philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

Pumpers, Dumpers, and Shills: The Skycoin Saga

Michael Terpin, who has managed two hundred such token sales, and who handled public relations for Skycoin, told me that the scheme empowers entrepreneurs. “Somebody who had an innovative product could sell directly, prior to it being built, to an audience of enthusiasts,” he said, without having to “give up a third of the company.”

A frenzy followed a few years later. Since 2017, hundreds of projects have announced token sales. One of the most lucrative, eos, raised about three and a half billion dollars in a yearlong I.C.O. 

 In chat rooms, Smietana’s followers addressed him with reverence. “We all are in honor to speak with synth,” a user called Anosis wrote. “It’s like having a chance to talk to Satoshi.”

By early January, 2018, the total estimated value of pre-mined Skycoins had reached almost five billion dollars. Smietana sent representatives to conferences in New York, Lisbon, San Francisco, and Singapore, and arranged a retreat in Mauritius. A former marketing contractor, who requested anonymity out of fear of harassment, recalled that Smietana could spend lavishly on the people who worked with Skycoin, in one case paying for cryotherapy, vitamin injections, thousand-dollar steak dinners, and a twelve-thousand-dollar trip to the Esalen Institute. 

In early February, 2018, a month after the CoinAgenda conference, Stephens booked a trip to Shanghai to see Smietana, determined to bring some order to Skycoin. One night, he had dinner with Smietana and members of a Chinese marketing team that Smietana had hired, at a steak house in Xuhui. As the dinner began, Smietana rose from his chair and launched into a rambling diatribe of conspiracy theories. For hours, he catalogued the hidden crimes of a class of global élites who controlled citizens through virtual reality, medical marijuana, and pornography. At some point, Stephens started recording Smietana on his phone. “We want to feminize the peasant population to make them more docile,” Smietana says. “It’s so they don’t revolt.”

Skycoin went into full damage-control mode. The project had been running a black-ops marketing unit sometimes referred to as Shill Team Six, composed of users plucked from Telegram who specialized in manipulating attention on the Internet. The “shills” occasionally flooded 4chan and Reddit, keeping engagement up with memes and bots. 

In voice messages, DJ Hives referred to Skycoin customers as “fish,” a poker term for easily exploited players, and encouraged Smietana to cultivate an aura of infallibility: “We want to put you on the level of deity as far as the masses are concerned.” (When contacted on Telegram, DJ Hives said, “None of this is correct,” and declined to comment further.)

In July, 2018, a recording leaked of Li Xiaolai, a Chinese billionaire and the founder of a coin that launched with an eighty-two-million-dollar token sale, giving his unfiltered perspective on the industry. “From the start, I knew one thing,” he said. “The main power to compete here is the traffic.” Successful coins accrue value, in other words, not because of technical sophistication but because they get people’s attention. This requires having a founder who can capture the imagination. “All the successful 100X, 1000X projects—you go and look at the founder, they will definitely be a spin doctor,” he said. What matters with a coin is that people are talking about it. “The consensus of idiots is still consensus,” he said.

To some extent, this is true of most modern currencies: they have no value apart from what we collectively assign them. But the U.S. dollar is supported by government guarantees and controlled through monetary policies. Bitcoin abolished government backing, but its scarcity is regulated through algorithms. (Even so, a tweet or statement from a high-profile coinholder like Elon Musk can raise or crash its price.) ...  Their value is built on a promise that some feature, often still in development, will make them more useful than other currencies. Until that promise is fulfilled, it is largely a matter of faith. “Money is a social construct,” Smietana wrote, on Telegram. “It is based upon CONFIDENCE . . . Confidence is a religion and is built upon perception and not reality.”

Founders that control perception control the price of their coin. According to Chwierut, the blockchain researcher, during the I.C.O. bubble, it was not uncommon for founders to spend as much as thirty per cent of their budget on ad campaigns.

I began to feel dizzy reporting this story, trying to sort through the layers of deception and to figure out whom I could trust. Everyone seemed to think that they could spin what I wrote to their advantage.

See the full long article here: https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/pumpers-dumpers-and-shills-the-skycoin-saga

China passes new personal data privacy law, to take effect Nov. 1

SHANGHAI, Aug 20 (Reuters) - China's National People's Congress on Friday passed a law designed to protect online user data privacy and will implement the policy from Nov. 1, according to state media outlet Xinhua.

The law's passage completes another pillar in the country's efforts to regulate cyberspace and is expected to add more compliance requirements for companies in the country.

China has instructed its tech giants to ensure better secure storage of user data, amid public complaints about mismanagement and misuse which have resulted in user privacy violations.

The law states that handling of personal information must have clear and reasonable purpose and shall be limited to the "minimum scope necessary to achieve the goals of handling" data.

It also lays out conditions for which companies can collect personal data, including obtaining an individual's consent, as well as laying out guidelines for ensuring data protection when data is transferred outside the country.

The law further calls for handlers of personal information to designate an individual in charge of personal information protection, and for handlers to conduct periodic audits to ensure compliance with the law.

The second draft of the Personal Information Protection law was released publicly in late April. ...

On Tuesday, China's State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) passed a sweeping set of rules aimed at improving fair competition, banning practices such as fake online reviews.

In January, the government-backed China Consumers Association issued a statement criticizing tech companies for "bullying" consumers into making purchases and promotions. ...

See the full story here: https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-passes-new-personal-data-privacy-law-take-effect-nov-1-2021-08-20/

Phil Lelyveld’s 10 seconds of fame at Cannes 2021!

Elon Musk Doubles Down on Artificial Intelligence at Tesla Amid Scrutiny of Autopilot

Mr. Musk, Tesla’s chief executive, said Tesla would build a robot in a human form that could perform repetitive tasks, with a prototype likely to be ready next year. It would draw on some of the technology Tesla has developed for vehicles, he said Thursday during an event in Palo Alto, Calif., around artificial intelligence, or technology designed to mimic the way humans think.

The deployment of such robots could fundamentally change the economy, potentially alleviating labor shortages, he said. “In the future, physical work will be a choice,” Mr. Musk said, adding that long-term, such a robot could make it necessary to provide a universal basic income, or a stipend to people without strings attached.

See the full story here: https://www.wsj.com/articles/tesla-ai-day-2021-11629408749

Facebook Releases Blockbuster App For Remote Work

This morning Facebook launched Horizon Workrooms, a free cross platform XR (VR, PC) collaboration app that enables distributed teams or groups to share a private virtual room for meetings, training and education. Workrooms can accommodate up to sixteen avatars, representing sixteen people in Oculus Quest 2 VR headsets, and as many as fifty people on video, using the companion Oculus remote desktop PC app, which provides a Zoom-like interface for colleagues on PCs in the physical world. There are white boards, shared note pads, and options for multiple environments that change in size based on the number of participants in VR. The rooms are persistent and content created there can be taken back onto the PC. Users can upload documents, photos, videos, basically any file on their computer into the room. You can even screen share.

... You can see your computer through the outward facing cameras of the Quest 2 headset well enough to type notes on a real computer while in VR...

“Workrooms is our first experience designed from the ground up using hands as your primary form of input instead of controllers,” began LeBeau. ... They’re more natural, more expressive, and quite good for using other tools like whiteboards and computers, making it more like a place you want to do work.” ...

"... It works for people in 2D and in headsets.” Boz later elaborated. ... A metaverse describes a persistent digital place that can be accessed by all sorts of devices. It only really becomes a metaverse when it crosses platform boundaries.” ...

I keep up with the leading state-of-the-art cross-platform virtual collaboration platforms like Spatial.io, Altspace, Engage, Glue, Arthur, and Virbela, which all seem to be growing quickly. They offer all the features Horizon Workrooms has and more. ... the incumbent platforms have some important features that Workrooms doesn’t yet have. The interface Spatial, Engage, and Altspace, with VR world-building platform Unity, don’t exist on Workrooms. ,...

Workrooms is clearly still in beta, but it’s a beta of one of the most amazing things I’ve seen in VR. It just doesn’t happen to be working perfectly right now. My keyboard disappeared intermittently. Sometimes the hands occluded the keyboard and confused the computer vision. ...

See the full story here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/charliefink/2021/08/19/facebook-releases-blockbuster-app-for-remote-work/?sh=493a1a7c52fd&fbclid=IwAR3C9zQg2RsvXfIaw7Wgo5jI_-4Vuc5W9kj0ug7DvJsgE58_FnglIJBb47c

Dawn Of Generative Celebrities: NVIDIA’s New Technology Weaves Magic

For a good 14 seconds (from 1.02.41 to 1.02.55), Huang’s virtual replica spoke to the audience while introducing the CPU designed for terabyte-scale accelerated computing. Last week, the graphics processor company revealed in its blog postthat it leveraged the power of Omniverse to pull this stunt off without anyone’s notice.  

... According to former journalist and NVIDIA’s chief blogger Brian Caulfield, a project like this typically takes a team months to complete and weeks to render. However, Omniverse enabled the animation to be completed by one animator and rendered in less than a day. ...

See the full story here: https://analyticsindiamag.com/dawn-of-generative-celebrities-nvidias-new-technology-weaves-magic/

Even North Korea Is Using VR & AR In The Classroom

During the Fourth Plenum of the Seventh Party Central Committee meeting in 2019, Kim Jong Un ordered North Korean institutions to begin using new technologies as part of their learning curriculums, including artificial intelligence, digital chalkboards, and computers. Apparently, this initiative also includes immersive technology.

According to a report by Choson Sinbo (The People’s Korea), a pro-North Korean newspaper based in Japan, a “model” elementary school located in the capital city of Pyongyang has employed new communication technologies as part of its learning curriculum. This includes VR headsets and several interactive AR experiences.

See the full story here: https://www.virtualrealitypulse.com/edition/daily-apple-samsung-2021-08-17?open-article-id=19993280&article-title=even-north-korea-is-using-vr---ar-in-the-classroom&blog-domain=vrscout.com&blog-title=vrscout

Val Kilmer Recreated His Speaking Voice Using Artificial Intelligence and Hours of Old Audio

[PhilNote: it sounds like the controversy around Val's voice in the documentary is off the mark.]

Val Kilmer marked the release of his acclaimed documentary “Val” (now streaming on Amazon Prime Video) in a milestone way: He recreated his old speaking voice by feeding hours of recorded audio of himself into an artificial intelligence algorithm. Kilmer lost the ability to speak after undergoing throat cancer treatment in 2014. Kilmer’s team recently joined forces with software company Sonantic and “Val” distributor Amazon to “create an emotional and lifelike model of his old speaking voice” (via The Wrap).

“I’m grateful to the entire team at Sonantic who masterfully restored my voice in a way I’ve never imagined possible,” Val Kilmer said in a statement. “As human beings, the ability to communicate is the core of our existence and the side effects from throat cancer have made it difficult for others to understand me. The chance to narrate my story, in a voice that feels authentic and familiar, is an incredibly special gift.”

...The AI-recreation of Kilmer’s voice was done after “Val” was made and is not featured in the documentary. The voice of Kilmer’s son, “Palo Alto” actor Jack Kilmer, is featured in the documentary to narrate the words of his father.

See the full story here: https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/val-kilmer-recreated-speaking-voice-210041795.html

Rendever Awarded $2M NIH Grant to Research Impact of Virtual Reality on Aging Population

– Rendever, a Boston-based virtual reality (VR)platform built to help seniors overcome social isolation through shared experiences, announces that it has been awarded a $2M Phase II Grant from the National Institute on Aging (NIA), a division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

– This grant will fund a registered multi-site clinical trial, in conjunction with the University of California Santa Barbara, to further Rendever’s continued research on the effects of VR on seniors. The focus of the research is to evaluate the impact of VR-based virtual family engagement for seniors and the differences in effect across various levels of cognitive impairment (MCI, mild to moderate AD/ADRD).

The Phase II Grant builds on Rendever’s previously awarded Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Phase I Grant to measure the impact of Rendever’s engagement platform. The initial pilot data confirmed the positive impact that virtual family engagement has on both residents and their family members living at a distance. Residents experienced decreased negative emotions and feelings of isolation, increased positive emotions and engagement with their family members, and overall improved quality of life. Family members reported similar mental health benefits along with significant decreases in caregiver guilt after using Rendever’s VR platform with their loved ones.

See the full story here: https://hitconsultant.net/2021/08/18/rendever-virtual-reality-on-aging-population-research/#.YR0uRS1h2t8

What AI researchers can learn from the self-assembling brain

In his book The Self-Assembling Brain, Hiesinger suggests that instead of looking at the brain from an endpoint perspective, we should study how information encoded in the genome is transformed to become the brain as we grow. This line of study might help discover new ideas and directions of research for the AI community.

The Self-Assembling Brain is organized as a series of seminar presentations interspersed with discussions between a robotics engineer, a neuroscientist, a geneticist, and an AI researcher. The thought-provoking conversations help to understand the views and the holes of each field on topics related to the mind, the brain, intelligence, and AI. ...

Therefore, our genome contains the information required to create our brain. That information, however, is not a blueprint that describes the brain, but an algorithm that develops it with time and energy. In the biological brain, growth, organization, and learning happen in tandem. At each new stage of development, our brain gains new learning capabilities (common sense, logic, language, problem-solving, planning, math). And as we grow older, our capacity to learn changes.

See the full story here: https://bdtechtalks.com/2021/08/16/self-assembling-brain-book/