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IMAX is going VR, so put on your headsets and hold on

Late last week, IMAX announced that it had “completed the first phase of a $50 million virtual reality fund between IMAX and other strategic investors to help finance the creation of at least 25 interactive VR content experiences over the next three years for use across all VR platforms including in IMAX VR centers.” That means that at some point in the near future, we’ll be able to enjoy higher-quality VR content on really, really giant screens.

Law firm Baker & Hostetler has announced that they are employing IBM’s AI Ross to handle their bankruptcy practice, which at the moment consists of nearly 50 lawyers.

Ross, “the world’s first artificially intelligent attorney” built on IBM’s cognitive computer Watson, was designed to read and understand language, postulate hypotheses when asked questions, research, and then generate responses (along with references and citations) to back up its conclusions. Ross also learns from experience, gaining speed and knowledge the more you interact with it.

“At BakerHostetler, we believe that emerging technologies like cognitive computing and other forms of machine learning can help enhance the services we deliver to our clients.”

ay you’re a time-starved man with a hankering to dress better. Just sign up on Trunk Club, one of whose style experts will call or email you shortly after to talk about your vision for your wardrobe. A few days later, a bemused FedEx employee shows up at your door bearing a trademark "trunk" (made of cardboard), which contains 10 or so items of clothing.

Finding someone who knows style is less important than finding someone who understands sales and relationship management

We have between 40 and 50 now, and 90% are women. They tend to have a background that includes sales, but rarely retail.

Its newest toy is called Barco Escape and right now it’s essentially three theater screens in one space — the main screen and then additional screens on the left and right walls. The effect is a 270-degree image that makes viewers feel like they are in the middle of the action.

It’s the kind of premium experience that most people would expect to pay extra for but Schilowitz says part of the point of Escape is to give viewers a more theme-park like experience without charging any more for a ticket.

One of the biggest trends right now is people watching other people play video games.

Founded in California four years ago, Coursera has become one of the world's biggest providers of "massive, open, online courses" - known as Moocs. The online platform has 20 million students following courses from about 145 prestigious universities and institutions around the world.But most of the online courses have been short units that give students a certificate, rather than a full degree or credits towards a degree.

Coursera has announced a partnership with the US State Department to help refugees to access online courses to improve their job chances, such as English language lessons or computer coding.It would remove any costs from studying, such as fees for certificates showing the completion of courses.

EdX is offering a range of online courses from Arizona State University - and if a student passes eight of these, costing $200 (£150) each, it counts as the equivalent of a first year at university.

Citizens of Kuwait must now register their DNA with the government or face hefty fines

In a bold and controversial move, Kuwait has just passed a new law that makes it mandatory to register your DNA with the government. Starting soon, the 1.3 million citizens and 2.9 million foreign residents of Kuwait will have to enter their individual DNA profiles into a government database.

Since the program is being mandated, the government of Kuwait will spend the equivalent of about $400 million to subsidize the DNA testing and management. Refusal to comply or DNA tampering could result in fines as high as $33,000, and even time in prison.

the goal here is to create proof of creation in a public database (namely, the blockchain) without necessarily dealing with the time and cost of officially registering

“The blockchain is the perfect solution for providing proof of creation,” Lands said. “It’s a permanent immutable record. Meaning, once the record is there it’s there forever and will never change.”

“The ideal future system is one where there is a universal database for claiming ownership of creations and for paying royalties,” Lands added. “Making it as simple as possible for people to do the right thing.”

NEW EDUCATION MODELS

education will become an "on-demand service" where people "pull down a module of learning" when they need it.

"School kids will learn from short bite-sized modules, and gamification practices will be incorporated in schools

From staff-free ticket offices to students who can learn online, it seems there is no corner of economic life in which people are not being replaced by machines.

One of the reasons Google is investing so much is that whoever owns the communications system for driverless cars will own the 21st century's equivalent of the telephone network or money clearing system: this will be a licence to print money.

The only new jobs will be in the design and marketing of the cars, and in writing the computer software that will allow them to navigate their journeys, along with the apps for our mobile phones that will help us to use them better

The term “enhancing underwear” might summon images of go-go-gadget pants that help you run faster and jump higher, but it actually refers to a new breed of briefs that promise you a bigger bulge. Push-up bras and “butt-lifters” have long been a staple of women’s lingerie aisles, but genital scaffolding has now spread to menswear. Featured in the V&A exhibition, the “Wonderjock” is the work of Australian company AussieBum and aims to do for men’s bits what the Wonderbra did for women’s busts – hoisting them up and thrusting them out.

US army researchers have developed smart underwear, with sensors secreted inside elastic waistbands that track heart rate, body temperature and perspiration, and beam the stats back to a central monitor. This “wear-and-forget” sensory system is also designed for stressful training situations, identifying which soldiers remain more balanced, so they can be picked for the harder missions.

Underwear is already a common place for smuggling drugs of the illegal variety, but a recent pharmaceutical innovation could soon make putting pills in your pants a legitimate activity. Swiss textile giant Schoeller has developed a fabric that administers drugs to the surface of your skin over time, and thinks the best place to put it is in your undies – as those are the garments you’re least likely to forget to put on.

We increasingly live in a world where we don’t have to leave our homes, and when we do, we travel in isolation

It is in public space that we encounter a wide variety of people different from ourselves. Public spaces are important because they provide room to negotiate how we will live together in a highly populated environment. Encountering people of different races, classes, ages and abilities on a daily basis has the potential to cultivate a citizenry that is more tolerant of diversit

Streets are declining as a form of public space because street life often is perceived – and sometime is – unsafe: thus we frequently retreat indoors, making the streets even less safe

The predictive factors themselves—behavior problems, frequent absences from school, reading skills that are below grade level—are not so surprising.

Thanks to widespread automation and digitization, we now have access to more information, gathered at ever-earlier stages, about individuals’ performance at school

There is a danger, of course, that people who struggle early on will be written off too soon, before they’ve had a chance to prove themselves.

Parents can program up to five numbers into the gadget, which kids can call with the touch of a button.

The FiLIP's simple interface only includes two buttons, one of which is bright red. In case of emergency, the child can hold down the red button, prompting the watch to call the first person in its contact list.

Microsoft unveiled a new hologram platform today as part of its new operating system

The holographic software is built into Windows 10 already, the company said. Though Microsoft is working on its own hardware, the platform will also work for other virtual reality software like Oculus Rift and Google Glass

Microsoft executive built a virtual flying drone, which the company then showed could be 3D printed. Alex Kipman, who helped lead the project, called it “print preview for 3D printing”.

The City Council's Housing and Buildings Committee heard testimony Tuesday from residents, housing advocates, city officials and companies about the effects of the growing industry on the city.

In November 2014, about 15,300 New York City listings were entire homes or apartments representing about 59% of the available listings on the site that month, according to Slee. There were also 9,704 listings for private rooms, and 753 listings for shared rooms. The analysis also showed that 2,764 users were renting out two or more units, which opponents have cited as evidence the service is helping illegal hotels. More than 200 users were renting out five units or more

Airbnb is calling for "smart regulation," which it has had success with in cities including Portland, Oregon; San Jose and San Francisco, California; Amsterdam; and Paris. Airbnb collects lodging tax directly from hosts in those cities, and several local governments have passed laws that allow short-term rentals in some form.

Kindly is his first effort to come up with an alternative solution. With the app, which launched quietly a couple weeks ago, users can share or receive short conversation prompts in categories like "addiction/recovery," "marriage/divorce," "work/business" and "creativity/inspiration." The app then makes use of an algorithm to try and match the person who put out the prompt with another who may serve as a good listener.

The good news is that the citizens faced with this disaster reaped the benefits of enhanced mass communications and early warning systems -- clearly the power of the Internet being used for social good.

citizens already turn to social media for disaster updates to supplement traditional governmental and agency sources. Taken a step further, imagine an app that enables disaster victims and relief workers to view a shared map and see where all the rescue and aid efforts are situated in real time.

Technology is getting smaller, faster, cheaper and more powerful every day. With this phenomenon, sensors in almost everything become the norm -- in our cars, machinery and infrastructure. This evolution, paired with the power of cloud computing and big data analytics, makes it possible for both humans and inanimate objects to communicate valuable information.

RankBrain helps Google decipher the approximately 15% of phrases that the search engine has not encountered before, Bloomberg reports.

Google has just gone public with the details of a new artificial intelligence called RankBrain, which the search giant is using to handle difficult queries.