Google may announce new Nexus phones

Google’s yearly Nexus uncovering for the most part comprises of one telephone and a tablet in case you’re fortunate. This year the word around the web is that Google is planning to discharge two new telephones that take into account a more extensive scope of Android fans. Another report from CNet now indicates September 29th as the discharge date. This date has been supposed before and matches with a few things we’ve listened, so it sounds lovely genuine.. Google may announce new Nexus phones

With respect to the hardware, Google is required to report an unassumingly measured 5.2-inch cell phone from LG, the producer of the fan most loved 2013 Nexus 5. The screen will be 1080p as opposed to the now-standard 1440p for lead telephones. That is likely more than adequate for a 5.2-inch telephone, however. Inside the new Nexus 5 is relied upon to have a hexa-core Snapdragon 808 (like the G4), 3GB of RAM, and a 2700mAh battery. Once more, 3000mAh and higher battery limits are getting to be standard, however this cell ought to be incredible for a simple 1080p screen…Google may announce new Nexus phones

Google may announce new Nexus phones

The bigger of the two telephones anticipated that would be reported will be made by the well known Chinese OEM Huawei. There have just been a couple of gadgets from Huawei sold in the US, so the Nexus will be its first prologue to numerous clients. This handset will have a 5.7-inch QHD (2560×1440) screen, 3GB of RAM, and an all the more capable Snapdragon 810. Google may announce new Nexus phones 

This chip has been known not warm in different telephones on account of the eight ARM centers. It has four powerful Cortex-A57 centers and four effective Cortex-A53 centers. The 808 just has two of the powerful ones to spare power and lower warmth. Google and Huawei have supposedly been working intently with Qualcomm on the equipment to hold the 810’s warmth under wraps. We’ll need to keep a watch out if that works out.

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Just want to say an apology to my Folks

Apology to my folks; it has been really long I wrote something amazing. Seriously I believe I haven’t been fair to you… yes, you reading this post. I have betrayed the trust you had in me and for that I am very sorry.

Honestly I apologize for feeding you with great articles and stories like Women and Money, The Secret Life of Wilson Love (the series), Voices in my little head and many more, and leaving you to hang. It was heartless of me and I apologize sincerely.

Apology to my folks…

Now, it is obvious that I have pushed away a lot of people from my life. People who have done nice things for me, those who have made sacrifices, those who can even go to the ends of the earth for me… *a confused look on my face* who am I kidding? I ain’t got such folks. I am only sorry to those who were close to me and wanted to remain friends due to the benefits involved, yeah! I’m sorry it couldn’t work out. Everything happens for a reason, I believe they have better friends and are in a better place.

I decided to write this apology to my folks so that I can have a clear conscience and a free vision to be able to handle the unfathomable thing driving straight at me.

Apology to my folks…

This apology to my folks also goes out to the fools who felt I couldn’t survive without them. I am so sorry but you were all wrong, I’m doing just fine thanks to my new found family. With them I have learned a lot of things; I’ve gained knowledge in tech, media, photography, and many more. I have also seen different ways to blend with different folks of different temperaments. To this very end I say thank you and also apologize to all those I have wronged within this amazing family God has given me. Apology to my folks…

Anyway, I know I sound rude in most of my posts so I also use this medium to hand out this gesture of apology to my folks; blame it on the fun and stress *smiles* I am actually a very playful person and you’d love me if you get to know me but… I dish out a plate of apology to my folks who will never get to meet me.

Lest I forget, the final apology to my folks goes to those who have been sighing while reading this article and those who already see it as a useless piece of writing. I am sorry you had to read it and hope you will find it in your heart to forgive my attention seeking.

I believe it worked *dancing shakiti bobo with a cup of soya milk* and I feel so great and lighter now that I got this off my chest.

Apology to my folks has been a cool piece of work and I am glad you believe so too but if you don’t drop your comment below. I’d really love to see what you think about my brain *winks*

Ciao!!!

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Getting to Know the Dope Boyz

Good afternoon to you, my readers. Hope you all had a wonderful week? Today we’ll be having an exclusive interview with the star emerging contest winners, Dope Boyz

Good afternoon, how are you all doing today?

Good afternoon to you too, We’re dope, (laughs) we’re good

So before we begin, what are your individual names ?

Izzy_pro , kelvin, Odrea , CJ,

What brought about the name dope boys ?

Kelvin:

   it was my idea, I mean I like these guys, the way we talk, the way we dress everything about us, is dope so the name wasn’t really hard to come by. we’ve been friends for a long time,

So the name was inspired by the style the group has?

Kelvin:

Yes, basically

How did you guys  start music?

Odera:

Music, ok music? We’ve been doing music for a long time we’re still under a music group, Federation theater in the St.Jospeh the worker parish, Awka . so we’re under the group, under Federation theater which is “V.O.P” – voice of prophet , so from V.O.P the dope boyz  emerged

So how did you guys meet each other?

izzy_pro:

We all stayed in the same hostel, “Diamond  hostel” (laughs) the most f**ked up hostel in Awka, we were also in the same group in church so basically we have been family since day one.

How come it’s called Dimond hostel ?

izzy_pro :

Mehn forget the name oh, the place is horrible (laughing)

Are you guys still in school or are you guys graduates?

Cj:

We’re graduates ohh, thank God

What do the dope boyz see music as ?

Odera:

Its short and simple, Music is life, music is dope boyz

Complete this sentence, without music dope boys would be _________?

Odera:

Without music we would just be 4 idiots (LAUGHS) hanging out with each other

In the next 5 years what should we be expecting from dope boyz?

Cj:

Bringing home Grammies ohh,(laughs),

Kelvin:

Grammies? My brother I want to be realistic In the next 5 years I see dope boyz disturbing the Nigerian music industry. Asin you’ll see us everywhere?

How would you describe your music to an audience that have never heard your music before?

Kelvin:

While I’d say our music is indigenous and it’s original

What was your first experience with music like ?

Kelvin :

I hated this guy (laughing and pointing at izzy_pro) he was shy!!

Izzy_pro :

(smiles) we were always good on the mic but one of our problems was stage management, me for example I was shy like, all those eyes looking at me but now I’m over that, I’m getting better

How long have you been performing live?

Cj :

We’ve been performing in front of an audience since 2012,

Like the former music groups “style plus”, “plantation boys” do you see dope boyz splitting up in the near future or will you  be different form the rest ?

Odera:

(speaking pigin) Nawa ohh !!! bros we never start you come dey ask when we go split up, we’re not planning on splitting in the near future and even if we do, there will be no beef because we’ve been friends even before the music, and what ever happens dope boyz remain family

How did you guys feel winning the star emerging contest?

Kelvin :

mehn it was the bestest feeling mehn… I’m not sure that’s even a word (laughs), it’s like the first major win for us so winning the star emerging contest is a feeling we’ll never forget

Has it been a dream to work with jesse jagz ?

Izzy_pro:

My brother, dream is an understatement I dreamed it,  and now I’ve seen it

Kelvin :

I mean who doesn’t want to work with Jesse Jagz , the guy is crazy but he’s a very cool guy

So how do you guys plan on exploiting the project, seeing this is a big step in your career?

Odera:

Exploiting won’t be hard seeing that star is going to be taking care of our promotion but locally we are getting publicity with the help of our manager Henry chisom Ezikeoha

I watched the star trek and I didn’t see dope boyz performing why was that?, wasn’t that part of the prizes for winning the contest ?

Odera:

That was an annoying part when we got to find out that our performance wasn’t aired,

You performed and it wasn’t aired?

Odera:

Yes , HipTV went live 11pm and we had to perform before then because Sean Tizzle was there, M.I. and other big stars

What challenges are you currently having ?

Kelvin:

Recognition, and funds… we have a lot of projects on our hands and no means yet but we’ll get there

What should you fans expect form the dope boyz ?

Kelvin:

Expect nothing but the best and anticipate our song with jesse jagz, Kilofoshe dropping soon

Shout out to Friendite

Cj:

Shout out the Friendite Global Limited, Henry Chestnut our Manager I mean we give him a lot of trouble and he still does his best for us.

Dope Boyz…

Hope you all had a wonderful time reading this interview with the star emerging contest winners “Dope boyz”, check out FrienditeTV our You Tube channel to watch a short video on the interview, And do have a wonderful weekend.

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Twitter in human rights/political mess

If you recall, I posted an article in August about twitter closing some twoop sites to save politicians’ tweets.

Now, seventeen international human rights and transparency groups, including the Sunlight Foundation, EFF, Free Press, Open State Foundation, Human Rights Watch and others, are taking Twitter to task for its decision to ban the Politwoops tool last month, which was used to track politicians’ deleted tweets. Twitter had earlier banned the U.S. version of this tweet-tracking service in May, saying it was in violation of Twitter’s developer agreement. At the time, Twitter also noted that every user on its service should have the same rights to privacy.

But the organizations argue that what politicians say is a matter of public record, and therefore, they shouldn’t have the same expectations of privacy when using social media as ordinary citizens do.

Politwoops, for those unfamiliar, was a tool developed by Dutch organization, the Open State Foundation, over three years ago. The code was used to track politicians’ and diplomats’ remarks on Twitter – and their subsequent removal – in 30 countries around the world. In the U.S., a government transparency group called the Sunlight Foundation used that same code to create a U.S. version of the service.

Twitter shut down the U.S. Politwoops account in May, but dozens of other international accounts continued to operate until this August. 

According to Twitter, preserving deleted tweets violates its developer agreement. But in a statement, the social networking company also added that “honoring the expectation of user privacy for all accounts is a priority for us, whether the user is anonymous or a member of Congress.”

Of course, Twitter has the right to run its network as it sees fit, but it’s hard not to believe that the company’s decision is in part influenced by its struggles to grow its user base. Making high-profile public figures uncomfortable, and possibly alienating them from the service by allowing rights groups to shame them thanks to their uncovered deleted tweets, could see them leaving Twitter for good. And with fewer notable accounts to follow, user growth and engagement could also be impacted.

In the jointly signed letter posted today, the rights groups say they recognize that Twitter’s API license allows it to enforce its terms.

“However, Twitter should also take into account human rights when it exercises that discretion—and particularly the right of people to access to information where it serves the interest of public accountability and transparency in a democratic society,” the statement continues. “There are times when what is legal must be outweighed by what is right.”

In other words, the groups are appealing to Twitter’s sense of morality – as if a business where profit is the key goal is motivated such sentiment.

Making their case, the groups also point out that court systems have long-held that public officials don’t have the same expectations of privacy as others, and when politicians turn to Twitter to amplify their views, they’re inviting “greater scrutiny of their expression.” The groups also believe that in the case of Politwoops, citizens’ rights to information outweighs “an official’s right to a retroactive edit.”

Source: TechCrunch

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Videogram offers new engaging ways

Cinemacraft, the Japan-U.S. company that provides interactive online video technologies, has launched a series of news tools aimed at giving broadcasters and brands new ways to boost engagement on their clips, beyond just relying on repositories like YouTube.

Rather than trying to replace YouTube, Vimeo and others, the company complements these services and caters to specific broadcasters, such as movie publishers or multi-channel networks, who are looking for a different way to engage viewers that’s more in line with social media.

The company, which is actually rebranding to Videogram — the name of its product —raised a $3.9 million Series A funding round this January, and founder Sandeep Casi told TechCrunch that the new products are a result of feedback that it has seen, particularly from MCNs, over the course of 2015.

Videogram has long offered ‘interactive’ video embeds, which show multiple frames from a clip rather than a single thumbnail to entice a viewer in, but it has now launched a new card format that takes things up a notch. Videogram embeds remain free to deploy anywhere on the web, but many content producers found that they needed something that was more specific to the demands of social media.

Each is comprised of an eight-second preview — a GIF, which autoplays on Twitter and Facebook — that is automatically assembled by Videogram’s engine and changes based on interaction.

“Each card is adaptively learning, so when people share the video, it keeps track and reformats the preview based on what people are looking at,” Casi said in an interview. “That helps enable discovery to happen — even if you watch it now, the content might have changed a week later.”

The card also includes a new, sleek video player design that lets viewers find other content via random discovery, categories and channels.

Fans may have noticed that the Videogram iOS and Android apps have left their respective app stores. This is only temporary, and Casi explained that they are being outfitted with the new design to match the web-based versions, which are optimized for mobile and smart TVs, too. The redesigned apps should return in the coming weeks, the Videogram CEO confirmed.

Source: TechCrunch

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The new yam festival of the Igbo people

Today i was reminded of the celebration of the new yam festival by my friend  Stephanie,and the painful fact is that most Igbo people don’t know what this festival is about, so here is a little education.

The New Yam Celebration of the Igbo people (Orureshi in the idoma territory, Iwa ji, Iri ji or Ike ji, contingent upon lingo) is a yearly New yam harvest celebration by the Igbo people held toward the end of the rainy season in ahead of schedule August.The Iwa ji celebration (actually “new-yam eating”) is drilled all through West Africa (particularly in Nigeria and Ghana)and other African nations and past, symbolizing the determination of a harvest and the start of the following work cycle.The festivity is a socially based event, entwining individual Igbo groups as basically agrarian and dependent on yam.

Yams are the first product to be gathered, and are the most vital harvest of the district. The night before the day of the celebration, every single old yam (from the earlier year’s yield) are eaten or discarded.The following day, just dishes of yam are served, as the celebration is typical of the wealth of the produce.

New yam festival

Generally, the part of eating the first yam is performed by the by the oldest man in the community or the king (igwe). This man additionally offers the yams to god, divinities and progenitors. It is trusted that their position offers the benefit of being mediators between their groups and the lords of the area. The customs are intended to express the appreciation of the group to the divine beings for making the harvest conceivable, and they are generally taken after notwithstanding more present day changes because of the impact of Christianity in the range.

The day is typical of delight after the development season, and the bounty is imparted to companions and well-wishers. A mixture of celebrations check the eating of new yam. People moves, disguises, parades, and gatherings make an ordeal that a few members describe as “workmanship”; the bright celebration is a scene of showed satisfaction, much obliged, and group show.

Palm oil (mmanu nri) is used to eat the yam. Iwa ji also shares some similarities with the Asian Mid-Autumn Festival, as both are based on the cycles of the moon and are essentially community harvest festivals.

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Android fighting to take over

A 2014 IDG Undertaking Portability Review demonstrated that 66 percent of cell phone clients, and 46 percent of tablet clients, are utilizing their gadgets for business related assignments. Organizations are receiving procedures like BYOD (bring your own gadget) and conveying better administration arrangements to tackle the expanding interest for big business portability, a market that is relied upon to develop from $71.93 billion in 2013 to $266.17 billion by 2019.

The scene of big business portability has changed definitely since its initiation. BlackBerry, the once predominant force in the business, has given its crown to Apple (72 percent) and its staff to Android (26 percent). Despite the fact that it was the most secure stage amid its prime, BlackBerry’s absence of advancement and its product, equipment and client experience handicapped their capacity to contend. Left to spoil, natural product will do only that (let this be a lesson for Apple).

Regardless of holding 78 percent of the worldwide piece of the overall industry for cell phones, Android has yet to increase real ground inside of workforce clients. Concerns over security vulnerabilities and working framework fracture has hindered Android’s development, until the late arrival of Android 5.0 (Candy) and Android for Work. Here are a couple reasons why Android is ready to assume control over the undertaking versatility diversion …

The presentation of the most recent working framework, Android 5.0 Candy, carried with it gigantic security fixes, including default gadget encryption and control over access to information and framework administrations utilizing Security Empowered Linux (SE Linux).

The “sandboxing” structure of SE Linux keeps malevolent programming from getting to touchy information or applications. As of late, Google has additionally dedicated to month to month security redesigns for its Nexus line of gadgets. Numerous OEM’s are going with the same pattern.

Android

As BlackBerry took in the most difficult way possible, development is vital to survival in the portable biological system. Android has stayed strides in front of Apple in terms of emphasizing and enhancing its versatile programming. Components, for example, warning drawers, custom consoles, coordinated stylus and multitasking appeared on Android gadgets some of the time years before Apple; smartwatches were on the wrists of Android clients one year prior to the Apple Watch arrived.

The fate of big business versatility is in the hands of the buyers. In the event that history has demonstrated to us anything, it will be molded by imaginative equipment and undertaking programming. Android, with its armed force of clients and developing venture arrangements, is ready to overwhelm the busines

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Lenovo rips off iPhone design

Lenovo just produced the most accurate iPhone 6 ripoff! The company just unveiled a new phablet called the Lenovo Phab Plus. It’s huge, and it looks exactly like an iPhone 6. The company might think that it can pull this off due to the different form factor, but there is no way you can’t see an iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 Plus in the Lenovo Phab Plus.

The Phab Plus is a 6.8-inch device, making it look more like a small tablet than a phablet. The reasoning behind this product is that many people want to use their tablets as their phones, but they currently need to carry two devices. Lenovo states that the Phab Plus is the best of both worlds.

This phone features two SIM slots, Android 5.0, a 13-megapixel rear camera as well as a 5-megapixel front camera with a front flash. It has 32GB of storage and runs with a Snapdragon 615 octa-core system on a chip with 2GB of RAM.

This phone is so big that there is a one-hand feature that lets you shrink down the entire display to the bottom left or bottom right corner. The company clearly targets its home market as it was announced a few days ago in China before the big IFA unveiling. It will be available later this month for $299 in the U.S.

Coming back to the design ripoff. As you know, the iPhone 6 comes in silver, gold and space gray. The Phab Plus comes in… titanium silver, champagne gold and gunmetal grey. It has the same metal unibody design technique with the same plastic lines for the antennas. There are two visible screws at the bottom of the device, like on the iPhone 6. The only notable difference is that the front glass isn’t curved on the edges.

 

Lenovo isn’t the only manufacturer that blatantly rips competitors off. Xiaomi has a good track record for example. But it doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t call these companies out.

The iPhone 6 is a popular phone, but it doesn’t even have a great design. It’s very slippery and many iPhone 6 Plus owners have dropped their phone on the floor. Some people didn’t use a case with the iPhone 5s but had to use one because of the rounded edges and slippery design. So please Lenovo, try harder next time.

Source: TechCrunch

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Facebook’s Messenger And The Challenge To Google’s Search Dominance

When Facebook announced M—an A.I.-powered personal assistant that lives inside Messenger—it enacted a grave challenge for Google.

Indeed, if Facebook can successfully scale M to its entire audience (and WhatsApp’s, as well), this new product represents a direct assault on search and AdWords—the lifeblood of Google’s business.

To understand how a digital personal assistant that lives inside a mobile messaging app represents a disruptive threat to Google, let’s look at why Google is in this situation in the first place.

Google faces the classic innovator’s dilemma; a  dire challenge

The recently-Alphabetized technology behemoth has built a mega-business around AdWords, and for most of the history of this businesses’ existence, it’s been generating billions and billions of dollars of delicious profit.

Indeed, Google’s core business is so profitable that it almost singlehandedly fuels all of Google’s wildly-ambitious and occasionally-awesome forays into things like internet infrastructure, life extension, augmented reality, and self-driving cars.

The massive AdWords money machine is, of course, built on top of a remarkable search product that works so well and so fast that most of the internet-connected population of Earth relies on it every day to extract the information, products, and services they want or need from the the vast expanses of the web.

But therein lies the rub: somewhere in the recesses of its collective corporate mind, Google knows that keyword search—the current foundation of its empire—is not the future.

Indeed, as former Googler and current Yahoo CEO, Marissa Mayer, told John Battelle when he was writing a book on your friendly neighborhood search giant years ago, “search is only 5% solved.”

While Google’s search technology has incorporated YouTube, Maps, and Knowledge since Mayer said this, the statement is as true today as it was then: Google’s fundamental product experience still involves entering a few words into a search box and getting back a list of relevant links.

Because Larry Page and Sergey Brin are visionaries, they know that the next-generation solution to the problem of search looks less like a clickable list of links and more like a primitive Star Trek computer or an early version of the A.I. from the movie Her.

But massive ships with hundreds of billions of dollars in market capitalization are hard to turn.

 Facebook vs Google; The Challenge

Indeed, as one former Google Now engineer [recently told Mark Bergen at Re:Code after political infighting and corporate shuffling lead to Google Now losing prominence], “This is how big companies work.”

The subsequent exodus of Google Now’s team doesn’t portend well for Google’s stake in the future of search, because Now was closest thing to the future of search that the company has produced to date.

The future of search is an intelligent digital assistant that can complete tasks

Like Google today, the search engine of the future will be able to mine the vast expanses of the internet for relevant information and deliver it to you in milliseconds.

But much unlike today’s Google, the future’s search engine will behave like a digital personal assistant that can understand and predict your needs, then deliver on them without requiring you to navigate to any web pages or tap around a bunch of apps.

When you do ask for something, this search engine will not respond with a list of blueish links. Instead, it will respond with a definitive result or a completed task. When it doesn’t have the definitive result or can’t complete the task on the first pass, it will ask you further questions to get closer and closer, until the machine gets it right.

 Facebook vs Google; The Challenge

We’ve known for a while that Facebook has been investing heavily in deep learning and other forms of A.I.

But until last month, we didn’t know what all the rumpus was about.

Now we do: Facebook is testing an A.I.-powered personal assistant inside of Messenger, itself. This assistant can book appointments, order gifts, make restaurant and travel reservations, and more.

Without search and mapping technologies and access to your calendar and inbox, Facebook’s A.I. assistant won’t be able to do all of the things in the scenarios above, but M is officially a contender. 
To understand why M (and products like it) pose a threat to Google, it helps to consider why AdWords became such a valuable asset in the first place:

On the internet, search has long been the most direct bridge between someone’s intent and the transaction where that intent is fulfilled.

This transaction could be something free, like reading an article or blog post, where attention is the currency being exchanged.

It could be something in between free and paid: like downloading a piece of content in exchange for contact information.

It could also just be paid: buying a product or service right from the web.

 Facebook vs Google; The Challenge

Because Google controls the middle of the bridge between your intention to transact and the final transaction, it can charge businesses who want a piece a very high toll. “Want to capture that lucrative intent? Pay me.”

But an A.I. personal assistant that goes out and completes transactions for you disrupts that entire process.

If you can simply tell a digital assistant to buy you tickets to a movie, order you a pizza, schedule a car repair, or even get you an insurance quote, there’s no longer any need to click a link or navigate to a webpage.

Without a page of links between your intent and the transaction, there’s nowhere for AdWords to show up!

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Cars our children may never have to drive

Imagine the possibility. Our children may never need to get a driver’s license before they can start driving; I think this has numerous advantages and disadvantages to it as much as it brings innovation to the tech industry.

With the craze of the American people, when cars begin to drive themselves, teenagers would rouse up protests that 13-15 year olds should be allowed to have cars and with the craze of the American government, they would probably pass a ‘clean bill of automobiles’ or whatever trash they would choose to call it.

Our Street Racers

Then again we have to consider the street racers; their joint would be all but blown away once manually driven cars are banned. Only on legal sports tracks would the sport still be fun to watch. The illegal section of street racing would be even more dangerous, just like we learnt about the hazards of Google’s self-driving cars, accident rates from illegal street racing would triple.

Humans will still race cars for fun though, even if they just have to set two automatically driven cars against each other and bet on which one would come first, just to pass time I guess they would still indulge it.

I expect that car manufacturers, eager to keep us from switching to the safer, cheaper, but far plainer vehicles from Uber or Google, will outdo themselves over the next 20 years. Let’s make do with our manual cars for now and watch the era of self-driven cars dawn on us.

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Nokia C1; the Android Smartphone

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Commoditized Wearables

Xiaomi reported it sold 2.8 million of its Mi Band activity tracker in the first quarter of 2015; in the same time period for 2014 (first quarter), they sold exactly 0. Newer reports have stated that the Mi Band has sold more than 6 million units for 2015, with estimates coming in that they’re selling around 1 million devices per month.

Analysts estimate this represents 25 percent of all similar devices sold this year. The Mi Band sells for $15, about $75 less than the nearest Fitbit offering, the Flex.

So what does this mean? Wearable fitness tracking is commoditized. Here’s why.

Commoditized Wearables

Fitness Tracking Technology Is The Same

I’ve been in the wearable space for more than four years — ever since I came up with the concept for FocusMotion. I’ve been watching it, pitching it, anticipating it and speaking about it — and nothing has really changed. In the last few years, we’ve seen Apple, Microsoft, Xiaomi , Samsung, Sony, Jawbone, Huawei, Razer, LG, Fitbit and more iterate new bracelets and watches in the market, but they all do the same thing: They track steps and “sleep.”

And many don’t do it well. If you’ve been watching, Nike just settled a class action suit out of court for $15 per person for false claims that they could track calories, steps, and “NikeFuel.” Fitbit has a lawsuit against it for false claims regarding sleep tracking.

Wearable Devices Are The Same

The core need for a wearable tracker is a CPU, Bluetooth, a battery and a beautiful little MEMS chip, the accelerometer. This Micro Electro Mechanical System let’s developers determine changes in acceleration in multiple directions or axes (x, y and z), and it’s used in everything from your phone to the Fitbit to the Apple Watch.

However, nothing is changing in the accelerometer space. These sensors can change frequency length (sense faster vibrations) or they can change amplitude sensitivity (sense more intense vibrations), but they’re essentially the same chip from manufacturer to manufacturer. There’s no need to iterate or improve because there’s no real way to improve them. You may see increases in battery life, but it’s still the same sensor — it just lasts longer.

If you’re using similar chips as your competitors, using similar batteries and using construction techniques, then the barrier to entry is small for any company with a large budget and a decent marketing campaign. In Xiaomi’s case, they became a 25 percent player in less than a year.

Commoditized Wearables

The Effect

There’s a certain consumer fatigue with wearables. We were told they would track steps — they’re not great at it. We were told they could track sleep — not truly. And there’s a flood of devices in the market that all do the same thing. They all use the same sensor and the same algorithms to track steps and sleep. I believe that this similarity, this commoditization, has hit a turning point with the Xiaomi offering. Consumers can now buy a device for $15 that does the same thing as a device at $99. With Fitbit’s current market cap at $8.8 billion, how does it compete with Xiaomi or a potential Apple bracelet (Apple Watch Mini)?

The fitness tracker space is confusing and boring. With similar components and similar features, it’s a race to the bottom for price. I’m disappointed with the past four years because there is so much more to human movement than steps and sleep. As for the $15 that every FuelBand owner received for the Nike settlement, I hope they go buy a Mi Band and drive down this commoditized market even further, forcing much-needed innovation in this space.

Commoditized Wearables

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Bisexuality

Bisexuality is romantic attraction, sexual attraction or sexual behavior toward both males and females, or romantic or sexual attraction to people of any sex or gender identity; this latter aspect is sometimes termed pansexuality.

The term bisexuality is mainly used in the context of human attraction to denote romantic or sexual feelings toward both men and women and the concept is one of the three main classifications of sexual orientation along with heterosexuality and homosexuality, which are each parts of the heterosexual–homosexual continuum. A bisexual identity does not necessarily equate to equal sexual attraction to both sexes; commonly, people who have a distinct but not exclusive sexual preference for one sex over the other also identify themselves as bisexual.

Bisexuality has been observed in various human societies and elsewhere in the animal kingdom throughout recorded history. The term bisexuality, however, like the terms hetero- and homosexuality, was coined in the 19th century.

The above definition is courtesy of Wikipedia, a trusted global encyclopedia. This goes far to show us what today’s world looks like; a place where it is accepted for one to be sexually drawn towards men and women and the U.S is the forerunner in the campaign for “equal human rights;” a charade with which the intellectuals of men has been dislodged. What happened to the America that was built with the Bible as it’s rock? What happened to the moral ethics fought for by Abraham Lincoln and the likes of him? The pendulum has swung far away from morality’s grove so let’s go back to what God says about this.

The Bible nowhere directly mentions bisexuality. However, it is clear from the Bible’s denunciations of homosexuality that bisexuality would also be considered sinful. Leviticus 18:22 declares having sexual relations with the same sex to be an abomination. Romans 1:26-27 condemns sexual relations between the same sex as abandoning what is natural. First Corinthians 6:9 states that homosexual offenders will not inherit the kingdom of God. These truths apply equally to bisexuals and to homosexuals.

The Bible tells us that a person becomes bisexual or homosexual because of sin (Romans 1:24-27). This does not necessarily mean sins the person has committed. Rather, it refers to sin itself. Sin warps, twists, and perverts everything in creation. Bisexuality and homosexuality are caused by sin “damaging” us spiritually, mentally, emotionally, and physically. Sin is the plague, and bisexuality is simply one of the symptoms.

Though the Bible does not directly speak about bisexuality, it frequently addresses issues related to sexual ethics. A look at some of these principles offers clarity regarding God’s view of the practice of bisexuality.

First, sexual relationships were created by God to take place within the context of marriage between a man and a woman. Genesis 2:24 teaches, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” Though the Bible records other forms of relationships, it only specifically presents one man and one woman enjoying sexual relations within marriage as God’s design.

Second, since bisexuality includes sexual relationships outside of marriage, it is also excluded as a form of sexual immorality. First Corinthians 6:18 clearly teaches, “Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body.”

Third, bisexuality is also excluded from Christian practice since it includes same sex relationships that are prohibited in the Bible. In the Old Testament, same sex activity was called an abomination (Leviticus 18:22). In the New Testament, Jesus speaks directly of marriage (and sexual relations) between one man and one woman in marriage (Matthew 19). The apostle Paul mentioned that some of the believers in Corinth had been involved in same sex relations before becoming believers, saying, “And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Corinthians 6:11). Same sex activity is clearly excluded from the lifestyle of those who follow Christ. This would certainly also include bisexual relations.

A brief word should be mentioned regarding the distinction between temptation and practice. Some people claim they have desired same sex or bisexual relationships since a young age and that they were therefore “born” that way. While it is unclear if this is the case, it does not mean bisexual or same sex relationships are acceptable for believers in Christ. A person may be tempted or have thoughts or inclinations toward various actions, yet these desires must be evaluated to determine whether they are consistent with God’s teachings. When a desire is inconsistent with God’s will for our lives, it should not to be acted upon.

Bisexual relations are certainly outside of God’s plan for human sexuality according to the Bible. While Scripture is clear that unbelievers are sometimes involved in such practices, believers in Christ are commanded to live differently. In addition, believers are called to show kindness and grace to those they meet who may be involved in such practices in order to share the good news of Jesus (John 3:16) and help others to experience the perfect love that only God can provide. Jesus wouldn’t support our hating on them and condemning them, He would want us to love and pray for them.

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Sam Smith records Spectre Theme song

Sam Smith has recorded the theme song for upcoming James Bond movie Spectre.

The track is called Writing’s on the Wall and will be released on 25 September. Smith said: “This is one of the highlights of my career.”

“I am so excited to be a part of this iconic British legacy and join an incredible line up of some of my biggest musical inspirations.”

Just last week, Smith told BBC Radio 2’s Jo Whiley he was “definitely not” working on the project.

But, revealing his involvement on Tuesday, he told Radio 1’s Nick Grimshaw: “I’m so relieved to actually talk about this, this has been a top secret mission of my own.”

He said he recorded the track in January.

“I got called into the office with Barbara Broccoli and Sam Mendes and they gave me the script, I read the script… they said ‘have a go at the song’.

“It’s the quickest I’ve ever written a song – it took 20 minutes… and they loved it!”

“I love the song so much,” he added.

Smith has co-written the title song with fellow Grammy award winner Jimmy Napes, who worked with him on the number one hits Stay With Me and La La La.

Dance act Disclosure – who gave Smith his big break on the single Latch – tweeted that they had “added some additional production” to the song.

It is the first James Bond theme song recorded by a British male solo artist since 1965.

The film, starring Daniel Craig, is released on 26 October.

It also features Oscar winner Christoph Waltz, David Bautista and Sherlock star Andrew Scott.

Adele’s Bond song, Skyfall, won her an Oscar in 2013.

Ellie Goulding, Radiohead and Lana Del Ray had also been rumoured to record the Spectre theme song.

Goulding had heavily hinted her involvement in the production with a picture posted on Instagram in July. The picture showed the singer leaving the world famous Abbey Road Studios with the caption: “It’s a wrap”.

She also tweeted the title of the 1973 Bond film Live and Let Die.

Abbey Road was the same studio Adele used for the Skyfall theme.

Last month the bookmaker William Hill suspended betting on the identity of the next Bond theme singer after a customer in Middlesex tried to put a £15,000 bet on Radiohead having recorded the song.

“The first gamble of the day was Ellie Goulding and punters were backing her as if she already had the gig, but just as we were thinking of pulling the plug we had a load of bets for Radiohead, including one customer who asked to place a £15,000 bet on the band at 10/1,” said William Hill spokesman Rupert Adams.

Sam Smith has all but confirmed that he will sing the theme tune for the new James Bond film, Spectre.

The singer tweeted a picture of a finger with a ring featuring the movie’s logo.

He had been tipped for the soundtrack several times but previously denied any involvement in the project.

Spectre is released in October but we don’t know much more about the song itself.

Only in July, Sam told Capital FM he was “definitely not” doing it.

“People seem to think I’m doing it but I have no idea what’s going on. I’m being deadly serious. I think I would know by now,” he said.

“I heard Ellie Goulding was going to do it,” he added.

The film will be directed by Sam Mendes who also worked on Skyfall, which came out in 2012.

Mendes revealed earlier this year that the theme tune for upcoming Bond film Spectre had already been recorded, in July, the same month Sam denied any involvement.

The film also features Oscar winner Christoph Waltz, WWE wrestler David Bautista and Sherlock star Andrew Scott as well as Daniel Craig reprising his role as 007.

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30-second video ads coming to Instagram

Instagram is done experimenting and is ready to ramp up ad revenue. It’s making three big changes today to attract marketing dollars from around the world and other ad mediums. Finally, Instagram will make back the money Facebook spent buying it.

First, today Instagram ads become officially available in 30 more countries including Mexico, India and South Korea, and will be on sale globally by the end of September. After users in core markets proved loyal despite having ads injected in their feeds, all 300 million people who use Instagram will now see ads. And instead of only working with big brands, Instagram is opening up ads to businesses of all sizes.

Second, Instagram is now courting television and online advertisers with more standardized formats and buying options. Instagram will allow advertisers to run 30-second video ads, rather than just 15 second ones, and use landscape dimensions instead of just squares. Landscape and portrait mode came to users last month, though Instagram’s James Quarles said it wouldn’t be technically feasible to expand the video length limit to 30 seconds for non-advertisers. This means businesses can easily port their television commercials into Instagram ads.

On the higher end of the scale, a new “premium product” called Marquee will help drive mass awareness and expanded reach in a short time-frame” — Instagram says it will be perfect for things like product launches and movie premieres. Video ads only launched on Instagram less than a year ago, but the Facebook acquisition is ready to start making more use of its parent company’s powerful ad infrastructure.

And third, Instagram is luring advertisers from a wider array of industries to its ads with improved calls to action. These include travel, entertainment, ecommerce, and retail. After testing “Shop Now”, “Install Now”, “Sign Up”, and “Learn More” options, these direct response formats that can link outside of Instagram will open to all advertisers.

Commerce and app install ads will make the photo network more valuable to merchants and developers who want an immediate return on investment. All these formats and placements will now be available through Facebook’s self-serve ad interface, Ads API, and Power Editor, which allow extremely granular interest and demographic targeting.

Facebook’s Acquisition Comes To Fruition

Really, this was the moment Facebook was imagining when it acquired Instagram. Of course it wanted to continue connecting people through photos the way it did with its social network. But on the business side, Instagram held the promise of applying Facebook’s advertising technology and connections with brands to another massive audience. It took three and a half years, but that moment has finally arrived.

According to Instagram’s Quarles “it would take us years to build that advertising stack on our own.”

It comes down to scale.

Advertisers, and in turn, investors, want scale. Facebook already has a ton of it with its nearly 1.5 billion users. Instagram adds another 300 million. This is the scale Wall Street desperately wants Twitter to achieve.

Now, when an advertiser wants to reach a huge audience, all they need is to buy through Facebook and they can push an ad to people on both Facebook and Instagram. With that scale comes efficiencies in sales and backend infrastructure. Each extra dollar earned costs Facebook less.

Now all Instagram has to do is not show so many ads that users get annoyed, change so much that they feel lost, or stay so stagnant that the app gets stale. As long as Instagram doesn’t lose its cool, it will become a massive money-making machine worthy of mention on Facebook’s earnings calls.

Instagram favored growth for its first five years. Now it’s all grown up and ready to be a bread-winner.

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Antivirus Software Pioneer John McAfee is running for President 2016

Fresh off of a DUI and gun possession arrest last month, software pioneer John McAfee has decided that the presidency of the United States is his next logical step.

After hinting the move to Wired in a piece that was published earlier today, The Hill reports that McAfee has filed the necessary paperwork to enter the 2016 race. In the documents, McAfee also specifies that he is “founding a new party yet to be announced.”

His presidential campaign site, which is now live, doesn’t seem to offer any details on his stances on the issues, but it does have a donate button.

McAfee, who founded the antivirus software company (now owned by Intel) that bears his name in 1987, has had a fairly bizarre past couple years involving murder, bribery and government corruption.

This has been a particularly wild election season already, but even this announcement is a crazy development.

McAfee has led a colorful and highly public life since he sold the last of his shares in McAfee Associates almost 20 years ago.

Just last month, he was arrested in Tennessee on charges of driving under the influence and possession of a handgun under the influence. But it was his detention in Guatemala in late 2012 on suspicion that he’d entered the country illegally that made McAfee’s name widely known outside technology circles.

McAfee crossed into Guatemala to evade investigators in Belize who wanted to question him in connection with the death of his neighbor. He was deported to the U.S. a few weeks later.

McAfee denied any involvement in the slaying, and he was never declared a suspect by Belize authorities — although they did sell off his seized assets in the country.

Related: ‘Dateline NBC’: The Fugitive Millionaire

McAfee’s blog became a must-read as he posted frequently about his escapades as a fugitive, detailing the many disguises he adopted.

Dean Barrow, Belize’s prime minister then and now, described McAfee at the time as “extremely paranoid, even bonkers.”

McAfee — whose Twitter biography reads simply “Eccentric Millionaire & Still Alive” — listed his current address in his FEC filing as Opelika, Alabama. His case was chronicled on “Dateline NBC” in March.

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CrunchBase Is Spinning Out, Backed by Emergence Capital

Eight-year-old, San Francisco-based CrunchBase looks to become a standalone company in the very near future. According to several sources, the unit, which calls itself the “definitive database of the startup ecosystem,” is finalizing a term sheet with the venture firm Emergence Capital Partners for an investment of between $5 million and $7 million.

AOL, we’re told, remains a “significant” investor.

It’s both the closing of a chapter for CrunchBase, and the beginning of a new one.

The unit, which currently attracts two million unique visitors each month and employs 25 people, began talking with investors nearly a year ago, well before CrunchBase’s parent company, AOL, was itself acquired by Verizon in $4.4 billion deal.

Says one person familiar with AOL’s thinking: “AOL agreed to spin out CrunchBase because an enterprise data business isn’t in its wheelhouse; it also recognized that [CrunchBase] is a potentially valuable business.”

An AOL spokeswoman declined to “comment on the rumor” that CrunchBase is spinning out imminently. CrunchBase executives did not respond to requests for more information. Emergence Capital also did not respond to numerous requests for information.

Executives at TechCrunch — founded by CrunchBase founder Michael Arrington and sold to AOL alongside CrunchBase in September 2010 – also declined to comment, citing company policy.

Two sources say CrunchBase was engaged with a different lead investor when it first began its roadshow last year. According to these people, Data Collective, the San Francisco-based firm, was interested in leading a round that would enable the company to spin out of AOL. But the firm and AOL disagreed over the future of the company and who would lead it.

Data Collective did not respond to a request for comment by our press time. CrunchFund (founded by Arrington following the sale of TechCrunch and CrunchBase) also did not respond to our requests for comment.

With Emergence, based in San Mateo, Ca., CrunchBase lands an investor known for being a software-as-a-service specialist.

That should come in handy.

According to one source, CrunchBase — which has grown restrictive in recent years about how it licenses out its data — will begin selling more of the information it collects via licenses that it sells to venture outfits and research firms, among others. Indeed, as part of the Emergence round, the firm will be installing a senior executive to oversee some of these efforts, say two sources.

Emergence will likely look to add co-investors, too, say the people with whom we spoke. For right now, however, “They just want to get the main close down and get the deal done.”

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Periscope Is Secretly Building An Apple TV App

Periscope is developing an app for the new Apple TV, according to multiple sources. It will allow users to watch livestreams on their television that are broadcasted from Twitter’s Periscope app. You could consider it a coming of age moment, considering the acquired startup’s website is Periscope.tv

Tomorrow, Apple will unveil an upgraded Apple TV set-top box that includes an Apple TV App Store featuring apps built by third-party developers, BuzzFeed News previously reported. Games are slated to be a big focus for the Apple TV platform that’s built on iOS, thanks to a multi-functional new remote controller reported by 9to5Mac that includes motion-control. But the Apple TV platform will also support an array of other experiences. Few of the apps have been outed yet, but sources confirm Periscope will be one of them.

Though we can’t confirm the exact functionality of the app, it’s likely to be focused on watching streams. Periscope made videos viewable on the web in June without the ability to broadcast, and the Apple TV app could work similarly. Periscope was acquired by Twitter in January and launched the mobile, ephemeral live-streaming app in April. It now has over 10 million registered users and sees 40 years of watch time per day, its CEO Kayvon Beykpour recently said on a stream.

We don’t have a specific unveiling or launch date for Periscope on Apple TV. Twitter and Periscope did not respond to our inquiry before press time. The app might be previewed in tomorrow’s Apple keynote to show off the potential of the Apple TV software development kit. Apple wants to get developers’ minds swirling with ideas for what they could build.

The goal is differentiation in two senses.

Apple wants the Apple TV to do things that other set-top boxes from Amazon and Roku can’t. That means getting developers to take advantage of potential hand-off or multi-screen options afforded by iPhones and iPads also running on iOS.

Apple also wants to define the future of the living room by inspiring developers to do more than just translate their desktop and mobile products to the television. The much bigger landscape screen, more powerful hardware that doesn’t depend on a battery, faster connection speeds, and the versatile controller with touch and voice input all open new opportunities for app makers.

Done right, the Apple TV platform could transform much more than traditional video content consumption. Gaming, news, social, and other areas could all see a renaissance on the tube.

Seductive third-party experiences could help sell more of the new Apple TV hardware units. Building an audience this way could boost Apple’s leverage as it negotiates deals with traditional cable channels to bring their content to Apple’s forthcoming live Internet TV service. Bloomberg Business says the TV service has been delayed until 2016 because those negotiations were progressing slowly.

If Periscope can expand on the value of its live-streaming app, not just its size, by coming to the Apple TV platform, it could inspire other social developers to start tinkering with television too.

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Are We At The End Of The Android Heyday?

Over the past years, Google’s Android has come to dominate the world of mobile and tablet devices. Even though sales declined slightly at the close of 2014, Android devices still accounted for more than 75 percent of the market share by the end of Q1 2015. Presently, there is an estimate of more than a billion Android devices being used worldwide.

But news breaking over flaws and security holes in the operating system has caused a general stir about the security of Android phones, and has triggered worries about the integrity and safety of data that we entrust into these Google-powered gadgets that have become an inherent part of our lives. Does this mean that the heyday of the more affordable Android devices is over, and we are better off investing in other technologies, such as Apple’s iOS or Microsoft’s Windows Phone?

Let’s have a quick breakdown of recently discovered threats you should be aware of regarding your Android device, plus what to do and what to expect in the future. Of course, tech websites are a treasure trove when it comes to mobile security threats, but they are usually cluttered up with too much overly technical information that usually ends up confusing non-technical readers rather than enlightening them.

Stagefright

This bug, which was introduced in late July, allows attackers to target Android phones by simply gaining access to their victim’s number. At the time of its discovery, this security hole could be exploited on approximately 95 percent of Android devices, and what made it more dangerous was that a successfully stage attack would leave no trace and will require no action on the victim’s part.

By taking advantage of this flaw, malicious users can actually gain administrative access to your phone and steal sensitive information including messages and keys.

Google declared the bug fixed on August 6, but it was later discovered that the patch could be bypassed and Android users were still vulnerable to Stagefright attacks.

RCSAndroid

This is an extremely dangerous malware that was first discovered after a major attack against cyber-security giant Hacking Team in mid-July spilled tons of hacking secrets worldwide. Once it finds its way your Android phone, this little tool allows attackers to take total control of the device, including access to social media and email accounts. It is also able to manipulate your handset’s camera and microphone.

OCToRuTA

Discovered by IBM researchers in early August, this newly discovered vulnerability in the Android OS has been named “One Class to Rule Them All” after a line from J.R.R. Tolkien’s famous fantasy trilogy The Lord of the Rings.

As the name implies, once exploited, this security loophole will allow a completely innocent-looking application to gain full-privileged access to your Android device, replace your legitimate apps with fake, malicious versions, and steal all your secrets.

Fingerprint theft

The exploitation of this vulnerability can have ramifications that go beyond the confines of your Android phone, especially if you rely on biometric technology for security at work and other places.

Researchers have found a flaw in Android’s security system that allows attackers to steal fingerprint information stored on your phone or monitor data passing through your handset’s fingerprint sensor.

Are Android devices less safe than their counterparts?

So many threats and severe vulnerabilities found in less than a month’s time gives cause for consternation. The good news is all of these problems have been fixed by the manufacturers, and if you’ve been keeping yourself up-to-date with patches delivered by Google on a regular basis, you can rest assured that you are immune to attacks based on the above-mentioned threats.

But there’s no telling what will come up in the next weeks and months, and given constant news of new threats, there’s no guarantee that you will not be the victim of the next zero-day threat that will pop up on the Android system.

But this doesn’t mean that Android is more flawed than its counterparts. The reason that so many attacks and exploits are being discovered on Android stem from the fact it is the most widely used operating system on mobile and tablet devices, and malicious hackers tend to invest on systems that give them more potential targets.

In fact, Apple’s iOS is known to have a few nasty flaws of itself that are no less potent than those of the Android, and Microsoft’s Windows Phone OS tends to collect user data even when told not to.

Where to go from here?

Whether the exposure of serious flaws will actually affect Android sales figures will become more evident in the months to come.

In the meanwhile, if you’re an Android owner and plan to stick with your current technology, make sure to regularly check-in on updates. And also consider investing into a third-party anti-malware application for your handset and avoid downloading apps from unknown and untrusted sources.

Alternately, if you think it’s time to move on to some other brand, be sure to do some thorough research first, because other systems can be just as vulnerable as Android, even if less-targeted.

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 Why Facebook’s $2 Billion Bet on Oculus Rift Might One Day Connect Everyone on Earth

Mark Zuckerberg made a $2 billion bet on a virtual-reality headset called the Oculus Rift, brainchild of 22-year-old Palmer Luckey, who sold his Kickstarter-funded breakthrough to Facebook this spring.

The first time Mark Zuckerberg put on the awkward headset he knew. This is ready, he thought. This is the future.

On the outside, the Oculus Rift didn’t look like much: a matte-black box, roughly the size of a brick, that hung from his face like giant ski goggles, a tangle of cords running from the back of his head to the back of a small desktop computer. It looked futuristic, but not pretty—the kind of thing a teenager might create to approximate his vision of the future, which, in fact, is exactly how this particular device had come into being. The Rift’s creator, Palmer Luckey, was a 17-year-old sci-fi geek when he started building the prototype in his parents’ garage, in Long Beach, California. He took it to the crowd-funding platform Kickstarter, where he raised an astonishing $2.4 million, and then to Silicon Valley, and now, just four years later, here it was sitting on the face of the most powerful man in the technology world.

For years, Zuckerberg had pushed, almost single-mindedly, for growth. With Sandberg’s help he had transformed Facebook into a communications platform that hundreds of millions of people essentially keep open on their phones all the time. “When you get started as a college student you limit your scope,” he says. At first, “it’s like, ‘I’m going to build this thing for the community around me.’ Then it’s ‘I’m going to build this service for people on the Internet.’ But at some point you get to a scale where you decide we can actually solve these bigger problems that will shape the world over the next decade.”

Lately he’d been thinking about what should come next. What, he’d been asking, is the next great computation platform? What comes after the smartphone? Zuckerberg believed that the answer was headsets that provide “immersive 3-D experiences”—movies and television, naturally, but also games, lectures, and business meetings. These headsets would eventually scan our brains, then transmit our thoughts to our friends the way we share baby pictures on Facebook today. “Eventually I think we’re going to have technology where we can communicate our full sensory experience and emotions to someone through thought,” he told me in an interview in his office. Then he added, helpfully, “There’s a lot of interesting research into that, where people have some band on their head…. You can look into it if you’re interested.”

It sounded a little bit insane, but Zuckerberg wasn’t joking. “There are certain things in the future that you know will happen,” he continued. “The real challenge is figuring out what’s possible now and how exactly do you make it.”

And now here it was: the Oculus Rift, which Facebook will begin shipping to customers early next year. It isn’t the first virtual-reality (V.R.) headset to hit the market, but at around $1,500 for the device and the computer you need to run it, it will be the first that is both sophisticated and relatively inexpensive. (Oculus helped create a much cruder $200 face mask to be used with Samsung cell phones.) It’s also the first headset that doesn’t give users motion sickness.

In March 2014, Zuckerberg announced that he would buy Oculus VR for more than $2 billion, and suddenly the question of what is possible now was not so hard to predict. The top two manufacturers of video-game consoles—Sony and Microsoft—are both preparing to release their own headsets in the next year. And just months after the Oculus acquisition was announced, Facebook’s chief competitor, Google, unveiled a virtual-reality-on-the-cheap offering, Google Cardboard, which involves slipping a smartphone into a headset made of a few dollars’ worth of corrugated paper. The press called it “Oculus Thrift.”

As the Oculus Rift is about to hit the market, Zuckerberg is cautious. “It’ll ramp up slowly,” he says. “The first smartphones … I don’t know if they sold a million units in the first year. But it kind of doubles and triples each year, and you end up with something that tens of millions of people have. And now it’s a real thing.”

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