Besides being a show choir nerd in high school and having a deep love for karaoke as an adult, I have zero technical musical skills. I never studied a musical instrument, I can’t read music—I barely even mess around with GarageBand. Luckily for me, none of that mattered as I stepped up to the ARC, a next-level musical soundboard on show during South by Southwest Interactive. As soon as I put my hands on one of the Arc’s five instruments, I was transformed into a digital DJ, performing a concert for my fellow showgoers hanging out at Deloitte Digital’s Interplay Lab on 6th Street. Behold! The ARC is a soundboard with five “instruments” that morph the elements of an existing song to create a brand-new track.
Google seems to be leading the way in making self-driving cars a reality, both technologically and legally. Just last month, U.S. safety regulators ruled that the company’s software “It’s more nuanced than [software as driver],” U.S. Department of Transportation Chief Innovation Office J. Christian Gerdes said during his panel at South By Southwest on Saturday. “There could be a reasonable interpretation [of the federal motor vehicle laws] but it doesn’t automatically remove all the barriers,” he added.
Google wants to hear from you! According to the The Google van will visit seven cities, according to the AP, and it’s all part of an effort to get a better idea of how everyday people use Google’s products and services. The company will give about 500 people a chance to share their thoughts in return for Google tchotchkes like T-shirts and gift cards.
There are people who want their gaming PC to embody the fantasy: super-sized case, neon backlighting, strobe lights. Others just want to play and keep the means as far removed from their consciousness as possible. If you fall into the latter category, then Velocity Micro’s Raptor Z40 should be on your short list. At only about 13 inches high and deep, and 8 inches wide, the Raptor Z40 will fit places that can’t house a massive tower. That’s its first trick for staying out of the way. The second is minimalist styling—the box and chassis are constructed entirely from black aluminum, and the brushed exterior lends an air of class.
Google DeepMind’s AlphaGo artificial-intelligence program has beaten South Korean Go player Lee Se-dol with three consecutive wins in a five-game tournament. “I kind of felt powerless,” said Lee after his defeat. The closely watched contest between man and machine on Saturday will likely reinforce the view that AI has come into its own, with great potential not only in gaming but also in enterprise and other applications. AI in Go still has some way to go, according to Lee. “Today’s defeat was Lee Se-dol’s defeat and really was not a defeat of human beings,” the player told reporters at a press conference. He added that AlphaGo was a strong program but not the perfect program at the level of a “so-called divine God.” It made different and sometimes superior moves than human beings but the program also has weaknesses, Lee said.
Mini-PCs are little but plucky, easily squeezing into small spaces to perform their computing tasks. Whether mounted to the back of a monitor or tucked into an entertainment center, they can handle everyday demands just as well as full-sized desktops. And like their larger counterparts, you can pick (and customize) a mini-PC to fit your circumstances. Most are bare-bones machines that just need a hard drive and some RAM, but you can also find ready-made systems that range from stick-style PCs to smartphone-sized pocket computers to the very definition of a "micro"-tower. Intel’s NUC5i7RYH bare-bones system.
Amazon’s always-on, ready-to-respond On Friday, Capital One launched a new “skill” for Alexa-powered devices that allows bank account and credit card holders to get account info from their Amazon hardware. Using the Echo, the Fire TV, or Echo Dot, customers can ask Alexa for their account balance and recent transactions, pay their bills, and transfer funds, all through voice commands.
Most of us sit hunched over at our desks to get work done. Others are convinced that But what about a desk that offers the best of all worlds and lets you sit, stand, and even
President Barack Obama can’t comment on the specifics of the ongoing feud between Apple and the FBI, but he did sit down with “The question we now have to ask is if technologically it is possible to make an impenetrable device or system where the encryption is so strong there’s no key, there’s no door at all, then how do we apprehend the child pornographer? How do we disrupt a terrorist plot?” Obama said. “If you can’t crack that [device] at all, if government can’t get in, everybody’s walking around with a Swiss bank account in their pocket.”
Timing and support issues have left Ubuntu users with Radeon graphics cards in a bit of a pickle. Ubuntu 16.04 LTS is set to
President Obama’s SXSW Interactive keynote address on Friday started late but was worth the wait, resulting in a fascinating conversation with
Thanks to That news, plus a bunch of game announcements ( First, a requiem. Daybreak (formerly SOE)
Here's another round of fresh Android apps and games to check out.
A new startup called Screening Room wants to save you a trip to the movie theater, though it probably won’t save you any money in the process.
After accusing Microsoft of trying to monopolize the Windows app ecosystem, Epic co-founder and CEO Tim Sweeney is back with a more level-headed take. Writing The crux of Sweeney’s argument is that users currently have to jump through hoops and classify themselves as developers to sideload UWP apps from outside the Windows Store. While Microsoft has
A patch for a critical Java flaw released by Oracle in 2013 is ineffective and can be easily bypassed, security researchers warn. The flaw, tracked as CVE-2013-5838 in the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) database, was
Your old Android phone is starting to look pretty dull in comparison to all those shiny new devices that were introduced at Great news! Many of those shiny new devices we saw at MWC are available now or coming
Microsoft made it much easier to add images to your documents starting with Office 2013, by When you search for images with Office programs on the desktop you can now add filters for size, type, and color, as well as easily find out other information about the photo. Microsoft’s image insertion works with Excel, OneNote, Outlook, and Publisher in Office 2013 and 2016. In our example, we’ll use a OneNote page and search for tree house images to get ideas for an upcoming project.
Writers, artist, and fighters in twelve of this week's newest streaming movies.