RedditAma
Latest
Moderators banned 2,200 accounts during Donald Trump's AMA
Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump participated in a Reddit AMA last night on the pro-Trump forum, /r/The_Donald, allowing a handful of internet denizens to ask him questions about the election and his proposed policies. He answered 12 questions in total and stuck to fairly broad statements such as, "I think NASA is wonderful." Trump reiterated his distrust of the press and of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, and his goal to repeal the Affordable Care Act. His most in-depth answers invited former Bernie Sanders supporters to vote for him and reached out to people considering voting for a third-party candidate. In a post-AMA thread and elsewhere in /r/The_Donald, some users accused Reddit administrators of "censoring" the Trump session by artificially down-voting it and not showing it on the site's front page.
Oculus founder apologizes for how Rift pricing was handled
It's fair to say that quite a few people are disappointed with the price of the Oculus Rift -- just read the comments on our article announcing that pre-orders had gone live. At $599 (€699 in Europe and £499 in the UK) it's a considerable investment, and one that's surprised people given that Oculus VR founder Palmer Lucky once mentioned a "$350 ballpark" figure. In a Reddit AMA, the designer has apologized for the way the Rift's price was communicated, saying his original comment was "ill-prepared" and reactionary to articles that stated the final version would cost $1500 on its own (in fact, that's the price of a future Rift and PC bundle.)
How real spacesuits differ from movie versions
The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum's curator Cathleen Lewis and conservator Lisa Young answered a number of questions from the public via a Reddit AMA session yesterday. The topic? Spacesuits. They recently raised over $600,000 on Kickstarter for the conservation of Neil Armstrong's Apollo 11 suit, and now they've begun promoting the project. One of the most interesting tidbits they dropped is the difference between real spacesuits and movie props. The biggest inaccuracy for Lewis is the size of most movie versions' helmets: turns out Hollywood merely exaggerates them to get a clear view of the actors' faces. "If you look at actual Apollo bubble helmets and photographs of astronauts wearing them, you will see that they are actually tightly fitting," Lewis answered the user who asked about movie inaccuracies. "The diameter of the helmets is about 12 inches. No one with claustrophobia would be able to get beyond the initial helmet fit."
Reddit says it will hide but not ban hate communities
Reddit Co-Founder and new CEO Steve Huffman has just laid out a host of changes to the websites content policy. He cites the company's earlier banning of non-consensual porn (ie revenge porn) as a restriction that improved the community as a whole -- even if those that traded in the smut felt their First Amendment rights were being violated. The new changes are clearly designed to address the rampant harassment and vitriol spewed by certain groups within the larger community. The new restrictions effectively move spam, doxxing, hate speech (based on sexual, ethnic and racial factors) and "sexually suggestive posts featuring minors" off of any public-facing pages. This content, like all common porn, must be flagged as NSFW. What's more those channels indulging in NSFW content will be opt-in only and require a login to access.
Here's what we know about Magic Leap so far
Google made a big splash when it threw its support behind Magic Leap with a $542 million investment last year. Immediately people began wondering what exactly Mountain View was so excited about that it was willing to drop half a billion dollars as pure investment -- not even an acquisition. Unfortunately, the startup continues to guard its secrets closely. All we know is that Magic Leap has some sort of wearable that blends augmented reality and virtual reality. We know that whatever its building is not meant to be used while stationary... but that's about it. We still don't have specs or a complete features list. We do have some information though, that was revealed during CEO Rony Abovitz's recent Reddit AMA. We know we weren't entirely accurate when we called its product an "augmented reality" headset. But it's still not entirely clear what it is. We've compiled the tidbits of info we've heard and read about Magic Leap. Hopefully, it can tide the curious over until Abovitz and his cohorts finally give us all a glimpse of their mysterious device.
Skype co-founder reveals service's origins as WiFi-sharing network
Everyone and their mother knows Skype as a call and chat messenger, but it would've been a completely different beast if its founders' original plans came to fruition."The initial idea was to develop a WiFi-sharing network, and then provide various 'telecom-like' services on top of that, such as TV and telephony," explained founding engineer Jaan Tallinn in a Reddit AMA. Tallinn compared the project to Fon, but he and his co-founders hit a wall: they couldn't offer TV services because they were battling copyright lawsuits as developers of P2P file-sharing site Kazaa. The team also had trouble finding a decent VoIP product to attach to the service and wound up concocting their own technology instead. The new VoIP tech, which was supposed to be named Skyper until the team noticed Skyper.net was already taken, eventually became the focus of the service. It's an interesting look at the birth of the chat messenger we know today. Now if only we could figure out if the government has direct access to Skype's logs, we'd be set.
President Obama's doing an AMA on Reddit today, invites the people to pose their digital questions
His competition from the GOP, Mitt Romney, already answered the people's questions on Yahoo! Answers, and now the Commander in Chief has decided to take on any and all internet queries too. The virtual Q&A with Obama is set to start at 4:30 ET today via an ask me anything session on Reddit, so head on over to the source link and see if your President will see fit to answer your questions -- be they about health care, net neutrality or even the Cubs non-existent playoff chances.
