimistically taken an action camera to record our exploits. Or invested in a drone. What happens when we return, though, is that the diligent among us archive that footage, and make some use of it. The rest of us likely stuff it all in a folder on our hard drive, maybe watching some unedited clips, or worse (and this is me) -- don't get around to transferring it to our PC for weeks, if at all (or until when your memory card fills up).

If you're in the latter camp, you're in good company. The napkin statistic is that only a single digit percent of people edit and publish their footage. Something even GoPro is trying to change, tempting users with cold hard cash, and offering moreand more toolsto lower the amount of friction between your camera and YouTube or Instagram. There are even products like Gnarboxthat don't even want you to wait until you get home, and let you edit and share on the move. There's definitely a problem that needs solving.

Is Sugarlock the solution? We'll have to wait and see. The hardware I saw was well made and polished (the product is launching on Indiegogo in February, but the hardware is done, it's more a matter of getting their message out). The software side -- both the remote app, and the main interface -- look very easy to use, but perhaps a little light on features. Simple tasks like joining two clips together and adding music aren't possible right now. Though, I was assured that Sugarlock "will be like a Tesla, it gets better after you buy it."

The team behind the product has worked on products such as ReplayTV and Roku, and it's hoping that Sugarlock will enjoy similar success. How much for a one? The Indiegogo earlybird deal will be $239, and it'll jump to $299 when it finds its way onto regular retail channels.

Meet the GoPro Hero4 Session: a tiny camera with big shoes to fill

That camera you see above is the GoPro Hero4 Session, the fifth and newest member to the company's current line-up.

That camera you see above is the GoPro Hero4 Session, the fifth and newest member to the company's current line-up. You can't have avoided noticing that the Hero4 Session is a small black square, and not the traditional silver matchbox, or gray lumpwe're used to. It's the most striking update in design we've seen from GoPro for, well, ever. The smaller, lighter form factor is the most obvious talking point, but the feature set is interesting too, for a mix of reasons.

Gallery: GoPro Hero4 Session | 22 Photos

Alphabet is reportedly selling its robotics subsidiary Boston Dynamics because it’s not making money

Boston Dynamics, the Massachusetts-based robotics company purchased by Alphabet in 2013, is apparently on the chopping block, according to a report from Bloomberg , over concerns that it won’t be able to sell any actual products in the next few years.

The lab is perhaps best known for producing some four-legged robots that dogs aren’t so sure about, and the humanlike Atlas robots, star of multiple creepy videos hinting at the demise of the human race(they also happened to be the robot many teams used at last summer’s DARPA Robotics Challenge).

After its purchase by Alphabet, Boston Dynamics came under the domain of Andy Rubin, the onetime head of Android, who was put in charge of Google’s fledgling robotics division. Rubin left Google in 2014 to run a tech incubator, and Boston Dynamics has floated adrift within Google’s corporate structure since then.

When Google reorganized into Alphabet last year, it folded much of its robotics work into Google X, its research lab for “moonshots.” According to Bloomberg, Astro Teller, the head of X, recently told employees that if robotics weren’t a viable solution for the problems that Alphabet is trying to solve, they would be reassigned. This message, along with the advice to potentially sell Boston Dynamics as it wasn’t a money-maker, was apparently inadvertently posted on internal Alphabet message boards, and sent to Bloomberg.

Alphabet wasn’t immediately available to comment on the potential sale, but a spokesperson for Alphabet also posted messages on the internal site saying that after the most recent Atlas video was posted to YouTube in February, the company wanted to distance itself from the robotics work. “There’s excitement from the tech press, but we’re also starting to see some negative threads about it being terrifying, ready to take humans’ jobs,” Courtney Hohne, the spokeswoman for Google X, reportedly posted online. “We don’t want to trigger a whole separate media cycle about where [Boston Dynamics] really is at Google,” she added.

Boston Dynamics’ robots are some of the most advanced robots in the world right now, and are in use at multiple universities and facilities working on creating useful humanoid robotics. But they are not money-making endeavors, it seems: Recently the US army said that it would not be usingthe dog-like robot Boston Dynamics built for it, as it was too loud, and also quite slow. The company did, however, receive nearly $11 million when DARPA contracted itto build Atlas for the Robotics Challenge in 2013, although it’s likely that that amount was dwarfed by the cost of developing and building the machine.

There are likely to be suitors for Boston Dynamics, however. Other companies interested in early-stage research might have the spare cash, and the lack of a timeframe that it needs to experiment. Bloomberg suggested that Amazon—which currently uses robots to move products around its warehouses, and is developing a drone delivery service—and Toyota, which recently pledged $1 billion into robotics research, could be potential buyers. Toyota’s new research head, Gill Pratt, also happened to be the person in charge of the DARPA Robotics Challenge. (Amazon was not immediately available for comment and Toyota declined to comment.)

While Boston Dynamics’ fate is currently unknown, it does at least give us a bit of hope that, at least for now, the robot revolutionthat Alphabet seems to be worried about, has been delayed just a little bit longer.

A Self-Taught Artist Paints The Rain Forest By Memory

This is one of 12 rain forest landscapes by Abel Rodriguez, part of his ink-and-watercolor series Ciclo anual del bosque de la vega (Seasonal changes in the flooded rain forest).

hide caption

toggle caption

This is one of 12 rain forest landscapes by Abel Rodriguez, part of his ink-and-watercolor series Ciclo anual del bosque de la vega (Seasonal changes in the flooded rain forest).

Looking at the painting above, it's easy to imagine the artist spent days, weeks maybe, observing the rain forest to get the details right. Off to the right, a large bird perches on a branch. Turtles and fish swim in the river. Several species of trees reach upward, vying for light through the forest canopy.

The artist painted it all by memory.

Abel Rodriguez showed off his basket-weaving skills at the 2011 Smithsonian Folklife Festival. hide caption

toggle caption

Abel Rodriguez showed off his basket-weaving skills at the 2011 Smithsonian Folklife Festival.

But, I am told, he doesn't consider himself an artist.

Nonetheless, the paintings of Abel Rodriguez are on display at the Art Museum of the Americasin Washington D.C., as part of the Waterweavers exhibition, a celebration of Colombian culture. And his work has captured the attention of art dealers and curators, both in Colombia and here in the U.S.

Adriana Ospina, the collections curator, tells me Rodriguez's story as she leads me through the exhibition. He's a member of the Nonuya indigenous people, from the Caqueta River region of Colombia, close to the rain forest, who have been farmers for centuries. "His role in the community is to know the plants," she says. "He's like a teacher." Rodriguez's knowledge, she says, comes from a combination of observation and wisdom passed down from generation to generation.

Rodriguez's intimate understanding of plants of the Amazon caught the attention of a Dutch nonprofit organization called Tropenbos International Colombia. This group works with indigenous people to document their natural and cultural practices. They met Rodriguez in the 1980s and realized he was a repository of a vast amount of lore. He taught the Tropenbos scientists to identify local plants and explained which are eaten and which are used for medicinal purposes. With their help, he even created a stunningly illustrated bookon the plants cultivated by his people.

Unfortunately, increasing armed conflict in the area forced many indigenous people, including Rodriguez, to leave the forest in the 1990s. Now living in Bogota, he continues to mine his lifetime of knowledge of the rain forest to teach others. "I had never drawn before, I barely knew how to write, but I had a whole world in my mind asking me to picture the plants," Rodriguez told a Tropenbos International interviewer in a poston the organization's website. In Bogota, using materials provided by Tropenbos International, Rodriguez began creating paintings and drawings — entirely from memory.

In each of Rodriguez's rain forest drawings, the vegetation and animal life is a little different, reflecting the season. Abel Rodriguez/Courtesy of Tropenbos International, Colombia hide caption

toggle caption Abel Rodriguez/Courtesy of Tropenbos International, Colombia

In each of Rodriguez's rain forest drawings, the vegetation and animal life is a little different, reflecting the season.

Abel Rodriguez/Courtesy of Tropenbos International, Colombia

A selection of his works hang on a gallery wall in the "Waterweavers" exhibition: 12 pieces titled Ciclo anual del bosque de la vega — seasonal changes in the flooded rain forest. The intricately detailed paintings in ink and watercolor are rendered in delicate shades of green and brown, highlighting leaves and shadows. The paintings show how the rain forest changes as the seasons pass.

At first glance, the paintings look similar, but upon closer examination, gradual differences emerge: a tree bursts into leaf; fish and turtles crowd the river and then disappear; the river rises and falls throughout the year.

I tried to interview Rodriguez. It was not meant to be. The complications of translators who understood the local dialect and international group calls couldn't be overcome. So I had to turn to the exhibition's accompanying book, Waterweavers : A Chronicle of Rivers, which includes an interview with Rodriguez, in which he talks about his art via a translator. "I always try to bring out the figures as they should be," he says. "It may not be exact, but it does show how the forest is, and that's the way I've gone on painting."

"But he's not a trained artist," Ospina says. "He didn't want to be an artist." Painting is just something he does. When in the Waterweavers book Rodriguez is asked how he makes his art, he replies, "with my hand."

He seems more eager to describe the subjects of the paintings themselves, which he does with an attention to detail gained from years of careful observation:

"This painting includes the larger trees, such as the marañón and the higuerón, and various seed- and fruit-producing trees eaten by animals, which are painted first. Then come the smaller trees, such as the açai palm, the large guama , a carguero de dormilón, another larger lecythis, the sangre toro, and the bombona and yavarí palms. The small ones give depth to the mountain, in my opinion. When the river is high, these lowlands are flooded, and so all the animals that would usually be here, are now in higher parts. During the summer months (December and January), fish start going up the river because they know that the water is going to rise, and they're looking for the overflows to enjoy the abundance of worms and seeds. When the waters begin to rise, worms are brought out of the ground, and the fish eat them; the other animals begin to migrate further into the forest. The monkeys stay because they like to look at their reflection, as ugly as it is, in the water. They descend along the lower branches and approach the water's edge; and then see that there's another monkey down there. That's how they amuse themselves. That's why, when the river is high, you'll see more monkeys by the river than you will in higher areas."

He's not only a gifted artist but he clearly has literary talents as well.

Alphabet built a new humanlike robot and then immediately bullied it

Boston Dynamics, the robotics subsidiary of Alphabet, released a video today (Feb.

today (Feb. 23) showing off a new version of its human-shaped Atlas robot. The new model appears to be lighter, quieter and more nimble than its predecessor, and to show off its abilities, Boston Dynamics decided to torment the robot that just seems to want to help out.

In the video, Atlas is first seen next to its robot siblings at Boston Dynamics’ headquarters. It’s smaller and more streamlined than the last version of Atlas that was widely usedat last summer’s DARPA Robotics Challenge, now coming in at a very human sized 5′ 9″ and 180 pounds. The frisky robot is shown walking out of the company’s office, braving the Massachusetts winter for a stroll through the woods. We’ve seen previous versions of Atlas that were able to navigate their way through the forest before, but the new Atlas seems a little unsure on its feet, as if a robot bartender said it was cut off, took away its keys, and said it had to walk home. Atlas never falls over, but comes really close a few times.

Perhaps this is why Atlas’ creators so mercilessly mess with it later in the video. Perhaps it’s the day after Atlas’ drunken tirade, and its coworkers want to get back at it. Atlas is shown working, somewhat awkwardly, stacking boxes, and just when it seems the robot had got its bearings back, a human with a hockey stick comes out of nowhere to harass it. The human knocks the box out of Atlas’ hands, and pushes the bot back, but Atlas recovers and gets back to its work. It’s just a step away from a researcher taking one of Atlas’ arms, whacking the robot with it and saying, “Why are you hitting yourself?” The human keeps moving the box away right as Atlas goes to grab it, shuffling it across the floor with his hockey stick. He keeps knocking it and moving it, and when Atlas finally recovers, the human comes back with a giant tube and knocks Atlas to the ground from behind.

Atlas takes a moment as it lays face down on the ground, perhaps taking stock of the day, and then quickly jerks up and gets back on its feet without any help. Atlas then walks right out the door again, perhaps because its shift is over, possibly because it’s just fed up with its coworkers, or it’s decided it’s finally time to start the robot uprising and is off to go find its relatives.

Boston Dynamics has a historyof testing its robots’ resilience with hazing, as if the company was trying to start some sort of robot fraternity. Hopefully these tests will come in handy when these robots are being used in disaster zones to save human lives. But if we keep bashing these robots, they might not be so interested in saving humans in the future.

Apple is preparing for a future where individual iPhone sales don’t matter

Apple just reported its first-quarter earnings results, and although sales of iPhones, iPads, and Macs were either flat or lower than the same quarter last year, there was one bright spot in the company’s revenue: its services business.

According to a footnotein Apple’s breakdown of its quarterly revenue, its “Services” bracket incorporates “Internet Services, AppleCare, Apple Pay, licensing and other services.” While Apple’s services business only accounts for about $7 billion of the roughly $75 billion revenue figure for the quarter, the business line has doubled since Apple first started reporting it at the end of 2011. It likely also includes sales of films, TV shows and music from iTunes, Apple Music streaming subscriptions, and apps sold through the App Store.

Apple said on its earnings call that over 1 billion Apple devices—phones, watches, computers, and Apple TVs—have engaged with one of the company’s services over the last 90 days. So, although Apple isn’t selling more phones, it’s still getting more value out of each phone sale. As CEO Tim Cook said on the call:

“A growing portion of our revenue is directly driven by our existing install base. Because our customers are very satisfied and engaged, they spend a lot of time on their devices and purchase apps, content, and other services. They also are very likely to buy other Apple products or replace the one that they own.”

Some of the services Apple currently offers leave a lot to be desired. Apple Music, which many users are forgetting to cancelafter signing up for a free three-month trial, is still working out some bugs. And although the newest version of Apple TV was generally well-receivedby critics, it’s not offering a complete replacement to cable TV, especially if you’re a fan of live sports. Apple Pay—which reports suggestthe company receives 15 cents per $100 spent through the contactless payment system—generally works well, but isn’t widely accepted, and has only launched in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia so far.

So what other services can Apple offer to keep users locked in to its ecosystem, even when they don’t feel compelled to upgrade their phones? There’s a pretty long list of things it could offer those with an Apple personal cloud.

More cloud. As the cameras continue to get better on the iPhone, users will need increasingly more iCloud space to store all their photos.

Wireless services. To keep all those devices connected to Apple services, it could look into creating its own wireless network. There were rumblingsof Apple launching a mobile network last summer, and while it seems those reports were false, it’d be a great way to drive some additional revenue (as Google Fi may or may not bedoing for Alphabet) and keep people streaming Apple Music and downloading apps, wherever they are.

Proper TV. Apple has enough spare cash to buy HBO and its cable-network parent Time Warner, which would help it kickstart a TV streaming setup that people might actually want to buy in large numbers. But it probably won’t.

Home security. Apple launched an Internet-of-Things control systemcalled HomeKit in 2014, but it hasn’t built any products or services specifically for it yet. Why not turn your unused iSight cameras into a home security system? Apple could create a paid-for service where users can check up on their houses while they’re out, right from their iPhones.

VR content. On today’s call, Cook said that he thinksvirtual reality is “really cool.” Apple hired a leading VR researcher last week, according to Fast Company. If the company is thinking about putting out a VR headset, every service it provides now—from apps, to films, to games—could be replicated for VR.

Siri Pro. Apple is also acquiring artificial-intelligence talent, most likely to bolster the capabilities of its often-unhelpful virtual assistant, Siri. If Apple is working on an AI system that could be useful to business—think Facebook M or x.ai, but for any request—it could market a more powerful version of Siri for a monthly fee.

Car services. Apple is likely working on some sort of car, so why not build out an On-Star-style assistant service to use in the Apple Car? It could even use Siri Pro.

Hortonworks Acquires Onyara, Early Startup With Roots In NSA

Hortonworks, the big data company built on Hadoop, bought early-stage startup Onyara today.

today. The company, which launched at the end of last year, has its roots in the NSA — yes that NSA.

The Onyara engineers worked at the NSA for 8 years helping to develop a technology that would later be known as Apache NiFi. The NSA released the technology to the open source community last year as part of the The NSA Technology Transfer Program.

Onyara launched at the end of last year with an undisclosed amount of seed funding

The technology gives Hortonworks a light-weight agent that creates a secure connection and provides two-way communication between say a sensor and the database, Shaun Connolly, vice president of corporate strategy at Hortonworks told TechCrunch.

As a technology that was tested and used across the intelligence community, it’s fast, reliable and secure, he explained. What’s more, it can operate in resource-constrained environments like a sensor or light-weight computer like a Rasberry Pi. This is quite the opposite of Hadoop, which is resource intensive.

The Onyara technology is particularly important to Internet of Things applications and should work well as a real-time data gathering tool that compliments Hortonwork’s Hadoop-based historical analysis capabilities, he said.

As part of the deal, Onyara’s 10 employees will become part of Hortonworks, but the company is planning on hiring additional engineers for the team and treating it as a new division, Connolly said.

In a blog post, the Onyara team expressed excitement about the deal and the new opportunities it should provide them. “As part of Hortonworks, we look forward to developing new products and services based on Apache NiFi that collect, conduct, and curate any data from anything, anywhere,” the founders wrote in a blog post.

This is actually the third company Hortonworks has purchased, and Connelly said the fact it’s an Apache open source company fits well with Hortonworks, which is based on Apache Hadoop. In fact, the company launched when Yahoo! released Hadoop to the Apache community in 2011.

Financial Outlook

Hortonworks went public last December, and is trading up from its IPO priceof $16 by around one third. However, while investors have cheered its rapid revenue growth, the company’s losses have expanded, hampering margin improvement at the Hadoop shop.

In its most recent quarter, Hortonworks reported 154 percent revenue growth, or an increase of $18.6 million in top line for the financial period. Hortonwork’s net losses, using standard accounting techniques, grew by $15.3 million in the same quarter. That means that the company has been losing more money in total than it brings in revenue.

Hortonworks raised $100 million in its IPO, and has since seen its total cash and equivalents position ease. However, with its strong share price, the company could lean more heavily on the value of its equity when making purchases like today’s, than the size of its checking account.

The company did not disclose the purchase price, but Onyara becomes part of Hortonworks effective immediately.

“At the end of the day, it’s about the technology and the team around the technology. This [acquisition] checks both boxes,” he said.

The Apple Watch and the rise of the personal cloud

One of the most interesting things I’ve experienced while using the Apple Watch over the past two and a half months is the growing consciousness that I am now wearing several machines that are capable of talking to each other.

This was illustrated one morning when I was in the New York City subway, deep underground. There—far from any cellular signal or internet connection—I used my Apple Watch to wirelessly change the podcast that was playing on my iPhone, which was being wirelessly transmitted to a pair of Bluetooth earphones. I had my own invisible, personal network, off the grid.

This phenomenon—some are calling it the “personal cloud” or “personal mesh”—is one of the most important changes that will come out of the rise of wearable devices, such as the Apple Watch.

While early consumer smartwatch applications have focused on fitness tracking and messaging, the more powerful capabilities—for entertainment, medicine, and life in general—could come when millions of people are each carrying around several devices and sensors. Today, that includes earphones, Bluetooth hearing aids, wireless heart-rate monitors, and running-shoe sensors. Soon, it could include clothing with sensors built in to their fabric—already in the works, but not yet mainstream—and sensors implanted in the body.

These personal clouds are interesting on their own, but especially when they’re joined, or connected to larger environments such as cars, buildings, or cities, carrying context, personal preferences, and data.

“If the first wave of the mobile phone’s impact on the tech sector was driven by applications running on the phone, the second wave will be driven by the phone connecting to other devices, including other phones,” tech investor Fred Wilson—who made early bets on Twitter, Tumblr, and Etsy—wrote last year in a blog post about the personal cloud.

It’s easy to get carried away with hypothetical examples. In a world where everyone shares communal, self-driving cars, yours will always know your seat settings, music preferences, and Starbucks order.

But there are already practical uses for the early adopter. Starwood, one of the world’s largest hotel chains, is in the process of outfitting thousands of rooms with new locks. Now, instead of waiting in line to check in at the front desk, eligible visitors can do so quickly and privately from their smartphone app, and walk directly to their room. A Bluetooth signal from your personal cloud—today, a smartphone or Apple Watch— will unlock the door.

Read this next: One month with the Apple Watch: We’re joined at the wrist

Nikon's new D4S DSLR improves speed and focusing, adds ISO settings up to 409,600

The Nikon D4S has been teased , displayed in a plastic case and now, it's official -- and we even got to play with it.

in a plastic case and now, it's official -- and we even got to play with it. There's a substantial list of what hasn't changed (the same 16.2-megapixel image size, to begin with), but if you're a high-level photographer already in possession of a D4(or perhaps even a D3S), you'll be more interested in those differences. Firstly, while the sensor will offer the same sized images, but it's a newly developed piece of hardware, with a focus on better noise reduction. ISO now ranges from 100 - 25600, with its Hi4 setting cranking that up to a mind-boggling 409600. If you're currently handling a D4, you can also expect to see substantial noise reduction: the D4S' ISO 1600 will be comparable to the D4's ISO 800 setting.

Nikon's new DSLR also delivers changes to to the auto-focus system for both photos and video. Behind the lens, there's improvements to both the tracking system and the algorithms that govern how the D4S focuses. A new Group AF mode tracks five separate points, meaning that a moving subject (and even a moving photographer) should pose less of a threat to crisp imaging. On video, (where you can now capture uncompressed 1080p resolution at 60 frames) tracking has been bumped up to 11 frames per second on full auto-focus and exposure.

Hopefully fixing one of our major issues with the D4, the new model also comes with a more substantial battery pack, up from 2,000mAh to 2,500mAh. The new unit actually weighs more, but reductions on the D4S' body means it adds just seven ounces, total, over 2012's D4. Expect the camera to land on March 6th, and prepare your bank account for the hit: it's expected to retail for $6,500. We've got some early impressions and details on some minor hardware changes, including more substantial grips, right after the jump.

Gallery: Nikon D4S press shots | 10 Photos

Hortonworks Misses On Revenue And Profit In Lackluster Q4

Let’s talk about money!

Hortonworks reported its earnings today, the first time it has as a public company! :)

Revenues for its fourth quarter totaled $12.7 million, up 55 percent on year-over-year basis. :)

But investors had expected the company to report revenue of $13.42 million. :(

The company lost money in the quarter, $90.6 million using normal accounting methods (GAAP). :(

Using adjusted metrics, however, that loss is only $36.9 million for the period. :)

That works out to a much smaller $2.19 per share loss. :)

But investors had expected a narrower loss of $2.04 per share. :(

Hortonworks expects its revenue to grow to $17.5 to $18.5 million in the current quarter. :)

That is way above street expectations of $15.2 million for quarter. :)

Which is why, I surmise, the company hasn’t tanked in after-hours trading after reporting its dullish fourth quarter. :)

Hortonworks is only down 2.48 percent, a haircut after missing on both top and bottom lines. :)

Provided that Hortonworks can make its current-quarter projections, investors will be all :) as the company will have accelerated its year-over-year revenue growth from the fourth quarter. :)

The company burned through a net $87.86 million in cash in 2014. The company has several years’ worth of reserves, given its IPO haul that swelled its coffers to north of $200 million. :)

But the company’s losses have been increasing over time, which could lead to the company needing more cash than one might expect. :(

In short, the quarter was saved by strong guidance. If the Hortonworks team can’t make their numbers, well, you know what to expect. :|

Not Ready To Stop Obsessing Over Beyoncé And 'Formation'? We Got You

Beyoncé performs at halftime during the Super Bowl on Sunday.

Patrick Smith/Getty Images hide caption

toggle caption Patrick Smith/Getty Images

Beyoncé performs at halftime during the Super Bowl on Sunday.

Patrick Smith/Getty Images

When the video dropped on Saturday, we galvanized. Cleared our schedules, watched on repeat till our eyes turned red. Got into screaming matches with loved ones about what kind of hot sauce belongs in a #swagbag. Even made preemptive Valentine's Day reservations at Red Lobster, because you never know.

Then came Sunday's performance. You thought the Broncos won the Super Bowl? Not so much. Beyoncé stepped onto the field and annihilated, and we were all left in the wreckage, paper fans limply hanging from our wrists, trying to make sense of it all.

Now it's Day 3 of this post-"Formation" world, and it's time to dust ourselves off, sort through the emotional rubble, and begin the rebuilding process. We've fired up Tweetdeck, blinked to let our eyes readjust, and stepped gingerly into the information phase. It's time for links.

To begin with, we wanted to better understand why this video feels so important . What is it, precisely, that makes these visuals so compelling, so urgent, so politically now ? We came across a fabulous essay from Zandaria Robinson of New South Negress that helps set the scene:

"Bodies are quiet, awaiting animation, and then they pulsate, loudly: in parking lots, in drained swimming pools, in streets, atop horses, in front of a police line, in a church, in a second line, in a parlor, in mirrors. Beyoncé places her own reckless, country blackness — one of afros, cornrows, and negro noses, brown liquor and brown girls, hot sauce, and of brown boys and cheddar bay biscuits — in conversation with and as descended from a broader southern blackness that is frequently obscured and unseen in national discourses, save for as (dying, lynched, grotesque, excessive) spectacle. Through this reckless country blackness, she becomes every black southern woman possible for her to reasonably inhabit, moving through time, class, and space."

The video itself would have been enough, but seeing Beyoncé and her crew perform the unapologetic black anthem at the Super Bowl was something else entirely. In a way, we marveled at her ability to get away with it. Carrie Battan of The New Yorker had some insight:

"[Beyoncé] did not dilute "Formation" like she could have, belting some of its most forceful lines with glee: "My daddy Alabama / Mama Louisiana / You mix that Negro with that Creole, make a Texas BAMA!"

And yet the performance didn't feel purely like an act of subversion. Part of Beyoncé's gift — and what has been necessary for her total dominance in the mainstream — is her ability to float provocative themes on giant platforms while retaining her megawatt star-power appeal. This is a political song, yes. Beyoncé's backup dancers were sporting outfits that made reference to the Black Panthers. But it was performed with such showmanship that I'm sure many American halftime-show viewers, those who were not paying obsessive attention to the "Formation" video, were none the wiser."

The timing of the debut was obviously no accident, but it wasn't just about the Super Bowl. Writer and filmmaker dream hampton explains in an interviewwith NPR's Mandalit del Barco:

"[Beyonce] dropped ["Formation"] very intentionally on a weekend that means something to the current movement. It is, of course, Black History Month, February, but that was Trayvon Martin's birthday, and the day before Sandra Bland's [birthday]. I mean, this is a generation that was kind of woke up by the Trayvon Martin killing, in terms of activism, in terms of being kind of nudged out of their post-racial slumber. And I think it was really significant that she dropped the video on Trayvon's day."

We were feeling pretty good about all this, when some disturbing comments made their way into our newsfeeds. Apparently, some people weren't all that pleased with "Formation." They thought it was too combative, too political, too black. Folks on Twitter called Beyoncé racist for not including white backup dancers in her Super Bowl lineup.

Rep. Pete King, a Republican congressman from New York, got in line, citingthe video's depictions of police in riot gear and the outfits on display at the Super Bowl:

"Beyoncé may be a gifted entertainer but no one should really care what she thinks about any serious issue confronting our nation. But the mainstream media's acceptance of her pro-Black Panther and anti-cop video "Formation" and her Super Bowl appearance is just one more example of how acceptable it has become to be anti-police when it is the men and women in blue who put their lives on the line for all of us and deserve our strong support."

Bitter Gertrudeblogger Melissa Hillman had a powerful response to this line of thinking in a post titled White People: Shut Up About Beyoncé:

"In this cultural moment where powerful, mainstream Black artists like Beyoncé are telling their stories on their own terms, the white people who controlled the narrative — including how and when Black stories have been told — for the past 400 years need to sit back, shut up, and listen, listen, listen. You don't like how white people are being portrayed? Spend some time thinking about why Black artists are portraying white people that way instead of demanding they adjust their stories to conform to your self-image as "the good guy." We are not the heroes in these stories. We are not the intended audience. We are irrelevant, and there's nothing people in power hate more than to be made irrelevant, but the fact remains that these are Black stories, by, for, and about Black people. You don't like it? Don't watch. But I recommend that you do, and give it some real thought. This is their truth. You do not get to dictate how Black artists see or portray their own lives."

We would be remiss not to place "Formation" within the larger conversations about Beyoncé, and her music, in recent days. Janell Hobson of Ms. Magazine reminds usthat just days ago, many of us were calling out Beyoncé for cultural appropriationin her Coldplay collaboration "Hymn for the Weekend." Where does that fit in?

"It would be a mistake to view "Formation" as somehow more authentic than her performance as a Bollywood star in the recent video for Coldplay's India-set "Hymn for the Weekend." Accusations of cultural appropriationtend to be superficial since they do not capture the nuances, complexities and messiness of how art encounters, collapses and syncretizes the cultural differences that confront a multiracial world. Not to mention how, in "Formation," Beyoncé suggests that blackness is itself performative, as represented by Mardi Gras costumes on display. There are layers to masking and unmasking.

However, in a year that has witnessed #OscarsSoWhite, in which actors, screenwriters and filmmakers of color are often ignored or whose stories are whitewashed, the question of who has access to larger cultural platforms matters. The local artists featured in Beyoncé's new video could not reach the Super Bowl audience without her intervention. And in a world that continues to decry women's power or black power, being able to boldly claim "I slay" is a radical form of resistance. Even more radical is her willingness to move towards an old black-club-women tradition of "lifting as we climb": "Now we gon' slay."

Beyoncé may have traveled the world and tried on different costumes of appropriation, but here in this moment, she has come back "home" to conjure up some magic in reclaiming all black souls and all black lives."

And at the end of the day, we're all in on this meditation by Marquita Harris at Refinery 29, who sums upwhy Beyoncé's performance is such a source of awe, even for people who might not like it:

"Beyoncé's cocky, unabashed declaration of self-love in her music is not to be taken lightly. Love her or hate her, in an environment that constantly tells women what they can and cannot do, how they should and shouldn't act, seeing one of our own beat the odds — over and over and over — is forever inspiring. And actually seeing a Black woman peacock for the world? It's beyond inspiring."

Still have questions after reading through all of this? Feel free to watch the video a few hundred more times. It's not going anywhere:

Facebook is giving users a new way to access it on the “dark web”

Online markets trafficking in illicit goods, such as the now defunct Silk Road , are probably the best known examples of destinations on the dark web, hidden services that can’t be visited with a conventional web browser.

, are probably the best known examples of destinations on the dark web, hidden services that can’t be visited with a conventional web browser. But the dark web also hosts legitimate sites with an interest in preserving user privacy, such as the nonprofit investigative news service ProPublica, which launched a hidden servicelast week (Jan. 13).

Facebook has had a dark-web presence for more than a year. In October 2014, the social network set up an address onTor, a hidden-service network that disguises the identity of users and requires use of a special web browser to visit sites. (Sites on Tor have addresses that end in “.onion.” Here’s Facebook’s .onion address.)

Facebook isn’t releasing usage figures, but it says that a “sizeable community” of its users actually visit it on Tor—sizeable enough that Facebook has now released a featurethat lets users access its dark web site via Android smartphone.

Facebook’s Tor site is one way for people to access their accounts when the regular Facebook site is blocked by governments—such as when Bangladesh cut off access to Facebook, its Messenger and Whatsapp chat platforms, and messaging app Viber for about three weeks in November 2015. As the ban took effect, the overall number of Tor users in Bangladesh spiked by about 10 times, to more than 20,000 a day. When the ban was lifted, the number dropped back to its previous level.

(Tor Metrics)

The spike in Tor use in Bangladesh was highlighted by Roger Dingledine, a founder of the organization that maintains the open-source Tor software, during a talk in Berlin. “There have been a whole heck of a lot of people there learning about these privacy things that can get around local censorship,” he said.

Governments can block websites and other internet services in a variety of ways, from filtering domain names to targeting specific keywords or IP addresses. Dingledine also highlighted an uptick in Tor usage in Russia, where the government maintains a list of blocked sites that has included Wikipedia. In May 2015, Facebook was warnedthat it could be blacklisted for not handing over data on Russian users.

(Tor Metrics)

But we still don’t know for sure if users are turning to Tor just so they can get to their Facebook accounts. As Dingledine pointed out in his talk: “Our data is public and open and we like sharing it; they don’t actually share their data, but one day it would be cool to see … [data on] users shifting from reaching Facebook directly to going over Tor.”

Facebook told Quartz it doesn’t presently provide traffic statistics or other data for its Tor hidden service.

Film Portrays A 'Perfect Storm' That Led To Unwanted Sterilizations For Many Latinas

Carolina "Maria" Hurtado in the now abandoned maternity ward of the Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center, where she was sterilized four decades ago.

Renee Tajima-Peña hide caption

toggle caption Renee Tajima-Peña

Carolina "Maria" Hurtado in the now abandoned maternity ward of the Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center, where she was sterilized four decades ago.

Renee Tajima-Peña

About 40 years ago, when she was 24, Consuelo Hermosillo had an emergency caesarean section at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center. In the new documentary No Más Bebés , she recalls asking her doctor what type of birth control she should use going forward.

"He goes, 'You don't need anything. We cut your tubes,'" Hermosillo says in the film. "And I said, 'Why?' And he said, 'Well you signed for it.' And I said, 'Me?'"

No Más Bebés (No More Babies) , which airs on PBS on Feb. 1, tells the story of how 10 immigrant Mexican women, Hermosillo included, sued LA County doctors, the state and the U.S. government in 1975 for allegedly violating their civil rights. The women's cases were similar. Each had an emergency cesarean section and each said she was either unaware that she signed for a tubal ligation or was told by a medical professional that not signing for one could mean death for her and her unborn child.

No Más Bebés examines how the lawsuit, Madrigal v. Quilligan , came to be, how questions of informed consent — or lack thereof — and coercion played into the case, and how the collision of various societal issues resulted in stories like Hermosillo's.

No Mas Bebés, which airs on PBS on Feb. 1, tells the story of how 10 immigrant Mexican women sued Los Angeles County doctors, the state and the U.S. government in 1975 for allegedly violating their civil rights.

YouTube

"When you're a filmmaker, the easiest thing to do is make a film about the good guys and the bad guys, the heroes and the villains," says No Más Bebés director Renee Tajima-Peña. Tajima-Peña says she and co-producer Virginia Espino, a historian who wrote her dissertation on the case, wanted to tell a multilayered story, one that revealed how even the best intentions could do harm.

Tajima-Peña and Espino explore the roles played by federally funded family-planning programs; a growing popular movement to curb population growth that attracted both environmentalists and anti-immigration proponents; doctors fresh out of medical school working in under-resourced maternity wards; cultural misunderstandings; and the popular belief that poor women who need public assistance should abstain from having children.

Taken together, these factors created what Tajima-Peña calls a "perfect storm" resulting in the sterilization of thousands of vulnerable women across the country in the late '60s and early 1970s. She and Espino say their goal was to document a history that continues to repeat itself — they point to nearly 150 women sterilized in California prisons between 2006 and 2010as the most recent example.

In telling this history, the film highlights the role played by the Family Planning and Population Research Act, which Congress passed in 1970 allocating millions for family-planning purposes. That money went to fund contraceptives, education, research and training. "You've got money for family planning programs, which were good programs and provided contraceptives for women who couldn't afford it," says Tajima-Peña. Congress also lifted a ban on federal funding for sterilization, so hospitals that provided the indigent with medical care, like Los Angeles County General Hospital, could apply for government money to perform tubal ligations.

Meanwhile, lobbying efforts in Washington, fueled by a fear of overpopulation gripping the nation, led to yet more funding for family planning programs. Inspired by the popularity of biologist Paul Ehrlich's best-selling 1968 book, The Population Bomb, which predicted that at some point in the 1980s, overpopulation would make it impossible for the planet to support humanity, members of the "zero population movement" worked to convince the public that having children was a very bad idea. Some went so far as promoting the sterilization of women deemed to have had too many. (They also called for a dramatic reduction to immigration.)

Then, there were divisions within the feminist movement on how sterilization fit into the bigger picture of reproductive rights. Mainstream white feminists marched for "the right to choose," including unfettered access to sterilizations, contraception and abortions. Feminists of color also called for abortion rights and easy access to contraception, but broke with white feminists on the issue of sterilization, arguing that for women of color, sterilization was not always a matter of choice. They called for waiting periods before tubal ligation procedures, and Latina activists called for Spanish-language consent forms.

In No Más Bebés , California politician Gloria Molina, who was active in the Chicana feminist movement in the 1970s, says the idea of a waiting period was "totally offensive" to white feminists, who, she says, pushed for sterilization upon demand. "They weren't taking into account that if you were Spanish-speaking, and if you don't speak English, you were being denied a right, totally," Molina says in the film.

And then there was the long-held stance, still popular today, that poor women should not have children they can't afford to support, especially poor women of color. For decades, Puerto Rican women had been subjected to sterilizations at various pointsas a way to combat astronomical unemployment and poverty on the island; a 1965 survey found that a third of Puerto Rican mothers living on the island at the time had been sterilized. Native American womenwere sterilized at the hands of the Indian Health Service in the 1970s. Poor African-American women on government assistance were also sterilized across the country during that time period. A particularly damning case, brought two years before Madrigal v. Quilligan , involved two black sisters sterilized at ages 14 and 12 in Alabama.

So, to recap: You had a surge of federal money for sterilizations, mainstream feminists calling for easier access to them, a fear that overpopulation would soon destroy the planet and the fear that poor women were burdening the country with children whom taxpayers would need to feed, clothe and educate. This nexus of events — and the consequences, intended and unintended, that followed — is the knot that No Más Bebés tries to untie.

"Why were they doing it?" Consuelo Hermosillo, one of the 10 plaintiffs in Madrigal v. Quilligan , asks on camera at one point in the film, nearly 40 years after her sterilization at LA County General. "I always keep these questions with me, and I never get those answers," she says.

NVIDIA Launches New GPUs For Deep Learning Applications, Partners With Mesosphere

The days when GPUs were only about letting you play Crysis with a higher framerate are long over.

The days when GPUs were only about letting you play Crysis with a higher framerate are long over. Many of the most transformative new computational techniques now rely on GPUs’ ability to quickly run certain algorithms in parallel.

One area where GPUs are especially helpful (besides video encoding) is machine learning, and NVIDIA is making a big bet on this. The company is launching two new hardware accelerators today, as well as a suite of tools that will help developers and data center managers use these accelerators to run deep learning software, as well as image and video processing jobs on them.

In addition, NVIDIA today announced that it has partnered with Mesosphere— the container-centric solution for managing large data centers as if they were a single pool of resources. Together, NVIDIA and Mesosphere want to “make it easier for web-services companies to build and deploy accelerated data centers for their next-generation applications.”

Because of the work Mesosphere did with NVIDIA, developers using Apache Mesos (the open-source backbone of Mesosphere’s data center operating system) will be able to use GPU resources in a data center just like they use CPUs and memory. GPU resources will be clustered into a single pool and the software will automatically distribute jobs across all the different machines that offer compatible GPUs.

As for the hardware, NVIDIA is launching two products: the M40 and M4 GPU Accelerators. The M40 is optimized for machine learning and was built and tested for data center use. The M4 was optimized for similar use cases, but with a focus on low-power consumption and video processing.

A number of public cloud vendors, including AWS and Microsoft, now either offer GPU-centric virtual machinesor will offer them soon— and for the most part, these data center operators are betting on NVIDIA. Google is making a big bet on machine learning internally, but it hasn’t made GPU instances available on its cloud platform just yet. Chances are it will do so pretty soon — maybe in the context of a dedicated machine-learning service.

Apple just made it easy for anyone with an iPhone to sound like a rockstar

Back in the day, those who dreamed of playing Carnegie Hall or going on international stadium tours had to start their quest by buying time at expensive recording studios to make demos.

Back in the day, those who dreamed of playing Carnegie Hall or going on international stadium tours had to start their quest by buying time at expensive recording studios to make demos. There were home-recording setups, but if you wanted something that sounded professional, you had to pay the price. Then came desktop software like ProTools that let anyone make decent recordings at home. After that, Apple launched GarageBand, a free program that shipped on every Mac, opening up music making to anyone who could afford a laptop. Now, Apple appears to be upending the recording industry again with Music Memos, a new app that lets anyone with an iPhone easily record songs wherever they are.

Apple has had a version of GarageBand available for the iPhone for a while, but it was pretty fiddly to use on such a small screen. Music Memos aims to simplify the music making process on the iPhone: You press a button to start recording, and press it again to stop. You can export your files to GarageBand to edit them more fully, or send them right to SoundCloud or YouTube if you think they’re ready for the world to hear.

Music Memos’ exceedingly simple recording interface up close. (AppleScreenshot)

Many musicians have taken to using the iPhone’s built-in Voice Memos app for recording ideas on the fly, and the new app doesn’t just recycle that app’s abilities. Music Memos can be set to listen and automatically start recording when it hears someone making music, and stop when they stop. (That should cut down on the awkward fumbling around noises everyone makes when starting and stopping recording on Voice Memos.) The app can also listen to what you’ve recorded, figure out the arrangement of the music, and automatically add in bass lines and drums to fill out the song.

The controls are simple and easy to use with fingers, and could well be a boon to any hobbyist musician who has an iPhone, but doesn’t have $1,500 to spend on a Macbook. Apple said the app works best for acoustic guitar or piano-based songs, but can be used for any music.

If your Music Memos creation needs more work, or the backing band Apple suggests for your track isn’t up to your liking, it can be exported to heavier editing tools, like GarageBand and Logic Pro. Apple also announced it’s updating GarageBandon iOS, with a new feature called Live Loops that lets anyone create electronic music without any special beat-making devices. But while GarageBand will be there for the more hardcore musicians, Music Memos is clean and simple—something that has been an issue for other recent Apple apps, like Apple Music. While Samsung has been paying musiciansto appear in commercials using its phones, it seems that, like Garageband before it, Apple has just made a simple app that musicians might actually want to use.

Snapchat Reaches 6 Billion Daily Videos Views, Tripling From 2 Billion In May

On the heels of Facebook’s announcement last week that they had surpassed 8 billion daily video views, Snapchat confirmed to the FT over the weekend that users of the ephemeral messaging app were now watching 6 billion videos every day.

What’s really notable about this latest reveal is how damn quickly it seems like video is taking off for Snapchat even though it’s been around on the service since late 2012. The last reportedvideo viewing numbers for Snapchat were in September when it announced that there were 4 billion videos being watched through the app daily. In May, Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel told Bloombergthat the company had 2 billion daily video views.

It’s apparent that Snapchat is getting serious about making video messaging content more engaging. Over the past couple of months they’ve introduced features like Lensesto add fun filters to photos and videos while they’ve also added fast-forward and slow-motionvideo editing options to allow users to stylize the content they send a bit more.

Electrified selfie courtesy of one of Snapchat’s new lenses

At a certain point some metrics are so highly variable based on their individual definitions that they only become useful in comparing a network’s growth relative to itself. Facebook counts a “view” after an autoplay video has been onscreen for 3 seconds, meanwhile networks like YouTube have previously reported that they only counted “views” after 30 seconds of watch time.

Snapchat videos, on the other hand, focus on very precise moments, and can only last for a maximum of ten seconds anyway. The company hasn’t officially detailed how they classify a “view,” but reports have arisen over the last few months that advertisers are being charged once a video begins, or at 0 seconds, so I’d imagine that’s probably representative of how they’re approaching view counts in general.

It’s generally kind of fruitless to argue which definition of a “view” is most accurate or whether it’s even a relevant metric. Some video streaming platforms like YouTube and Periscope have shifted their metrics to measure “time watched” and actually showcase the actual time amount of content being viewed.

The most irresistible comparison to make with this new metric is in balancing Snapchat’s video-viewing acumen with that of Facebook, who reported in their quarterly earnings report that they were racking up over 8 billion video views on a daily basis. Their last reported daily video views was 4 billion back in April.

What makes these metrics especially hard to compare is that all of these platforms are often best used for distinctly different purposes. I’m watching ongoing Q&As on Periscope, I can check out full documentaries on YouTube, while now I’m using Facebook the way I used to use YouTube in checking out funny videos and following people’s channels. Snapchat is at its core a messaging app and thereby users are encouraged to be much more concise. While products inside of it like Stories and Live are developing into more widely-focused newsfeed-like features (which is where I’d imagine a lot of those views are coming from as users quickly tap through updates), right now Snapchat is still succeeding in its strategy of keeping all content bite-sized.

One thing is abundantly clear with this announcement: Snapchat’s rate of video content growth is insane, suggesting that its users are only growing more engaged with the app. Even with a tenth of the DAUs as Facebook (last reported), based on current growth rates Snapchat may soon overtake Facebook in terms of daily video views. What that actually means is open to interpretation, but hey, key metrics measured in billions for a startup valued in billions can’t be a bad thing.

Global interest in the iPhone SE is weaker than for earlier models, but not in two key markets

Apple’s new, small iPhone isn’t generating as much interest among consumers as its earlier phone launches, according to data from web traffic analytics company SimilarWeb.

Apple’s new, small iPhone isn’t generating as much interest among consumers as its earlier phone launches, according to data from web traffic analytics company SimilarWeb. Traffic to Apple’s website didn’t spike as much after the iPhone SE was announced compared to traffic surges after Apple’s previous two iPhone models were launched.

Here’s a chart of traffic to Apple’s websites around its last three iPhone launches:

Traffic to Apple’s website doesn’t necessarily translate to iPhone sales, of course. Apple hasn’t said how many iPhone SEs have been ordered, and in the past Apple has announced “opening weekend” sales for its iPhones roughly two weeks after launch. The SE was announced about a week and a half ago, so an announcement isn’t yet due. But here’s what each iPhone’s opening weekend sales looked like:

Neil Cybart, an independent Apple analyst who writes at Above Avalon, says he believes SE sales will be a “fraction” of those for 6 and 6s, and their plus-sized counterparts. “The iPhone SE is the replacement for the 5s. Accordingly, I would expect demand to be a fraction of that seen for the iPhone 6, 6 Plus, and the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus,” he told Quartz.

While overall web traffic may be disappointing, visits to Apple’s website from India and China following the SE announcement were well above the global average of about 80%, with jumps of 160% and 150%, respectively, according to SimilarWeb. By Cybart’s estimates, Apple could have sold up to 2 million SEs over opening weekend.

That’s good news for the prospects of Apple’s cheapest phone, which is priced for emerging markets.

Snapchat Gives Up On Original Content, Axes ‘Snapchat Channel’

According to a report by Deadline , Snapchat is having massive second thoughts about producing its own content.

, Snapchat is having massive second thoughts about producing its own content. A team of around 15 ran what was called the “Snapchat Channel,” which was going through a reimagining. That apparently led to not a relaunch, but a shutdown. The team has been let go.

How serious was Snapchat about creating its own content? It made a huge deal about a flashy hire, Marcus Wiley, just five months ago. Wiley was a senior vice president at Fox, working on the development of comedies like “New Girl,” “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” “The Mindy Project” and “Bob’s Burgers.” He’s now gone.

Here’s what a Snapchat spokesperson told us about Wiley:

Given that we are winding down the Snap Channel, it’s natural that Marcus would want to explore other opportunities. He is a tremendous talent and we wish him well.

Related Articles Why Snapchat’s Only Non-Ephemeral Content, The Profile GIF, Is A Big Deal Snapchat Starts Charging $0.99 For 3 Replays, Adds Face Effect "Lenses" Snapchat Solicits Longer Content By Ditching Tap-And-Hold-To-Watch

Snapchat has around 100 million active users that apparently like to eat up content. In January, Snapchat launched “Discover,”which is a platform for content from partners like BuzzFeed, CNN and Yahoo. Companies that don’t mind paying for playing, apparently. But they’re not paying a ton. Snapchat must have thought it was best to leave it to the content people to create content, because none of its original stuff took off.

If the company changes its mind and one day wants to create again, it’s going to be really difficult to find talented people to bring onboard. When you announce big names and run them out of the company just months later, you’re not going to see truly creative folk chomping at the bit to “try again.”

P.S. While we’re talking about Snapchat, can someone explain this to me? Thanks.

Evan Spiegel of Snapchat *might* have just won the title of most fashionable techie CEO ever http://t.co/VRYbMPhZ71 pic.twitter.com/JWLdwxfkfx

— Yahoo Style (@YahooStyle) October 12, 2015

SpaceX Raises $1 Billion In New Funding From Google And Fidelity

SpaceX, the space exploration startup helmed by ex-PayPal founder Elon Musk, has confirmed that it has raised $1 billion in new funding , in a round including Google and Fidelity, who join existing investors Founders Fund, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Valor Equity Partners and Capricorn.

, in a round including Google and Fidelity, who join existing investors Founders Fund, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Valor Equity Partners and Capricorn. Google and Fidelity get an ownership stake just shy of 10 percent in exchange for their investment.

A report from the WSJ broke yesterdaythat Google was considering a sizeable investment in SpaceX, with a valuation of more than $10 billion (which is in keeping with Google and Fidelity getting less than 10 percent ownership for their combined $1 billion contribution). The investment was said to be aligned with Google’s plans to make Internet connectivity more accessible on a global scale.

The Information originally reportedthat Google was investing in SpaceX in order to support a satellite project specifically aimed at broadening Internet availability. Musk has discussed the project, which is being run out of a newly opened Seattle office, as involving hundreds of micro-satellites that will operate in very low orbit, offering faster communication vs. traditional satellites, and helping to pave the way for future Mars missions.

Google’s Project Loon is also striving to increase the availability of Internet connectivity, using a network of high flying balloons to network hard-to-reach areas. Musk’s plan has a couple of differences, though the projects actually share a lot in common: SpaceX’s design calls for satellites flying higher and faster than Google’s balloons, but the aims of casting off the limits of terrestrial networks still apply.

Apple insists tablets are the future of computing, but consumers aren’t buying it

Apple has made no secret about its preference for the iPad as the platform for future.

Apple has made no secret about its preference for the iPad as the platform for future. “This is the way we think that personal computing is going,” said Phil Schiller, senior VP of worldwide marketing, at the company’s product event in Cupertino, California, on Monday (March 21).

That future may be further off than Apple might like. Schiller went on stage to promote the new, smaller iPad Pro, the latest iteration of a product people have not bought in numbers anywhere close to those like the iPhone (230 million sold in 2015) .

At just 50 million units last year, iPad shipments were way down from their 2013 peak of 74 million devices and 63 million in 2014. Revenue growth for the iPad also fell about 20% in the final quarter of 2015 compared to the same period a year earlier.

The far more expensive Mac, meanwhile, is seeing growing sales and market share ( 21 million were sold in 2015), but wasn’t even mentioned at Monday’s event. Instead, Apple pushed the new iPad Pro as the “ultimate PC replacement,” capable of convincing millions to trade in their laptops for tablets.

With all the sales data pointing the opposite direction, what gives?

For one thing, newer phones are probably stealing some of the oxygen in the room as they’ve grown larger (phablets) and more powerful. Hardware boundaries are also blurring. For instance, Windows laptops now sport removable touchscreens and thinner profiles, making them similar to tablets. Software is in transition as well: OSx and iOS share code and features, and Microsoft’s new Windows 10 supports the Surface tablet, but neither mobile operating system offers the full functionality of a laptop just yet.

Apple has the cash— $216 billion, in fact—to play the long game. Apple wants a bigger slice of Windows’ still-massive market share (90% of global installed operating systems, according to Net Applications).

To do this, it needs to convince millions of Microsoft customers, especially IT departments running Windows, that the iPad Pro is a superior product that’s worth the trouble of adopting a new operating system. Apple hustled out two such customers—Citigroup and the animation studio Pixar—in Monday’s announcement to illustrate that point.

Apple is salivating at what it calls the opportunity to replace 600 million PCs more than five years old. And the steep decline in PC sales since 2012 suggests an opening does exist. Gartner reported in January that year-on-year PC shipments had dropped 8.3% in the final quarter of 2015, the lowest since 2008.

Now, Apple just needs to convince customers that tablets are the future, and the future is now.

Sphero 2.0 rolls out at speeds 'slightly slower than a Lamborghini' (video)

A robotic ball you control with your phone ?

? What's not to like? Well, we managed to find a few things when we took a look at the first generation back in 2011-- that's what we do. Most of the criticisms of the original Sphero came down to pricing and the admittedly short list of things it could actually do at the time. Sure it was pretty great at driving feline friends completely nuts -- but that alone wasn't enough to justify the $130 price tag. Orbotix has made some improvements since then, and more importantly, the open API has given users a much fuller experience, with around 20 or so compatible titles currently available on the iPhone.

This month, the company is refreshing the device itself, with the simply titled Sphero 2.0. The particularly astute among you will no doubt notice that nothing has really changed here from an aesthetic standpoint. Nope, it's the same white plastic ball with the cartoony Sphero mascot on one side and all of the fine print (FCC info, "Made in China," etc.) on the other, with a series of interlinking, barely visible lines across its surface. There have been some hardware changes to the toy, but everything's on the inside, namely brighter lights and faster speeds -- as the company insists in its press material, it's "only slightly slower than a Lamborghini." Of course, scale's important here.

The new Sphero tops out at seven feet per second, a speed due in part to a lower center of gravity. We had the opportunity to play with the ball at top speed, and indeed the thing hauls. In fact, it's a bit hard to control out of the box. Thankfully, there's a speed controller in the app -- better still, you'll actually have to work up to those sports car-like speeds. Our unit was, admittedly, topped up. When you buy Sphero through standard means, you'll start off at a slower speed. By playing games with it, you begin to level-up, making the ball faster and faster as you go along.

The color lights inside have been improved as well, with three times the brightness of its predecessor. Though, like the last version, the entire body doesn't actually light up due to the opacity of internal components. Orbotix suggests you put on some sunglasses so you don't blind yourself, but don't worry. We think you'll be just fine. The company also claims the 'bot is "smarter," though we've yet to see those brains really manifest themselves -- perhaps when more apps take advantage of the brighter ball. The Bluetooth has also been improved -- and indeed, we didn't have any problems keeping the ball connected with our handset.

The packaging is also surprisingly cool this time out. Lift up the top of the box, and you'll see the Sphero sitting on a stand sandwiched between two triangular pieces of plastic. Those are, get this, ramps. Orbotix says you'll be able to get around a foot of air at full speed. We weren't able to get it quite that high -- mostly because we're still working on getting it to go over the ramp just right when it's moving that fast. The company insists that the ball can handle that much air, and indeed we found it to be quite tough as we rammed it into a few walls when we were first getting started. If you're still worried, though, Orbotix is offering up silicone "Nubby Covers," cases that slip over the ball for added ruggedness. They also offer up a bit more traction for off-roading with the thing.

Pre-orders for the second-gen Sphero open up today. It'll run you $129, when it starts shipping at the end of the month. The first-gen will also remain available, now priced at $109. Interested parties can also pick up the special edition Sphero Revealed, a $129 Apple Store exclusive, which features a partially transparent shell, giving you a peek at the ball's inner workings.

There’s an app to listen to silent TVs in public places—and it might just help TV take on the web

It seems obvious in retrospect.

It seems obvious in retrospect. We can watch television on our phones, so why not listen to television on our phones?

In airport terminals, at gyms, bars and coffeeshops, hospital waiting rooms, and elsewhere, there are typically televisions tuned to the news, sports events or music videos, but with the sound turned off. You can rectify that with Tunity, a new app, that works like a Shazam for moving images. Point it at the television (on most big channels in the US, but not yet outside America) and it will pull in the sound over the internet so you can listen via your smartphone.

Why might this be a useful tool? Yaniv Davidson, who created Tunity, says it will enable television channels to count the app’s users among its viewers. Measuring these out-of-home users right now is hard. He cites Neilsen, a ratings and measurement company, to argue that adding out-of-home television viewers would bump up the size of the 25-54-year-old audience by nearly a tenth. A CNN report found that adding out-of-home viewers would boost its reach by 52%. These are pretty big numbers for an industry that is about to enter battlewith the giants of the web for audio-visual advertising.

Davidson’s argument is seductive for media professionals. They don’t need to create more content. They don’t need to invest in fancy gadgetry or whizzbang new machines. All they need to do is improve measurement of what they already broadcast—and measuring who has seen which ad is, as the industry knows only too well, the single trickiest thingabout advertising.

Tunity promises to deliver this measurement. Instead of estimating some vague number of half-interested viewers, Tunity can tell television networks precisely who is watching what, for how long, and where exactly they’re watching it.

It is a clever way to bring tracking— around which web advertising is built—to television. That is not something consumers like the idea of, but it is something that media buyers increasingly demand.

The only hitch will be getting people to use the app. Davidson is convinced there is plenty of demand: People in gyms, bored people in airport lounges watching the news, even people at home who want to watch something on a big screen without disturbing their spouses, flatmates or pets.

Sphero is turning the 'Star Wars' rolling droid into a real toy

BB-8 , the new adorable droid from Star Wars: The Force Awakens , has taken the world by storm over the past few days.

, has taken the world by storm over the past few days. In particular, people were mostly surprised by the fact that the character was not computer-generated imagery -- this thing is, indeed, real. Now, following earlier reports, Sphero, a company that makes robotic toys for entertainment and educational purposes, is confirming that its technology is behind Disney's now-famed BB-8 droid ball. And be ready, because there's a consumer versionin the works. Sphero says it is teaming up with Disney to "deliver an incredible and authentic BB-8 experience." Further details (like pricing or availability) are slim at the moment, but Sphero did set up a landing page for people who want to stay updated on the project.

"What an incredible honor it is to work with the team at Disney on one of the most interesting new characters in the Star Wars franchise," Paul Berberian, Sphero'sCEO, says about the chance to be involved with the popular movie franchise. "Opportunities this significant are rare. If anyone can execute and deliver on an exceptional BB-8 experience, it's our Sphero team in Boulder [Colorado]." He adds, "Our hardware and software technology advancements make it possible to build the toys of the future now. We are deepening the user connection in ways that, until today, have only been portrayed in science fiction."

But, since it could be a while before the official BB-8 toy comes out, you could always try making one yourself.

The end of China’s ban on video game consoles won’t change anything

This week, China said it will lift a ban on selling video game consoles and games in the country, the latest in a series of rules aimed at loosening restrictions on sales.

on selling video game consoles and games in the country, the latest in a series of rules aimed at loosening restrictions on sales. But despite the nice-sounding sentiment that China is opening up, the fact is that not much has changed. And not much will change.

China has “lifted the ban” before—notably in January 2014, when it allowed the sale of the consoles and games in China so long as they met certain conditions, such as being locally produced in a specific free-trade zone. The latest directive simply makes life slightly easier for companies, allowing them to set up them anywhere in the country, as Tech in Asia points out.

Moreover, the change is unlikely to make much of a difference to games-makers, either. A research note from investment bank Macquarie notes that the “initial impact is likely very minimal,” citing six reasons beyond the fact that games are already easily available, both legally and in the gray market. These are:

Chinese consumers don’t generally pay for software. At most, they pay for a certain period of play, such as in a gaming parlour, or they play free games. Relatedly, more hardcore gamers are already used to playing on PCs in internet cafes. These players may not be able to afford consoles, but they can afford the hourly rates associated with such cafes. The dominant form of gaming is on mobile phones, which are now powerful enough to compete with consoles for at least the casual games. (Indeed, China’s Snail OS has built an entire business—and a mobile network—on mobile gamers alone.) Chinese developers don’t have much experience making console games, and nor do they much incentive to learn, for the reasons cited above. The same applies to non-Chinese developers, thinks the analysts at Macquarie, who say that “Western and Japanese pubs unlikely to make games that appeal to Chinese gamers.” And the Chinese government will maintain its censorship of certain types of video games, regardless of whether consoles are legal or not. This is in keeping with the government’s policy of enforcing strict moral codes on the media.

In short, says Macquarie, the answer to the question of what impact this will have for large gaming firms like Electronic Arts, “the answer is, unfortunately, very little… at least for now.”

Small Batch: How To Eat The Super Bowl

As you know if you are interacting with American commerce or popular entertainment at the moment, the Super Bowl is this weekend.

Tortilla chips with guacamole and salsa. hide caption

toggle caption

Tortilla chips with guacamole and salsa.

As you know if you are interacting with American commerce or popular entertainment at the moment, the Super Bowl is this weekend. Stephen Thompson, as he has explained for NPRin the past, has an annual Super Bowl party and chicken-eating contest called Chicken Bowl. This year will be Chicken Bowl XX — that is, Chicken Bowl 20, for those of you who are not Romans.

In preparation for Chicken Bowl and for the Super Bowl parties many of you will be enjoying (or trying to enjoy) also, we brought in Dan Pashman, who hosts The Sporkfulat WNYC and is completely right about many things despite being totally, wildly wrong about hot dogs.

Dan offers some advice for party hosts who are not pleasing guests by plying them with massive quantities of fried chicken, as well as for guests like me who, for whatever reason, are not bringing the world's best party snack. (After you review our advice, also check out this nifty beer/snack pairing guideover at The Salt.)

Many thanks to Dan for dropping by, and please try the corn dog mini-muffins.

LG teases G5's 'Always On' display

The phone will be launched on February 21st.

While the G5 teaser GIF LG's mobile division posted on Twitter doesn't say much, it has enough info to tell us that the device will have an "Always On" display. According to Android Authority's sources, the flagship phone will have a screen that is literally always on. Other phones with ambient screens like the Moto X and the Nexus 6P only show pertinent info on screen (only the pixels needed to show, say, a notification lights up) when you perform specific gestures.

The publication says the G5 won't have an AMOLED display and will instead have a full screen version of the LG V10'ssecond, smaller screen. If you recall, the V10 has a small strip of display on top with app shortcuts. It's unclear what elements the Always On screen will have, but as you can see above, it has the time, date and can show if you have calls, emails or texts.

Another thing we'd love to know is the device's battery life, since the screen would obviously consume energy all the time. We'll know more about the phone when it launches on February 21st, though the manufacturer might be calling the "Always On" function something else by then. Samsung has trademarkedthe term "Always on Display" for the Galaxy S7, which will presumably sport an ambient screen, as well.

잠들지 않는 Play

LG G5
Always ON
#LG #LGG5 #G5 #AlwaysON pic.twitter.com/11BKsUlFJb

— LG Mobile (@LG_Mobile_) February 10, 2016

There are now more than 24,000 different Android devices

For the past four years, London startup OpenSignal, which tracks networks and sensors, has released an annual report on fragmentation in the Android ecosystem.

For the past four years, London startup OpenSignal, which tracks networks and sensors, has released an annual report on fragmentation in the Android ecosystem. Where Apple produces fewer models of its iPhone than you have fingers on one hand, Android has long had a vast diversity.

How vast? This year, OpenSignal countedmore than 24,000 unique Android devices—both smartphones and tablets—on which its app has been installed. That is six times as many as in 2012.

2012
2013
2014
2015

LG G5 already has a touch-enabled Quick Cover

The phone hasn't even been announced yet.

There's still over a week left before LG launches its newest flagship phone, but we know two things for certain: First, the G5 has an "Always On" display, and second, you will be able to get a Quick Cover casefor it. The Korean company has announced that it's releasing a touch-enabled case for (in its own words) a "smartphone that does not officially exist" yet. LG says the cover is wrapped in "a unique film with a glossy metallic finish" for a luxurious feel. Also, you'll be able to take calls and control the alarm settings through its semitransparent mesh material, without having to open the case.

Like previous LG Quick Covers, it has a small window that shows a part of the screen. For the G5, it's the part that shows the date, time and notifications on the Always On display. The company didn't mention how much it'll cost you on top of the phone itself, but that might be one of the things we'll find out on February 21st. Both the G5 and the case will also be on display at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain on February 22nd to 25th.

Houzz opens its Commerce API to third-party vendors

While you may mostly look at Houzz as a mobile app and website that features beautiful home remodelling photography in an effort to connect you to the professionals behind these projects, the service also features a thriving marketplace that aims to sell you the products needed to complete your next kitchen or bathroom remodel.

Houzz, the home remodelling site with a focus on giving you house envy, today announced that it is opening up its Commerce API for third-party developers.

As the Houzz team tells me, its recently launched View in My Room feature, which lets you see what a certain product would look like in your home, is driving quite a few sales, too. About half of the users who purchased something through the Houzz app used this feature.

The company says it currently features about five million products from over 10,000 merchants on its site.

Houzz president and co-founder Alon Cohen tells me that the API will be open to all merchants who are selling home good. “We know that merchants want fast, seamless ways to integrate with Houzz to submit products, process orders, and keep inventory up-to-date and a commerce API will help us deliver that experience,” Cohen said.

Houzz’s launch partner for the new API is Shopify, which now features a Houzz sales channel for its users, for example. Using this channel, Shopify users can publish their products on Houzz and those who use a different service will be able to use the new API to integrate their existing backend systems with Houzz’s.

For the time being, there is no cost associated with using the API.

Potential partners who want access to the API can apply here(and those who are already approved sellers on Houzz can do so from the service’s Seller Central page).

CDC Sees Major Challenges Ahead In The Fight Against Zika

A patient suffering from Guillain-Barre syndrome recovers in a hospital ward in San Salvador on Jan.

A patient suffering from Guillain-Barre syndrome recovers in a hospital ward in San Salvador on Jan. 27. Researchers are trying to determine whether there is a link between the disorder, which can cause weakness and paralysis, and the mosquito-borne Zika virus. Marvin Recinos /AFP/Getty Images hide caption

toggle caption Marvin Recinos /AFP/Getty Images

A patient suffering from Guillain-Barre syndrome recovers in a hospital ward in San Salvador on Jan. 27. Researchers are trying to determine whether there is a link between the disorder, which can cause weakness and paralysis, and the mosquito-borne Zika virus.

Marvin Recinos /AFP/Getty Images

"If you are a woman who is pregnant living in the U.S., there's one really important thing you need to know: You shouldn't go to a place that has Zika spreading."

That's the strongly worded advice from Dr. Tom Frieden, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. It's a marked contrast to the suggestion made by Dr. Margaret Chan, director of the World Health Organization, earlier this week: A pregnant woman could safely travel to affected countries, Chan said, if she wore long sleeves to ward off bugs and used mosquito repellent.

Frieden's statement is a sign of just how seriously the CDC is taking the Zika outbreak, which has been linked to a surge in birth defects in Brazil. CDC is one of the lead global agencies in the battle against this virus, and officials there say the outbreak is far from over, with major challenges ahead.

Indeed, Zika now dominates the agenda at the CDC's Emergency Operations Center. Giant video monitors in the front of the room track reports of Zika cases around the globe. A huge picture of the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which spreads Zika, sits next to a grainy photo of the virus taken through a microscope.

As you'd expect, the CDC is keeping tabs on Zika cases imported into the U.S. But it's doing far more than that, reaching out to help countries throughout Latin America test for the virus and attack the mosquitoes that carry it.

The CDC is working with researchers in Brazil to try to verify whether Zika truly is responsible for thousands of cases of microcephaly — a condition in which babies are born with abnormally small heads and possible brain damage.

Dr. Lyle Petersen, director of the division of vector borne disease and the head of the CDC's Zika response, worries that microcephaly might not be the only potentially serious health risk from what has typically been regarded as a mild virus. Zika may be causing other neurological problems as it spreads through Latin America, he says.

"So that's one of the things we want to find out," says Petersen. "We also want to figure out how we can best protect pregnant women from getting infected. That is the top priority."

The additional problems include cases of Guillain-Barre syndromepopping up in countries soon after the arrival of Zika. Guillain-Barre is a temporary but at times debilitating neurological disorder that can cause mild tingling and weakness — or that can paralyze. Researchers saw an increase in Guillain- Barre cases during earlier Zika outbreaks in Micronesia and French Polynesia.

The CDC's Leonard Peruski, with its global disease detection branch, sees a similar pattern: "a spike in Guillain-Barre cases most notably in El Salvador and Colombia. There have been some sporadic reports in Honduras."

In its latest figures, the Pan American Health Organizationsays that El Salvador reported 46 cases of Guillain-Barre in December. Two of the patients died. Guillain-Barre, which can have various causes, is fairly rare; the 46 cases in El Salvador are more than three times what that country normally reports monthly. A direct link, however, between Guillain-Barre and Zika has not been proved.

Until last week, Peruski was heading up the CDC's regional disease detection center in Guatemala. He watched as Zika spread across the region.

"It was much faster than we expected," he says. "We were doing some very simplistic models down there. We expected it to emerge probably this spring throughout Central America and we were surprised at how quickly it did spread. Again, this indicates that diseases don't respect borders."

The concern about this outbreak isn't limited to this hemisphere.

"This morning I was on a conference call with India," says Peruski. "They want to get testing set up. We have a request from Bangladesh. We have requests from Kenya, from China, from all over the globe, about how to get Zika diagnostics in place."

Besides testing, mosquito control is the other big issue CDC is trying to help with on the Zika outbreak.

The mosquitoes that spread Zika have been developing resistance to the most common insecticides. Researchers at the CDC's labs in Atlanta are studying patterns of resistance and trying to figure out how to overcome them.

"These are mosquitoes that are really difficult to control. They can breed in a bottle cap," says Frieden. That's all the water they need — just a capful. And that makes them a daunting foe.