Sean O'Kane | Vox

Sony’s PlayStation VR Will Cost $399, Debut in October

2019-03-06T05:10:42-05:00

Sony has finally announced that the PlayStation VR will cost $399, and it will be available in October 2016. The company shared the news this afternoon during a short keynote at the 2016 Game Developer Conference in San Francisco.

That price could almost be considered cheap if you already own a PlayStation 4, and even if you don’t, the total cost is much less than Sony’s VR competitors. The Oculus Rift starts at $599 and Valve’s HTC Vive will sell for $799, but both of those headsets require powerful PCs that can cost much more than the $299 PS4.

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This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

X Prize and IBM Announce a $5 Million Artificial Intelligence Competition

2019-03-06T05:17:31-05:00

The X Prize Foundation and IBM have just announced a new global X Prize competition with a focus on artificial intelligence. Teams from around the world can take part in the “IBM Watson A.I. X Prize: A Cognitive Computing Competition,” as it’s being called, in hopes of taking home part of a $5 million purse to be awarded at the TED conference in 2020. Registration will open at the end of May.

In past competitions, the X Prize Foundation typically laid out specific goals or requirements that had to be met. That’s not the case this time around, because X Prize is allowing teams to define their own challenges.

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This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

New Satellites Will Deliver High-Speed Internet to Remote Areas

2019-03-06T05:39:10-05:00

U.S.-based satellite company ViaSat is teaming up with Boeing to create and deliver three new satellites that will deliver high-speed internet to remote areas around the world. The partnership was announced yesterday, months before the company is scheduled to launch its previous generation satellite, ViaSat-2, on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

The new ViaSat-3 satellites will be capable of much more. Each satellite will carry with it a total network capacity of one Tbps (yes, terabit per second), about triple what ViaSat-2 is capable of. That will allow ViaSat to deliver 100 Mbps service to remote residential properties in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia. The company says that work is already under way on the first two satellites and that Boeing is already preparing them for launch by the end of 2019.

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This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

GoPro Warns Investors of a Rough Year Ahead

2019-03-06T05:11:30-05:00

Just weeks after a round of layoffs, GoPro has posted the results of its final quarter of 2015. The company earned $436.6 million in revenue during Q4 of 2015, a 31 percent drop from the company’s fourth quarter of 2014. In addition, GoPro is projecting revenue of $1.35 billion to $1.5 billion for this year, a drop from $1.6 billion in 2015. GoPro’s stock dropped as much as 15 percent in after-hours trading.

The numbers aren’t much of a surprise, because at the same time that GoPro announced the workforce cut, it downgraded its guidance for the fourth quarter of 2015 from about $500 million to $550 million in revenue to $435 million, citing “lower than anticipated sales of its capture devices.”.

GoPro also announced today that CFO Jack Lazar is leaving the company. He will be replaced by Brian McGee, who joined GoPro in 2015 after working at Qualcomm.

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This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

It’s Christmas, Which Means People Are Crashing Brand-New Drones (Video)

2019-03-06T05:39:34-05:00

If hoverboards are this year’s most buzzed-about holiday gift, drones are probably a close second. They were a big hit last year, and that appears to be the case again this year — even if this time around, the new drone owners will have to register their new toys with the FAA.

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This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

This Hoverboard Costs $20,000 and Can Fly for Six Minutes

2019-03-06T06:07:24-05:00

2015 was literally and figuratively the year of the hoverboard. While everyone was talking about the self-balancing scooters, two companies showed off skateboard-shaped boards that actually hovered a few inches above the Earth: Lexus with the “Slide” board and Arx Pax with its second generation Hendo Hoverboard. Now, just days before the new year, another company called ArcaSpace is taking a shot at making the mythical hoverboard.

ArcaSpace is primarily a private space company, and one of the original 26 teams that competed in the Ansari X Prize competition in 2004. (It also entered the Lunar X Prize competition, too, before pulling out in 2013.) But early this morning the company released a video that shows off the “ArcaBoard,” a fan-powered rectangle that can lift a person off the ground by almost a foot.

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This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

A Brief History of the Tech Industry’s Obsession With Celebrity Hires

2019-03-06T05:45:09-05:00

It’s a tale as old as time: Tech brand struggles, tech brand hires a celebrity to help save itself, tech brand and celebrity eventually part ways. The newest version of this story was told this week, when the bankrupt-yet-somehow-still-around RadioShack hired Nick Cannon on as its chief creative officer. Can the “Wild ‘N Out” host can actually resuscitate RadioShack’s retail presence in his new role? Likely not. If recent history is any indication, he’s already fighting a losing battle.

Some celebrities go out and start their own thing (Neil Young with Pono, Jay-Z with Tidal), and plenty others have spent time working solely as spokespersons (the list of celebrity endorsements goes far back, even beyond the “Friends” video for Windows 95). But here’s a look back at some of the tech industry’s most notable (and failed) attempts at actually hiring celebrities.

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This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

Silicon City: New York’s Forgotten Role in the History of Computers

2019-03-06T05:44:20-05:00

When you think of the history of computers, it’s easy to mentally jump right into the garages and basements of Silicon Valley, or even the Silicon Prairie of Texas that is so moodily depicted in “Halt and Catch Fire.” You probably don’t, however, immediately think of New York.

New York has a history as long, if not longer, than some of the other places in this country that often flaunt the word “silicon” in their nicknames. And it’s why, this weekend, the New York Historical Society is opening a half-year-long exhibit called Silicon City. “This is a story that has been forgotten by many, many people, especially after Northern California stole the spotlight,” Louise Mirrer, president of the New York Historical Society, says.

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This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

MakerBot Lays Off 20 Percent of Its Staff for the Second Time This Year

2019-03-06T05:42:19-05:00

MakerBot is laying off 20 percent of its staff for the second time in the last six months, citing “market dynamics” and a failure to meet “ambitious goals.” The company is also leaving one of the two buildings it occupies in Industry City, a large-scale manufacturing complex in Brooklyn.

The 3-D printing company will also be making changes to its leadership team to better “focus on [its] people and the MakerBot 3D ecosystem.” The news was announced in a blog post by CEO Jonathan Jaglom.

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This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

LG’s V10 Doubles Up on Screens and Selfie Cameras

2019-03-06T06:03:14-05:00

September has been full of major phone announcements, and LG has decided to join the party with just a few days to spare. The company just announced a new premium phone called the V10 less than a day ahead of a scheduled event in New York City. It’s the first phone in the company’s new “V” line of phones, which bumps up a few key specs while ditching plastic for more premium materials.

The new V10 isn’t terribly different from LG’s flagship G4 on the inside. It has the same (removable) 3,000 mAh battery, the same Snapdragon 808 processor, and the same 16-megapixel rear camera. (There is an extra gigabyte of RAM, however). On the outside, though, the V10 appears to have left the G4’s curved display behind for a flat one. The phone’s also built out of higher-grade materials, with LG opting for stainless steel and silicone over plastic.

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This article originally appeared on Recode.net.