Year: 2018

Google may have evaded the first few rounds of grill-a-tech-exec, but its CEO Sundar Pichai wound up in the hot seat on the Hill after all. Pichai appeared today, weathering a three-and-a-half-hour hearing solo with no competitors to offload congressional ire onto.

To his credit, Pichai performed very well. Instead of adopting Facebook’s flavor of over-rehearsed confidence and robot-like answers, Pichai came across as human, very competent and fairly sympathetic. That demeanor held, even as Pichai dodged here and pushed a handful of misrepresentations and mistruths there.

In a normal hearing, Pichai’s task would be tough, but this wasn’t a normal hearing. Pichai wasn’t called to Capitol Hill to testify on Google’s role in Russian disinformation, its controversial plan to re-enter China or recent news that Google+ exposed private data. Rather, he was summoned to Washington as the last gasp of a Republican-led House Judiciary Committee hellbent on performing its own preoccupation with perceived political bias against conservatives.

The hearing, titled “Transparency & Accountability: Examining Google and its Data Collection, Use, and Filtering Practices” hewed closely to that aim in its mission to “examine potential bias” supposedly perpetrated by the search giant to the detriment of right-leaning voices. Over more than three hours of testimony, no proof surfaced that Silicon Valley’s left-leaning ideals had polluted Google’s search algorithms, which shouldn’t come as a surprise. No substantial evidence has surfaced indicating that conservatives are unfairly treated by Google to date, though that doesn’t keep many of the committee’s Republicans from treating those accusations as fact.

Unfortunately for them, perhaps, none of this flustered Google’s chief executive. Pichai patiently explained that Google was aware of many of the accusations from the right, but that its own investigations had turned up nothing of substance. He gently disputed the questionable methodologies behind research purporting to show evidence of Google’s bias.

“I lead this company without political bias and work to ensure that our products continue to operate that way,” Pichai said. “To do otherwise would go against our core principles and our business interests.”

The partisan-fueled line of questioning led to a weird role dynamic in which Democrats on the committee pushed back on Republican talking points, defending Google instead of laying into the company on the myriad relevant issues of substance. For a political body ostensibly committed to holding power to account — and wielding its regulatory power in doing so — it was disappointing. Pichai mostly slipped through their hands.

Some of the committee’s members even acknowledged more substantial issues — anti-competitive behavior, Google’s position on China — before skipping back to the Republican-led committee’s agreed-upon throughline. Still, there were a few moments of clarity.

When asked point-blank by Rhode Island Rep. David Cicilline if Pichai would “rule out launching a tool for surveillance and censorship in China” during his tenure as CEO, Pichai dodged noticeably. Washington Rep. Pramila Jayapal cornered Pichai into a follow-up commitment on ending its forced arbitration practices for issues extending beyond sexual harassment. And a number of members of the committee pressed Pichai on Google’s invasive Android location-sharing practices in light of a recent New York Times report raising the issue, so it’s good to see Congress uncomfortable with that knowledge even if some members of this particular committee still don’t know the basics of how tech works.

In spite of these bright spots, Pichai got off easy. He managed to make it through more than three hours without any questioning about Google’s interest in providing technology for military applications. And no one quite pinned him down to any kind of commitment around Android location sharing concerns or Google’s inscrutable privacy policies, though that doesn’t come as a surprise. Under Democratic leadership next term, the committee hinted that it would try again.

“I look forward next year to working with you on some of the very serious questions we face,” Rep. Zoe Lofgren said. “It’s pretty obvious bias against conservative voices is not one of them.”

Tech executives, so insulated within massive, layered companies and cocooned in wealth, are rarely if ever accountable, on a personal level, to much of anyone. The opportunity to press them with questions in real time is almost never afforded to members of the press. Unfortunately, especially right now, there are many, many legitimate things to hold Google to account about that were not the premise of today’s hearing.

It’s all the more disappointing then that Pichai’s time on the stand was mostly squandered. 

Google may have evaded the first few rounds of grill-a-tech-exec, but its CEO Sundar Pichai wound up in the hot seat on the Hill after all. Pichai appeared today, weathering a three-and-a-half-hour hearing solo with no competitors to offload congressional ire onto.

To his credit, Pichai performed very well. Instead of adopting Facebook’s flavor of over-rehearsed confidence and robot-like answers, Pichai came across as human, very competent and fairly sympathetic. That demeanor held, even as Pichai dodged here and pushed a handful of misrepresentations and mistruths there.

In a normal hearing, Pichai’s task would be tough, but this wasn’t a normal hearing. Pichai wasn’t called to Capitol Hill to testify on Google’s role in Russian disinformation, its controversial plan to re-enter China or recent news that Google+ exposed private data. Rather, he was summoned to Washington as the last gasp of a Republican-led House Judiciary Committee hellbent on performing its own preoccupation with perceived political bias against conservatives.

The hearing, titled “Transparency & Accountability: Examining Google and its Data Collection, Use, and Filtering Practices” hewed closely to that aim in its mission to “examine potential bias” supposedly perpetrated by the search giant to the detriment of right-leaning voices. Over more than three hours of testimony, no proof surfaced that Silicon Valley’s left-leaning ideals had polluted Google’s search algorithms, which shouldn’t come as a surprise. No substantial evidence has surfaced indicating that conservatives are unfairly treated by Google to date, though that doesn’t keep many of the committee’s Republicans from treating those accusations as fact.

Unfortunately for them, perhaps, none of this flustered Google’s chief executive. Pichai patiently explained that Google was aware of many of the accusations from the right, but that its own investigations had turned up nothing of substance. He gently disputed the questionable methodologies behind research purporting to show evidence of Google’s bias.

“I lead this company without political bias and work to ensure that our products continue to operate that way,” Pichai said. “To do otherwise would go against our core principles and our business interests.”

The partisan-fueled line of questioning led to a weird role dynamic in which Democrats on the committee pushed back on Republican talking points, defending Google instead of laying into the company on the myriad relevant issues of substance. For a political body ostensibly committed to holding power to account — and wielding its regulatory power in doing so — it was disappointing. Pichai mostly slipped through their hands.

Some of the committee’s members even acknowledged more substantial issues — anti-competitive behavior, Google’s position on China — before skipping back to the Republican-led committee’s agreed-upon throughline. Still, there were a few moments of clarity.

When asked point-blank by Rhode Island Rep. David Cicilline if Pichai would “rule out launching a tool for surveillance and censorship in China” during his tenure as CEO, Pichai dodged noticeably. Washington Rep. Pramila Jayapal cornered Pichai into a follow-up commitment on ending its forced arbitration practices for issues extending beyond sexual harassment. And a number of members of the committee pressed Pichai on Google’s invasive Android location-sharing practices in light of a recent New York Times report raising the issue, so it’s good to see Congress uncomfortable with that knowledge even if some members of this particular committee still don’t know the basics of how tech works.

In spite of these bright spots, Pichai got off easy. He managed to make it through more than three hours without any questioning about Google’s interest in providing technology for military applications. And no one quite pinned him down to any kind of commitment around Android location sharing concerns or Google’s inscrutable privacy policies, though that doesn’t come as a surprise. Under Democratic leadership next term, the committee hinted that it would try again.

“I look forward next year to working with you on some of the very serious questions we face,” Rep. Zoe Lofgren said. “It’s pretty obvious bias against conservative voices is not one of them.”

Tech executives, so insulated within massive, layered companies and cocooned in wealth, are rarely if ever accountable, on a personal level, to much of anyone. The opportunity to press them with questions in real time is almost never afforded to members of the press. Unfortunately, especially right now, there are many, many legitimate things to hold Google to account about that were not the premise of today’s hearing.

It’s all the more disappointing then that Pichai’s time on the stand was mostly squandered. 

Ah, holiday board gaming. A roaring fire. A glass of nog. And a raging debate over whether the blue guy was next to the red square or vice versa.

Buying a gift for a board game fan? Just need something new to bring along to the get together? In this roundup we highlight some of what we’ve been playing lately – from the easy to the immensely complex – and give you and your family fodder for your next bout of holiday fun. Some new, some old, all great.

 

Machi Koro

This super-cute card game involves building a city using special buildings and attractions. Will your city have a power station, a noodle bar, and a playground? Or will you focus on a TV station, a bakery, and city hall? Think of it as a whimsical Sim City in physical form.

 

King of Tokyo

Who do you want to be today? A giant lizard? A mech? An alien invader? With King of Tokyo you can take over a Japanese metropolis with your giant monster and, with the right moves, take out other players with your spiky tail or teeth. A great game for middle-schoolers, it offers some of the fun of card gaming with board game play.

 

Codenames

Codenames is a wildly different experience with each new group of players. You lay out a grid of cards, each with a single word on it. You pair off two-versus-two, with one player being the clue giver, the other being the guesser. The clue giver is trying to get their guesser to pick as many of their team’s cards as they can each turn, but there’s a catch: the clue giver can only say one word per turn… and there are sudden death cards on the board. You’re looking for single words that can connect multiple cards without misleading the guesser into tapping any of the other team’s cards or, worse yet, the sudden death killer card. Lead the guesser astray, and your team’s done for. There are all sorts of variations of Codenames at this point — including a picture-heavy Disney remix for when the littles want to join in.

 

Anomia

You pull a card. It has a seemingly random symbol on it, along with a category — like “Shoe brand”, or “Occupation”, or “Pop Star”. Look at the top cards of the other players at the table; does your symbol match anyone else’s symbol? If so, the race is on. The first one who can name something, anything that fits the category wins that round. It sounds simple, but it’ll leave your brain exhausted and your body sore from laughter.

 

Bohnanza

In this German card game, you’re dealt a hand of assorted types of beans (some more rare than others) that you must play in the order they’re dealt. You have a limited number of fields in which to plant your beans, which you can then harvest for money. The trick of the game is that as new cards/beans are introduced, they must be planted or harvested by someone at the table for play to resume, so a big part of the game is negotiating bean trades with other players to make the most of your own hand. The player with the most money at the end of the game wins. If you enjoy haggling and negotiating (and goofy cartoon beans) this game is for you.

Waldschattenspiel

I’ve talked about this game before on TC but this version, in the original German, is one of the coolest versions. The gameplay is simple: you turn off the lights in the room and hide little elves behind tall trees. Then one player moves her candle through the forest, trying to catch the elves at play. Once all of the elves are caught – or all the elves hide in one spot – you win. The best part? Fire!

 

Viticulture

Given that most games are played while drinking a bottle or two of wine, Viticulture is the drinking person’s board game. You and your family run a small winery in Tuscany and you have to grow your business by picking grapes, making wine, and getting visitors. Another building game with a great premise.

 

Secret Hitler

Secret Hitler is a game about the rise of fascism. While it’s not a light-hearted game, it does teach us about the fragility of political systems and what it takes to go from a peaceable state to a fascist one overnight. Influenced by Werewolf/Mafia style games, one player is Secret Hitler and another player is a secret Nazi. Together, without telling they other players, they must work together to convert the government to fascism. It’s well worth a look if you like thinking games.

Spaceteam

Spaceteam is a cooperative game — you win, or lose, together. But just because it’s cooperative doesn’t it’s a calm, friendly hang. Oh, there will be yelling.

Spaceteam has you working together to repair your failing spacecraft. Everyone at the table has a set of goals they need to accomplish… but everyone else at the table has their own goals, too. And everyone seemingly has the wrong tools. Gather all the tools you need from other players, and that goal is complete… but everyone else needs their tools too, and with the timer counting down, you’re going to have to all go simultaneously if you’re going to survive. It’s frantic and ridiculous and OH MY GOD SOMEONE PASS ME THE CENTRIFUGAL DISPOSAL, I’VE ASKED FIFTEEN TIMES oh nevermind i have it right here.

 

Carcassone

Carcassonne is one of my absolute favorite games. This city building game lets little ones take part in the fun and, because it is so visually arresting, it can engross you for hours. This massive box includes almost all the expansions. I cannot recommend this game more highly.

 

 

Twilight Struggle

This massive game lets you play the USSR vs. the USA in a struggle for world domination. Designed to simulate the Cold War – I know, exciting! – it’s actually a truly engrossing title and well worth a look.

Scythe

Scythe is a sprawling game that uses cards and miniatures to describe a world of alternate reality. As a farmer in this broken world you must rebuild your armies, reclaim lost lands, and start up the great gears of progress. It’s a long game – about 115 minutes – but it has gotten rave reviews.

Gnomes at Night

Gnomes at Night is a cooperative kids game with a twist. One player sees a maze while other player cannot. The players work together to move through the maze to the treasure, encouraging communications and interaction that online games lack.

 

 

Risk Legacy

Risk Legacy offers all the complexity of Risk with even more complexity! In each game the board and pieces themselves change, allowing you to create long stretches of gameplay that promise repeat bouts. While old fashioned Risk is a still a classic, this amazing game is a great expansion to that military world.

 

Last Night On Earth

Last Night on Earth is a board game with multiple playthrough scenarios. Players get to choose if they play as humans or zombies. If you’re on the human team, you get to pick a hero card before the game starts. You then move around the board to solve the scenario — for instance, you can be defending a manor, escaping a location and more. Zombies will get in the way and you’ll have to find the best weapon to get rid of them.

 

Gloomhaven 

If your friends and family take board gaming serious, consider Gloomhaven. It’s a good bit more intense (and, at $140+, more expensive) than anything listed above, but it’s one of the most popular games of the year for a reason. A ready-to-play dungeon crawler in a box, its got thousands of cards, dozens of playable classes, and nearly 100 playable scenarios. You’ll want to lock in a group of friends who can meet up regularly to play this one with before diving in — but if you can do that, you’re in for something special.

Hero Realms

Hero Realms is like a trading card game (think Magic: The Gathering) but also quite different. If you hate buying card packs to build the best deck ever, Hero Realms is for you — everything is already in the box. Each player starts with just a handful of cards and slowly builds a deck by acquiring cards from the central pile. After that, it’s a matter of combining the effects of multiple cards to attack your opponent and destroy their heroes.

 

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Ah, holiday board gaming. A roaring fire. A glass of nog. And a raging debate over whether the blue guy was next to the red square or vice versa.

Buying a gift for a board game fan? Just need something new to bring along to the get together? In this roundup we highlight some of what we’ve been playing lately – from the easy to the immensely complex – and give you and your family fodder for your next bout of holiday fun. Some new, some old, all great.

 

Machi Koro

This super-cute card game involves building a city using special buildings and attractions. Will your city have a power station, a noodle bar, and a playground? Or will you focus on a TV station, a bakery, and city hall? Think of it as a whimsical Sim City in physical form.

 

King of Tokyo

Who do you want to be today? A giant lizard? A mech? An alien invader? With King of Tokyo you can take over a Japanese metropolis with your giant monster and, with the right moves, take out other players with your spiky tail or teeth. A great game for middle-schoolers, it offers some of the fun of card gaming with board game play.

 

Codenames

Codenames is a wildly different experience with each new group of players. You lay out a grid of cards, each with a single word on it. You pair off two-versus-two, with one player being the clue giver, the other being the guesser. The clue giver is trying to get their guesser to pick as many of their team’s cards as they can each turn, but there’s a catch: the clue giver can only say one word per turn… and there are sudden death cards on the board. You’re looking for single words that can connect multiple cards without misleading the guesser into tapping any of the other team’s cards or, worse yet, the sudden death killer card. Lead the guesser astray, and your team’s done for. There are all sorts of variations of Codenames at this point — including a picture-heavy Disney remix for when the littles want to join in.

 

Anomia

You pull a card. It has a seemingly random symbol on it, along with a category — like “Shoe brand”, or “Occupation”, or “Pop Star”. Look at the top cards of the other players at the table; does your symbol match anyone else’s symbol? If so, the race is on. The first one who can name something, anything that fits the category wins that round. It sounds simple, but it’ll leave your brain exhausted and your body sore from laughter.

 

Bohnanza

In this German card game, you’re dealt a hand of assorted types of beans (some more rare than others) that you must play in the order they’re dealt. You have a limited number of fields in which to plant your beans, which you can then harvest for money. The trick of the game is that as new cards/beans are introduced, they must be planted or harvested by someone at the table for play to resume, so a big part of the game is negotiating bean trades with other players to make the most of your own hand. The player with the most money at the end of the game wins. If you enjoy haggling and negotiating (and goofy cartoon beans) this game is for you.

Waldschattenspiel

I’ve talked about this game before on TC but this version, in the original German, is one of the coolest versions. The gameplay is simple: you turn off the lights in the room and hide little elves behind tall trees. Then one player moves her candle through the forest, trying to catch the elves at play. Once all of the elves are caught – or all the elves hide in one spot – you win. The best part? Fire!

 

Viticulture

Given that most games are played while drinking a bottle or two of wine, Viticulture is the drinking person’s board game. You and your family run a small winery in Tuscany and you have to grow your business by picking grapes, making wine, and getting visitors. Another building game with a great premise.

 

Secret Hitler

Secret Hitler is a game about the rise of fascism. While it’s not a light-hearted game, it does teach us about the fragility of political systems and what it takes to go from a peaceable state to a fascist one overnight. Influenced by Werewolf/Mafia style games, one player is Secret Hitler and another player is a secret Nazi. Together, without telling they other players, they must work together to convert the government to fascism. It’s well worth a look if you like thinking games.

Spaceteam

Spaceteam is a cooperative game — you win, or lose, together. But just because it’s cooperative doesn’t it’s a calm, friendly hang. Oh, there will be yelling.

Spaceteam has you working together to repair your failing spacecraft. Everyone at the table has a set of goals they need to accomplish… but everyone else at the table has their own goals, too. And everyone seemingly has the wrong tools. Gather all the tools you need from other players, and that goal is complete… but everyone else needs their tools too, and with the timer counting down, you’re going to have to all go simultaneously if you’re going to survive. It’s frantic and ridiculous and OH MY GOD SOMEONE PASS ME THE CENTRIFUGAL DISPOSAL, I’VE ASKED FIFTEEN TIMES oh nevermind i have it right here.

 

Carcassone

Carcassonne is one of my absolute favorite games. This city building game lets little ones take part in the fun and, because it is so visually arresting, it can engross you for hours. This massive box includes almost all the expansions. I cannot recommend this game more highly.

 

 

Twilight Struggle

This massive game lets you play the USSR vs. the USA in a struggle for world domination. Designed to simulate the Cold War – I know, exciting! – it’s actually a truly engrossing title and well worth a look.

Scythe

Scythe is a sprawling game that uses cards and miniatures to describe a world of alternate reality. As a farmer in this broken world you must rebuild your armies, reclaim lost lands, and start up the great gears of progress. It’s a long game – about 115 minutes – but it has gotten rave reviews.

Gnomes at Night

Gnomes at Night is a cooperative kids game with a twist. One player sees a maze while other player cannot. The players work together to move through the maze to the treasure, encouraging communications and interaction that online games lack.

 

 

Risk Legacy

Risk Legacy offers all the complexity of Risk with even more complexity! In each game the board and pieces themselves change, allowing you to create long stretches of gameplay that promise repeat bouts. While old fashioned Risk is a still a classic, this amazing game is a great expansion to that military world.

 

Last Night On Earth

Last Night on Earth is a board game with multiple playthrough scenarios. Players get to choose if they play as humans or zombies. If you’re on the human team, you get to pick a hero card before the game starts. You then move around the board to solve the scenario — for instance, you can be defending a manor, escaping a location and more. Zombies will get in the way and you’ll have to find the best weapon to get rid of them.

 

Gloomhaven 

If your friends and family take board gaming serious, consider Gloomhaven. It’s a good bit more intense (and, at $140+, more expensive) than anything listed above, but it’s one of the most popular games of the year for a reason. A ready-to-play dungeon crawler in a box, its got thousands of cards, dozens of playable classes, and nearly 100 playable scenarios. You’ll want to lock in a group of friends who can meet up regularly to play this one with before diving in — but if you can do that, you’re in for something special.

Hero Realms

Hero Realms is like a trading card game (think Magic: The Gathering) but also quite different. If you hate buying card packs to build the best deck ever, Hero Realms is for you — everything is already in the box. Each player starts with just a handful of cards and slowly builds a deck by acquiring cards from the central pile. After that, it’s a matter of combining the effects of multiple cards to attack your opponent and destroy their heroes.

 

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We were promised jetpacks, but let’s be honest, they’re just plain unsafe. So a nice drone ride is probably all we should reasonably expect. Lift Aircraft is the latest to make a play for the passenger multirotor market, theoretical as it is, and its craft is a sleek little thing with some interesting design choices to make it suitable for laypeople to “pilot.”

The Austin-based company just took the wraps off the Hexa, the 18-rotor craft it intends to make available for short recreational flights. It just flew for the first time last month, and could be taking passengers aloft as early as next year.

The Hexa is considerably more lightweight than the aircraft that seemed to be getting announced every month or two earlier this year. Lift’s focus isn’t on transport, which is a phenomenally complicated problem both in terms of regulation and engineering. Instead, it wants to simply make the experience of flying in a giant drone available for thrill-seekers with a bit of pocket money.

This reduced scope means the craft can get away with being just 432 pounds and capable of 10-15 minutes of sustained flight with a single passenger. Compared with Lilium’s VTOL engines or Volocopter’s 36-foot wingspan, this thing looks like a toy. And that’s essentially what it is, for now. But there’s something to be said for proving your design in a comparatively easily accessed market and moving up, rather than trying to invent an air taxi business from scratch.

“Multi-seat eVTOL air taxis, especially those that are designed to transition to wing-borne flight, are probably 10 years away and will require new regulations and significant advances in battery technology to be practical and safe. We didn’t want to wait for major technology or regulatory breakthroughs to start flying,” said CEO Matt Chasen in a news release. “We’ll be flying years before anyone else.”

The Hexa is flown with a single joystick and an iPad; direct movements and attitude control are done with the former, while destination-based movement, take-off and landing take place on the latter. This way people can go from walking in the front door to flying one of these things — or rather riding in one and suggesting some directions to go — in an hour or so.

It’s small enough that it doesn’t even count as a “real” aircraft; it’s a “powered ultralight,” which is a plus and a minus: no pilot’s license necessary, but you can’t go past a few hundred feet of altitude or fly over populated areas. No doubt there’s still a good deal of fun you can have flying around a sort of drone theme park, though. The whole area will have been 3D mapped prior to flight, of course.

Lifting the Hexa are 18 rotors, each of which is powered by its own battery, which spreads the risk out considerably and makes it simple to swap them out. As far as safety is concerned, it can run with up to six engines down, and has pontoons in case of a water landing and an emergency parachute should the unthinkable happen.

The team is looking to roll out its drone-riding experience soon, but it has yet to select its first city. Finding a good location, checking with the community, getting the proper permits — not simple. Chasen told New Atlas the craft is “not very loud, but they’re also not whisper-quiet, either.” I’m thinking “not very loud” is in comparison to jets — every drone I’ve ever come across, from palm-sized to cargo-bearing, has made an incredible racket, and if someone wanted to start a drone preserve next door I’d fight it tooth and nail. (Apparently Seattle is high on the list, too, so this may come to pass.)

In a sense, engineering a working autonomous multirotor aircraft was the easy part of building this business. Chasen told GeekWire that the company has raised a “typical-size seed round,” and is preparing for a Series A — probably once it has a launch city in its sights.

We’ll likely hear more at SXSW in March, where the Hexa will likely fly its first passengers.

We were promised jetpacks, but let’s be honest, they’re just plain unsafe. So a nice drone ride is probably all we should reasonably expect. Lift Aircraft is the latest to make a play for the passenger multirotor market, theoretical as it is, and its craft is a sleek little thing with some interesting design choices to make it suitable for laypeople to “pilot.”

The Austin-based company just took the wraps off the Hexa, the 18-rotor craft it intends to make available for short recreational flights. It just flew for the first time last month, and could be taking passengers aloft as early as next year.

The Hexa is considerably more lightweight than the aircraft that seemed to be getting announced every month or two earlier this year. Lift’s focus isn’t on transport, which is a phenomenally complicated problem both in terms of regulation and engineering. Instead, it wants to simply make the experience of flying in a giant drone available for thrill-seekers with a bit of pocket money.

This reduced scope means the craft can get away with being just 432 pounds and capable of 10-15 minutes of sustained flight with a single passenger. Compared with Lilium’s VTOL engines or Volocopter’s 36-foot wingspan, this thing looks like a toy. And that’s essentially what it is, for now. But there’s something to be said for proving your design in a comparatively easily accessed market and moving up, rather than trying to invent an air taxi business from scratch.

“Multi-seat eVTOL air taxis, especially those that are designed to transition to wing-borne flight, are probably 10 years away and will require new regulations and significant advances in battery technology to be practical and safe. We didn’t want to wait for major technology or regulatory breakthroughs to start flying,” said CEO Matt Chasen in a news release. “We’ll be flying years before anyone else.”

The Hexa is flown with a single joystick and an iPad; direct movements and attitude control are done with the former, while destination-based movement, take-off and landing take place on the latter. This way people can go from walking in the front door to flying one of these things — or rather riding in one and suggesting some directions to go — in an hour or so.

It’s small enough that it doesn’t even count as a “real” aircraft; it’s a “powered ultralight,” which is a plus and a minus: no pilot’s license necessary, but you can’t go past a few hundred feet of altitude or fly over populated areas. No doubt there’s still a good deal of fun you can have flying around a sort of drone theme park, though. The whole area will have been 3D mapped prior to flight, of course.

Lifting the Hexa are 18 rotors, each of which is powered by its own battery, which spreads the risk out considerably and makes it simple to swap them out. As far as safety is concerned, it can run with up to six engines down, and has pontoons in case of a water landing and an emergency parachute should the unthinkable happen.

The team is looking to roll out its drone-riding experience soon, but it has yet to select its first city. Finding a good location, checking with the community, getting the proper permits — not simple. Chasen told New Atlas the craft is “not very loud, but they’re also not whisper-quiet, either.” I’m thinking “not very loud” is in comparison to jets — every drone I’ve ever come across, from palm-sized to cargo-bearing, has made an incredible racket, and if someone wanted to start a drone preserve next door I’d fight it tooth and nail. (Apparently Seattle is high on the list, too, so this may come to pass.)

In a sense, engineering a working autonomous multirotor aircraft was the easy part of building this business. Chasen told GeekWire that the company has raised a “typical-size seed round,” and is preparing for a Series A — probably once it has a launch city in its sights.

We’ll likely hear more at SXSW in March, where the Hexa will likely fly its first passengers.

Thought VR was too expensive and too bulky? Well, VRgineers is here with a giant $5,800 headset to prove that you lack perspective.

The Prague-based startup just showed off its latest piece of high-end VR hardware which it will be launching at this year’s CES expo. The headset sports an 180-degree field-of-view, dual 2560 x 1440 OLED displays and a form factor that’s massive. The big focus of the revamped XTAL headset seems to be in the lenses which have a brand new design meant to expand what users can see at full resolution inside the headset while also minimizing distortion elsewhere.

The headset has integrated Leap Motion hand-tracking, is compatible with a variety of tracking systems and leans heavily on voice controls.

What VRgineers has built is quite obviously professional-focused. It’s pushing industry boundaries in field-of-view and resolution.

Their focus is clearly enterprise given its $5,800 price tag. Specifically, the startup seems to be trying to capture the automotive market where VR is actually being leaned on heavily in design and manufacturing.

The high-end VR headset market is in a bit of an interesting spot right now. Oculus has kind of seemed to hurt the rest of the market by having driven hardware margins so low in the quest to make VR more approachable. It’s difficult to fault them for wanting to recoup some of their investment in OculusVR, but the more niche hardware players have really been usurped by a competitor that’s just operating on longer timelines.

Things are looking up for more high-end focused VR startups though, Oculus seems to be moving in a different direction for its next PC VR hardware release. We reported last month, that Oculus was looking to keep a lot of stuff the same with its next headset, possibly called the “Rift S”. This leaves some positive room for high-end VR startups to charge exorbitant amounts for their products but also deliver more niche feature sets for customers at the same time.

Apparently, a lot of people realize at the last minute that they don’t have either beer, wine, or liquor in their home when they need it.

It’s certainly the most obvious explanation for a sizable new round of funding into Drizly, a six-year-old, Boston-based on-demand delivery app for alcohol that works with roughly 1,000 brick-and-mortar liquor stores across the U.S. and Canada to deliver spirits to customers in what it says is less than an hour. Indeed, according to a new SEC filing, the company has just locked down $34.5 million in funding, which roughly doubles the company’s previous $33 million in funding. Investors include Polaris Partners, which led the company’s Series B round a couple of years ago, along with Baird Capital. Altogether, shows the filing, 17 investors took part in the offering.

The Drizly app shows shoppers different prices on the beer, wine and liquor that they’re looking for at local shops, along with different delivery or pick-up options. There have been some recent changes behind the scenes as the company has grown, too. In late summer, cofounder and original CEO Nick Rellas moved into an advisory role, while his cofounder and cousin, Cory Rellas, who had been the company’s chief operating officer, took over as chief executive. (Nick Rellas remains on the company’s board.) Drizly published a statement at the time, stating: “Having taken on a more critical role in the operations of the company over the past few years, coupled with his experience at Bain Capital, Cory is poised to lead Drizly through the next stage of its growth.”

Drizly also added a CMO, CFO, and head of HR to its leadership team over the past year, as the Boston Globe reported in August.

Another sign that the company is maturing: it made its first acquisition in July, absorbing Buttery, an on-demand alcohol e-commerce company that was only active in four cities but whose backend technology and employees were integrated into Drizly. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Tesla is now seeking $167 million in a lawsuit against Martin Tripp, the former Tesla employee who CEO Elon Musk has referred to as a saboteur, CNBC first reported. The lawsuit, originally filed in June and seeking just $1 million at the time, alleges Tripp stole confidential and trade secret information, and gave it to third parties.

Tripp, in July, filed a formal whistleblower tip to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission alleging Tesla misled investors and put its customers at risk. It’s been a bitter back-and-forth between Tesla and Tripp, who then in August tweeted photos of allegedly damaged batteries at Tesla’s factory.

According to the filing, Tesla has not made Musk available for a deposition. Additionally, the filing argues Tripp’s lawyers need to depose more than ten people involved with Tesla.

“In this case, where Mr. Tripp is being sued for more than $167,000,000.00 and has asserted counterclaims against Tesla, more than ten (10) depositions is certainly reasonable and appropriate,” Tripp’s lawyers wrote in the filing.

I’ve reached out to Tesla and will update this story if I hear back. The case is Tesla, Inc. v Tripp, located in the U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada.

Members of the House Judiciary committee have today closely questioned Google’s CEO about the company’s intentions in China, following reports this summer it’s planning a controversial return to the market despite local censorship of Internet services.

Mountain View pulled its search engine out of China back in 2010, under pressure over censored search results. It also cited cyber attacks originating from the country as factoring into its decision to leave.

So Congress wanted to know what exactly had changed that Google is considering reversing that exit, and how doing so wouldn’t contradict its own “core values”.

A none-too-comfortable Pichai stuck closely to a qualified line on the topic, telling Congress Google has no plans “right now” to launch in China, thereby leaving the door open for a launch at a future date.

At the same time he pointed to Google’s “mission”, of making information digitally accessible, to justify what he couched as an exploratory, internal effort at this stage — saying the company mission underpins its ongoing interest in the market. 

He made no mention of the 800M+ Chinese Internet users that Google could potentially add to its business if it returned to the market as factoring into his calculations.

“Right now there are no plans for us to launch a search product in China,” Pichai told the committee. “We are, in general, always looking to see how best — it’s part of our core mission and our principles — to try hard to provide users with information.

“We always have evidence, based on every country we’ve operated in, us reaching out and giving users more information has a very positive impact. And we feel that calling but right now there are no plans to launch in China. To the extent that we ever approach a position like that I will be fully transparent, including with policymakers here. And engage and consult widely.”

A little earlier in the session the committee was briefly interrupted by a person trying to enter the room holding a poster depicting the Google logo superimposed on the Chinese flag.

The chair asked for the individual to be removed and the door to be shut.

Asked directly whether he would “avoid launching a tool of censorship and surveillance in China while you are CEO of Google”, Pichai trod carefully in his response, avoiding making any such categorical commitment — but saying he would be “very thoughtful” about any relaunch. 

“Congressman I commit to engaging,” he said, beginning his answer. “One of the things which is important to us as a company, we have a stated mission of providing users with information, and so we always — we think it’s in our duty to explore possibilities. To give users access to information… I have that commitment but as I said earlier on this we’ll be very thoughtful and we will engage widely as we make progress.”

He was also asked directly whether there are any current discussions with any member of the Chinese government on launching the app. “This effort currently is an internal effort,” he replied to that, reiterating again that he would be “happy to consult/be transparent should we take steps towards launching a product in China”.

Asked who is leading the China project, Pichai also kept things vague — saying it’s being undertaken by Google’s “search teams”, before adding: “But these are distributed efforts. It’s a limited effort internally currently.”

One of the policymakers who questioned Pichai about Google’s intentions in China, congressman David Cicilline, suggested returning to the market would be “completely inconsistent” with Google’s recently announced AI principles.

But ending his five minutes of allotted question time with the Google CEO, Cicilline said concern about technologists working with anti-democratic regimes “goes beyond Google — and frankly beyond China”.

“At a moment of rising authoritarianism around the world when more leaders are using surveillance, censorship and repression against their own people we’re in a moment that we must reassert American moral leadership,” he said, asking also for an open letter from a coalition of human and civil rights organizations, opposing the launch of a censored Google search engine for the Chinese market, to be submitted to the committee for the record.