A company that was conceived less than a year ago today announced its Series B round of funding late last night, with a massive raise of $75 million to add to its existing $16 million Series A and $2.4 million in Kickstarter crowdfunding dollars. That company is Oculus Rift: A virtual reality headset dreamt up by Gaikai veteran Brendan Iribe and a team of other startup vets. With nearly $100 million invested, expectations are huge, but the company is ready to meet those expectations, Iribe tells TechCrunch, and exceed them with a vision of the future that blurs the line between the virtual and the real.

Why So Much Money, So Fast

The Rift has already managed to sell over 42,000 units prior to its consumer launch, via development kits that are admittedly rough around the edges, according to Iribe. That’s impressive enough, but it’s not what’s selling investors like Marc Andreessen and game industry legends like John Carmack on the Rift – that’s the experience provided by the next-generation prototype, which is functionally the same as what we’ll see from the first consumer device, Iribe says, but which has been used by only a few hundred people at most as of right now.

Once the new prototype was perfected, Iribe got in touch with Marc Andreessen and Chris Dixon, to say that they’d achieved what they’d set out to do and asked how soon they could come in to see it. The combination of the prototype demonstration, and former id founder and Doom creator John Carmack explaining his vision of where he sees the entire Oculus project headed “pretty much convinced them on the spot,” Iribe tells me. Dixon and Andreessen join the fairly limited group of outside VCs with ownership stake in Oculus VR, and Iribe says that the partners and funding were chosen specifically with the intent that they should help them get to through the initial V1 consumer launch without having to go find more money elsewhere.

“The point of the first raise was to build out the technology,” Iribe says, explaining what the money has been spent on so far. “We actually thought it would take us a bit longer to get to the point of where we’re at now.”

But it didn’t take that long. The new Oculus Rift prototype should be virtually identical in terms of experience to the version that ships to consumers.

Achievement Unlocked: Consumer-Caliber Experience

“We got to the point where the latest prototype of this technology really is beyond even what we expected for V1,” Iribe told me. “We kind of put the hammer down and said ‘Okay, this is it, this is definitely enough to totally blow away the world and deliver our consumer, V1 product.’ We’re looking back even now on the dev kit and going ‘oh gosh, this new one is so much better.’ It is literally an entirely different experience.’”

“Of the 300 people who have seen the current prototype, not a single person has come away not saying ‘That’s gonna change the world,’ and that’s really [what we needed to accomplish] in terms of delivering on the promise of the vision we’ve all had for so many years,” Iribe says.

There’s a general feeling that it’s a true ‘Holy Grail’ experience in terms of immersive reality tech among those who’ve tried the latest prototype, Iribe says. I asked if I’d be able to see for myself at CES coming up in January, but he says they’re not ready to announce yet what they’re bringing to the show, and we’ll find out closer to the date. Not to read too much into it, but that does sound pretty promising for those hoping to get a sense of this new design in action. The latest hardware still isn’t close to final in terms of product design, however, Iribe adds:

“It’s what we want to bring as an experience,” he said. “It’s a prototype, so it still has its circuit boards and exposed wires and all that, but the experience, meaning once you put the device on, it is what we want to deliver in a consumer product. People go in, spend long periods of time in the experience and come out and say ‘I want to do more of that.’ There’s no kind of discomfort, no dizziness, no nausea. So many of the technical hurdles have been pretty much nailed.”

Vision In The Near-Term: Both Literal And Figurative

As for things they’re still working on the engineering side, Iribe says that there’s an increasing interest in building more advanced eye movement detection to the Rift’s functionality.

“[We recently hired] a lot of vision guys, that’s a big effort for us now,” he says. “We’re really focusing on the vision side, in terms of tracking and using optical tracking and camera tracking. That’s going to be a big focus for us going forward. Over time, we want to get more of the body in the game, but right now we’re trying to get your eyes in the game, combining your vision with your head tracking.”

Aside from engineering work, there’s a lot that needs to be nailed down in the immediate future. There’s figuring out how to consumerize the actual product design itself, and then ramping up the initial production run. That’s why Iribe isn’t putting a firm date on the Rift’s availability date just yet: internally, they have a pretty good idea of when to expect it to reach retailers and customers, but they’re purposely keeping tight-lipped about those projections to make sure everything’s ready when the time comes. To that end, they’re also hiring smart people aggressively in virtually every capacity, as there’s not just a hardware and software component to the Rift, but services, an ecosystem, a consumer education initiative and much, much more that all need to come together at launch.

Carmack Codes And Codes And Codes To Avoid A Deflating Launch

Hardware startups, especially those dealing with novel input paradigms or wearable computing, have been multiplying sharply in the past couple of years, and recently we’ve seen a number that were initially crowdfunded via pre-orders deliver their shipping consumer devices. The results aren’t pretty: while some like the Pebble have been fairly well-received (though not universally loved), others like the Leap Motion and the Ouya have sounded a sour note. Iribe admits that potential fate is a little daunting, but believes that Oculus is doing everything right to avoid the same kind of crash at the gate.

“John Carmack is writing code as fast as he can, travelling as little as he can,” he said. “I think he’s back to the early days of kind of a Doom and Quake era of him being held up in a room just programming as fast as he can to make this work really well, and he tells me having more fun than he’s had in a really long time.”

That likely explains why his dual roles at both Oculus and id didn’t last long, as he stepped down from the original home of Doom and Quake late last month to focus on being Oculus VR’s CTO full-time. Carmack is doing what he loves most at Oculus, according to Iribe, which is tackling a difficult problem that’s “right on the edge of reality.” Carmack pioneered both 2D and 3D gaming, and he’s doing the same thing all over again with the Oculus Rift, and it “really works,” Iribe says.

Acquisition Potential, Valuation And Launch Sales Estimates

Along with launch date and Carmack project specifics, Oculus is also keeping mum on valuation. Essentially, Iribe very loosely suggested a 20 to 40 percent equity sale at this stage for a startup like Oculus VR, which would put the valuation somewhere between $200 and $400 million or so, with the heavy caveat that this is mostly educated guessing on my part and not data sourced direct from the company.

“The valuation wasn’t so high that [our investors] were getting a tiny sliver, we had a pretty good valuation at each round [...] that was fair for everybody,” was the only thing Iribe would say for sure on the matter. “It’s good, but not too crazy.”

That valuation is high enough that any prospects of Oculus Rift getting scooped up by Microsoft, Sony or any other major incumbent gaming company is slim to none, Iribe says, at least until after they deliver their initial run of consumer devices. He also says that personally, the idea of having built what they have and not releasing it themselves just seems impossible.

“We feel like we have a pretty good idea of what we can sell through pre-orders, and through consumer launch, for the first six, eight or even twelve months,” Iribe explains regarding their budgeting and the amount raised, and why they don’t anticipate having to find more capital pre-launch. Extrapolating from comments he made to me, I’d suggest they’re looking somewhere in the neighborhood of one million devices for a production run funded by what’s in their existing coffers, though Iribe declined to get into specifics. He did say that they see that expanding to hundreds of millions of devices and active users sometime in the next decade or so, thanks to the long-term Oculus vision of VR beyond the confines of gaming.

Immersed In The Big Picture

What we’re looking at is the evolution of virtual reality, starting with this headset. It’s going to be a little bigger than we’d all want it to be of course, and it will have its form factor challenges, but the experience inside is good enough that people are going to really enjoy it, and love going in, playing games and watching movies. And then it’ll quickly evolve, and its form factor will keep getting better; closer and closer to sunglasses, lighter and easier to wear. Very quickly, over the next decade or two, what we’re looking at really becomes about communications.

Just like the smartphone now represents the primary means with which we communicate digitally, Iribe sees a future where VR supplants a lot of the same usage, so that you have a pair of sunglass-style Rift goggles that you simply slip on when you want to talk face-to-face, as if in person, with your friend halfway around the world. Our kids will laugh at stories of typing away on virtual keyboards and smiling back at grainy video into the unblinking eye of a monitor-mounted webcam, and remote business won’t be so remote anymore. In short, Oculus is taking the first step towards a world where the “virtual” in virtual reality is just a technical distinction, not a description of experience.

The internet has been lit up with talk of the nature of Santa Claus, especially after Megyn Kelly of Fox News declared him to be white because he "just is." But who is Santa Claus, really? I explained to my kids that Santa Claus is the spirit of anonymous giving without an expectation of gratitude or obligation. But the traditional elf who drives a sleigh pulled by reindeer -well that's a long and complicated story. The history of our Santa starts with a melding of Norse mythology and a Christian bishop from Turkey. As his legend traveled, he changed over the years. The story was solidified with the writings of Washington Irving and Clement Clarke Moore. But he still changed over time. Santa inevitably became an advertising icon.    

Even in these early days, Santa had his vices. Always a fan of tobacco, Santa Claus was depicted endorsing dozens of cigarette brands, such as Murad, Chesterfields, Pall Malls, and Camels, in countless magazine advertisements. Because Sundblom’s artist circle included pin-up artists, it wasn’t long before Santa’s trademark fur-trimmed red coat and hat were painted on scantily clad bombshells by the likes of Gil Elvgren and Alberto Vargas. The idea that Santa just might have a sexual appetite came up in songs like 1952’s “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” and 1953’s “Santa Baby,” the former sung by a naive child and the latter sung by a sultry Eartha Kitt. Racy ads for Mojud Hosiery in 1951 even showed Santa catching a glimpse up a woman’s skirt.

Despite what Fox News’ Megyn Kelly says, no one actually knows what skin color Nicholas of Myra had, or if he even existed in the first place. Except for the white beard, Old Saint Nick’s appearance has changed drastically throughout time. He generally took on the appearance of people in the communities who celebrated him—so because the Santa mythology had roots in Dutch, German, and British traditions, he was traditionally portrayed as an old white man.

Collectors Weekly looks at the history of Santa Claus, from Odin and St. Nicholas to this week's internet debate about his race, along with a gallery of dozens of strange images of Santa through the years.

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OF THE many thousands of usually small protests that break out in China every year, few relate to national policy. Many consider the risk of challenging the central government too great. But the entrance to the agriculture ministry is a gathering spot for occasional demonstrations. Their complaints are about an issue dear to the ministry: genetically modified (GM) crops. At one protest this year, a group chanted slogans calling for the eradication of "traitors" who support GM food. Debate over the technology is escalating, putting the government in a bind.

Public unease about genetic modification is common around the world. In China, alongside rising concerns about food safety, it has taken on a strongly political hue. Chinese anti-GM activists often describe their cause as patriotic, aimed not just at avoiding what they regard as the potential harm of tinkering with nature, but at resisting control of China's food supply by America through American-owned biotech companies and their superior technology. Conspiracy theories about supposed American plots to use dodgy GM food to weaken China abound online.

They are even believed by some in the government. In October an official video made for army officers was leaked on the internet and widely watched until censors scrubbed it. "America is mobilising its strategic resources to promote GM food vigorously," its narrator grimly intoned. "This is a means of controlling the world by controlling the world's food production."

Peng Guangqian, a retired major-general and prominent think-tanker, echoed these sentiments in an article published by official media in August. He said America might be setting a "trap". The result, he said, could be "far worse than the Opium War" between Britain and China in the 1840s that Chinese historians regard as the beginning of a "century of humiliation" at the hands of foreign powers.

China already uses plenty of GM products. More than 70% of its cotton is genetically modified. Most of the soyabeans consumed in China are imported, and most of those imports are GM (often from America). The technology is widely used for growing papayas. The government wants to develop home-grown GM varieties and has spent heavily on research, eager to maintain self-sufficiency in food. Officials see GM crops as a way of boosting yields on scarce farmland.

In 2009 China granted safety certificates for two GM varieties of rice and one of maize. This raised expectations that it might become the first country in the world to use GM technology in the production of a main staple. But further approvals needed for commercial growing have yet to be granted. To the consternation of GM supporters, the safety certificates for the rice are due to expire next August.

Public opinion is a big reason for the delay. Environmental groups in China have rarely succeeded in changing government policy. Officials have long treated such NGOs with suspicion and made it hard for them to register or set up offices in more than one place. The only NGO in China that devotes much time to the GM issue is an international one: Greenpeace. But the anti-GM lobby has thrived, thanks not least to the adoption of the cause by conservatives in the establishment as well as by informal groups of diehard Maoists who see America as a threat.

To the Maoists, opposing GM food is an urgent priority. Hardly a speech is made by one of them without mentioning it. "I support Mao Zedong thought," shouted one of the protesters outside the agriculture ministry. The police usually treat them with kid gloves; unlike others who protest in public, they are ardent supporters of Communist Party rule. And on this issue, at least, the Maoists enjoy much sympathy; public anxiety about food safety has soared in recent years thanks to a series of scares. Of 100,000 respondents to an online poll in November, nearly 80% said they opposed GM technology.

The fightback begins

Since a change of China's leadership a year ago, however, supporters of GM food inside the government and among the public have begun fighting back. In October Chinese media reported that 61 senior academics, in a rare concerted effort, had petitioned the government to speed up the commercialisation of GM crops. The Ministry of Agriculture was also said to be preparing a new public-education campaign on the merits of GM food (it issued a swift rebuttal of General Peng's remarks, saying GM foods certified in China were just as safe as any other food). Since May Huazhong Agricultural University in the central city of Wuhan has organised nearly 30 public events promoting GM rice, including, in October, the serving of porridge made from it to about 300 people.

One of the recent petitioners, Li Ning of China Agricultural University, laments that the issue remains ensnared by nationalist sentiment. Among students, he says, "lots of them wonder how to express their patriotism; people say opposing GM is patriotic, so they say, 'Fine, I'll oppose GM.'" He says the scientists have not received an official answer to their appeal, but he is heartened at least by their new willingness to speak out. "Previously there was only one voice, and it was anti-GM. Now we've entered a period of acute antagonism." The government, it appears, is waiting for the dust to settle before it lets the paddy fields fill with the controversial strains. That may take some time.

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Most of us freak out at the mere sight of a bug — let alone a photo! But there’s something about biologist Sam Droege’s pictures of insects that has hundreds of thousands of people marveling at them. Sam’s photostream offers viewers a detailed and rare look at bees; comparing these little, hairy creatures to mesmerizing works of art.

Sam Droege is the head of the U.S. Geological Survey’s Bee Inventory and Monitoring Laboratory in Maryland and for the past seven years he’s been photographing bees and other insects. The purpose is to create online reference catalogs to help researchers identify the thousands of bee species across North America.

“We have to take a lot of pictures because many of these species vary only by very subtle characteristics,” Sam explains. “For some it might be the tiny pits on the surface of the top of the bee, and others it might be the pits within the pits. It’s important to take as many pictures as possible allowing our specialists to look at anything they might be interested in.”

For years, Sam and his team took pictures using simple point-and-shoot cameras. The level of detail, however, was extremely limiting.

“We were taking pictures of bees through microscopes,” Sam says. “We literally attached cameras to microscopes, often with plumbing fixtures. But in the end, we were disappointed with the number of pixels and the amount of resolution of the photos. After a while, we largely stopped pictures through microscopes because the quality wasn’t up to our standards.”

But all that changed in 2010 when Sam’s team was approached by the U.S. Army. They had developed techniques using macro photography to take photos of insect infestations from foreign bases (Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.). Macro photography allowed the army to get high-quality pictures that, in turn, helped them to identify these insects and treat those affected. When Sam first saw these photos, the level of detail blew his mind.

“The army’s novelty here was the portraiture,” Sam admits. “It was the solid, black background, the off-centeredness, the flash, just everything helped provide a portrait of a bee, rather than a documentation of a bee.”

It was from that point onwards, Sam and his team adopted and modified this technique and resumed photographing their specimens.

To capture the bees with such detail, Sam and his team take several different shots of the (already dead) insect and combine them together to form one image using a special software. This software creates detailed macro images which can be blown up to five feet by eight feet without pixelating.

“When we started looking at these pictures, I just wanted to gaze at these shots for long periods of time,” Sam says. “I had seen these insects for many years, but the level of detail was incredible. The fact that everything was focused, the beauty and the arrangement of the insects themselves — the ratios of the eyes, the golden means, the french curves of the body, and the colors that would slide very naturally from one shade to another were just beautiful! It was the kind of thing that we could not achieve at the highest level of art.”

Sam began to show these pictures to several colleagues who also found them visually appealing. They encouraged him to share the photos on Flickr, as a means to transfer these images to other scientists and researchers.

“At some point we found out that someone had posted the Flickr pictures onto Reddit, and it got a huge number of views,” Sam says. “I think it was 200,000 views in two days. I couldn’t believe it! It was at that point we realized that there is interest in these kinds of pictures outside of our scientific circles, and that people just like looking at them.”

Sam says he’s always tried to attract people to what he does but admits it’s been difficult because many us have a preconceived notion that bugs are bad or gross. With these pictures, all of a sudden people were attracted to these insects because of their beauty. People described the bees as “fluffy” with “stained-glass wings.” It’s an entirely new way of reaching people Sam never thought was possible.

“I feel honored as a public servant to bring these pictures to people,” Sam admits. “They’re all public for anyone to see. And the fact that it’s not just important scientifically, but also beautiful… it makes me feel good. It reaches my soft side of my hard-scientist body. And I smile every day when I look at the number of views we’re getting on Flickr.”

Visit Sam’s photostream to see more of his photography.

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Team Fortress 2 Dispenser Plushies

Want your own happy little dispenser plushie, delighted to provide you health and ammo? How about a dizzy little sapped dispenser plush to hug and comfort through the rough times? Now one can be yours!

You can pick which Team Fortress 2 team your dispenser buddy will belong to (RED or BLU). Secondly, you can pick what kind of expression your buddy will have! 

These precious little buddies are $58.08 USD each! They are available from Phoo’s Engineered Plushies, a shop that also offers some TF2 buttons!

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That was just too awkward and painful to watch.

Girl Friend-Zones Guy Caught On Security Camera [Video] is a post from: The Inquisitr News

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For anyone who ever mumbled the words to a song without certainty while your friends belt it out, this video is for you.

Pleated Jeans has put together a compilation of 2013's biggest pop songs, captioning the wrong words that somehow still sound right.

The misheard lyrics transform the songs making some more absurd (i.e., Rihanna's fear of condiments), while others are just concerning. (Why is one of the guys from Imagine Dragons making his sister moan?)

Some of the lyrical mix-ups seem like a stretch (Did anyone actually Pink was singing about a raisin?) but any of them could make your holiday karaoke party more interesting. Read more...

More about Viral Videos, Watercooler, Videos, and 2013

Thanks Krisgo

 

If you're as enamored with this gorgeous vintage skeeball game as we are, finding space for it in your home won't be a problem. Because you'll happily ditch your dining room table, your living room sofa, even your bed to make room for this piece. It basically turns your home into your own private Chuck E. Cheese's minus the screaming kids and disgusting layer of grease.

Read more...

Capcom has been pumping out classic video game music for nearly three decades, pushing out iconic music for a number of franchises like Mega Man, Bionic Commando, and Street Fighter that have all been updated through modernized remixes. Naturally, the upcoming Strider is set to receive the same musical treatment, with many of its most recognizable tracks from the original arcade and NES era getting updated for a new generation.

Brought to you by Jem and the Holograms and TWA - The Truly Owtrageous Airline! (don't hurt me)

First, Between Me and You, Big Ben is rather fun to fly around on. Assuming you can fly, that is.





















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