This week, a look at the merits of online petitions, superheroes star in new game from Vancouver studio, and a computer beats a human at Go. But first, PlayStation has revealed what its virtual reality headset will cost.

PlayStation VR releases in October for $550

PlayStation stands to dominate the early adoption of virtual reality. PS VR is priced at $550, compared to $850 for the Oculus Rift and $1,150 for the HTC Vive.

And while the other systems require a high-performance camera, all you need to use the PS VR is a PS4.

Almost. Sony has been a bit coy about the fact that you’ll also need the PS Camera peripheral, and some games may require that you have PS Move controllers.

Those additional things aren’t going to set you back too much. The Camera is $60 and the move controllers are around $50.

The PS4 doesn’t have the processing power required for VR, so an external processor unit ships with the PS VR. That’s included in the cost.

Sony plans on releasing PS VR in October. They also plan to have some 50 things to experience with PS VR before the end of the year, from tech demos to games like EVE: Valkyrie.

There has been no announcement about pre-orders for the PS VR. But there will be pre-orders at some point so you can be sure you’ll get one on launch day.

One small step for man, one giant leap for AI

The best way to demonstrate how smart machines have become is by having them play games, which require both an understanding of rules, but the ability to respond to the actions of another player.

This was demonstrated most popularly in the two chess tournaments that pitted IBM’s Deep Blue against world chess master Garry Kasparov. The first match, in 1996, was won by the human. A year later, after some upgrades, the computer won.

But that was child’s play compared to what happened in the past week, when a machine, DeepMind, a Google project, defeated Lee Sedol, perhaps the world’s best Go player, four games to one.

The difference between chess and Go was described eloquently by Edward Lasker, a chess master and Go player:
“While the baroque rules of chess could only have been created by humans, the rules of Go are so elegant, organic, and rigorously logical that if intelligent life forms exist elsewhere in the universe, they almost certainly play Go.”

DeepMind reportedly learned how to play the Go by playing games against itself. According to one of the machine’s creators, Demis Hassabis, that likely led to some gaps in its knowledge.

But despite the lack of experience playing against a real Go player, DeepMind succeeded despite suggestions that the game of Go is too intuitive for a machine to play.

Each of the matches has been archived on YouTube.

Things the Internet is good for #612: Online petitions

There are so many things about the Internet that are good and bad. You can get the craziest t-shirts ever imagined. And it is full of cat photos. You can find out what’s going on anywhere in the world. And you have to wade through Trump talk to get to anything interesting. You can start a petition. And you can start a petition.

Petitions are fantastic devices for the general public to make an impact on decisions they normally would not be able to influence.

But not all petitions are the same. There are petitions that can convince Amazon to stop selling Robert Pickton’s autobiography. And there are petitions to try and get a CEO to resign.

I’m not suggesting that there isn’t something to be discovered in the WestJet case, in which a former flight attendant has initiated legal action around a sexual assault accusation.

But to think that a CEO is going to resign because of it is a bit much.

Although public outcry – and 180,000 names on a petition – did get Des Hague to resign.

Maybe it can even get get the provincial government to stop discriminating against people with disabiltiies.

New Disney Infinity Play Set designed in Vancouver at United Front Games

Released yesterday is the new play set for Disney Infinity 3.0, Marvel Battlegrounds. Three new characters join the roster: Ant-Man, Black Panther, and Vision.

Developed in Vancouver at United Front Games, Battlegrounds brings four-player arcade fighting to Infinity for the first time. You can use all the Marvel Infinity figures in the game, and UFG has built Battlegrounds so that players can try out as many different characters as possible. Every week there are three new trial characters to use, and by playing you’ll earn tokens that you can spend on any character you want to play.

Marvel Battlegrounds is an absolute riot to play.