Just another WordPress site
Someday, I will see the trailer for a new Star Wars movie and not get completely gooey inside. Today is not that day. Here’s the briefer “TV spot” (don’t call it a trailer!) that aired during the Super Bowl last night.
I think my insides and outsides briefly switched places when they showed Donald Glover as Lando.
Tags: movies Solo Star Wars trailers video
via kottke.org
Solo, A Star Wars Story
Last night, we finally got our first look at the next chapter in Star Wars’ spinoff saga, the standalone Han Solo movie. Now, we’ve got an even better look at the past of one of the series’ most beloved characters, before he truly became the snarky smuggler we all know and love.
This trailer gives off a much better vibe of the film is going to be like, in comparison to the short Super Bowl spot that dropped last night—not just a chance to see more of the young Han himself (Alden Ehrenreich), but better glimpses at the new cast of characters that will be joining him and Chewbacca (now played by Joonas Suotamo) on a wild adventure that will see Han transform from cocky Corellian racer, to… well, a still cocky racer, that just happens to sit at the helm of the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy.
It won’t be long until we see more: Solo: A Star Wars Story, directed by Ron Howard, hits theaters May 25.
via Gizmodo
In the First Trailer for Solo: A Star Wars Story, a Familiar Legend Begins
The next Star Wars movie is out in three months. THREE MONTHS. But up until now, we haven’t seen a single image from it. That changed during the Super Bowl, though, as Disney, finally, revealed the first look at Solo: A Star Wars Story.
Here it is.
I mean – that looks pretty great, right? Definitely has that Star Wars feel. Lando looks awesome. It gave me chills.
Advertisement
Directed by Ron Howard, Solo stars Alden Ehrenreich, alongside Emilia Clarke, Donald Glover, Thandie Newton, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Woody Harrelson, Joonas Suotamo, and Paul Bettany.
Expect a full trailer Monday morning.
Solo: A Star Wars Story opens May 22.
via Gizmodo
There Is Now Official Footage From Solo: A Star Wars Story
Is there a point when investors will turn off the spigots for giant unicorn funding rounds? If so, we haven’t reached that threshold yet.
Last year, investors put a record amount of capital into members of the Crunchbase Unicorn Leaderboard, a list of private venture-backed companies valued at more than $1 billion.
Globally, a staggering $66 billion went into unicorn companies in 2017, up 39 percent year-over-year, according to an analysis of Crunchbase data. The ride-hailing space was the single largest recipient of investor dollars, with several rivals in the space raising billions. Investors also poured copious sums into co-working, consumer internet and augmented reality.
Newcomers also joined the unicorn club for the first time in 2017, albeit at a slightly slower pace than the preceding two years. For all of 2017, 60 new startups were added to the unicorn list. This compares to 66 newly minted unicorns in 2016 and the record-setting 2015 with 99 newcomers.
Below, we break down the leading locations for new and existing unicorns, top sectors for investment capital, exits and a few other trends affecting the space.
The vast majority of unicorns are headquartered in either the U.S. or China, and that’s also the case for newcomers to the Unicorn Leaderboard.
In 2017, both the U.S. and China continued to mint new unicorns at a steady clip. A total of 29 U.S. companies inked their first funding round at a valuation of a billion dollars or more, up from 22 the prior year. In China, 24 new unicorns joined the leaderboard, down from 32 in 2016. Europe and Southeast Asia, meanwhile, also contributed a few unicorns.
In the chart below, we look at new entrants, categorized by country:
The newcomers were a pretty diverse bunch, spanning industries from agtech to enterprise software, including no-cost stock buying platform Robinhood, online education provider VIPKID and cryptocurrency buying and selling platform Coinbase.
Unicorn investors showed a particularly strong appetite, however, for companies in a handful of sectors.
Ridesharing, in particular, had a strong funding year, with companies in the space taking more than 10 percent of all unicorn investment. That was largely attributable to billion and multi-billion dollar rounds for Lyft, Grab, Ola and Didi Chuxing.
Bike-sharing was also big. Two new entrants onto the unicorn list came from that space: Ofo and Mobike. However, concerns arose later in the year over whether consumer demand could support the ballooning bike supply.
Other recipients of really substantial funding rounds, even by unicorn standards, include U.S. co-working giant WeWork and China-based consumer internet players Toutiao and Koubei.
So a lot of unicorns are raising big rounds. But is there any sign members of the group will eventually produce returns for investors?
Overall, 2017 provided some modestly positive news for unicorn exit watchers. Fifteen venture-funded companies with private valuations of a billion dollars or more went public last year, more than double 2016 levels and the highest total since Crunchbase began tracking the asset class.
Acquisition activity, meanwhile, was weaker. There were just seven recorded M&A exits involving unicorns in 2017, down from 10 in 2016. AppDynamics was the highest-performing exit at 95 percent over its last private valuation. For the remaining companies that exited, all appear to have been below or at their last private valuation.
In the chart below, we look at IPO and M&A counts for unicorns over the past seven years:
Unicorn IPOs weren’t just more common in 2017. Performance was often quite good, too. Many of last year’s newly public companies sustained market caps far higher than their last private valuations. Top performers by this metric include several China-based unicorns, led by investment manager Qudian and search engine Sogou. Other standouts include gaming hardware provider Razer and app developer software provider MuleSoft.
In the chart below, we look at some of the top performers based on the post-IPO percentage gains over their last private valuations:
Lately, going public seems to be a better option for investor returns. If the company goes out below its last private valuation, that multiple can improve if it grows its market and public shareholders boost the stock. For an M&A transaction, the price is set and either late-stage investors have built in protections or are losing money at those exit prices.
For the 45 unicorn companies that have gone public, the average time to go public has been 26 months after first being valued at $1 billion. For the 25 companies that have been acquired, the average time to get acquired is 24 months after first being valued at $1 billion.
So what does that say about the current crop of still-private companies? Because more than 150 companies out of 263 have been on the Unicorn Leaderboard for more than two years, we expect exits to increase, given the backlog.
Special thanks to Steven Rossi who manages the Crunchbase Unicorn Leaderboard.
Featured Image: Li-Anne Dias
via TechCrunch
Unicorns gorge as investors dish up bigger rounds, more capital
Injecting small amounts of two immune-stimulating agents directly into solid tumors in mice eliminated all traces of cancer, including distant, untreated metastases, according to a new study.
The approach works for many different types of cancers, including those that arise spontaneously, the study finds.
The researchers believe the local application of very small amounts of the agents could serve as a rapid and relatively inexpensive cancer therapy that is unlikely to cause the adverse side effects often seen with body-wide immune stimulation.
“When we use these two agents together, we see the elimination of tumors all over the body,” says Ronald Levy, professor of oncology at Stanford University and lead author of the study, which appears in Science Translational Medicine.
“This approach bypasses the need to identify tumor-specific immune targets and doesn’t require wholesale activation of the immune system or customization of a patient’s immune cells.”
“…we saw amazing, body-wide effects, including the elimination of tumors all over the animal.”
One of the agents is already approved for use in humans; and the other has been tested for human use in several unrelated clinical trials. A clinical trial was launched in January to test the effect of the treatment in patients with lymphoma.
Levy works in the field of cancer immunotherapy, in which researchers try to harness the immune system to combat cancer. Work in his lab led to the development of rituximab, one of the first monoclonal antibodies approved for use as an anticancer treatment in humans.
Some immunotherapy approaches rely on stimulating the immune system throughout the body. Others target naturally occurring checkpoints that limit the anti-cancer activity of immune cells. Still others, like the CAR T-cell therapy recently approved to treat some types of leukemia and lymphomas, require a patient’s immune cells to be removed from the body and genetically engineered to attack the tumor cells.
Many of these approaches have been successful, but they each have downsides—such as difficult-to-handle side effects and high-cost and lengthy preparation or treatment times.
“All of these immunotherapy advances are changing medical practice,” Levy says. “Our approach uses a one-time application of very small amounts of two agents to stimulate the immune cells only within the tumor itself. In the mice, we saw amazing, body-wide effects, including the elimination of tumors all over the animal.”
Cancers often exist in a strange kind of limbo with regard to the immune system. Immune cells like T cells recognize the abnormal proteins often present on cancer cells and infiltrate to attack the tumor. However, as the tumor grows, it often devises ways to suppress the activity of the T cells.
The new method works to reactivate the cancer-specific T cells by injecting microgram amounts of two agents directly into the tumor site. (A microgram is one-millionth of a gram).
The first, a short stretch of DNA called a CpG oligonucleotide, works with other nearby immune cells to amplify the expression of an activating receptor called OX40 on the surface of the T cells. The second, an antibody that binds to OX40, activates the T cells to lead the charge against the cancer cells.
Because the two agents are injected directly into the tumor, only T cells that have infiltrated it are activated. In effect, these T cells are “prescreened” by the body to recognize only cancer-specific proteins.
Some of these tumor-specific, activated T cells then leave the original tumor to find and destroy other identical tumors throughout the body.
The approach worked startlingly well in laboratory mice with transplanted mouse lymphoma tumors in two sites on their bodies. Injecting one tumor site with the two agents caused the regression not just of the treated tumor, but also of the second, untreated tumor.
In this way, 87 of 90 mice were cured of the cancer. Although the cancer recurred in three of the mice, the tumors again regressed after a second treatment. The researchers saw similar results in mice with breast, colon, and melanoma tumors.
Mice genetically engineered to spontaneously develop breast cancers in all 10 of their mammary pads also responded to the treatment. Treating the first tumor that arose often prevented the occurrence of future tumors and significantly increased the animals’ life span.
Finally, lead author Idit Sagiv-Barfi, instructor of medicine, explored the specificity of the T cells by transplanting two types of tumors into the mice. She transplanted the same lymphoma cancer cells in two locations, and she transplanted a colon cancer cell line in a third location. Treatment of one of the lymphoma sites caused the regression of both lymphoma tumors but did not affect the growth of the colon cancer cells.
“This is a very targeted approach,” Levy says. “Only the tumor that shares the protein targets displayed by the treated site is affected. We’re attacking specific targets without having to identify exactly what proteins the T cells are recognizing.”
The current clinical trial is expected to recruit about 15 patients with low-grade lymphoma.
If successful, Levy believes the treatment could be useful for many tumor types. He envisions a future in which clinicians inject the two agents into solid tumors in humans prior to surgical removal of the cancer as a way to prevent recurrence due to unidentified metastases or lingering cancer cells, or even to head off the development of future tumors that arise due to genetic mutations like BRCA1 and 2.
“I don’t think there’s a limit to the type of tumor we could potentially treat, as long as it has been infiltrated by the immune system,” Levy says.
The National Institutes of Health, the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, the Boaz and Varda Dotan Foundation, the Phil N. Allen Foundation, and Stanford’s department of medicine supported the work.
Source: Stanford University
The post ‘Vaccine’ kills cancer in mice appeared first on Futurity.
Back in 2009 when we didn’t expect too much from AI, Cognition IP co-founder Bryant Lee decided to go to law school after studying computer science — but he still wanted to one day try to bring those two together.
Fast forward to 2018, when AI has completely exploded and is pervasive in pretty much every industry, and Lee now has that chance. That’s why he and his co-founder started Cognition IP, a new-style law firm that helps clients more efficiently create and file patents and deal with other kinds of patent law. But instead of relying on the endless man hours for lawyers trying to figure out if a patent is already out there, Cognition IP leans on algorithms to create a kind of topic graph around a subject and see if anyone’s filed something on it already.
“I realized people didn’t want a way to find a lawyer, they just wanted a lawyer [right now],” Lee said. “The way to do that was to have our own firm but make that more efficient. People kept asking me, why don’t you take my case? I was getting a lot of demand for patent services. I realized that I should just try to make that firm more efficient with my own technology. I realized that’s where a lot of demand was and I wanted to build this tech to help with that.”
The client experience is still the same — someone comes in and works with the team to file their patents and deal with anything related to that. The inventor gets a pretty seamless experience of putting together the paperwork through a simple dashboard, and the tools recommend what to put in that application. Once all that’s in there, the firm files it. Cognition IP charges a flat firm, banking on the idea that if the firm can streamline the process, they can take more cases and build a more robust business.
Cognition IP’s core tech is on the back end, helping lawyers be more efficient about finding if there’s anything out there and detecting some of the subtle tricks that are sometimes implemented to get patents through. Over time, the engine becomes smarter as it determines which topics are associated with each other, making the searches more efficient and getting a better understanding of what kinds of filings are already out there. Often times a lawyer deals with around 100 patent clients, but Cognition IP looks to double that efficiency (or go even higher as the technology and firm become more sophisticated).
There are, of course, many challenges going into this as a lot of companies (like Google, even) race to figure out the best way to create a more seamless patent law experience, whether that’s on the filing front or anything that comes after. And there are regular search engines like Google Patents, which would help firms already find prior art. Cognition IP’s hope is that it can successfully build a topic graph for the universe of patents out there to quickly see if there are potential issues with the patents in order to head off problems down the road.
“There isn’t a lot of work on the search for actual factual information in cases,” Lee said. “For patents, there’s a lot of patent-specific knowledge to use — there’s a trick lawyers use where you try to change some of the words, and the patent office can’t find the relevant prior art to invalidate it. We’re working to find synonyms based on the patent database, something that’s domain specific. Instead of keyword related, they’re semantics and based on the whole document and not just the keywords.”
Cognition IP is launching out of Y Combinator’s 2018 winter batch.
via TechCrunch
Cognition IP looks to streamline the patent filing experience with a dose of smarter search
Price: $10 | Buy
Designed by former martial artist and self-defense specialist James Williams, CRKT’s Williams Tactical Key is an innocuous self-defense tool. It looks just like a key but offers a pointed end and a secure grip when needed. It also works as a Philips screwdriver.
When people ask how criminals get their hands on guns, we know what they want to hear is a story that will justify some new gun law. At least, that’s the way things generally go in such discussion. If they’re not rabidly anti-gun, they’re hoping they’ll hear a way that will let them stop criminals from getting guns without impacting law-abiding gun owners. Unfortunately, that’s fairly rare.
Yet if people want to know how criminals get guns, they only have to look at people like this.
A Chicago man was sentenced to four and a half years in federal prison for illegally buying handguns in Indiana and selling them in the city.
Ricky Hatchet, 25, bought the guns from an unlicensed individual in a Bloomington on three separate occasions in 2015, according to the United States Attorney’s Office for the Norther District of Illinois.
Hatch, who is also known as “Rick Hatchet” and “Ricky Hatchet,” recruited someone from Indianapolis to serve as the buyer in the initial sale, prosecutors said. The seller reviewed the person’s driver’s license and listed some of her information on a purported bill of sale before selling the guns to Hatch, who paid for them in cash.
Hatch used aliases to conceal his identity in the other two transactions, prosecutors said.
After buying the guns, Hatch brought them to Chicago, prosecutors said. Chicago Police ultimately recovered five of the guns from other people.
Let’s look at how this happened. We have a straw purchase (which is illegal), false information being used on a Form 4473 (also illegal), and transporting guns across state lines for the purposes of selling them (which is, you guessed it, illegal). Pretty much every rule designed to stop this kind of behavior was broken, and this doesn’t even touch on the Illinois laws broken with these sales.
In other words, despite numerous laws designed to prevent criminals from getting their hands on firearms, they still got them.
It’s almost like gun laws don’t actually stop criminals from breaking the law to get their hands on guns. Shocking, right? It’s like you just can’t find a law-abiding criminal these days.
This is how I know the gun grabbers won’t stop until they figure out how to ban guns completely. Because that’s about the only way you’re going to stop these kinds of transactions from happening. It won’t stop criminals from getting guns, mind you, but it’ll stop this particular path for them getting guns.
The number of laws Hatch broke in this scheme tells you that so long as people can legally acquire guns, there will be people who break the law in order to get them for nefarious purposes. As we’ve seen in places like the U.K. and Australia, even gun bans don’t even stop criminals from getting the guns.
Nothing will.
Instead, it makes more sense to empower the law-abiding. Allow people to own guns, buy them as they wish, and make it too risky to engage in violent crime. If you do that, then it won’t matter if criminals have guns or not. After all, if they’re afraid to use them, it’s the same thing as them not having them in the first place.
http://ift.tt/2w2n5Gd
via Bearing Arms
Chicago Man Gets 4 Years For Illegal Gun Sales
In our series Getting It, we’ll give you all you need to know to get started with and excel at a wide range of technology, both on and offline. Here, we’re walking you through the process of creating your own app by examining five software tools to get the job done.
There was a time when creating your own website, starting your own online store, or launching your own app would have required either advanced coding skills or enough money to hire someone with said skills. These days, though, enough companies have tools and business that make the process as speedy as an hour in some cases, and at minimal cost.
Advertisement
Sites like Wix, Weebly and Squarespace make drag-and-drop website creation a breeze, while Shopify and Woocommerce let you pop up a web store during your lunch break. Easy app creation has lagged a bit behind in this field, but that has changed dramatically over the course of the last few years. You can now use a range of sites to whip up an app in no time, without having extensive computer skills, and we’ll take a look at five of those sites below.
Of course, the kind of apps you get from these tools tend to be on the relatively simple side. You’ll still need to be able to code or hire an app-development company to create more complex apps and games. But for simple form- or information-based apps, these services will do just fine. Specifically, you’ll be able to create an app that might not make you millions, but they will add value to existing businesses or websites. If you have a content-based site or an online store, for example, you can create an app that lets people shop more easily or sort through your articles with a press of the screen.
Before we get on to comparing the services you can use to create your own app, you’ll need credentials as an app publisher, so that you can distribute and/or sell your creations.
Advertisement
To be able to distribute apps made for Android through the Google Play store, you need to sign in here with your Google account, accept the terms and pay a $25 registration fee. To become an app seller for the iOS platform through the iTunes store, you’ll need to head here, pay a $99 annual fee and sign in using your Apple credentials. After those initial fees, both Google and Apple take 30 percent of sales once your app is published.
AppyPie. The tagline for this web-based app builder is: “Make an app, easy as pie.” Say what you will about the slogan, but it’s accurate; you really can whip up an app on this site without too many clicks, or design knowledge. You start by choosing your app’s category, and then a basic layout. Then, by clicking through a demo of the app on a sample on-screen phone, you can adjust text, and add pages, colors, photos, media, links and more. You have pretty robust control over the flow and architecture of the app, and the site is extremely responsive.
Advertisement
Pricing ranges from a free plan that embeds AppyPie advertising in your app and only lets you tweak your creation for 48 hours, to $15, $30 and $50 monthly plans that offer unlimited app editing and stepped-up platform distribution. The $15 plan, for instance, allows you to build apps for Android only, while the $50 plan will cover all the major platforms including Microsoft and Apple.
AppMakr. With a decidedly less-slick interface than AppyPie, AppMakr is nonetheless easy to use. It excels in making icon-based apps. Just like AppyPie, you’re given a mock-up of a smartphone and you’re able to drag icons directly onto its face from a menu of choices at the right. Unlike AppyPie however, apps built through this tool are better at linking to content rather than providing native content. Drag the “blog” icon over for example, and you’ll be asked to enter your blog’s RSS feed address. Same for the “news” function. But if you have an existing blog or website, this provides an easy way to take it mobile. You can also change the look of each icon and customize the background image. Changes to architecture, however, aren’t as robust as they are with AppyPie.
Advertisement
Using the free version of AppMakr will let you create an ad-free mobile website. Two dollars per month lets you develop an Android-only app with AppMakr branding; $39 per month lets you create up to ten Android apps with no branding and lets you publish your app wherever you’d like, as you get the source code; and $99 per year lets you publish an Android app in the Google Play store or an iOS app on iTunes with no branding.
AppInstitute. This is another extremely user-friendly online app builder. One differentiating factor is that when you begin your app-building process on this site, you’ll be asked to choose a template based on your goals, such as: “Sell Stuff,” “Get Bookings” or “Earn Loyalty.” After clicking on the tab that best represents your needs, you can further hone your app by choosing the proper category such as “church,” “coffee shop,” or “good cause.”
Advertisement
Another unique feature of AppInstitute is that after you choose your basic template, you can enter your phone number and you’ll be instantly sent a link to your pre-made app. Of course, you’ll want to spend some time making it your own, but it’s a fun feature to get the instant gratification of a working app in seconds. (Of course, it’s also a clever way by which AppInstitute gets ahold of your phone number.)
While AppInstitute is generally well-regarded, in our testing we did find that it was slow to respond, often glitchy and a bit counterintuitive in terms of customizing your app. Still, there are good videos and a live chat service that can help you get rolling fairly quickly.
This service is also by far the most expensive we tested, with monthly plans ranging from $40 to $115 per month. In order to publish an Android-friendly app, you’ll need to shell out $70 per month, with the $115 price point gaining you access to an iOS version of your app as well.
GoodBarber. Despite its strange name, GoodBarber is a solid choice for online app building. It puts the smartphone mock-up front and center in its design ontology, so you can click through the app as if it were live and see your changes take effect immediately. While this makes understanding the logic of your app quite easy, it makes designing it a little more difficult.
Advertisement
Say you wanted to change a block of text in the app. It would make sense that all you would need to do would be to click on it. This, however, doesn’t work. Because the app is “live,” clicking on anything takes you to the relevant section of the app. To make changes to sections, you need to use the navigation tools at the right which break the design process into different chunks such as menus, icons and sections. This takes a little getting used to, and requires more clicking around than the other apps mentioned here, but once you get the hang of it, the level of customization possible is truly impressive.
GoodBarber also offers app checking tools, so that before you are ready to publish an Android version of your app for instance, it would give you a checklist of completed items and those that still need to be fixed (such as naming your app). The site offers a 30-day trial after which it costs $32 per month for an Android app and $96 per month for Android and iOS.
GameSalad. While information-based apps can help add value to your business, games offer you a chance to create an app that truly holds the potential to earn money. A quick look at the top-grossing iOS apps on website AppAnnie, shows that over half are games, with other top spots largely occupied by free entertainment and social media apps like Hulu, Netflix and Facebook.
Advertisement
If you want to make your own game and try to sell it through iTunes or Google Play, GameSalad offers a great way to give it a go. Unlike the other app creators in this list, GameSalad consists of software you need to download to your desktop. The company says that you could create a game in as little time as an hour, but in reality, it will take a bit longer—even if you start with one of their pre-made but customizable games. The software isn’t quite drag and drop, so you’ll want to spend some time going through the video tutorials to get a hang for the system.
When you are ready to publish your game, a fee of $29 per month will get the job done and let you publish to all the major platforms including Android and iOS.
via Lifehacker
How to Build Your Own App If You Don’t Know How to Code
