As San Francisco residents slowly become part of the #vaxpack there’s a spring to everyone’s step that has nothing to do with hoverboards or the announcement that Elon Musk’s supposedly going to host Saturday Night Live in May —and I can’t wait to unpack that sh*t show.
But in other news, Travis Kalanick’s CloudKitchens startup imploded(color me unsurprised), and in Facebooklandia, Mark Zuckerberg’s Dad gently called him out his son for forgetting lunch — “Do you need Mom and I to deliver meals,” which (off course) went viral, because he is the great and mighty ZUCK after all.
Considering this level of entertainment and to pay homage to last month’s April Fools Day, I’ve added a twist to the April edition of “Two Truths and a Lie: The Silicon Valley Startup Edition,” as I figure we’re all needing a bit of extra sunshine right now.
You know the drill by now:
Out of the following tech company’s April Fools jokes of yesteryear, which one of the following was not a joke?
- Kodak’s Aromatography collection, which harnessed their neuro-optic nasal sense technology to embed scents in film. In their release: “This isn’t your father's smell-o-vision.”
- Apple’s “Apple Collection” clothing line, a line of polo shirts, joggers, hoodies, and branded stationery for the Apple aficionado, with the logo on the back. In their release: “Changing the world one person at a time.”
- Opera’s face-gesture web navigation, Face Observation Opera Language, provided beta-users with expression-based browsing. In their release: “We are able to recognize pre-determined facial expressions and match them to commands.”
(Scroll to the bottom for the answers.)
Know of some ridiculous stuff happening in tech? Email, DM, or tweet me to include it in next month’s edition. Pre-order my new book, Killer Looks here.
With Sparked, Facebook Wants To (Kindly) Infringe In Your Love Life
Come on, you saw this coming, right?
Facebook, the behemoth of social media, the same one that professes its purpose is to, “connect you with the people around you,” wants to get its mitts on your romantic data? Gee whizz, strike me down shocked that they’d like a piece of that $3 billion dating pie…It’s not even like this is a NEW idea for them; in 2019 Facebook released the Facebook dating app (which included a secret Instagram crush list) and for years they’ve allowed third-party apps like Tinder to let people sign in through FB.
Their new foray, “video dating with kind people,” a free-to-use service is called Sparked, reports The Verge. Users select their romantic preferences, which include male, female, and nonbinary, and can opt-out of matching with trans folk. To get admitted, they’ll have to explain what makes them a “kind dater,” — a response which *apparently* will be reviewed by a human, so yay?
They’ve done away with the swipe mechanism, replacing that with video speed dating events, cycling people through four-minute video dates, matched by Facebook’s magical algorithm fairies. Should you “like” your video date, you can opt-in for a longer ten-minute video fate, at which point they suggest you, like, message them IRL (through Facebook Messenger, obv.)
Not the most terrible idea — one requirement is that you “show up,” presumably meaning if you X out of a call with a basic-ass date, you *may* be taken off their service… It’s still in beta mode but you can get on the waiting list here.
Will.i.am Wants You To Wear His Xupermask mask
According to lore, a.k.a. The New York Times, billionaire Marc Benioff (Salesforce founder and Dadbod no.1) had a brainwave during the MTV awards of summer 2020 as he watched Will.i.am (of Black Eyed peas fame, being-on-his phone during Voice auditions infamy, and arguably the worst-dressed judge, ever) prance around/joke dance on stage.
Will.i.am wore a fugly white/denim combo with a hybrid mask/helmet covering his mouth. As masks were an ever-growing thing back then, Benioff told the singer he liked his style and hooked him up with the multimillionaire CEO of Honeywell (who manufactured a ton of N95 masks) to discuss turning the 45-year old’s stage gear into a mass-market adornment for the TikTok generation.
The result of this collaboration made in the magical marketing to Gen X boardroom was the Xupermask, pronunciation unknown, priced at $299. Because old people trying to dictate what young people wear ALWAYS goes so well… Made from silicon and athletic mesh, it includes three — THREE?! — dual three speed fans, a non-medical HEPA filtration system, embedded headphones, and Bluetooth connectivity.
I’m more excited about the “special” nose seal that *may* prevent glasses fogging up, but whatev, can you really place a price on looking like a robotic rhino? Available in white and black, so you can choose average rhino or go for the almost extinct version… you did pay $299 remember?
No surprise the space-age design was cooked up by the same dude that created Elon Musks’s SpaceX suits and worked on multiple Marvel costumes. “We are living in sci-fi times,” Will.i.am said. “But we are wearing masks from yesterday’s movie. I wanted to make a mask to fit the era that we’re in.” Comes with a free fanny pack for when you’re **sick** of the thing. Released on April 18, the first Xupermask drop sold out in days.
The Next Coachella May Be 3D printed
California has been in a housing crisis — sorry: A CLUSTERF**K—for years.
You can thank poor zoning laws and outdated legalese for that, amongst other things. So I welcome any and ALL attempts at fixing this, but something about Coachella — Coachella Valley, to be exact — just tickles me.
Thanks to a collab between Oakland-based Mighty Buildings and the So-Cal-based Palari, by this time in 2022, five acres of desert in Rancho Mirage will morph into a fifteen-unit community, reports Kari Paul for the Guardian. And by fifteen units, I mean FIFTEEN bonafide three-bed two-bath detached homes, each delivered courtesy of a garage-sized 3D printer.
Did I mention that each 1,450 sq. ft. property is planted on a 10,000 square foot lot, which comes with an outdoor pool AS STANDARD?
These start-up starter houses start at $595,000, and are cranked out in Mighty Building’s Oakland warehouse.
Once the house has “set,” insulation, roofing and all that jazz is added, Mighty Buildings says building houses this way takes up 95% fewer manpower hours than building it manually. Most take a day or so to print in entirety — (frantically googles how to buy a 3D printed house) the only limiting factor being road access to deliver them.
Hey, if people can do this, they can do anything.
Enter the AI Artists
You know those jokes your dad makes about how music sounds robotic (cue awkward Britney dance and years of therapy)?
Well, thanks to San Francisco-based startup, Authentic Artists, he may have a point (Robot being the pejorative term for unreal here). They’ve just announced the launch of twelve “supernatural” virtual-artist avatars, reports Variety, which ranges from a “lo-fi loving cyborg” to a bunny that spins trap beats.
If you’re a bit confused as to WTF that means, reading their press material is equally confusing, full of jargon about how it's “scalable social” and a “gamified, co-creative musical experience.” Obviously, given that amount of waffle there’s a bunch of bigwigs involved (their investors/advisors include Oculus, Roblox, and someone who can namedrop DJ Khaled).
Essentially, once they’re out of beta (their website is a holding page right now) users can select their virtual AI-powered DJ of choice and have them play virtual sets for the ever-growing remote audience. Their original beats are powered by a catalog of 130,000 MIDI files, which generate tunes in real-time, and the company says they’re developing ways for a live-Twitch streamed audience to interact with them in real time, and change things up a bit (quite how that works is not disclosed).
They’ve taken the virtual DJ thing to a new level — it’s one thing to watch a virtual Lil Nas X in Roblox, or a virtual Dillon Francis in Wave, but Authentic Artists raised the bar with their AI-musicians, sans IRL artist. Much like the digital model Shudu took the fashion world by storm, it seems their hope is that the “beat bunny” or “cyborg girl” may become household musical names in their own right. They might need to name them first though.
I get that there’s a market but as soon as the vaccination ramps up, I’m looking to see IRL people in an IRL space, so…eh?
Answers to Two Truths and A Lie: The Apple clothing line is the real one, and existed for a brief period in the 1980s. You can read about Kodak’s Aromatography joke here, and Opera’s Face gesture video is here.
