“How Heroes of the Storm is evolving its esports scene” plus 12 more VentureBeat

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• How Heroes of the Storm is evolving its esports scene
• Everything you need to know about corporate venture capital in Europe
• Blockchain’s brilliant approach to cybersecurity
• Tennis legend Andre Agassi’s Square Panda blends fun games and digital education
• How competitive gaming has to quickly evolve into a mature industry
• Roads? Where we’re going, we don’t need roads.
• Foxconn chief: ‘The rise of protectionism is unavoidable’
• Ashley Judd scorches the game industry for profiting from misogyny
• Sexism in esports deserves more than the Band-Aid of segregation
• Why you won’t have to worry about parking your 2018 Ford Mustang
• Bay Area Women’s Marches draw more than 100,000
• 5 industries ripe for human-machine learning
• Hands-on with Tobii’s eye-tracking laptop controls

How Heroes of the Storm is evolving its esports scene Posted: 22 Jan 2017 12:10 PM PST Heroes of the Storm’s esports are evolving. Blizzard’s new Heroes Global Championship league starts this weekend. It’s a new format for competitive play for Heroes of the Storm, the developer’s multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA). These are some of the most popular games in the growing esports market, and Blizzard has put a lot of focus on creating and promoting esports events for its games. You can find the full schedule here. GamesBeat interviewed Sam Braithwaite, Heroes of the Storm’s esports lead. We talked about the HGC, how Heroes of the Storm’s esports business has evolved, and how it’ll bring in new fans by focusing on its players. Above: Heroes of the Storm in action. Image Credit: Blizzard GamesBeat: How has Heroes of the Storm’s esports scene changed recently? Sam Braithwaite: Over the course of 2016, we learned quite a few lessons. One big thing that Heroes struggled with was consistency. You could never find Heroes in the same stream, or on one website that gives you all the information for what's happening across the globe. It was very difficult to follow. We decided to step back and re-address what our scene looks like and what we want to accomplish. With that, we launched HGC. It's an A-team league that runs in North America, Europe, China, and Korea that all runs simultaneously in a double round robin league format. All of our teams are guaranteed to earn at least $100,000 as minimum compensation for participation, if they participate the entire year. It's about creating that stability, creating regular content for people to tune in on, and providing the stability for not only rosters, but the entire scene and where you get information, how you get information, how you digest it. GamesBeat: Have you done much direct player compensation in the past? Braithwaite: No, we've never done it before. This is a first for us. We're proud of it and we're excited about it. We felt like, in order for Heroes to grow, we needed to let our players have the peace of mind  —  this is a career, a long-term investment. You don't need another job. You can play Heroes full time. We want that for all of our players. We're excited that we were able to do that. GamesBeat: It seems like all of Blizzard's esports games have been going through a lot of changes. Is this part of an internal plan? Braithwaite: We've definitely made some changes. The biggest is just building our team. In the past year we've hired so many people on the esports team across all the different franchises. We're giving a lot of opportunities to think and plan ahead. With that you start to see more of these intricate leagues and formats emerging across all of our franchises, because we as Blizzard are taking esports seriously. It's coming from the top down and it's something that the entire company feels. You're not alone. Internally we're all feeling a big shift, that we as Blizzard support esports. GamesBeat: Your game is constantly adding new characters, and each time you do this, does it shake up the game so much that it throws players a bit, trying to learn new characters and the counters for them? Or is it not that big an adjustment? Braithwaite: The ideal situation is that a new character, a new hero on the roster doesn't actually shake up the competitive scene. If one single hero can completely shift the meta, there's something wrong with that hero. The real thing that we need to look at is, over the course of a few months, when several heroes are added, as well as several reworks, how does that shift the meta? When you look at overall sweeping armor changes or different heroics or talents in a warrior pool, we might start seeing a warrior-heavy meta. But I don't think one particular hero can necessarily shake up the meta. But just in case — there are those chances, where a hero comes out that's incredibly strong. One thing we're doing with HGC that we've never done before is a tournament realm. Moving forward, we'll be able to identify and choose which patch we want to play on. With that we're always going to be two to four weeks behind the regular release schedule. There are huge heroes coming out that impact the game in a big way, but our professional players will have several weeks to adapt to those changes before they're placed in a tournament environment. GamesBeat: In the past you've done TV events, like Heroes of the Dorm. Is this new venture going to be more focused on streaming? Braithwaite: We're doing Heroes of the Dorm again this year. We're really excited about it. But for Heroes and HGC we're not really looking for TV right now. We do have our broadcast partners that we'll be pushing toward this year, Facebook and Twitch. I don't see us being on TV for HGC this year, though. Above: Heroes of the Storm at BlizzCon. Image Credit: Giancarlo Valdes/GamesBeat GamesBeat: What kind of fans are you trying to draw to competitive Heroes? Are you aiming more at Blizzard fans or MOBA fans? Braithwaite: First and foremost, when we're creating esports content, we're creating it for our current active players. Esports isn't exactly a service to them, but it's auxiliary content for our users to digest. When they're not playing the game, we want them to be watching the game, to be thinking about the game, to be taking it to the next level. That's what HGC is for, as a companion to our current active players. Obviously, when it comes to big moments, high highs, offline events, we'll be targeting other MOBA players, as well as the entire Blizzard community. But overall, HGC is targeted for current Heroes of the Storm players. GamesBeat: The MOBA field was already competitive when you entered with Heroes. Do you think you've been able to carve out a place for yourselves in that market? Braithwaite: Absolutely. We're continuing to find our place in the market as well. We're starting to hit our stride with Heroes as a game, to where we can all sit back and say that the game people see today is something we're proud of, that we think has a spot in the MOBA marketplace. Heroes has several things that really define what it is and make it unique. Having multiple battlegrounds, having talents, everybody leveling up simultaneously—without that burden of having to last-hit and argue over that with your teammates, it really does propel Heroes to different heights. GamesBeat: What are your goals with esports here? Is it focused on building a stable league, on just drawing a lot of viewers? Braithwaite: It's a little bit of both. HGC is built as a foundation to provide stability for the Heroes esports community. Not only do we want to provide stability with our favorite rosters, but we also want to give viewers the experience  —  three days a week, 16 hours a day, I can tune in to this specific channel and watch the best of the best when it comes to Heroes of the Storm. Not only that, but they'll be able to choose their favorite teams and players. Today, just about an hour and a half ago, our new HGC website went live, and with that the entire schedule from now until June was released. If you follow a favorite team or player, you know every single match they're playing in. You'll be able to set your calendar right now for matches in May. That's also something that's unheard-of in the esports world, something we wanted to work hard toward: giving every person all the information that they want. And not only that—another goal of the HGC is to bring a global program to life. If you go to our website, it's not just an NA/EU, western-focused website. Everything is broken down for North America, Europe, China, and Korea. You can get all the VODs, all the schedules, all the standings, anything and everything you could want about all the regions. That's all in one central location. Stability and consistency is our main goal for the program, but also we're going to be trying to dive in this year into creating and building superstars and personalities within the Heroes scene. I'll admit that with Heroes, it's more difficult compared to other MOBAs to really have those standout performances. It's going to be up to us as Blizzard and the HGC and our players to bring these superstars in front of the fans. GamesBeat: How do you plan to do that, build the players into stars? Braithwaite: We'll be doing more interviews and providing more background info, but we'll be driving it through stats. While watching the game, there are those immediate carry performances in Heroes, which is what we want, but there are also statistics that can help build superstars and figure out who's the best at a certain character in the league. Who's the best in NA at this role? Who's the best in EU at this role? Who's the best with this character? What are teams' and players' battleground win percentages? If we dive into the statistics and show why these guys are great, the rest can follow. Above: The benefits of a two-player health pool: Cho’gall shrugs off attacks that annihilate other heroes. Image Credit: Blizzard Entertainment GamesBeat: What kind of prize pool are players competing for? Braithwaite: That's one thing that we wanted to not focus on this year, the prize pool. A lot of the money for HGC, which is over $4 million on the year, is straight into that guaranteed compensation. Our offline events are meant to be looked at as a bonus for being the top performer in a region. But we're hoping that the guaranteed compensation is what will ultimately bring stability to the scene. We still haven't announced our BlizzCon prize pool yet. That will come at a later date. But overall, our tier three online events will be a $100,000 prize pool. Tier two will be $250,000. The remaining is to be announced. GamesBeat: Is there any worry that, since players have so much guaranteed money, that might stifle competition a bit? Braithwaite: No, I think it'll be the opposite. I think it's going to breed competition. Teams will want to stay in that position. Up until now, it's only been really important for the top two to three teams in the region. Those two to three teams make a decent amount of money. But teams four through eight don't really see a piece of it at all. What I think is going to happen is that those spots will be so coveted, because of the guaranteed compensation, that people are going to want to fight for them. The bottom two do get relegated twice a year. GamesBeat: I imagine that along with the guaranteed money, there might be more restrictions on these players. Do you limit other games they can play competitively, or other leagues they can appear in? Braithwaite: We do expect another level of professionalism from our players. It doesn't necessarily come with restricting from doing other things. We're not going to stop them from streaming whatever game they want to play or do what they want to do. But we do have heavier restrictions on roster locks and how they treat referees and sportsmanship. We have a lot more rules on tardiness, showing up on time. We're investing a lot of money into HGC and into these players. With that there's an added level of responsibility. There's no more delaying matches because players don't show up on time. That's something that can't exist in the HGC. GamesBeat: Has that been a difficult transition? Esports started out as a kind of wild west. Is part of your job teaching players how to be more professional? Braithwaite: It's actually not that difficult. We just recently had our players summit, where we flew out all the teams and players from North America and Europe to Blizzard HQ and spend three days with them, doing all the things that you're talking about. We gave them media and interview training. We had them sit down with our balance team. We talked about rules and payments and everything that they would need to know about the HGC. We also gave them a lot of swag, of course. One thing we realized is that these guys are ready for the game to level up. They want it to level up. They don't mind any of the added professionalism, because they ultimately know that the more people treat HGC professionally, the more money will ultimately end up in their pockets. The bigger HGC gets, the bigger they'll be. That's one thing that I wanted to echo in that players summit. This is their league, the players' league. They voted for the map pool. They voted on official rules and some of the other behind-the-scenes things we're going to be doing. We want the players to feel like this is their league. We'll be empowering them to do that. GamesBeat: Is it possible for any player to aspire to the HGC? Braithwaite: With the HGC we also launched something called the Open Division. That's meant to bridge the gap between Hero League and competitive play. We want people who enjoy the game, who are really good at the game, to think, "Hey, I want to be in the HGC. How do I get there?" That path is easy. You go to the Open Division. We recently partnered up with GosuGamers, which will be hosting weekly cups in their Heroes of the Storm section where there's cash and points up for grabs. At the end of a 14-week period, we'll take the top 16 teams. Those teams compete in a playoff and the top two teams from the Open Division fight against the bottom two teams in the pro league to find out who'll be the next two teams in the HGC for the end of the year. We really do believe that HGC is the full experience. Whether it's the Open Division, whether it's the pro league, whether it's our website, we really are trying to create this one-stop shop where it's a complete ecosystem and we support every aspect of it. That's the closing thing. HGC is bringing a lot of attention to the game and to esports generally. There are still opportunities to compete and opportunities to be in the HGC. The path is clear and it's easier than ever. Grab your friends, sign up, and play.

Everything you need to know about corporate venture capital in Europe Posted: 22 Jan 2017 11:08 AM PST GUEST: Corporate venture capital (CVC) is an investment by a corporate (fund) into external startups in order to make a financial return or to gain a competitive advantage. CVC is a polarizing subject and opinions are divided. Fred Wilson from Union Square Ventures believes that it's evil and corporates should not invest in startups but simply buy them. While Marc Andreessen from Andreessen Horowitz on the other hand is co-investing with corporations such as General Electric. Whatever the opinions are, fact is that CVC is on the rise, also in the old continent. In order to get a good overview of the scene, Sirris.be, the non-profit I work for that maps European technology scaleups, recently looked at all of the European tech companies that have raised at least $1 million in 2016 from corporates. The data (which you can view here) is comprised of $17 billion funding and more than 1,650 transactions from 31 countries. Additional input came from the Corporate Venturing Europe group. How big is the CVC impact in Europe? Corporates have been involved in at least 292 deals worth $4 billion in investments in 2016. The biggest investment was $398 million in Africa Internet Group by AXA and Orange. While the European scaleup ecosystem is strongly oriented towards B2B, CVC investments are more balanced: 51 percent in B2B and 49 percent in B2C companies. The majority of CVC are balance sheet investments, although there is a trend towards dedicated corporate venture capital funds. CVC funds are often exclusive to a single corporation, although there are also CVC funds that are co-investments of companies that have complementary activities, such as Aster Capital, which was jointly created and funded by Alstom, Schneider Electric, and Solvay Rhodia. We even see co-investments from competitors, such as the Belgian SmartFin Capital fund, where competing banks (Belfius and ING) participated. Especially notable is that a third of CVC funds active in Europe are from the US. As for the size of CVC funds, 8 percent are under $10 million; 15 percent are $10 – $50 million; 23 percent are $50 – $100 million; 31 percent are $100 – $500 million; 8 percent are $500 million –  $1 billion and; 15 percent are over $1 billion. CVC funds account for 11 percent of active investors (VC accounts for 51 percent), making it a viable source of capital for cash-hungry scaleups. France is the European CVC champion With 67 deals and more than $1.1 billion of capital raised involving corporations in 2016, France leaves Britain (61 deals, $984 million) and Germany (55 deals, $710 million) behind. As a result Paris (50 deals) is the corporate venture city of Europe followed by London (46) and Berlin (32). The Nordic, once again performs well, with Stockholm (13) and Oslo (9 deals) on position 4 and 5. In fact 29% of all investments in Norway have corporates involved. The usual suspects: Salesforce and Intel Salesforce Ventures (11 deals) and Intel Capital (8 deals) are the most active investors leveraging their CVC funds for extending their ecosystem and reinforcing their core offerings. Salesforce is focused on investing in scaleups that are an extension of its platform, often marketing tech companies. It co-invested in French Augment and Dutch Emark. Salesforce Ventures was involved in $286 million of investments in Europe last year. Intel invests across a wide number of industries, including automotive, software development, manufacturing, supply chain, virtual reality, and Internet of things. It always co-invests with other VCs and CVCs. Intel Capital was involved in $223 million of investments. Both Salesforce and Intel made a significant investment in Sigfox, a French provider of Internet of Things connectivity. Sigfox raised a $161 million series E with participation of Total, Tamer Group, and Air Liquide. A less obvious investor: The French state-owned national railway company SNCF is one of the most active CVC investors in Europe investing strategically in new technologies and innovative business models in the mobility space, with five deals amounting to $43 million. Its investments include OnePark (a parking market place), Allocab (a private driver market place), and LuckyLoc (a rental car market place). SNCF invests alone or in combination with other CVCs such as insurance company Allianz. SNCF’s most spectacular investment is Navya Tech, an autonomous vehicles manufacturer that bagged $32 million from other corporate investors Valeo (automotive spare parts) and Keolis (transport group). The industry that attracted the highest number of CVC investments: FinTech It should be no surprise that FinTech saw the most CVC investments last year, as this is the most funded industry in Europe. FinTech scaleups received 42 deals worth $499 million from 48 corporate investors. The most active CVCs in the FinTech space are Orange (French telco) and Allianz (German insurance company). FinTech (including InsurTech) accounts for the highest number of specialized CVC funds active in Europe such as CommerzVentures, ABN AMRO Digital Impact Fund, Anthemis Exponential Ventures, American Express Ventures, Santander InnoVentures, Axa Strategic Ventures, DB1 Ventures, InnovAllianz, Allianz Ventures, and Chinese CreditEase Fintech Investment Fund. Some surprising FinTech investors are pharmaceutical companies Merck and Pfizer, which invested $13 million in Spanish Storm, a Point of Sale device provider that offers a gateway for merchants to connect with their main stock suppliers. Another remarkable CVC is the World Bank, which co-invested with Peter Thiel in German Kreditech, a scaleup offering Credit-as-a-Service to underbanked consumers. And lastly, betting company Betfair invested in Moneybox, which is targeting millennials with saving and investment services. As for the buzzword of 2016 — blockchain — Santander, KfW, Allianz, Groupe Duval, and Thomson Reuters invested in blockchain scaleups Elliptic (UK), Bitwala (Germany), SmartAngels (France), and Funderbeam (Estonia) for a total of just $12 million. The other buzzword of 2016, artificial intelligence, saw investments from Axel Springer, Allianz, Convoy, and Taipei Fubon Bank, which invested in AI-focuses FinTech scaleups such as Clark (Germany), MoneyFarm (Italy) and Nutmeg (UK) for a total of $74 million. Surprisingly, except for Nutmeg, there were no CVC investments in FinTech business models based on robo-advisors. Nine FinTech scaleups received CVC funding while graduating from an accelerator: three from Finleap, two from Seedcamp, two from Startupbootcamp, one from Microsoft Accelerator, and one from L’Atelier BNP Paribas. They collectively raised $120 million. Autonomous vehicles, automotive, and mobility With the fast changing mobility landscape and the race to autonomous vehicles, it's not surprising that a number of incumbents want to safeguard their position by investing in promising technology or innovative business models. More than $536 million is been invested in mobility and automotive related scaleups. Intel Capital invested together with Renault and Robert Bosch in French university spin-off Chronocam, a computer vision technology provider, to make autonomous vehicles a reality. Intel has even bigger plans in 2017 by investing in Here, a German autonomous vehicle technology provider owned by the car-maker consortium of Audi, BMW, and Daimler. Porche invested in car parking company Evopark. Volkswagen invested in Hubject, an “eRoaming” platform that aims to connect EV charging stations. Founded in 2012, Hubject already counts BMW, Bosch, Daimler, and Siemens among its owners. PSA Peugeot Citroën invested in Koolicar, a French scaleup that allows people to share or rent vehicles without the need to exchange keys. Daimer invested in Berlin-based Blacklane, a platform connecting passengers with professional drivers. Daimler also invested in the first weeks of 2017 in London-based Starship Technologies, creator of self-driving futuristic-looking delivery robots. Swedish connected cars scaleup Springworks received two rounds of funding in 2016 from mobile network operator Telia. Schmitz Cargobull, a German manufacturer of semi-trailers, trailers, and truck bodies, invested in Truckin, a platform that connects trucking companies with shippers, freight forwarders, and drivers. Energy and utilities Another quickly changing landscape is energy. The European Union aims to make renewable energy 20 percent of its overall energy supply by 2020. Norway is a heavy producer of renewable energy, with the vast majority of electricity production generated by hydropower. Norwegian Statkraft Group, Europe’s largest generator of renewable energy, invested last year in Swiss DEPSys, German Tado (as a co-investment with Siemens), and Norwegian Greenbird. Electricity producers such as German E.ON and French Engie invested in German Thermondo, UK Bboxx, and French IoT scaleup Connit. A group of oil giants (Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and Statoil) invested in Scottish Lux Assure, which develops chemical monitoring technologies. Total, on the other hand, invested in FinTech (Particeep) and IoT (SigFox). Finnish Rocsole, developer of a 3D-imaging enabling accurate process control leading to savings in process chemical and energy consumption, received funding from Shell and Repsol. General Electric invested in both the Series C and D of German Sonnen Group, manufacturer of transportable intelligent lithium storage systems. Houston-based Envision Energy also participated in the $93 million investment that Sonnen raised in 2016. Also GE invested, together with Ericsson, in IoT startup Resin.io from London. Artificial intelligence According to Frost & Sullivan's study "The future of Europe," there's an increasing shift towards the cognitive era where devices are getting smarter and smarter. This shift is particularly Eurocentric. Even Silicon Valley giant Google made its largest acquisition by investing in UK-based DeepMind. Similarly, IBM made Munich its headquarters for AI research and applications. Many companies are trying to get on the AI bandwagon, and machine learning is probably the buzz word of 2016. Artificial intelligence and data analytics scaleups received $354 million of investment across 41 deals from corporate investors — specifically AdTech (i.e. sales and marketing automation platforms) scaleups using advances algorithms and data. Consider German AX-Semantics, which creates semantic software that automatically generates text content based on data only. It can create 30,000 stories per day in multiple languages. It received $5.4 million funding from media companies Müller Medien Group and NWZ Digital. Then there’s Cambridge-based Luminance, promising to free lawyers to focus on what matters by using artificial intelligence to provide forensic insight into a company. It received funding from Slaughter and May, a London-based international law firm and a member of the Magic Circle of elite British law firms. Portuguese DefinedCrowd combines crowd-as-a-service and machine learning to accelerate enterprise data training and modeling. It received funding from Microsoft, Sony, and Amazon. Bottom line: The European CVC market is in good shape The European corporate venture capital market is flourishing, with France and UK in the lead. The 2016 landscape is marked by an increasing number of industries using corporate venture capital to get ahead in the game. This is fertile soil where many young companies can receive support during the critical phase of upscaling. Alternatively, a startup can help a corporation to step away from its own paradigm by accessing a new R&D layer. Corporate venture capital has a bright future in Europe and will gain influence in the coming years. Omar Mohout is a former tech entrepreneur turned startup adviser. He works with Belgium-based Sirris, is a board member at Startups.be, and is also professor of entrepreneurship at the Antwerp Management School. He has written a few books for startups, including Lean Pricing.

Blockchain’s brilliant approach to cybersecurity Posted: 22 Jan 2017 09:33 AM PST GUEST: Hackers can shut down entire networks, tamper with data, lure unwary users into cybertraps, steal and spoof identities, and carry out other devious attacks by leveraging centralized repositories and single points of failure. The blockchain's alternative approach to storing and sharing information provides a way out of this security mess. The same technology that has enabled secure transactions with cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum could now serve as a tool to prevent cyberattacks and security incidents. Blockchains can increase security on three fronts: blocking identity theft, preventing data tampering, and stopping Denial of Service attacks. 1. Protecting identities Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) is a popular form of public key cryptography that secures emails, messaging apps, websites, and other forms of communication. However because most implementations of PKI rely on centralized, trusted third party Certificate Authorities (CA) to issue, revoke, and store key pairs for every participant, hackers can compromise them to spoof user identities and crack encrypted communications. For instance, controversy recently broke over the key renegotiation process of WhatsApp, which could possibly be exploited to push false keys and perform man-in-the-middle attacks on one of the most popular and secure messaging apps in the world. Publishing keys on a blockchain instead would eliminate the risk of false key propagation and enable applications to verify the identity of the people you are communicating with. CertCoin is one of the first implementations of blockchain-based PKI. The project, developed at MIT, removes central authorities altogether and uses the blockchain as a distributed ledger of domains and their associated public keys. CertCoin provides a public and auditable PKI that also doesn't have a single point of failure. More recently, tech research company Pomcor published a blueprint for a blockchain-based PKI that doesn't remove central authorities but uses blockchains to store hashes of issued and revoked certificates. This approach gives users a means to verify the authenticity of certificates with a decentralized and transparent source. It also has the side benefit of optimizing network access by performing key and signature verification on local copies of the blockchain. Another interesting study of identification based on distributed ledgers is the IOTA, a project that applies Tangle (a blockless type of distributed ledger that is lightweight and scalable) to provide the backbone for millions of IoT devices to interact and identify each other in a peer-to-peer manner and without the need for a third-party authority. "By referencing hashes that match identity attributes of an individual tied to the ledger one can start to reconstruct the entire identity management system. The fact that you can tie these attributes of person to a tamper-proof hash makes it impossible for someone to forge your identity," says IOTA cofounder David Sønstebø. 2. Protecting data integrity We sign documents and files with private keys so that recipients and users can verify the source of the data they're handling. And then we go to great lengths to prove that those keys haven't been tampered with, which is difficult when the key is meant to be secret in the first place. The blockchain alternative to document signing replaces secrets with transparency, distributing evidence across many blockchain nodes and making it practically impossible to manipulate data without being caught. How do you prove that the San Antonio Spurs were the champions of the 2014 NBA Playoffs? You don't need to because it's general knowledge. The same applies to data on a blockchain distributed ledger. Keyless Signature Structure (KSI), a blockchain project led by data security startup GuardTime, is one group that aims to replace key-based data authentication. KSI stores hashes of original data and files on the blockchain and verifies other copies by running hashing algorithms and comparing the results with what is stored on the blockchain. Any manipulation of the data will be quickly discovered because the original hash exists on millions of nodes. As GuardTime CTO Matthew Johnson told me, the blockchain approach to data authentication offers "mathematical certainty over the provenance and integrity" of information. The U.S. Department of Defense's DARPA agency is considering KSI as a potential fit to protect sensitive military data. And on the health care front, blockchain company Gem is using blockchain to provide data transparency, change-auditing, and fine-grained access control of health records. This is especially important as healthcare providers handle reams of sensitive data and have been victims of huge data breaches. "Data controlling critical business processes, patient health, and clinical trials are all attack surfaces in healthcare industry," said Gem VP of Engineering Siva Kannan. "Blockchain technology would help in verifying the integrity of patient data shared across different organizations, create immutable audit trails for data governing health care business processes, and maintain the integrity of data collected in clinical health trials." 3. Protecting critical infrastructure A massive October DDoS attack taught us all a painful lesson about how easy it has become for hackers to target critical services. By bringing down the single service that provided Domain Name Services (DNS) for major websites, the attackers were able to cut off access to Twitter, Netflix, PayPal, and other services for several hours, yet another manifestation of the failure of centralized infrastructures. A blockchain approach to storing DNS entries could, according to Coin Center's Peter Van Valkenburgh, improve security by removing the single target that hackers can attack to compromise the entire system. Nebulis is a project that is exploring the concept of a distributed DNS system that will never fail under an excess of requests. Nebulis uses the Ethereum blockchain and the Interplanetary Filesystem (IPFS), a distributed alternative to HTTP, to register and resolve domain names. "The killer weakness of the current DNS system is its overreliance on caching," Nebulis founder Philip Saunders told me. "Caching makes it possible to stage DDoS attacks against DNS servers and allows oppressive regimes to censor social networks and manipulate DNS registries." Blockchain will also remove the network fees associated with DNS reads and will only impose costs on updates and new entries. "This has great potential for lifting a great deal of pressure from the physical backbone of the Internet," Saunders said. "It also means we can do away with many of the redundancies of the traditional DNS and come up with something much better. A transparent, distributed DNS where domain records are under their owners' control will also make it virtually impossible for any single entity, including governments, to manipulate entries at their whim. New and unexpected cybersecurity threats will continue to emerge while old threats linger. Blockchains won't be a silver bullet to fix everything that's wrong with the Internet, but they will be a powerful tool experts and engineers can leverage to harden their systems against the multitude of threats that surround us, especially where centralized weaknesses and single points of failure are concerned. Ben Dickson is a software engineer and the founder of TechTalks, a blog that explores the ways technology is solving and creating problems. He writes about technology, business and politics. Follow him on Twitter: @BenDee983.

Tennis legend Andre Agassi’s Square Panda blends fun games and digital education Posted: 22 Jan 2017 09:05 AM PST Square Panda is trying to walk the lines between fun and learning, and between the digital and the physical. The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company has launched a $99 product that combines proprietary learning hardware with games that run on an iPad. The company has received funding from tennis legend Andre Agassi, who attended CES 2017, the big tech trade show in Las Vegas earlier this month, with company CEO Andy Butler. I interviewed Butler at CES, and he has some big ambitions for Square Panda. He wants to help reform early education itself. Asked what is missing from schools, Butler said, “Education over the next five to 10 years is going to be revolutionized. This chronological conveyor belt, factory model of education we have, where everyone gets on at the same point in time and advances through every subject at the same rate, regardless of whether they are left brain or right brain, that’s going to be eliminated. The Square Panda iPad accessory product ships in April, and you can order now on the company’s web site. Targeted at kids ages two and up, it teaches children phonics and basic learning skills with a multi-sensory system, with sounds, visual aids, and physical toy-like letters. Kids can explore the alphabet, learn letter sounds, discover rhymes, and build vocabulary — using tactile letter blocks. Above: Andy Butler, CEO of Square Panda. Image Credit: Dean Takahashi Unlike other companies that simply want to entertain kids, Square Panda takes the education very seriously. “I see other companies focus on toys or play, and not being curriculum centric,” said Butler. “My daughter is dyslexic. This is a personal mission of mine to impact the whole area of reading literacy among young children, whether they are dyslexic or not.” About 66 percent of kids aren’t reading fluently by the fourth grade, and those kids rarely catch up to those who are fluent. The economy can’t afford to leave those kids behind, Butler said. Above: One of Square Panda’s learning games on the iPad. Image Credit: Square Panda Founded by Tom Boeckle, who struggled with dyslexia as a child, Square Panda has created a play-based environment with deep curriculum behind it. The company is half game developers and half education researchers. It is focused on kids ages two to seven. The team worked with researchers at Stanford University to develop the curriculum. Square Panda’s kit includes 45 letters that can be placed in a smart reader that is connected to the iPad. On the iPad, they can enjoy 10 different learning games that are available to download. Children playing don’t really realize that they’re acquiring phonic skills, the ability to decode letters into sounds, and form those sounds into words, and utilize those words in sentences, Butler said. “We start as early as two, as soon as a child developers motor skills, since the company has a platform that is multi-sensory,” Butler said. “What we do is about 10 percent hardware and 90 percent software.” Above: Square Panda comes with an iPad accessory for reading physical letters. Image Credit: Square Panda Parents can connect to a portal that keeps a log of how the child is progressing. The parents can personalize the experience and make the learning experience more enjoyable, adding their own personal words, like the name of a pet, into the database. The company has 20 people in California and just opened an office in Beijing. Agassi grew up in Las Vegas and has two children. In 1994, he started the Agassi Foundation for Education, which has a K-12 charter school in Las Vegas. Square Panda is his first ed-tech investment, and he is on the company’s board. “We have cloud storage and feedback systems that can tell teachers on a daily basis so they can intervene with the children who need it the most and see which children are more self-directed,” Butler said. “This whole revolution in education is happening now, and we intend to play a role in that because we are adaptive. We watch every move the child makes and adapt the curriculum on the fly. It’s a really exciting time in education.”

How competitive gaming has to quickly evolve into a mature industry Posted: 22 Jan 2017 08:35 AM PST GUEST: The esports industry, for many, seems to have appeared overnight – at least in the mainstream. It tallied $892.8 million in revenues in 2016 with over 213.8 million spectators watching the competitive gaming tournaments and matches. That's coming from market researcher SuperData, which estimate that the industry will surpass the $1 billion dollar mark by 2018 and reach a global audience of 303 million by 2019. Asia leads, but North America and Europe follow closely. A few years ago, you may have noticed some frowns and criticisms, at least in western countries, about the societal consequences of promoting this level and intensity of gaming, particularly on youth. But the landscape has evolved beyond that narrow-minded concern and the market appears to have accepted the reality that competitive gaming is here not only to stay, but thrive. The narrative has changed. "Traditionally, a lot of formal research took a negative stance on gaming and looked at behaviors such as addiction and social isolation," Dan Himmelstein, founder and “brain coach” at Premier eSports Academy, told me. "However, we are now seeing studies looking at how to best influence optimal performance in esports, increased cognitive functions correlated with gaming, and positive effects on mental health." One factor for why esports is going through a growth spurt is the synergy that comes from sitting at multiple intersections. One is the convergence of video, live events, and games. Another is the interplay between the players, game publishers, and broadcasters. And it looks like the next one might very well be the compounding impact that emerging tech like AR, VR, and 5G will have on enhancing, and maybe even transforming, the spectator experience. We already see a glimmer of this with the $6.2 million Sliver.tv raised last summer for its immersive virtual reality platform. When asked I asked Ralf Reichert, CEO of ESL at Turtle Entertainment, what he saw on the horizon for the industry in 2017, he said: "Bigger and better competitions and events with continuously expanding viewership breaking into new channels. Global and local partnerships with media and tech companies like Telefonica, Vivendi and many more to come will facilitate and accelerate that growth. Every sport in history has been built with media companies together and these type of coops will accelerate the growth of esports." Quite a bit of this success is owed to the game creators and publishers who clearly recognized the writing on the wall on how effective competitive gaming is to enriching the bottom line. It increases player engagement, lengthens the longevity of gaming titles, expands the field of franchise awareness, and compounds monetization potential in multiple directions that are continually being optimized and expanded. The revenue streams include digital ads and sponsorship, which currently contributes to 70 percent of total revenue, along with merchandise, event tickets, virtual goods, prize pool contributions, media rights, and betting in allowable markets. Compared to traditional sports leagues like the NBA that makes an average of $15 per fan, esports makes about four times less at $3.30. So fine tuning the monetization mechanisms will be an important priority and we're already seeing cannibalization of traditional sports viewership at the expense of its digital cousin. Just like any industry, this stage in its development is mired by fragmentation and the early onrush of new contenders looking to reap and sweep in early profits. "Many companies are looking to rival and dethrone the leaders just by throwing money at it," Paul Kats, director of Analytics and Business Intelligence at Azubu, the global esports broadcast network, told me. "This industry is driven by passion and authenticity. Many of the new companies do not have that and are just trying to make a quick buck. The industry will thrive, but many of the new companies and investors will not be around in a few years." The rapid growth of esports also demands an accelerated pace to managing a wide range of issues that come into play when gaming turns professional and plugs into an entire ecosystem that depends on stability and good business practices. Think of the collegiate leagues in traditional sports, or the talent agencies, law firms, and training institutes that specialize in the industry. All of this, these varied players tailoring their focus directly on esports, will demand a finely woven bureaucratic system to be built and managed to the same degree of depth as we see in traditional sports. In fact, it'll likely be even more elaborate and intricate. "In traditional athletics, there is a formal developmental path which usually starts at youth participation, learning the basics of the sport while also learning vital life skills like communication, teamwork, and perseverance." Himmelstein told me. "Then players are given different opportunities to progress through school sports and travel teams and coached all the way through. That’s not something we typically see in esports and players are left to do the brunt of their training on their own until they’re picked up by a team with structure." In practice, this will mean consolidating leagues, associations, and establishing the authority of regulatory bodies that can enter the scene and address the top growing pains on the table. Regulatory organizations like the Esports Integrity Coaltion have arisen only quite recently to help establish and maintain a code of ethics towards issues like doping, match fixing, in-game cheating, and poor sportsmanship. Organizing bodies will have to address standards like minimum pay for players, teams, and support staff like coaches and analysts. And with a heavy male skew (85 percent), addressing and promoting gender diversity will need to be seriously looked at. "Esports, just like any other sport, won’t grow if surrounded by the stigma of integrity problems. So on a basic level, when it comes to match fixing, illegal or underage betting, doping and other sort of threatening factors, it is crucial that eSports event organizers, game publishers and everyone else in the ecosystem comes together to tackle that. On a higher level, when it comes to aspects such as player contracts, leagues sharing revenue with teams, player representation and media rights, the industry is facing an explosive growth in all of those areas and it’s only natural individual institutions unite to introduce a level of regulation we can all refer to," Reichert told me. There's so much to say, and that's the point. Most of the major traditional sports were established over a hundred years ago. Competitive gaming will likely catch up within only a few, and we'll all watch in awe as it forms into wholes, springs out branches, and develops into increasing influential and highly profitable industry. Amir-Esmaeil Bozorgzadeh is the co-founder at Virtuleap, a sandbox for creative developers to showcase their VR concepts to the world, which is currently running the world's biggest WebVR Hackathon. He is also the European Partner at Edoramedia, a games publisher and digital agency with its headquarters in Dubai.

Roads? Where we’re going, we don’t need roads. Posted: 22 Jan 2017 06:03 AM PST FEATURE: Investment in autonomous vehicle technology entered overdrive in 2016, and 2017 is gearing up for more of the same. In the last six months of 2016, the first public self-driving taxi service hit Singapore roads, courtesy of NuTonomy, while Uber followed suit a month later in Pittsburgh. The question of self-driving cars becoming a reality on roads around the world is no longer an “if,” it’s a big fat “when.” Amidst all the hullabaloo over driverless automobiles, another transportation revolution is gaining momentum. Flying cars have been at the center of fantastical future visions in science fiction for decades. But despite the best efforts by Star Wars, Blade Runner, Back to the Future, and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang to cajole engineers into making fantasy a reality, it has never quite happened. However, things are changing. Earlier this week, aerospace giant Airbus confirmed that it plans to test a prototype of a self-piloted flying car by the end of the year, with the ultimate aim of circumventing the growing gridlock on city roads. Airbus CEO Tom Enders said of the plans: “One hundred years ago, urban transport went underground; now we have the technological wherewithal to go above ground. We are in an experimentation phase; we take this development very seriously.” With flying, you don't need to pour billions into concrete bridges and roads. The company didn’t commit to any figures for its investment, or the ins and outs of what the planned demonstration will entail, but the company’s efforts to bring personal flying vehicles to skylines is in line with efforts we’re seeing elsewhere. Last month, fledgling startup Lilium Aviation announced a €10 million ($10.7 million) funding round from Skype cofounder Niklas Zennström's Atomico for a jet with vertical take-off and landing. While it’s not strictly a “car,” insofar as it doesn’t have wheels, it shares a similar mission to that of Airbus by seeking to alleviate gridlock — “everyone can fly anywhere, anytime,” the company proclaims. “Our cities are heading for perpetual gridlock, choked by an ever-growing number of cars  —  1.2 billion today, rising to an estimated 2 billion by 2035," a Lilium spokesperson said at the time. Pricing for the Lilium jet remains a mystery for now, but it will fit two passengers and will have an estimated cruising velocity of 250 to 300 km/h (160 to 190 mph), and a range of around 300 km (190 miles). The Lilium jet remains a prototype for now, but the company has previously committed to flight testing in early 2017, ahead of commercial production. Lilium has also declared that it expects many businesses to emerge as a result of such vehicles, including air taxi and ride-sharing services. Above: Lilium Aviation Airbus and Lilium are just two of the latest companies to join the race to make “flying cars” a reality. Massachusetts-based Terrafugia was founded in 2006 by five pilots and MIT graduates and has developed working prototypes of roadable aircraft. The company recently received approval from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) that will help pave the way to getting unmanned passenger vehicles in the skies by 2018. Roads? Some of the biggest names in technology are looking to a future in which personal flying vehicles are a thing. Google cofounder Larry Page is backing Zee, a stealth startup founded in 2010 that is “designing, building, and testing better ways to get from A to B,” as the blurb on the company’s homepage notes. It now counts some 150 employees who are working on a “small, all-electric plane that could take off and land vertically,” according to a Bloomberg report from last year. That’s not all. Page is also backing a second secret flying car startup called Kitty Hawk, which is headquartered just a half-mile away from Zee in Silicon Valley. “Over the past five years, there have been these tremendous advances in the under­lying technology ," Mark Moore, an aeronautical engineer at NASA who designs advanced aircraft, told Bloomberg. “What appears in the next five to 10 years will be incredible.” Elsewhere, Uber recently released a whitepaper that anticipates a time when on-demand urban air transportation is widespread, possibly within a decade. “On-demand aviation has the potential to radically improve urban mobility, giving people back time lost in their daily commutes,” the paper reads. “Just as skyscrapers allowed cities to use limited land more efficiently, urban air transportation will use three-dimensional airspace to alleviate transportation congestion on the ground.” Uber’s vision is thus: A network of small, electric aircraft that take off and land vertically (VTOL, for Vertical Take-off and Landing) will open up routes between cities and suburbs, reducing the time it once took from hours to a matter of minutes. Above: Uber’s fantastical future vision   Challenges If there are challenges involved in making self-driving cars a reality, the obstacles facing flying cars — autonomous or otherwise — are ten-fold. Safety will likely be the number one concern, which will lead to heavy regulatory obligations for any company considering putting vehicles in heavily populated, built-up conurbations. Then there are issues related to noise, emissions, and technological capabilities — the latter being the part of the puzzle that is receiving most attention at the moment. Basically, the idea is: “Make flying cars possible, and worry about the other things later.” And that philosophy does make sense. There is little point worrying about regulations and environmental factors until you’re at the stage of being able to put personal flying vehicles, other than helicopters and planes, in the sky. The technological capabilities are perhaps at a far more advanced stage than many realize, but there is a way to go yet. Airbus’ Silicon Valley arm, A³, is running Project Vahana, the self-piloted flying vehicle platform we mentioned earlier. A³ CEO Rodin Lyasoff reckons much of the technology is already here, which is why his team is so confident that they’ll be ready to run a test later this year. "Many of the technologies needed, such as batteries, motors, and avionics are most of the way there,” explained Lyasoff. But one of the remaining challenges, one that cannot be underestimated when operating fast-moving vehicles in built-up areas, pertains to the “sense and avoid” sensors that ensure the vehicles can circumvent obstacles of their own volition. Sure, we’re seeing many cars go to market with such smarts built-in, including Teslas, but “no mature solution” for airborne vehicles currently exists, according to Airbus. “That's one of the bigger challenges we aim to resolve as early as possible,” noted Lyasoff. It’s difficult to imagine a time when hundreds or thousands or millions of airborne vehicles are traversing skies around the world — though this vision has been the centerpiece of an imagined future for more than a century. But with the proliferation of self-driving cars and a growing sense that we’re on the cusp of a major technological revolution, the very notion of “flying car” suddenly becomes more tangible. “We believe that global demand for this category of aircraft can support fleets of millions of vehicles worldwide,” added Lyasoff. "In as little as 10 years, we could have products on the market that revolutionize urban travel for millions of people.” That so many companies are now working toward a future in which “flying cars” are a mainstream transport option makes it easier to imagine a time when this really will be a reality. Whether that’s in five years, 10 years, or 50 years remains to be seen.

Foxconn chief: ‘The rise of protectionism is unavoidable’ Posted: 22 Jan 2017 03:01 AM PST TAIPEI (Reuters) – The head of Foxconn, the world’s largest contract manufacturer of electronic goods and a major Apple Inc supplier, said on Sunday that the rise of protectionism is unavoidable. Terry Gou, chairman of Foxconn, formally known as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co, warned that uncertainties for this year make it tough to have a very clear analysis and outlook, but he said it was clear politics would underpin economic development. His remarks came after U.S. President Donald Trump pledged to put ‘America First’ in his inauguration speech Friday, reinforcing concerns of a U.S. protectionist agenda that has cast a cloud over the outlook on global trade. “The rise of protectionism is unavoidable,” Gou said. “Secondly, the trend of politics serving the economy is clearly defined.” Gou, who did not directly refer to Trump, gave his remarks in a speech to an audience of employees and senior company executives at an annual company event on Sunday. Taiwan’s tech-dominated manufacturers are nervous about potential U.S. trade policies because Trump has threatened to raise tariffs on imports from some countries, notably China. Foxconn is one of the biggest employers in China where it operates factories that churn out most of Apple’s iconic iPhones. In December, Foxconn said it was in preliminary discussions to expand its U.S. operations. (Reporting by J.R. Wu; Editing by Christian Schmollinger)

Ashley Judd scorches the game industry for profiting from misogyny Posted: 21 Jan 2017 10:50 PM PST Actress Ashley Judd made news today at the Women’s March in Washington, D.C., for her performance that skewered President Donald Trump. But she also gave another recent heated speech at a TED conference where she criticized the video game industry. The TED speech, which went up a few days ago, called for an end to hate speech, sexual harassment, and threats of violence against women in online venues. Judd said that she is attacked every single day on forums, such as Twitter and Facebook. “Online misogyny is a global gender rights tragedy, and it is imperative that it ends,” Judd said. During a passing moment in the speech, she turned her ire on the game industry, saying that "profiteering off misogyny in video games must end." "I'm so tired of hearing you talk to me about how deplorable #GamerGate was when you're still making billions of dollars off games that maim and dump women for sport," she said. “Basta! As the Italians would say. Enough.” Judd said that she has to hire someone to scrub her social media feeds so that she doesn’t see rape threats and other hate speech directed against her every single day. She said she has been a victim of “every form of sexual abuse including three rapes.” Above: Actress Ashley Judd called for an end to online harassment of women. Image Credit: TED She decried the heinous proliferation of revenge porn. She noted that 92 percent of people under 30 have witnessed online abuse happening, and overall, 72 percent of us have witnessed it. She said that online violence is an extension of in-person violence. Part of the answer is to teach everyone digital media literacy and the importance of learning to treat people with dignity and respect. She also said that Silicon Valley has to rectify its gender imbalance in the workplace and grow the ranks of women in every department in a company. And she said that law enforcement has to learn how to handle online abuse investigations. She started the Women’s Media Center Speech Project aimed at stopping online abuse and said she plans to visit Facebook’s headquarters soon. “We’re going to win this fight,” she said. And here’s Judd’s speech today at the Women’s March, where she read Nina Donovan’s poem “I Am a Nasty Woman.”

Sexism in esports deserves more than the Band-Aid of segregation Posted: 21 Jan 2017 07:03 PM PST Women are half the gaming population but represent only a small minority in competitive gaming, an industry that is set to hit $1.1 billion in revenues by 2018. One contributing issue is the sexism that takes place in the otherwise burgeoning industry. With 85 percent of professional gamers male and the number of cases of online harassment and abuse that have left many female players feeling disenfranchised, esports is in trouble of being associated as a “boys club.” One of the industry's answers has been to create segregated girls-only teams, leagues, and tournaments, a proposition that doesn't make sense in a sport where there are none of the physical disadvantages to mixing genders as there are in traditional sports. Sure, it's a quick remedy that produces immediate results like offering more opportunities to gain experience. But it's not a long-term solution, but rather a handicap that limits the wider potential of the industry. It's like smoking cigarettes at an early age. It threatens to stunt your growth. Segregation isn't the right answer and it only perpetuates the underlying issues, particularly when it's clear that the industry will need to sooner or later consolidate itself by reintegrating the genders back together. This will be way more difficult after a few years pass and the landscape has already matured and broadened into a more mainstream industry. Quite a few women feel disenfranchised, and that's just bad business because you're alienating half of your potential market of gamers and potentially also the wider community of female spectators. Gender parity has to be the aim and competitive gaming deserves it because it is inherently gender blind to begin with. So why is this happening? It falls under what the industry refers to as toxic chat and behavior. Reports of online harassment and abuse abound about toxic chats and dialogues that have descended into threats of rape or harm towards female players, and these cases are sometimes quite graphic. It's only natural that the first knee-jerk reaction for the industry to take is to simplify the situation by establishing what has been done for hundreds and thousands of years when you want to sterilize society: separate the genders into separate insulated communities. But this only aggravates the situation. One, women already receive less sponsorship interest and coverage as it is, and segregation will likely only serve to continue this trend down a road where the female players, teams, and leagues will be seen as the “sideshow.” Two, it compromises on the bigger issue at hand: that a subset of the male gamer community hold and share misogynist ideas based on asinine misconceptions like “women aren't as skilled as men.” Personally, I know this isn't true for the majority of professional male gamers, but a divisive segment do exist and we need to hone in on them and pay them special attention. Resolving these misconceptions in those so sorely affected will take a long time and a lot of effort through marketing and the like that aim to dispel toxic ideas. But while that's the carrot, I think the stick is more important at the moment. The advantage in combating discrimination in esports is that everything happens digitally. Moderation tools can be enhanced in order to ensure that professional players know that poor behavior will be penalized. With AI and machine learning on the rise, this can only become more streamlined and advanced in coming years. The ill-conceived idea that it’s OK to discriminate must be weeded out and the rules can't be lax. A penalization system that affects players' rankings, sponsorships, and cash stakes will sober up quite a few of the bad apples, help them 'snap out of it', and set an example to the broader community. Let's be clear. I don't think we can just get rid of toxicity itself. Instead, it has to be built into the system that those that partake in poor behavior are affected by becoming less relevant. That's the idea that needs to be ingrained. The moment when sponsorships get into the mix, when tickets are being sold, and when players and teams are being paid, the ante has just gone up and so have the standards. That's the deal any professional should wholeheartedly agree with when they sign up as contenders to be taken seriously. Last February, Intel and ESL funded AnyKey, an advocacy group that has been churning out research-driven whitepapers and running workshops to cover these kinds of inclusivity issues. They established an ethics code, coined Keystone Code, which their affiliate organizations are encouraged to support within their own communities. Yet a lot will depend on not just encouraging but actively promoting and enforcing decency as a rule, not an option. Either way, esports needs to avoid alienating the female population at this early stage, both as players and spectators. Otherwise it'll harm its long-run prospects and fall short on its potential. Those that don't think it's an important enough topic to take seriously aren't able to see the big picture. Amir-Esmaeil Bozorgzadeh is the co-founder at Virtuleap, a sandbox for creative developers to showcase their VR concepts to the world, which is currently running the world's biggest WebVR Hackathon. He is also the European Partner at Edoramedia, a games publisher and digital agency with its headquarters in Dubai.

Why you won’t have to worry about parking your 2018 Ford Mustang Posted: 21 Jan 2017 05:00 PM PST For anyone who lives near a major city, you know there are many stress points. Traffic is one of them, but the real hair-pulling exercise happens when you need to find a parking spot. Ford recently announced a new app called FordPass — which will debut in the 2018 Ford Mustang — that could solve this problem. For someone like me who hates how much time it takes to find a spot and then find the terminal to pay for parking, the app is a welcome perk. Ford is making a big push to become not just a car company, but a mobility company. It makes sense. Your car is already a moving computer, with safety features and a hotspot. The redesigned Mustang, which debuts this year at dealerships, is going to be the most connected muscle car ever, with lane-keeping features and even a way to adjust the sound of the exhaust system (loud or soft, depending on where you're driving). FordPass will be part of a new ecosystem. For example, it will use FordPay, a recently announced service that stores your credit card information securely. Eventually, it could pay for more than a parking spot. My guess is that this ecosystem will play right into the long-term plans for autonomous driving, letting you pay for your food at Burger King and eventually even collect money when you send your self-driving Mustang out to pick up people who rent it for the day — something that might not actually take place until 2022 or later. For now, the Mustang will use FordPass for parking, although there are no details yet about an upcharge. Let's say you know you need to head downtown for the day. You might use the app while you are still home to find and hold a spot, similar to how you might book an Uber for the morning. It's all taken care of for you, so you just go to the spot and park, then show your phone to the terminal when you leave. Ford reps say you can pre-pay for a set period, as well. And the feature that lets you search for and reserve a spot will work in 160 major cities. You can also bookmark a spot as a favorite and use it each time you go to a downtown area. FordPass will also work with airport parking. A Harris Poll mentioned in a press release says people tend to waste an hour per week looking for parking spots in downtown areas. The FordPass app works with ParkWhiz and FlightCar and will go live in April. What's not clear is how this will evolve over time. Parking garages in places like Minneapolis are not exactly high-tech in terms of using sensors that know how long you actually parked and which stalls are open, even if there is an ecosystem for paying at an automated terminal. If sensors tracked where you park and when you leave (similar to the Amazon Go store) you wouldn’t need to use a terminal. Once it comes out, the real test will be whether the app is easy to use and helps you find spots near your destination. If it adds too much complication, we may just put up with the stress of finding parking the old-fashioned way.

Bay Area Women’s Marches draw more than 100,000 Posted: 21 Jan 2017 03:20 PM PST They came with pussy hats and placards. Thousands of people turned out for marches in the San Francisco Bay area to remind President Donald Trump about women’s rights. In solidarity with the Women’s March in Washington, D.C., protesters held hundreds of marches in big cities around the world to celebrate women’s rights and protest Trump’s election. I attended the Women’s March in San Jose, Calif., and VentureBeat’s Khari Johnson was at a march in Oakland, Calif. We both took pictures of the events, as did my daughter Danielle Takahashi. Above: Women’s March in Oakland, Calif. Image Credit: Khari Johnson As the press reported that the Women’s March and accompanying rallies drew much bigger crowds than the Inauguration, President Donald Trump accused the media of lying about inauguration crowds. Speaking at the Central Intelligence Agency, he wrongly said the crowd at his event reached the Washington monument. Above: Women’s March held Jan. 21, 2017 in Oakland, Calif. Image Credit: Khari Johnson Estimates say 500,000 attended the Women’s March in Washington. In San Jose, the estimate was 25,000, while 50,000 marched in San Francisco. In Oakland, the police estimated the crowd at 60,000. In Walnut Creek, in the East Bay, 10,000 marched. Many wore pink hats with cat ears, dubbed “pussy hats.” Above: Women’s March in San Jose, Calif. Image Credit: Dean Takahashi Of course, technology can settle this debate. CNN posted images from the EarthCam network that showed the crowd at the National Mall during Trump’s ceremony was demonstrably smaller than the crowd for the Women’s March. Not to mention the fact that there were hundreds of women’s marches. More satellite imagery will be able to further measure the size of the crowds. Above: Women’s March in San Jose Image Credit: Dean Takahashi While the march was ostensibly non-partisan, almost all of the signs that I saw at the Women’s March in San Jose were anti-Trump. They included the familiar “Love Trumps Hate,” “This Pussy Grabs Back,” “My Body, My Choice,” “March Like A Girl,” “We Will Not Be Silent,” “Make America Think Again,” “We Are A Nation Of Immigrants,” and even “Diverse Tech.” Above: Placards at the Women’s March in San Jose. Image Credit: Danielle Takahashi Transportation to and from the event was packed. I had to ride in a crowd Light Rail train into San Jose where we were packed like sardines. Above: There were lots of kids at the Women’s March in San Jose. Image Credit: Danielle Takahashi The march started at City Hall in San Jose and ended in Cesar Chavez Park. In San Jose, Mayor Sam Liccardo tweeted an overhead photo of "a beautiful crowd" around City Hall, and added a hashtag that said, "This is what democracy looks like." Above: Honoring Carrie Fisher at the Women’s March in San Jose. Image Credit: Danielle Takahashi My favorite sign was “A Woman’s Place is in the Resistance,” with a picture of the late Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia from Star Wars. [Updated: Added updated numbers for crowd sizes 10:21 am 1/22/17] Above: A Woman’s Place is in the Resistance Image Credit: Dean Takahashi

5 industries ripe for human-machine learning Posted: 21 Jan 2017 03:18 PM PST GUEST: Machine learning has been a constant on tech trend lists for years. This year, it's time to embrace what humans can learn by interacting with machine learning. As Google's head of Machine Intelligence, Blaise Aguera y Arcas noted in a recent Medium article: "Machine intelligence will expand our understanding of both external reality and our perceptual and cognitive processes." In the spring of 2016, Google’s AlphaGo software, fueled by machine learning, beat the world's greatest human Go player, Lee Sedol. The victory was a major milestone for a specific type of AI, called deep neural networks, that is more closely modeled on the way humans think. The AlphaGo team refined the machine’s Go-playing prowess by training it on 30 million moves from prior games, and also by pitting AlphaGo against human experts. While machine learning was the clear protagonist of the story, a funny thing happened during these human-machine face-offs. In training and playing against AlphaGo, the human Go players also improved. While the use of neural networks in AlphaGo was proof of how human thinking influences machine learning, AlphaGo’s interaction with human players also suggested a future in which machine learning could influence human thinking. We are already indirectly learning from machine learning in other ways, whether by refining our music tastes while we help Spotify refine its algorithm or by learning about the brain by observing neural networks learning. What happens when we approach machine learning not as a replacement for human expertise, but as a partner in a collaborative relationship where humans and machines learn from each other? Could observing a computer make new connections between words make us more creative writers? Could we teach someone a new language and refine a computer's translation abilities at the same time? Everyone is talking about machine learning. Let's talk about human-machine learning, as well. Learning from machine learning could have an immediate impact on a number of industries. Below are five predictions for how human-machine learning could impact our lives in the coming years. 1. Education Education is one of the areas with the clearest opportunity for embracing human-machine learning. For example, adaptive learning draws on machine learning to help tailor and evolve educational experiences based on a student's learning style. Companies from education stalwart Pearson to start-up DuoLingo are embracing it, and the software — at least in the case of DuoLingo — also refines its translations over time as it draws on human input. As online and blended learning continues to grow, organizations that can creatively embrace the reciprocal relationship between humans and machines could have a competitive edge. They could also help redefine what it means to learn — for humans and machines. What could this look like? The Magic School Bus: Students have personalized learning plans that adjust to their behaviors (like the Nest thermostat) and give recommendations for new content (like the Netflix dashboard). How frequently do you need to see that Flashcard? Are you a visual learner? Do you learn better in small groups? Adaptive learning platforms could create collaboration between students, educators, and technology. 2. Human capital Human capital, from recruiting to management, offers an ideal context in which to embrace the reciprocal relationship between human and machine learning. A number of startups, including Belong and Prophecy Sciences, are exploring machine learning as a way to augment the hiring process. Google's People Operations team, and others, have pioneered the use of data-driven human capital. We could enhance professional development by using machine learning to identify and predict human capital trends and needs and then create a dialogue between employees and algorithms. What could this look like? Human-Machine Resources: Employees get assigned a human manager — and a machine learning coach — to help them develop throughout their career. 3. Venture capital VC firms' investments in artificial intelligence-related startups have been growing steadily over the past five years, but the opportunity to draw on machine learning to drive VC firm investments remains largely untapped. Venture capital, with its combination of interpersonal relationships, insider knowledge, and instinct balanced by quantitative trend identification and analysis, could be an ideal context for human and machine learning collaboration. What could this look like? AI Combinator: A startup incubator driven by VC expertise and machine learning, drawing from the latest angel investing and industry trends to identify new market opportunities. By interacting with machine learning, venture capitalists could develop new investment strategies or targets they may otherwise have missed. 4. Psychology and behavioral science A new MIT study suggests that an algorithm can predict human behavior more quickly and more reliably than people can. As machine learning evolves, it has the potential to help us gain further insight into how we think and behave and can motivate us to change those behaviors when we want to. Whether through therapy, building daily fitness habits, or encouraging retirement investing, behavioral interventions across industries offer a wealth of opportunity for human-machine learning. What could this look like? HaBit: A Fitbit for habit building that helps people track their behaviors and provides personalized motivation and feedback to enable behavior change when they need it most. 5. The arts Perhaps the least practical and most open-ended human-machine learning could change the way we approach the creative process. Machine learning is not just analytical, it’s also generative. It can identify existing patterns (e.g. a cat versus a blueberry muffin), but it can also generate new content, whether visual images or musical compositions. GoogleBrain, the team recently featured for overhauling Google's approach to translation, and AI more broadly, has launched Magenta to determine whether we can "use machine learning to create compelling art and music." The implicit follow-up question is: How might we collaborate with the creative output of machine learning? And, in the process, how can we learn from it and evolve our own creative process? What could this look like? Co-creation: Artworks are co-signed by an artist and an algorithm. Musicians, writers, and artists see machine learning as a collaborative partner and influence, and in turn actually create differently. At this point, we know that machine learning will impact industries and the nature of work. But as it replaces parts of our daily lives, how might our collaboration with machines also influence us as humans — how we think, learn, and create? We are looking at a future in which humans and machine learning could be collaborative partners, whether that's in a classroom, on a canvas, or in a boardroom.

Hands-on with Tobii’s eye-tracking laptop controls Posted: 21 Jan 2017 02:33 PM PST Oscar Werner, president of Tobii Tech, gave me a rundown of the company’s eye-tracking technology for games at CES 2017, the big tech trade show in Las Vegas earlier this month. And I’m finally getting around to relating that experience. With those demos, I’ve got a better idea about whether this will be the next great user interface for games. Stockholm-based Tobii’s platform tracks your eye movements and uses them to control a computer. Above: Oscar Werner, president of Tobii Tech. Image Credit: Tobii I’m still figuring out just how revolutionary this will be. On the one hand, it’s very cool to use your eyes, and it’s faster too. On the other hand, it is something you have to learn to do. And as I learned in my interview with Synaptics CEO Rick Bergman, it can be very hard to teach humans how to use something new. But it’s unquestionable that Tobii and eye-tracking are gathering momentum. The sensors have been integrated into a variety of laptops and displays, and around 50 titles now take advantage of the eye-tracking controls, Werner said in an interview with GamesBeat. “Going forward, devices have to understand who you are, what you are doing, and where you are looking,” Werner said. The technology can authenticate people through iris recognition — in which case the computer needs to know where your iris is and what your eye looks like — and help control a game in a way that is faster than someone who is competing against you. Among the laptops that use the technology is the Acer Aspire V 17 Nitro Black Edition, which debuted at CES. The Alienware 17 gaming laptop also has integrated Tobii Aware software and so does the MSI GT72 6QE Dominator Pro G laptop. Acer will also launch a curved monitor, the Acer Predator Z1, with Tobii built into it. Above: The Aspire V 17 Nitro is one of the first laptops to bring together Tobii’s eye-tracking technology. Eye tracking with Dying Light Above: Dying Light’s zombies-and-parkour mixture attracted a lot of gamers in January. Image Credit: Techland Werner showed me how eye tracking works with Dying Light, Techland’s hit zombie-killing game that debuted in 2015. I only had a few minutes to learn what to do and form my impressions. But it worked. With Dying Light, you have to deal with a lot of zombies coming at you at once. But with eye tracking, using a feature dubbed Aim@Gaze, you have a way to react quickly. If you are facing one direction, and a zombie comes at you from the side, you can press a button and hold it. You then look at the zombie target with your eyes, without changing the way your character is facing. You target the zombie, then release the button. And you throw a knife at that character. This is called Throw@Gaze. You can also do something called MultiThrow@Gaze. In this case, you can target several zombies with your eye at once by looking at them one by one. When you release your button, you can throw a knife at each target simultaneously, taking out several targets at once. I got the hang of this quickly. My conclusion is that you can shoot and target faster using Aim@Gaze eye tracking compared to using a computer mouse, just as using a mouse is faster than using a console game controller. It’s such an unfair advantage that Tobii in many cases doesn’t let you precisely target something. Rather, you get close to the target by using your eyes, and then you have to use the mouse or controller to finish the precise targeting. That’s a little more fair, both to mouse users and to the targets themselves. I enjoyed throwing knives. That worked wonderfully well. But throwing knives is a very small part of that game, and I’m not sure how often I would use that trick in gameplay. You can do other things that will speed up how quickly you can shift your body while running. If Tobii has a chance to build an extended tutorial into a game or software program, it will probably become a lot easier to learn. “I agree, and we are working on a couple of games where we do that,” Werner said. Eye controls for Watch Dogs 2 Above: I’ve walked across this bridge, depicted in Watch Dogs 2, in real life. Image Credit: Ubisoft With Ubisoft’s Watch Dogs 2 hacking game, I was able to try what Werner called Hack@Gaze. I used a game controller to drive a car in the game. I was driving at high speeds, either chasing someone or being chased by the police. As you pass by other objects, humans, or cars, you can click on them in the game and hack them in an instant. In a car chase, you can hack a red-light signal and make cars get in a wreck behind you. Or you could hack a car ahead of you and make it run off the road. With eye tracking, I was able to glance at other objects and target them using my eyes, rather than the cursor controlled by the game controller. I could drive straight and look to the side of the screen and hack that object quickly without losing my focus on driving. That was the theory, anyway. In my short time with the game, I didn’t have much time to learn it, and I had problems doing the one-two coordination of targeting with my eyes and then executing a hack with the game-controller button. You can also use the eye tracking to target near an object that you want to shoot. That allows you to move the targeting reticle closer to the object you want to shoot in a split second. That helps you shoot faster and more accurately, though not so accurately that you hit something every single time. “I think it’s more natural to aim with your eyes,” Werner said. “In computer games, with a mouse or controller, you look at something, then you turn your character and aim. Then you can shoot. That’s not as natural.” Ubisoft also integrated the eye controls into Steep, its winter sports game that launched in December. With implementations like “Extended View” and “Clean UI,” players can see more of the screen at any given time with fewer on-screen distractions. With Clean UI, for instance, you can look at a part of the screen where there’s a user interface. That part of the screen will disappear and instead show you the part of the environment that would otherwise be obstructed by that interface. Productivity eye tracking Above: Tobii is built into the latest Acer gaming laptop. Image Credit: Dean Takahashi Not only does Tobii give you more intuitive control of a game. It also enables smoother workflow in productivity apps for Windows 10. On the productivity side, Tobii thinks of the eye tracking as a “virtual touchscreen,” allowing you to look at something and move to that place on the screen. It takes some getting used to. You have to train a machine to see your eyes with a quick calibration program. Once calibrated, the machine will pretty much recognize you every time, Werner said. To activate the eye tracking in Windows, you place a finger on the touchpad of the laptop. Then, you stare at a spot on the screen. If you click your finger, the cursor moves to that spot on the screen. It’s a lot faster than just moving the mouse or swiping the touchpad with a finger. Tobii calls this Touch@Gaze. You can also do Scroll@Gaze. When you have multiple windows open on the screen, you can swipe two fingers on the touchpad and then look at a window. When you do that, you’ll scroll in the window you’re looking at. There’s also Zoom@Gaze, where you look at an area and pinch on the touchpad. Then, you’ll zoom in on the area that you are looking at. “It takes a little getting used to,” Werner said. “But the computer knows your intentions a lot better than other user interfaces do.” You can also use eye tracking to switch apps. If you hold the alt and tab keys, you’ll display all of the open programs on the screen. If you glance at one, then release the keys, you’ll be taken to that program. “It’s bringing the interaction to the point where you use your eyes to do the touching,” Werner said. Werner said that several new eye-tracking enhanced games are being added monthly. Tobii expects 100 eye tracking enhanced titles to be available by the end of 2017, including several more upcoming triple-A offerings. Huawei has also created its Honor Magic smartphone with eye tracking built into it. I didn’t get to try that one. That phone, available only in China, uses Tobii to acquire data on the person’s presence and attention. Above: Tobii Eye Tracker 4C, Tobii’s second-generation gaming peripheral. (Photo: Business Wire.) The Aspire V 17 Nitro will be available in February. Tobii also sells stand-alone accessories that can retrofit existing PC gaming hardware with eye-tracking capability. Tobii will likely have some big competitors soon. Facebook acquired Eye Tribe for use with its Oculus Rift virtual reality headset. And Google acquired rival eye-tracking firm Eyefluence. Eye tracking for virtual reality At the Game Developers Conference in late February, Tobii and its customers will also show off eye tracking for VR headsets, Werner said. With VR, eye tracking has a particularly useful purpose. Cameras built into the VR headsets will be able to detect where you are looking on a screen. Japan-based Fove recently opened preorders for a VR headset that lets you play games by moving your eyes. Above: You can control this shooter reticle with your eyes using Fove. Image Credit: Fove Eye tracking is critical to a technology called foveated rendering. With it, the screen will fully render the area that your eye is looking at. But beyond your peripheral vision, it won’t render the details that your eye can’t see. This technique can save an enormous amount of graphics processing power. (Nvidia estimates foveated rendering can reduce graphics processing by up to three times.) That is useful in VR because it takes a lot of graphics processing power to render VR images for both of your eyes. VR should render at 90 frames per second in each eye in order to avoid making the player dizzy or sick. And foveated rendering — which will likely prove to be necessary for stand-alone VR headsets — doesn’t really work that well unless you know exactly where the person is gazing. “This year, we are going to work very closely with foveated rendering in VR and on the PC,” Werner said.

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