A quick burst of 9 links for you to chew over, as picked by the Technology team
Did Valve just soft-launch the Source 2 engine? >>> Polygon
Valve appears to have stealthily soft-launched the long-awaited Source 2 game engine alongside the overnight release of Workshop Tools for Dota 2, Dota modders are suggesting.
Where Source 2 leads, Half Life 3 surely follows. Right? Right?!
Remote control your friends with video app Sup >>> TechCrunch
You send a Sup request to one or a few friends, inviting them to turn on their phone’s camera and starting showing you their life. If one accepts within five minutes, you get pinged back saying they’re ready to Sup. Re-open the app and you’ll then get a silent, live video feed from them that lasts 10-seconds, but you can tap “Mo’ Time” if you don’t want the stream to end.
Please stop making apps. Please. Just stop.
Why is YouTube so into Vice News? >>> Digiday
The hot media company, focused on being “the Time Warner of the streets,” according to its brash CEO, has put many of its chips on Vice News. The news channel, relaunched in December, is all about multiplatform distribution, including a deal with HBO. On the Web, Vice has turned to Google-owned YouTube as the linchpin of its distribution strategy.
Vice and Google, sitting in a tree...
Commons:Deletion requests/File:Macaca nigra self-portrait.jpg - Wikimedia Commons
Keep I think a reasonable comparison would be if an animal had access to some kind of art supplies or raw materials (or maybe just some poop) and created some kind of “artwork” of this. Would the first human to come across this artwork own the copyright to it? What if the human left the supplies there? I think in both cases, the human does not own the copyright, and thus this should be in the public domain.
A glimpse at how the sausage that is Wikipedia is made.
Sony shows off new curves with its 4K Bravia S90 TV >>> Pocket-lint
The Bravia S90 will come in 65-inch and 75-inch sizes which, curved around your face, should create a cinema-like experience at home.
Please stop making curved TVs. Please. Just stop. It’s like 3D all over again, but even more expensive and possibly less useful.
Apple details ‘Siri for Mac’ desktop virtual assistant in new patent application >>> Apple Insider
Like the current iteration of Siri, limited to iOS, Apple’s desktop version is able to process natural speech and text input to perform actions like completing tasks, inputting and retrieving data, conducting searches and more. Further, the filing points out that commands are to be taken in context based on deduced user intent. In other words, Siri for desktop will use speech recognition to decipher and remembering contextual clues.
We might be more inclined to talk to a computer in the home, but then sat in front of a keyboard you can probably get more done quickly with a few key commands than running through voice prompts, even if it is a natural language chat.
Wireless Charging, at a distance, moves forward for uBeam >>> NYTimes.com
“This is the only wireless power system that allows you to be on your phone and moving around a room freely while you’re device is charging,” Ms. Perry said in an interview. “It allows for a Wi-Fi-like experience of charging; with everything else you have to be in close range of a transmitter.”
There’s talk that this could reduce the need for decent sized batteries, but given most smartphones can’t make it more than two days, that spells disaster for anyone who’s wants to use their phone while traveling. A decent idea, though.
Piracy police arrest Nottingham man, 20 >>> BBC News
The sites taken down by City of London Police do not offer pirated content themselves, but rather offer tools that allow users to connect to illegal services such as the Pirate Bay and similar torrent sites. “Internet users have sought ways to continue to access the sites by getting round the blocking put in place by the ISPs,” said Kieron Sharp, director general of Fact. “This operation is a major step in tackling those providing such services.”
Proxy sites are set for the chop. They’ve been targeted for a while, but it seems they’ve stepped up their action.
Google buys chat app that spies on you to serve ads >>> Wired UK
The tech giant confirms it has acquired Emu, a startup that offers a kind of instant messaging tool. The price was not disclosed, but Google’s interest in the company isn’t hard to divine: Emu has built a system that can monitor chats, infer what people are talking about, and insert relevant links including ads.
Rather suspicious, but probably right. Google is a massive ad company after all.
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