17 March 2018

VR, presence and the case of the missing killer app


Compelling virtual reality shipped to developers and consumers nearly two years ago. The first flagship headsets arrived from Oculus and HTC back in the spring of 2016, offering enough resolution, frame rate, field of view, latency mitigation and position-tracking to produce believable visual immersion.

But no one seems to know what to do with it. To date, no killer app has extended the promise of VR from a novelty to a sticky experience or utility that reaches beyond enthusiasts to resonate with the consumer center of mass.

This isn’t to say that great experiences don’t exist. Apps like Tilt Brush, Elite: Dangerous and Google Earth VR have earned rave reviews and plaudits from enthusiasts. But we have yet to see a household phenomenon like Halo or Lotus 1-2-3 — applications that single-handedly propelled their respective platforms to wide use. At CES 2018, one industry analyst referred to VR as “drawerware,” referring to the likelihood of headsets to be stuffed in a drawer after a few forays into jejune worlds.

In an attempt to shed some light on the case of the missing VR killer app, I want to offer a few thoughts on why VR matters to users, and what that implies for entrepreneurs and investors interested in building or funding the VR killer app.

Why VR matters: Presence

Why is virtual reality valuable? In a word, presence: Immersion is the heart of the incremental value of VR versus existing platforms. Most forms of expressive media provide a third-person perspective of an experience, or convey sufficient information to help a user imagine a first-person perspective on their own.

When done right (6DoF tracking, room-scale movement, sufficiently high-resolution/FOV/low latency, spatial audio), virtual reality helps a user feel like they are really there. Rather than convey an impression of an experience, VR manipulates our visual and auditory senses (and soon our tactile sense) to transmit experience itself.

Presence is valuable in two ways

The idea that VR is valuable because it generates presence is well understood. But why does presence matter? What need does being there fill for users?

The quality of presence has clear intrinsic value. With few exceptions, subjective immersion is the best way to fully grasp what a certain experience is like. Being at the mountaintop generates the maximum degree of sensory throughput, and is a better way to understand the truth of your relationship to that place than watching a video of the mountain, which is better than seeing a picture of the mountain.

The objective fact of being somewhere matters as much or more than the subjective feeling of being there.

But presence also can have instrumental value, where being there is valuable in an objective sense. Being present at a meeting with a potential business partner sends a positive signal separate from the fidelity of your experience. Actually visiting the mountaintop can impress your friends, mattering beyond the sensation of being there.

Put another way, and borrowing the language of philosophy, it seems like we value presence for its experiential worth — being for the sake of experience — as well as for its ontological worth, or being for the sake of being. Another way to describe the ontological value of presence is authenticity. The philosopher Robert Nozick suggested as much in his refutation of ethical hedonism, employing the notion of the “experience machine” to suggest we care about more than our feelings. What this all means is that for many kinds of experience, the objective fact of being somewhere matters as much or more than the subjective feeling of being there.

VR’s killer app will deliver both types of presence value

How does identifying the two ways that presence drives user value help us imagine the use case that a VR killer app might address?

First, it illuminates why many first-order VR applications may not be suited for adoption by a non-enthusiast audience. When examining some of the typical mass market use cases forwarded by VR aficionados — enterprise or personal telepresence, virtual tourism and travel, virtual attendance at sports and entertainment events, virtual social environments and rec rooms — it seems clear that authenticity matters a great deal to consumers of these experiences, meaning that simply porting them to VR may not be compelling beyond an initial sense of novelty.

I believe that the value of ontological presence is largely driven by social norms. As and when the quality of VR experience converges on metaphysically “real” experience, those norms will evolve. Perhaps our children will label us “substratist” for claiming that hanging out in VR is less satisfying than visiting in person. But with regards to the next generation or two of VR tech and applications, I’m not bullish on social VR experiences that merely replicate the ways we interact in real life. By generating experiential presence without authenticity, they seem to fall into an uncanny valley somewhere between interactive video chat and in-person interaction.

It’s tempting to believe, then, that the VR killer app will skirt the issue of authenticity by solving for problems where the subjective feeling of presence, and not the objective fact of it, matters most — for example, virtual training for a factory worker, touring new construction homes for sale or checking out a car in a virtual showroom. VR is already finding fruitful use in the enterprise and select consumer applications. But when considering potential killer applications, the problem is that arenas of experience where experiential presence matters but authenticity does not usually aren’t important or frequently accessed parts of our life.

Ultimately, I think the first VR blockbuster will deliver both the experiential and ontological value of presence. In other words, VR’s killer app will generate a powerful feeling of being there for a compelling experience, in a way that also feels completely authentic.

Quality, accessibility and ecosystem maturity are probably the biggest practical barriers gating the VR killer app.

I believe that the experience in question will lack an analogue in the real world. In other words, the VR killer app won’t be a multiplayer simulation of New York City in the present day, or a virtual movie theater, or a virtual Giants Stadium where you can kick back in a box and watch the Super Bowl. The application that sells the mass market on virtual reality will be fully native to the platform, such that the only way to know what it is really like will be donning a headset and stepping inside.

An engaging VR experience that isn’t simulating something in the real world, but exists solely in its own right, can immerse a user in both senses of the word: After all, authenticity is implied when the virtual substrate is the only home for a certain experience. The real question is making the experience interesting or fun or cool enough that the feeling of presence is appealing, too.

Concluding thoughts

If it sounds like I’m describing a video game, I think I am, too. But video games are a focal use case for every VR headset in production. What’s missing?

Quality, accessibility and ecosystem maturity are probably the biggest practical barriers gating the VR killer app. The current generation of flagship headsets are cumbersome and expensive to set up and run. Though deep price cuts across flagship wearables powered sales of more than a million VR headsets in Q3 2017, and both Oculus and HTC moved hundreds of thousands of high-end, PC-based units, individual install bases remain low enough to deter AAA studios.

Bootstrapping a two-sided ecosystem — in the case of VR, headsets/users and content, with more of the former increasing the incentive to invest in the latter and vice versa — is never easy. But better technology is on the way: HTC recently announced the Vive Pro, sporting improved resolution, spatial audio and a wireless adapter to do away with clunky wires. Google, Samsung, Lenovo and Oculus are working on standalone headsets that run without a PC or smartphone under the hood. Dozens of startups are developing peripherals and software to improve the VR experience, from haptics that mimic touch to pupil tracking that enables realistic eye contact.

Each new iteration of core VR hardware is a rising tide that makes any VR application more appealing to users on the margin. But killer apps often emerge on imperfect versions of the platforms they bring to life. The charting function of Lotus 1-2-3 strained the limits of the early graphics hardware on x86 PCs, but until 1-2-3, no one knew that programmatic generation of charts and graphs was even possible.

A killer app doesn’t need to be a perfect encapsulation of a new technology’s potential. All it needs to do is hint at the grand vision by providing a single, irresistible demonstration of value over the status quo.

In the case of VR, I’m not certain if that demonstration will occur on this generation of hardware or the next. But I believe it will be an experience that compares in intensity or joy or uniqueness to the best experiences we can access in reality. If you’re working on VR content or applications, consider this advice: Give us the ability to be present in a vision of the past, or a counterfactual world. Give us the feeling of life underwater or in space. Give us the sense of being present for an experience completely native to virtual reality, not merely an emulation of experiences we can already inhabit. Give us something real in its own right. That’s when the mass market will start to believe — and buy.


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Amid the greatest NCAA basketball upset ever, a Twitter hero emerges


Happy Saturday, everyone! While many things in the world are very bad today, if you were on the Internet last night, you probably caught wind of a pretty cool historic moment in college basketball: UMBC — University of Maryland, Baltimore County — knocked off the overall number one seed in the annual NCAA men’s basketball championship tournament in an absolute landslide.

So, naturally, I absolutely had to find the tech angle here, and if you owned a smartphone, you probably saw a series of extremely excellent tweets from UMBC’s twitter account, which went absolutely ballistic last night. So, we wanted to recognize the other star of the show: UMBC’s twitter account. You probably would too if, as a 21-point underdog, beat what most consider the best team in the country. Most tweet compilations are not great, but this one is very great.

University of Virginia was absolutely crushed during the second half of the game after dominating the world of college basketball for the entire regular season and throughout the conference tournament on the way to the overall number one seed — a system in place where teams are placed in the tournament based on favorable matchups as a reward for their performance. The system is still ripe for upsets, and there have been a lot this year, but this one is arguably one of the biggest upsets of all time.

So, without further ado:

Alarming bucket of truth, that one. We’ll end with this one:

Happy March Madness, all! May fortune favor (the rest) of your brackets.


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EasyEmail is autocomplete for Gmail


Despite wave after wave of startups vowing to kill email, electronic mail has never been stronger. It seems the best way to live with emails is to let AI steal the job of writing them.

EasyEmail, emerging from Y Combinator’s latest batch, is aiming to get inside your inbox and help you navigate future messages using the past as a guide with an autocomplete-like feature.

After downloading the Chrome plugin, the service spends 10-20 minutes pouring through your sent messages and building up a good idea of how you write emails. From there, the service lounges in your “compose message” window bringing the insights of autocomplete to the body of your message. The interface can get a little crowded and the utility takes some effort curating responses early on which you can actively delete from future suggestions.

Compared to the predictive text features on your phone which may complete a word or two, EasyEmail is ambitiously trying to complete your sentences based on how you usually complete your sentences in emails.

Your mileage with the plugin will depend strongly on what you use it for. In its earliest iteration the app seems most useful to those trapped in sending a lot of monotonous messages. If you’re working in something like sales or PR where you’re making the same pitch over and over again and dealing with a lot of the same questions, I can imagine the time saved is a lot more palpable. For me, the plugin was surfacing a lot of nonsense for the sake of quantity over quality, clearly communicating that there’s still a long way to go in improving the plugin’s smarts.

What may be more useful to a broader base of users is how the plugin lets users define hotkeys and bring up oft copy-pasted bio info or links into the body of their emails without the pain of searching for the info over and over again.

Co-founder Filip Twarowski tells TechCrunch that the next step here is finding how you respond to certain people and catering responses so that suggestions are more casual with acquaintances and more formal with people that might be managers or work associates.

EasyEmail has a great deal of promise as a tool and is clearly tackling some big challenges. Depending on how you use it, the plugin is a lightweight add-on that could save you a load of time navigating the minutiae of sending tons of emails.


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Google collaborates with Ubisoft to launch Agones, an open source game server hosting system


When you think of cloud computing, chances are you are thinking about massive server farms that let you edit documents in the cloud and update your CRM system, but thankfully, there’s a playful side to the cloud as well. All of those multiplayer games, after all, have to run somewhere, too. Often, gaming companies write their own systems for running these servers, but Google and Ubisoft today announced a new project that provides an open source alternative to managing and hosting multiplayer game servers.

Agones, as the project is called because that’s the Greek word for ‘contest,’ uses the Google-incubated Kubernetes container project as it core tool for orchestrating and scaling a fleet of multiplayer game servers. When you play your favorite multiplayer game, it’s these kind of game servers that assure that users can see each other as they traverse an island full of 99 other suicidal maniacs, for example — and they also often run the software necessary to identify cheaters. Containers are actually ideal for this kind of scenario because game sessions tend to last for relatively short periods of time and containers can be deployed and shut down quickly.

“Our goal is to continually find new ways to provide the highest-quality, most seamless services to our players so that they can focus on their games,” writes Ubisoft development director Carl Dionne today. “Agones helps by providing us with the flexibility to run dedicated game servers in optimal datacenters, and by giving our teams more control over the resources they need.  This collaboration makes it possible to combine Google’s expertise in deploying Kubernetes at scale with our deep knowledge of game development pipelines and technologies”

Agones essentially extends Kubernetes with the kind of tools necessary to run a game server. These include a custom Kubernetes Controller and custom resource definitions for the game server. The team notes that developers can easily integrate their custom matchmaking services for pairing gamers with each other with the standard Kubernetes APIs to start up a game server.

While Google would surely want developers to host their games on the Google Kubernetes Engine, Agones itself is cloud agnostic and can run on virtually any cloud or on premises.

Today’s release is very much an early effort. A v2 roadmap is already in the works, though, and the team says it’s also working on new feature like game server Fleets and support for Windows, game server stats and node autoscaling.


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Google Lens Is Now Available on iOS


The world around us is filled with people, places, and objects we don’t know anything about. But how can we make sense of it all? Google Lens can fill in the gaps in your knowledge, turning your smartphone photos into educational adventures.

The Rise of Google Lens

Google initially launched Lens on the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL. Then, over the past few months, Google has been rolling Lens out to all Android phones. Now, Google Lens is available on iOS devices too, but only if you have Google Photos installed.

Google Lens is essentially a visual search tool. So, if you’re visiting a new city and want to know the name of a certain building, take a photo of it, launch Google Lens, and, assuming Lens recognizes it, you’ll get given a slew of information about that building.

Google Lens works with books, landmarks, works of art, plants, animals, and more besides. It also works with business cards, flyers, and billboards, offering links to events or letting you save the contacts details on them to your phones.

To access Google Lens on your iOS device, first make sure you have the latest version of Google Photos installed. Then launch the app, and open a photo. Then tap on the Google Lens icon. You’ll then be given different options based on what Lens detects in the photo.

The Future of Google Lens

Google Lens is already a brilliant addition to Google Photos, but it has even greater potential. Thankfully, Google has exciting plans for Lens, with the artificial intelligence underpinning it set to get smarter, and new ways of using it being added.

In the meantime, give the current incarnation of Google Lens a try. And when you get bored see why we recommend using Google Photos on your iPhone, learn about some of Google Photos’ coolest features, or see how Pinterest is using visual discovery tools.

Image Credit: R. Nial Bradshaw/Flickr


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Suspicious likes lead to researcher lighting up a 22,000-strong botnet on Twitter


Botnets are fascinating to me. Who creates them? What are they for? And why doesn’t someone delete them? The answers are probably less interesting than I hope, but in the meantime I like to cheer when large populations of bots are exposed. That’s what security outfit F-Secure’s Andy Patel did this week after having his curiosity piqued by a handful of strange likes on Twitter.

Curious about the origin of this little cluster of random likes, which he just happened to see roll in one after another, he noticed that the accounts in question all looked… pretty fake. Cute girl avatar, weird truncated bio (“Waiting you”; “You love it harshly”), and a shortened URL which, on inspection, led to “adult dating” sites.

So it was a couple bots designed to lure users to scammy sites. Simple enough. But after seeing that there were a few more of the same type of bot among the followers and likes of these accounts, Patel decided to go a little further down the rabbit hole.

He made a script to scan through the sketchy accounts and find ones with similarly suspicious traits. It did so for a couple days, and… behold!

This fabulous visualization shows the 22,000 accounts the script had scraped when Patel stopped it. Each of those little dots is an account, and they exhibit an interesting pattern. Here’s a close-up:

As you can see, they’re organized in a sort of hierarchical fashion, a hub-and-spoke design where they all follow one central node, which is itself connected to other central nodes.

I picked a few at random to check and they all turned out to be exactly as expected. Racy profile pic, random retweets, a couple strange original ones, and the obligatory come-hither bio link (“Do you like it gently? Come in! 💚💚💚”). Warning, they’re NSFW.

Patel continued his analysis and found that far from being some botnet-come-lately, some of these accounts — and by some I mean thousands and thousands! — are years old. A handful are about to hit a decade!

The most likely explanation is a slowly growing botnet owned and operated by a single entity that, in aggregate, drives enough traffic to justify itself — yet doesn’t attract enough attention to get rolled up.

But on that account I’m troubled. Why is it that a single savvy security guy can uncover a giant botnet with, essentially, the work of an afternoon, but Twitter has failed to detect it for going on ten years? Considering how obvious bot spam like this is, and how easily a tool or script can be made that walks the connections and finds near-identical spurious accounts, one wonders how hard Twitter can actually be looking.

That said, I don’t want to be ungenerous. It’s a hard problem, and the company is also dealing with the thousands and thousands (maybe millions) that get created every day. And technically bots aren’t against the terms of service, although at some point they probably tip over into nuisance territory. I suppose we should be happy that the problem isn’t any worse than it is.


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6 Reasons Why You Should Start Shooting 4K Videos Already

Tingles is an app devoted to ASMR videos


The Tingles team has done much in the way of promotion, but the app has already built a fairly sizable following in its community. That’s one of the nice things about a targeted product — it spreads fast.

In the year since Slovenian co-founders Gasper Kolenc and Miha Mlakar launched, the service has focused almost exclusively on ASMR — autonomous sensory meridian response — those whispered, pleasant-sounding videos that give listeners a sense of low-level euphoria. The service is about to get a big push, with help from Y Combinator.

“We were just trying to figure the best way to build it for artists and the community,” Mlakar, who also serves as the company’s CPO, tells TechCrunch. “We established all of these relationships. All of the features came from the community. We needed time to work on the product.”

In spite of a lack of promotion, the company says it’s pulled in 60,000 monthly active users, bout a third of whom use the product every day. The site’s content is created by more than 200 “artists” (a term taken from the ASMR community’s almost-too-clever “ASMRtist”), many of whom were poached from YouTube.

Google’s video service has, of course, been ground zero for the rise of the ASMR online phenomenon. And while Mlakar admits that it’s proven a valuable resource for the community (it was where he first learned of the concept), the co-founder believes there were still issues unserved by YouTube’s catch-all approach to online video.

“I think YouTube is great for discovery,” says Mlakar. “I discovered ASMR on there. But when you become a regular user, it becomes a problem. The main thing is the ads. If you’re listening to ASMR to fall asleep and you’re just about to doze off, then a loud commercial wakes you up, it’s really unpleasant.”

The other benefits of offering such a hyper-focused service include a better monetization model for creators. The service is available ad-free for free, but the company is working with creators to develop exclusive premium content deals, along with other features like tipping. Creators are vetted through a short approval process, and Tingles does police the videos. But while the app — and most ASMR proponents — are quick to point out that the phenomenon itself isn’t a sexual one, there are indeed “more erotic channels,” according to Mlakar.

For Tingles, ASMR is just the beginning. Mlakar describes the Android/iOS app as “basically the best place to find any video content that helps you relax and fall asleep,” and future plans include a larger push into other relaxation categories, like meditation/mindfulness.


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Create the Perfect Wedding Invitation Using These Phone Apps


If you’re planning a wedding, then you know how much is involved. Big or small, ceremonies take coordination for the location, photographer, flowers, and of course, the invitations.

For an intimate wedding with just a few friends or family members, you may decide to forego the expense and hassle of physical invitations. But you can still send something beautiful to your guests in the form of digital invitations.

These mobile apps are simple, offer attractive options, and take the work out of physical wedding invitation ideas.

1. Wedding-Invitations

create your own wedding invitations with wedding-invitations mobile app

For a basic invitation where you choose the background and wording from a variety of options, take a look at Wedding-Invitations.

First, tap the Designs tab on the bottom and scroll through the lovely options. Once you pick one, the Wordings tab will automatically open. Then, review categories like Fall Wedding, Children Inviting, or Religious.

Once you have your design and wording, you can adjust the font style, color, and size in addition to editing the words. When you finish, just save or share your invitation with a tap.

Wedding-Invitations is free and does contain ads. However, they are only at the top or bottom of the screen rather than taking over in full screen like many others. Plus, if you are interested in the premium version which gives you many additional designs, there is an in-app purchase available.

Download: Wedding-Invitations for iOS (Free)

2. Wedding Invitation Cards Maker by vcsapps

create your own wedding invitations with wedding invitations cards vcsapps maker mobile app

Wedding Invitation Cards Maker for Android is easy to use and provides tons of customizations. Start by entering optional details such as the greeting, location, and type of RSVP. Select a date and time and tap Create Invitation.

You can then choose a design by tapping the Cards button on the top right. There is a nice selection of backgrounds in all colors and styles. When you pick one, you will see any of the details you entered initially pop right onto the card. But you will also notice a slew of editing options.

Add stickers, quotes, blur, a signature, a photo, and effects. You can also choose the font style and color, plus edit or move all text blocks and other items right where you want them. Then, easily save or share your invitation.

The app does contain ads that follow you through your creation process which you can remove with an in-app purchase. But if you don’t mind them, you can create a gorgeous invitation that fits your ceremony perfectly.

Download: Wedding Invitation Cards Maker for Android (Free)

3. Wedding Invitation Cards Maker by Cruise Infotech

create your own wedding invitations with wedding invitations cards Cruise Infotech maker mobile app

Wedding Invitation Cards Maker is another good, free option for your invitations. You can pick from cards or frames, both of which have plenty of choices. Open the app, tap Start, and then choose either Cards or Frames from the top.

Invitations range per taste from cute and casual to stylish and elegant. Once you make your pick, tap the text boxes to pop in your details. You can also insert romantic quotes, add themed stickers, and adjust the colors. You can save your creations to show your partner or share one right away.

This app is a bit heavy on the ads which you can remove with an in-app purchase. However, if you can get past them, Wedding Invitation Cards Maker has really pretty options.

Download: Wedding Invitation Cards Maker for Android | iOS (Free)

4. Invitation Card Maker

create your own wedding invitations with invitation card maker mobile app

Invitation Card Maker is a great app for wedding invitations because it also offers options for engagement, party, and birthday events.

Tap the Wedding tab at the top and then scroll down through a variety of invitations. You can choose from simple designs to those with photographs for just the right look.

When you find one you like, tap Edit and then add your details along with icons, new text or image boxes, and adjust the background color, gradient, or pattern. After you finish your invitation, hit the Checkmark and then share or save it.

If you decide to continue using Invitation Card Maker for its other offerings, you can remove the ads with an in-app purchase.

Download: Invitation Card Maker for iOS (Free)

5. Evite

create your own wedding invitations with evite for mobile

If you like the idea of an app with more than just wedding invitations, check out Evite. With everything from Independence Day to wine tasting events, you have tons of invitation options.

For your wedding, you can either enter a term into the search box or select Browse and scroll down to Wedding Ceremony. When you pick the one you want, you will be prompted through the creation process. You’ll add a host, title, date, location, and message.

With a free account, you can save your creations, invite guests, or share your invitations from within the app. If you decide to invite guests, just allow access to your contact list and you can receive notifications when guests respond.

Evite has plenty of little extras that make it a terrific app for your wedding invitations. And best of all, there are no ads to get in the way.

Download: Evite for Android | iOS (Free)

6. Canva

create your own wedding invitations with canva for mobile

One final app to check out for your wedding invitations is Canva. Canva is actually a robust graphic design tool, but it offers an excellent selection of wedding invitation templates. So after your wedding day, you can hold onto Canva for plenty of other tasks like social media posts, logos, and banners.

For your wedding invitations, just create a free account. Then in the top navigation, scroll to and tap on Invitation. Enter the word wedding into the search box to view your options. You can easily see the free and paid templates and tap a design to get started.

Canva provides a selection of editing tools for adding your details, adjusting the font style and format, rearranging items, changing the color, and inserting images. When you finish, tap Share and then select your file type to save it.

With great features, attractive templates, and no ads, you can’t go wrong using Canva for your wedding invitations.

Download: Canva for Android | iOS (Free)

Create the Perfect Wedding Invitation

If you are having a huge wedding or are simply traditional, then you may want to stick with physical invitations. But if your wedding is small or you want to do something different, try these terrific digital invitation options.

And if you need a little help with the other pieces, see how you can use Trello to plan your ceremony and websites that can help you save money on your wedding overall.


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Chromecast Ultra vs. Apple TV 4K vs. Roku Ultra vs. Amazon Fire 4K: Which Is Best?

The next frontier for robotics? Jazz marimba


Watch out all you well-paid, fat-and-sassy jazz marimba players: Shimon, the marimba playing robot is after your jobs. Shimon is the brainchild of the Robotic Musicianship Group at Georgia Tech and I’ve been following his career for a few years now. In this video, taken at the Ferst Center Presents as part of Atlanta Science Festival, Shimon and a band led by Zachary Robert Kondak jam out to Kondak’s latest rock opera. That’s Richard Savery on the sax.

Watch it. It’s wild.

The truly amazing part of the show has to be drummer Jason Barnes’ mechanical arm that he uses to play beats live in time with Shimon’s tapping. It’s a melding of man and machine that is truly awe-inspiring.

So you’ve had it good so far, all you jazz vibraphonists. Now that robots are gunning for your jobs the jig might be up.


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