Alex Kipman, the head of the Hololens project at Microsoft, gave a talk on the TED stage where he showed off some fantastic new Hololens demos and talked about the future of the technology. Source: Check out Alex Kipman’s mesmerizing HoloLens TED talk [I’ll replace the low-quality video with the official TED video when it’s … Continue reading
Paris attacks: Silicon Valley in crosshairs over encryption – BBC News
In the wake of the Paris attacks, Silicon Valley is braced for an onslaught against security, privacy and encryption. source: Paris attacks: Silicon Valley in crosshairs over encryption – BBC News Around the time of the Snowden revelations, I remember sitting in a board meeting at some startup I won’t name, trying to convince (prominent VC and … Continue reading
Anatomy of a Poorly Sourced Article
Source: Microsoft Invented Google Earth in the 90s Then Totally Blew It | Motherboard I don’t often comment on disappointing news articles, but I couldn’t pass on this one. The premise of the article is that Microsoft invented Google Earth in 1998 and then blew it by not exploiting their invention. Sounds easy to believe, but it’s nonsense. And … Continue reading
Amazon Update
Back in 2014, I published a post on why I rejoined Amazon, after spending a year at a startup. I’ll say again that Amazon is the best run company I’ve ever worked for. I say that after close to 25 years spent with many big and small companies. I could be getting a startup funded right now. I could … Continue reading
Nintendo Fires Employee For Speaking On Podcast
Last week, Nintendo localization editor Chris Pranger made an appearance on a small podcast called Part-Time Gamers. This week, Nintendo fired him. Source: Nintendo Fires Employee For Speaking On Podcast As companies acquire more and more (reportedly constitutional) rights to free speech, employees of companies ironically lose them. When did this happen and who said it was OK? … Continue reading
Niantic, Inc.
Congrats to John and the gang (several former Keyhole alums among them) for going independent with Niantic. Source: Niantic Labs, Maker Of Ingress, Spun Out Of Google As Its Own Company | TechCrunch
Animating with Voice
I’ve been wanting stuff like this for 25 years. To me, this represents a much bigger step towards creating a real Holodeck than most current display technologies. Still, it isn’t just the keying of animations that needs to be voice controlled. Directing actors and directing AIs is still a world apart in quality, subtleties, and … Continue reading
What’s it like to be a thousand years old?
Ever notice how as we get older, time passes more quickly? Lately, I feel like a week passes in what used to be a day. I found an interesting page from the late 90s (its formatting ironically stuck in time) that tries to explain our perception of time as a function of age, mainly our … Continue reading
Disney VR: Redux
A few years ago, I documented some of the cool experiences I worked on at Disney Imagineering starting in 1994. Now, Inspired by John Carmack exploring Scheme as the language of VR for Oculus, I figured it would be helpful to talk about the software stack a bit. And I’ll finish with a few thoughts … Continue reading
Palmer Luckey Wants to Build the Matrix
It’s worth remembering that virtual reality has never always been about gaming. Any real virtual reality enthusiast can look back at VR science fiction. It’s not about playing games … “The Matrix,” “Snow Crash,” all this fiction was not about sitting in a room playing video games. It’s about being in a parallel digital world … Continue reading