Tonight the Wall Street Journal reports that, according to anonymous sources, Google will introduce an ad-blocking feature for Chrome on mobile and desktop platforms. Ad blockers for browsers are hardly a new thing, and Google itself already pays into Adblock Plus’ “Acceptable Ads program, but this is interesting because Google is at its heart an advertising company. Based on the report, Chrome’s ad blocking will target bad advertisements as defined by the Coalition for Better Ads, including pop-ups, autoplaying ads, time countdowns and others.

We’re fairly confident that most of our readers understand how the internet works, but there are some who could use a little more information. Who knows, maybe you actually think you know how the internet works but after taking a look at the animated infographic below you could learn something. The World Wide Web and the internet as we know it has been a work in progress since the 70’s. We really took off to the races in the late 80’s with the help of British computer scientist Sir Tim Berners-Lee. Check out the simple infographic below provided to us by siegemedia and Frontier.

And there you have it! A quick rundown on the general workings and history of the internet. This animated infographic is pretty basic and the working and moving parts and history of the web is obviously far more complex, but it is a good start to understanding how it all began. If you’d like to learn more about how the it all got started and how your search for cat pictures turns into results that show you pictures of cats, you can read more about the history of the internet on Wikipedia, or head over to the biggest search engine in the world — Google — to see their story about how search works. There are plenty of resources available to learn more about nearly anything you could possibly want, all you need to do is perform a quick search on… you guessed it… the internet.

How long have you been on the ‘net? What are some of your favorite early experiences? Tell us all about it in the comments below or on Google+, Twitter, or Facebook.

Facebook Spaces was announced at the social network’s F8 conference as a way of blending social media and virtual reality. If you own an Oculus Rift (and Touch controllers), you and four friends can enter a virtual world and hang out together.

Unfortunately, hanging out mostly constitutes of chatting, taking “selfies*” and enjoying the virtual world around you. Oh, and it’s not you, per se, but a cartoon caricature that you control; a dead-eyed digital mannequin that smiles blankly at everyone in the desperate hope that you won’t find it creepy.

Unfortunately, Spaces falls into the same trap that so many other platforms have over the years, assuming that people want the digital world to be a surrogate for the real. And that people have the time and energy to sit around talking to a cartoon with their friend’s voice through thousands of dollars worth of equipment.

Whenever a high-minded tech company makes proclamations about the future of social interaction, I’m reminded of Second Life. Founded more than a decade ago, the title was an open world platform that enabled strangers across the world to come together. It was touted as a digital utopia, a place where you were free to create whatever you wanted, whenever you wanted, however you wanted. Your digital avatar could even fly around the Second Life universe, interacting with people from across the globe.

But in reality, this utopianism was misplaced, and the environment, even during its boom years, was stale and empty. People weren’t all that into into communicating with each other, and the platform gradually became a space for people to develop weird forms of architecture. It became little more than a proto-Minecraft, a gallery space or weird and wonderful designs that few would ever notice. Second Life itself still exists, of course, with around 600,000 monthly active users.

A big part of the internet’s job is to bring people together in ways that we wouldn’t — couldn’t — have conceived a few generations ago. We can now learn so much from people all across the globe and share their experiences, dreams and knowledge. Real-time chat platforms, from IRC to FaceTime, have enabled us to gradually bridge the physical distances that separate us. Still, none are a substitute for real human interaction, face to face, in the real world.

Facebook Spaces, on the other hand, places two more barriers between us and our friends: the bulky VR headset and the digital avatar. Then there are the constraints that Facebook places upon its users. At the moment, Spaces users can’t express sadness or anger. The likelihood of this becoming the new normal for social interactions is about as likely as Disney’s recently shuttered Club Penguin becoming the new Facebook.

Facebook is asking us to take a chunk of our most precious commodity — our attention — and give it entirely to its virtual world. But that world is one step removed from that of the internet, full of (literally) fake people in a fake place. In the demo video, friends gather together a surprise birthday party to take a selfie of themselves on an imaginary boardwalk.

But where is the reality and authenticity in you, and three other people, taking an image of some cartoon avatars in a virtual world? Will you expect that future historians will unearth these images and marvel at the experiences that you pretended to have?

I wonder if I’m wrong, and that people will embrace this in the same way that they have taking pictures from inside video games. But then that, at least, shows a journey that you’re going on — and an appreciation of a particularly engaging sight that’s been created within the game. Imagine the reaction of your friends and family when you show them your vacation shots from the Grand Canyon that you didn’t visit.

Even Mark Zuckerberg knows that Facebook’s Social VR demo, as it is, not the future of how we’re going to interact with one another. Both this year and last, the CEO showed off a rough idea for an augmented reality platform that could work in a pair of glasses. There, you’d never need to buy a TV, just use the AR overlay in the lenses on conjure one up on the wall of your otherwise sparse living room.

Unfortunately, that idea is nowhere near ready for the real world, and Facebook VP Deb Liu told the AP that the journey to that hardware was “just one percent finished.” Imagine, rather than exchanging time-sucking pleasantries with a cartoon avatar while standing on a fake mountaintop, having someone sitting on your couch next to you.

You’d be able to speak to them as if they were in the room, despite being on the other side of the world. But with this (almost) real interaction, you would have real eye contact, real body language and all of the other things that we, as humans, need in order to feel comfortable interacting with one another.

The software and hardware just isn’t there for this sort of platform, and probably won’t be for a very long time. But that, not Facebook Spaces, is the vision of social VR that I can get behind.

Click here to catch up on the latest news from F8 2017!

* Technically not a selfie, since it’s not the person taking a photo.

Sing Street

Perfect for anyone who’s ever been in a band – and pretty much everyone else – this 2016 comedy drama set in 1980s Dublin follows a troubled teen who starts a band to impress the girl he likes. From the shoddy homemade pop videos to the American high school dance dream sequence, it’s got everything you need for a musical ’80s homage.

Battle Royale

A strong inspiration for The Hunger Games, and many other films besides, this disturbingly violent thriller sees a group of Japanese high school students shipped off to an island and forced to fight to the death as part of the annual government-sanctioned Battle Royale game.

Annie Hall

As in many of his films, Woody Allen plays a exaggerated version of himself, in this case neurotic comedian Alvy Singer, who falls in love with flighty Annie Hall (Diane Keaton) in this sharp Manhattan-based romantic comedy. If you’re only ever going to watch one Woody Allen film, this is the one to choose.

Red Army

This documentary film tells the gripping story of the Soviet ice hockey team. As well as explaining how the squad became so dominant in the sport during the Cold War, it also tells the tale of those who defected to the US before the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Fascinating stuff.

In the Heat of the Night

Screen legend Sidney Poitier stars in this 1967 classic as a Philadelphia detective who travels to a small Mississippi town to investigate a murder. With sad predictability, he’s met with hostility and a racist police chief (Rod Steiger) with whom he must work to solve the crime.

Let the Right One In

Ignore the remake (Let Me In) and stick with the original Swedish horror film about a bullied boy who falls in love with a vampire girl in the Stockholm suburbs in the early 1980s. The macabre romance is bleak and bizarre but also strangely uplifting.

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold

Based on John le Carré’s novel of the same name, this gripping Cold War thriller stars Richard Burton as British agent Alec Leamas who is determined to ‘come in from the cold’ and give up his life of espionage. To do that, he must complete one last mission to East Germany as a faux defector, in order to spread misinformation.

13th

This Oscar-nominated documentary from director Ava DuVernay takes its title from the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S Constitution which abolished slavery in 1865. The thought-provoking film takes an uncomfortable look at the country’s subsequent history of racial inequality including the Jim Crow segregation laws and the demonisation and mass incarceration of minority communities.

Perhaps the best examples for that category are LightSail, the Bill Nye-helmed campaign that brought Carl Sagan’s “solar sailer” to life, and the Oculus VR headset. Oculus raised $2.4 million on the platform, which is impressive, but what the campaign really did for the team is bring it to Facebook’s attention — the social network ended up buying Oculus for a cool $2 billion. There’s also OpenROV, the underwater drone that raised over $800,000 on the platform.

In addition to technologies that push the limits, the team is also looking for campaigns featuring tools that can help bring other people’s projects to life. A couple of good examples are Particle’s electron board that people can use to make IoT devices and Artiphon’s Instrument 1, which can function as several types of musical instruments. Finally, they’re also looking for campaigns that feature avant-garde designs, such as Lumos the next-gen bicycle helmet and a shapeshifting modern lamp called Lumio.

Kickstarter says it decided to publish its request, because it was inspired by Y Combinator’s call for startups. It’s also part of staying true to its promise to support arts and creativity as a public benefit corporation, which was also the reason why the company hosted a special STEM event for kids last year. So, what can you expect if your project fits any of the three categories Kickstarter is looking for? The company says it will work with you one-on-one to help make your campaign shine and “spotlight it for [its] community of 13 million backers.”

I had the chance to try out Spaces for myself a few hours after it was announced at F8. As soon as I placed the Oculus Rift headset on my head and the Touch controllers were in my hands, I was transported to what appeared like a beautiful park with cherry blossom trees. On my right was my virtual helper, Justin, who appeared in the form of an animated cartoon avatar. In front of me was a tableau of sorts, with a little dashboard in front of me.

Justin told me to select Appearance, and voila, I could customize the appearance of an animated cartoon avatar of myself. You could design one from scratch by customizing individual features like your nose or your hair, but I decided to just have one automatically generated for me. I grabbed one of my profile photos, which were already on display, and Spaces was smart enough to translate it into a cartoon version of me. From there, I also changed the color of my glasses and my shirt, which you can do in the Appearance tab too.

What I noticed almost immediately is how real it seemed, which is really weird considering I was speaking to an animated avatar. Mike Booth, the product manager leading the Spaces development team, says that’s because the Rift and the Touch creates a little motion capture studio. “You get your actual body language,” he said. “It captures head movements, even hand gesticulation.”

What’s more, Spaces also infers what your eyes are looking at, creating what appears to be eye contact, which is integral to face-to-face communications. One of the reasons Spaces can do this so well is because these avatars are stylized and cartoon-like. “They’re not hyper-realistic, where you can find every little flaw,” says Booth.

The same goes with mouth movement. It actually listens to the voice coming through the Rift microphone and then it tries to guess what mouth shapes you’re making. It’s not always accurate — it sort of snaps the mouth around like a Wallace & Gromit cartoon — but that’s entirely on purpose. “We’re not trying to be super photorealistic,” says Booth. “We just want to show that you’re talking.”

There are other fun things you can do with your avatar too. If you point both thumbsticks up, your avatar will laugh. Point them out, and you’ll smile. Place both controllers on your face and you’ll make an “OH” face. Turn them outward, and your avatar will shrug and look confused. Gestures are basically to VR as emojis are to text. “You have to invoke them,” said Booth. “They’re not supposed to be accidental.”

Next, Justin showed me how to share different kinds of media. I could share photos and videos from my own album, or I could share ones from my newsfeed, or I could just share whatever on the web I found interesting. Once selected, I could resize them anyway I want and have them displayed in the background. What’s especially neat is that when you share 360-degree photos and videos, you can sort of throw them in the middle of the tableau and the image will completely envelop the world. It sounds sort of silly perhaps, but when Justin shared a 360-degree video of a CNN documentary of Iceland, I almost felt like we were right there, taking a tour of the glaciers.

You also have the option of using a marker to draw silly doodles, turning them into three-dimensional art. You can toss them around, make duplicates of them or just play silly games with them. And of course, I couldn’t not take a selfie. Yes, there’s a virtual selfie stick, and yes it works just as it sounds. Simply grab the selfie stick, frame the shot you want and snap the perfect shot. From there, you can share it with your friends just like you can with any other photo.

Last but not least, Spaces is also tied in with Messenger. So you can initiate video calls right when you’re in VR. Your friend’s video chat screen will show up in a little floating square (No, they don’t need a VR headset to participate) and only you can hear and see what he or she says — none of your other VR buddies can eavesdrop in the conversation. They can still hear what you say of course, but they can’t hear what your Messenger friend is saying. Facebook tells me there’s no way to enable that just yet, but that functionality might come later in the future.

As cool as all of that is though, what really sold me the most on Spaces are those animated avatars. And they also happen to be one of the factors that was really hard for Facebook to get right. “The biggest challenge was how the avatars were going to look,” said Booth. “You know the uncanny valley? Well the uncanny valley in VR is a lot wider. Anything that’s attached to your head is going to have biological motions; it’s going to seem alive.” That means that anything that was too life-like would look weird.

“Finding the right balance of charming and being human recognizably without being too realistic and creepy, was harder than expected,” said Booth. “One of our early experiments was to have the lips smoothly blend with the shapes, thinking it would be realistic. And it was just way too creepy.” There were also some experiments on non-human avatars, like you’d see on Zootopia, but that was nixed as well. “Facebook is about authentic identity, which is fundamentally about humans.” Still, that doesn’t mean that costumes won’t be an option later on.

“The core of Spaces, the reason it exists, is so you can feel like you’re in person with your friends,” said Booth. “And then it’s having interesting things you can do with your friends. It’s not a chatroom where you’re just talking.

Of course, Facebook Spaces isn’t the only social VR app out there. Oculus even has its own version called Oculus Rooms. The difference between the two, Booth says, is that Oculus’ version is made just for Oculus hardware and is made to drive that particular platform. Facebook Spaces, on the other hand, is supposed to be much more widespread. That’s why even though it’s an Oculus exclusive right now, Booth wants it to be on all VR hardware. Yes, even the Vive.

When I asked what Booth would say to the skeptics of social VR, he said he doesn’t quite know. But what he thinks would really happen, is that VR skeptics would finally be persuaded to use VR because of social. “There are people that are looking at VR, thinking it’s not for me, because they think it’s all about gaming,” he said. “But what we’re trying to build is for everyone.”

“We want to bring you and your friends to VR,” said Booth. “I hope it’ll make more people look at VR as someone that people will actually want.”

Microsoft’s phone sign-in works similarly to Google’s sign-in prompts in that it uses a mobile app (available for iOS, Android and Windows Phone) to confirm your identity, but you’ll never actually need to type a password when signing on to Microsoft services. Once you’ve set up your Microsoft Account in the app, you can enable phone sign-in through the settings menu. The next time you log in to your Microsoft Account on the desktop, you only need to enter your username and you’ll receive a notification on your phone to approve the login. Tap approve, and you’re in. The notifications act as a safeguard against unauthorized login attempts and the app can also create a unique code that works as a second authentication factor for OAuth logins.

Of course, you can always switch back to your password if you’ve somehow been separated from your phone, but Microsoft says the whole process is “easier than standard two-step verification and significantly more secure than only a password.”

If there was still any question why Facebook paid all of that money for Oculus, today’s F8 keynote provided some extra explanation. From AR to social VR and more, the company laid out its plan for the immediate future that involves blending the virtual world with real life. If you missed the hour-long talk earlier today, don’t fret: We’ve compiled all the big news in a 10-minute clip.

Click here to catch up on the latest news from F8 2017!

The full version of Workplace will be free until September 30th, but Facebook plans to charge a modest monthly rate of $3 per person for the first 1,000 people, $2 per person for the next 9,000 users, and $1 per person after that. Slack does offer 5GB of storage and service integrations with its free service, but you’re looking at a minimum of $6.50 per month for perks like additional storage or searching chat archives. That can add up quickly if you’re part of a large outfit.

Workplace is also getting bots that can automate tasks in group chats, such as ordering food for a long meeting or Lyft rides for the trip to an event. You’ll also have the option of broadcasting live video from pro equipment, such as a high-end camera at a presentation.

Should Slack be worried? That’s hard to say at this stage. Facebook’s name and resources will certainly get its foot in the door, but Slack has years of lead time and a presence on virtually every major platform. Also, some organizations may prefer Slack precisely because it isn’t Facebook. You don’t have to think about sharing your Facebook identity with your office, for example. It won’t be surprising if Workplace makes further inroads with its free tier, but it isn’t guaranteed to dominate.

Click here to catch up on the latest news from F8 2017!

Facebook teased how it would create social experiences in virtual reality, and now it’s ready to take things one step further. It just launched a Facebook Spaces beta that lets Oculus Rift owners hang out together (up to four at once) in VR. You can create an avatar that’s as realistic or fanciful as you want, draw 3D objects and show off your personal videos and use 360-degree video backgrounds to liven up your chats. There’s even a selfie stick to take virtual self-portraits. And if a friend can’t use VR, you can bring them into the conversation using Facebook Messenger video calls.

Developing…

Click here to catch up on the latest news from F8 2017!

You can access these objects the same way you get to any of Snapchat’s other lenses — from the camera view, just tap the screen and it’ll scan what’s in front of you. For starters, there are two sets of 3D objects you can try. The first contains emoji-esque graphics like a happy rainbow, sad cloud, sassy coffee mug and so on. Tapping and holding on the object lets you move it around throughout your scene, and its size scales depending on how close or far away you place it in your virtual scene.

Once you place the object in your scene, you can start recording video and walk around it to see it from all angles, just like it’s a real happy rainbow. It’s a neat trick, and it looks like Snapchat even managed to avoid getting offensive this time. In addition to the 3D emoji, you can also drop big text bubbles into your scene; phrases include “OMG,” “hello” and “gross,” for starters. While these new lenses certainly fit into the goofy Snapchat aesthetic, they’re also one of the more interesting tricks we’ve seen from the app in a while — here’s hoping Snap adds more three-dimensional objects to the app soon.

Carmen Sandiego started off as a live-action game show with awkward costumes, heavy word play and puns, and stealth geography lessons. Netflix’s remake sounds closer to Fox’s animated series Where on Earth Is Carmen Sandiego that ran from the mid- to late ’90s. The show blended travelling the world with time travel, with early internet and computer game references a-plenty. For further temporal / third wall confusion, the entire show took place inside a video game, with the protagonists often talking and interacting with an off-camera kid and his giant, beige desktop PC.

In my still-developing tween brain, the original animated show struck the perfect balance between morning cartoon and, ugh, “edutainment”. Netflix appears to be making moves into this with its recent kids programming: The Magic School Bus is also set to be revived. hasn’t detailed when the show might arrive, but I’d offer one word of warning: don’t you dare ruin the theme song.

MIT PhD student and project lead Carrie Cai explained:

“With stand-alone apps, it can be inconvenient to have to separately open them up to do a learning task. WaitSuite is embedded directly into your existing tasks, so that you can easily learn without leaving what you were already doing.”

Those are but two of the five tasks WaitSuite covers, though. One tool from the suite can look for Bluetooth iBeacons and will send you a flash card if it determines that you’re in front of an elevator. Another will ask you to translate words while waiting for WiFi to connect, while the last one sends you words to translate while you’re waiting for an email to send.

Based on the team’s preliminary tests, some of the tools could prove more useful than others, depending on your situation. If your computer takes a while before it connects to WiFi, you can learn a word or two. Otherwise, that particular tool won’t be that useful. Their testers seemed to love the elevator app, though, since it typically takes a minute to call an elevator and only 10 seconds to answer a flash card question.

Cai also noted that their testers were able to focus on their main tasks a lot better with the addition of the WaitSuite tools, since they were less likely to check Facebook and other social networks. In the future, Cai and her team want to create similar “wait-learning” tools in an audio format for times when you can’t look at your screen. For now, you can test one of WaitSuite’s apps available for download from the CSAIL website. The team made WaitChatter available as a Chrome extension for Google Chat, so you can learn words while waiting for a friend to finish typing.

[ Source:-http://techcentralus.blogspot.com/2017/04/18/mits-app-only-needs-a-second-to-teach-you-a-new-language/ ]

It’s going to be a busy week.
What to expect from Facebook’s annual developer conference

2017 marks the 10th anniversary of F8, and you know that CEO Mark Zuckerberg will want to show off just how far Facebook has come in the past ten years. Covering more Messenger, those Live woes and maybe even a bunch of hardware, here’s a look at what we’ll hopefully see in the days ahead.

Origin’s first budget gaming laptop costs less than a grandThere’s such a thing as a budget gaming laptop?

Origin’s EON15-S laptop has always straddled the line between gaming performance and portability, and this year’s model does that again, but for a bit less cash. For 2017, the PC maker has added NVIDIA’s newish 4GB 1050 Ti graphics card, a model that gives it a (very) mild speed bump over last year’s 980M-based EON15-S. That’s squeezed into a 1-inch, 5-pound case, and costs $999 for the cheapest configuration. However, there’s no high-res screen option this time around — you’re stuck with a 15.6-inch 1,920 x 1,080 IPS panel.

That’s a big number.Netflix explains why it keeps paying Adam Sandler for movies

Yesterday Netflix revealed its quarterly earnings, and said it is close to having 100 million streaming customers. But the most surprising statistic had to be news that subscribers have streamed half a billion hours of Adam Sandler movies since the debut of The Original 6.

It’s only twice the price of a Model 3
Tesla cuts the price on its entry-level Model S by $5,000

Recently, Tesla dropped the cheapest version of its Model S and now it’s followed up by lowering the price of the current entry-level edition. The 75 and 75D are still $1,500 more than the 60/60D was, even after a $5k price cut, but they offer more range and now come standard with features like a glass roof and automatic rear power liftgate.

It’s time to get dirty
Marriott, Hilton and Hyatt take the fight to Airbnb via lobbyists

Inevitably, hotels were going to fight back against “home sharing” apps, and a New York Times report says that time is now. Via lobbyist organizations, the hotel industry is apparently fighting on the “local, state and federal level” to rein in Airbnb and the rest with additional regulation and scrutiny (Of course, some would argue that scrutiny might be necessary).

Distill water, hop oil, or whiskey… if your local laws allow it.
Picobrew’s next goal: A safe and affordable DIY distillery

Picobrew has a new, cheaper countertop beer brewing system. That you already knew. But the company is now dipping its toes into distilling. The Picostill is an add on for the Pico Model C that turns that weird custom designed keg into a countertop distillery. Specifically it’s a reflux still that uses vacuum distillation, which doesn’t look as cool as a pot or column still, but makes far more efficient use of the space.

Finally, a way to revisit Microsoft BASIC 2.0.
Go back to 1984 with Internet Archive’s Macintosh collection

Not content to sit on the sidelines, the Internet Archive recently resurrected something, too. This time, it’s a swath of apps, games and software from the original Macintosh circa 1984. That means stuff like Lode Runner, MacOS System 7.0.1, Microsoft BASIC 2.0 and Space Invaders are on offer in their pixelated, black-and-white glory. Just like the old days.

The Wear24 will set you back $300 with a 2-year activation.
Verizon’s Android Wear 2.0 watch goes on sale May 11th

Verizon’s Android Wear 2.0 smartwatch broke from cover back in February with an scheduled launch for March. Well, that didn’t happen. Today, the wireless carrier announced that its Wear24 device would go on sale both in stores and online May 11th. If you’ll recall, the wearable is priced at $300 with a 2-year activation plus $5 month to tack one on to your data plan.

But wait, there’s more…

“The concert will be broadcast from multiple vantage points including the front row and on-stage to provide unprecedented access for fans,” NextVR said in a statement. Finally, you’ll be able to see the George Hamilton of metal (Anthrax singer Joey Belladonna) and guitarist Scott Ian’s lengthy beard up-close-and-personal. All that and you won’t have to get kicked in the head by a passing crowdsurfer or spend an evening pressed up against the rail separating fans from the stage.

Better yet? Beer from your fridge will be cheaper than the venue’s and you won’t have to worry about getting bounced for smoking. The free broadcast is even sweeter when you can pull your Daydream View or Gear VR headset off after Anthrax leaves the stage and not feel obligated to stick around for Killswitch because you dropped cash on a ticket. If there’s a downside, however, it’s that regardless of how cool VR is, you won’t be able to get caught in a mosh tonight.

For example, the steep penalties in New York for running illegal hotels? You can partly chalk that up to lobbying the governor’s office and state lawmakers. A letter Democrat Senators sent to the FTC “raising concerns” about Airbnb was reportedly the work of collaboration with the hotel association. And of course, the organization takes partial credit for laws and enforcement actions in cities like San Francisco. The group even takes a two-sided approach to taxes. It’ll insist that Airbnb is evading lodging taxes in some cases, but will sometimes urge governments to avoid collecting taxes to give Airbnb an aura of illegitimacy.

The AHLA will also fund studies highlighting some of the issues (real or perceived) with Airbnb, such as the economic damage to hotels and communities. It even partners with affordable housing and neighborhood groups to channel their outrage.

Naturally, Airbnb is angry. It insists that the “hotel cartel” is conducting the campaign to make sure it can “keep price-gouging customers.” To some extent, that’s right. Hotels have had to lower their rates during peak travel periods thanks to Airbnb, and they really don’t like having to compete against anyone with a guest room. However, some of the AHLA’s actions are also addressing real concerns about services like Airbnb, such as the rise of illegal hotels that drive out residents and raise rental costs in the remaining apartments. It’s not quite as simple as demonizing one side or the other — just know that the home sharing legislation you see might be skewed by corporate cash.