interview

In 2019, Niantic's got another Earth Day campaign planned. In a manner similar to 2018, Niantic and masses of gamers - Pokemon GO and Ingress included - will head out and clean up the planet. In 68 events and with "countless NGOs" taking part in the celebration, 6.5 tons of garbage were collected - and presumably put into landfills, mostly - but still, progress!* Here in 2019 we had a chat with Niantic's Civic & Social Impact Manager, Yennie Solheim Fuller, to see what the future holds.

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Smart glasses are coming, and since augmented reality wearables need to be closer to designer sunglasses than they are to Google Glass, transparent displays need to raise their game. That's just what smart eyewear display specialist Lumus is doing, bringing along its latest Sleek display prototype to CES 2019 this week to show how AR could have mass-market appeal.

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This week we spoke with one of the founders of LEIA Inc, David Fattal, on the big deal behind the next-gen DLB tech with Lightfield Mode for a new type of 3D. This technology's been in development for over a half-decade, starting its life with Fattal and crew at HP Labs in Palo Alto. Now their display technology's about to hit the market in a smartphone that's set to appear on shelves on two of the country's biggest mobile carriers. This display's about to be in front of thousands if not millions of everyday citizens. What's the big deal?

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Today we had a chat with Sonos VP of Software Antoine Leblond about the company going public. Sonos launched today on Nasdaq with stock symbol SONO, as it did so becoming a public company for the first time. The first and most important question we had for Leblond is the same we've had for every tech company that's hit the stock market in the past decade: How will this change Sonos?

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The Swedes have never been attention-seekers, but there's no denying that, of all the cars at the Geneva Motor Show 2018 this week, the achingly handsome Polestar 1 hybrid coupe stands out. Partly that's down to its new, matte gray paint job, a finish which proved unexpectedly flattering for the design language the car company has inherited from Volvo. At the same time, though, Polestar 1's charm is about more than just design.

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When the "cutting edge" in automotive is electrification, what do you do if you're Maserati and your brand is wrapped up tight with the appeal of gasoline engines? That's the challenge facing the Italian automaker as it continues to carve out a space in the luxury performance high-end, and the question I posed to Reid Bigland, Head of Maserati and Alfa Romeo, this week at the LA Auto Show 2017. As you might expect, the answer is complicated.

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We’ve definitely seen our fair share of concept car designs, ranging from mundane to the almost improbable. The BMW Z4 Concept, which was teased in renders just a week ago, seemed to dance between those two extremes, with a design that is both ahead of its time yet still completely doable. And when BMW finally revealed the real thing, it took us a few moments to pick up our jaws from the floor. Fortunately for us, we got the chance to sit down with Adrian van Hooydonk, BMW’s head of global design and the man behind the Z4, to pick his mind about the thinking that went into such a breathtaking design.

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This month we had a chat with author Walter Isaacson about his work on humanizing several of histories most influential geniuses. Isaacson is the author of Steve Jobs' most famous biography - you might remember him from this 60 Minutes interview given after Jobs' death. In 2007 he released the book "Einstein: His Life and Universe", and in 2017, National Geographic began releasing the episodic TV series "Genius" using Isaacson's biography.

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Cadillac's Super Cruise may be a practically invisible change on the 2018 CT6, but the semi-autonomous driving system is actually one of the biggest announcements at the New York International Auto Show. It's intended to take control of the luxury sedan on the roads where drivers get most bored, highways and freeways, and though it may only be Level 2 autonomy, it wraps up a number of hands-off technologies that could give drivers the confidence that rival systems lack. I caught up with Barry Walkup, Super Cruise Chief engineer at Cadillac, to find out why.

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Zero Motorcycles may not be the first electric vehicle company that comes to mind when you think of California transportation start-ups, but there's more to the firm than just Tesla on two wheels. Founded back in 2006 in Santa Cruz, CA, the trajectory from passion project to internationally respected bike company has been a rapid one. With a new CEO at the handlebars, and more attention than ever on EVs and the future of transportation, I stopped by to take a tour of the production line and find out more.

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Cuba probably isn't the first place you'd expect to find a million-dollar monster truck, but that only served as encouragement for professional racer BJ Baldwin. For "Recoil 4", the latest in the off-road driver's stunt videos, he took his 6,000 pound truck on a high-speed run around the country, thundering through tight city streets and achieving a record-setting 191 foot residential jump, among other stunts. With "Recoil 4" now released online, I caught up with Baldwin to find out why Cuba, what went wrong, and whether he broke anything other than records along the way.

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Until now, the only way one car could communicate with another was if the driver leaned on the horn or made imaginative hand-signals to their fellow motorists. With the arrival of the 2017 Cadillac CTS, though, all of a sudden the vehicle itself gets chatty. Making V2V, or Vehicle-to-Vehicle, communication a standard feature, it promises not only an increase in on-road safety but to pave the way to new semi-autonomous and self-driving features. The big question is, with Vehicle-to... well, anything still in its infancy, why is Cadillac making the jump now?

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