Maveron, Scooter Braun, Alex Rodriguez invest in $30M round for virtual entertainment startup Wave
Wave partners with music labels, management companies, and independent artists to help host virtual concerts with digital fan avatars.
Wave plans to use the funding to roll out new in-stream experiences and expand into Japan, China, and other countries. The company has put on more than 50 events, with some hosting up to 400,000 people at a time.
A future without MPEG
MPEG passed away on 2020/06/02T16:30 CEST. The agony was long, but the result was predictable. The causes have partly to do with the nature of ISO whose main feature I describe in This is ISO – A feudal organisation.
I need to make 3 strong statements:
- Those who have created a new intellectual object have to right to exploit it
- Technology innovation is well rewarded by a system that identifies, determines and protects intellectual property (IP)
- Those who make available their IP to a technical specification declared standard by an official standards body have additional benefits compared to those who do not. They should have more obligations as well.
The competitors
When the MPEG-4 Visual licence sentenced the death penalty to the MPEG-4 Visual standard, competitors popped up. Four famous names are Real Networks, Microsoft, On 2 and Google. The fact that private companies could assemble a video codec of commercial value signaled that video coding was a maturing technology and that “anybody” could assemble a reasonably performing solution.
What the market offers
The market has not been idle. In 2015 an initial group of companies (Amazon, Cisco, Google, Intel, Microsoft, Mozilla, Netflix) have created Alliance for Open Media (AOM), initially targeting video. The AOM about page mentions 4 main features of the first specification AV1:
- Royalty-free ecosystem
- Patent review process and legal defense fund
- Cutting edge technologies
- Collaborative open source development.
... Most importantly, the market has come up with a solution – AV1 by the Alliance for Open Media – that is capable to provide decently performing specifications that are royalty free and promises a defence to an attacked member (with strings attached, but everybody looks at the next quarter, and does not consider the implications of a choice 5 years from now).
See the full story here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/future-without-mpeg-leonardo-chiariglione/?fbclid=IwAR3NVqdBWwhbfjUzLATU2Bp4H1sU-FjjeWXOSTU5th-FUpPdws9d-N5BrNE
Intel’s ‘3D’ Lakefield chips arrive for foldables and ultrathin laptops
Intel's mobile client platform, code-named “Lakefield,” introduces the industry’s first product with 3D stacking and hybrid computing architecture. Leveraging Intel’s latest 10nm process and Foveros advanced packaging technology, Lakefield offers OEMs more flexibility for thin-and-light form factor PCs. (Credit: Intel Corporation)
Intel is able to combine multiple chip architectures and onboard memory onto a single processor thanks to its Foveros 3D packaging technology. That allows the company to stack multiple logic and memory dies on top of each other, instead of spreading them out on a flat 2D plane like traditional processors. The basic takeaway is that Lakefield chips also won't need to take up much physical space, making them ideal for very thin devices.
See the full story here: https://www.engadget.com/intel-lakefield-3d-chip-foldables-laptops-150008628.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly9uZXdzLmdvb2dsZS5jb20v&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAJbkFh5Y4Ro0ZBNOPqS7-YHT7kBoxtWRiHqDE7dHk-BB5TgZIu8F1iTHHh51QJQ3EGcBI3VllwOjfszuRglWhD4A7aIR1Jb1Fes6-7vk7-cLdIRB9x4OpAWCKGP7gRdmh1d7TT2X4Bc3i4KKeGAAYhCJ8BIKIur7YI6_7g6lvjZE
KrattAI: Estonia’s National Artificial Intelligence Strategy
In Estonia, there are around 30 Artificial Intelligence (AI) solutions deployed in the Estonian public sector that were identified as active as of the beginning of June 2020. The Baltic nation aims to have at least 50 AI use cases by the end of 2020.
... all part of e-Estonia.
But, how did Estonia, a small Baltic nation in Northern Europe, led by a female president, managed to be recognized as the most advanced digital society on the planet?
In Estonian mythology, a Kratt is a magical creature. A Kratt is a creature brought to life from hay or metal household objects, and it is animated by a human soul. Essentially, the Kratt was a servant made by its maker out of hay or old household items to help with tasks. The Estonian government uses this character as a metaphor for Artificial Intelligence and its complexities.
"A Kratt is a living being consisting of various objects. An interesting caveat is that you have to keep the Kratt busy. If you don't keep it occupied, it will focus all of its ability on attacking its owner. So, giving the Kratt lots of tasks is essential, the harder the better. And to complete the parallels with reality, the only way to get rid of the Kratt in its entirety is to give it impossible tasks. A very nice series of analogies for technology, if you ask me," Florian Marcus told me.
Suve: The Estonian chatbot for digital public services
The Suve chatbot is a relatively new addition to Estonia's digital services. Suve was an idea that came from the Hack the Crisis hackathon, which was organized by Garage48 and Accelerate Estonia.
The hackathon was organized to beat the global pandemic affecting Estonia. "Startup-government collaboration is in the DNA of our Estonian digital society," President of Estonia, Kersti Kaljulaid said.
Hack the Crisis is a global community that centralizes all the local events and information to participate in the online hackathons. The startups believe that the power of community has the power to fight and beat the pandemic. To achieve this, and after their local success, they also organize events to help countries around the world.
Estonia counts with approximately 1,000 startups, which positions the country among the top countries with more startups per capita. According to a study by Index Ventures in late 2018, Estonia is the best in the world in terms of startup regulation.
"Imagine you’re in a foreign country, pregnant, and you feel you’re about to go into labour. Wouldn’t it be great to just tell Siri or your Google Assistant that you’re about to have a baby, and in the background, the AI calls an ambulance to your location, forwards your medical data to the nearest hospital, alerts the Estonian embassy in that country, creates a new electronic ID for your baby, and also starts child benefit payments? Then, the voice assistant calmly informs you that everything has been sorted out and that the ambulance will reach your location in two minutes. This is amazing," says Marcus.
If you are thinking that the above has been taken from a science fiction book or movie, think again. Because it is exactly what the Estonian government is working on right now as you are reading this.
See the full story here: https://interestingengineering.com/krattai-estonias-national-artificial-intelligence-strategy
The Time Machine: A Virtual Reality review – a sleek voyage through the fourth wall
The Time Machine’s first run at the London Library, intended to celebrate HG Wells, was abruptly cut short due to Covid-19. Now it has been re-imagined as an interactive online experience by the ever-enterprising Creation Theatre.
See the full story here: https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2020/jun/07/the-time-machine-review
TOP 10 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE COMPANIES TO WORK FOR IN 2020
[PhilNote: The article contains 1-paragraph descriptions of each company's AI activity.]
Amazon
Graphcore
Altar.io
Nvidia - GauGAN, named after post-Impressionist painter Paul Gauguin, is a deep-learning model that acts like an AI paintbrush, quickly changing over text descriptions, doodles, or fundamental representations into photorealistic, professional-quality images. Nvidia says art directors and concept artists from top film studios and video-game organizations are as of now utilizing GauGAN to prototype thoughts and roll out quick improvements to digital scenery. Computer scientists may likewise utilize the tools to make virtual universes used to train self-driving vehicles, the organization says.
HiSilicon
Syntiant
SoftServe
Intel
Kasisto
See the full story here: https://www.analyticsinsight.net/top-10-artificial-intelligence-companies-to-work-for-in-2020/
VR Can Be the Film Industry’s Future, but the Barriers to Entry Are Surreal
[PhilNote: this very good article is about VR experiences, not creating experiences in VR.]
A stately man identified only as Tom, who helped Simon organize the event after meeting him at a weekly VR town hall event called “The Evening News,” put the globe-spanning gathering in context. “This is just a cool exemplification of what VR can be,” Tom told the crowd. “An event in one part of the world is now an event for the entire world. It’s amazing that someone living 5,000 miles away would find this personal.”
In early March, as it became clear that crowded events would become impossible for quite some time, I purchased an entry-level ticket to VR with the Oculus Go. As it turns out, there is a whole world entirely free from COVID-19 hiding in plain sight.
VR can’t replace Cannes, but it will play host to Cannes XR, a virtual reality market with virtual parties; VR can’t replace moviegoing, but it has hosted premiere screenings and Q&As for films that had been scheduled to play at canceled festivals. And VR can’t replace filmmaking, but it’s a platform for storytellers finding new ways of exploring the medium.
[VR is] the ultimate panacea to sheltering in place, where people can gather without inhaling the same air in immersive spaces.
One quiet Saturday night a few pandemic weeks ago, I dropped into a Reggie Watts performance in Altspace and had a blast. Watts, whose boundary-pushing performances blend standup, beatboxing, and jazzy, discursive music layered across a dense set of tracks in real time, has exactly the kind of category-busting persona that makes sense for the VR space. As I watched his cartoon avatar flit about the stage, addressing multiple rooms at once while the audience gathered around him, I was swept up in the euphoria of experiencing spur-of-the-moment creativity in a crowded room. Watts used the technology to his advantage, leading us out to a virtual balcony for his climatic performance, where he invited the audience to set off fireworks that exploded into large images of his face across the sky. It was a dazzling, surreal, and otherworldly feat.
See the full story here: https://www.indiewire.com/2020/06/virtual-reality-could-save-film-industry-1202234384/