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Soylent, which makes a meal-replacement milkshake, has raised about $10 million at a $100 million valuation, according to a Re/code report.

The fundraising round appears to be led by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, and may not be finished yet.

Soylent was invented by Rob Rhinehart, who blogged about going on the liquid diet in 2013.

"Now that I’ve discovered Soylent, I’m healthier than I’ve ever been, have more freedom with my time and money, and never have to worry," he said.

Soylent is still a nutritional experiment and hasn't been declared medically safe yet.

Some nutritionists have taken issue with Rhinehart's claims and the implication that Soylent would be helpful for general consumption.

That hasn't stopped other companies from trying to improve his recipe and further the concept.

These days, anyone can buy Soylent. Each order comes with an idealistic manifesto from Rhinehart about how Soylent is a group project.

"Refined, robust, and efficient, Soylent is food that works," he said. "And it would not be here if not for you."

SEE ALSO: Soylent, The Magic Food Replacement Milkshake, Is Surprisingly Delicious

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Easy and delicious ravioli with meat and spinach sauce baked with mozzarella and parmesan.(Recipe in English and Polish)

craving more? check out TasteSpotting

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John Travolta will return to television for his first starring role since the 70s sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter in FX's American Crime Story, from Glee/American Horror Story creator Ryan Murphy.

Travolta will star as real-life defense attorney Robert Shapiro in the FX miniseries American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson. Shapiro, you might recall, was a key member of O.J. Simpson’s “Dream Team” defense during the sensational murder trial. Travolta will also serve as a producer of the 10-part miniseries.

Travolta joins the already cast David Schwimmer (as O.J. Simpson’s confidant and attorney Robert Kardashian), Academy Award-winner Cuba Gooding Jr. (as O.J. Simpson), and American Horror Story's own Sarah Paulson (as prosecutor Marcia Clark). Executive producers include Ryan Murphy, Nina Jacobson, Brad Simpson, Scott Alexander, Larry Karaszewski, Brad Falchuk, and Dante Di Loreto.

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Anyone that's familiar with Killing Floor could have probably predicted that its sequel would be equally violent and blood-soaked (if not more so). These fourteen screenshots do a fine job of affirming that suspicion. So, good guess, Guy Who Doesn't Go Out on a Limb with His Predictions.

Killing Floor 2 doesn't yet have a release date, likely because the developers are hellbent on making the entire game look like The Shining's elevator. While they're at it, they might want to put a caution sign on those blood-drenched stairs; that's a lawsuit waiting to happen.

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It takes a special kind of crazy to show up to the biggest consumer electronics show on Earth, to pay for an exhibition space next to Oculus VR and then advertise your product as an "Oculus killer." That's exactly what 3DHead did with its "GCS3" head...

There are plenty of smart smoke detectors on the market that connect to your home's Wi-Fi network to provide smartphone notifications when there's trouble, but they're an expensive upgrade to the dumb smoke detector you've (hopefully) already got watching over your home. The $40 Roost promises pretty much the same functionality as those smart alternatives, but on the cheap, upgrading only the 9-volt battery your smoke or carbon monoxide detector already relies on.

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Waterbeds are pretty much extinct today, but this cute compilation of cats getting their minds blown by them might be enough of a reason to bring them back.

Previously: Cats Confused by Glass Tables

[sent by mrfunnymals]

In a recent appearance on Smosh Games (interview starts at 4:35), Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto touched on a range of topics, including the future of F-Zero and Pikmin.

The famed designer gave a concise update on the latter series -- "We will continue to make Pikmin games," he said through translator Bill Trinen -- but as for F-Zero, well, it's complicated:

"We see a lot of other designers who are kind of making more traditional racing style of games," he began. "So, we've tried to focus on something that feels a little bit more game-y. So, maybe if we create a new type of controller interface, and we find a controller interface that's particularly suited for F-Zero, then maybe we'll do something with it in the future."

Oh, Miyamoto. Always trying to surprise and delight.

Are you one of the millions of people who has looked at your BMW M4 and said, "This is good, but it's just not TRON enough for me"? Then BMW has a luminous solution straight from their high-tech i8: laser headlights .

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It's not all chips and wearable sensors at Intel's CES press conference. CEO Brian Krzanich just announced a far-reaching diversity initiative, promising to hire, promote and retain more women and underrepresented minorities. In particular, he said t...

How do you move in virtual reality?

When you're wearing the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset, your natural instinct is to walk or run around as you explore the simulated environment that surrounds you.

The Virtuix Omni is a virtual reality treadmill that's designed to solve this problem, and I got to try it at this year's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

The booth was located right next to the Oculus VR booth, and it's hard to say which booth drew more people. Crowds would stop to take pictures and videos of the futuristic spectacle of the Virtuix Omni in use, captivated by the testers running in place on the treadmill, waving a plastic gun around with an Oculus Rift strapped to their face.

The Virtuix Omni has been around for a little while now, raising over $1,000,000 in a Kickstarter campaign last July. Virtuix then went on to raise $2.7 million in funding just a month ago.

I got to try the very latest and final design of the Virtuix Omni, which is available now for pre-order for $499 (the price is going to go up when it launches).

Strapping into the Omni is a bit of chore. You have to wear special low-friction shoes that allow you to run in place, with your feet sliding and gliding along the bowl-like surface of the Omni treadmill.

Attached to each foot is an Omni sensor, which is "where the magic happens" according to a Virtuix booth attendant. These sensors track how fast you're walking and running so your in-game avatar moves at a similar pace.

After the shoes comes the harness, which straps around your waist. There's also some thigh straps. While you could technically use the Omni without a harness, it allows you to run and lean forward without falling over, and it frees up your hands from trying to keep you balanced, so you can hold a controller, or in this case, a plastic gun.

The last step was to don the Oculus Rift headset. For this demo, we used an Oculus Rift Development Kit 2, which isn't bad, but it's not nearly as nice as the most recent Crescent Bay prototype.

With the headset covering my vision, the Virtuix team booted up their own demo, which is a speed run where you try your best to shoot down various targets through a maize of rooms. The faster, the better.

Running on the Omni certainly doesn't feel like actual running. Your feet rarely leave the ground. Instead, it's more of a continuous sliding, almost like you're pedaling your feet across a wooden floor in slippery socks.

 

That being said, it's still feels like the closest thing to running in virtual reality that I've ever experienced, and it's quite the workout. Once I got the hang of it, I quickly found myself running from room to room, using my head to focus on a target and the gun to activate an iron site for better aim.

Now, the nice thing about the Virtuix Omni is that it plays nicely with all games, since it's basically just translating your footsteps into a forward, left, or right direction and feeding it into the game, almost like a big gamepad that you can run on. While that's probably the best way for the Omni to be compatible with a large range of games when the Oculus Rift launches, it also means that movements are far from exact; the movements are merely estimations.

All in all, this final version of the Omni looks and feels almost ready for release. There's still no ability to move backward or to strafe left or right, but I was told that's being worked on for the consumer release, which is scheduled for the first half of 2015. Design wise, the construction is far more solid and polished than other past Omni iterations, some of which actually featured a wooden rather than metal frame, and it can also be taken apart for storage, since it does take up a lot of space.

So should VR enthusiasts shell out $499 on a virtual reality treadmill? Like most VR tech coming out, the best option is still to wait. The Omni is a great workout, so if you're planning on buying an Oculus Rift and want to lose weight while using it, the Omni is a great choice that will work well enough with games.

But Oculus is still the leader of the pack when it comes to VR, and since they're targeting a seated experience, it's safe to say that you won't be missing out if you decide to save $499 and just sit on the couch. It might be slightly less immersive, but as of right now, there's no need to physically move your legs in VR quite yet.

You can pre-order a Virtuix Omni right here.

SEE ALSO: Watch Henry Blodget Freak Out When He Tries Oculus Rift And Looks Down From A Virtual Skyscraper

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Android is underappreciated as a commercial platform — as a revenue driver for the e-commerce, advertising, and software industries. 

Too many analysts remain attached to an outdated idea of Google's mobile operating system as fragmented, malware-ridden, and low-end. They believe Android users don’t spend money on mobile and lack lifetime value. This is no longer true.

In a new BI Intelligence report, we show how Android has translated its massive audience — an estimated 1.2 billion active users globally by the end of this year — into a solid platform for mobile-based businesses. 

Access The Full Report And Data By Signing Up For A Free Trial Today >>

Here are the report's main takeaways: 

• Mobile business models that neglect or ignore Android risk severely limiting their market potential. Android is roughly twice the size of iOS in terms of its user base and is comparable in size to the world’s two other major platforms: Facebook and Windows.
• Android is rising faster than competitors as a driver of mobile revenue, including ad revenue. In this year's second quarter, Android's share of mobile ad traffic passed the share controlled by Apple's iPhone and iPad devices. Android at 39% still lags iOS in ad revenue share, but it is gaining share twice as fast.
• Android is exploding as a mobile commerce driver. Android's share of mobile commerce orders is up 26% year-over-year. Android devices now account for just over one-fifth of all mobile e-commerce orders in the US. 
• The fragmentation problem is extremely overblown, from all perspectives: screen size, operating system version, and device proliferation. Globally, 80% of Android devices are running the two latest available versions of the platform. In the U.S, it's over 90%. Android Lollipop will roll out beginning this month.
• Google has also made strides in addressing the quality of apps in the Google Play app store, and that has translated to revenue growth. The percentage of spam apps is falling. Meanwhile, global  revenue on Google Play more than doubled year-over-year in the first quarter of 2014. That's faster growth than iOS, according to App Annie. Some analysts believe Google Play will overtake the Apple App Store in revenue within five years. 
• Android's Achilles Heel remains the feature-creep and bloatware perpetrated on the platform by partner carriers and manufacturers. But Google is exerting more and more control over Android and pushing partners to adopt its preferred version of Android, which has a full suite of Google apps, including  Search and Google Play. 
• Google has made progress in "recapturing" Android. In the second quarter of 2014, 65% of global smartphone shipments were running Google's preferred version of Android, rather than variants. That was a 3-percentage-point improvement over the previous quarter.  

The report is full of charts and data that can be easily downloaded and put to use. 

In full, the report: 

• Explains how Android has essentially solved the fragmentation problem 
• Delivers all the key stats in a dozen charts for Android-based e-commerce, advertising, and app sales
• Shows how Android is growing much faster across most key mobile business categories than rival platforms
• Lists all the milestones Android has achieved in 2014, including surpassing iOS in web traffic share
• Delves into why Android still has significant vulnerabilities, and how Google is addressing them

For full access to the report on Android As A Mobile Business Platform and all our downloadable charts and data on mobile computing strategy and trends sign up for a free trial subscription today.

 

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