Techflier

 You might have noticed a new end-of-year trend on Instagram the past few days. If so, you can thank 2017bestnine.com, a website that lets you automatically collect and collage your most-liked photos of 2017. Best Nine has been around for a while, so many of you may be familiar with the tool already. But for those of you who are new to that Best Nine game, here’s how it works. First of… Read More from TechCrunch http://ift.tt/2q4IuRn via IFTTT

2017 was a good time for racial representation in movies. From films like Hidden Figures to Coco , it seems that Hollywood is more invested than ever in telling stories with diverse leads. Not all of the news is good, however; the past year also saw two more whitewashing controversies thanks to the live-action Ghost in the Shell and Netflix’s Death Note , and people of color on the big screen still lag far behind their populations in real life. Although it’s difficult to square all these trends into one easily understood narrative, especially as no single report out there has all the numbers and data, we can still piece together a general idea of how this year stacked up against years prior. Get Out, which premiered in February, explored... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts http://ift.tt/2lucIZt via IFTTT

Throughout the final week of 2017, culture writers from across Vox Media will be chatting about the best works of the year. In this installment, Vox’s Todd VanDerWerff, Alissa Wilkinson, and Genevieve Koski; The Verge’s Tasha Robinson; and Polygon’s Julia Alexander talk about the movies of 2017. Todd VanDerWerff: My favorite movies in 2017 weren’t escapism, not precisely, but they did take me so thoroughly out of my own point of view that reentering reality afterward could feel a little like resurfacing after a deep-sea dive. From the intimate details of Lady Bird to the bleakly comedic terror of Get Out , from the cat’s-eye-view shots of Kedi to the sudden plunge into the vastness of infinity in A Ghost Story , movies often felt like a... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts http://ift.tt/2C4bL0f via IFTTT

Earlier this month, HQ Trivia announced that the app would finally be available for Android users , allowing them to pre-register to download it. The app is now available in the Google Play Store’s Early Access section. The game launched this past fall on iOS. The Android app is still in beta, and the product page notes that the app is potentially unstable. Recode reported earlier this month that the company is working to raise money from venture capitalists for a potential $100 million valuation. The addition of an Android app will likely help boost its user base. Created by Vine co-founders Rus Yusupov and fellow co-founder Colin Kroll, the game is a live trivia contest that has become extremely popular in recent months . Players... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts http://ift.tt/2C1lcNL via IFTTT

Before his death in January 2016 , David Bowie was a noted musician, actor, and was a prolific reader . On Twitter , Bowie’s son, Duncan Jones recently said that he has been “feeling a building sense of duty to go on the same literary marathon in tribute” to his late father, and will be holding an online book club based on his father’s favorite books. Bowie’s website provides a list of his 100 favorite books , and Jones, the director of Moon , Warcraft , and the forthcoming film Mute , said on Twitter that he’ll be starting off with Peter Ackroyd’s 1985 novel Hawksmoor. The novel follows two parallel storylines: one follows an 18th century church builder in London who performs human sacrifices, while the other is about a detective who is... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts http://ift.tt/2lsq4FH via IFTTT

A team of reptile and amphibian enthusiasts is asking for the public’s help training artificial intelligence to spot snakes, frogs, and more from photos. The team wants to eventually create an app that can help people identify these creatures in their backyards — and prevent people from killing them. But first, their AI has to get better at making those photo IDs. The AI, named Fitch after the late, renowned herpetologist Henry S. Fitch , is part of a new platform called What the Herp? Right now, it’s a webpage and a Twitter bot (@WhatTheHerp) where people can submit photos for Fitch to try and identify. “The biggest issue with conservation of herps is that we work with one of the most detested groups on the planet — you’re up there... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts http://ift.tt/2C5kgYI via IFTTT

 Imagine attending a business meeting with an Amazon Echo (or any voice-driven device) sitting on the conference table. A question arises about the month’s sales numbers in the Southeast region. Instead of opening a laptop, opening a program like Excel and finding the numbers, you simply ask the device and get the answer instantly. That kind of scenario is increasingly becoming a… Read More from TechCrunch http://ift.tt/2CmC7xX via IFTTT