philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

Shakespeare in VR: Virtual reality ‘Hamlet’ puts you in the center of the action [column]

This was possible through virtual reality. Google, working with Commonwealth Shakespeare Co., created an hourlong VR version of “Hamlet.” “Hamlet 360: Thy Father’s Spirit” brings the tragedy written in early 1600s into the 21st century. It left me dizzy, literally and figuratively, and excited about the potential to bring more art alive.

This Boston-based Shakespeare group tried something new, complicated and pricey ($500,000) as a big way to grow.

“This allows us to scale that mission to the world and truly democratize Shakespeare and theater,” Steven Maler, the director of the film and the founding artistic company, told The New York Times.

WGBH, a PBS member station in Boston, shared the video for free on its YouTube page last month. With a cheap VR headset, you can be immersed in the world of “Hamlet.” It’s a world that VR pioneer Nonny de la Pena calls a visceral empathy generator.

See the full story here: https://lancasteronline.com/features/shakespeare-in-vr-virtual-reality-hamlet-puts-you-in-the/article_3b90ae4e-3634-11e9-a911-ab80ce82ea66.html

Odeon Cinema and Telia Test 5G-Connected Movie Theater

Odeon Cinema Center in Oslo and Norwegian mobile firm Telia teamed to operate the first 5G-connected movie theater, presenting films streamed over the next-gen network. The plan was announced in December, with the introduction of a 5G “test network.” The two companies are still in test mode with the launch of the 5G-enabled Odeon, to demonstrate how 5G will replace 4G and at least some wired broadband services. The Odeon is in fact using 5G to transfer the films to its own server, and said the system “works excellently.”

VentureBeat reports that, “the distinction is critically important as it demonstrates that responsive, high-bandwidth 5G wireless could be a viable alternative to local storage, even in commercial settings where buffering or audiovisual degradation would be problems for hundreds of viewers at once.”

In theaters, movies typically are projected at 4K or greater resolution, a problem since existing 4G LTE networks “may struggle to maintain fluid 720p video streams.” In tests, Telia’s 5G network achieved 2.2 Gbps speeds, “between five and 20 times the bandwidth of typical consumer 4G networks, and faster than the theater’s wired Internet lines.”

“participate in real time with live concerts or other events broadcast from remote locations.”

See the full story here: http://www.etcentric.org/odeon-cinema-and-telia-test-5g-connected-movie-theater/

How AlphaZero has rewritten the rules of game play on its own

David Silver says the computer program that taught itself to be a chess grandmaster exhibits “the essence of creativity”.

In one famous game against possibly the best Go player ever, AlphaGo made a brilliant move that human observers initially thought was a mistake. Was it being creative in that moment?

“Move 37,” as it became known, surprised everyone, including the Go community and us, its makers. It was something outside of the expected way of playing Go that humans had figured out over thousands of years. To me this is an example of something being creative.

You’ve had AlphaZero play against the top conventional chess engine, Stockfish. What have you learned?

Stockfish has this very sophisticated search engine, but at the heart of it is this module that says, “According to humans, this is a good position or a bad position.” So humans are really deeply in the loop there. It’s hard for it to break away and understand a position that’s fundamentally different.

AlphaZero learns to understand positions for itself. There was one beautiful game we were just looking at where it actually gives up four pawns in a row, and it even tries to give up a fifth pawn. Stockfish thinks it’s winning fantastically, but AlphaZero is really happy. It’s found a way to understand the position which is unthinkable according to the norms of chess. It understands it’s better to have the position than the four pawns.
See the full story here:https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612923/how-alphazero-has-rewritten-the-rules-of-gameplay-on-its-own/

Microsoft Expands Its Augmented Reality App Portfolio from HoloLens to Android & iOS

Under CEO Satya Nadella, Microsoft has shown a willingness to spread its software beyond its Windows ecosystem, so the adaptation of HoloLens apps for smartphones, where its own platform has faltered, aligns with its strategy. However, in the case of the HoloLens, the strategy also serves as a scaled down example of how HoloLens could provide a return on investment further down the road, particularly as its capabilities evolve and its price decreases.

See the full story here: https://hololens.reality.news/news/microsoft-expands-its-augmented-reality-app-portfolio-from-hololens-android-ios-0194047/

If 5G Is So Important, Why Isn’t It Secure?

Worse than ignoring the warnings, the Trump administration has repealed existing protections. Shortly after taking office, the Trump F.C.C. removed a requirement imposed by the Obama F.C.C. that the 5G technical standard must be designed from the outset to withstand cyberattacks. For the first time in history, cybersecurity was being required as a forethought in the design of a new network standard — until the Trump F.C.C. repealed it. The Trump F.C.C. also canceled a formal inquiry seeking input from the country’s best technical minds about 5G security, retracted an Obama-era F.C.C. white paper about reducing cyberthreats, and questioned whether the agency had any responsibility for the cybersecurity of the networks they are entrusted with overseeing.

See the full story here: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/21/opinion/5g-cybersecurity-china.html

Tom Wheeler, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission from 2013 to 2017, is a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution and a fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School.

Google Debuts Deep Planning Network Agent with DeepMind

Google unveiled the Deep Planning Network (PlaNet) agent, created in collaboration with DeepMind, to provide reinforcement learning via images. Reinforcement learning uses rewards to improve AI agents’ decision-making. Whereas model-free techniques work by getting agents to predict actions from observations, agents created with model-based reinforcement learning come up with a general model of the environment leveraged for decision-making. In unfamiliar surroundings, however, agents must create rules from experience.

More specifically, PlaNet “leverages a latent dynamics model — a model that predicts the latent state forward, and which produces an image and reward at each step from the corresponding latent state — to gain an understanding of abstract representations such as the velocities of objects.”

Predictive image generation is the means whereby the PlaNet agent learns, a quick process that, “in the compact latent state space … only needs to project future rewards, not images, to evaluate an action sequence.” Hafner noted that, rather than a policy network, PlaNet “chooses actions based on planning.”

“For example,” he said, “the agent can imagine how the position of a ball and its distance to the goal will change for certain actions, without having to visualize the scenario. This allows us to compare 10,000 imagined action sequences with a large batch size every time the agent chooses an action. We then execute the first action of the best sequence found and replan at the next step.”

See the full story here: http://www.etcentric.org/google-debuts-deep-planning-network-agent-with-deepmind/

Highlights & transcript from Zuckerberg’s 20K-word ethics talk

“What I’m saying is on the data use, I don’t believe that that’s something that people should buy. I think the data principles that we have need to be uniformly available to everyone. That to me is a really important principle” Zuckerberg expands. “It’s, like, maybe you could have a conversation about whether you should be able to pay and not see ads. That doesn’t feel like a moral question to me. But the question of whether you can pay to have different privacy controls feels wrong.”

Research suggests users don’t want the inconvenience of getting logged out of all their Facebook Connected services, though, they’d like to hide certain data from the company.

Of all the apologies, promises, and predictions Zuckerberg has made recently, this pledge might instill the most confidence. While some might think of Zuckerberg as a data tyrant out to absorb and exploit as much of our personal info as possible, there are at least lines he’s not willing to cross. Facebook could try to charge you for privacy, but it won’t. And given Facebook’s dominance in social networking and messaging plus Zuckerberg’s voting control of the company, a greedier man could make the internet much worse.

See the full story here: https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/20/zuckerberg-harvard-zittrain/?utm_medium=TCnewsletter

LA Kings Launch Augmented Reality and Blockchain Authentication App

The LA Kings have launched the first Augmented Reality (AR) Blockchain authentication platform in the world, specifically developed to help secure professional sports merchandise and memorabilia.

The Kings launched the AR Authentication App, in partnership with Pro Exp Media Inc., to make it easy for customers to ensure that the items they purchase are authentic.

Once authenticated, customers will still receive a hard-copy Certificate of Authenticity (COA) even while using the app.

The app, which was recently featured on Fox Business Network's Varney and Co., is capable of discerning an authentic piece of registered game-used merchandise versus a non-authentic or unregistered (stolen) piece of game-used merchandise by utilizing AR technology and Blockchain technology.

See the full story here: https://www.nhl.com/kings/news/la-kings-launch-augmented-reality-and-blockchain-authentication-app/c-304994378

University of New Haven Researchers Discover Critical Vulnerabilities in Popular Virtual Reality Application

Using Bigscreen, a popular virtual reality application, researchers at the University of New Haven were able to listen to users' conversations and access their computers without their knowledge

See the full story here: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/university-of-new-haven-researchers-discover-critical-vulnerabilities-in-popular-virtual-reality-application-300798914.html

BAM Digital Exhibit Returns With ‘Virtual Reality Storytelling’

An interactive digital arts showcase at the Brooklyn Academy of Music will return this weekend with new additions that will let families step into the latest innovations in technology — literally.

The new two-hour timed-entry sessions will take place on the upper levels of the BAM Fisher building, located at 321 Ashland Place. Participants who sign up for the virtual reality options will also have access to the lower-level installations, such as a program that uses tracking and animated graphics to create a "living mask" based on the user's facial movements or an audiovisual concert created by shadow play.

The virtual reality contemporary dance exhibit, called The Hillman Studio, lets users inhabit full-body avatars that interact and communicate physically with each other in various performance landscapes.

Tickets for the regular exhibit are $16 for children ages 6 through 14 and $21 for adults. The TeknopolisTM + VR $35 for youth ages 9 through 14 and $45 for adults.

See the full story here: https://patch.com/new-york/fortgreene/bam-digital-exhibit-returns-virtual-reality-storytelling