Apple starts sharing its AI research and Snapchat adds AR talent. That and more in The Daily Crunch for December 27, 2016. And if you're suffering a turkey coma, I am with you. 1. Apple starts publishing its AI research If you want to attract top talent in research in almost any advanced tech field, it helps to publish your research. A lot of academics who would make the jump to private industry otherwise won't do it if there's no opportunity to engage with the academic community, which is probably why Apple is publishing its AI research finally. The other tech bigs learned this lesson earlier, but publishing is something secretive Apple has been slow to become comfortable with. Better late than never, because it's hard to attract the best when you're organization isn't perceived as a cutting edge company in a given field. 2. Oculus Computer Vision lead arrested in underage sex sting Oculus has a lot of problems on its hands in terms of leadership right now, and a new one was added to the pile over the holidays. Head of Computer Vision at the company Dov Katz was arrested in a sting operation in which a cop posed as a 15-year old girl offering sex for money. This probably isn't going to make it any easier for Palmer Luckey to make his return. 3. 40 women who rocked 2016 2016 was a shit year in many ways, but it was actually a pretty great one when it comes to women in tech excelling in their field. Connie rounds up the highlights. 4. Snapchat acquires AR startup Cimagine You might have heard of those AR apps that let you put potential purchases in your space to preview what they'll actually look like, and Cimagine is one of them. Snapchat acquired the startup for between $30 and $40 million, adding to its existing AR expertise. 5. Samsung's C-Lab brings skin care and kids to CES CES is a dystopia of weird and bad tech ideas, and Samsung wants to throw its own contributions into the pixel in the form of some skin care gadgets and tech for kids. Ugh. 6. Snopes is one to watch in Trumpian times Snopes gets profiled in the New York Times now that it's adding staff and taking a place in the spotlight following its work to debunk this particularly poorly informed election cycle, and now assisting with Facebook's mission to bring facts back into the news feed. 7. Handbrake exists beta HandBrake is an app that will probably be recognized by most internet user of a certain era, but the amazing thing that happened over the holiday is that the software exited beta – a full 13 years after its original release. I hope it's stable. |