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For his first post on Public Access, Parth Misra treats us to a look at four early virtual reality head mounted display systems with a full examination of the specs, technologies and features available. It's fairly astounding how old the headsets look --even though some of them were released only ten or twelve years ago.Another first time poster, Hossein Rahnama, looks into the future with an article about the ways artificial intelligence will require governments to set standards and safeguards. It's an interesting start of a complex discussion that includes aspects of cybersecurity, user privacy, ethics, and law.Meanwhile, Jim Marggraff writes on the ways that VR manufacturers need to get "down to the metal" in order to truly push the technology into a viable future -- meaning essentially, that in order for VR to be fully adopted, it will require an intuitive feel and interaction that far exceeds touchscreens and voice controlled assistants; and arguing that human interactions with machines will become ever more natural to us.The Game Awards 2016 aired this week, and streamed live on YouTube for those eager to find out if Overwatch would win the coveted Game of the Year Award. Timothy Seppala covered the highs and lows in this post , saying this years show was the best yet. Do you watch game awards shows? Why or why not? And if you watched The Game Awards 2016 show, do you agree that it was the best one yet?We looked at the pros and cons of the Google Home this week (and gave it an official Engadget score of 79), and liked it but didn't feel it was an essential experience. With competing products like the Amazon Echo also getting a lot of attention, it seems like a good time to ask: Do you want a smart home assistant like the Home or the Echo? Why or why not? And what do you most wish you could get a smart home assistant to do for you?Last Friday was the fabled day of crazy consumption, Black Friday . Did you participate in any Black Friday deals, events or midnight lines outside of a brick-and-mortar store? If so, what did you do and why? Do you feel like you got some good deals, or that Black Friday deals are usually overinflated to create a sense of savings?