Click Here to Kill Everybody, Bruce Schneier
It may sound like publishing clickbait, but I’m trying to make the point that the internet now affects the world in a direct physical manner, and that changes everything. It’s no longer about risks to data, but about risks to life and property. And the title really points out that there’s physical danger here, and that things are different than they were just five years ago.
It’s really the internet of things plus the computers plus the services plus the large databases being built plus the internet companies plus us. I just shortened all this to “Internet+.”
Your book largely focuses on the US. Do you think it will take the lead here?
I focus on the US because it’s where the major tech companies are located and it’s the regime I know best, but I do talk about Europe a fair bit as well. The European Union is the regulatory superpower on this planet right now. I think it’s going to advance further and faster than the US. In the US, I look more to the states, and specifically Massachusetts, New York, and California.
A Hologram Hits the Runway
Our subject was the model and activist Ashley Graham. She had a strict cutoff at noon, and we were leaving extra time for things to go wrong.
As part of “Ashley Graham, Unfiltered” — an interview conducted by Joanna Nikas, a New York Times Styles editor, that explores issues around body image — readers who have downloaded the New York Times app (iOS) onto their iPhones or iPads can project a hologram of Ashley into their space as she demonstrates poses and her runway walk.
This is a new video format, with a new production process. Rather than record Ashley from just a few perspectives, she is captured from all angles using more than 100 cameras positioned around her on a stage that is essentially a giant green-screen in-the-round. The images from the cameras are then composited and processed together to create a single “hologram” that, when viewed through the screen on your phone or tablet, can be placed into your own physical environment.
We recorded Ashley Graham at Metastage, a brand new volumetric video studio in the Culver City Studios complex. “Having Ashley as one of our first captures was a testament to how far we’ve come with female empowerment in business,” said the studio’s chief executive, Christina Heller. “We had a strong, vivacious supermodel performing on a state-of-the-art volumetric capture stage run by women. The energy was fun and inclusive, just like it should be.”
The capture zone is confined to an 8-foot-diameter circular area, for instance, which required some creative problem solving — such as designing walk patterns that would fit and look natural in a small space. “It was like a math problem,” Joanna noted. Before she even stepped onto the stage, we worked with Ashley on a piece of circular carpet outside the dressing room area, drawing patterns and arrows on paper as if planning a football play.
We also needed to work within specific styling guidelines from the studio. No super-skinny stiletto heels, for example, and hair needed to be contained to a unified shape, as small flyaway strands are confusing to the capture system.
...personal space. We’ve solved this for now by having the hologram go transparent once a certain threshold of closeness is crossed.
To find other augmented reality projects, readers can choose the “Immersive AR/VR” tab in the NYTimes app.
See the full story here: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/05/insider/ashley-graham-hologram-augmented-reality-video.html
Video The waterslide with virtual reality
See the video here: https://www.bbc.com/news/av/technology-45348076/the-waterslide-with-virtual-reality
Virtual Reality Transporter – St. Louis Science Center
Spacewalk: Danger in Orbit
Prehistoric Undersea Adventure
$10/experience, $9 for members.
See the full story here: https://www.slsc.org/exhibits-attractions/virtual-reality-transporter/
VR SPOTLIGHT: STIFLED BRINGS ECHOLOCATION TO VIRTUAL REALITY
It seems a bit counterintuitive to play a VR horror game about losing the ability to see, but Stifled is proof that sometimes it’s what you can’t see that scares you the most.
Stifled is a game that forces you to navigate using sound. Although it’s not perfect, it’s an interesting concept to explore, even if the VR implementation isn’t as fleshed out as it should be.
Stifled is about sneaking around in the pitch black with various nasty creatures that want to see you dead. The twist is that your character and the creatures are both equally blind in the darkness, but the moment anything makes a sound, the area around the source is illuminated, which allows you to see the environments in an artistic take on echolocation.
This system is incredibly cool in practice, especially when you enable the optional microphone support, which lets Stifled listen to every sound you make as you progress through the story.
Although the echolocation mechanic is undeniably unique, the groundbreaking game design kind of slows down from there.
See the full review here: https://www.gamecrate.com/vr-spotlight-stifled-brings-echolocation-virtual-reality/20648
‘Screaming nightmare’: William Shatner boldly goes into VR
He is involved with Ziva Dynamics, a VR company, through which he has experienced “nightmarish footage” involving strange creatures that creep up on the user.
“It’s so real: it’s the stuff of nightmares … We’ve got to be really careful because you could put somebody into a psychosis,” he said.
See the full story here: https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2018/aug/31/a-screaming-nightmare-william-shatner-boldly-goes-into-vr