Monday, April 10, 2017

Google's AlphaGo AI learns to collaborate. It's The Daily Crunch.

THE DAILY CRUNCH
MONDAY, APRIL 10 2017 By Darrell Etherington

Google will pair human and AI Go players, Netflix streams to all streamers and VPNs are within your grasp. All that and more in The Daily Crunch for April 10, 2017. Also United did some totally insane customer-hostile stuff which is a great reminder that tech can enable us to fly through the air as if by magic but humans are still pretty bad at making the most of it.

1. Google to find out how well AI plays with humans

Google's AlphaGo artificial intelligence software, developed via its acquisition DeepMind, is very good at playing Go. Now, we'll find out if it's also good at playing nice WITH humans.

Google is co-running a conference for Go players and AI in China next month, where it'll have tandem DeepMind/human teams facing off against one another. AlphaGo will also take on the number one ranked Go player in a history-making match during the event.

2. Netflix has crazy streaming penetration

Netflix really is the streaming giant – the company reaches 75 percent of streaming customers in the U.S. YouTube is catching up, however, with 53 percent coverage and a faster rate of growth: The market is aging up.

3. Roll your own VPN

It's hard to tell what VPN you can trust, but there's a way to sidestep that entirely: Create your own VPN server in just 15 minutes, using this handy guide by Romain.

4. Try on glasses at home – without the glasses

Want to order glasses online? Some companies including Warby Parker offer free at-home try on, but that's a hard market to scale. Quattrocento is an Italian startup that will ship you replica papercraft frames to test out fit, which is a clever workaround.

5. Google is spending big on LG to curve the Pixel's display

The Pixel is a solid phone, but it's relatively unexciting in the design department, and could lag more with devices like the Samsung Galaxy S8 coming to market. Google has apparently invested nearly $1 billion in LG's display subsidiary to help it keep up with curved screen tech, however.

6. The Engine wants to back tough frontier tech

A new fund just emerged that wants to focus specifically on hard problems that other funds might not want to touch. The Engine has closed its first $150 million fund, and has strong bonds to MIT. Could be room for some longer term thinking in the VC realm.

7. Minecraft gets a real-money in-game store

People make a lot of things in Minecraft, and now there's an official, first-party store for selling and buying those things. This could change Minecraft forever, but so has basically everything Microsoft has done with it post-acquisition and yet it rolls on.

Something else also rolls on: Our new weekly startups newsletter, curated by Anthony Ha. Just follow the link below and check the "TC Startups" checkbox to subscribe.

Get more stories at techcrunch.com 

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