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"Quantic Dream hires exec to round up third-party developers | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2019/06/02/quantic-dream-hires-exec-to-round-up-third-party-developers"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Exclusive Quantic Dream hires exec to round up third-party developers Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Quantic Dream's Detroit: Become Human pushed the edge on face animation. Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship. Learn more. Quantic Dream has hired game veteran Sebastien Motte to help run third-party development relations as the company expands beyond PlayStation. Paris-based Quantic Dream — maker of Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls, and Detroit: Become Human — recently received a minority investment from China’s NetEase and announced it would expand beyond Sony’s PlayStation business. Now it plans to publish games from third-party developers. “Quantic Dream has been an independent, triple-A developer for the past 22 years,” Motte said. “With the NetEase investment, we are fully independent again. We are able to self-fund future development on multiple projects. And more importantly, with better digital distribution channels, there is an opportunity to become more independent and self publish.” Above: Quantic Dream’s Sebastien Motte Motte has been involved in the game and tech business for decades. Most recently, he served as a business development and strategy consultant at Mintonic. Event GamesBeat at the Game Awards We invite you to join us in LA for GamesBeat at the Game Awards event this December 7. Reserve your spot now as space is limited! Before that, he served in business development at Unity and was CEO of mixed reality design studio Loook. He also served in business development and other roles for 16 years at Microsoft’s game studios. Motte will report to Guillaume de Fondaumière and David Cage, co-CEOs of Quantic Dream. For 12 years, Quantic Dream made original titles for Sony’s PlayStation consoles. But Quantic Dream recently announced that Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls, and Detroit: Become Human, exclusively on the Epic Games Store. All three titles are now available for pre-order. Above: Jodie, voiced by Ellen Page, is the star character of Beyond: Two Souls “By being able to self-publish our titles moving forward, we have put together an expert publishing team from different companies,” Motte said. “That is why I am in the picture. We also would like to offer our services to other independent studios that have strong backing and would like to have a strong direct-to-consumer relationship.” He added, “There is more room for independent developers to find their connections directly with players through digital distribution platforms. With the emergence of cloud gaming platforms, there will be more ability for developers and publishers to own their own destinies and manage their relationships with gamers. It’s exciting times.” Motte said the company might publish one or two additional titles per year from third parties. He said the company’s strength is in interactive narration and it will look for games that align with its creative sensibility, or unique original games with high production quality, passion, and emotion. Quantic Dream has highly sophisticated motion-capture facilities in France and character development is one of its big skills. “We like meaningful games that are unique and original,” he said. He said the company will focus on North American and European markets, but it will seek creativity out anywhere. Motte will remain based in Seattle. GamesBeat's creed when covering the game industry is "where passion meets business." What does this mean? We want to tell you how the news matters to you -- not just as a decision-maker at a game studio, but also as a fan of games. Whether you read our articles, listen to our podcasts, or watch our videos, GamesBeat will help you learn about the industry and enjoy engaging with it. Discover our Briefings. Join the GamesBeat community! Enjoy access to special events, private newsletters and more. VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"How Quantic Dream defended itself against allegations of a 'toxic culture' | Page 2 of 3 | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/business/how-quantic-dream-defended-itself-against-allegations-of-a-toxic-culture/2"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Feature How Quantic Dream defended itself against allegations of a ‘toxic culture’ Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn David Cage of Quantic Dream, creator of Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls, and Detroit: Become Human. Above: Guillaume de Fondaumière, the co-CEO of Quantic Dream. But the journalists said they were being fair. The articles recounted the IT manager’s story, and they also mentioned the other issues at Quantic Dream. “In this first piece, Mediapart tackled the issue of the edited pictures, but also a lot of other things: the crunch culture and the way a lot of employees were discouraged and exhausted; the fact that some former employees didn’t like working with Quantic Dream; some suspicious administrative customs (in particular regarding the relationships between Quantic Dream and the national unemployment agency),” Israel said. But Cage said he believed the journalists didn’t understand the way game companies worked, nor the tight controls that the company was required to meet. “We were really surprised, because we are very strict about the company’s management,” Cage said. “We have internal and external accountants, lawyers, administrators and shareholders, and doing anything illegal in a small company like ours would be hard to hide. We seriously investigated internally again and questioned third parties to understand if we had done anything wrong, but again we couldn’t find anything.” Event GamesBeat at the Game Awards We invite you to join us in LA for GamesBeat at the Game Awards event this December 7. Reserve your spot now as space is limited! Cage said three different authorities backed up the company. These included a Tax Control audit in 2018, which was a complete audit from three major audit companies, one American and two French, who did due diligence about the company in the context of an investment from a company listed on NASDAQ. And it also included a government body (called “URSSAF”), which sent two people onsite for three weeks to check all the employees and directors’ contracts, salaries, taxes, financial accounts, and transactions — including the contract and transaction of the director that was described as illegal in an article. “All these independent institutions reported that the company was very well managed, that it respected the law in all aspects, and that they had no issues to report,” Cage said. Above: Quantic Dream’s workplace. After video game news site CanardPC , French newspaper Le Monde , and the investigative news site Mediapart published articles on Quantic Dream, the company fired back with defamation lawsuits against Le Monde and Mediapart (Quantic Dream chose not to sue CanardPC, as it appeared to be a much smaller publication). “We knew that these articles were a complete fabrication, and that was unacceptable. This is why we decided to sue the journalists for defamation,” Cage said. Regarding the third-party audits, Dan Israel, one of the Mediapart writers, responded, “We asked a lot of questions on these issues. If David Cage and Guillaume de Fondaumière had shared these explanations with us, we would have quoted them on that. They did not: They only explained that there was an audit that did complete due diligence about the company, and that everything was deemed legal. We included this comment in our article. We were meticulous in including all the answers they gave us on these important matters.” In response to a query from GamesBeat, journalist William Audereau, author of the Le Monde article, said in an email, “Our investigation spanned over three months. I consulted extensive internal documentation, talked with around 20 former or current employees, including some very high profile, who all confirmed the stories. While investigating on their own, Mediapart (a major French investigation website) and CanardPC (one of the most independent video game outlets) reached the same conclusions. Quantic Dream calling it ‘falsehoods’ or a ‘sensationalized story’ sounds like another awkward PR spin from the company, and this is a pity for people who suffered, and for some of them still suffer from what they described as a toxic workplace.” Labor court battle Above: These are human cops, and they’re far from perfect. The IT manager’s complaint with the Labor Court worked its way through the system. The Labor Court is an institution in France where any employee who has a complaint against an employer can request a hearing. A judge analyzes the evidence and renders a judgment. Both parties can hire legal defense, provide evidence, and argue the case. Cage said that in 22 years, with more than 1,000 employees employed over that history, Quantic Dream has had only three cases brought to the Labor Court. It lost one of those cases, unrelated to this one. This, Cage said, shows that issues with employees are extremely rare at Quantic Dream. The first hearing took place in 2018, but the judges in the case could not come to a decision. In a second hearing in 2019, the judge ruled that the plaintiff “did not provide evidence of a deterioration of working conditions within the company, […] and the production of press articles […] were insufficient to establish these facts.” The IT manager asked for €115,000 ($128,215) and the reclassifying of his resignation into unjustified dismissal (in France, a dismissal has to be justified on very serious grounds, otherwise the employee is entitled to significant compensation). The judge rejected the IT manager’s request for compensation and ruled that the IT manager had voluntarily resigned. The company believed that the threat to tell the press unless the employee was fired was “totally unacceptable.” The judge also rendered similar verdicts for two other employees from the IT team, and a third case is under appeal. In the two other cases, the judge ruled that the employees were “instrumentalized by others” in hopes of getting higher compensation, Cage said. Israel said that is not a correct interpretation of the court’s ruling. Translated from the French, the court’s wording included, “It is permitted to wonder whether he wasn’t instrumentalized by others or would not have thought he could benefit from a windfall effect to obtain a much higher financial compensation.” This language was included in the dismissal of the IT manager’s claim. “To give context to these verdicts, it is worth noting that a few weeks before the incident, these employees had their annual interviews with their lead, the IT manager, in which they reported how happy they were in the company and what a pleasant working atmosphere there was,” Cage said. “These documents among other evidence convinced judges that this story of ‘toxic atmosphere’ was only made up to ask for compensation.” Quantic Dream had to pay the IT manager compensation of €5,000 ($5,572) because the court ruled that the company should have anticipated the potential risk of an employee editing pictures and should have prohibited this activity from the start. Cage claims that the French journalists twisted the meaning of the ruling, interpreting it as a loss for the company. That tone carried over into international articles, like this one in Variety , with the headline, “Detroit Developer Quantic Dream Loses Court Case Over Harassment.” The French journalists in particular continue to interpret this outcome as a victory for the plaintiffs. “Anyone who reads the verdict can see that this is utterly misleading, but their version was the one that some people wanted to hear, so they just interpreted the court’s findings in order to serve their own editorial appetite,” Cage said. He said the court noted, “Contrary to what the employee claims, there is no evidence of a deterioration in working conditions within the company.” Another French journalist who was not connected to the published stories sided with Cage and Quantic Dream. Vincent Jolly, senior reporter at Le Figaro magazine, told me in an email (and speaking only for himself) that he did some reporting on the case and chose not to write a story about allegations of a toxic culture. Jolly added, “Having covered Quantic Dream frequently in the past years and knowing some of the employees myself, I just don’t see unbiased evidence that would support the claim of the investigations. There is no smoking gun. There is, from my point of view, just no story here.” The media defamation lawsuits Above: Jodie, voiced by Ellen Page, is the star character of Beyond: Two Souls The defamation lawsuits continue, but on a much slower pace than the Labor Court. The recent labor riots forced a rescheduling of the first hearing until May 2021. The company is impatient to clear its name, and it says its employees are as well. Cage said, “It is also interesting to note that although many people talk about what happens inside Quantic Dream, absolutely no one tried to talk to our employees. Some people have the image of game studios where employees are treated disrespectfully, are humiliated and exploited, but this is not our case. Most of our employees are between 30 and 50 years old; they have families; they are very talented veterans in the industry; and none of them would accept to stay in a company that is ‘toxic,’ especially when they can easily find work in the best triple-A studios in the world. Anyone analyzing the facts would have come to the same conclusion — that this whole story doesn’t reflect the evidence provided.” Audereau, the journalist from Le Monde, responded, “As for the outcome of the Labor Court: Court described the pictures as ‘homophobic, misogynistic, racist, or highly vulgar’ and fined Quantic Dream for having failed to their ‘duty of security’ toward their employees, which is, to my knowledge, very rare. Using a very obscure and risky point of the French labor law, the ‘ prise d’acte ,’ the employee asked for [the] resignation to be requalified as a termination, but the court didn’t agree on that. Hence he didn’t obtain the amount of damages and interests he was asking for, and appealed against the ruling.” Regarding the pending lawsuits, Cage said that both sides have been asked to share evidence in the case. He said Quantic Dream has testimony from 40 current and former employees, with “numerous messages of support that team members spontaneously sent when the articles were published.” The company also included as evidence the full independent HR audit of the team, the results of all the financial and social audits and controls, and “many other documents supporting very consistently that Quantic Dream is a well-managed company where employees are appreciated and respected.” Cage also said that the judge in the case said, “The photomontage showing [the IT manager] in Supernanny , if it appears vulgar, is neither homophobic, nor racist, nor pornographic.” Mediapart’s Israel said, “David Cage and Guillaume de Fondaumière are of course entitled to their opinion. Which is why we interviewed them and quoted them extensively on this issue (among others) in our article. If you read our piece, you’ll see that we let them a lot of room to express themselves. It is our standard process at Mediapart.” Cage said that evidence supplied by Mediapart was scant. Quantic Dream said the judge in the case limited witnesses, so the company will call five witnesses on its behalf instead of the 50 who are prepared to testify. Mediapart and Pixel/Le Monde had four witnesses, including the three journalists who wrote the articles. “We cannot comment on the issue of our sources, as you will understand, but we had far more than one source,” Israel of Mediapart said. Israel added, “The four witnesses Quantic Dream is talking about are the ones that were subpoenaed to the hearing that was supposed to be held on December 5 and 6. In addition to those, we have provided four other written testimonies, that are considered just as important by the French law. And our five witnesses are ex-employees, even the union representative. Moreover, as you may have guessed, a lot of our witnesses wished to stay anonymous, and didn’t want to testify in their own names. We couldn’t reveal their identities to the court.” Above: A father looks for his son in Heavy Rain Regarding the delay in the defamation lawsuit, Cage said it is “extremely frustrating, because this hearing would have clarified everything about these allegations.” Cage said the company decided to speak up now rather than wait because the company needed to answer attacks on social media, as its employees who have spoken up were “bullied, caricatured as ‘traitors to the employees’ cause’ and even threated [ sic ] with death.” He added, “They just said they were not victims of anything, which was totally unacceptable to some. What is absolutely astonishing is how people from the outside are eager to save people who are humiliated and discriminated against even when there are none.” As to addressing the allegations of a toxic workplace, Cage said, “We faced our responsibilities and took these allegations very seriously. So we investigated internally to see if there was anything wrong in the company. We started a full internal audit, we conducted interviews of everyone in the studio, we even invited people to complain anonymously if they wanted to, and we called dozens of ex-employees. No one reported anything.” He added, “Then we hired a third-party company called People Vox, which specializes in audits of human resources (they work with many major companies in France). They asked 74 questions about the working conditions that employees answered anonymously through their platform. The result is absolutely clear: 96% of the responses mentioned the good atmosphere in the studio as what they liked the most about the company, 94% said they were particularly proud of working at Quantic Dream, 96% said they trusted the management, and the “satisfaction grade” of the company reached 94%. People Vox never saw these kinds of figures in any company before.” He also said, “At Quantic Dream, we offer competitive salaries to our employees, 50% of our managers are women, employees were granted 10% of the company shares for free, we have people of all origins, sexual orientation and backgrounds, we support humanist values and we do everything we can to offer pleasant working conditions to all. Anyone who would have seriously investigated would have seen these facts and realized the truth.” But Israel of Mediapart said, “Considering our article about Quantic Dream (like every article published by Mediapart), we are very confident that we will win this case. We did our job and followed professional standards. Unfortunately, the outcome will only be in a long time.” 1 2 3 View All Join the GamesBeat community! Enjoy access to special events, private newsletters and more. VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"How Quantic Dream defended itself against allegations of a 'toxic culture' | Page 3 of 3 | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/business/how-quantic-dream-defended-itself-against-allegations-of-a-toxic-culture/3"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Feature How Quantic Dream defended itself against allegations of a ‘toxic culture’ Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn David Cage of Quantic Dream, creator of Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls, and Detroit: Become Human. Employee reactions Above: Detroit: Become Human character As mentioned, I spoke with 16 members of Quantic Dream’s staff. I talked with a large group over a video conference, and I also spoke with several over Skype calls. I did not visit the company in Paris, though I was invited to do so. I had permission to speak with employees from the company leadership, and I spoke with one employee in an interview that wasn’t arranged by the company. In a group discussion, employees said they felt the stories were off base and they hurt the reputation of the company, making it harder to recruit people in the competitive industry. Some of the employees — including some who worked at the company for decades — were surprised, “shocked,” and indignant about the media coverage. They said the stories were “bullshit.” One father said he was distressed when his teenage children read the story and said, “Oh, Daddy, you are working in a toxic company?” The employees said that if there was a need for overtime, the company was open about it and discussed it in detail, as French law is very strict when it comes to overtime work and paying for it. “We tried to stay positive in the shitstorm” of media coverage, said one employee. “You become depressed. We are passionate about making games.” Event GamesBeat at the Game Awards We invite you to join us in LA for GamesBeat at the Game Awards event this December 7. Reserve your spot now as space is limited! Adam Williams, lead writer at Quantic Dream, started at the company about four years ago on the Detroit: Become Human project. He worked remotely at first and then relocated to Paris to work with the team. He sat across from Cage, and found him and de Foundamiere to be very kind. Cage helped with relocation, and he even taught Williams how to ride a bike. “I remember the allegations of a toxic culture ahead of Detroit’s release,” Williams said in our interview. “But it wasn’t exactly clear what the nature of those transgressions were. David was really racking his brains to think about where these allegations could come from. The timing was strange, as the allegations were ramping up as the publicity of Detroit was ramping up.” He added, “When I found out the photo montage was at the center of it, I could not remember people who were offended by them.” Williams said he has sisters himself and is particularly sensitive to stories he has heard about harassment in other industries. “The idea that allegations like that might be used cynically by a member of the media was quite upsetting to me,” Williams said. “It makes it harder for people who have really gone through these things to get the correct level of attention and be taken as seriously as they should be.” He was offended at the notion there might be a code of silence in management about talking about harassment or toxicity. Above: Detroit: Become Human “The idea that we as a group would be craven enough not to speak out about something like that if we had seen it felt slanderous to me,” Williams said. “As time went on, we moved from a genuine concern about what might be happening to a creeping sense that maybe we were the target of the stories rather than these being genuine investigations by the media. As time went on, I started to feel that it was actually that we had build up animosity among some journalists and sections of the games media. We realized there was nothing to be found.” He noted how there are a lot of women on staff and a number of them are in senior roles. And Williams knew that Cage was motivated to write the story of Detroit because he “wanted to talk about how people can be treated like second-class citizens.” Williams said that getting a chance to talk about this whole issue of a toxic culture was therapeutic for him, as it was hard not to be able to talk about his views of perception and reality. “I honestly believe that a lot of people who are involved in this feel that because the cause is a good one — that we should defend vulnerable employers from sinister workplace situations — that those in the media doing the investigating felt like the ends justify the means,” Williams said. “Even if they can’t prove something, and even if they haven’t got the right people or the right facts, it’s kind of OK. Because what they are doing is noble and they have this oral license.” He and others noted that employees in France are very well protected by the law, and it’s hard for employers to win any fights against the word of employees. The fact that the Labor Court did not take the side of employees who were complaining said a lot, Williams said. Lisa Pendse, vice president of marketing in the publishing division at Quantic Dream, concurred and said her experience in the past year has been good. When she was interviewing for her job, she asked about the allegations of a toxic culture. She said that she had other opportunities and it gave her a lot of pause. But she decided after talking with the company for a long time that she would take the job, and it turned out to be a great decision, she said. She noticed how many women were in leadership roles on staff, and she felt all perspectives were listened to at the company. “I asked Guillaume about the allegations against the studio in my very first interview, and he was really honest with me about the reality of life in the studio,” she said. “I feel I took a risk in coming here because of what I had read about the studio. But I decided to trust my own gut instinct, and every day of my life I am so thankful.” Looking back Above: A choice in Quantic Dream’s game Heavy Rain. As to why this happened to Quantic Dream, Cage said the company was “a little bit naïve about all this.” Cage said, “We always trusted and considered our employees a lot, and we never anticipated that any of them could lie in order to receive a payout. We know that most journalists are fair and honest, but we should have also anticipated that it only takes one to share and spread false news. We were certainly not cautious enough to protect our company and our employees against these risks. We are now.” He added, “Like unfortunately more and more game studios these days, it is also true that we have some haters on the internet who hate our studio because we do games that they don’t like. We don’t make games based on violence, but we create emotional stories based on human relationships and storytelling. It may not be everyone’s cup of tea, which I totally understand, but there are also millions of fans around the world who love the genre and our work in particular.” And he said, “There are also people who don’t like my ideas about the need for the industry to propose more varied and mature experiences, to focus more on emotion and meaning than on violence. This position apparently also generated a lot of anger with some people. I don’t pretend to please everyone, and if my games and ideas are that troubling to some, it means that they are interesting. I am not going to change what I believe in, no matter what some people will invent in order to justify their own anger and frustration.” The impact on Quantic Dream Above: Is this a human or an android? An animation or a video of a person? Cage said that the controversy has not had a negative impact on the team, which has stayed together. Detroit: Become Human was also a commercial success. Cage said, “Fans also fully support Detroit and send us messages of love every day. We receive literally thousands of messages, fan art, pictures of cosplay, and incredibly moving messages. We get a wonderful reception wherever we go on the planet, and this is really amazing.” The company also received a big investment from China’s NetEase to fund multiple games on multiple platforms. The company has built a new motion capture studio, new sound studios, new offices, and a common area for employees while working on new game concepts and next-generation technology. Over the course of a long relationship, Sony did not sever ties over issues related to a toxic culture. And NetEase presumably did its own investigation of Quantic Dream before investing in the company last year. “Our team has never been so united. Nothing would be possible without their passion, talent and involvement in Quantic Dream. I am extremely proud of this team and of what we have built together over the past 22 years,” Cage said. “This story shows that we should all be very concerned about how information can easily be manipulated, but also about how politics gets into video games. Quantic Dream doesn’t do politics, but we refuse to be instrumentalized by people who use our notoriety to promote their political agenda or sell their articles. We should also be very respectful of the voice of the real victims, people who are really facing situations where they are mentally or physically in peril. People inventing or relaying fake stories like ours should understand that they don’t help the industry nor the real victims.” He added, “On our end, we will continue to explore our vision of interactivity, to create experiences that are different, to collaborate with the best talents in the world, and to develop emotional and meaningful experiences. We will keep working as a team, with the same passion and pleasure to work together, we will keep imagining, laughing, arguing, dreaming, surprising ourselves, promoting humanist values while sharing our passion with our wonderful community of fans around the world.” 1 2 3 View All GamesBeat's creed when covering the game industry is "where passion meets business." What does this mean? We want to tell you how the news matters to you -- not just as a decision-maker at a game studio, but also as a fan of games. Whether you read our articles, listen to our podcasts, or watch our videos, GamesBeat will help you learn about the industry and enjoy engaging with it. Discover our Briefings. Join the GamesBeat community! Enjoy access to special events, private newsletters and more. VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"How Quantic Dream defended itself against allegations of a 'toxic culture' | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/business/how-quantic-dream-defended-itself-against-allegations-of-a-toxic-culture/view-all"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Feature How Quantic Dream defended itself against allegations of a ‘toxic culture’ Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn David Cage of Quantic Dream, creator of Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls, and Detroit: Become Human. Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship. Learn more. Quantic Dream has had a couple of years of nightmare publicity surrounding its alleged “toxic culture.” From the company’s perspective, the French game studio has been the victim of unjust slander perpetrated by sensationalist media outlets. And from the perspective of a few French journalists and one of its accusers, it’s the company’s leadership that’s the problem. That’s a sad state of affairs for the Parisian game studio that David Cage and Guillaume de Foundaumiere lead. Their company has won 250 awards for games since its founding in 1997. Quantic Dream has created deeply emotional stories that elevate video games to an art form, such as The Nomad Soul, Fahrenheit, Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls , and Detroit: Become Human. On the strength of that history, NetEase invested in Quantic Dream earlier this year, and the studio announced it would move beyond Sony’s PlayStation consoles to self-publish games on different game platforms. But this success allegedly came at a cost, as three publications reported on an internal dispute at the company a couple of years ago. After the completion of one investigation, a French labor court cleared the company of the most serious accusations and any large financial liability related to them. And Cage is now speaking extensively via email with GamesBeat about the facts and outcome of the case so far. Quantic Dream’s own defamation lawsuits against media outlets that wrote about the alleged toxic culture are still pending, and a hearing was postponed (as a result of French labor protests) until 2021. The dispute centers on one incident, but the open question is what it’s actually like to work at the company. Media outlets reported that the company had a toxic culture based on interviews with a number of current and former employees, while Cage said that third-party investigators have found no problems and that the company has many employees willing to vouch for its professionalism. Event GamesBeat at the Game Awards We invite you to join us in LA for GamesBeat at the Game Awards event this December 7. Reserve your spot now as space is limited! The irony of the incident is that, at that time, Quantic Dream was finishing the work on Detroit: Become Human, which had a story about human androids and hammered home what it was like to be treated like a second-class citizen. Quantic Dream’s games are about moral dilemmas, and the media expressed moral outrage about how the company was run. For this story, we spoke with 16 current members of Quantic Dream’s staff and conducted email interviews with Cage and de Foundaumiere. We are open to speaking with more people and have made queries about that. But this story is what we know. An unfortunate incident Above: Quantic Dream’s Detroit: Become Human pushed the edge on face animation. A real-life emotional story has distracted the studio. The long legal fight began with a triggering event. A lead programmer at Quantic Dream entertained himself by creating photo montages during his lunch break. He put the heads of his fellow employees on the bodies of various celebrities or other images. He shared these images with friends and managers, including Cage. Cage said that the employee honored requests by employees who didn’t want to be in the images, which were sometimes posted (often by the photo subjects themselves) at the coffee machine. “The intention was never to mock or to humiliate anyone, otherwise we would have stopped this right away,” Cage said, regarding the benign beginning of the altered-image sharing. “Of all the images I saw, none were shocking. It is important to mention that no one in the team ever reported any issue about this activity: over three years, there were zero complaints, internally or to any official institution.” For three years, none of Quantic Dream’s 200 or so employees complained about being included in the images. But on February 27, 2017, the employee editing these pictures shared all 600 of them with the entire company. He evidently forgot that 12 of the images were entirely inappropriate, and he shared them by mistake. The company’s IT manager at the time told management that the image of him was unacceptable. His face was pasted on a famous reality TV show character, Supernanny. “The image had no specific angle (not homophobic, racist or misogynist, as the Labor Court confirmed), but it was definitely not acceptable,” Cage said. “We also discovered other images that were never shared and that we had never seen before, which were totally unacceptable.” Cage said that management met with the creator of the images, and ordered him to stop making them. They asked him to apologize to the IT manager and gave him a formal warning (a disciplinary sanction that goes on record and can lead to contract termination). The company provided records for this disciplinary action and three different investigating bodies verified it. The former IT manager, who declined to be interviewed for this story and referred GamesBeat to the articles already published, allegedly accepted the apology. But then he later informed the company that he wanted the creator to be dismissed immediately, and that he wanted to be compensated with one year’s salary (plus 40%), otherwise he would “tell the whole story to the press,” Quantic Dream said. To the company, this sounded like blackmail, Cage said. “We tried to talk. We offered a neutral mediator, which he accepted first then refused. We tried to find solutions, but he rejected all options,” Cage said. Three of the IT manager’s other colleagues in the IT department resigned and also asked for compensation. The IT manager sought help from government institutions, but Cage said that Quantic Dream provided explanations and documents. In each case, the investigating bodies either closed or resolved the investigations. Then the IT manager reached out to French journalists, sending the 12 inappropriate pictures, and three journalists responded. Media investigation Above: David Cage is the co-CEO of Quantic Dream. The newspaper Le Monde, video game site CanardPC, and media investigation site Mediapart wrote articles about Quantic Dream’s culture, based on the outreach from the IT manager. But the stories weren’t just about the incident involving the edited images. They were looking into what was wrong with game companies. During the process of investigating the game industry, Mediapart decided to focus on Quantic Dream for its first article “because we were gathering a lot of information, and precise testimonies, about its work culture and work practices,” Mediapart writer Dan Israel said in an email to GamesBeat. “We also learned that Le Monde was doing a very similar job, so we teamed with them, only for this first article,” Israel said. The journalists teamed up and sent questions to the company. Quantic Dream said that the initial questions were alarming. On December 26, 2017, the journalists sent Quantic Dream a list of questions that the company thought was “surreal.” They included these questions: We found an invoice of $10 for room service in a hotel in Las Vegas. Was this for a prostitute? We heard that one of your employees had a mouse pad with a sexy female character. Do you think this is acceptable? One of your employees had a heavy metal T-shirt that someone found offending. Do you encourage this? You are known to work a lot. Are you aware that some people who work less may feel bad about you working more? (The journalists said they sent many more questions and even published both the questions and answers. They said their tone was professional). “Quantic Dream’s co-CEO, Guillaume de Fondaumière, and I were absolutely stunned. We have met hundreds of journalists during the course of our careers, but we never encountered such questions,” Cage said. “We quickly realized that these journalists actually had ‘their own angle.’ They wanted to show that a successful company had to be toxic and they were looking for any piece of proof to support their theory.” The journalists met with Cage and de Fondaumière on January 4, 2018. “We stayed calm and answered their questions, but they ignored all our answers because these were not in line with their own personal theories. In their articles, they rearranged and truncated my answers in order to make me say what they wanted,” Cage said. “Then they sent their questions to our Employee Representatives, who answered in all honesty that they never heard any complaint and that the allegations were complete nonsense to them.” Cage added, “The story they wanted is very simple: Quantic Dream and their top managers are very successful … but this success was built on a toxic atmosphere and perverted management.” Cage said the company has dozens of formal testimonials from employees and former employees saying they had no issues with the company. The articles ran in mid-January 2018. Dan Israel and Mathilde Goanec wrote three articles in Mediapart about labor culture in the video game industry, and it partnered with CanardPC on those articles. CanardPC published its own, longer version of those stories. Cage said he invited the Le Monde journalist to spend a week at Quantic Dream, but the journalist declined. Above: Guillaume de Fondaumière, the co-CEO of Quantic Dream. But the journalists said they were being fair. The articles recounted the IT manager’s story, and they also mentioned the other issues at Quantic Dream. “In this first piece, Mediapart tackled the issue of the edited pictures, but also a lot of other things: the crunch culture and the way a lot of employees were discouraged and exhausted; the fact that some former employees didn’t like working with Quantic Dream; some suspicious administrative customs (in particular regarding the relationships between Quantic Dream and the national unemployment agency),” Israel said. But Cage said he believed the journalists didn’t understand the way game companies worked, nor the tight controls that the company was required to meet. “We were really surprised, because we are very strict about the company’s management,” Cage said. “We have internal and external accountants, lawyers, administrators and shareholders, and doing anything illegal in a small company like ours would be hard to hide. We seriously investigated internally again and questioned third parties to understand if we had done anything wrong, but again we couldn’t find anything.” Cage said three different authorities backed up the company. These included a Tax Control audit in 2018, which was a complete audit from three major audit companies, one American and two French, who did due diligence about the company in the context of an investment from a company listed on NASDAQ. And it also included a government body (called “URSSAF”), which sent two people onsite for three weeks to check all the employees and directors’ contracts, salaries, taxes, financial accounts, and transactions — including the contract and transaction of the director that was described as illegal in an article. “All these independent institutions reported that the company was very well managed, that it respected the law in all aspects, and that they had no issues to report,” Cage said. Above: Quantic Dream’s workplace. After video game news site CanardPC , French newspaper Le Monde , and the investigative news site Mediapart published articles on Quantic Dream, the company fired back with defamation lawsuits against Le Monde and Mediapart (Quantic Dream chose not to sue CanardPC, as it appeared to be a much smaller publication). “We knew that these articles were a complete fabrication, and that was unacceptable. This is why we decided to sue the journalists for defamation,” Cage said. Regarding the third-party audits, Dan Israel, one of the Mediapart writers, responded, “We asked a lot of questions on these issues. If David Cage and Guillaume de Fondaumière had shared these explanations with us, we would have quoted them on that. They did not: They only explained that there was an audit that did complete due diligence about the company, and that everything was deemed legal. We included this comment in our article. We were meticulous in including all the answers they gave us on these important matters.” In response to a query from GamesBeat, journalist William Audereau, author of the Le Monde article, said in an email, “Our investigation spanned over three months. I consulted extensive internal documentation, talked with around 20 former or current employees, including some very high profile, who all confirmed the stories. While investigating on their own, Mediapart (a major French investigation website) and CanardPC (one of the most independent video game outlets) reached the same conclusions. Quantic Dream calling it ‘falsehoods’ or a ‘sensationalized story’ sounds like another awkward PR spin from the company, and this is a pity for people who suffered, and for some of them still suffer from what they described as a toxic workplace.” Labor court battle Above: These are human cops, and they’re far from perfect. The IT manager’s complaint with the Labor Court worked its way through the system. The Labor Court is an institution in France where any employee who has a complaint against an employer can request a hearing. A judge analyzes the evidence and renders a judgment. Both parties can hire legal defense, provide evidence, and argue the case. Cage said that in 22 years, with more than 1,000 employees employed over that history, Quantic Dream has had only three cases brought to the Labor Court. It lost one of those cases, unrelated to this one. This, Cage said, shows that issues with employees are extremely rare at Quantic Dream. The first hearing took place in 2018, but the judges in the case could not come to a decision. In a second hearing in 2019, the judge ruled that the plaintiff “did not provide evidence of a deterioration of working conditions within the company, […] and the production of press articles […] were insufficient to establish these facts.” The IT manager asked for €115,000 ($128,215) and the reclassifying of his resignation into unjustified dismissal (in France, a dismissal has to be justified on very serious grounds, otherwise the employee is entitled to significant compensation). The judge rejected the IT manager’s request for compensation and ruled that the IT manager had voluntarily resigned. The company believed that the threat to tell the press unless the employee was fired was “totally unacceptable.” The judge also rendered similar verdicts for two other employees from the IT team, and a third case is under appeal. In the two other cases, the judge ruled that the employees were “instrumentalized by others” in hopes of getting higher compensation, Cage said. Israel said that is not a correct interpretation of the court’s ruling. Translated from the French, the court’s wording included, “It is permitted to wonder whether he wasn’t instrumentalized by others or would not have thought he could benefit from a windfall effect to obtain a much higher financial compensation.” This language was included in the dismissal of the IT manager’s claim. “To give context to these verdicts, it is worth noting that a few weeks before the incident, these employees had their annual interviews with their lead, the IT manager, in which they reported how happy they were in the company and what a pleasant working atmosphere there was,” Cage said. “These documents among other evidence convinced judges that this story of ‘toxic atmosphere’ was only made up to ask for compensation.” Quantic Dream had to pay the IT manager compensation of €5,000 ($5,572) because the court ruled that the company should have anticipated the potential risk of an employee editing pictures and should have prohibited this activity from the start. Cage claims that the French journalists twisted the meaning of the ruling, interpreting it as a loss for the company. That tone carried over into international articles, like this one in Variety , with the headline, “Detroit Developer Quantic Dream Loses Court Case Over Harassment.” The French journalists in particular continue to interpret this outcome as a victory for the plaintiffs. “Anyone who reads the verdict can see that this is utterly misleading, but their version was the one that some people wanted to hear, so they just interpreted the court’s findings in order to serve their own editorial appetite,” Cage said. He said the court noted, “Contrary to what the employee claims, there is no evidence of a deterioration in working conditions within the company.” Another French journalist who was not connected to the published stories sided with Cage and Quantic Dream. Vincent Jolly, senior reporter at Le Figaro magazine, told me in an email (and speaking only for himself) that he did some reporting on the case and chose not to write a story about allegations of a toxic culture. Jolly added, “Having covered Quantic Dream frequently in the past years and knowing some of the employees myself, I just don’t see unbiased evidence that would support the claim of the investigations. There is no smoking gun. There is, from my point of view, just no story here.” The media defamation lawsuits Above: Jodie, voiced by Ellen Page, is the star character of Beyond: Two Souls The defamation lawsuits continue, but on a much slower pace than the Labor Court. The recent labor riots forced a rescheduling of the first hearing until May 2021. The company is impatient to clear its name, and it says its employees are as well. Cage said, “It is also interesting to note that although many people talk about what happens inside Quantic Dream, absolutely no one tried to talk to our employees. Some people have the image of game studios where employees are treated disrespectfully, are humiliated and exploited, but this is not our case. Most of our employees are between 30 and 50 years old; they have families; they are very talented veterans in the industry; and none of them would accept to stay in a company that is ‘toxic,’ especially when they can easily find work in the best triple-A studios in the world. Anyone analyzing the facts would have come to the same conclusion — that this whole story doesn’t reflect the evidence provided.” Audereau, the journalist from Le Monde, responded, “As for the outcome of the Labor Court: Court described the pictures as ‘homophobic, misogynistic, racist, or highly vulgar’ and fined Quantic Dream for having failed to their ‘duty of security’ toward their employees, which is, to my knowledge, very rare. Using a very obscure and risky point of the French labor law, the ‘ prise d’acte ,’ the employee asked for [the] resignation to be requalified as a termination, but the court didn’t agree on that. Hence he didn’t obtain the amount of damages and interests he was asking for, and appealed against the ruling.” Regarding the pending lawsuits, Cage said that both sides have been asked to share evidence in the case. He said Quantic Dream has testimony from 40 current and former employees, with “numerous messages of support that team members spontaneously sent when the articles were published.” The company also included as evidence the full independent HR audit of the team, the results of all the financial and social audits and controls, and “many other documents supporting very consistently that Quantic Dream is a well-managed company where employees are appreciated and respected.” Cage also said that the judge in the case said, “The photomontage showing [the IT manager] in Supernanny , if it appears vulgar, is neither homophobic, nor racist, nor pornographic.” Mediapart’s Israel said, “David Cage and Guillaume de Fondaumière are of course entitled to their opinion. Which is why we interviewed them and quoted them extensively on this issue (among others) in our article. If you read our piece, you’ll see that we let them a lot of room to express themselves. It is our standard process at Mediapart.” Cage said that evidence supplied by Mediapart was scant. Quantic Dream said the judge in the case limited witnesses, so the company will call five witnesses on its behalf instead of the 50 who are prepared to testify. Mediapart and Pixel/Le Monde had four witnesses, including the three journalists who wrote the articles. “We cannot comment on the issue of our sources, as you will understand, but we had far more than one source,” Israel of Mediapart said. Israel added, “The four witnesses Quantic Dream is talking about are the ones that were subpoenaed to the hearing that was supposed to be held on December 5 and 6. In addition to those, we have provided four other written testimonies, that are considered just as important by the French law. And our five witnesses are ex-employees, even the union representative. Moreover, as you may have guessed, a lot of our witnesses wished to stay anonymous, and didn’t want to testify in their own names. We couldn’t reveal their identities to the court.” Above: A father looks for his son in Heavy Rain Regarding the delay in the defamation lawsuit, Cage said it is “extremely frustrating, because this hearing would have clarified everything about these allegations.” Cage said the company decided to speak up now rather than wait because the company needed to answer attacks on social media, as its employees who have spoken up were “bullied, caricatured as ‘traitors to the employees’ cause’ and even threated [ sic ] with death.” He added, “They just said they were not victims of anything, which was totally unacceptable to some. What is absolutely astonishing is how people from the outside are eager to save people who are humiliated and discriminated against even when there are none.” As to addressing the allegations of a toxic workplace, Cage said, “We faced our responsibilities and took these allegations very seriously. So we investigated internally to see if there was anything wrong in the company. We started a full internal audit, we conducted interviews of everyone in the studio, we even invited people to complain anonymously if they wanted to, and we called dozens of ex-employees. No one reported anything.” He added, “Then we hired a third-party company called People Vox, which specializes in audits of human resources (they work with many major companies in France). They asked 74 questions about the working conditions that employees answered anonymously through their platform. The result is absolutely clear: 96% of the responses mentioned the good atmosphere in the studio as what they liked the most about the company, 94% said they were particularly proud of working at Quantic Dream, 96% said they trusted the management, and the “satisfaction grade” of the company reached 94%. People Vox never saw these kinds of figures in any company before.” He also said, “At Quantic Dream, we offer competitive salaries to our employees, 50% of our managers are women, employees were granted 10% of the company shares for free, we have people of all origins, sexual orientation and backgrounds, we support humanist values and we do everything we can to offer pleasant working conditions to all. Anyone who would have seriously investigated would have seen these facts and realized the truth.” But Israel of Mediapart said, “Considering our article about Quantic Dream (like every article published by Mediapart), we are very confident that we will win this case. We did our job and followed professional standards. Unfortunately, the outcome will only be in a long time.” Employee reactions Above: Detroit: Become Human character As mentioned, I spoke with 16 members of Quantic Dream’s staff. I talked with a large group over a video conference, and I also spoke with several over Skype calls. I did not visit the company in Paris, though I was invited to do so. I had permission to speak with employees from the company leadership, and I spoke with one employee in an interview that wasn’t arranged by the company. In a group discussion, employees said they felt the stories were off base and they hurt the reputation of the company, making it harder to recruit people in the competitive industry. Some of the employees — including some who worked at the company for decades — were surprised, “shocked,” and indignant about the media coverage. They said the stories were “bullshit.” One father said he was distressed when his teenage children read the story and said, “Oh, Daddy, you are working in a toxic company?” The employees said that if there was a need for overtime, the company was open about it and discussed it in detail, as French law is very strict when it comes to overtime work and paying for it. “We tried to stay positive in the shitstorm” of media coverage, said one employee. “You become depressed. We are passionate about making games.” Adam Williams, lead writer at Quantic Dream, started at the company about four years ago on the Detroit: Become Human project. He worked remotely at first and then relocated to Paris to work with the team. He sat across from Cage, and found him and de Foundamiere to be very kind. Cage helped with relocation, and he even taught Williams how to ride a bike. “I remember the allegations of a toxic culture ahead of Detroit’s release,” Williams said in our interview. “But it wasn’t exactly clear what the nature of those transgressions were. David was really racking his brains to think about where these allegations could come from. The timing was strange, as the allegations were ramping up as the publicity of Detroit was ramping up.” He added, “When I found out the photo montage was at the center of it, I could not remember people who were offended by them.” Williams said he has sisters himself and is particularly sensitive to stories he has heard about harassment in other industries. “The idea that allegations like that might be used cynically by a member of the media was quite upsetting to me,” Williams said. “It makes it harder for people who have really gone through these things to get the correct level of attention and be taken as seriously as they should be.” He was offended at the notion there might be a code of silence in management about talking about harassment or toxicity. Above: Detroit: Become Human “The idea that we as a group would be craven enough not to speak out about something like that if we had seen it felt slanderous to me,” Williams said. “As time went on, we moved from a genuine concern about what might be happening to a creeping sense that maybe we were the target of the stories rather than these being genuine investigations by the media. As time went on, I started to feel that it was actually that we had build up animosity among some journalists and sections of the games media. We realized there was nothing to be found.” He noted how there are a lot of women on staff and a number of them are in senior roles. And Williams knew that Cage was motivated to write the story of Detroit because he “wanted to talk about how people can be treated like second-class citizens.” Williams said that getting a chance to talk about this whole issue of a toxic culture was therapeutic for him, as it was hard not to be able to talk about his views of perception and reality. “I honestly believe that a lot of people who are involved in this feel that because the cause is a good one — that we should defend vulnerable employers from sinister workplace situations — that those in the media doing the investigating felt like the ends justify the means,” Williams said. “Even if they can’t prove something, and even if they haven’t got the right people or the right facts, it’s kind of OK. Because what they are doing is noble and they have this oral license.” He and others noted that employees in France are very well protected by the law, and it’s hard for employers to win any fights against the word of employees. The fact that the Labor Court did not take the side of employees who were complaining said a lot, Williams said. Lisa Pendse, vice president of marketing in the publishing division at Quantic Dream, concurred and said her experience in the past year has been good. When she was interviewing for her job, she asked about the allegations of a toxic culture. She said that she had other opportunities and it gave her a lot of pause. But she decided after talking with the company for a long time that she would take the job, and it turned out to be a great decision, she said. She noticed how many women were in leadership roles on staff, and she felt all perspectives were listened to at the company. “I asked Guillaume about the allegations against the studio in my very first interview, and he was really honest with me about the reality of life in the studio,” she said. “I feel I took a risk in coming here because of what I had read about the studio. But I decided to trust my own gut instinct, and every day of my life I am so thankful.” Looking back Above: A choice in Quantic Dream’s game Heavy Rain. As to why this happened to Quantic Dream, Cage said the company was “a little bit naïve about all this.” Cage said, “We always trusted and considered our employees a lot, and we never anticipated that any of them could lie in order to receive a payout. We know that most journalists are fair and honest, but we should have also anticipated that it only takes one to share and spread false news. We were certainly not cautious enough to protect our company and our employees against these risks. We are now.” He added, “Like unfortunately more and more game studios these days, it is also true that we have some haters on the internet who hate our studio because we do games that they don’t like. We don’t make games based on violence, but we create emotional stories based on human relationships and storytelling. It may not be everyone’s cup of tea, which I totally understand, but there are also millions of fans around the world who love the genre and our work in particular.” And he said, “There are also people who don’t like my ideas about the need for the industry to propose more varied and mature experiences, to focus more on emotion and meaning than on violence. This position apparently also generated a lot of anger with some people. I don’t pretend to please everyone, and if my games and ideas are that troubling to some, it means that they are interesting. I am not going to change what I believe in, no matter what some people will invent in order to justify their own anger and frustration.” The impact on Quantic Dream Above: Is this a human or an android? An animation or a video of a person? Cage said that the controversy has not had a negative impact on the team, which has stayed together. Detroit: Become Human was also a commercial success. Cage said, “Fans also fully support Detroit and send us messages of love every day. We receive literally thousands of messages, fan art, pictures of cosplay, and incredibly moving messages. We get a wonderful reception wherever we go on the planet, and this is really amazing.” The company also received a big investment from China’s NetEase to fund multiple games on multiple platforms. The company has built a new motion capture studio, new sound studios, new offices, and a common area for employees while working on new game concepts and next-generation technology. Over the course of a long relationship, Sony did not sever ties over issues related to a toxic culture. And NetEase presumably did its own investigation of Quantic Dream before investing in the company last year. “Our team has never been so united. Nothing would be possible without their passion, talent and involvement in Quantic Dream. I am extremely proud of this team and of what we have built together over the past 22 years,” Cage said. “This story shows that we should all be very concerned about how information can easily be manipulated, but also about how politics gets into video games. Quantic Dream doesn’t do politics, but we refuse to be instrumentalized by people who use our notoriety to promote their political agenda or sell their articles. We should also be very respectful of the voice of the real victims, people who are really facing situations where they are mentally or physically in peril. People inventing or relaying fake stories like ours should understand that they don’t help the industry nor the real victims.” He added, “On our end, we will continue to explore our vision of interactivity, to create experiences that are different, to collaborate with the best talents in the world, and to develop emotional and meaningful experiences. We will keep working as a team, with the same passion and pleasure to work together, we will keep imagining, laughing, arguing, dreaming, surprising ourselves, promoting humanist values while sharing our passion with our wonderful community of fans around the world.” GamesBeat's creed when covering the game industry is "where passion meets business." What does this mean? We want to tell you how the news matters to you -- not just as a decision-maker at a game studio, but also as a fan of games. Whether you read our articles, listen to our podcasts, or watch our videos, GamesBeat will help you learn about the industry and enjoy engaging with it. Discover our Briefings. Join the GamesBeat community! Enjoy access to special events, private newsletters and more. VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"StreetLight Data can now help cities measure bicycle and foot traffic | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2019/01/14/streetlight-data-can-now-help-cities-measure-bicycle-and-foot-traffic"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages StreetLight Data can now help cities measure bicycle and foot traffic Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn StreetLight Data visualization: Cars, bikes, pedestrians Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship. Learn more. One of the big by-products of the digital revolution has been data — large banks of information garnered from billions of connected devices and software. Making sense of all this data is a challenge, but it’s one that San Francisco-based StreetLight Data has been setting out to tackle by drawing meaningful insights from trillions of location-based data points collected from smartphone apps. Founded in 2012, StreetLight Data works with an aggregator called Cuebiq, which offers app makers an SDK that enables them to request anonymized access to their users’ location data. On an individual user basis, this doesn’t reveal that much, but tracking the location of people through weather apps, dating apps, and around 300 other apps on 70 million devices in North America can serve up valuable insights into how people move around. StreetLight Data applies its algorithms to this data to figure out things like where people travel to and from, at what times, and on which days. This can be useful for city authorities, engineers, and urban planners working on new infrastructure projects. The data can also reveal how new modes of transport are impacting the way people travel — for example, has a new train line helped reduce traffic jams in a particular area? So far, StreetLight Data has focused largely on tracking vehicular traffic — cars, buses, motorcycles, and so on. Moving forward, the company will be expanding the scope of its flagship StreetLight Insight product to cover pedestrians and bicycles. VB Event The AI Impact Tour Connect with the enterprise AI community at VentureBeat’s AI Impact Tour coming to a city near you! The platform has, of course, already been tracking pedestrians and bicycles, but it hasn’t been able to provide specific breakdowns for these modes of transport. StreetLight Data said it has developed a new proprietary machine learning toolset that can differentiate bikes and foot traffic from motorized vehicles. Above: StreetLight Data So anyone who subscribes to StreetLight Data can now log into their digital dashboard and view exact times, dates, and trip types (car, bike, foot). From this, they can see things like average travel times and distances per mode of transport during rush hour in a specific street, neighborhood, or any other pre-defined “zone.” Above: StreetLight Data: Insights Smart cities Cities are increasingly turning to tech-infused mobility platforms for access to data. Uber, for example, has partnered with cities to help planners manage urban growth, and last year it joined SharedStreets, a data-sharing project from the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO). Elsewhere, Palo Alto-based Waycare is collecting historical and real-time data from multiple sources, including connected car platforms, telematics services, road cameras, construction projects, fleet management platforms, weather services, and public transit, to help cities build a more complete picture of their roads. However, being able to drill down into a specific mode of transport — be it cars, bikes, or pedestrians — arms cities with even more detailed information. If data shows that more than three-quarters of bike traffic is heading downtown, for example, that could be used to justify more cycle lanes. “My hope is that by being able to measure bikes and pedestrians, we can manage toward a future where these modes of travel are more prevalent,” said StreetLight Data CEO Laura Schewel. StreetLight Data recently raised $10 million in funding, taking its total amount raised to around $30 million, with a promise to accelerate its expansion and “invest in new product innovations.” Today marks the first step in this expansion. “StreetLight Data has long led the industry with in-depth analytics that describe the mobility patterns of vehicle traffic,” Schewel added. “It is critical to develop a granular analysis of bike and pedestrian traffic to better see a complete picture of today’s complex mobility landscape. Our industry has been in the dark for years on bike and pedestrian movement because of the cost and difficulty of data collection. Now we can shed light on these mobility trends, giving planners the ability to make smart decisions about policy and infrastructure investment.” VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Discover our Briefings. The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"Sidewalk Labs spins out Replica to help city planners create ‘virtual populations’ with big data | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2019/09/12/sidewalk-labs-spins-out-replica-to-help-city-planners-create-virtual-populations-with-big-data"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Feature Sidewalk Labs spins out Replica to help city planners create ‘virtual populations’ with big data Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship. Learn more. Google sibling Sidewalk Labs has confirmed the latest project spinout from its incubator. Replica , originally known as Model Lab , is touted as a “next-generation urban planning tool” and began life as a Sidewalk Labs project in April, 2018. In truth, Replica Inc. has been an independent entity since March , and a June corporate filing describing its business somewhat enigmatically as “quality fish reproductions” was spotted by Redtail a few months back. Now it seems Replica is willing to go on the record about its new life as a standalone company and has also revealed a fresh tranche of funding. But first — what exactly does Replica do? In a nutshell, Replica leverages what it calls “de-identified location data” to figure out how people move around cities. This aggregated mobile location data comes from a range of third-party sources, like mobile phone apps, and is then combined with demographic data from public sources, such as censuses, as well as public transit data, to create what city planners like to call a “synthetic population” — think something along the lines of SimCity. VB Event The AI Impact Tour Connect with the enterprise AI community at VentureBeat’s AI Impact Tour coming to a city near you! “This is a virtual population that is statistically representative of the real population, and that we can then use to model travel behavior across a city or metro area,” Replica CEO Nick Bowden told VentureBeat. Above: Replica: Statistical simulation of how people traverse a city In the real world, Replica is designed to help municipalities determine how many people are on a particular road, how they’re traveling (on foot, by bike, by car, etc.), and even their reason for traveling — whether going to school or commuting to the office. Armed with this information, cities can make key infrastructure decisions around transport, looking at the impact ride-hailing platforms are having on congestion or how many people are cycling (and thus whether more bike lanes are needed). Having access to real-time mobility data garnered from devices located in people’s pockets should generate far more accurate and compelling data sets than traditional mechanisms, such as surveys or manual trip counters. “Public agencies face an incomplete picture of city movement patterns and, consequently, a lower confidence in critical transportation and land use decisions,” Bowden said in a separate blog post published today. “New mobility, rising housing costs, and aging infrastructure have accelerated the urgency to find better solutions.” Replica has so far worked with Kansas City, Chicago, Sacramento, and — as of just a few months ago — Portland. As an independent company, free from its incubation shackles and any negative association that naturally derives from being in the Google family, Replica is gearing up to launch more city partnerships later this year. To boost this effort, Replica — which is headquartered in Kansas, with an engineering hub in San Francisco — also announced today that it has raised $11 million in a series A round of funding led by Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors , with participation from Firebrand Ventures and Revolution’s Rise of the Rest Seed Fund. Above: Replica: Where did riders’ trips end? Controversy Sidewalk Labs has courted its fair share of controversy since it was spun out of Google four years ago , with a stated ambition to “improve city life for everyone.” A subsidiary of Google’s holding company Alphabet since 2015, Sidewalk Labs was set up to help major conurbations improve their infrastructure — and more — by leveraging technology, including investing in and incubating companies. News emerged back in 2017 that Sidewalk Labs would develop an area of Toronto into a futuristic smart city , replete with thermal energy grids, a mobility network with heated bike lanes, and adaptive traffic signals. But in a world that is increasingly wary of big tech company’s abuses of data in the race for profit, a backlash ensued, leading to a high-profile campaign to stop the development in its tracks. Toronto residents don’t want to be treated as “lab rats,” it turns out , with concerns about how Sidewalk Labs would store and manage all the data it garners from a turbocharged smart city. An independent panel also criticized Sidewalk Labs’ “frustratingly abstract” proposals. Similarly, some have questioned how Replica accesses and manages the mobile location data it harnesses, and the methods used to de-identify data. This is an area of discussion that will likely envelop Replica long into the future, but the company is quick to point out that it doesn’t share the actual data with its city partners. “It’s important to note that the underlying data used to create the model is not shared with our city customers, only the resulting model,” Bowden noted. Moreover, Bowden stressed that Replica is not interested in identifiable data. “We never handle the original, personal information,” Bowden continued. “This data set cannot be traced back to a specific individual. Planners can use Replica to answer difficult questions about how people move around in cities, without compromising privacy.” However, “de-identification” is really a few steps short of “anonymized.” Even if someone’s personally identifiable information is removed from a data set, it’s still technically possible to re-identify that data by combining and aligning it with a different data set that hasn’t been de-identified and spotting shared patterns. It’s not entirely clear what measures are in place to prevent this from happening, beyond any contractual promises. Of course, spinning Replica out as a separate entity makes sense, particularly given the public’s general distrust of big technology companies. While any kind of direct association with Google’s parent company could hinder Replica’s growth and future partnerships, going it alone will help shield the startup from controversy. Evidence of its unstated eagerness to avoid being painted with the same brush as Google can be seen, perhaps unintentionally, in apparently inconsequential details. According to the customer dashboard screenshots provided to VentureBeat, Replica uses Mapbox maps rather than Google Maps. And when asked where its data is derived from, Bowden said none of it comes from its former parent. “Neither Sidewalk Labs [nor] Alphabet data is used,” he said. However, as Sidewalk Labs was an early investor and driving force behind Replica’s development, ties are not being severed entirely. “Sidewalk Labs has been and will continue to be an important partner in our journey,” Bowden said in a separate blog post announcing Replica’s funding. Big data It’s worth noting that Replica isn’t the first spinout from Sidewalk Labs. Coord, which specializes in collecting curbside data, and Cityblock, which is setting out to help low-income people access health care in the U.S., are both now blazing a trail on their own. Sidewalk Labs has also invested in a number of startups, most recently joining a $5 million seed round in Umbrella, a community marketplace for elderly people. And earlier this month it led a $20 million round in Ori, which creates robotic furniture for small urban spaces. But Replica and former parent Sidewalk Labs represent part of a broader push to leverage the vast swathes of data that have emerged from the digital revolution. San Francisco-based Streetlight Data, for example, aggregates mobile app data to help cities measure traffic , while PredictHQ taps data from global events to help companies such as airlines and Uber forecast demand surges. Elsewhere, Waycare collates historical and real-time data from sources such as connected car platforms, telematics services, road cameras, construction projects, weather services, and public transit to give cities a more complete picture of their roads. As cities increasingly realize that these data-sharing pacts are an effective way to gain insights into people and places, technology such as Replica’s can only proliferate. And with $11 million in its coffers, Replica is a name we can expect to hear more about in the coming years. “Over the next few months, Replica will be launching in several new regions, all of [which] were involved in our initial partner program,” Bowden said. “The additional financing will allow us to partner with more agencies and roll out Replica at a much faster pace.” VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Discover our Briefings. The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"PredictHQ raises $22 million to help Uber and others predict demand with big data | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2020/02/12/predicthq-raises-22-million-to-help-uber-and-others-predict-demand-with-big-data"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages PredictHQ raises $22 million to help Uber and others predict demand with big data Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn PredictHQ team: CEO Campbell Brown is second from right Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship. Learn more. PredictHQ , a company that aggregates data sets from myriad events and public holidays to help companies forecast demand for their services, has raised $22 million in a series B round of funding led by Sutter Hill Ventures, with participation from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Aspect Ventures, and Rampersand VC. The San Francisco-based startup taps myriad sources for data related to concerts, sports, public holidays, and more and then adds in proprietary and “hard to find” data. It throws all of this into a big melting pot, channels it into an API, and licenses it to companies like Uber, Domino’s, Quantas, and Booking.com. So why is this data so useful? Well, it all comes down to predictive insights — knowing how much demand a service is likely to see. During a major music festival or sports event, for example, Uber often employs surge pricing , a mechanism to manage supply (and make more money ) when demand is high. But surge pricing often kicks in with little to no warning, as the pricing mechanism simply reacts to a surge in demand. Knowing when to expect a spike in ride requests could help Uber alert drivers to be at a location at a certain time. PredictHQ’s secret sauce is the way it combines data. For example, knowing there’s a rock concert on a specific date in San Diego is useful, but adding in the fact that the American Society of Hematology is holding an exposition in the same area on the same day might suggest an even greater demand for rides. Moreover, Uber could tap other independent data sources — including hyper local weather forecasts — to fill in the picture. If a torrential downpour is anticipated as the two major events are about to finish, for example, drivers can be standing by to cash in. VB Event The AI Impact Tour Connect with the enterprise AI community at VentureBeat’s AI Impact Tour coming to a city near you! Similarly, by using PredictHQ’s data Domino’s can garner greater insights into how many delivery drivers might be needed on a specific evening, or whether a location might need to order more ingredients. Ultimately, PredictHQ is all about helping businesses cut down on losses by adapting their supply and pricing to suit demand. Above: PredictHQ on a laptop The story so far Founded out of Auckland, New Zealand in 2015, PredictHQ exited stealth three years later with $10 million in funding. That same year, its global headquarters moved to San Francisco, along with CEO and cofounder Campbell Brown. With another $22 million in the bank, the company said it’s now well positioned to grow its data science team and bring its demand intelligence platform to more industries and markets. “This funding will be used to grow the team, especially our data scientists, who now make up about half of our team,” Campbell told VentureBeat. “We are focused on our correlation and prediction engine that will turn months of complicated data science work into a few hours for our customers.” Back in September, PredictHQ launched its first industry-specific product, called aviation rank, which is designed for airlines. Aviation rank uses machine learning models to forecast which global events are likely to impact the demand for flight bookings — anything from Oktoberfest in Munich, Germany to the World Dairy Expo in Madison, Wisconsin. A specific product is required for the airline industry because some events are more likely to attract inbound air traffic than others. A major music festival or technology conference will likely draw people from far and wide, whereas a local standup comedy gig probably won’t. By tailoring its product to niche markets, PredictHQ widens its appeal. Above: High-impact events as shown in PredictHQ’s aviation rank According to Brown, the company will be working on similar product niches in the future, but for now it’s more focused on developing its main product. “Aviation rank has performed really well for us, snagging us a series of leading airline customers,” Brown said. “But the opportunity in front of us is vast, so we are focused on sequencing our investment into our core product and knowledge graph to generate even greater relevance. This creates value for all of our customers and target industries. We will be working on industry-relevant products in the future, but we prioritized aviation rank early because airlines have very specific requirements.” Big data is the driving force behind countless digital services, informing life insurance policies , insights into cities, and public transport decisions. Pittsburgh-based Gridwise, for example, targets ride-hailing drivers directly via a dedicated mobile app that uses big data and real-time alerts to inform them about potential ways to increase their earnings. Whatever the industry, it’s clear there’s a growing demand for big data insights that help companies adapt to shifting consumer demand. “In today’s hyper-connected world, it just doesn’t make sense for businesses to miss out on factoring the significant impact of real-world events into their forecasting, pricing, planning, and other business optimization strategies,” Brown said. VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Discover our Briefings. The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"Cris Tales is a time-traveling homage to Japanese role-playing games | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2019/06/10/cristales-is-a-time-traveling-homage-to-japanese-role-playing-games"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Cris Tales is a time-traveling homage to Japanese role-playing games Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship. Learn more. Cris Tales coming in 2020 from Maximum Games indie label Modus, it revealed during the PC Gaming Show today during the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in Los Angeles. It’s from developers Dreams Uncorporated and SYCK, and it’s going to be on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Switch. It’s a Japanese role-playing game, and its gameplay conceit has time travel in the past, present, and future (sounds like Chrono Trigger, one of the best-regarded and most-loved JPRGs ever made). It has a cartoonish look and rich colors, and it looks to have turn-based combat as well. You play as Crisbell, and you’re out to stop an evil Empress and prevent a cataclysm. A demo out until June 24 on Steam. You time magic and change your foes’ timelines, which can give you an advantage in combat. You meet allies as you travel through the kingdom of Crystallis. Japanese RPGs have been gaining traction over the last several years on PC, with publishers like Square Enix putting more of their games on the platform. Event GamesBeat at the Game Awards We invite you to join us in LA for GamesBeat at the Game Awards event this December 7. Reserve your spot now as space is limited! Update: 11:43 a.m. Pacific with more details from Modus. GamesBeat's creed when covering the game industry is "where passion meets business." What does this mean? We want to tell you how the news matters to you -- not just as a decision-maker at a game studio, but also as a fan of games. Whether you read our articles, listen to our podcasts, or watch our videos, GamesBeat will help you learn about the industry and enjoy engaging with it. Discover our Briefings. Join the GamesBeat community! Enjoy access to special events, private newsletters and more. VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"GameDev.World pulls off a historic global online game conference in 8 languages | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2019/06/23/gamedev-world-pulls-off-a-historic-global-online-game-conference-in-8-languages"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages GameDev.World pulls off a historic global online game conference in 8 languages Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn GameDev.World aired 24 hours of game developer talks in eight languages. Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship. Learn more. GameDev.World demystified the art of game development just a little bit in the past three days, with 24 hours of talks from a diverse group of experts from around the world. The talks were broadcast online with translation in eight different languages. The event from June 21 to June 23 was the brainchild of Rami Ismail , executive director of Vlambeer; Sarah Elmaleh, voice actress and event organizer; and Myriame Lachapelle, a producer at GameDev.World. The speakers truly came from all around the world: Brazil, Russia, Egypt, China, Spain, Cameroon, and many other countries. They gave their talks in Arabic, Russian, French, Chinese, Japanese, English, Spanish, or Brazilian Portuguese. And those talks were translated to eight languages. “It was both really rough and really good,” said Ismail, in an email to GamesBeat. “Since nobody had ever pulled anything like this off, even folks experienced in the field couldn’t warn us for everything that could go wrong.” Event GamesBeat at the Game Awards We invite you to join us in LA for GamesBeat at the Game Awards event this December 7. Reserve your spot now as space is limited! He added, “So while there were a ton of things that could be better, we can’t be prouder to have delivered a full 24-hour program of game development knowledge from an incredible roster of speakers from all over the world, speaking in their own languages. I personally couldn’t be prouder of our team, and I am so grateful to all our supporters and sponsors. If gamedev.world was a video game, I would call it an incredible beta.” The talks will be posted later. The sponsors included Google Cloud, Facebook Gaming, Sony, Intel, Devolver Digital, Dauntless, Epic Games, Xsplit, Brace Yourself Games, Fully Illustrated, Unity, Nvidia, and Play Date. Above: The art of Gabby DaRienzo. I listened to some of the talks and I was particularly impressed with Gabby DaRienzo , art director of Laundry Bear Games in Toronto and artist for A Mortician’s Tale. She talked about getting a case of “art block,” where she was depressed and couldn’t come up with a creative approach to two new games. Her first game was very successful, but she felt blocked and said she was “making poor decisions for the art on new games.” She became frustrated and unmotivated. Art was now a cause of stress. She talked with friends and they referred to this as “art block.” “And this is absolutely something I’ve dealt with over the years and over my career and in my personal or professional art,” DaRienzo said. “And I admit it feels pretty lousy when it happens. But another reason why our blog happens is due to external pressure, feeling like everyone is watching you and that you’re letting people down who aren’t productive or good enough.” As she started pre-production on a new game, she didn’t conjure anything spectacular. She remembered the words of a teacher who told her, “Don’t try to be different. Just try to be good.” You have to trust your own instincts of what is good, and that will lead to good art. She shared her concerns with her coworkers, and her boss suggested she take a month off. Her biggest piece of advice is to not isolate yourself from others, but to share your troubles with them and have them help you. The suggestion of the time off worked, and she recharged herself with a variety of techniques. She overcame the artist’s block by trying out new things. She tried to be productive every day by working on art that was unrelated to the game. She did this purely for herself, not for work or others. DaRienzo would drink a cup of tea and spend 10 minutes each morning by looking at motivating art. She was being inspired by things that were outside of video games, like architecture, film, fashion, photography, and others. She printed the inspiring art and could look at it periodically. She tried new media. She suggested that if you do digital art, then switch to physical art. If you like drawing fantasy, try drawing sci-fi. And she said you should revisit your basics, getting back to the fundamentals of art. She came up with a new approach to art, and her coworkers received it enthusiastically. “It was so validating,” she said. GamesBeat's creed when covering the game industry is "where passion meets business." What does this mean? We want to tell you how the news matters to you -- not just as a decision-maker at a game studio, but also as a fan of games. Whether you read our articles, listen to our podcasts, or watch our videos, GamesBeat will help you learn about the industry and enjoy engaging with it. Discover our Briefings. Join the GamesBeat community! Enjoy access to special events, private newsletters and more. VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"Salesforce launches Service Cloud Voice, Einstein Voice Assistant, and Voice Skills | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2019/11/19/salesforce-launches-cloud-voice-einstein-voice-assistant-and-voice-skills"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Salesforce launches Service Cloud Voice, Einstein Voice Assistant, and Voice Skills Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Salesforce Tower in Indianapolis. Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship. Learn more. Salesforce’s annual Dreamforce conference in San Francisco is in full swing, as evidenced by the steady clip of product- and service-related announcements. The tech giant this morning debuted Service Cloud Voice, a product it’s pitching as a “modernization” of the contact center that embeds telephony inside Service Cloud. Additionally, alongside a voice app development toolkit dubbed Einstein Voice Skills, Salesforce unveiled a revamped Einstein Voice Assistant, the virtual assistant integrated with every app built on Salesforce Customer 360. Einstein Voice Assistant and Voice Skills Einstein Voice Assistant is a component of Salesforce’s Einstein Voice, an outgrowth of the company’s Einstein technology that enables customers to navigate cloud services hands-free. One of its key advantages over other platforms is its versatility, so says Salesforce: It’s siloed, restricting data pulls to individual users’ accounts, and it can be “taught” to recognize jargon, acronyms, and slang in an organization’s lexicon. Einstein Voice Assistant is more than just a glorified transcriber. Users can update Salesforce records and create tasks using natural language requests, or tap Einstein Vice Assistant to navigate through Einstein Analytics dashboards and surface metrics like open service cases and performance guidance. Plus, thanks to native integration with popular voice assistants like Google Assistant and Alexa, Einstein Voice Assistant can deliver a daily brief of “key priorities” like upcoming calendar appointments and teams pipeline updates. VB Event The AI Impact Tour Connect with the enterprise AI community at VentureBeat’s AI Impact Tour coming to a city near you! For those in need of greater customization, there’s Einstein Voice Skills (previously Einstein Voice Builder), a toolkit that supports the creation of voice-powered corporate apps. From a setup page, developers and admins select customer relationship management actions — such as updating a field, creating a task, or reading out a prediction — and the fields or objects that inform each of those actions. Apps can be purpose-built for the needs of employee roles or teams, and Einstein Voice Skills affords control over how information (e.g., next steps and follow-up tasks) is read back and the channels and devices on which apps are accessible. Both Einstein Voice Assistant and Einstein Voice Skills are available on a range of devices, including the newly revamped Salesforce Mobile app for Android and iOS, third-party smart speakers, and smart displays. That’s in addition to the Einstein Smart Speaker, an enterprise-focused concept device Salesforce demoed this week. “We believe AI-enhanced conversational interfaces can transform business processes, which is why we are focusing heavily on innovation in this sphere and building in voice across the entire Salesforce system,” said Einstein voice senior director of product Michael Machado. “Voice allows companies to command and draw insight from Salesforce in a natural way, making an already powerful system even more powerful.” Einstein Voice Assistant and Einstein Voice Skills complement Einstein Voice Bots, a chatbot design and orchestration service announced late last year. Bots built on the Einstein Bot Platform are compatible with Alexa, Google Assistant, and other voice assistants, and they can be tailored to reflect a given company’s brand. Einstein-powered Voice Bots are primarily meant to be consumer-facing. An airline could build one that lets customers update their booking information in Salesforce, for example, or one that taps knowledge articles in Salesforce’s Service Cloud to answer commonly asked questions. Cloud Voice In a nutshell, Service Cloud Voice collates phone, digital channel, and customer support data in a unified remote console. It routes and automatically transcribes calls, surfacing transcriptions in real time in Service Cloud and attaching them to customer records for future reference. On the supervisory side, a bespoke dashboard lets managers view calls and conversations while monitoring where calls are being routed, as well as the skills of each agent and which conversations might require live (or post hoc) coaching. Einstein ties in tightly with Service Cloud Voice on the backend. Specifically, it provides recommended solutions and next best actions for agents, like responses to common questions and relevant articles from a knowledge base. And it powers Einstein Call Coaching, which enables managers to glean insight from conversational data. Natural language processing identifies keywords in sales call transcripts, highlighting trends like a spike in competitor mentions or best practices on topics like objection handling and pricing discussions. Above: Einstein Call Coaching “Delivering great customer service consistently can be challenging for companies, especially when call volume is extremely high and the queries are becoming increasingly complex,” said Service Cloud executive vice president and general manager Bill Patterson. “These latest Service Cloud innovations will help companies meet these rising demands, and empower phone agents to focus on the human side of service — solving difficult problems for customers, and doing it with empathy.” Salesforce says that Service Cloud Voice customers will be able to select the telephony provider of their choosing or keep their existing provider. As for those looking for an out-of-the-box solution, the company will partner with Amazon Connect, Amazon’s public cloud customer contact center service, to resell and deliver pre-integrated telephony inside of Service Cloud. The launch of Service Cloud Voice comes a week after Google made generally available Contact Center AI, its cloud service that taps AI to automate customer call center interactions. It offers a comparable assist feature that provides agents with knowledge resources during calls, in addition to virtual agents that respond to queries with voice or text or handoff conversations to people. In this way, it’s akin to CallJoy, Google subsidiary Area 120’s automated cloud-based telephone customer service agent, which recently added new customization features. There’s money to be made in the contact center automation space, without a doubt. Vonage — which incidentally acquired conversational AI startup Over.ai’s team and intellectual property in August — estimates that businesses collectively spend $1.3 trillion annually servicing 265 billion customer calls. The list of well-funded startups vying for supremacy is unsurprisingly lengthy, and includes Replicant , which raised $7 million in July to further develop its bot platform that answers customer questions over the phone; conversational AI company Uniphore, which nabbed $51 million in August; Boston-based call center analytics company Cogito , which raised $37 million in July 2018; Directly , which raised $20 million in April 2018; Dialpad , which also got $50 million in 2018; Quiq , which just raised $12.5 million this July; and countless others. New identity and data services Voice services and call center capabilities weren’t the only things Salesforce announced today. It also took the wraps off of new data and identity products, which will arrive in the coming weeks in Customer 360. Data Manager delivers the ability to connect, resolve, and access data across a range of systems. It’s able to prepare, match, reconcile, and update profiles on command, with an exchange feature that pulls up customer info when needed. As for Identity for Customers, it provides a secure way to login to all of a company’s websites, apps, and connected products, with two-factor authentication and engagement reporting and analytics tools. Next up is Audience Manager, which unifies customer profiles across known and unknown data like cookies, first-party IDs, and more. It creates customer segments and engagement journeys from those profiles and delivers AI-powered insights, like lifetime value and likelihood to churn. Lastly, there’s Privacy and Data Governance, which allows companies to collect and respect customer data use and privacy preferences, as well as apply data classification labels to all data in Salesforce. It addresses obligations from regulations such as Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), specifically those concerning data governance and customer consent. VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Discover our Briefings. The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"This Nvidia neural network can apply slow motion to any video | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2018/06/18/this-nvidia-neural-network-can-apply-slow-motion-to-any-video"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages This Nvidia neural network can apply slow motion to any video Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Are you ready to bring more awareness to your brand? Consider becoming a sponsor for The AI Impact Tour. Learn more about the opportunities here. Most high-end DSLRs and smartphones can shoot in slow motion, but not all. That’s because doing so is quite data-intensive: Super Slow Motion mode on Sony’s Xperia XZ2 smartphone, for example, shoots 960 frames a second (fps), which is 32 times the amount of frame data it captures at the default 30 fps. That requires a lot of storage, not to mention a processor that’s speedy enough to process every frame. Nvidia’s novel algorithm , which will be presented at the 2018 Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition in Salt Lake City this week, can slow down footage after the fact. But unlike the jittery slow motion filters that fill gaps in footage with time-stretched frames, the research team’s solution uses machine learning to hallucinate new frames. Scientists from Nvidia, the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and the University of California, Merced engineered an unsupervised, end-to-end neural network that can generate an arbitrary number of intermediate frames to create smooth slow-motion footage. They call the technique “variable-length multi-frame interpolation.” “We’re taking a slow-motion effect and applying it to existing video,” Jan Kautz, who leads the learning and perception team at Nvidia, told VentureBeat in a phone interview. “You can slow it down by a factor of eight or 15 — there’s no upper limit.” VB Event The AI Impact Tour Connect with the enterprise AI community at VentureBeat’s AI Impact Tour coming to a city near you! Here’s how it works: One convolutional neural network (CNN) estimates the optical flow — the pattern of motion of the objects, surfaces, and edges in the scene — both forward and backward in the timeline between the two input frames. It then predicts how the pixels will move from one frame to the next, generating what’s known as a flow field — a 2D vector of predicted motion — for each frame, which it fuses together to approximate a flow field for the intermediate frame. A second CNN then interpolates the optical flow, refining the approximated flow field and predicting visibility maps in order to exclude pixels occluded by objects in the frame and subsequently reduce artifacts in and around objects in motion. Finally, the visibility map is applied to the two input images, and the intermediate optical flow field is used to warp (distort) them in such a way that one frame transitions smoothly to the next. The researchers trained the system on 240 fps videos from YouTube and handheld cameras — including a series of clips from The Slow Mo Guys (for a corpus of 11,000 videos total) and used Nvidia Tesla V100 GPUs and a cuDNN-accelerated PyTorch deep learning framework. The results are impressive, to say the least — the output videos don’t exhibit the hallmark jitteriness and blurriness of slow-motion software filters. With the exception of a few jagged edges around the borders of fast-moving objects, it’s tough to tell them apart from footage shot natively at high framerates. Another advantage of the system is that the parameters of both CNNs are independent of the specific time step being interpolated, allowing the neural net to generate as many intermediate frames as needed in parallel. “[O]ur approach achieves state-of-the-art results over all datasets, generating single or multiple intermediate frames,” the researchers write. “It is remarkable, considering the fact that our model can be directly applied to different scenarios without any modification.” Unfortunately, it’s unlikely to be commercialized anytime soon. Kautz said that the system isn’t highly optimized and that getting it to run in real time will be a challenge. And he expects that when it does appear in consumer devices and apps, it will perform most of the processing in the cloud. Still, it’s a promising step forward for machine learning — and for slow-motion enthusiasts everywhere. Here’s to more overly dramatic backflips, skateboard tricks, and dogs catching balls in midair. VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Discover our Briefings. The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"ProBeat: Enough with the government facial recognition | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2019/12/20/probeat-enough-with-the-government-facial-recognition"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Opinion ProBeat: Enough with the government facial recognition Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Are you ready to bring more awareness to your brand? Consider becoming a sponsor for The AI Impact Tour. Learn more about the opportunities here. A U.S. government study released this week found that 189 facial recognition algorithms from 99 developers “falsely identified African-American and Asian faces 10 to 100 times more often than Caucasian faces.” Enough. This should be the last such study. We are long overdue for federal governments to regulate or outright ban facial recognition. This year, the NYPD ran a picture of actor Woody Harrelson through a facial recognition system because officers thought the suspect seen in drug store camera footage resembled the actor. This year China used facial recognition to track its Uighur Muslim population. Next year, we will hopefully realize that all facial recognition in the government’s hands is dangerous. Facial recognition for personal use is still problematic, but at least that’s a person’s choice. Every day I use Windows Hello to unlock my computer and Face Unlock on my Pixel 4 XL. There are plenty of problems with those and similar technologies, but I can turn them off whenever I want. When the government is using facial recognition, it’s much harder to opt out. Or it’s impossible. Should facial recognition be used on public transportation? What about security checks at the train station and airport? By the police? No, no, and hell no. VB Event The AI Impact Tour Connect with the enterprise AI community at VentureBeat’s AI Impact Tour coming to a city near you! Facial recognition is wrong way too frequently, biased from the get-go, and overall just unreliable. Can it be improved? Sure. Should it be influencing government decisions? Nope. Even when — not if — the technology does get much better, there are plenty of privacy and ethical issues to work through. Various local governments have already banned it. It’s time for federal governments to follow suit. Come on, politicians, this should be an easy one. Remember, facial recognition regulation is bipartisan. ProBeat is a column in which Emil rants about whatever crosses him that week. VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Discover our Briefings. The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"ICE's warrantless facial recognition searches trigger Maryland bill | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2020/02/27/ice-warrantless-facial-recognition-searches-trigger-maryland-bill"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages ICE’s warrantless facial recognition searches trigger Maryland bill Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Facial Recognition System concept Are you ready to bring more awareness to your brand? Consider becoming a sponsor for The AI Impact Tour. Learn more about the opportunities here. A few weeks ago, Maribel Cortez was at home in Rockville, Maryland with her husband and five children when one of her kids opened the door. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers proceeded to arrest her husband in front of the family. “They didn’t give any explanation. It wasn’t until they were detaining him and putting him in the car that [officers said they were] arresting him because they obtained the information in regards to his [driver’s] license,” she said, speaking through a translator. Cortez spoke today in the Maryland General Assembly in favor of a bill that would require ICE to obtain a warrant from a judge before using facial recognition to search the Maryland Image Repository System (MRS). Maryland began issuing driver’s licenses to immigrants in 2013. On Wednesday, the Washington Post reported that ICE searched the state’s immigrant driver license photo database of millions of drivers multiple times without a warrant. ICE has searched these databases in states like Utah in the past, but the report says the Maryland incident may demonstrate the agency’s ability to search a state driver’s license photo database without gaining approval. The debate happened on the same day the U.S. Justice Department created an office to denaturalize immigrants and BuzzFeed News reported that Clearview AI has been used by the Department of Justice, ICE, and major retailers and governments around the world. VB Event The AI Impact Tour Connect with the enterprise AI community at VentureBeat’s AI Impact Tour coming to a city near you! Access to photos of Maryland drivers is believed to come from a 2012 memorandum of understanding (MOU) agreement between the Maryland Department of Public Safety and the Department of Justice. Multiple immigrants shared similar stories with immigration rights groups and reporters, but it’s unclear how often ICE accessed the Maryland database since the state has no auditing system to keep track of such searches, either inside Maryland or in other states. Georgetown Law Center on Privacy and Technology Harrison Rudolph said warrantless photo searches by ICE are a “bait and switch for immigrants” that will subvert public safety and could lead down more dangerous roads. “It’s my judgment that Maryland has a duty to the immigrants in this state who have trusted you and trusted the MVA (Motor Vehicle Administration) to give up their most private information so that they can get a driver’s license. So they feel safe waking up in the morning and taking their kid to school or the doctor. A mother today is waking up more scared in Maryland because she found out in the Washington Post that a federal agency has direct access to the MVA; that’s what this is about,” he said. “It is a betrayal of immigrants’ trust for the MVA to allow ICE agents to conduct warrantless face scans on immigrants’ photographs to identify people for deportation.” State Senator Clarence Lam (D) said Maryland encouraged immigrants to get driver’s licenses so they could cooperate with law enforcement and to ensure they receive the same driver testing and training required for U.S. citizens. “There are real benefits, and we’ve encouraged people to do so, and yet the state has opened up this information to searches by federal immigration officials. And as I mentioned, particularly given the privacy argument, this does impact all Marylanders, because all of us are subject to this virtual police lineup, where federal agencies can go through and submit a photo and run it against any of our pictures that we have on our driver’s licenses,” Lam said. According to Georgetown Law analysis , dozens of states currently have memorandums of understanding with the Department of Justice to provide access to driver’s license databases. Privacy advocates call this a way to involve millions of innocent people in searches by law enforcement. Rudolph said the MOU Maryland officials signed might be the most lenient in the country. Lam, who sponsored Senate Bill 649, testified that states like Washington and New York have laws requiring a warrant for ICE access. The Maryland bill was tailored to exclude other Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agencies, like Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). A lawsuit over New York’s Green Light Law led the Trump administration to revoke Global Entry program support for New York ports of entry earlier this month. In response to testimony about the bill today, Senator Ronald Young (D) on Maryland’s Senate Judiciary committee questioned whether a law like SB 649 could lead to retaliation by the federal government and whether it’s risky to enact legislation that prevents cooperation with federal agencies. Young requested further input from the state attorney general and asked directly whether President Trump would instruct the FBI to carry out searches on behalf of ICE. On Wednesday, a judge in the 2nd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled in New York vs. DHS that the federal government can deny benefits to states that do not cooperate with federal agencies. A prior contradictory ruling signals the issue could be headed for the U.S. Supreme Court. “The Supreme Court will resolve this, and if we end up being on the wrong side of this, aren’t we imperiling the benefits we’re going to receive from the federal government? And under the circumstances, do we want to take that risk at this point?” Young asked. Lam argued that the bill does not share immigration status data, just photographs, and said with the imperfect systems available today, you don’t have to be an exact match — you just have to look like an immigrant. Another lawmaker expressed similar concerns that today’s inaccurate facial recognition systems could cast a wide net and lead to racial profiling of innocent individuals, regardless of a person’s immigration status. A December 2019 NIST study of nearly 200 facial recognition systems found that some were 100 times more likely to misidentify Asian-Americans and African-Americans than Caucasians. Women, the young and old, and other groups also saw lower levels of accuracy compared to white men. In an attempt to establish clear rules, standards, and limits on how federal agencies can use facial recognition, state lawmakers across the U.S. are considering a variety of laws for facial recognition regulation. Before his death last year, Congressman Elijah Cummings led a bipartisan effort in the House Oversight and Reform Committee to examine facial recognition use by law enforcement and regulate government use of the technology. Use of facial recognition by the FBI and ICE is part of what motivated U.S. Senators Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Jeff Merkley (D-OR) to propose a facial recognition moratorium until limits can be placed on the technology to protect personal freedoms like freedom of speech and the right to assemble. VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Discover our Briefings. The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"K Health raises $25 million to expand its self-diagnostic platform | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2018/12/17/k-health-raises-25-million-to-expand-its-self-diagnostic-platform"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages K Health raises $25 million to expand its self-diagnostic platform Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn K Health's symptom checker cross-references millions of patient records to deliver highly accurate results. Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship. Learn more. Ever check medical symptoms online? You’re far from alone. The Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project estimates that 35 percent of adults in the U.S. regularly turn to the internet to self-diagnose ailments. Only a fraction of them, however, find the information they’re searching for — such online tools only provide accurate results about 34 percent of the time. Allon Bloch, previously CEO of Wix and Vroom, thought the industry could do better. Two years ago he cofounded K Health , a Tel Aviv primary care startup with a software platform that takes into account medical histories, the clinical outcomes of millions of people, and the experience of thousands of doctors to deliver treatment information on hundreds of diseases. It today announced that it’s raised $25 million in a series B round led by 14W, with the participation of Comcast Ventures and Mangrove Capital Partners — double its $12.5 million series A raise earlier this year, in July. It brings K Health’s total funding to date to $37.5 million. As part of the round, 14W managing partner Alex Zubillaga and Comcast Venture’s Shawn Leavitt will join K Health’s board. Bloch says that the proceeds — which come shortly after K Health’s smartphone app, K, crossed the 500,000-download threshold, at a rate of 10,000 to 15,000 new users a day — will allow it to launch in-app virtual physician visits in early 2019 and “accelerate the intelligence of its self-learning system.” In the months ahead, K Health plans to make available doctors with whom K users aged 18 and older will be able to consult for a fee. Said doctors will review an AI-assisted triage of the patient’s symptoms and diagnose, prescribe, or refer patients as appropriate. VB Event The AI Impact Tour Connect with the enterprise AI community at VentureBeat’s AI Impact Tour coming to a city near you! Currently, K offers same-day appointment bookings with physicians and complimentary remote consultations in cities where it’s partnered with local health systems. There’s a wealth of competition in the budding telemedicine market, which some analysts estimate could be worth $29.6 billion by 2022 — Doctor on Demand, HealthTap , PlushCare, Teladoc, and American Well are all competing for a slice of the pie, to name a few. But Block asserts that K Health’s AI-driven approach, combined with its proprietary medical knowledge database, gives it a leg up.. “Today, if you go online and search for something as simple as a cough, you’ll see millions of results, ranging from the common cold to cancer,” Bloch told VentureBeat in an earlier interview. “With K, we use real data from millions of people so you discover and understand the medical outcomes of people like you and have informed conversations with your providers about treatment options.” K sources from a database of millions of electronic health records and 2 billion “health events” — maladies like nausea, headaches, and vomiting — supplied by Maccabi, Israel’s second-largest health fund. Users start by downloading an app for iOS or Android and answering roughly 20 questions about their age, gender, body mass index, health history, and symptoms. A machine learning-powered backend uses the responses to build a private profile, which it compares to medical insights gleaned from physician notes and charts. The results page shows a list of outcomes experienced by people in similar health circumstances, along with a percentage indicating the likelihood of each diagnosis. Reports and profiles can be shared with clinicians via a HIPAA-compliant messaging feature ahead of telemedical or in-person appointments, if users so choose. “There’s so much misdiagnosis — so much overtesting and overtreatment,” Bloch said. “We see [K Health] as a tool that can help to rule out something that’s potentially serious [and] help users take control of the information … [For] people who don’t have the ability to get access to quick care, that’s crucial.” K Health is funded in part by Maccabi and Morris Kahn Institute for Research and Innovation, the tech incubation arm of Tel Aviv, Israel-based health maintenance organization (HMO) Maccabi Health. It says that any profits from the app will be reinvested into K Health’s database. VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Discover our Briefings. The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"Salesforce: Sales teams are increasingly bullish on AI | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2018/05/23/salesforce-sales-teams-are-increasingly-bullish-on-ai"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Salesforce: Sales teams are increasingly bullish on AI Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Salesforce Tower in Indianapolis. Are you ready to bring more awareness to your brand? Consider becoming a sponsor for The AI Impact Tour. Learn more about the opportunities here. Salesforce released its third annual State of Sales report today, a compendium of insights, trends, and surveys from over 2,900 sales professionals worldwide. It’s chock full of interesting facts and figures, but one of the biggest takeaways is that artificial intelligence — specifically as it relates to opportunity insights, lead prioritization, and guided selling — is gaining slow but steady ground in the sales industry, and sales teams expect it to become pervasive by 2020. “AI is one of the most exciting fields today,” Gilad Raichstain, vice president of product management at Salesforce, told VentureBeat in a phone interview. “We’re seeing how it’s impacting the business world.” The industry is bullish on AI’s ability to close sales and boost the bottom line. Nearly half of all salespeople surveyed said that AI has a role to play in guided selling capabilities, like opportunity rankings (i.e., highlighting customers with high sales potential) and suggested next steps (tips and ideas to help clinch a deal). Of the “high-performing” salespeople surveyed, that number was 62 percent. “Without the help of AI, sales teams are doing all these things that are taking time out of selling and building relationships with customers,” Gilad said. “They’re spending a third of their time doing selling. With AI tools, you want high enough accuracy that you can complete things automatically and build trust and relationships with customers.” VB Event The AI Impact Tour Connect with the enterprise AI community at VentureBeat’s AI Impact Tour coming to a city near you! In fact, Salesforce says that 76 percent of teams using AI have increased the size of their staff since 2015. That’s compared to sales teams that aren’t using AI and don’t plan to use AI in the near future, only 48 percent of which saw staffing levels rise. Across the board, respondents to the Salesforce survey said that they expect AI to substantially impact sales report forecasting and guided selling. About 66 percent characterized machine learning’s ability to glean customer sentiment and engagement as “transformative,” and 65 percent said that AI-powered insights into business developments, emails, and calendar data would “make them more effective in their job.” Despite the confidence teams expressed in AI and its positive impact so far, a minority of salespeople have access to it. Only 46 percent of sales representatives surveyed said they receive data insights into customers’ propensity to buy, and just 34 percent said they have intelligent forecasting and/or get alerts to key actions on opportunities. But respondents expect the gap to narrow in the coming years. By 2020, they predict that AI adoption in the industry will grow by 155 percent. (The growth metric is unclear, in this case; the Salesforce report didn’t elaborate.) “For years, people were talking about data and how they weren’t getting any insights out of it,” Gilad said. “AI providing insights for you has been a vision for a long time. In the future, I think we’ll see AI everywhere — in voice, text, and email — that’s going to optimize processes and end up enabling teams to sell more.” VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Discover our Briefings. The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"Facebook’s new 3D Photos use iPhone camera data to simulate depth | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2018/10/11/facebooks-new-3d-photos-use-iphone-camera-data-to-simulate-depth"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Facebook’s new 3D Photos use iPhone camera data to simulate depth Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship. Learn more. Leveraging the extra “depth” data found in certain recent iPhone photographs, Facebook today announced the rollout of 3D Photos : images that look flat at first, but can be examined from different angles either through Facebook itself, or using Oculus VR headsets. The basic premise of a 3D Photo is that the dual cameras on the iPhone 7 Plus, 8 Plus, X, and XS model can capture depth data in addition to the flat image — data that has generally been used solely to create blurred backgrounds in portrait mode. However, software can use that data to understand some of the scene’s three-dimensional characteristics, then simulate them in an image you can move around with your finger or a cursor. “Simulation” is the key word here. iPhone apps have offered similar functionality since before Apple started to include depth-sensing cameras on its devices, and the results ranged from somewhat interesting to ghoulish; imagine a person appearing to bulge out of a flat surface as if their skin were attached to the wall. But with newer cameras and better depth data, Facebook’s results can look pretty believable. The company suggests composing images with multiple layers, colors, and textures to achieve the best results. You’ll need one of these listed iPhones to create a 3D Photo; doing so is just a matter of creating a Facebook post; tapping on the three dots (a new addition) to bring up a list of post options; selecting 3D Photo; and picking an image from your Portraits album. Once posted, the image will be viewable by any Facebook user, as well as in VR through the Oculus Browser on Oculus Go or Firefox on the Oculus Rift. Event GamesBeat at the Game Awards We invite you to join us in LA for GamesBeat at the Game Awards event this December 7. Reserve your spot now as space is limited! The viewing feature is rolling out to users today, and the creation feature will start with some users today, becoming available to everyone “in the coming weeks,” so it may or may not be available when you go to use the app. A tutorial video is available here. VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Discover our Briefings. The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"AI Weekly: Artificial intelligence will take jobs, but it'll also create new ones | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2018/07/20/ai-weekly-artificial-intelligence-will-take-jobs-from-humans-but-itll-also-create-new-ones"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages AI Weekly: Artificial intelligence will take jobs, but it’ll also create new ones Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Are you ready to bring more awareness to your brand? Consider becoming a sponsor for The AI Impact Tour. Learn more about the opportunities here. A majority of people think that artificial intelligence will steal jobs away from human workers. They’re not wrong, but that’s not the whole story. In a recent survey conducted by Quartz, more than 1,600 respondents in 84 countries said that half of positions would be made redundant by automation in the next five years. A separate survey conducted by Gallup in the U.S. found that 75 percent of adults believe AI will “eliminate more jobs than it creates.” “[AI is] superhuman, and we think [it] will be in every industry [and] replace 50 percent of human jobs,” Kai-Fu Lee, founder of VC firm Sinovation Ventures, told CNBC in an interview last April. “It is the decision engine that will replace people.” The data doesn’t bear that out, though. VB Event The AI Impact Tour Connect with the enterprise AI community at VentureBeat’s AI Impact Tour coming to a city near you! This week, a study published by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) suggested that by 2037 in the U.K., widespread adoption of AI could generate more jobs than it displaces. The health care market alone stands to grow by 1 million (about a fifth of its existing jobs), according to PwC, while law, accounting, and advertising firms could gain as many as half a million jobs. PwC’s findings jibe with Gartner’s , which in December predicted AI would create a net 500,000 jobs by 2020 and 2 million by 2025. Researchers at the McKinsey Global Institute, meanwhile, concluded that while as many as 73 million jobs are at risk of being automated by 2030, new ones will be created in their wake. That’s not to discount the concerns of workers in manufacturing, transport, and storage industries, which are forecast to be the hardest hit. As economists at MIT and Boston University noted in a March 2017 study , automation doesn’t just affect the workers it directly replaces — the economic pain reverberates, triggering further unemployment. Luckily, there might be recourse around the corner. I recently spoke with futurist Martin Ford, author of the New York Times bestseller Rise of the Robots , about the coming AI revolution. He subscribes to the notion of a universal basic income (UBI) in the form of fixed, regular payments from nations’ governments to citizens, regardless of their employment status or wealth. Ford isn’t the only one. Universal income advocates include Stanford’s Andrew Ng, Y Combinator president Sam Altman, SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, and Facebook cofounder Chris Hughes, among others. Others, like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, suggest retraining as a partial solution to the AI dilemma, and a few tech titans have already begun to lay the groundwork for such an effort. Microsoft has committed millions of dollars to Skillful , a nonprofit organization that connects people with IT and health care jobs. And Amazon offers to cover 95 percent of the cost of training warehouse employees for careers outside of the company. Still others propose a tax or penalty on the use of AI. Last February, European Union lawmakers considered levying a tax on robot owners to cover training for workers who would lose their jobs, and those lawmakers aren’t the only ones. In September, San Francisco city supervisor Jane Kim launched a campaign to push for a “robot tax” on business owners who choose to replace humans with algorithms. One thing’s clear: The AI transition isn’t going to be easy. In developed countries like the U.S., automation is likely to lead to greater income inequality. A report from U.K. charity Sutton Trust forecast that wealthier workers’ access to education, the rising importance of “soft skills” like communication, and a reduction in “stepping stone” jobs and internships could entrench the divide between rich and poor. But executives like Mimi Spier, vice president of VMware’s internet of things (IoT) business, take the optimistic view. “We’ve long believed that the AI fear of ‘man vs. machine’ is hyperbole, and that ‘man alongside machine’ is the real opportunity — not a threat to today’s workforce,” Spier told VentureBeat in an email. “[There’s a] widen[ing] skills gap between traditional and machine-augmented work, but it also creates a real need for new training, new types of experts, and, ultimately, a shift from the workforce we know to a workforce open to endless possibilities, as far as new skills, productivity, and contributions by humans made hand-in-hand with machines.” For AI coverage, send news tips to Kyle Wiggers and Khari Johnson — and be sure to bookmark our AI Channel. Thanks for reading, Kyle Wiggers AI Staff Writer P.S. Enjoy this video of an AI system performing real-time lung nodule detection using chest CT slices. From VB IBM Watson Health and the VA extend partnership to fight cancer Today IBM Watson Health and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs extended a partnership aimed at providing personalized treatment for cancer patients. Read the full story Apple loses last Siri cofounder and search chief Apple’s AI and search teams are continuing to churn, as Siri cofounder Tom Gruber and search chief Vipul Ved Prakash have now left the company. As originally noticed by the Information, their departures coincide with John Giannandrea taking over as Apple’s chief of machine learning and artificial intelligence. Gruber was the last of three Siri cofounders […] Read the full story Samsung will reportedly release a smart speaker in coming weeks, foldable phone in 2019 Samsung plans to bring a foldable smartphone codenamed “Winner” to market in late 2019, according to reporting by the Wall Street Journal. Also due out soon is the first smart speaker with Bixby inside, dubbed Lex, which may be released within the next month. Read the full story Bossa Nova Robotics acquires Hawxeye to improve inventory object detection EXCLUSIVE: Inventory robot maker Bossa Nova Robotics today announced it has acquired Hawxeye, a Carnegie Mellon University spinoff whose work focuses primarily on computer vision and facial recognition software. The acquisition will help refine object detection carried out by Bossa Nova’s robots, which currently scan Walmart shelves at 50 stores across the United States. The Hawxeye […] Read the full story AI leaders Musk, Tegmark, and DeepMind call for autonomous weapons systems ban Prominent artificial intelligence thought leaders including SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Skype founder Jaan Tallinn, three cofounders of Google’s DeepMind subsidiary, and Future of Life Institute president Max Tegmark signed a letter protesting the use of autonomous weapons at the 2018 International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI) in Stockholm, Sweden this week. Read the full story Coast Autonomous’ self-driving shuttles are boring, and that’s by design Coast Autonomous, an autonomous driving startup based in Pasadena, California, demoed driverless shuttles in New York City’s Times Square. Read the full story Beyond VB Evolutionary algorithm outperforms deep-learning machines at video games Neural networks have garnered all the headlines, but a much more powerful approach is waiting in the wings (via MIT Technology Review) Read the full story Artificial intelligence will create as many jobs as it destroys, according to a PwC Analysis People are now worried about vast swathes of unemployment where a few wealthy people own the robots and the rest survive on government handouts. But a new PwC forecast suggests artificial intelligence will create as many jobs as it destroys. (via Business Insider) How Amazon Has Reorganized Around Artificial Intelligence And Machine Learning Work The company that sets the tone for so many aspects of customer experience is breaking down internal barriers and showing how other companies can do the same. Amazon, a leader in customer experience innovation, has taken things to the next level by reorganizing the company around its AI and machine learning efforts (via Forbes) Read the full story JPMorgan Chase invests in artificial intelligence startup Volley JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N) has made a strategic investment in Volley.com, a San Francisco-based startup that uses artificial intelligence to help large enterprises automatically generate training content for employees, the companies said on Tuesday (via Reuters) Read the full story VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Discover our Briefings. The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"Ottopia's remote assistance platform for autonomous cars combines humans with AI | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2018/12/21/ottopias-remote-assistance-platform-for-autonomous-cars-combines-humans-with-ai"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Ottopia’s remote assistance platform for autonomous cars combines humans with AI Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Ottopia founders Leon Altarac (CTO) and Amit Rosenzweig (CEO) Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship. Learn more. The burgeoning autonomous vehicle (AV) revolution seems to crank up a notch every other week, with Waymo recently unveiling its first commercial driverless car service, Volvo announcing its first commercial autonomous truck , and countless companies working on the underlying technology that will bring self-driving transport to the mainstream. But full autonomy that involves millions of cars traversing busy thoroughfares completely devoid of human oversight will likely be some time away. With that in mind, one Israeli startup is setting out to serve as a bridge to 100 percent autonomy. Founded this year, Tel Aviv-based Ottopia is pitching itself as a teleoperation platform for autonomous vehicles. The startup was cofounded by CEO Amit Rosenzweig, formerly head of product management at Microsoft’s Advanced Threat Analytics, and CTO Leon Altarac, who previously set up the robotics and AV branch of the Israeli army. “Our platform addresses all the core challenges in teleoperation, like network connectivity, safety, and cybersecurity,” Rosenzweig told VentureBeat. “And the feedback so far from key players is very encouraging.” VB Event The AI Impact Tour Connect with the enterprise AI community at VentureBeat’s AI Impact Tour coming to a city near you! While part of its offering does indeed enable the manual control of vehicles by a remote human operator, the company’s pitch is more than that — it promises a hybrid system that relies on a human operator working in tandem with the car’s AI smarts during a remote intervention. It’s more about “collaboration” than handing full control over to the human, which means the human assists in the decision-making process in more complex scenarios while the AV’s sensors and controls execute the maneuvers. Ottopia’s software isn’t quite ready for prime time — the company will have a pre-demo version ready by the end of Q1 2019, followed by a minimum viable product (MVP) by the end of Q3. But to help get the technology up to speed, so to speak, Ottopia today announced a $3 million seed round led by MizMaa Ventures, with participation from Glory Ventures, Plug and Play, and NextGear. Decisions, decisions One of the ways autonomous vehicle companies such as Waymo train their software is by clocking millions of miles on public roads , thereby exposing vehicles to myriad situations — with human safety drivers ready to help. But countless unpredictable scenarios can trip up even the best-trained AV software, including awful road conditions, half-obscured obstacles, flash floods, law enforcement officers giving vague hand gestures or inaudible voice commands — or a combination of any of these. So how, exactly, does Ottopia plan to help AVs when they encounter such situations? The company said that the remote assistant may provide a new waypoint to circumvent a problem, instruct the car that it’s okay to temporarily cross over road markings to get around a blockade, or help the AV choose a new path based on multiple options. And, yes, the human can take full control if the situation requires it. But even in that scenario, the company said, the AV’s built-in safety mechanisms remain operational, which is crucial in the event the network suffers from low latency. The last thing you want is for a pedestrian to step out in front of a vehicle just as a teleoperator’s network suddenly cuts out. Above: Ottopia: Operation concept “My CTO and cofounder has personally seen more than seven accidents in the Israeli army over the last decade, when an operator teleoperated a vehicle and there was a latency build-up,” Rosenzweig said. “That is why we move away from ‘direct’ teleoperation and focus on building the smartest possible way to integrate and control the vehicle, keeping all of its safety systems in check.” Safety Though safety drivers are still commonplace in most self-driving trials, we are approaching the moment when level 5 “full autonomy” becomes a reality. Earlier this year, GM unveiled an autonomous vehicle with no steering wheel or pedals , along with plans to launch this vehicle in 2019. Swedish company Einride is developing autonomous electric cargo trucks that have no physical space for human drivers — they will instead rely on remote teleoperators as a safety measure. A consensus is emerging, however, that even when level 5 autonomy hits the mainstream, the option of having a human intervene remotely will be needed for the foreseeable future. Earlier this year, Menlo Park-based Scotty Labs raised a $6 million seed round from some big names, including Google’s AI-focused investment fund Gradient Ventures. The company’s sales pitch claims that “safe teleoperation subsumes level 5 autonomy,” rather than preceding it. Scotty Labs’ first product is a platform that enables humans to “virtually control cars in a highly dynamic environment,” according to company cofounder and CEO Tobenna Arodiogbu. He said: We fundamentally believe that any platform in the AV sector needs multiple layers of redundancy to succeed, and we provide that redundancy to companies building autonomous vehicles by giving them the ability to bring humans into the loop. This helps solve some of the hardest edge cases of driving, while allowing AV companies and their teams to focus on what they do best — building and improving their autonomous driving technology. Other companies setting out to combat “edge cases” in the autonomous vehicle sphere include San Francisco-based Phantom Auto , which was founded in 2017. Ups and downs One example that’s often trotted out when discussing the need for teleoperators in the autonomous vehicle realm is that of the humble elevator. Once upon a time, elevators contained operators who were paid to control them and, ultimately, give passengers peace of mind. Nowadays, most elevators just have buttons that people push themselves — one of which is for safety, so that people can beckon help in the case of an incident. And it will likely be a similar situation with autonomous vehicles. Oversight will be required for edge cases, and it won’t be all that surprising if teleoperator is one new job that springs up as a result of self-driving cars — imagine entire contact centers filled with remote teleoperators, on standby to help thousands or millions of travelers across a city. “Autonomous vehicles are inevitable, but safe deployment is still a core roadblock,” MizMaa Ventures’ Aaron Applbaum added. “Major players agree that there is a real, unmet need in this domain.” With a fresh $3 million in the bank, Ottopia said it plans to invest further in research and development and to build more partnerships with autonomous vehicle companies that can test its software in the real world. VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Discover our Briefings. The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"Einride raises $25 million to accelerate rollout of its autonomous electric shipping fleet | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2019/10/10/einride-raises-25-million-to-accelerate-rollout-autonomous-electric-shipping-fleet"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Einride raises $25 million to accelerate rollout of its autonomous electric shipping fleet Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Are you ready to bring more awareness to your brand? Consider becoming a sponsor for The AI Impact Tour. Learn more about the opportunities here. Einride today announced it has raised $25 million to continue development of its self-driving electric shipping vehicles and begin targeting international markets. Based in Sweden, the company has developed a software platform and autonomous, electric Einride Pods that are modular and can be adapted to suit various loads. The goal is to speed the trend toward more efficient and sustainable delivery systems as logistics are stretched under the booming demand for goods worldwide. “Our ambition is to disrupt the transport industry, and closing our series A brings us one step closer to that goal,” said Einride founder and CEO Robert Falck in a statement. “The funding will allow us to start expanding in the U.S., deliver on our technology road map, and to meet rapidly increasing customer demand.” Founded in 2016, the company has developed an Autonomous Electric Transport system that includes both the platform for managing fleets and the self-driving pods. Because the vehicles don’t have cabs, they are lighter and make more efficient use of their electric charges. Einride’s model is twofold. It works with other logistics companies to help introduce its self-driving vehicles into their fleets, including a partnership with shipping logistics provider DB Schenker. But it also works directly to supply pods to companies like supermarket chain Lidl. Reinventing long-haul logistics has become a hot area for both entrepreneurs and investors in recent years. Given the high costs for fuel, challenges recruiting and retaining drivers for trucking, and thin margins, the sector seems ripe for disruptive solutions like autonomous or electric vehicles. Companies such as Starsky Robotics, Thor Trucks, Ike , Pronto.ai, Aurora, and TuSimple are building self-driving trucks. Automotive giants such as Daimler and Volvo have also developed their own self-driving shipping vehicles. And there seems to be plenty of money to go around. Today’s round was led by the EQT Ventures and NordicNinja VC, with participation from Ericsson Ventures, Norrsken Foundation, Plum Alley Investments, and Plug and Play Ventures. Einride executives said the latest funding will be used for hiring, product development, and expansion into the U.S. “Einride is taking on the huge challenge of revolutionizing the jurassic global transportation market by automating and electrifying transportation to reduce CO2 emissions,” said Ted Persson, operating partner and investment advisor at EQT Ventures, in a statement. VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Discover our Briefings. The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"Einride CEO on autonomous trucks: 'The biggest business opportunity in the history of mankind' | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2019/12/16/einride-ceo-on-autonomous-trucks-the-biggest-business-opportunity-in-the-history-of-mankind"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Einride CEO on autonomous trucks: ‘The biggest business opportunity in the history of mankind’ Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Slush 2019; November 21th; Helsinki, Finland; (C) Tanu Kallio Are you ready to bring more awareness to your brand? Consider becoming a sponsor for The AI Impact Tour. Learn more about the opportunities here. While much of the initial hype surrounding autonomous vehicles focused on cars, that attention has decisively shifted towards self-driving trucks. The founder of one autonomous truck startup says there’s good reason to believe that an industry that moves freight is likely to take the lead in this mobility revolution. “We address a market that yearly uses more than 5 billion barrels of oil just transporting goods,” said Robert Falck, CEO of and founder of Einride. “We actually have an opportunity now, and I consider it to be the biggest business opportunity in the history of mankind, to rethink how we do transport, creating a better solution for tomorrow.” Falck spoke recently at the Slush technology conference in Helsinki, Finland. Based in Sweden, Einride has developed self-driving electric shipping vehicles that use its software platform as well as its autonomous, electric Einride Pods that are modular and can be adapted to suit various loads. VB Event The AI Impact Tour Connect with the enterprise AI community at VentureBeat’s AI Impact Tour coming to a city near you! Einride raised $25 million in October as it begins to commercialize its technology. It faces a market that has become crowded with competition. Companies such as Starsky Robotics, Thor Trucks, Ike , Pronto.ai, Aurora, and TuSimple are building self-driving trucks. Automotive giants such as Daimler and Volvo have also developed their own self-driving shipping vehicles. Falck said today’s shipping industry remains woefully behind in terms of adopting many of the most basic technologies, making it ripe for disruption. “Today’s solutions are not very intelligent and not very sustainable, and they are using technology that was invented more than a century ago,” he said. “They still haven’t digitalized for a new era.” He describes the Einride system as “intelligent and sustainable transport” that will lower costs through more effective planning and tracking of shipments, reducing energy consumption and accidents. “We have the potential to rewrite an entire transportation sector,” he said. “The transport services market is more than two thousand billion dollars over the next 10 years. We have the potential to lower the cost by more than 50%.” What also makes shipping a rich target is its predictability. About 80% of all delivery trips are repetitive, using the same vehicles taking the same routes again and again. That lowers the technical hurdles for an autonomous truck because there is less information it needs to learn about roads and conditions. “That means that you can apply logic to that market in a completely different way than you do for autonomous cars,” he said. Einride spent about $10 million in its first three years creating the initial version of its autonomous truck. Because it doesn’t have a cab, its lower weight allows it to run longer on a single charge, Falck said. Last May, Einride debuted its truck at the Swedish facility of logistics giant DB Schenker. The Einride pod is now hauling goods from a warehouse and a terminal at the site. The company also recently signed a deal with Coca-Cola in Sweden to conduct a pilot that will see an Einride truck transport products from a Coca-Cola European Partners’ facility near Stockholm to a partner’s warehouse in the region. While longer range autonomous technology will still require more dramatic advances, Falck said self-driving trucks are ready to start making an impact now. As someone who previously worked in the traditional automotive industry making engines that contributed so much to global warming, Falck said he personally feels an urgency to reverse the environmental damage. “We live in the age of disruptive technology,” he said. “Previously, we didn’t always understand what kind of future we were creating by making diesel and fossil fuel-based engines the backbone of our modern society. But we need to be able to create something different for the next century.” VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Discover our Briefings. The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"Robots will destroy our jobs – and we're not ready for it | Technology | The Guardian"

"https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jan/11/robots-jobs-employees-artificial-intelligence"

"Two-thirds of Americans believe robots will soon perform most of the work done by humans but 80% also believe their jobs will be unaffected. Time to think again US edition US edition UK edition Australia edition International edition Europe edition The Guardian - Back to home The Guardian News Opinion Sport Culture Lifestyle Show More Show More document.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', function(){ var columnInput = document.getElementById('News-button'); if (!columnInput) return; // Sticky nav replaces the nav so element no longer exists for users in test. columnInput.addEventListener('keydown', function(e){ // keyCode: 13 => Enter key | keyCode: 32 => Space key if (e.keyCode === 13 || e.keyCode === 32) { e.preventDefault() document.getElementById('News-checkbox-input').click(); } }) }) News View all News US news World news Environment US politics Ukraine Soccer Business Tech Science Newsletters Wellness document.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', function(){ var columnInput = document.getElementById('Opinion-button'); if (!columnInput) return; // Sticky nav replaces the nav so element no longer exists for users in test. columnInput.addEventListener('keydown', function(e){ // keyCode: 13 => Enter key | keyCode: 32 => Space key if (e.keyCode === 13 || e.keyCode === 32) { e.preventDefault() document.getElementById('Opinion-checkbox-input').click(); } }) }) Opinion View all Opinion The Guardian view Columnists Letters Opinion videos Cartoons document.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', function(){ var columnInput = document.getElementById('Sport-button'); if (!columnInput) return; // Sticky nav replaces the nav so element no longer exists for users in test. columnInput.addEventListener('keydown', function(e){ // keyCode: 13 => Enter key | keyCode: 32 => Space key if (e.keyCode === 13 || e.keyCode === 32) { e.preventDefault() document.getElementById('Sport-checkbox-input').click(); } }) }) Sport View all Sport Soccer NFL Tennis MLB MLS NBA NHL F1 Golf document.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', function(){ var columnInput = document.getElementById('Culture-button'); if (!columnInput) return; // Sticky nav replaces the nav so element no longer exists for users in test. columnInput.addEventListener('keydown', function(e){ // keyCode: 13 => Enter key | keyCode: 32 => Space key if (e.keyCode === 13 || e.keyCode === 32) { e.preventDefault() document.getElementById('Culture-checkbox-input').click(); } }) }) Culture View all Culture Film Books Music Art & design TV & radio Stage Classical Games document.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', function(){ var columnInput = document.getElementById('Lifestyle-button'); if (!columnInput) return; // Sticky nav replaces the nav so element no longer exists for users in test. columnInput.addEventListener('keydown', function(e){ // keyCode: 13 => Enter key | keyCode: 32 => Space key if (e.keyCode === 13 || e.keyCode === 32) { e.preventDefault() document.getElementById('Lifestyle-checkbox-input').click(); } }) }) Lifestyle View all Lifestyle Wellness Fashion Food Recipes Love & sex Home & garden Health & fitness Family Travel Money Search input google-search Search Support us Print subscriptions document.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', function(){ var columnInput = document.getElementById('US-edition-button'); if (!columnInput) return; // Sticky nav replaces the nav so element no longer exists for users in test. columnInput.addEventListener('keydown', function(e){ // keyCode: 13 => Enter key | keyCode: 32 => Space key if (e.keyCode === 13 || e.keyCode === 32) { e.preventDefault() document.getElementById('US-edition-checkbox-input').click(); } }) }) US edition UK edition Australia edition International edition Europe edition Search jobs Digital Archive Guardian Puzzles app Guardian Licensing The Guardian app Video Podcasts Pictures Inside the Guardian Guardian Weekly Crosswords Wordiply Corrections Facebook Twitter Search jobs Digital Archive Guardian Puzzles app Guardian Licensing US World Environment US Politics Ukraine Soccer Business Tech Science Newsletters Wellness The Pepper robot, which can be used in fields such as healthcare, technology, education and retail. Photograph: Christopher Jue/EPA The Pepper robot, which can be used in fields such as healthcare, technology, education and retail. Photograph: Christopher Jue/EPA Technology Robots will destroy our jobs – and we're not ready for it Two-thirds of Americans believe robots will soon perform most of the work done by humans but 80% also believe their jobs will be unaffected. Time to think again Wed 11 Jan 2017 05.00 EST T he McDonald’s on the corner of Third Avenue and 58th Street in New York City doesn’t look all that different from any of the fast-food chain’s other locations across the country. Inside, however, hungry patrons are welcomed not by a cashier waiting to take their order, but by a “Create Your Taste” kiosk – an automated touch-screen system that allows customers to create their own burgers without interacting with another human being. It’s impossible to say exactly how many jobs have been lost by the deployment of the automated kiosks – McDonald’s has been predictably reluctant to release numbers – but such innovations will be an increasingly familiar sight in Trump’s America. Once confined to the pages of futuristic dystopian fictions, the field of robotics promises to be the most profoundly disruptive technological shift since the industrial revolution. While robots have been utilized in several industries, including the automotive and manufacturing sectors, for decades, experts now predict that a tipping point in robotic deployments is imminent – and that much of the developed world simply isn’t prepared for such a radical transition. Many of us recognize robotic automation as an inevitably disruptive force. However, in a classic example of optimism bias, while approximately two-thirds of Americans believe that robots will inevitably perform most of the work currently done by human beings during the next 50 years, about 80% also believe their current jobs will either “definitely” or “probably” exist in their current form within the same timeframe. Somehow, we believe our livelihoods will be safe. They’re not: every commercial sector will be affected by robotic automation in the next several years. For example, Australian company Fastbrick Robotics has developed a robot, the Hadrian X , that can lay 1,000 standard bricks in one hour – a task that would take two human bricklayers the better part of a day or longer to complete. In 2015, San Francisco-based startup Simbe Robotics unveiled Tally , a robot the company describes as “the world’s first fully autonomous shelf auditing and analytics solution” that roams supermarket aisles alongside human shoppers during regular business hours and ensures that goods are adequately stocked, placed and priced. Swedish agricultural equipment manufacturer DeLaval International recently announced that its new cow-milking robots will be deployed at a small family-owned dairy farm in Westphalia, Michigan, at some point later this year. The system allows cows to come and be milked on their own, when they please. Data from the Robotics Industries Association (RIA), one of the largest robotic automation advocacy organizations in North America, reveals just how prevalent robots are likely to be in the workplace of tomorrow. During the first half of 2016 alone, North American robotics technology vendors sold 14,583 robots worth $817m to companies around the world. The RIA further estimates that more than 265,000 robots are currently deployed at factories across the country, placing the US third worldwide in terms of robotics deployments behind only China and Japan. In a recent report , the World Economic Forum predicted that robotic automation will result in the net loss of more than 5m jobs across 15 developed nations by 2020, a conservative estimate. Another study , conducted by the International Labor Organization, states that as many as 137m workers across Cambodia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam – approximately 56% of the total workforce of those countries – are at risk of displacement by robots, particularly workers in the garment manufacturing industry. A Trump-sized problem Young women visit a newly opened robot-staffed store where robots welcome customers looking to buy a mobile phone. Advocates for robotic automation routinely point to the fact that, for the most part, robots cannot service or program themselves – yet. In theory, this will create new, high-skilled jobs for technicians, programmers and other newly essential roles. However, for every job created by robotic automation, several more will be eliminated entirely. At scale, this disruption will have a devastating impact on our workforce. Few people understand this tension better than Dr Jing Bing Zhang, one of the world’s leading experts on the commercial applications of robotics technology. As research director for global marketing intelligence firm IDC , Zhang studies how commercial robotics is likely to shape tomorrow’s workforce. IDC’s FutureScape: Worldwide Robotics 2017 Predictions report, authored by Zhang and his team, reveals the extent of the coming shift that will jeopardize the livelihoods of millions of people. By 2018, the reports says, almost one-third of robotic deployments will be smarter, more efficient robots capable of collaborating with other robots and working safely alongside humans. By 2019, 30% or more of the world’s leading companies will employ a chief robotics officer, and several governments around the world will have drafted or implemented specific legislation surrounding robots and safety, security and privacy. By 2020, average salaries in the robotics sector will increase by at least 60% – yet more than one-third of the available jobs in robotics will remain vacant due to shortages of skilled workers. “Automation and robotics will definitely impact lower-skilled people, which is unfortunate,” Zhang told me via phone from his office in Singapore. “I think the only way for them to move up or adapt to this change is not to hope that the government will protect their jobs from technology, but look for ways to retrain themselves. No one can expect to do the same thing for life. That’s just not the case any more.” Meanwhile, developments in motion control, sensor technologies, and artificial intelligence will inevitably give rise to an entirely new class of robots aimed primarily at consumer markets – robots the likes of which we have never seen before. Upright, bipedal robots that live alongside us in our homes; robots that interact with us in increasingly sophisticated ways – in short, robots that were once the sole province of the realms of science fiction. This, according to Zhang, represents an unparalleled opportunity for companies positioned to take advantage of this shift, yet it also poses significant challenges, such as the necessity of new regulatory frameworks to ensure our safety and privacy – precisely the kind of essential regulation that Trump spoke out against so vociferously on the campaign trail. According to Zhang, the field of robotics actually favors what Trump pledged to do on the campaign trail – bring manufacturing back to the US. Unfortunately for Trump, robots won’t help him keep another of his grandiose promises, namely creating new jobs for lower-skilled workers. The only way corporations can mitigate against increasing labor costs in the US without compromising on profit margins is to automate low-skilled jobs. In other words, we can bring manufacturing back to the US or create new jobs, but not both. Time for a career change, then? With millions of jobs at risk and a worldwide employment crisis looming, it is only logical that we should turn to education as a way to understand and prepare for the robotic workforce of tomorrow. In an increasingly unstable employment market, developed nations desperately need more science, technology, engineering and math – commonly abbreviated as Stem – graduates to remain competitive. During the past eight years, science and technology took center stage both at the White House and in the public forum. Stem education was a cornerstone of Barack Obama’s administration, and he championed Stem education throughout his presidency. On Obama’s watch, the US was on track to train 100,000 new Stem teachers by 2021. American universities began graduating 100,000 engineers every year for the first time in the nation’s history. High schools in 31 states introduced computer science classes as required courses. Unfortunately, this progress is now in jeopardy. The coming future? A robot holding a medical syringe. Like many of his cabinet choices, President-elect Trump’s appointment of Betsy DeVos as secretary of education is darkly portentous. One of the country’s most vocal charter school cheerleaders, DeVos has little experience with public education beyond demonizing it as the product of governmental overreach. DeVos and her husband Dick have spent millions of their vast personal fortune fighting against regulations to make charter schools more accountable, campaigned tirelessly to expand charter school voucher programs, and sought to strip teachers’ unions of their collective bargaining rights – including teachers’ right to strike. Despite these alarming shortcomings, Trump seems confident that a billionaire with little apparent interest in public education is the perfect choice for such a crucial role. There is no doubt that this appointment will affect the opportunities of students keen to launch a career in Stem. Private schools such as Carnegie Mellon University, for example, may be able to offer state-of-the-art robotics laboratories to students, but the same cannot be said for community colleges and vocational schools that offer the kind of training programs that workers displaced by robots would be forced to rely upon. In light of staggering student debt and an increasingly precarious job market, many young people are reconsidering their options. To most workers in their 40s and 50s, the idea of taking on tens of thousands of dollars of debt to attend a traditional four-year degree program at a private university is unthinkable. Enter Silicon Valley: no need for a degree any more? Solving inequality in tech has been a particularly challenging PR exercise for Silicon Valley. A report published by the Equal Opportunities Employment Commission in May 2016 found that just 8% of tech sector jobs were held by Hispanics, 7.4% by African Americans and 36% by women. However, those numbers have done little harm to perceptions of Silicon Valley in general. Propelled by our enthusiastic consumer adoption of mobile devices, startup culture has become the latest embodiment of America’s Calvinistic work ethic. Graduates struggling to find jobs aren’t unemployed; they’re daring entrepreneurs and future captains of industry, boldly seizing their destinies by chasing bottomless venture capital financing. “Hustle” has become the latest buzzword du jour, and it seems as though everybody is working on an app, trying to set up meetings with angel investors, or searching for a technical co-founder – including Daniel Hunter. The son of two engineers, Daniel has been fascinated by robots his entire life. He spent much of his formative years building elaborate machines with Lego blocks, and later joined a robotics club near Sacramento, California. Before long, Daniel and his team-mates were pitting robots of their own design against those of other teams, and even won first prize in a regional robotics tournament. Daniel is now preparing to complete his bachelor of science in robotics engineering at the University of California, Santa Cruz – one of a small but growing number of colleges across the US to offer a generalized undergraduate degree in robotics. In addition to his studies in robotics, Daniel has also been improving his coding skills, in part to sate his intellectual curiosity, but also to further hone his competitive edge. Humanoid robots work side by side with employees in the assembly line at a factory in Kazo, Japan. Daniel, who works at a startup that is currently developing an iOS app for sales professionals, is a firm believer in the new gold rush. He told me of his admiration for the work of libertarian journalist Henry Hazlitt, his ambitions to become a world-renowned roboticist and technologist (“I’m 21 now, so if by the time I’m 45 – Elon Musk’s age – I’ve established myself as a world-class mechatronics engineer, I’ll consider myself pretty successful”) and that he doesn’t believe everyone should go to college. “I ask myself pretty regularly if the degree is actually worth it,” he says. “There’s a lot of side projects I could work on that might provide more value to my future than some of the classes I take, so it’s hard to justify.” Daniel also told me that his experiences defy conventional wisdom that earning a college degree is the only pathway to success in today’s savagely competitive job market. “I talk to as many employers and startup founders as I can, and I hear the same thing over and over: degrees mean less and less, experience is everything,” Daniel says. “In the age of Udacity, Udemy, MIT’s OpenCourseWare, it’s very possible to do a bunch of small personal projects, display that experience to an employer, and get hired.” This appetite for alternatives to traditional higher education has driven intense interest in private programming schools and self-styled coding “boot camps” in recent years. Intensive coding schools may be popular, but they have attracted more than their share of criticism – not least for their typically high tuition fees, low academic rigor, and vague promises of highly paid, full-time jobs upon completion. On top of this, one of the most common arguments leveled against coding boot camps is that they do little to address the chronic underrepresentation of minorities and the exclusion of those from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. “I think programming boot camps have been fairly criticized for the fact that there’s a lot of tension around the idea of economic mobility,” says Adam Enbar, a former venture capitalist and co-founder of Flatiron School, one of the most renowned private programming schools in New York City. “The reality is that most schools are fairly selective and very expensive, which means they tend not to be serving populations that really need a leg up economically; they’re really more often people who graduated with a good degree and want to change careers.” Founded by Enbar and self-taught technologist Avi Flombaum in 2012, Flatiron School has implemented programs designed to make careers in technology more accessible to marginalized groups. “For three years, we’ve been working with the city of New York on something called the New York City Web Development Fellowship , where we run programs exclusively focused on low-income and underrepresented students,” Enbar says. “We’ve done courses exclusively for kids from households with no degrees. We’ve done courses exclusively for foreign-born immigrants and refugees … When we enroll students at Flatiron School, we actually specifically look for people from different backgrounds. We don’t want four math majors sitting around a table together working on a project – we’d rather have a math major and a poet, a military veteran and a lawyer, because it’s more interesting.” We don’t need any more food delivery apps – we need engineers Developing a new iOS app may be more interesting than navigating the comparatively dreary worlds of logistics infrastructure, manufacturing protocols, and supply chain efficiencies, but America doesn’t need any more messaging or food delivery apps – it needs engineers. The question, according to Enbar, is not whether future engineers earn their degrees from traditional colleges or not, it’s about what a technology job actually is and how we, as a nation, view scientific and technical work. In much the same way, many also believe we must examine the role of technology in primary education if we are to address growing concerns about labor shortages. Initiatives such as Hour of Code , a nationwide program that aims to highlight the importance of programming in K-12 education, have proven remarkably popular with educators and students alike. According to Enbar, such initiatives are just one way America needs to examine its attitude toward Stem and traditional education. “I think the question we should be asking is ‘Why is this important?’” Enbar says. “We have to ask ourselves why we’re not mandating accounting or nursing or plenty of other jobs. The answer is that we’re not trying to create a nation of software engineers – it’s that this is becoming a fundamental skill that is necessary for any job you want to do in the future.” Despite these grave threats, when I asked Daniel where he sees himself in five years, he remained cautiously optimistic. “I’ll have my undergraduate degree and be several years into working,” Daniel says. “I don’t think I’ll go to grad school. I’m not sure if I’ll be working at a company or for myself – that largely depends on the opportunities I find once I graduate, and it’s pretty difficult to predict that.” It is indeed difficult to predict how the gradual automation of the American workforce will take shape under Trump’s presidency. One certainty, however, is that the interests of those Americans at greatest risk of professional obsolescence will continue to be sacrificed in favor of serving, protecting and benefiting wealthy, white conservatives – a trend we are likely to see across virtually every aspect of life in Trump’s America and yet another betrayal of the predominantly working-class voters who believed Trump’s empty promises on the campaign trail. As Enbar observed, the most urgent question we must answer is not one of robots’ role in the workforce of 21st-century America, but rather one of inclusion – and whether turning our backs on those who need our help the most is acceptable to us as a nation. If history is any precedent, we already know the answer. Explore more on these topics Technology Artificial intelligence (AI) US work & careers Donald Trump Computing features Most viewed Most viewed US World Environment US Politics Ukraine Soccer Business Tech Science Newsletters Wellness News Opinion Sport Culture Lifestyle About us Help Complaints & corrections SecureDrop Work for us Privacy policy Cookie policy Terms & conditions Contact us All topics All writers Digital newspaper archive Facebook YouTube Instagram LinkedIn Twitter Newsletters Advertise with us Guardian Labs Search jobs Back to top "

"Amazon, Google, Huawei, and Microsoft sponsor UC Berkeley RISELab, AMPLab's successor | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2017/01/23/amazon-google-huawei-and-microsoft-sponsor-uc-berkeley-riselab-amplabs-successor"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Amazon, Google, Huawei, and Microsoft sponsor UC Berkeley RISELab, AMPLab’s successor Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Are you ready to bring more awareness to your brand? Consider becoming a sponsor for The AI Impact Tour. Learn more about the opportunities here. The University of California, Berkeley in November wrapped up the AMPLab , a five-year computer science research lab that produced, among other things, the Apache Mesos cluster management software and the Apache Spark data processing engine. Today the university is announcing what comes next: RISELab. The new five-year initiative has financial backing from Amazon Web Services (AWS), Ant Financial, Capital One, Ericsson, GE Digital, Google, Huawei, Intel, IBM, Microsoft, and VMware. AMPLab figures Ken Goldberg, Michael Jordan, Randy Katz, Michael Mahoney, David Patterson, and Ion Stoica are sticking around for the new program, alongside new participants like Databricks cofounder and chief executive Ali Ghodsi and Trifacta cofounder and chief strategy officer Joe Hellerstein. But the new organization has a new focus. “Like much of the big data movement, the AMPLab focused mostly on offline data analysis problems, where minutes and hours could be devoted to extracting value from data. By contrast, the RISELab researchers are looking to make real-time decisions in milliseconds,” the team said in a statement. VB Event The AI Impact Tour Connect with the enterprise AI community at VentureBeat’s AI Impact Tour coming to a city near you! RISELab already has a slew of projects listed on its website. Among them are a tool called Allegro that rewrites queries in order to bring back differentially private results and a modeling framework called Paris that’s meant to figure out performance of workloads using different types of virtual machines (VMs) in public clouds. Like MIT and Stanford, Berkeley has played a role in the history of computing. Berkeley RISC, the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), and RAID have come out of it — during previous five-year labs — not to mention graduates like Eric Schmidt and Steve Wozniak. “The difference between traditional labs elsewhere and Berkeley’s labs is that at Berkeley each lab has a well-defined vision and goals. The five-year duration provides a natural deadline to measure whether the lab has successfully delivered on its goals,” Stoica told VentureBeat in an email. “For example, the vision of AMPLab was to ‘make sense of the big data’, and the goal was to build ‘the next generation of open-source data analytics stack to be used across industry and academia’. Similarly the vision of RISELab is to enable ‘intelligent real-time decisions with strong security’, and the goal is to develop ‘platforms, tools, and algorithms to support applications that require intelligent real-time decisions on live data with strong security.'” VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Discover our Briefings. The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"Amazon's re:MARS opening keynote featured autonomous acrobats and Robert Downey Jr. | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2019/06/05/amazons-remars-opening-keynote-featured-autonomous-acrobats-and-robert-downey-jr"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Amazon’s re:MARS opening keynote featured autonomous acrobats and Robert Downey Jr. Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Amazon's Dave Limp at re:MARS 2019. Are you ready to bring more awareness to your brand? Consider becoming a sponsor for The AI Impact Tour. Learn more about the opportunities here. Amazon kicked off its inaugural re:MARS conference with a bang on Tuesday night in front of a packed ballroom at the Aria in Las Vegas. Senior vice president of devices and services Dave Limp headlined the first keynote alongside Boston Dynamics founder Marc Raibert and Disney Research’s Morgan Pope and Tony Dohl, after which the crowd was treated to autonomous acrobats and an address from Robert Downey Jr. Limp began by outlining the four pillars of re:MARS, which largely mirror those of MARS, Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos’ annual invitation-only gathering of tech luminaries. The first pillar is machine learning and the second automation, followed by robotics and space. “It started with machine learning. It’s at the foundation of everything that [Amazon] does, [and] it will be key to the invention that we need to do,” said Limp. “It’s a renaissance … robotics is an area of incredible growth, and it’s about seeing how robotics can further our lives.” Above: Boston Dynamics’ Atlas picks up boxes autonomously. This growth has coincided with the Seattle company’s migration from a centralized machine learning approach to a decentralized approach, which began four to five years ago, Limp said. In November 2018, he told the Wall Street Journal that 10,000 employees were working on Amazon’s virtual assistant and the Echo devices it powers, up from 5,000 a little over a year before. VB Event The AI Impact Tour Connect with the enterprise AI community at VentureBeat’s AI Impact Tour coming to a city near you! “Automation done correctly is invisible to customer[s] — it’s just delightful,” said Limp, who took the opportunity to highlight re:MARS’ impressive guest list of astronauts, artists, engineers, PhDs, entrepreneurs, and NBA players, as well as the founders and cofounders of household brands like Coursera, Aurora, and iRobot. The “thousands” of registered re:MARS attendees hail from 46 countries, said Limp. “We have people in the audience that invented the core foundations of robotics and the internet itself,” he added. “We even have a Golden Globe winner, an Olympic gold medalist, and five NBA championship rings represented in the audience tonight.” Above: Disney’s next-generation autonomous stunt robot. Raibert demoed the latest innovations from Boston Dynamics, a Massachusetts company specializing in highly articulated utility robots. An onstage demo video showed Atlas, a bipedal humanoid robot, using its electrically powered and hydraulically actuated joints to manipulate boxes. Thanks to force control, Raibert said, Atlas can locate and grasp objects without markers and even package them together. “To have the right approach [to robotics], you really want to take a holistic approach and combine what the software is doing with the physical machine and its design and its interaction with physical world,” he added. “The Atlas robot has a number of 3D-printed and carefully innovated elements that give it very high levels of mechanical and physical performance that really dovetail with the kinds of controls we do.” Pope and Dohl were the next to present onstage — the pair detailed Disney Research’s development of nimble machines capable of landing flips, twists, rolls, and other gymnastic feats precisely every time. The trick was mastering the laws of angular momentum and velocity, they said. Above: Robert Downey Jr. onstage at Amazon’s re:MARS 2019 conference. “We started working with a full-scale figure,” explained Pope, as he queued up a video playlist of robots completing triple backflips and a forthcoming model — the Mark II — with even greater dexterity. “[B]ecause we’re in an entertainment space … [this] lets us do things that maybe aren’t feasible in the field for a while, but I hope that they are at least inspirational.” Robert Downey Jr. of Disney’s Avengers fame closed out the ceremony with commentary that blended the Marvel Cinematic Universe with a history of AI and innovations, his personal struggles with addiction and the pressures of celebrity, and banter opposite sometime costar Matt Damon. “By Hollywood osmosis, for the last 11 years or so I’ve been steeped in the actual history of AI and space stuff as it happened and is happening in reality,” he said. “I think it’s a great read.” Downey acknowledged the tech industry’s flaws, noting specifically that it “has a long way to go” with respect to inclusion. But he expressed confidence in its ability to affect change in the world, which is why he launched the Footprint Coalition with a commitment to significantly “clean up” the planet within 11 years. “I’m going to get actual smart people around me, and then in 11 years, when I’m 65, if we’ve made a notable dent in what I think is a massive threat to our future, I’m going to throw the nuttiest retirement party you’ve ever seen,” Downey told the crowd. “And you’ll be invited.” VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Discover our Briefings. The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"Jeff Bezos: Blue Origin is going to the moon to 'save the Earth' | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2019/06/06/jeff-bezos-blue-origin-is-going-to-the-moon-to-save-the-earth"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Jeff Bezos: Blue Origin is going to the moon to ‘save the Earth’ Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Amazon and Blue Origin CEO Jeff Bezos at the Amazon re:Mars conference in Las Vegas Are you ready to bring more awareness to your brand? Consider becoming a sponsor for The AI Impact Tour. Learn more about the opportunities here. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said his other company, Blue Origin, is going to the moon to “save the Earth.” The idea is that moving more of humanity into space could be part of a long-term strategy to protect the Earth. “To do big things in space, we need to use in-space resources, and so the moon is great. The reason we go to space, in my view, is to save the Earth. [If] we are going to continue to grow this civilization, we need the moon,” he said. “I’m talking about something that our grandchildren will work on and have their grandchildren work on, and so on. This isn’t something that this generation is going to accomplish, but we need to move heavy industry off Earth. It will be better done in space anyway. It will be way easier in space, and Earth will be zoned residential and light industry.” Ice from the moon’s poles can be used for drinking and for growing food but also as a source of rocket propellant. Bezos also noted that launching from the surface of the moon would take less energy because, due to differences in gravitational pull, things on the moon weigh 24 times less than on Earth. Bezos spoke today onstage at the re:Mars conference in Las Vegas, in a conversation with Amazon head of forecasting Jenny Freshwater about the future of AI, space, and business. The talk was briefly interrupted by an animal rights protestor. VB Event The AI Impact Tour Connect with the enterprise AI community at VentureBeat’s AI Impact Tour coming to a city near you! NASA rolled out Project Artemis, its plan to return to the surface of the moon by 2024 with commercial partners, in mid-May. In a press conference in Washington D.C. earlier that month, Bezos and Blue Origin debuted both the Blue Moon lunar lander that’s capable of carrying up to 6.5 tons of cargo to the moon and the BE-7 rocket engine. Also rolled out in recent weeks: the first commercial partners to make deliveries to the moon. And introduced last month, NASA received lunar space station conceptual plans from companies like Blue Origin, Northrop Grumman, and Lockheed Martin. Blue Origin is scheduled to complete its first manned space flight by the end of the year. The Blue Origin reusable rocket made its first trip to space and back in 2015. In his talk, Bezos also said dexterous robots will be among key tech advances seen in the next 10 years, alongside machine learning and biotechnology. “I think grasping is going to be a solved problem in the next 10 years, at least in a commercial way,” he said. “I think if you went back in time 30 or 40 years ago and asked roboticists and computer scientists, people working on machine learning at that time, which problem would be harder to solve — machine vision, natural language understanding, or grasping — I think most people would have predicted we would have solved grasping first, and of course it’s turned out to be an incredibly difficult problem.” Teaching robots to grab things like humans can give robots the ability to do things like clean your home, work in factories, or sort recyclable material , but it could also shape the future of Amazon and other ecommerce companies. To this end, Amazon holds an annual picking challenge for roboticists. Prior to taking the stage, Ambidextrous Robotics chief scientist Ken Goldberg talked about Dex-Net, an AI system trained to pick up and move items at a rate comparable to humans. Once robotic arms are capable of handing more items than humans, they’re likely to join other robots like the two introduced this week inside Amazon fulfillment centers. The world’s richest man encouraged business leaders to also think about constants — not just what’s bound to change, but what will be the same down the road. “The answer to that question can allow you to organize your activities, and you can work on those things with the confidence to know that those things will pay dividends 10 years from now,” he said. Bezos also said that if he wasn’t CEO of Amazon, he’d probably be “an extremely happy software engineer.” VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Discover our Briefings. The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"Amazon proposes a home robot that asks you questions when it's confused | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2019/12/04/amazon-proposes-a-home-robot-that-asks-you-questions-when-its-confused"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Amazon proposes a home robot that asks you questions when it’s confused Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship. Learn more. AI models invariably encounter ambiguous situations that they struggle to respond to with instructions alone. That’s problematic for autonomous agents tasked with, say, navigating an apartment, because they run the risk of becoming stuck when presented with several paths. To solve this, researchers at Amazon’s Alexa AI division developed a framework that endows agents with the ability to ask for help in certain situations. Using what’s called a model-confusion-based method, the agents ask questions based on their level of confusion as determined by a predefined confidence threshold, which the researchers claim boosts the agents’ success by at least 15%. “Consider the situation in which you want a robot assistant to get your wallet on the bed … with two doors in the scene and an instruction that only tells it to walk through the doorway,” wrote the team in a preprint paper describing their work. “In this situation, it is clearly difficult for the robot to know exactly through which door to enter. If, however, the robot is able to discuss the situation with the user, the situational ambiguity can be resolved.” The team’s framework employs two agent models: Model Confusion, which mimics human user behavior under confusion, and Action Space Augmentation, a more sophisticated algorithm that automatically learns to ask only necessary questions at the right time during navigation. Human interaction data is used to fine-tune the second model further so that it becomes familiar with the environment. VB Event The AI Impact Tour Connect with the enterprise AI community at VentureBeat’s AI Impact Tour coming to a city near you! Whenever the agent — in the case of this study, a robot navigating a simulated home — becomes lost during navigation, it sends out the signal “I am lost, please help me!” to a user and asks for help. As the user provides answers to the robot’s subsequent questions, the Action Space Augmentation corrects originally wrong trajectories, using the feedback to prevent future mistakes of the same kind. The team reported that the robot adjusted dynamically to unclear and erroneous human responses. The researchers compiled a data set containing 21,567 navigation instructions (14,025 of which were used for training; 1,020 for validation in seen environments; and 2,349 in unseen environments), with an instruction vocabulary consisting of around 3,100 words. They evaluated the robot on both its success rate and the number of steps taken, where “success” constituted a navigation error of less than 3 meters. The team said that their proposed strategy was “substantially” more data-efficient than previously proposed pre-exploration techniques that involve robots exploring environments on their own. “We are among the first to introduce human-agent interaction in the instruction-based navigation task,” they wrote. “[This] data augmentation method … is useful in a continual learning scenario [because the] agent can improve its performance continually in customers’ home[s].” The work might inform Amazon’s long-rumored home robot, which Bloomberg described in a report last year as akin to the Echo Show — albeit with wheels. Code-named Vesta after the Roman goddess of the hearth, it’s said to pack far-field microphones and speakers that enable it to understand and respond to the thousands of commands Alexa recognizes and to be able to navigate through homes using computer vision and techniques like simultaneous localization and mapping. VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Discover our Briefings. The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"The White House's new AI principles won't solve regulatory problems | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2020/01/11/the-white-houses-new-ai-principles-wont-solve-regulatory-problems"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Guest The White House’s new AI principles won’t solve regulatory problems Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn White House north lawn in VR Are you ready to bring more awareness to your brand? Consider becoming a sponsor for The AI Impact Tour. Learn more about the opportunities here. This week, the White House released 10 AI Principles, intended as guidance for federal agencies while they consider how to appropriately regulate AI in the private sector. It’s an effort to reduce AI’s potential harms, which have come under scrutiny all over the world, while maintaining the maximum benefits to society. The industry has been awaiting this moment amid lingering uncertainty around the U.S. government’s plans to control this powerful technology and ensure it doesn’t hurt people more than it helps. But while it may be a good thing that the White House is taking an active role in the fight to regulate AI, the Trump administration’s emphasis on light-touch regulation means the new rules fail to go far enough. The principles themselves address some of the concerns raised by the AI ethics community and academics who study the effects of technology on society. One such principle calls for lawmakers to consider whether the technology will “introduce real-world bias that produces discriminatory outcomes,” echoing the rallying cries of academics who have for years warned that AI will codify existing societal biases into automated decision systems. These systems have been shown to adversely impact the most vulnerable people in society, including those marginalized by discrimination on the basis of race, gender, sexuality, and disability — and perhaps most alarmingly, our country’s poorest citizens. Unregulated algorithms can automate and thereby govern the human right to life in areas like health care, where flaws in algorithms have dictated that black patients receive inadequate care when compared to their white counterparts. In other cases, lawmakers suspect that algorithmic bias may perpetuate gender disparities in access to financial credit and employment. The guidance also acknowledges that “current technical challenges in creating interpretable AI can make it difficult for agencies to ensure a level of transparency necessary” to foster public trust. It advises agencies to pursue transparency in two forms: disclosing when and where the technology is in use and making the outcomes transparent enough to ensure that the algorithms at least comply with existing laws. VB Event The AI Impact Tour Connect with the enterprise AI community at VentureBeat’s AI Impact Tour coming to a city near you! But the true extent of the harm AI does globally is often obscured, due to trade secret designations and a governmental tendency to resort to the Glomar response — the classic “I can neither confirm nor deny” line. Using these protective measures, entities can hide the extent and breadth of the AI-related programs and products they’re using. It’s entirely likely that many algorithms already in use violate existing anti-discrimination laws (among others). In some cases, companies may even choose “black box” model types that obscure the rationale behind decisions at scale in order to claim ignorance and a lack of control over the resulting actions. This legal loophole is possible because some types of AI are so complex that no human could ever truly understand the logic behind a particular decision, making it difficult to assign blame if something goes wrong. This lack of transparency has resulted in a massive loss of public trust in the technology industry today, and it’s further evidence that AI-specific regulation is desperately needed to protect the public good. We’ve seen time and again that — even with the best intentions — AI has the potential to hurt people in mass numbers , which puts unique responsibilities on the field. This incredible power to do harm at scale means those of us in the AI industry have a responsibility to put societal interest above profit. Unfortunately, too few companies currently embody this high degree of accountability. Bias mitigation, public disclosure, and a solution to the problematic “black box” are table stakes for any sufficiently effective regulatory framework for AI. But the government’s AI Principles fall woefully short in their attempt to optimize the balance between societal good and any potential dangers the technology may cause — now or down the line. Instead, the AI Principles focus mainly on the risks of losing out in terms of power rivalry, market competition, and economic growth. In doing so, the administration dramatically underestimates the ongoing harm facing Americans today, once again sacrificing public well-being for unchecked industry growth. Importantly, although this is the first guidance to emerge from the federal government, many cities and states have already had success governing AI, where similar, comprehensive federal bills have stalled or failed due to congressional deadlock. Several cities have banned intrusive facial recognition use by law enforcement, with many more algorithmically centered proposals under consideration at the state and city levels. It’s telling that the new AI Principles warn of regulatory “overreach” in one breath while undermining local legislative authority in another. The guidance advises that agencies may use “their authority to address inconsistent, burdensome, and duplicative State laws.” This language subtly indicates to lawmakers that a practice known as federal preemption could be used to undo some of the strong, grassroots, and broadly celebrated local regulations that have been championed by AI experts and civil liberties advocates like the ACLU. Even more concerning is the fact that these strong local laws are the result of the public democratic will expressed in pockets of the country where technical work is most common: San Francisco; Somerville, Massachusetts (near MIT); and a likely proposal in Seattle, Washington. These new local laws were enacted as a response to the inherent risks of using predictive technology to gate access to sensitive services like public housing, proactive health care, financial credit, and employment and to a lack of action from Washington. The people who build these technologies know that any algorithm threatening to perpetuate human bias or provide a “math-washed” license to discriminate must be closely monitored for misbehavior, or never implemented at all. These AI Principles may be a small step in the right direction, and broadly speaking, they can introduce a degree of enhanced responsibility if correctly implemented by lawmakers who are earnestly seeking to reduce risk. But they are only a starting point, and they threaten further harm by raising the issue of federal preemption, which could undo the incredible work already being done by local legislators. Industry workers with direct knowledge of the benefits and risks of AI have often been the strongest voices in the call for strict regulation, and the White House should take steps to better align its policies with the advice of those working hardest to bring AI to market. Liz O’Sullivan is the cofounder of ArthurAI and technology director of STOP (Surveillance Technology Oversight Project). VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Discover our Briefings. The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"White House's proposed budget would increase investments in AI and quantum computing | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2020/02/10/white-houses-proposed-budget-would-increase-investments-ai-and-quantum-computing"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages White House’s proposed budget would increase investments in AI and quantum computing Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Are you ready to bring more awareness to your brand? Consider becoming a sponsor for The AI Impact Tour. Learn more about the opportunities here. The White House’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2021 includes sizable increases in federal funding for AI and quantum computing projects. All told, the overall increase in federal R&D funding is 6% compared to fiscal year 2020, reaching $142.2 billion. Although much of the funding is aimed at R&D and infrastructure investments like $25 million to begin research for a quantum internet, the tenor of the briefing included defense tones. In espousing the need to invest in quantum information science (QIS), an official on the call said the U.S. needs to stay ahead of China and Europe, which are investing in their own quantum computing projects. U.S. CTO Michael Kratsios was clear about American values as they pertain to AI. “I think with regards to some of our adversaries and others around the world [that] utilize this technology, it’s imperative that the U.S. continues to lead in technologies like AI,” he said. “We see others around the world using artificial intelligence to track their people, to imprison ethic minorities, to monitor political dissidents, and this is something that does not align with American values and makes our leadership position even more of an imperative.” There was also talk of war-fighting and defense spending, as well as mentions of Project Maven , a controversial collaboration between the U.S. military and private companies. In the document outlining the budget proposal, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is putting $459 million into AI R&D, up from $50 million in 2020’s budget. At the same time, the Department of Defense’s Joint AI Center is seeing a proposed $48 million increase, to $290 million up from $242 million in fiscal year 2020. VB Event The AI Impact Tour Connect with the enterprise AI community at VentureBeat’s AI Impact Tour coming to a city near you! Reporters in the briefing raised questions about what these investments would mean for cybersecurity and other scientific research, but the White House officials on the call demurred, only answering narrow questions about the AI and quantum computing aspects of the budget proposal. Under the proposal, the National Science Foundation (NSF) would get a 70% increase from 2020 to reach $850 million. Other proposed AI investments include: Department of Energy’s Office of Science will invest $125 million in AI research, a $54 million increase over fiscal year 2020 The U.S. Department of Agriculture will provide $100 million for the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative competitive grants program to enhance application of advanced technology, including AI, in agricultural systems The National Institutes of Health will invest $50 million for new research on chronic diseases using AI and related approaches The proposed budget includes a great deal more funding for QIS. There’s a 50% increase over 2020, with an aim to double current funding by 2022. Although the overall new investment in QIS would be in the low hundreds of millions, arguably the marquee line item is $25 million “to support early stage research for a quantum internet.” The Department of Energy held a workshop last week in New York City with the National Science Foundations, national laboratories, the U.S. Commerce Department, and university and industry partners to discuss how to get started. “That work will produce our blueprint for the scaffolding of an entangled quantum internet that connects our labs identifying short, medium, and long term goals, as well as the challenges that will need to be faced and the technologies that we need to be developed along the way to build the quantum internet stack,” Kratsios said. Such a network would help fulfill the vision of the Office of Science and Technology Policy’s (OSTP) National Quantum Coordination Office that penned the Strategic Vision for America’s Quantum Networks. Other investments in quantum technologies include: National Science Foundation investment in QIS research will double to $210 million, an additional $105 million over FY 2020 The Department of Energy Office of Science spending on QIS research (at national labs, as well as academia and industry) will increase to $237 million, a $70 million increase from fiscal year 2020 VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Discover our Briefings. The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"EU introduces AI strategy to build 'ecosystem of trust' | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2020/02/19/eu-introduces-ai-strategy-to-build-ecosystem-of-trust"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages EU introduces AI strategy to build ‘ecosystem of trust’ Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission Are you ready to bring more awareness to your brand? Consider becoming a sponsor for The AI Impact Tour. Learn more about the opportunities here. The European Commission today unveiled a sweeping set of proposals that it hopes will establish the region as a leader in artificial intelligence by focusing on trust and transparency. The proposals would lead to changes in the way data is collected and shared in an effort to level the playing field between European companies and competitors from the U.S. and China. The EC wants to prevent potential abuses while also building confidence among citizens in order to reap the benefits promised by the technology. In a series of announcements, EC leaders expressed optimism that AI could help tackle challenges such as climate change, mobility, and health care, along with a determination to keep private tech companies from influencing regulation and dominating the data needed to develop these algorithms. “We want citizens to trust the new technology,” said Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission. “Technology is always neutral. It depends on what we make with it. And therefore we want the application of these new technologies to deserve the trust of our citizens. This is why we are promoting a responsible human-centric approach to artificial intelligence.” VB Event The AI Impact Tour Connect with the enterprise AI community at VentureBeat’s AI Impact Tour coming to a city near you! She added that today’s proposals include “key enablers to make the most of technology, and an ecosystem of trust which mitigates the risk that artificial intelligence may pose to our fundamental values.” In recent years, Europe has been trying to carve out a distinct identity when it comes to technology development and regulation. The continent faces a tricky balancing act as it tries to crack down on abuses by large tech companies while encouraging local innovation and startups. Although transformative technologies like AI have been labeled critical to economic survival , Europe is perceived as slipping behind the U.S., where development is being led by tech giants with deep pockets, and China, where the central government is leading the push. With its latest digital strategy, the EC wants to encourage more cooperation between public and private sectors. The plans call for finally creating a digital single market across the continent, a goal the EC has been pursuing for years with only limited results. The belief is that pooling data from governments and businesses would create a critical asset Europe could use to leverage AI development. The EC is concerned that the bulk of data, particularly from individuals, is currently being gathered and controlled by a handful of corporations. To boost competition, the EC wants to gather this data in a way that makes it widely available to entrepreneurs interested in using it as the foundation for new services and startups. To make citizens comfortable with this centralization of data, the proposals call for strict guidelines and oversight of AI development. “We want a fair and competitive economy,” said Margrethe Vestager, vice president of the European Commission for a Europe Fit for the Digital Age. “[We want] full single markets, where companies of all sizes can compete on equal terms, where the road from garage to startup is as short as possible. But it also means an economy where the market power held by a few incumbents cannot be used to block competition. It also means an economy where consumers can be sure that their rights are being respected and where profits are being taxed where they’re made.” The proposals also call for rules to prevent algorithmic bias that could lead to discrimination. And the commission wants to create a certification process for “high risk” uses of AI, such as in vehicles. For less risky uses, the EC is considering a voluntary labeling system to disclose information around the algorithms and data used. “We have to make sure that the data used is free of any bias,” von der Leyen said. “If you feed an algorithm with data that is being mainly produced in a field where you have men in the medical sector, then an AI-driven therapeutic or diagnostic instrument will not be fit for purpose if you have a population where [women are] treated with these applications.” The EC will also continue to study the questions surrounding facial recognition. While uses like unlocking a smartphone are seen as relatively safe, the commission warns that using facial recognition to remotely identify people poses human rights risks. Currently, such facial recognition use is allowed in Europe under very limited exceptions when there is deemed to be a heavy public interest. The commission is proposing a “broad debate on which circumstances might justify exceptions in the future, if any.” “Without trust, we cannot make all the positive things happen,” Vestager said. “I think you will see that artificial intelligence is not good or bad in itself. It all depends on why and how it’s being used. It can be used to make a chatbot that is much faster and to give us a better consumer experience. But it can also be used to create fake news … None of the positive things will be achieved if we distrust the technology.” Despite the group’s lofty ambitions, most of today’s announcements are simply statements of principles and goals. For instance, in a whitepaper released today, the EC proposes the creation of a framework for what it calls “trustworthy artificial intelligence.” But the paper merely summarizes discussions that have happened to date while outlining future steps to defining and implementing that framework. The EC did disclose plans to spend almost $21 billion on AI and data research programs, as well as the platforms that may eventually allow for the pooling of data envisaged by the commission. While still vague, the policy process has drawn nervous visits from Silicon Valley leaders eager to offer input. In recent years, Europe has played an influential role in setting the regulatory agenda for tech, and any new rules will likely have a big impact on companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter, Apple, and Amazon. “Europe has been an inspiration to many jurisdictions around the globe,” Vestager said. “We will remain the most open region in the world. When it comes to trade and investment, whoever does business in Europe needs to respect our rules and values while doing business here.” VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Discover our Briefings. The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"Electric car sales reflect consumers' internal struggle between practicality and luxury | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2017/11/05/electric-car-sales-reflect-consumers-internal-struggle-between-practicality-and-luxury"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Electric car sales reflect consumers’ internal struggle between practicality and luxury Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Are you ready to bring more awareness to your brand? Consider becoming a sponsor for The AI Impact Tour. Learn more about the opportunities here. Competition for the title of most popular electric car has sparked a long and highly charged race between Tesla and Chevrolet. Though these brands offer vastly different versions of electric vehicles, they seem to be the two dominating electric vehicle sales in 2017. Reports show that top monthly electric car sales rotated between the Chevy Volt , the Chevy Bolt EV , and the Tesla Model S for the majority of the year. The Tesla Model S is the current winner of overall sales for 2017, but the Chevy Bolt EV’s performance in October is an example of how Chevrolet is nipping at Tesla’s heels to become a main contender for the most popular electric car on the market. The Bolt EV had a spectacular sales month in October, which pushed the vehicle far ahead of Tesla Model S sales over the 31-day period. If Chevy’s electric models continue to grow at this rate, Telsa had better start guarding its crown. Last month’s numbers The Chevy Bolt EV maintained momentum from a high sales month in September to sell 2,781 cars in October. Tesla, however, saw a drastic decrease in sales. In September, the Model S took a significant lead over Chevy Bolt EV sales, selling 4,860 cars. In October, Model S sales took a nosedive with a reported 1,120 cars sold for the month. Though the Tesla Model S is still winning the war on electric car purchases for the year as a whole, it’s important to note the battles won by its less luxurious competitors, the Chevy Bolt EV and the Chevy Volt. With little more than a lower price tag to sway consumers in the market for electric cars, the Bolt EV and the Volt have bested the Model S on monthly sales multiple times throughout the past year. The sales trends of Tesla’s Model S and Chevy’s Bolt EV and Volt reflect American consumers’ internal battle between practicality and luxury when it comes to purchasing a car. Features versus affordability The Tesla Model S is arguably the coolest electric car on the market. The model comes standard with Dual Motor All Wheel Drive that includes a high-efficiency front motor and a high-performance back motor to power the vehicle from zero to 60 in a mere 2.5 seconds. The model also has full self-driving capabilities and comes with an enhanced autopilot feature to support regular driving functions. Add in the clout behind the luxury car brand name and the sleek look and feel of the exterior and interior components, and you can see why this car is selling like hotcakes in the U.S. Although the Chevy Bolt EV has difficulty competing on the features and performance front, Chevy maintains one important competitive edge — affordability. Tesla has struggled to ramp up production on its Model 3 which promises to be a more affordable option for aspiring Tesla owners. Though the Model S and the Model X come with incredible features and lavish luxury car amenities, the models also come with high price tags that start above the $60,000 mark (even after tax incentives). This could serve as a strong deterrent for potential buyers in the U.S., where the median annual income is $56,515. The Model 3 promises a lower price tag, starting at around $35,000, but as Elon Musk has himself stated , the company is in “manufacturing hell” when it comes to the production of this more affordable model. Delays in the release of this model have even contributed to a decrease in Tesla’s stock value. Chevrolet, on the other hand, has the production of affordable vehicles down to a science. This has proven useful when producing electric vehicles such as the Bolt EV and the Chevy Volt. The price tag for the Chevy Bolt EV starts at about $36,000, which puts the final cost of ownership at around $30,000 after tax incentives. The Volt (which is also a top-selling electric vehicle in the U.S.) offers an even more affordable option, with models starting at $33,000. However, while the Chevy models accommodate budget-conscious Americans, they have a hard time satisfying the needs of consumers who want more than a practical car to help them get from point A to point B. The Bolt offers front wheel drive only and is notably slower than the Model S — with a record of reaching zero to 60 in 6.5 seconds, compared to the Model S’s 2.5-second record. The car touts a long battery life and a solid UI , but at the present moment it lacks the self-drive and enhanced autopilot features Tesla is best known for in its Model S. And, perhaps most importantly for car snobs, neither the brand nor the overall design of the car conjure “luxury.” What happens when the Model 3 production revs up? Although a high price tag has yet to stop Tesla from beating its lower-priced competitors in terms of overall electric vehicle sales for the past year, it could cause the carmaker’s sales to drop below its competitors’ on a month-to-month basis. We see Tesla as the holy grail of electric vehicle production, but the brand’s competition is catching up in a big way with more affordable, practical options for electric car enthusiasts. The Chevy Bolt EV and the Chevy Volt are stealing the hearts of Americans who want to own an eco-friendly car but are on a budget. When the Model 3 is able to reach optimal production, will the playing field remain level? Although the stock versions of the model with no additional options will lack the speed and autonomous features of the Model S, they will carry Tesla’s luxury name and sleek look at a price that is comparable to the Bolt EV. We can see that those shopping for an electric vehicle are torn between practicality and luxury. Perhaps a model that combines a little of both will allow Tesla to defend its top position in the electric car industry. Despite the many issues plaguing Tesla’s operations at the moment, a successful release of the Model 3 could help the carmaker hold onto its crown just a little longer. VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Discover our Briefings. The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"Amazon acquires smart doorbell maker Ring, reportedly for over $1 billion | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2018/02/27/amazon-acquires-smart-doorbell-maker-ring-reportedly-for-over-1-billion"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Amazon acquires smart doorbell maker Ring, reportedly for over $1 billion Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Ring Doorbell 2 Are you ready to bring more awareness to your brand? Consider becoming a sponsor for The AI Impact Tour. Learn more about the opportunities here. Amazon has acquired Ring, maker of smart home doorbells, cameras, and security systems, GeekWire reports. The company was acquired for more than $1 billion, according to Reuters. The acquisition may be announced later today and was likely made to fuel its fight for the emerging in-home delivery and in-home services market. Amazon debuted its in-home delivery service Key and Cloud Cam in October 2017. Then Assa Abloy, owner of some of the world’s largest lock companies, acquired August Home , following the start of its in-home delivery trial. August Home began to experiment with in-home services in 2015 to grant access to repair personnel or plumbers, as well as to facilitate vacation rentals from companies like Airbnb and HomeAway. Amazon reportedly wanted to acquire August Homes for $100 million in 2016, according to The Information. VB Event The AI Impact Tour Connect with the enterprise AI community at VentureBeat’s AI Impact Tour coming to a city near you! The Ring acquisition could also support the spread of Alexa to more smart home devices. Amazon’s move follows Google’s effort to consolidate Nest into its hardware team and add Google Assistant to more of its smart home products. Last week Nest IQ Cam Indoor became the first Nest product to adopt Google Assistant support. VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Discover our Briefings. The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"U.S. agencies widen investigation into what Facebook knew about Cambridge Analytica | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2018/07/02/u-s-agencies-widen-investigation-into-what-facebook-knew-about-cambridge-analytica"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages U.S. agencies widen investigation into what Facebook knew about Cambridge Analytica Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Mark Zuckerberg testifies in front of the House Energy and Commerce Committee on April 11, 2018. Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship. Learn more. Nearly four months after the revelation that Facebook failed to stop data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica from utilizing improperly obtained data of up to 87 million Facebook users, U.S. agencies have remained quiet as to what punishment the company will face, if any. Now, a new report from the Washington Post gives more detail into what federal investigators are reportedly looking at. Reporters spoke to five sources “familiar with the official inquiries,” who said that the current focus of the investigation is on how Facebook dealt with Cambridge Analytica privately versus what it publicly reported — including statements that Mark Zuckerberg gave when he testified in front of Congress in April — and whether those disclosures were “sufficiently complete and timely.” The Washington Post also reported that the agencies investigating Facebook now include the FBI, the SEC, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Justice Department. A Facebook spokesperson confirmed to VentureBeat that the company had received questions from those four agencies and said that “we are cooperating with officials in the U.S., U.K., and beyond. We’ve provided public testimony, answered questions, and pledged to continue our assistance as their work continues.” VB Event The AI Impact Tour Connect with the enterprise AI community at VentureBeat’s AI Impact Tour coming to a city near you! After the Cambridge Analytica news broke in March, the FTC released a statement confirming that it was conducting an “open, non-public investigation” into Facebook’s privacy practices. British data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica — which worked on a number of political campaigns, including that of U.S. president Donald Trump — obtained the data through a quiz called thisisyourdigitallife. Some 3,000 users took the quiz, which unbeknownst to them, gave the quiz creator access to certain data from their Facebook friends. Quiz creator Aleksandr Kogan then gave that data to Cambridge Analytica, which — without having gotten user consent — used the data to produce targeted political ads. Facebook said it first heard that Cambridge Analytica had obtained the data in 2015, at which time it sent a letter asking the company to destroy the data. Cambridge Analytica reportedly said it had done so, but Facebook never followed up to ensure that this was the case. After British news outlet The Guardian reported that Cambridge Analytica had continued to use the data , Zuckerberg was called to testify in front of both the U.S. Congress and the U.K. House of Commons (though he has only testified in front of the former). Cambridge Analytica, in the face of intense scrutiny from the U.S. and U.K. government, shut down in May. During his Congressional testimony, Zuckerberg said that Facebook was still “getting to the bottom of what Cambridge Analytica exactly did,” and that in hindsight, it was a mistake to not take steps to ensure the data had been destroyed. He also said Facebook would have to do an audit into Cambridge Analytica’s systems to know exactly what the company did with the data, but that this audit was “temporarily ceded” in order to let the U.K. government complete their own investigation. VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Discover our Briefings. The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"Google promises to block cross-site cookies and fingerprinting in Chrome, announces ads transparency extension | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2019/05/07/google-promises-to-block-cross-site-cookies-and-fingerprinting-in-chrome-announces-ads-transparency-extension"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Google promises to block cross-site cookies and fingerprinting in Chrome, announces ads transparency extension Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship. Learn more. Google today announced that Chrome will soon protect users from cross-site cookies and fingerprinting. The company also plans to launch an open source ads transparency browser extension. Chrome was curiously missing last year at Google’s I/O 2018 developer conference. Almost as if to make up for it, Google used I/O 2019 to promise a bunch of privacy features. I say “promise” because none of the functionality that Google talked about today is available. Cross-site cookies Google is changing how Chrome handles cookies, which are used to keep you logged into web services and save relevant information about you at corresponding websites. Cookies can also, however, be used to track your browsing activity across the web. That can be to serve personalized content and ads or for more nefarious purposes. Browsers treat all cookies the same. That’s why clearing all your cookies usually solves one problem (trying to reset your settings on a site) but creates another (you’re logged out of all your sites). Google thus notes that blocking all cookies can degrade the web for users. The company also argues that a heuristic-based approach, where the browser guesses a cookie’s purpose, degrades the web for developers. Google’s solution is two-fold: Provide users with more transparency about how sites are using cookies, and offer simpler controls for cross-site cookies. The company plans to preview these features “later this year.” But first, Google will modify how cookies work in Chrome by building on the web’s SameSite cookie attribute. In the coming months, Chrome will require developers to explicitly specify which cookies can work across websites (and potentially track users). Developers can test their sites against this change in the latest Chrome developer builds. This change will let Chrome users clear all such cookies while leaving single domain cookies unaffected, preserving user logins and settings. And Chrome will be able to provide information about which sites are setting these cookies. Google hopes this will let users make more informed choices about how their data is used. At the same time, it will protect cookies from cross-site injection and data disclosure attacks. Google also plans to eventually limit cross-site cookies to HTTPS connections. Fingerprinting Google claims that because some browsers block cookies outright, some user-tracking efforts have moved “underground.” These harder-to-detect methods that subvert cookie controls are known as fingerprinting. This is a catch-all term for various techniques that try to examine what makes a given user’s browser unique. Fingerprinting naturally does not respect the user’s choice. Google says it plans to “aggressively” restrict fingerprinting in Chrome. The company didn’t elaborate much on its plans here. Google merely added that it will be “reducing the ways in which browsers can be passively fingerprinted, so that we can detect and intervene against active fingerprinting efforts as they happen.” Ads transparency browser extension Lastly, Google wants to “give users more visibility into the data used to personalize ads and the companies involved in the process.” Google plans to release an open source browser extension for the ads that it shows on its own properties and its publishing partners. The extension, which will work across different browsers, will show the names of companies “that we know were involved in the process that resulted in an ad.” That includes intermediaries between the advertiser and publisher, and companies with ad trackers present in an ad. The browser extension will also list the factors used to tailor an ad to a user. The extension will do this for each ad Google shows and will also present an aggregated snapshot for all the ads Google has shown a user recently. A browser extension seems handy, but it’s unlikely to be something many users install. Google says it will look for additional ways to show this information to users and even encourage others in the advertising industry to do the same. The company plans to build APIs that let other advertising companies disclose this same type of information to users through the extension. Finally, Google wants to build tools that allow researchers to “view and analyze aggregated and anonymized data from Google and other providers that elect to use these new APIs.” Like the Chrome changes, the browser extension and APIs will start rolling out “in the coming months.” The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"Google ditches dessert names starting with Android 10 | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2019/08/22/google-ditches-dessert-names-starting-with-android-10"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Google ditches dessert names starting with Android 10 Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship. Learn more. Google’s Android, the operating system that’s now on more than 2.5 billion tablets, cars, watches, TVs, and other active devices around the world, is getting a rebrand intended to make it more “accessible” globally. The Mountain View company this morning revealed a refreshed logo it intends to release in the coming weeks, alongside the official name of what has until this point been referred to as Android Q : Android 10. “Over the last decade, Android’s open platform has created a thriving community of manufacturers and developers that reach [an] audience with their devices and apps,” wrote Android vice president of product management Sameer Samat. “As we continue to build Android for everyone in the community, our brand should be as inclusive … as possible — and we think we can do better in a few ways.” Since Android 1.5, Google has named each version of its mobile operating system after a sweet food or dessert, moving sequentially through the letters of the alphabet: Android 1.5 Cupcake (April 2009) Android 1.6 Donut (September 2009) Android 2.0/2.1 Éclair (October 2009, January 2010) Android 2.2 Froyo (May 2010) Android 2.3 Gingerbread (December 2010) Android 3.0/3.1/3.2 Honeycomb (February 2011, May 2011, July 2011) Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich (October 2011) Android 4.1/4.2/4.3 Jelly Bean (July 2012, November 2012, July 2013) Android 4.4 KitKat (October 2013) Android 5.0/5.1 Lollipop (November 2014, March 2015) Android 6.0 Marshmallow (October 2015) Android 7.0/7.1 Nougat (August 2016, December 2016) Android 8.0/8.1 Oreo (August 2017, December 2017) Android 9.0 Pie (August 2018) Going forward, the company says it will change the name of Android’s releases to version numbers, starting with Android 10. This is to prevent confusion for new Android users who aren’t familiar with the naming convention, Google asserts, and to better accommodate those in countries where the dominant language doesn’t reflect alphabetic order and where certain treats aren’t commonly eaten as desserts. “We’ve heard feedback over the years that the names weren’t always understood by everyone in the global community,” wrote Samat. “For example, L and R are not distinguishable when spoken in some languages, [so] when some people heard us say Android Lollipop out loud, it wasn’t intuitively clear that it referred to the version after KitKat … As a global operating system, it’s important that these names are clear and relatable for everyone in the world.” As for the updated logo — Android’s first new look since 2014 — it has swapped the color green for black and gained a new set of high-contrast combinations, which Google says should make it easier for people with visual impairments to read. “It’s a small change, but we found the green was hard to read,” explained Samat. For the uninitiated, Android’s visual branding is inspired by the operating system’s official mascot: Bugdroid — the work of Irina Blok, who while a designer at Google pitched the now-familiar stripped-down robot with a tin-can-shaped torso and antennas on his head. VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Discover our Briefings. The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"Firefox 72 arrives with fingerprinting blocked by default, Picture-in-Picture on macOS and Linux | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2020/01/07/mozilla-firefox-72"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Firefox 72 arrives with fingerprinting blocked by default, Picture-in-Picture on macOS and Linux Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Firefox logo Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship. Learn more. Mozilla today launched Firefox 72 for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Firefox 72 includes fingerprinting scripts blocked by default, fewer annoying notifications, and Picture-in-Picture video on macOS and Linux. There isn’t too much else here, as Mozilla has now transitioned Firefox releases to a four-week cadence (from six to eight weeks). You can download Firefox 72 for desktop now from Firefox.com , and all existing users should be able to upgrade to it automatically. The Android version is trickling out slowly on Google Play. According to Mozilla, Firefox has about 250 million active users , making it a major platform for web developers to consider. Fingerprinting blocked by default Fingerprinting is a popular mechanism for tracking web users as they move across the internet inside a browser. It works independently of cookies and lets advertisers, companies, and governments build a picture of an individual over time by tracking signals from their machine’s configuration, such as time zone, screen resolution, HTTP headers, operating system type, the fonts the user has installed, and more. Browser makers are fighting back against the practice. Google has announced plans to block fingerprinting in Chrome, but Firefox beat it to the punch (and Safari got there first). VB Event The AI Impact Tour Connect with the enterprise AI community at VentureBeat’s AI Impact Tour coming to a city near you! Over the last year and a half, Mozilla has been ramping up Firefox’s privacy chops. In October 2018, Firefox 63 arrived with Enhanced Tracking Protection, blocking cookies and storage access from third-party trackers. Firefox 65 , released in January 2019, added Content Blocking controls with three options for the blocking feature: Standard: the default, where Firefox blocks known trackers and third-party tracking cookies in general. Strict: for people who want a bit more protection and don’t mind if some sites break. Custom: for those who want complete control to pick and choose what trackers and cookies they want to block. Firefox 69 arrived in September with Enhanced Tracking Protection turned on by default. Firefox 70 followed in October with cross-site tracking cookies from sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn blocked under the Standard setting. As part of all this, Mozilla also tackled cryptomining, which uses your CPU to generate cryptocurrency for someone else, and fingerprinting, which builds a digital fingerprint that tracks you across the web. Firefox 69 blocked cryptomining by default as part of the Standard setting and fingerprinting as part of the Strict setting. Now, Firefox 72 blocks fingerprinting under the Standard setting, too. Specifically, Firefox 72 blocks all third-party requests to companies that are known to participate in fingerprinting. That way, they can’t inspect properties of your device using JavaScript nor gather information that is revealed through network requests. Windows, Mac, and Linux As sites add notifications, the popups browsers show for them can get pretty annoying. In Firefox 72, Mozilla has tweaked notification request popups so they no longer interrupt your browsing. The browser now shows a speech bubble in the address bar instead. Firefox 71 for desktop introduced Picture-in-Picture support for Windows. Firefox 72 brings the feature to macOS and Linux, as Mozilla promised last month. Picture-in-Picture means you can watch your favorite clips in a separate small window as you browse. The window sticks around when you switch tabs and even works outside Firefox. To try it, hover your mouse over the video and click the small blue “Picture in Picture” option. Here’s the full Firefox 72 for desktop changelog : Firefox’s Enhanced Tracking Protection marks a major new milestone in our battle against cross-site tracking: We now block fingerprinting scripts by default for all users, taking a new bold step in the fight for our users’ privacy. Firefox replaces annoying notification request popups with a more delightful experience by default for all users. The popups no longer interrupt your browsing, in their place a speech bubble will appear in the address bar when you interact with the site. Picture-in-picture video is now also available in Firefox for Mac and Linux: Select the blue icon from the right edge of a video to pop open a floating window so you can keep watching while working in other tabs or apps. Debugger Watchpoints lets developers observe object property access, and writes make it easier to track data flow through an application. Firefox now supports simulation of meta viewport in Responsive Design Mode. Enterprise: Experimental support for using client certificates from the OS certificate store can be enabled by setting the preference “security.osclientcerts.autoload” to true (Windows only). Various security fixes. Support for blocking images from individual domains has been removed from Firefox, due to low usage and poor user experience. If you’re a web developer, you’ll want to get more details here: Firefox 72 for developers. Android Firefox for Android is still barely getting updates. The latest changelog simply states “Get WebRender in Geckoview leading to performance gains for Firefox in Android.” The lack of notable additions is due to the Android team working on Firefox Preview , a new version of Firefox for Android powered by GeckoView. Mozilla plans to launch the new Firefox for Android in the first half of 2020. As mentioned, Mozilla is transitioning to a four-week Firefox release cycle. Firefox 73 is currently slated for February. VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Discover our Briefings. The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"Microsoft launches Chromium Edge for Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10, and macOS | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2020/01/15/microsoft-launches-chromium-edge-for-windows-7-windows-8-windows-10-and-macos"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Microsoft launches Chromium Edge for Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10, and macOS Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship. Learn more. Right on schedule , Microsoft today launched its new Edge browser based on Google’s Chromium open source project. You can download Chromium Edge now for Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10, and macOS directly from microsoft.com/edge in more than 90 languages. This is Edge 79 stable, for those who like tracking version numbers. Edge 80 is slated to arrive in early February, and afterwards Microsoft will stick to a six-week cadence for stable releases, just like with Chrome. Microsoft has yet to lay out which features will ship in Edge 80, Edge 81, and so on. When asked what to expect from the next few Edge releases, a spokesperson said developers and users should use the beta releases as an indication. If you want to peek at the pipeline, download one of the Edge Insider Channels : Beta (updated every six weeks), Dev (updated weekly), or Canary (updated daily). Insider builds can be installed side by side with Edge stable. Update : Microsoft has published a support article that lists features in the works and requests that are not currently on the roadmap. It’s worth noting that the new Microsoft Edge, as Microsoft is calling it, has a fresh logo. For the first time in decades, Microsoft’s browser is not denoted with a blue “e” — the logo is a wave, presumably for “surfing” the web. VB Event The AI Impact Tour Connect with the enterprise AI community at VentureBeat’s AI Impact Tour coming to a city near you! Today’s debut has been a long time coming. Back in December 2018, Microsoft embraced Chromium for Edge development on the desktop. In April 2019, Microsoft released the first Chromium Edge builds ( daily Canary and weekly Dev channels ), and the Chromium Edge Beta channel followed in August 2019. In November 2019, Microsoft launched the Chromium Edge release candidate and positioned Edge and Bing as “ the browser and search engine for business. ” Microsoft today shared that the Insider builds have gotten “millions” of downloads. Now we’ll see if the stable release can get traction. Features and performance Microsoft plans to ship more consumer Edge features later this year, but this launch is largely targeted at businesses. That means AAD support, Internet Explorer mode , and Microsoft Search in Bing integration. Business and education IT administrators can download offline packages and policies for Chromium Edge. Many businesses already use Chrome and at least one Microsoft browser (Internet Explorer and/or Edge) — Microsoft is hoping these features will get them to switch to using just Chromium Edge. Business features aside, there’s also support for Chrome-based extensions, 4K streaming, Dolby audio, inking in PDF, and privacy tools. For the last one, it’s worth noting that tracking prevention is on by default and offers three levels of control, like Firefox’s tracking protection. Chrome extension support is probably the most important feature for most users. By default, extensions that have been ported over to Edge can be downloaded from the Microsoft Store. Chromium Edge also has an option to “Allow extensions from other stores” to get Chrome extensions from the Chrome Web Store. There are still a few features missing from Chromium Edge, most notably history sync and extension sync. Microsoft is working on these and some other inking functionality that it still wants to port from legacy Edge, as Microsoft is calling it. Microsoft also claims that Chromium Edge is twice as fast as legacy Edge. Curiously, the team isn’t making any claims against other browsers — at least not yet. In fact, our own testing shows Chromium Edge has solid performance. The bigger picture here is that by leaning on Chromium, Microsoft no longer has to worry about “fixing” its underlying browser engine EdgeHTML. The company can instead improve Chromium itself, which helps all browsers that use the codebase, not just Chromium Edge. Microsoft says over the past year it has made more than 1,900 contributions to Chromium across areas like accessibility, touch, speech, and digital inking. On the flip side, Edge is now just another Chromium-based browser. That makes it all the harder to offer a differentiated experience. Having failed with EdgeHTML, Microsoft figures Chromium is worth a shot. Installing the new Edge: Manual or Automatic If you’re running Windows 10 and don’t install Edge manually, you’ll eventually get it in a future update. Microsoft plans to start rolling out the new Edge “in the coming weeks,” starting with a subset of Windows Insiders in the Release Preview ring. The process will ramp up to more users “over the next several months.” It will be made gradually available on Windows Update and offered to additional devices “as data and feedback indicate that users are having a good experience.” Microsoft currently has no plans to automatically upgrade Managed, Enterprise, Education, or Workstation Pro Edition devices ( documentation ). If you want to block automatic delivery of the new Edge to Home and Pro devices, you can do so either via policies or the Blocker Toolkit. When you install the new Edge on Windows 10, it will replace legacy Edge. Any shortcuts you have on the desktop, taskbar, or Start Menu will be updated to new Edge. The executable for legacy Edge is technically hidden, but it will be removed eventually. Your favorites, passwords, form fill information, and basic settings will carry over from legacy Edge to new Edge automatically. If you have Chrome or Firefox installed, new Edge will ask if you want to import those settings from there. Web apps built on EdgeHTML and Edge preview channels will continue to work without interruption. Depending on how up-to-date your Windows 10 installation is, you may be asked to install additional updates. A future version of Windows 10 will skip all this and include new Edge by default. When you install new Edge on Windows 7, Windows 8, and macOS, it will work just like installing any other browser. New Edge will not replace whatever you have as the default (whether that’s Internet Explorer, Safari, or a third-party browser). Yesterday, Microsoft ended support for Windows 7 , so it’s notable the company is still releasing new Edge for the decade-old operating system. It shows just how big Windows 7 still is — about one in four computers run it. On Android and iOS, new Edge will replace old Edge automatically. That said, not much is new on mobile — Edge already uses Blink/Chromium on Android and WebKit/WKWebView on iOS. But you can expect the new logo, similar user interface to the desktop versions, and tracking prevention on iOS (coming soon to Android). More desktop features will make their way to Android and iOS over time. Lastly, Microsoft’s FastTrack and App Assure programs cover Chromium Edge. The former means Microsoft will help you deploy Edge to your organization at no extra charge with an eligible subscription to Microsoft 365, Azure, or Dynamics 365. The latter means if your sites work in Internet Explorer 8 and above, Chrome, or legacy Edge, then they’ll work on the new Edge. If not, Microsoft will help you fix them at no additional cost. VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Discover our Briefings. The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"Electronic Arts: 'We are doubling-down on live services' | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2019/10/29/electronic-arts-we-are-doubling-down-on-live-services"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Electronic Arts: ‘We are doubling-down on live services’ Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn EA wants more games like Apex Legends. Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship. Learn more. You may think that the world already has too many live-service games, but that is still where Electronic Arts is putting its investment. The publisher confirmed that today as part of the executive remarks in its quarterly earnings statement. EA reported strong results for Q2 of its fiscal 2020. Total net revenues were $1.348 billion, up from $1.286 billion last year, thanks to strong performance from digital sales on console and especially on PC. The publisher is also seeing a lot of strong sales for its major sports games. FIFA 20 , Madden NFL 20 , and NHL 20 all launched during Q2, and EA chief executive Andrew Wilson is happy with their performance. “It was an excellent second quarter for Electronic Arts,” said Wilson. “Our new EA Sports titles are thrilling core fans and bringing in new players, and our ongoing live services are growing with deeply engaged communities.” Wilson noted that the company is prepared for the holiday with games like Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, Need for Speed: Heat, and Plants vs. Zombies: Battle for Neighborville. That’s in addition to new content for its ongoing games. Event GamesBeat at the Game Awards We invite you to join us in LA for GamesBeat at the Game Awards event this December 7. Reserve your spot now as space is limited! EA loves live services Following up on Wilson’s remarks, EA chief financial and operating officer Blake Jorgensen stepped in to talk about EA’s live services. Games like Apex Legends, The Sims 4, and the Ultimate Team sports games came through in a big way for the company in Q2. FIFA Ultimate Team’s unique players increased 22% year-over-year. Madden Ultimate Team, meanwhile, saw a similar increase of 19%. Those modes were already popular, and now they’re growing. And that’s crucial for EA’s revenue growth because developers pack those modes with ways for players to spend more money. “The strong results this quarter illustrate the power of our live services and our core franchises,” said Jorgensen. “Strength in Ultimate Team, The Sims 4, and FIFA Online drove live services performance above our expectations.” EA’s live-service success is leading the company to pursue that strategy more aggressively moving forward. “We are doubling-down on live services combined with our core franchises,” said Jorgensen. “We’re investing in games that people play for longer and engage with much more deeply. This focus will continue to drive growth and profitability for the company through the remainder of this year and beyond.” What does this mean for EA’s games? Doubling-down on live-service games is going to have a noticeable effect on EA’s release schedule. And you can already see it if you look ahead to its fiscal Q4. Above: No games for Q4. EA doesn’t plan to release any games next quarter, which runs from January 2020 through the end of March 2020. And you can see that it didn’t have any releases in Q1, either. But while these might look like droughts, they aren’t. The company is constantly releasing new content for games to encourage players to come back and spend time and money in ongoing live services. The company is potentially also reloading for the launch of new consoles at the end of 2020, which would fall into Q3 of EA’s fiscal 2021. So more live-service games means fewer big new releases. More of EA’s teams are going to focus on producing content for successful games instead. EA has already embraced a lighter schedule of new releases, but expect even more of that going forward. GamesBeat's creed when covering the game industry is "where passion meets business." What does this mean? We want to tell you how the news matters to you -- not just as a decision-maker at a game studio, but also as a fan of games. Whether you read our articles, listen to our podcasts, or watch our videos, GamesBeat will help you learn about the industry and enjoy engaging with it. Discover our Briefings. Join the GamesBeat community! Enjoy access to special events, private newsletters and more. VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"This is the Samsung Galaxy Note10, Note10+, and Note10+ 5G | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2019/08/07/this-is-the-samsung-galaxy-note10-note10-and-note10-5g"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages This is the Samsung Galaxy Note10, Note10+, and Note10+ 5G Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship. Learn more. Samsung officially unveiled the Galaxy Note10 and Note10+ at an event in downtown Brooklyn at Barclays Center this afternoon. As leaks, rumors, and the Seoul tech giant’s own marketing materials foretold, the twin flagships leapfrog the Note9 in most — if not all — respects. Among the highlights are an in-screen fingerprint sensor, fast-charging large batteries, a speedy processor, and Samsung’s signature S Pen enhanced with gesture recognition. And those are just the tip of the iceberg. The Galaxy Note10 series will be available for pre-purchase starting August 8 at 12:01 a.m. Eastern, with orders expected to ship by August 23 for those who reserved a spot in the preorder line. Here’s what you need to know. Design Samsung switched things up this year with two Note models instead of one: the Note10 and Note10+. Neither diverges much from the series’ established formula, but a few nips and tucks bring them in line with current trends. The Note10’s and Note10+’s frames are made from scratch-resistant aluminum that’s IP68 rated to withstand 1.5 meters of water for 30 minutes, and their protective glass shielding — Corning’s Gorilla Glass 6, an upgrade from the Note9’s Gorilla Glass 5 — can withstand up to 15 consecutive drops from 1 meter onto rough surfaces. The Note10 and Note10+ weigh about 168 grams and 198 grams, respectively, or lighter than the 201-gram Note9. And the phones’ bezels are narrower than those of the Note9, with the most dramatic gains coming from the right, left, and top. But perhaps the most obvious difference between the old and new models is the roughly 6-millimeter hole-shaped cutout top of center, which accommodates the front-facing camera. Samsung calls the design “Infinity-O,” and it debuted on the midrange Galaxy A8 series phones before graduating to the Galaxy S10 series in February. Taking another cue from the S10 lineup, Samsung did away with the iris scanner, a hallmark of Note phones since 2016. (An ambient light sensor and earpiece speaker take its place.) And in yet another series first, the Note10 and Note10+ have a Qualcomm-supplied ultrasonic fingerprint sensor embedded beneath their display glass. They work as you’d expect — placing a digit on the highlighted portion of the screen unlocks the phones — but Qualcomm’s proprietary 3D Sonic Sensor tech is one of the first to boast FIDO Alliance Biometric Component certification. Around the back of the Note10 and Note10+, you’ll find a triple-sensor camera module and LED flash akin to that on Galaxy S10 series phones. The bottom portion houses a USB-C port and a loudspeaker (the latter of which works in tandem with the earpiece to deliver stereo sound), and on the left side, there’s a volume rocker adjacent to the power button. What you won’t find on this year’s Note models are Bixby keys — remappable buttons on previous-generation Galaxy and Note handsets that trigger Samsung’s homegrown AI assistant by default — or 3.5mm headphone jacks. Also missing in action is the Note9’s health sensor, which measures biometrics like heart rate, blood oxygen, and blood pressure. They’ve been done away in the pursuit of minimalism, but fortunately not completely thoughtlessly — there’s a USB-C-to-3.5mm adapter in the box, and Bixby can be activated with a double-press of the power button. Display Here’s how the Note10 and Note10+’s display sizes and resolutions break down: Galaxy Note10: 6.3 inches, 2,280 by 1,080 pixels (401 PPI) Galaxy Note10+: 6.8 inches, 3,040 by 1,440 pixels (498 PPI) The Galaxy Note10’s HDR10+-compatible, Dynamic AMOLED Infinity Display is a tad smaller than that of the Note9, which measures 6.3 inches diagonally — the result of the 19:9 aspect ratio (compared with the Note9’s 18.5:9). It’s also slightly blurrier, at about 401 pixels per inch (compared with the Note9’s 516 PPI) owing to a downgrade in resolution to 2,280 by 1,080 pixels (versus 2,560 by 1,440 pixels). That aside, the Note10 and Note10+’s panels are certified by the UHD Alliance for Mobile HDR10+ (High Dynamic Range) Premium content. Without getting into the weeds, HDR videos and video games have a wider color gamut and brightness range, contributing to a picture that’s not only more accurate, but more visually pleasing. HDR10+ kicks things up a notch with dynamic metadata that treats every frame as is its own set of colors, brightness, and contrast parameters. Cameras and speakers Samsung’s flagships rank alongside the Google Pixel and iPhone on the photography front, and the company is looking to cement its lead with the Galaxy Note10 series. Toward that end, the Note10 and Note10+ add more sensors to what was previously a dual-camera affair, and a bunch of other upgrades besides. Samsung Galaxy Note: 12-megapixel (f/1.5/2.4 variable aperture with optical image stabilization, phase detection autofocus, and a 77-degree field of view), 16-megapixel ultrawide (f/2.2 aperture with a 123-degree field of view), 12-megapixel telephoto lens (f/2.1 aperture with optical image stabilization and a 45-degree field of view) Samsung Galaxy Note10+: 12-megapixel (f/1.5/2.4 variable aperture with optical image stabilization, phase detection autofocus, and a 77-degree field of view), 16-megapixel ultrawide (f/2.2 aperture with a 123-degree field of view), 12-megapixel telephoto lens (f/2.1 aperture with optical image stabilization and a 45-degree field of view), time-of-flight DepthVision Camera The Note10 phones’ cameras feature the same variable aperture tech found in the S10 series: A tiny contracting and expanding motor affords photogs the freedom to switch between f/1.5, a lower aperture better suited to dim lighting, and f/2.4, the default setting. Hardware is nothing without great software to take advantage, and the Note10 series appears to have it. The camera app’s Automatic mode flips to the f/1.5 aperture automatically when the ambient lighting dips below a certain level, and an AI-powered scene detection feature — Scene Optimizer — tweaks color settings like contrast and white balance and enables HDR based on the landscapes, people, animals, and objects in-frame. It’ll recommend switching to the ultrawide angle lens when appropriate, as well as to modes fine-tuned for food photos, selfies, panoramas, and more. And as with the Note9, the Note10 series boosts image crispness by capturing a multi-image burst shot, dividing it into sets, and generating a composite picture. In addition, there’s Best Shot, which snaps a photo automatically when the Galaxy S10 detects it’s properly lined up, and a multi-capture feature that lets you take photos using multiple sensors simultaneously. A bevy of bokeh effects are on tap in Artistic Live Focus, including Color Point (which turns the background black and white), Mono (which makes the entire picture black and white), and Side Light (which adds a virtual light source off-camera). AR Emoji have been enhanced, and there’s Bright Night, a take on Google’s Night Sight and Huawei’s Night Mode that combines multiple shots together to improve the quality of pictures taken in “very dark” conditions. Oh, and there’s a new augmented reality feature that lets you create your own shareable doodle. Both Note10 handsets have a 10-megapixel front-facing shooter with a f/1.9 aperture and an 80-degree field of view — a step up from the Note9’s 8-megapixel selfie camera but a sensor short of the Galaxy S10+’s dual front cameras. Time will tell whether it makes a tangible difference. On the video front, the Note10 and Note10+ can record clips at up to 4K and optionally in HDR10+ (with 10-bit color), though you’ll need an HDR-compatible display to appreciate the latter fully. A nifty new tool — Audio Zoom — taps three separate mics to emphasize audio from whatever you’re focused on, while video bokeh blurs out the background while focusing on the foreground. As for Super Slow-Mo, it shoots clips at a blistering 960 frames per second for between 0.4 and 0.8 seconds at up to 1080p, or double the 0.2-to-0.4-second duration and 720p resolution limits in the Galaxy Note9. In cases where you need a shot steadier than what the optical image stabilization can provide alone, there’s Super Steady, which launched with the S10 series. Samsung describes it as a “professional-level” setting that can hold its own against action cams like GoPro’s Hero 7. AKG The Note10 and Note10+ play stereo sound through the earpiece and a bottom-firing loudspeaker. They’re both tuned by AKG Acoustics and support the Direct Stream Digital (DSD) format (64/128) and Dolby’s Atmos 3D simulated surround sound technology in supported apps. Bluetooth S Pen The Note10 series ships with Samsung’s S Pen, which has 4,096 pressure levels and packs a Bluetooth modem. It pairs to the phones to unlock them, and it advances through slideshows, activates the camera shutter or switches between lenses, controls music playback, and even stands in as a six-axis game controller. New this year is a gestures feature — Air Actions — that lets you squiggle shapes above the phone’s screen to launch apps and adjust settings. Samsung partnered with Spotify and YouTube to build in gesture support for their respective Android apps. And starting today, developers can download a software development kit to build gesture-supported apps of their own. The S Pen otherwise supports the range of Note features users have come to know, like Live Drawings, which allows you to sketch or write messages on photos and backgrounds and send them as GIFs to anyone in your contact list. Beefed-up handwriting tools let you convert handwritten messages to digital text (and shrink, enlarge, or change the color of the text) and export them in a range of formats, including Microsoft Word .doc files. Also present and accounted for is Screen-off Memo, a digital sketchpad that lets you scribble notes on the Galaxy Note10’s always-on screen without having to unlock it first. Rounding out the Note10’s S Pen tools are Translate, which automatically translates words and phrases as you hover over them with the S Pen’s tip; Magnify, which enlarges parts of the screen; and Smart Select, which lets you crop out a portion of the Note9’s screen and save it as a snapshot. Processor Pop open the hood of the Note10 and Note10+ and you’ll find one of two system-on-chips: Samsung’s Exynos 9825 or Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 855. Samsung demoed the Exynos 9825 variants at today’s event, but some territories — likely North America, Latin America, Hong Kong, China, and Japan — will get a Snapdragon-based model. Exynos 9825 Samsung quietly announced its latest octa-core chipset ahead of today’s Note10 festivities, and it’s a doozy. The Exynos 9825 — the successor to the Exynos 9820 — is the industry’s first built with a 7-nanometer extreme ultraviolet lithography processing technology, which Samsung claims enabled the printing of finer circuits than was previously possible. It features a “tri-cluster” architecture consisting of two Cortex-A75 cores for high-performance workloads and four Cortex-A55 cores for less intensive tasks, and it’s equipped with the Mali-G76 MP12 graphics chip, which runs at faster clock speeds compared with previous generations. The Exynos 9825 packs a neural processing unit (NPU) for on-device artificial intelligence (AI) applications, making it the second Samsung chipset with a dedicated AI chip after the Exynos 9820 (following in the footsteps of Huawei’s Kirin NPU and Apple’s neural engine ). It accelerates on-device inferencing tasks such as object recognition in photos and faster app pre-loading, and the benefits extend to the Note10’s and Note10+’s cameras. According to Samsung, the NPU can detect and identify a range of objects and scenes which the image signal processor (ISP) then retouches. Finally, like the Exynos 9820 before it, the Exynos 9825 has a physically unclonable function (PUF) that stores and manages personal and biometric data (such as facial and biometric scans) in isolation. The PUF provides a unique key while a separate component — the secure key manager — supports other security protocols, such as key generation and derivation. Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 As for Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 855, it’s a 7-nanometer eight-core chip that, like the Exynos 9820, can achieve up to 2Gbps cellular speeds courtesy the embedded X24 LTE modem. It supports Wi-Fi 6 (aka 802.11ax) along with 802.11ac Wave 2 for superior performance on pre-802.11ax networks, and it’s up to 45% faster overall thanks to a 64-bit ARM Cortex design based on Qualcomm’s in-house Kryo 485 processor. Four cores handle the heavy lifting — one prime core clocked at 2.84GHz and three performance cores at 2.42GHz — while four efficiency cores running at 1.8GHz handle less performance-intensive tasks. Unlike the Exynos 9820, the Snapdragon 855 diffuses AI capabilities across multiple processing components (including a new tensor accelerator called Hexagon 690) for a total theoretical capacity of seven trillion operations per second. Qualcomm is claiming an AI performance improvement of three times compared to its previous flagship chipset, the Snapdragon 845. Meanwhile, the Snapdragon 855’s graphics chip — the Adreno 640 — is 20% faster than the Snapdragon 845’s Adreno 630, and it supports HDR (along with APIs like Vulkan 1.1) and custom algorithms designed to reduce dropped frames by over 90%. Additionally, it enables developers to use physically based rendering (PBR) to replicate the way light reflects off of real-world materials. Last but not least, the Snapdragon 855 features a redesigned camera pipeline that moves computer vision features directly into the ISP. Dual 14-bit CV-ISPs are packed into the Spectra 380, each with hardware-based depth sensing that allows for video capture, object classification, and object segmentation in real time. Battery life, memory, storage, and connectivity So clearly the Galaxy Note10 series packs a processing punch, but what about the battery life? That depends on the model. Fortunately, both the Note10 and Note10+ should charge substantially faster than the Note9, if Samsung’s marketing is to be believed. They’re the first to ship with Samsung’s Superfast Charge, which gives “hours” of juice in just a few minutes of 45W fast charging (though they ship with a 25W charger). Both wirelessly charge when they’re set atop Qi chargers — the Note10 up to 12W and the Note10+ up to 20W. Separately, PowerShare, which lets you use the Note10 or Note10+ to recharge Qi accessories wire-free by placing them on the flat portion of the phones’ rear covers (below the camera), has been improved — it now delivers up to 15W. Both Snapdragon and Exynos Note10 variants benefit from hardware acceleration for H.265 and VP9 codecs, which improves power efficiency and reduces power consumption during video recording. And they boast Samsung’s Adaptive Power Saving tech, which optimizes battery performance based on app usage. Here are the battery capacities of each phone: Galaxy Note10: 3,500mAh (down from the Note9’s 4,000mAh) Galaxy Note10+: 4,300mAh And here’s their RAM and storage capacities. Note the absence of removable storage on the Note10: Galaxy Note10: 8GB LPDDR4x RAM (up to 12GB in Korea only), 256GB (UFS 3.0) storage Galaxy Note10+: 8GB LPDDR4x RAM, 256GB/512GB (UFS 3.0) storage (expandable via microSD card) Wireless On the connectivity side of the equation, the Note10 series supports the standards you’d expect in flagship 2019 smartphones, namely Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac/ax (Wi-Fi 6) and Bluetooth 5.0. Intelligent Wi-Fi, a new battery-saving feature, jumps between LTE and wireless with the help of AI that recognizes when the phone’s in an enclosed location and when it’s on the move (like when you’re in a car or walking down the street). On the cellular side of the equation, Samsung’s Exynos 9825 packs an LTE-Advanced Pro modem that supports LTE Category 20, offering downlink speeds of up to 2.0Gbps with 8 times carrier aggregation (CA) and an uplink speed of up to 316Mbps. That downlink speed is up from 9810’s maximum of 1.2Gbps, and it comes thanks in part to accouterments like 4×4 Multiple-Input, Multiple-Output (MIMO), 256-QAM (Quadrature Amplitude Modulation), and Enhanced Licensed-Assisted Access (eLAA) technology. The Note10+ comes in a 5G-compatible flavor, but it predictably costs more than its LTE counterparts. Like the recently released Samsung Galaxy S10 5G, it supports sub-6GHz bands and millimeter wave, the backbone technologies of today’s cellular 5G networks. Software OneUI Like phones in the Galaxy S10 series, the Galaxy Note10 and Note10+ run One UI , Samsung’s overlay atop Android Pie. In addition to font tweaks and redesigned navigation buttons, the UI is much more intuitive than previous versions of the company’s mobile flows, not to mention more responsive. The upper portion of the screen is reserved for viewable content, while the lower portion is devoted to interactions. Focus Blocks — bright, colorful buttons that stand out against dark backgrounds — make clear just which elements are interactive. As for pop-ups, which previously appeared near the middle of the screen, they now populate the bottom where they’re easier to reach. In other improvements, the One UI settings menu groups related functions together, and it’s been reordered so that the most important options appear first, near the top. The dialer app’s UI is dynamic — when you’re dialing a number, the display changes accordingly, concealing the search bar and menu tabs. And in the clock app, it’s easier to switch between tabs devoted to functions like stopwatch and timer. Bixby One UI isn’t the Note10 series’ only spotlight software feature. In July, Samsung launched the Bixby Marketplace in the U.S. and South Korea, a dedicated app store where third-party developers can offer their own Bixby-compatible services, similar to Amazon’s Alexa skills. Through it, users can search for services — which Samsung calls “capsules” — that enhance Bixby. Capsules can be added with a tap, and the Bixby Marketplace supports ratings and reviews to help surface the best, or most popular, capsules. Also on tap is Bixby Home, a “social stream for your device.” It’s a dashboard of reminders and social media updates collated in cards that can be dismissed, pinned, or permanently hidden. Bixby Vision — which taps computer vision to recognize and classify objects in photos, much like Google’s Google Lens and Amazon’s Flow — natively supports document scanning. Thanks to integrations with Vivino, Amazon, Nordstrom, Sephora, Cover Girl, and others (and Samsung’s data-sharing partnerships with FourSquare and Pinterest), it can scan barcodes and show relevant product listings, recommend wine, display the calorie counts of food, and let you virtually “try on” makeup products. Above: Samsung’s Bixby Marketplace As for Bixby Voice, Samsung’s answer to Amazon’s Alexa and Google Assistant, it works just as it does on the Note9 — say “Hey, Bixby” or hold down the Bixby key to prime it for commands like “What’s the weather forecast?” and “Call John.” More than 3,000 commands in six languages (English, Korean, Chinese, Spanish, German, French, Italian, and Spanish) are supported in all, including chained ones like “Open the gallery app in split-screen view and rotate misaligned photos” and “Play videos on a nearby TV.” Bixby, like any modern voice assistant, recognizes requests to add items to your calendar, queue up tunes, place calls, and launch apps, and it can answer basic questions about sports scores, movie showtimes, business hours, and more. It’s also somewhat conversational. When you ask it about upcoming concerts around New Year’s, for example, it’ll remember the date range when looking for tickets in the future. A relatively new addition to Bixby is Bixby Routines, which rolled out earlier this year. Much like Alexa Routines and routines on the Google Assistant, Bixby offers preset and personalized routines, such as Driving and Before Bed routines, which can be customized based on your habits. DeX There’s good news on the DeX front: As with DeX on the Note9, it doesn’t require a dock — Samsung calls this Dex Lite. All you need is a USB Type-C-to-HDMI adapter; connecting it to an external display gets DeX up and running in a jiffy. DeX mode displays a Windows-like interface, replete with resizeable windows, a dedicated taskbar, mouse and keyboard support, and shortcuts to files, the photo gallery, and settings. Samsung teamed up with Microsoft to optimize Office apps (Word, PowerPoint, and Excel) for the interface, and with Epic Games to support Fortnite. Other partners include the New York Times , Deezer, Amazon, TripAdvisor, Citrix, VMWare, and Craigslist. New this year are apps for both Mac and Windows. In practice, that means you’re able to plug the Note10 or Note10+ directly into a PC to get a window with your phone apps in it. The Galaxy Note10 series is compatible with Microsoft’s “Your Phone” feature from Windows 10, and it’s activated with a Link to Windows shortcut in the Quick Settings panel. Gamers can use their Samsung account to stream games from a laptop or desktop and play them on the Note10, via Play Galaxy Link. And later this year, you’ll be able to make and receive calls from a linked Windows PC. Smartphone apps run in DeX, but Samsung makes no guarantees that they won’t misbehave. Pricing and availability Here’s a breakdown of pricing: Galaxy Note10: $950 (256GB) Galaxy Note10+: $1,100 (256GB) or $1,200 (512GB) Galaxy Note10+ 5G: $1,300 (256GB) or $1,400 (512GB) The Note10 series is available in auro glow, auro white, and auro black at launch, with region-specific colorways to come later this year. In the U.S., the Galaxy Note 10 Plus 5G is a timed exclusive on Verizon. It’ll come to AT&T, VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Discover our Briefings. The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"Huawei delays Mate X folding 5G phone until end of 2019 | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2019/08/15/huawei-delays-mate-x-folding-5g-phone-until-end-of-2019"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Huawei delays Mate X folding 5G phone until end of 2019 Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Huawei Mate X: Foldable Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship. Learn more. Huawei originally expected its folding smartphone-tablet hybrid, Mate X , to ship in June but pushed the launch date back to September to accomodate “extra” tests. Now the 5G phone is being delayed again, with a release promised by the end of 2019, potentially — but not certainly — in November. Mate X was the star of a glitzy Huawei event back in February, when it was touted as the “world’s fastest foldable 5G phone” — a jab at Samsung’s Galaxy Fold. The company suggested the device’s 8-inch diagonal unfolded display could be used to enhance a user’s on-the-go video viewing experience, while a 6.6-inch smartphone-style screen could be used for everyday apps, phone calls, and the like. But after the Galaxy Fold was delayed over hinge- and screen-related engineering issues, Huawei similarly paused the Mate X, ostensibly to make sure apps would be able to handle the transition between the smaller and larger displays. According to TechRadar , the second delay appears attributable to recent hardware changes, including improvements to the device’s screen hinge and a slimmer lock button, though key elements — a plastic screen cover and steel back — have remained unchanged. Consequently, Huawei is now ruling out a September launch completely. Given the Mate X’s $2,600 price tag, it’s hard to imagine too many people were anxiously awaiting its release. At one point, the device was expected to be the company’s first 5G smartphone, only to be beaten to market by the Mate 20 X 5G. And there’s no chance the expensive foldable will be future-proof: Huawei is already talking about a sequel with even more screens, though it has not offered a release date, which is probably for the best at this point. VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Discover our Briefings. VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"Huawei passes 200 million smartphones shipped, outpacing 2018 by 2 months | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2019/10/23/huawei-passes-200-million-smartphones-shipped-outpacing-2018-by-2-months"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Huawei passes 200 million smartphones shipped, outpacing 2018 by 2 months Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Huawei @ MWC 2019 Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship. Learn more. Huawei announced that it has shipped 200 million smartphones so far in 2019 — hitting the milestone 64 days faster than in 2018. The Chinese technology giant has unveiled a number of new devices so far this year, including high-end flagship devices under the Huawei brand, a future-looking foldable 5G device , and smartphones from its Honor sub-brand. However, Huawei was placed on a U.S. trade blacklist earlier this year that prohibits all U.S. companies from doing business with the Chinese tech giant — including Google , which is currently unable to provide Huawei with Android services that are integral to Huawei mobile phones outside of China. While this ban doesn’t impact existing Huawei devices, which will continue to receive Android updates, it has affected newer phones, including the high-end Mate 30 series that launched last month but is still unavailable to buy internationally. Assuming nothing changes in terms of the U.S. trade blacklist, Huawei will have to ship all future phones without Google’s apps, including Google Play and the millions of third-party apps that are available through the app store. So while Huawei is laying early claim to a bumper 2019, the effects of the trade ban haven’t likely been fully felt yet. If the U.S. trade ban remains in place, it’s difficult to see how Huawei’s consumer business can continue to grow outside of China. That said, the company has reportedly enjoyed a major uptick in sales in its domestic market as patriotic Chinese consumers back Huawei against the U.S.-imposed sanctions, so any drop in global sales could be offset — temporarily, at least — by sales at home. Huawei is currently the No. 2 smartphone company globally in terms of shipments, ahead of Apple but behind Samsung. When Huawei announced its 200 million milestone for 2018, the company was confident it could surpass Samsung as the No. 1 smartphone company by the end of 2019, in terms of shipments. Based on 2019 estimates so far , that prediction is looking very unlikely to materialize. VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Discover our Briefings. VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"Apple: Coronavirus concerns offset record Q1 iPhone and wearable sales | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2020/01/28/apple-coronavirus-concerns-offset-record-q1-iphone-and-wearable-sales"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Apple: Coronavirus concerns offset record Q1 iPhone and wearable sales Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Tim Cook at WWDC 2019 Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship. Learn more. Fresh off reporting record earnings of $91.8 billion for the holiday quarter , Apple CEO Tim Cook and CFO Luca Maestri used a conference call with financial analysts to offer additional details on the health of the company’s business at the beginning of 2020 — arguably the strongest point in its history, as measured in both dollars and devices. But the potential impact of the coronavirus that is spreading in China is clearly weighing heavily on the company’s leadership. Beyond blowing past its own revenue estimates and those of analysts, Cook and Maestri underscored that there are now 1.5 billion active Apple devices, up 100 million for the quarter, with 98% customer satisfaction across all three iPhone 11 models. Cook noted that the $699 iPhone 11 was Apple’s top-selling model every week during the quarter, and all three of the 11-series phones were the company’s top sellers. Asked about the topic of 5G iPhones , Cook demurred, suggesting that 5G is “in the early innings” without confirming that it was preparing to release devices. Regardless, he said, “we couldn’t be prouder of our lineup, and wouldn’t trade our position for anybody,” subtly underscoring the continued strong performance of iPhones in most markets despite their lack of 5G support. In response to another question, Cook noted that 5G’s rollout isn’t happening at the same pace in every geography, hinting that that company may have regionally different strategies for its devices this year. While Apple saw roughly $4 billion in year-over-year iPhone growth, the smaller wearables and services businesses enjoyed steeper percentage jumps, each jumping around $2 billion over prior numbers. The wearables category alone is now the size of a Fortune 150 company, setting all-time revenue records in virtually every market Apple tracks around the world, and over 75% of customers purchasing during the quarter were new to Apple Watch. Cook confirmed that both the $199 Apple Watch Series 3 and $249 AirPods Pro are presently supply constrained, which is to say that demand for each product is higher than the company can match. The company is concerned, however, about the potential impact of China’s Wuhan coronavirus on both its production and sales. In addition to offering a wide ($63 to $67 billion) range of revenue estimates for the coming quarter, which it attributed to risks related to the virus, Maestri and Cook suggested that the company has already closed one retail store in China due to the issues and is actively cleaning other stores to keep them safe for guests. Additionally, device production that was to have resumed after the Lunar New Year has been pushed back modestly into the second week of February. Thanks in part to the growing size of its installed device base, revenues from services were up 17% over last year, Cook noted, with double-digit growth in all five geographies, and growth across all of the services Apple offers. The App Store had a particularly strong December, and a new record of $386 million in spending on New Year’s Day alone. That said, the company didn’t have hard numbers to report for Apple TV+, Apple Arcade, or Apple News+ beyond to suggest their subscriber numbers are growing. Unsurprisingly, Apple Pay’s revenues are up, and transactions more than doubled year over year, with a $15 billion run rate. On the computer front, while the iPad and Mac numbers were down a little year over year, Maestri characterized them as essentially flat, and Cook noted that the iPad grew in emerging markets. The year-over-year comparisons for iPad and Mac were “tough,” Maestri said, because there had been major new model launches in the year-ago quarter, though Cook said that the new 16″ MacBook Pro , modular Mac Pro, and Pro Display XDR released during the quarter had all enjoyed a “strong response” from the professional creative community. VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Discover our Briefings. VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"Pokémon Sword and Shield get Expansion Pass content | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2020/01/09/pokemon-sword-shield-expansion-pass"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Pokémon Sword and Shield get Expansion Pass content Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn The new content coming to Sword and Shield. Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship. Learn more. Pokémon Sword and Shield are both getting new content that will tell fresh stories set in the same region. This is a big change for the franchise, which has previously released separate games to expand on its settings. The Pokémon Sword and Shield Expansion Passes replace that with downloadable content that enable players to pick up their adventure from where they left off in the base games. The Expansion Pass includes two new major content drops. One is The Isle of Armor, and the other is The Crown Tundra. Both include new monsters to catch as well as the return of more than 200 old favorite Pokémon. You’ll also get new character customization options and more. These new areas are seamless add-ons to the map that are similar to the wild area in Sword and Shield. The Expansion Pass is available to purchase today for $30. The Isle of Armor comes in June. The Crown Tundra launches in the fall. Both come as part of the Expansion Pass for each game — but the Sword and Shield versions of the DLC are different and must be purchased separately. “Until now, we sometimes released new versions of games set in the same region,” Game Freak producer Junichi Masuda said in a video presentation this morning. “This expansion pass will be different from those games. You’ll be able to set out on new adventures using the same data you’re already playing.” Event GamesBeat at the Game Awards We invite you to join us in LA for GamesBeat at the Game Awards event this December 7. Reserve your spot now as space is limited! This move toward an expansion model is something more major Japanese games are embracing. Like Pokémon, Monster Hunter used to release new versions of games with extra content. Capcom abandoned that in favor of downloadable expansions for Monster Hunter World. Now, Game Freak is doing the same. Sword and Shield originally debuted November 15 for Nintendo Switch. The games set sales records for the franchise in terms of dollar sales. A large part of that is these are the first main-series Pokémon games to sell for $60 instead of $30 or $40. GamesBeat's creed when covering the game industry is "where passion meets business." What does this mean? We want to tell you how the news matters to you -- not just as a decision-maker at a game studio, but also as a fan of games. Whether you read our articles, listen to our podcasts, or watch our videos, GamesBeat will help you learn about the industry and enjoy engaging with it. Discover our Briefings. Join the GamesBeat community! Enjoy access to special events, private newsletters and more. VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"Niantic launches Pokémon Go's competitive battling league | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2020/01/28/pokemon-go-battle-league"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Niantic launches Pokémon Go’s competitive battling league Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Pokémon Go gets Battle League Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship. Learn more. Pokémon Go is coming off its most lucrative year ever in 2019. And now developer Niantic is working to keep that momentum going in 2020 by improving the augmented reality adventure’s competitive battle system. This is beginning now with the launch of Pokémon Go Battle League, which is rolling out slowly across the globe. The Go Battle League is a new way for players to face off against one another. It takes the Trainer Battle system and adds a new structure that enables players to face off against one another from around the world. Niantic is also shifting its Premium Raid Passes to Premium Battle Passes. Like many other games, this progression pass will enable players to earn a premium track of unlockables by participating in the games events. Once your game updates with Go Battles, you will need to go out and walk 5 kilometers (3.1 miles) to unlock the event. Of course, if you have more money than time, you can pay to open it up before completing the required distance. But every kilometer you walk reduces the final cost. For Niantic, this is a way to both serve up new content to its most dedicated players. But it’s also a way to further expand its method of generating revenue. Now, instead of selling just raid passes, players can get more from the game by spending money to battle other trainers as well. Event GamesBeat at the Game Awards We invite you to join us in LA for GamesBeat at the Game Awards event this December 7. Reserve your spot now as space is limited! Pokémon Go has already brought in more than $3 billion in revenue since its original debut. And this latest update could lead it yet another billion. How Pokémon Go Battle League works Go Battle League has a seasonal structure. As it launches today, it is entering a preseason phase. But this testing period will still enable players to rank up and earn rewards by competing. The preseason will also give players a chance to get some experience with Go Battle’s rotating subleagues. These include Great League, Ultra League, and Master League. Each of these sub-leagues will introduce slightly different formats. And the idea is to prevent any one style of play from dominating the competitive ladder. “Only one league will be available at a time, and they will all rotate throughout a season,” reads a Niantic blog post. “This means that in order to be the best, you need to be able to win in all three formats.” But the preseason is also crucial to help the studio refine how Go Battle League is going to work. “With your help, we will be able to optimize and balance the Go Battle League feature during this time,” reads the Niantic blog. “We will also be taking this time to learn about how the Go Battle League is being used in order to determine things like ideal length of seasons, rating thresholds for ranks, and more.” While this is all launching today, you may have to wait a bit longer to actually get it in your game. Niantic says it is rolling it out based on player level. So if you haven’t played recently, it may take a bit longer. GamesBeat's creed when covering the game industry is "where passion meets business." What does this mean? We want to tell you how the news matters to you -- not just as a decision-maker at a game studio, but also as a fan of games. Whether you read our articles, listen to our podcasts, or watch our videos, GamesBeat will help you learn about the industry and enjoy engaging with it. Discover our Briefings. Join the GamesBeat community! Enjoy access to special events, private newsletters and more. VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"Nintendo upgrades fiscal-year forecast as Switch hits 52.5 million consoles sold | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2020/01/29/nintendo-upgrades-fiscal-year-forecast-as-switch-hits-52-5-million-consoles-sold"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Nintendo upgrades fiscal-year forecast as Switch hits 52.5 million consoles sold Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn The Nintendo Switch is riding high. Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship. Learn more. Nintendo said it is upgrading its forecast for profits in the fiscal year ending March 31, thanks to strong sales of the Nintendo Switch and games that run on it. Nintendo said that its revenues would hit $11.48 billion in the fiscal year, about the same as it had predicted in October. But the Kyoto, Japan-based video game company said its operating profit would be $2.75 billion, up from a previous forecast of $2.38 billion. Switch sales As of December, the Nintendo Switch has sold 52.5 million to date, with software hitting 310.6 million copies sold as of December 31, 2019. The Nintendo 3DS has sold 75.7 million units and 382.2 million copies of software. The Switch is far more successful than the predecessor Wii U, which only sold 13.56 million units and 103 million copies of software. Event GamesBeat at the Game Awards We invite you to join us in LA for GamesBeat at the Game Awards event this December 7. Reserve your spot now as space is limited! Meanwhile, Nintendo said that it has sold 22.96 million copies of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, 17.68 million copies of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, and 16.59 million copies of Super Mario Odyssey. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild has sold 16.34 million copies, and Pokémon Sword/Pokémon Shield have sold 16.06 million copies. Nine month results Above: Nintendo Switch Lite and other stuff that goes in my pocket. For the nine months ended December 31, Nintendo reported sales of $9.39 billion, up from $9.16 billion a year earlier. Operating profit was $2.41 billion, compared with $2.02 billion a year earlier. Net profit was $1.80 billion, compared with $1.55 billion a year earlier. During the nine months, Nintendo launched its Nintendo Switch Lite handheld system, and the launch didn’t hurt Switch sales, resulting in sales growth for the whole Switch family, Nintendo said. Other details and forecasts So far, Nintendo and other publishers have had 21 titles that have sold more than a million units in the current fiscal year. Hardware unit sales in the nine months ended December 31 were 17.74 million, up 22.5% from a year earlier. Software sales were 123.13 million units, up 30.1%. Nintendo Switch Online and other digital revenues were up 48% from a year earlier, and the mobile business saw revenue rise 10.6%. Nintendo is forecasting that it will sell 19.5 million Switch units during the fiscal year ending March 31. Of that, Nintendo expects it will 5.2 million Switch Lite units. GamesBeat's creed when covering the game industry is "where passion meets business." What does this mean? We want to tell you how the news matters to you -- not just as a decision-maker at a game studio, but also as a fan of games. Whether you read our articles, listen to our podcasts, or watch our videos, GamesBeat will help you learn about the industry and enjoy engaging with it. Discover our Briefings. Join the GamesBeat community! Enjoy access to special events, private newsletters and more. VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"Android reaches massive 80% market share, Windows Phone hits global high, iPhone languishes | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2013/08/01/android-reaches-massive-80-market-share-windows-phone-hits-global-high-iphone-languishes"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Android reaches massive 80% market share, Windows Phone hits global high, iPhone languishes Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Europe: is Android too big? Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship. Learn more. Global smartphone shipments grew 47 percent to hit 230 million devices in the second quarter of 2013, according to a new report from research firm Strategy Analytics. Android captured record market share of 80 percent, while iOS hit a new low of 14 percent. This really is Mac versus PC all over again , as iOS hit its lowest levels since 2010. “The Android operating system captured a record 80 percent share of all smartphones shipped worldwide in the second quarter of 2013,” Strategy Analytics’ Neil Mawston said in a statement. “Apple iOS reached 14 percent global smartphone share in the quarter, its lowest level since Q2 2010.” That’s due to Android’s massive app store, which is now serving more downloads than Apple’s iOS app store, the many, many vendors who make and sell Android-based phones, and, most of all, the “competitive licensing costs” — in other words, free — that Google offers Android at. Window Phone #2? Interestingly, as Apple hit a three-year low, Microsoft hit a global high. “Microsoft slotted into third position with 4 percent share, reaching its highest level in the global smartphone market for three years,” Mawston said. That may not sound like much, but it is almost a third as much market share as Apple, which only a year ago seemed light years ahead of its old rival. Microsoft is making steady progress, Strategy Analytics says, but it’s still charging too high a license fee to hardware partners and is lagging in support for the latest high-end chipsets. Fix those two issues, and Windows Phone could be in second place at some point in the foreseeable future. A recent study of 6,000 mobile developers recently expressed more interest in beginning to build apps for Windows Phone than any other platform. Tim ‘No new products until fall’ Cook Above: All we’ve seen of the reputed new, cheaper iPhone. Apple has completely dropped the ball on the mobile market by focusing on expensive, high-end smartphones that do extremely well in the United States and a few other wealthy countries and pretty much suck everywhere else. Pundits and analysts have been telling Apple for years that it needed a low-end product , and it now seems like they are right. Harshly, and cruelly right. The blame rests squarely on the shoulders of Apple CEO Tim “No new products until fall” Cook , who keeps telling us that Apple is focused on making great products but refuses to actually show us any. Real artists ship, as former Apple CEO Steven Jobs used to say. Lack of innovation and slowness to market is why Apple’s iPad market share was just recently chopped in half and why Wall Street has punished the company , causing it to lose hundreds of billions of dollars in stock value in spite of a recent mini-rally. A new iPhone 5S and a cheaper iPhone for both domestic and international markets are coming, of course. Sayonara, Apple But at this point, it’s too late. Android has captured the global smartphone market for the foreseeable future, and Apple has frittered away a massive lead in technology and user experience by keeping its nose in the air and refusing to do what it takes to satisfy more than a small slice of the market. Which ultimately harms consumers, who don’t get a chance to experience iOS and Apple products at a price level they can afford, and harms Apple, which is still making money but, absent a miracle of the scope of iPhone’s original introduction, is quickly subsiding into yesterday’s story. Sic transit gloria mundi. VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Discover our Briefings. The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"Apple Watch chasing luxury consumers with fancy Paris booths and upgrades to retail stores | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2015/02/20/apple-watch-chasing-luxury-consumers-with-fancy-paris-booths-and-changes-to-retail-stores"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Apple Watch chasing luxury consumers with fancy Paris booths and upgrades to retail stores Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship. Learn more. This has been a frenzied week for revelations about the Apple Watch , the much-hyped new product that nevertheless is still shrouded in a fair bit of mystery. The latest news to drop is that Apple may be building some Apple Watch booths in an exclusive luxury shop in Paris. That tantalizing news comes from a French fashion magazine. The magazine reports that in the Galeries Lafayette on Boulevard Haussmann, it has spotted white tarps draped over four balconies. Click through this link to see pictures of the tarps. What does the Galeries Lafayette look like? You know, it’s pretty much your average dollar-store type situation: In other words, not a place where you’re going to see ads about someone smashing a video of Big Brother to liberate technology for the masses. Meanwhile, 9to5mac.com reports that Apple may be considering building its own separate stores to sell the Apple Watch. In addition, 9to5mac.com says Apple is adding safes inside the stores to protect the pricier version of the watch, which some have speculated could cost up to $20,000 , a price tag that would likely cause many people’s heads to explode in shock. We learned earlier this week, from the gargantuan New Yorker profile of Jony Ive , just how acutely aware Apple is of the need to cater to the particular whims of the types of people who would drop $20K for a gold watch that would let them send emojis to their BFFs: “Ive has begun to work with [Angela] Ahrendts, Apple’s senior vice-president of retail, on a redesign — as yet unannounced — of the Apple Stores. These new spaces will surely become a more natural setting for vitrines filled with gold (and perhaps less welcoming, at least in some corners, to tourists and truants). Apple had not, overnight, become an élite-oriented company — and it would sell seventy-five million iPhones in the final quarter of 2014, many of them in China — but I wondered how rational, and pure of purpose, one can make the design of a V.I.P. area. Ive later told me that he had overheard someone saying, ‘I’m not going to buy a watch if I can’t stand on carpet.'” And it also better be an 18th-century Persian rug, not just some carpet square from Target! No word on whether Apple retail employees will also have to start wearing tuxedos and address everyone as “ma’am” or “sir” using Queen’s English accents as they serve tea and hold customer’s Chihuahuas while the elite try on the pricey timepieces. VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Discover our Briefings. VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"The 5 best Apple Watch apps for the enterprise (so far) | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2015/04/24/the-5-best-apple-watch-apps-for-the-enterprise-so-far"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages The 5 best Apple Watch apps for the enterprise (so far) Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship. Learn more. Today is the (non) launch day of the Apple Watch , and already there are more than 3,000 apps available in the special app store for the new device. The vast majority of them are aimed at consumer users, but a growing number of enterprise app developers are developing for the device. These are the most promising enterprise apps we’ve seen so far. NOTE: We are omitting health care enterprise apps here, as we already included them in their own roundup. Good Technology The enterprise mobile device management firm Good Technology announced its Apple Watch app today. The app is an offshoot of Good’s Good Work collaboration suite. The app allows Watch wearers to get email and calendar notifications on the wrist. The IT folks receive email and calendar notifications from Good Work while IT administrators can control what information the notification displays. For example, the app could be configured to only display the sender and subject of an email. Microsoft On Tuesday Microsoft announced that it had updated its OneNote, PowerPoint, and OneDrive iOS apps to extend to the Watch. Forget about those last two apps, as they still need refinement, and consider OneNote, which is better designed and takes better advantage of the Watch’s place on the body. For people who work for companies that already use the Microsoft suite, the OneNote app will be perfect for using voice dictation on the Watch to add new notes. You can also use the app to quickly access notes and other content from OneNote on the wrist. Trello Trello has a base of hardcore fans who swear by its usefulness in collaboration and planning. The Watch app allows users to: – Quickly add cards – View notifications and reply to comments – View cards and edit basic information like the due date – View cards that are due soon or that you’ve opened recently – Check/uncheck items Slack Slack , the team communication app now valued at $2.8 billion , earlier this week announced its Apple Watch app. The app allows users to: – Quickly and easily create, receive, and reply to direct messages – Keep track of unread mentions and reply via direct messages – Handoff support (if you are in a DM with someone on the Watch, you can quickly open your phone to the same conversation) – Switch teams – See how many people on your team are online MicroStrategy Usher We’ve seen devices that use a near field communications chip to handle authentication in the workplace, and while the Apple Watch does have an NFC chip, it’s locked down. But MicroStrategy has figured a way to use the Watch for workplace authentication without using the NFC chip. Usher turns the Apple Watch into a secure digital key, enabling wearers to log into enterprise business systems, unlock devices, validate personal identity, and open physical entryways with a simple gesture or tap. After Apple opens up the NFC chip to developers, we expect to see more authentication apps like Usher. VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Discover our Briefings. VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"The top 8 Apple Watch games at launch | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2015/04/24/the-8-best-apple-watch-games-at-launch"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Feature The top 8 Apple Watch games at launch Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Even watch role-playing games have rats as enemies. Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship. Learn more. Just like with the iPhone, it’s going take a bit of work to find the good games for your new Apple Watch. Apple Watch launch One studio plans on making 10 Apple Watch games by June. Making Apple Watch games is surprisingly hard. Here’s the first batch of 7 apps you should download for your Apple Watch. It’s launch day. Why can’t I buy one ? Today’s launch of the Apple Watch brings with it hundreds of new apps of every type for the little (just over 300 pixels wide) screen. While the benefits of wrist-worn health- and fitness-based applications are immediately obvious, it’s a bit harder to figure out how games will work on the wearable. But that’s not stopping them from jumping on the newest addition to Apple’s ecosystem. And with analysts predicting sales of up to 40 million Apple Watches this year, why wait? The device presents plenty of new challenges for game makers used to larger smartphones and tablets, and concerns over battery life also factor in. According to the developers GamesBeat has spoken with, making Watch games is not easy. Some of these developers have taken the easy way out, launching companion apps that merely add to an existing iPhone game’s functionality. Others have wrangled ports of existing games onto the little screen. And a few are putting forth depressingly basic offerings such as digital tic-tac-toe games. But a handful of developers have embraced the Wild West situation, taking chances on what could be a hot new gaming platform. We’ve rounded up some of the most promising of these micro-gaming experiences for Apple Watch launch day. Event GamesBeat at the Game Awards We invite you to join us in LA for GamesBeat at the Game Awards event this December 7. Reserve your spot now as space is limited! Above: Bossa Studios’ Spy_Watch uses Apple’s own notification system to make you feel like a real secret spy. Spy_Watch Spy watches in James Bond films seems like some ridiculous far-off future, but now that wrist computers are reality, Bossa Studios embraces that theme fully. The creators of popular games such as Surgeon Simulator and I Am Bread have created a text-based experience that uses Apple’s own notification systems to tell a story of a spy agency that has fallen on hard times. Real-time messages will come to the player, updating them on missions that will eventually have them working as a spy to revive the fallen agency. You don’t even have to open the app to play Spy_Watch ($2). Bossa Studios’ chief operating officer Vince Farquharson says that the idea is to make you feel like a real spy equipped with a special device. “The idea of this game is to make you feel like it’s not a game, to make you feel like you’ve bought your Apple Watch, and it came with this really cool encrypted software, and you genuinely are experiencing this thing in real life,” Farquharson told GamesBeat. “This game we made sits in the background. It lives with you for five or six weeks, and you just fall into the role — you believe you’re talking to friends and secret agents. And it all plays out in real time.” Notifications will arrive on the Watch just as they would from actual individuals, through Apple’s built-in notification system, which goes a long way towards realism. The timing is just as realistic: the agent you work with will get on a plane and won’t contact you for another two hours, for example. “It’s more like an interactive story, real-life role-play reminiscent of old text adventures, wrapped in a beautiful spy interface,” Farquharson said. Runeblade The role-playing game franchise is known for its dozens and sometimes even hundreds of hours of gameplay, but Everywear Games is shooting for Twitter-sized entertainment with its Apple Watch exclusive, Runeblade (free, with future paid content planned). The Finnish studio, which is made up of veterans from Remedy and Rovio, is solely dedicated to smart watch game development. They have simplified RPG mechanics to give high-fantasy adventuring a casual appeal, yet Runeblade is a full-blown experience, with various lands to travel to, gear to collect, powers to unlock, and enemies to defeat. All set up for 15 second sessions at a time. “While the setting is very ambitious in the context of gaming on Apple Watch, we’ve radically simplified the gameplay itself,” Everywear Games CEO Aki Järvilehto told GamesBeat in an interview. “Game sessions last 5-15 seconds, and fighting monsters happens with single-click ease. Every now and then, you’ll want to log in to the iPhone client to enchant your Runeblade and cast a spell or two. ” Even if the sessions are short, its depth continually builds with each session. “The key to Runeblade really is how the game experience builds over time from these ultra-short sessions,” Järvilehto said. “Later in the game, you start to gain magical artifacts, and together with spells and runes, these add a lot of strategic and tactical elements to the gameplay.” Letterpad NimbleBit made waves with popular mobiles games such as Tiny Tower and Pocket Planes in recent years, but it gets back to word games with Letterpad, a port for Apple Watch. A search grid of nine letters creates words that relate to given topics, with over 200 puzzles included in the main application. The grid’s 3-by-3 square format is a good fit for the Watch screen, nice for when you’d like to sneak in a few extra games. Letterpad is a universal app (and it’s free, with paid content), so if you own the iPhone or iPad versions, you also already own the Watch version. Above: Aim for the fences in Watch This Homerun. Watch This Homerun Developer Eyes Wide Games have a line of quick-play sports games in the works for Apple Watch, and its first is baseball game Watch This Homerun. It’s a batting challenge that has players tapping at the screen to nail timing to knock pitches — curveballs, fastballs, and knuckleballs — out of the park. A companion iPhone app features leaderboards to show players’ successes at hitting as well as a forum for chatting about game strategies. It’s a short game: Each session lasts around 15 seconds. But Eyes Wide Games has packed a lot of meaning in that short time. CEO Stephen Griffin told GamesBeat that the developer strove to create a complex experience down to one exciting moment, one that stood in for the larger game from a narrative standpoint. “In the case of baseball, that moment was the opportunity to hit a home run to win the game in the final inning at the last at bat,” he said. “We then changed the rules of baseball a little bit to challenge the player to hit not just one home run but frequently multiple home runs. It’s as if the player is the last player at bat and has to hit home runs to catch up and beat the opposing team.” This has each turn feeling like completing a full game of baseball. “As a result, every 15 second game matters toward winning the league and leveling up to the next tier in order to face new types of pitches and tougher challenges,” he said. “This approach creates a lot of fun tension for just a 15 second game experience.” The developer is already at work on its next game in the series, a soccer league-themed game called Watch This Goal. After that it aims to take what it has learned to develop games with more action and adventure elements, moving beyond sports. Above: The Apple Watch version of Rules! will feature only four tiles. Rules Rules! ($3) brings brain-training and puzzle games together and presents them in short sessions, making for a good fit with the Apple Watch. Just like the popular phone game , which Apple called one of the best of 2014, this version (included in the game’s 3.0 update) has you tapping on a grid of pictures under specific rules, with speed being the goal. For each success, another rule is layered on, testing both mind and reflexes. But unlike the phone game, the watch version has just four tiles as opposed to the main game’s 16 tiles. Developer TheCodingMonkeys calls this companion application a “daily brain workout minigame.” Watch Quest What better story for one of the first Watch games than one about time? Valencia, Calif.-based WayForward (Shantae, Mighty Switch Force, Duck Tales: Remastered) has created a light story adventure and city-builder across both the iPhone and the Apple Watch, with the role-playing action taking place on the wearable while the kingdom management side resides on the phone. A quest system lets watch wearers take on beasts and solve puzzles, and options for active and passive playstyles enable players tailor the experience to their preferences. WayForward says that the game’s opening chapter is free, but access to the rest will require an in-app purchase. Hatchi Remember Tamagotchi? Even if you don’t, virtual pets are back. What better place for one of these critters than the back of your wrist? Hatchi jumps from the phone to the watch, letting you check in on your pet without ever having to pull your phone out and turn it on. Hatchi keeps its pixelated look on the Watch and brings with it new minigames, including one that tests your memory and something called “Whack-a-Hatchi.” The Watch version is free for existing iPhone game owners (the app costs $1), but those new to virtual pet raising will have to pay for developer Portable Pixels’ app. Lifeline… Writer Dave Justus (he writes the Fables: The Wolf Among Us comic series) has penned a branching story that draws Apple Watch wearers into the events following a crash landing on an alien moon. The story of Lifeline ($3) plays out in real time, revealed through messages that pop up directly on the watch throughout the day. Through players’ communications, stranded crew member Taylor will make decisions that will impact his life, making them a part of the story. It’s possible to jump back to a previous part of the story to choose different answers, which could lead to different outcomes. GamesBeat's creed when covering the game industry is "where passion meets business." What does this mean? We want to tell you how the news matters to you -- not just as a decision-maker at a game studio, but also as a fan of games. Whether you read our articles, listen to our podcasts, or watch our videos, GamesBeat will help you learn about the industry and enjoy engaging with it. Discover our Briefings. Join the GamesBeat community! Enjoy access to special events, private newsletters and more. VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"12 things I don't like about the Apple Watch | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2015/04/29/12-things-i-dont-like-about-the-apple-watch"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages 12 things I don’t like about the Apple Watch Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship. Learn more. Believe me there are about a million things I like about the Apple Watch — the great materials, the thoughtful design, the beautiful interface. But me being a glass-half-empty kind of guy, I thought I’d skip to the things I don’t like about the new device. And here they are. 1. Arm motion doesn’t always wake up the Watch When you want to look at your Watch you’re supposed to be able to just lift your wrist and the device will wake. But I found that this didn’t always happen. I was often met with a blank screen when I raised my wrist, causing me to have to do a wrist spin to tell the Watch to wake up and be useful. 2. Setup was a little rough I have set up my Apple Watch twice now. I did it once, then reset it the device and did it again. Each time I found the process to be somewhat tedious. Pairing the phone with the watch took a while — three minutes the first time and two minutes the second time. You’re supposed to be able to take a picture of a crazy design on the Watch face with your iPhone camera to make the two devices pair. I tried this four times, and it worked only once. Setting up your preferences and apps on the Watch takes a good hour to complete, too. You have to move through screen after screen of questions, some of which I felt were unnecessary. 3. Phone calls don’t sound that good I took calls and made calls for a few days, and I can’t say I had the best experience. I found that the sound quality of calls playing on the Watch’s small speaker left a lot to be desired. It sounded remote and crackly. Some of the people I called said I sounded “far away.” 4. Texting typos Using voice dictation to compose text on the Watch works pretty well, in general. Dictation is one of three main options for composing on the Watch — you can also use canned phrases (“I’ll call you later”) or emojis. I ran into problems only when I dictated a word that Siri didn’t understand. This could be slang, a nickname, or a piece of industry jargon. When Siri misinterpreted the word, I found no straightforward way of clearing the error and restating the word (or, perhaps, spelling it) to the Watch. Instead, I had to delete the text and start over. If that one problem word was essential, I had to pull out my phone to type it in. 5. The screen is not responsive with perspiration on it I found the Workout app that ships with the Watch to be useful enough, but I also noticed that it became hard to control — to switch screens or whatever — when there was perspiration on the face of the Watch. I don’t expect miracles here, but I do expect my touches to yield some kind of response when the screen is damp or wet. When I had been walking on the treadmill for about 30 minutes I wanted to touch and swipe on the screen to get my heart rate and the number of calories I’d burned, but the Watch wouldn’t respond. 6. A whole button for social contacts? It’s interesting that Apple dedicated such a large portion of the Watch design to a button that brings up your social contacts. But there it is. The large button right by the crown is dedicated to displaying calling and texting options for 10 of your favorite contacts. It seems like there could have been a better way to trigger that one feature other than dedicating a whole button to it. 7. Apple Pay could be a smoother experience Well, actually, that button by the digital crown serves one other purpose. You double-press it to activate the Apple Pay mobile payments system. That you have to do this is not a huge deal, but it is a slight disappointment when you consider that you don’t have to do anything like that when making a payment using the phone. With Apple Pay on the iPhone 6, the phone automatically wakes up to the Passbook screen when you put it near the point-of-sale terminal; you hear a beep and the sale is done. I was hoping that making payments on the Watch would involve one smooth motion of the arm and that’s all, but it was not to be. 8. Getting my city right For the first couple of days the face of my Watch said “CUP,” which stands for “Cupertino.” Since I don’t live in Cupertino I wanted to change the name to read “SF” for San Francisco. I reasoned that the Watch had been set to Cupertino when the timezone was set. So I checked the World Clock settings, but found that the city had already be set to San Francisco there. To be honest I can’t even remember how I fixed the problem, but it was by making an adjustment on the Watch itself, not on the phone. 9. Not enough watch faces I don’t like the fact that the Watch shipped with only ten watch faces to choose from. The novelty of the Mickey Mouse face wore off pretty quickly. The one with the giant numbers (called “X-large”) didn’t have any date and temperature data, so that didn’t work. I’ve now settled on a face called “Utility” that has the information I want but is nothing special to look at. I want more choices. 10. App developers remain handicapped App developers have no access to key components of the Watch. For instance, in the Glide Watch app you can receive images on the screen, but the sound still has to come from the phone. Glide’s app has no access to the speaker. You also cannot speak an audio message into the phone in Glide, because the app can’t access the Watch’s microphone. Apps also can’t access the near field communication chip in the card for things like transportation payments and personal identification functions. 11. Stand up, already standing I like the idea of being reminded to stand up and move around, which my Watch does every hour. But several times during my first few days using the Watch I got the notification saying “time to stand” when I was already standing. Did the accelerometer in the Watch really fail to detect that? I guess so. 12. Battery life is too short Perhaps the biggest criticism of the Watch so far has been its limited 18-hour battery life, and I found that to be a problem. You can’t sleep with the Watch because you have to charge it every night. If Apple didn’t mean for you to be able to leave your Watch on while you’re sleeping, why did it include the alarm clock function? (It’s actually quite cool to be awoken by a gentle buzz at your wrist.) Granted, these observations come after just a few days of using the Watch. So I may find other things not to like in the future, and Apple will definitely find ways to fix some of the problems mentioned above with software upgrades. All in all the Watch is a great piece of technology, but let’s not forget this is Version 1. It will get a lot more interesting in future versions. I haven’t written my full review of the device yet because I’m still trying to understand how the thing fits into my everyday life, and whether I really need it. VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Discover our Briefings. VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"30 days later, I'm returning my Apple Watch (full review) | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2015/05/15/30-days-later-im-returning-my-apple-watch-full-review"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Review 30 days later, I’m returning my Apple Watch (full review) Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn The official VentureBeat Apple Watch re-boxing. Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship. Learn more. Today is the last day I can return my Apple Watch. It’s the day I decide if I really need the Watch in my life. For me the Watch already had a few strikes against it before I even put it on. I generally don’t like to wear things around my wrist. I also had reservations about adding yet another piece of tech to my life with the potential to distract me even more. That’s the bar the Watch had to pass to be a keeper. It had to give me enough useful and meaningful features to make me forget about wearability and distraction issues. The first wave of Watch reviews were less than satisfying to me because they were based on one week of usage — probably not enough time to understand how the device really fits into the fabric of everyday life. I’ve had my Watch for a month now, and I’ve worn it every day, showered with it, run with it, worked out with it, walked around town with it, slept with it, driven with it, worked with it, and socialized with it. Instead of talking about how the Watch looks on paper, or about how well this feature or that works in a vacuum, my goal is to give you an idea of how well my Watch helped me stay on top of my life on a day-to-day basis. Looks and wearability After putting the Watch on my wrist and wearing it around for a while, I noticed that I wasn’t thinking much about the feel of the band. Nothing seemed to get caught in my abundant wrist hair — something that’s happened with other wearables. And this is one of the little design innovations you begin to notice after using Apple products for a while: The underside of the watch band is slightly hollowed out so that much of it doesn’t actually make contact with the skin. This cuts way down on the clammy, sweaty feel of plastic against flesh. Still, I noticed that it did feel good to take the Watch off at the end of the day. And I found that on the weekend I sometimes left it sitting on the desk. The Watch itself is a thick little device, but I had no problems with the distance that the thing protruded from my wrist. Ultimately, my feeling about the look of the Watch is neutral. I have the aluminum Sport model with a white band. It’s not a bad-looking device — in fact it looks a bit better in real life than I thought it would. But it’s not fantastic-looking. A notifications device at heart The Watch is not a remote control for the phone; it’s not a media-playing device; it’s not a killer fitness gadget; it’s not an invaluable communications device — not by a long shot. No, the main job of the Apple Watch, for now at least, is delivering notifications from apps on your phone to your wrist. You’ll see these notifications throughout the day. The exercise app will remind you to stand up or alert you that you’re close to your daily exercise goal. You’ll see texts and phone calls coming in. Various apps will alert you of things like an Uber arriving or when it’s time to drink more water. I already get notifications on my iPhone, so these are certainly nothing new. But the presentation is much more personal. Notifications come with physical buzz or tap to the wrist created by the Watch’s Taptic engine, a sound from the Watch’s speaker (usually a bell sound), and a visual message on the watch face. The fact that you’re being physically tapped on the wrist to alert you to, or remind you of, something makes it a far more visceral experience than a phone notification. It’s certainly harder to ignore. Some early Watch reviewers complained that they were getting distracted by too many notifications on their wrist. I think this is a legitimate criticism of the Watch, although the Watch app provides ample means of controlling which apps can give you alerts, and how, and when. Still, Apple made a couple of mistakes here. When you’re first setting up your Watch, Apple asks if you want to mirror the the apps and notifications settings on your phone. Wanting to get through the setup process, I answered Yes to that without really considering what that might mean for the volume of notifications. The Watch app doesn’t present you with a setup screen that asks you exactly which apps should be allowed to notify you, and to what types of events. You may want to receive notifications from your calendar app, but only for upcoming meetings and not new invites, etc. You may want a certain type of taptic buzz to accompany upcoming events notifications. Only later do you find out that to get down into the details of your notifications you have to go to the Settings of the phone, and then select “mirror phone” in the Watch app settings. Less distracted or more distracted? There are definite social implications to notifications. As The Verge’s Nilay Patel points out , looking down at one’s watch can suggest to a person you’re talking to that you are bored or would rather be somewhere else. It suggests that you are marking the time, when really you may have just been notified of some event or message. This happened to me this morning, and the person I was with immediately began to wrap up what she was saying. I apologized. The cultural more of interpreting a glance at a watch as a dismissive gesture isn’t likely to change until smartwatches are ubiquitous, if even then. Jony Ive said in a New Yorker interview a few months ago that good technology shouldn’t distract you, but rather help you stay engaged with your normal, real-world interactions with friends, family, and coworkers. When we reach for our phone to do a certain task, we often then move on to other tasks; 20 minutes later we realize we’ve been zoned out in the digital realm and have forgotten all about what’s going on in the real world. Author and blogger Matt Gemmell argues , compellingly, that the Watch helps us avoid being pulled back into the digital world by the way it presents content. He points out that Watch notifications are small, glanceable bits of mostly non-actionable information, and that this information is often enough to rid us of the need to grab our phone. For example, when you get a text message you may be able to ascertain from the small amount of information on your wrist (who it’s from, roughly what it’s about) that it doesn’t require immediate action. That sounds sensible enough, and I thought about it for a few days while wearing the Watch, but in practice it just didn’t turn out to be true for me. Even though I recall some times when glances at the Watch saved me from having to pull out my phone, the fact is I was getting more notifications — and they were just closer to my face and harder to ignore. Even if I didn’t need to pull out my phone I was often distracted by the need to respond to, or look deeper into, something that showed up on my wrist. In practice, the Watch invited me into the digital realm more than it saved me from it. It’s true that certain Watch functions like Apple Pay and the music player (which stores playlists and plays back on wireless headphones) obviate the use of the phone altogether. But there are not nearly enough of these autonomous functions — not yet. The Watch is almost useless without a phone paired with it. As for texting, it’s a mixed bag. You can immediately see who is texting you by looking down at your wrist. And you can create simple responses by dictating to the Watch, or using canned phrases (“I can’t talk now”), or using emojis. But this isn’t easy or quick, unless you respond with one of the canned phrases. The digital crown Perhaps the most notable physical feature of the Watch is the digital crown, which you press to toggle back and forth between the main apps screen and the watch face (time, temp, etc.). The crown’s functions are contextual: Sometimes it zooms you in and out, as when you’re looking at a map; sometimes it scrolls you through text; it controls the volume of music playing back on your phone. Pressing it down and holding turns on Siri. The point is that the crown does a number of things and they aren’t all obvious. Not one to read manuals (I thought with Apple products I shouldn’t have to), it took me a while to learn the full function of the crown. How well the thing works was never a question. The interface seems to react quickly and smoothly to the actions of the crown, with the possible exception of maps, which I thought zoomed in and out less than smoothly. The ‘social’ button The button by the crown pulls up a quick group of your social contacts. You can click on these to initiate calls (on your iPhone) or to dictate text messages. I didn’t hit that button very much, and I’m a bit surprised that Apple’s designers dedicated a large button just for enabling limited communications with a small group of contacts. Also, there are several other ways to initiate calls or text messages. You can select either of those apps from the apps screen, or you can simply call them up by giving Siri a command. Thankfully, the large button by the digital crown has one more purpose. You double click it to call up the mobile payments function, which I used quite a lot. Glances If you swipe up on the home screen (not the app screen, but the one that tells the time) you’ll see a series of screens — or “glances” — that you swipe side to side to flip though. You see a line of small dots at the bottom the screen telling you how many Glance screens you have, and where the one you’re looking at falls in the order. You use the Glances screen in the Watch app at setup (or anytime) to choose which apps you want glances of, and how they are ordered. As a concept, glances are a good idea. They provide a way to get key information quickly from any of a set of key apps. I did start to get into the habit of using them. Beyond waking up your Watch and looking at the time and temperature, it’s the next logical thing you’ll do to access more information. You may want to glance at your exercise progress for the day, or look at what kind of weather is coming, or check on a stock price. The only problem I had with glances is that it sometimes felt clunky calling them up and moving among them. At times the touchscreen didn’t respond immediately to my upward swipe to access my glances. Then, moving among the glances felt clunky, as some of them hurried to load up current information from the corresponding apps. This was especially hard if there was any perspiration on the screen. So finding my heart rate glance during a hard workout was a challenge. Maps The Watch is not the ideal device for mapping because the screen is just too small. But I give Apple points for making the maps at least somewhat useful on the wrist. The Maps app makes good use of the Taptic engine in the Watch, giving you three gentle taps on the wrist when it’s time to turn while driving or walking. While you’re taking driving directions from the map, it’s somewhat helpful getting tapped on the wrist and hearing the little blinker sounds coming from the Watch to let you know you have to turn soon. It’s better than relying only on the voice commands coming from the phone. But the tragic flaw here is that you can’t hear the spoken directions coming from the Watch itself. Note that the Watch relies on the GPS radio in the paired iPhone for directions, so you always have to have your phone with you to get directions or track your routes. This usually isn’t a problem (I’d want my phone with me anyway), unless you want to use a workout app to track your progress while you run, bike, or swim. Exercise apps The Watch comes with two very basic wellness apps: Workout and Exercise. The Workout app gives you a choice of aerobic workouts including indoor or outdoor walks or runs, stair stepper, rowing, cycling, etc. Apple says each workout uses a unique mix of sensor measurements and a special algorithm to accurately track your workout. You tell the app your how many calories you want to burn, there’s a countdown, and you’re off. While you’re working out it tells you things like your time pace, distance, heart rate, calories burned, etc., and after you’re done it give you a full report on these metrics. I’m a runner and a walker, but not hardcore in either one. I found the information provided by the app was adequate, although I found it difficult to access the information during my runs and walks. This was because of perspiration making the touchscreen less responsive, as mentioned above. The Exercise app is the thing that tracks your steps, calorie burn, and distance throughout the day. Your progress toward your daily goals is expressed in three colored circles, which turns out to be very easy to understand at a glance. The app also reminds you get up from your desk every hour, which I ended up liking once I got used to it. The app does not track your sleep as other fitness trackers so, but that might be added in future versions of the software. Heart rate monitor The heart rate monitor in the Apple Watch works the same way as monitors in other fitness trackers. It shines infrared light through the skin at your wrist to measure the rate of the blood flow underneath for 5-10 seconds then extrapolates the number of beats in a whole minute. I believe the results are more accurate than any other wearable I’ve tried. My main problem with the heart monitor is that I had a very hard time accessing it while I was working out. If there’s any perspiration on the watch face, the touchscreen has a hard time understanding your touches. It also doesn’t respond well while your body is in motion, like walking. Siri Siri on the Watch is the dumb stepsister of Siri on the phone. Sitting in a quiet room it works well, but I’ve found that out in the real world the service failed at important times. Also, Siri on the Watch can’t talk. Other reviewers loved how well Siri understands natural language, but I had worse results. It either seemed to not understand what I was saying to it (this was a real problem when using the phone outside, especially if there was any wind), or it understood my question but could not find an answer. Sometimes I said “hey Siri” over and over and couldn’t get Siri to wake up and listen. When Siri misinterpreted the word, I found no straightforward way of clearing the error and restating the word (or, perhaps, spelling it) to the Watch. Instead, I had to delete the whole text message and start over. If that one problem word was essential, I had to pull out my phone to type it in. Siri understands a certain amount of natural language search. So if you say “How do I get to Ocean Beach?” it will quickly pull up a map and show you, with directions. But if you ask it a question like “Who won the 1959 World Series?” it has to hand off the search to the paired iPhone to display an answer. Phone Calls In theory you can talk to someone using the little microphone and speaker in the Watch. But it just doesn’t work very well. Even in completely quiet environments with no background noise or wind, the calls sounded crackly and far way. Same way on the other end, I’m told. Apple Pay You double-press the large button by the digital crown to activate the Apple Pay mobile payments system. Then you hold your Watch up to a point-of-sale terminal, you hear a ding, and you’re done. This is one thing the Watch can do by itself, without the need of the phone. Still, it’s not perfect. I was disappointed that you have to double-click a button to use Apple Pay. With Apple Pay on the iPhone 6, the phone automatically wakes up to the Passbook screen when you put it near the point-of-sale terminal; you don’t have to do anything. I was hoping that making payments on the Watch would involve one smooth motion of the arm and that’s all, but it was not to be. Also, in order to set up Apple Pay on your Watch you have to password-protect the Watch. You have to enter that password any time the Watch has left your wrist, which will mean at least once a day because of the need to charge the battery. Battery and charging Perhaps the biggest criticism of the Watch so far has been its limited 18-hour battery life, and I too found that to be a problem. My Watch never ran out of juice during a day of usage, but having to charge it every night was an annoyance. You can’t sleep with the Watch because you have to charge it every night. If Apple didn’t mean for you to be able to leave your Watch on while you’re sleeping, why did it include the alarm clock function? (It’s actually quite cool to be awoken by a gentle buzz at your wrist.) So . . . In the end, I decided that the Apple Watch doesn’t quite earn its place on my wrist. While I appreciate the elegant design of both the hardware and the software, I really don’t miss the Watch when I’m not wearing it. I don’t think the notifications made my life that much easier, and I see the Watch’s other functions (with the possible exception of Apple Pay) as secondary bells and whistles that I can get on less expensive devices. The Apple Watch is solid first draft of a new kind of product. It’s already showing signs of brilliance, but the list of things that need to be added, subtracted, or fixed is just too long right now. And the app developer community needs to learn more about device before they can create apps that make it really sing. Above: The official VentureBeat Apple Watch re-boxing. VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Discover our Briefings. The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"Nest CEO Tony Fadell on the iPod, iPhone, and the importance of shipping products | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2016/02/28/how-the-father-of-the-ipod-iphone-and-nest-became-a-tech-visionary"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Nest CEO Tony Fadell on the iPod, iPhone, and the importance of shipping products Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Tony Fadell is the creator of the iPod, iPhone, and Nest. Tony Fadell has had a storied career in Silicon Valley. He grew up in Michigan and took to building things early, thanks to a grandfather who gave him lots of tasks — like changing electrical sockets at the age of four. He became tech savvy, moved to Silicon Valley, and got a job at General Magic, a 1990s company that was trying to beat Microsoft in operating systems and portable hardware. It failed miserably, but Fadell took his ideas for portable hardware first to Philips Electronic and then Apple. At Apple, Steve Jobs eventually supported Fadell’s attempt to create a music device, and, later, a PC-compatible music device. And so the iPod was born. Fadell’s team created 18 versions of the iPod and helped cement Apple’s turnaround. Then he went on to lead the team that created the first three versions of the iPhone. In 2010, he and Matt Rogers cofounded Nest Labs, which made the Nest smart thermostat. In 2014, Google acquired Nest for $3.2 billion, and since early 2015, he has been leading Google’s efforts in smart glasses. Fadell now has more than 300 patents, and he wakes up early every day to exercise before heading into a day full of meetings. Las week, we attended the SV Forum Visionary Salon Dinner honoring Fadell for his many accomplishments. He was interviewed on stage by Kevin Surace, CEO of Appvance and chairman of the nonprofit SV Forum. Here’s an edited transcript of their conversation. Above: Tony Fadell (left) speaking with Silicon Valley Forum chair Kevin Surace. VentureBeat: People attain a certain number of patents, a certain amount of notoriety, and they lose that humility, lose touch with their friends and their community and their office. Tony has never been that way. Tony is the most humble gentleman in technology I’ve ever met. Anyone who knew Tony 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago, they’ll tell you, call him and he’ll get back to you. He will help you. He’s there. Very few people will do that. So thank you for being who you are and that side of you. Tony Fadell: Thank you for saying that, and thank you all for coming out. One of the big reasons I do that is because I believe if I don’t help other people, I’ll miss out. When I started, the lowest guy on the totem pole at General Magic in 1991, I was 22 and just came out here. Everyone around me helped me to get to where I am. It’s all about giving back and helping others. That’s where the greatest value is. It’s not just about building a great company. When you read that list of accomplishments, the first day was complete and utter failure. It was a ton of work. But what comes around goes around. If you help others, they’re going to help you. That’s why I love the Silicon Valley community. We can build so many successes and do it together. VB: You were in electronics and computers early on. What drove you to technology as a kid? Fadell: I didn’t start with electronics, per se. It started with my grandfather. My brother and I, at the ages of three and four, he started us painting walls and pounding nails and building things. Even changing electrical sockets, at four years old. My mom would say, “What are you doing?” The ability to use your mind and your hands and create stuff, that was given to me by him. That led me to be curious about all kinds of different things around me. And then the Apple II came out. You saw it all around. It was Time Magazine’s person of the year. I’m really dating myself. But that got me saying, “Here’s another thing to be curious about.” I took a summer school class in third grade. It was bubble cards and a paper printout. Not even a monitor. That’s what got me hooked. That’s where it first started. Then after that, the Apple II and a Tandy. I worked to earn the money to get that first computer. But that’s where it all started. First learning from my grandfather about how to use my hands and then leveraging that to build stuff on computers. VB: What was it like growing up in Michigan? Fadell: The thing is, I went to 12 schools in 15 years. I was all around the U.S. In certain times I’d be in Michigan, but other times I was in Texas, New York, all these other places. That was the other thing about technology. I couldn’t play sports, because there’s no way to get on a team when you’re only in the city for a year or two. I kept moving, and so what I brought with me was my Apple II. Then I started communicating with my friends in the cities I left on BBSes with a 300 baud modem. That’s what I had. That became my lifestyle. All I’d do in my life was those kinds of things. I knew I had to come out here as soon as I got out of college. Above: Apple’s first iPod VB: People get up every day and say, “Oh, God, another day.” And then the other half go, “Yeah, it’s another day!” When you get up, how do you look at the day? What drives you throughout the day? Fadell: My day really starts, first and foremost, with some sort of workout. Something around five in the morning, I have to work out for about an hour. Whether it’s yoga or running or lifting. Start there, take the kids to school, and then go right into the first meeting of the day. Sometimes I can’t wait to have that meeting. Other days, “Oh, we’ve got to talk.” But that’s how you start the day. Try to process what you’re going to do. At night, I go to bed and I’m exhausted, and I just fall asleep. But in the morning, I wake up and I think of all the things that are going to happen today…Whether it’s running or yoga, it’s like moving meditation. I let the thoughts just wash over my brain and think about how to react to the day and come up with some ideas and problem-solve. After that, I’m in meetings with people all day long, just brainstorming, problem-solving, new designs, five days a week. At night and on the weekends, I can’t stop. My wife says I’m diseased. I can’t stop thinking about fixing problems. VB: You graduated and came out here to General Magic, at the time. It was one of the first concept IPOs. General Magic went public in 1995 with a billion-dollar valuation. Crazy numbers. They had every partner in Japan, every partner in the U.S. It was an amazing company with an amazing 400 or 500 people. In the end, it didn’t succeed. Could you tell us a bit about those early days, when you were learning about how to bring products to the market, learning how to design computing and handheld products? Fadell: First I had to get to General Magic. I started a company in high school and college. I always had this yearning, where I felt like the biggest fish in the very smallest pond. I was always trying to learn more, and even at the University of Michigan, I couldn’t get that practical experience of creating companies and knowing who to call if you had an issue. You were all alone. I knew I had to go and work with people who had that experience. I wasn’t getting it at school. Today, you go to school and you can learn a bit about startups and stuff like that. Back in the day, there was nothing. I wanted to go to a company where I could learn a lot. Where are my heroes? My heroes were at General Magic, because they had the team that created the Macintosh. I wanted to go work with them — Bill Atkinson, Andy Hertzfeld. And so to get in the door at General Magic, it’s like my eyes were wide open. You knew what kind of software it was, but you didn’t know how to build software, how to test software, how to design software. You didn’t have any of those concepts in college. Every day I was learning. I was working 18- to 20-hour days, because I had to learn and do at the same time. Just trying to keep up. But I had my heroes next to me, and I was trying to impress them. I’d begged for a job, and they gave me a job at $28,000 a year. I was like, “All right! I’m in California!” I was just scraping by. But to be around those people every day and learning from them about so many aspects of startups. What about the market? The thing you learn very quickly is that you can build anything, given enough time and money. But can you actually sell it? There are some hard lessons we learned at General Magic and beyond about — can you actually sell it? Because it was a disaster, I learned how hard … VB: What did you learn? What would be two or three takeaways from that project? Fadell: The first thing was, stick to your milestones, and do not have a project that takes more than a year to a year and a half. You cannot keep the team together longer than that. I look at these civic works projects, like building bridges and stuff, and it takes 10 or 15 years. The team turns over three or four times! But in these kinds of designs, if you go more than a year and a half, it’s taking too long, especially in the Internet age. It’s hard for me to even convince people to spend a year doing something. A four or five-year project to build a new operating system? Nope. Nowadays it’s hard to plan more than three months out without dedicating to shipping something. But if you want to do something great, that takes more than three months. So make sure you have a really good time schedule and you stick to it and you ship. You need to know what your milestones are, and the team needs to know what your milestones are. When I joined, the line was, “We’re gonna ship in one year!” And then it was another year and then another. It was a five-year project and it just kept getting bigger and bigger. We kept saying, “We forgot this! We gotta add that!” No, we have to ship. Great artists ship. Even if they’re not perfect, you gotta ship. That’s one of the biggest learnings. We might not have failed if we hadn’t taken so long. That was one big thing. The other one is, really understand what you’re trying to develop and how you’re going to market. Do that before or while you’re designing. When you’re designing that feature, what’s the tagline? You should have a list of features, but when you communicate with consumers or business owners, you can only tell them about three or four things. You better understand what those things are. That’s all you need to focus on. All the other stuff, no one’s ever going to get around to selling it. General Magic’s device had everything in it. It had mobile email. It had downloadable games and shopping and all kinds of different stuff. This was in 1994. We all understand what that is now, but then? It took four hours to explain to people! “That looks really cool. I don’t know if I need it.” And because it was 1994, there was one major thing that was missing, too, which was coming in 1995. We call it the Internet. Instead we had the whole proprietary network with AT&T. So when they finally launched the product, Netscape went public around the same time, and they didn’t talk to each other. We were the biggest concept IPO to date, and then the very next concept IPO after that? Netscape. Netscape took off and we just got buried. Above: Apple’s first iPhone VB: Turns out the Internet was a pretty good bet. So you got some learning out of General Magic, and then you went on to Philips. Tell us about what you did there and what you learned from a big company. Fadell: Just back then, it was 375,000 people at Philips. So how did this all happen? Philips was actually a licensee of the General Magic technology. I had been working with those teams to help build chips and possibly devices and all these other things with Philips. General Magic was an utter failure. I saw it happen. We shipped the device and no one cared. We thought, “Oh my God, we have to design some other device.” So I started designing a device I thought was the right thing. I showed it to Andy and Milton and Anna, and they said, “That’s really nice, but that’s not what we’re going to do right now. We have to do this other thing right now.” I thought, “Why? This is the thing!” I knew in my heart that we were going to fail here. So I went to go build a device, a General Magic-based device, and do it in the right way and convince General Magic that they had to support it. I went to the CEO of Philips and pitched him this idea. 25 years old. I had never done anything like this before. I was just an individual contributor, an engineer. I pitched him this thing and he said, “This is great! Now we’re going to hire you and I want you to build it.” So be careful what you wish for. The next 48 hours of my life, I was crumpled up in a corner thinking, “What did I just do?” But we came out with a critically successful device. It wasn’t a market success, not a business success, but the critics all loved it. It was a pocket computer with a keyboard and mobile email. It used Windows CE back in the day, because General Magic had failed by then, and it turned out pretty well for Philips. But again, you can build anything. Can you sell it? The sales teams, the marketing teams at Philips, we didn’t own those teams. They just wanted to sell TVs. It was nothing like a startup. But now where’s Philips today? It’s less than 40,000 people now. They’ve sold off everything. It’s a fraction of a company, and now they’re actually going to get rid of lighting, the whole reason for them being. They’ll be a 20,000-person company. Huge change. VB: Let’s move on to Apple. What took you from Philips to Apple? Fadell: I went to go and work for RealNetworks for six weeks. Then I said, “I hate this. I’m gonna start my own company.” It was the very beginning of digital imaging. This was in 1998. I was a DJ at the time. I hated carrying around all my CDs. I wanted to carry around one box with me that had all of my music on it. We were creating, at this startup company called Fuse, a CD ripper. You’d put a CD in it and then it would put it on a big hard drive. It looked like a stereo. We were building that. That was the initial thing. I wanted to build this cool music jukebox. Then the Internet crunch happened. The bottom fell out of everything. A hardware startup doing digital music? “I want software only! I don’t want hardware! Hardware’s over!” I went to 80 VCs, did 80 pitches, and got turned down 80 times. You have no idea how hard it was. Nobody was opening their wallets. They didn’t want anything to do with what we had. Ironically, when we couldn’t get any more money, I got a phone call from Apple saying, “Hey, come on in. We want to talk to you.” It turned out to be, we have iTunes, we’re making mix CDs, and these MP3 players out there are really bad. We think there’s a way to make an Apple version. Come on as a consultant for eight weeks, see what you can design, and we’ll see what we like. That was it. Above: Tony Fadell sold Nest to Google for $3.2 billion. VB: Eight weeks turned into … Fadell: Eight weeks turned into 10 years and 18 generations of iPods and three generations of iPhone. Apple was crazy. VB: When you go to launch the iPod, this was a moment in time when Apple was not quite failing, but a challenged company. Fadell: The company had $500 million in debt, $250 million in the bank, and less than one percent U.S. market share. There was nothing left to sell. VB: You’re there, Steve’s back, and Steve supported this. He had this idea to support a music player. At some level, any rational board would say, “Your company is about to die. You have tons of debt. You have no market share. And you’re going to come up with the 50th MP3 player in the world?” Any rational board would fire the CEO. It was a very unique time when a CEO could get away with doing absolutely ludicrous things by most standards. Fadell: It was crazy. I’d go around to other people in the company because I needed their help. Jack Williams, the COO, he was in one of the very first meetings I was in. I didn’t know who he was. I turned to him and said, “I need you to do this.” He said, “What is this?” “I’m making this music player!” No one believed it. People did not believe it. We’re fighting for our lives here. What are we doing with this little toy? That’s what it looked like. VB: No one else had had huge success. Fadell: The market was littered with junk. I almost didn’t take the job. We had the General Magic tale. We had the Philips tale. I turned to Steve and said, “We can build anything. Give it enough time and money. But how can you guarantee to me that you can sell and market it? Look at Sony. They own every audio category. How do we go up against that?” He said to me, “Look. You make it, and I guarantee I’ll use every marketing dollar I’ve got. I’ll starve the Mac to do it.” I said, “Okay, you do what you want.” He was really passionate about it. He was crazy. It wasn’t just me. I had to hire a team. I had to convince them to come to this dying company that might get shut down at any time. Most of the other people in the company didn’t believe in it. It was quite extraordinary. VB: How did you feel the week of launch? Fadell: It was interesting. I’ve been on the stand, because the lawsuits, the trials over the iPod, the infringement… You know you have a success because everyone sues you. That’s what always happens. I’m on the stand and this attorney comes up and says, “You knew this was going to be a success! You absolutely knew this was going to be successful!” I’m like, “No, I did not.” Look, dude, after a decade of failures, I was hoping it was successful, but I was tempered. I understood. I’d seen so much failure. I had no idea. At General Magic, we all inhaled our own exhaust. All the press were saying we were going to take down Microsoft. VB: Well, General Magic had a bit of the Google play. You had the great operating system and a great hardware design and you could license it to the entire world. How would you not be successful? Turns out to be the wrong place at the wrong time. Hardware wasn’t fast enough. No Internet. Everything. Fadell: Being a kid, being in my 20s, I believed all that. I knew it was going to be successful! Everyone said it was going to be successful! Then, with the iPod, I’m not breathing anything. I’m not listening to anything. I hope I’ll do a good job, but that’s it. VB: When did you finally wake up and realize it was a success? Fadell: It took two and a half years. Really. The first one was awesome. Every Mac owner bought it. But there weren’t many Mac owners! Then, flatline. This is where the arm-wrestling happened with Steve. I had a team making it compatible with the PC and Steve’s like, “OVER MY DEAD BODY! Never! We need to sell Macs! This is going to be why people buy Macs!” I said, “Steve, the iPod is $399. But really it’s not. Because you have to buy a Mac!” We had to give people a taste. We had this knock down, drag out battle. We’re all sitting around and saying, “Look, Steve, we need to get this on the PC. That’s where the biggest set of people are.” And even Bill Gates goes, “Why did you decide to put it on the PC?” Above: Tony Fadell initially joined Apple as a consultant for just eight weeks. VB: Who said it first? Because I have to imagine, if you say that when Steve’s in the room, a frying pan comes flying at you. Fadell: The way this normally works is, you have a little pre-meeting before the meeting with Steve. I’m gonna say this, then you say this, then you say that. Sometimes it works. That time, though, everyone got scared. We showed up and I’m like, “Who’s gonna take the first step?” Everyone’s shutting up. This time, though, I think it was Bill Schiller who said, “We gotta get this thing on the PC!” And I’m like, “Yeah, I’ll get the team working on it!” We let it sink in. This was like the fourth time it had come up, and he hadn’t wanted to hear it. But enough quarters had passed with nothing really happening. Like I say, it was a critical success, but not a business success. He finally said, “Okay. But under one condition. We’re going to build these and run it by Mossberg. And if Mossberg says it’s good enough to ship, then we’ll ship it.” He wanted to divorce himself from having to make the decision. But Walt said, “Not bad. I’d ship it.” That’s how we actually shipped on the PC. VB: What happened to sales after the PC? Straight up. Fadell: Straight up. And then what happened was Mac sales started taking off. People got a taste of Apple. It was good on a PC, but it was great on a Mac, so let’s go get a Mac. That was the drug, like people talk about the gaming drug. VB: I remember iTunes entering, because it was controversial for a computer company to do all these deals with the music labels. Then we had other crazy thing, because music was free at that point. You’d get it from Napster or whatever, steal it. This idea of charging 99 cents a song … Fadell: It was the convenience. People would pay for that. VB: So where did iTunes enter into this, both on Mac and PC, so that it all worked? Fadell: At the beginning, the reason why the iPod was needed — revisionist history, you know, everyone goes back and thinks there was a grand master plan at Apple. There was no master plan. We were living day to day. We started with iTunes, so you can rip CDs and make mix CDs. Then people want something more than a CD, something convenient to put their music on. Then they’re ripping CDs to get their music, so there has to be a better way. That was when digital downloads and then iTunes Music Store happened. It was this continuum of hit a wall, fix it, hit a wall, fix it. That’s how it all came together. VB: In the midst of that, somewhere along the line, you decided to take this concept, build more of an OS, add communication, and you have a phone. Fadell: It wasn’t that easy. VB: At that point a computer company building a phone was unheard of. Phones were from Nokia and Ericsson and other people. How did you get from a music player to a phone? Fadell: We had the music player doing video and audio and photo. We had iTunes. Then futurephones came out. They started playing MP3. This is a holy shit moment. Phones could steal everything we were doing. What could we do to counter this? The first idea was to do a deal with Motorola called the ROKR E1 and put music on a phone and see if we could get iTunes there. We tried to hold those guys at bay. It was a complete disaster. We knew we’d have to build our own phone. Everybody in the futurephone world was trying to crank out as many phones as they could every year. Samsung had a different model of phone every day. Each carrier had its own set of rules. It wasn’t about the consumer. It was about what you could sell to the carriers. The Motorola ROKR E1 was poorly designed. There was no way we could work with another company and get the right experience. We started out by making an iPod phone. It was an iPod with a phone module inside it. It looked like an iPod, but it had a phone, and you would select numbers through the same interface and so on. But if you wanted to dial a number it was like using a rotary dial. It sucked. We knew three months in that it wasn’t going to work. Steve said, “Keep trying!” We tried everything. We tried for seven or eight months to get that thing to work. Couldn’t do it. We added more buttons and it just became this gangly thing. That was the iPod phone. At the same time, we were trying to build a touchscreen Mac. We were also trying to do better video on an iPod. We had a real screen, but people didn’t like to watch videos on their iPod. So how can we get a really big screen, but not have the click wheel involved? Instantly, we knew we needed a virtual interface on top of a phone. We wanted to make this touch Mac, and we knew the iPod phone wouldn’t work, but we knew we needed to make a phone. Steve’s like, “Come over here!” I didn’t know about this at the time, but he showed me a ping-pong table that was the first multi-touch screen. It was a ping-pong-sized table. It had a projector of a Mac on top of it, and you could interact with it. He said, “We’re going to put that in an iPod!” “Steve, it’s the size of a ping-pong table!” In the end it was clear that we needed to build a phone, and we needed to build a touch screen company on top of it. That’s exactly what we did. We created a touch screen company to build the multi-touch display. Then we needed a better operating system, so we brought a bunch of pieces of the Mac, a bunch of pieces of the iPod, and bolted them together. That was the first version. Then we threw that away and made the second version of the iPhone. That was the one that shipped. It took two and a half to three years, depending on how you count it up, from the time we said we needed to do a phone to the time we actually shipped. I told you that three months is what people want. Good luck trying two and a half or three years and keeping people together at such intensity. People asked me why we didn’t just buy a cell phone company and use them to help build the phone. But we weren’t making a cell phone with a little bit of music technology. We were building a computer with a little bit of cell phone in it. We had to start with a handheld computer team and add a little bit of the cellular thinking. Not the other way around, which was the way all the cell phone companies were trying to do it. Above: Tony Fadell designed the first three versions of Apple’s iPhone VB: The iPhone launches. I’m sure you were wondering if anyone would buy a phone from Apple. It was a very big secret until it launched. When did you finally realize that was a success, a change-the-world success? Fadell: The second generation. The first one was a lot of learning. We had the wrong business model with carriers. We didn’t have apps yet. It was our first learning device. The second one was where it took off, because the carriers could subsidize it. We had the right carriers. We had apps. It was so powerful. The thing is, a lot of times … back in 2005, 2006, 2007, Blackberries were everywhere. At Apple, we didn’t use Blackberries. We didn’t have any mobile stuff. But as soon as we had the iPhone, you could see the entire company transform. Overnight. Everyone was using them. That was very different. They couldn’t put them down. That told us to invest more, invest more, do whatever it takes. VB: You saw that once you saw it among yourselves. Fadell: Oh yeah, we all saw it. VB: You waited a little bit and you started Nest. Tell us about that. Fadell: My wife and I, we had two young kids, and we took a year off and traveled around the world with them. We just wanted to spend time with them. We lived in these houses for two months or three months around the world, and we were building a house in Tahoe at the same time. I was encountering certain problems around building this green, connected house. I thought the world was going to change when your interface with the world was in your hands all the time. As we went from place to place, and I’m using email and designing this house online and everything else, I’m also seeing the same problems in all these homes. We were in Spain and France and Hawaii and here. All the homes had the same exact problems. They’re not green. The thermostats suck. The smoke detectors suck. Everybody had these problems. I thought they were just U.S. problems, but in fact they were everywhere. The volume of smartphones was taking off. The prices of components were dropping dramatically. We could start to use these components in all these different devices in the home. What’s the first and best one to do? It’s the thermostat. That’s where it hit me. I had been spending 10 years just trying to control the thermostat in our house in Lake Tahoe. I spent hours and hours cobbling these things together and they never worked. I finally decided to make one for me. I needed it to be green. It should turn off when you’re not home. It should be able to learn your preferences. That’s what happened. There was a need. VB: It seemed like an easy thing and it turned out to be a lot harder than you thought. Fadell: Way harder. Getting it to connect to 50-year-old furnaces … When you’re trying to get the thermostat to talk to all of this old equipment, there are no standards. There’s nothing. It’s ancient. Then to have it talk to the Internet and make it low power so you don’t have to run wires to it … all these are difficult problems. If I’d known then what I knew after it was done, I probably wouldn’t have done it. I said the same thing about smoke detectors. You have no idea how hard those are. Each time, ignorance is bliss. We didn’t know enough about the markets, but we got in. VB: What did you take away from the Nest experience so far? You had some great product successes and the company was acquired by Google. What did you learn? Fadell: That even the most unloved, most ignored, most despised thing in the world, you can reinvent it and make people love it. You can change the way people think about something by putting all your love and passion into it. Not just the product, but the marketing and everything else. This is what I learned from Steve. If you lead it and put your heart and soul into it, and you can sell it because you know every single bit of it, that will resonate with people, because you’re solving problems both for yourself and for a lot of other people who see the same thing. If you do that, you will be rewarded. You take a risk. You take that unloved thing and reinvent it. People will come, and they’ll follow you. It will build a movement if it’s done right. VB: Were there other people interested in buying the company at the time? Fadell: Yeah, there were others interested in buying, but a lot of others just wanted us to keep on going. It was designed that way. I designed it so we were running both tracks. You always want leverage. We wanted to have every option available to us. We wanted to make sure we made the right decision. Above: Tony Fadell and Kevin Surace at SV Forum VB: I know we can’t talk about specific projects you’re working on right now — one of the biggest things that was shown recently from several companies was VR and AR. The technology is coming along. We’re not as able to talk about content so much. But what is your vision of where that goes? Fadell: Truth be told, I started working on VR at the University of Michigan. I went to the very first cyber-posium in San Francisco in 1989, before General Magic. I’ve seen the wave of hype around VR twice already in my lifetime. To see it again … We’re just at the cusp now, the early Apple II days, or the early General Magic days for the iPhone — 10 years too soon. It’s going to happen. But there are so many tools, so many technologies, so many things that still need to get built. I’ve seen compelling use cases for AR and VR in industry, in virtual activities, in medical. I see a lot of it. I see a lot of consumer possibilities. But we’re still in the very early stages. Some people will tell you otherwise, but you see the prices of what’s going on with Oculus today. Everybody thinks that all of a sudden, it’ll take off. When the iPhone came out it was $700. Certain people could use it, but a lot of people couldn’t get access to it. Now, eight years later, everyone can have one. We’re in those stages with VR and AR today. It’s going to continue. We need to learn so many things. For me to tell you what I think it’s going to look like, I really don’t know. But I do see that there are tangible applications for it. I just don’t think the way we think of it today …There won’t be all these fun-and-games kinds of things. There’s a lot of real work that will accomplished with this – medical, manufacturing, construction. That will be more important than consumer applications, which is different from the way people are thinking about it now. VB: You worked for many different bosses, including Steve and Larry, two very different people. How would you describe their management styles? Fadell: Larry’s an incredible scientist and technologist. He respects product and is fascinated by product. Steve is an incredible marketer who loves product and wasn’t necessarily so involved in technology. They come from very different places. Larry has more of a research background — small teams thinking about things but not necessarily all the business concepts. Steve was all the marketing and all business. It’s very different. Not that either one’s bad or good, but they’re very different. I’m a product guy. I love technology, but I’m not a guy who’s going to sit in a lab and be a scientist. I love marketing, but marketing is not the only thing I do. I leave a lot to marketing experts. I sit in the middle. The style is very different, because one is about how far you can push the technology, thinking about 10 years out. The other is about the two things you really need to do and marketing them exactly right and getting them out the door to do great business. It’s two different ways of thinking and approaching a problem. VB: The Steve movie created a lot of controversy. Some people say that’s kind of him. Others say it’s not him at all. What are your thoughts? Fadell: I didn’t see the movie. I didn’t need to. I lived it. Steve was an amazing guy. He was a human. He had amazing talents, and he also had drawbacks. I would never change my working for him or my history at all. I don’t regret it in any way. What happens is, a lot of the negative stuff that comes across in books and movies and wherever else … What I’ve always found with Steve is that the people who talk negatively about the experience they had with him, it’s because either, one, they couldn’t keep up, or two, they didn’t bring their best to the table and he saw that, or three, they thought he was in the way. They thought they should be Steve, that they had the idea that they deserved more credit for. All the people who complain in the books, it’s usually one of those three reasons. The ones who saw the benefits of Steve, they’ll say, “He was a balanced person. He wasn’t always perfect. But he was an amazing genius at the same time.” His style was amazing for the right people around him. If you were not the right person, you got [not sure of the punch line here – 57:05]. Which you could have. It’s just sour grapes. VB: A lot of work is going on in AI and robotics now. A lot of people are afraid of AI and robotics. What are your thoughts? Fadell: We made robots every day at Nest. Our thermostats were robots. Everybody thinks of a robot as being this humanoid-looking thing like Boston Dynamics, which are fascinating. They’re wonderful. They’re really cool, like science fiction coming alive. But we have robots all around us. We just don’t call them that. I believe there’s so much we can do with computers as intelligent assistants. Everyone knows AI. Artificial intelligence. Human replacements. But then there’s IA, which is intelligent assistants. Augmenting humans and making us better with computers. I’m much more a believer in IA than AI. I’m not scared like some fearmongers are. The AI we have is really good at logic, but it’s horrible at emotions. It’s horrible at gut instincts. I have not seen a computer be creative like a human can be creative because it’s not about logic. It’s creativity. If you’ve never read the book by Dave O’Connor, Thinking Fast and Slow , it’ll teach you a lot about what we can and can’t do with AI and how we think every day. There are two systems in our brains that O’Connor talks about. We only know how to use one of those with a computer. We don’t know how to use the other. We have to use both of them to make the creative leaps that happen in our society. So yes, I think logical AI and IA assistants are going to help us get more in touch with our guts because we’ll be able to run more logical models that help us find the next global maximum instead of getting stuck. Above: Google Nest device VB: How did you recruit, motivate, and win the respect of people smarter than you? Assuming there are people smarter than you. Fadell: There are a lot of them! First and foremost, it’s that passion and vision. It’s being able to tap into that and communicate it to people, whether they’re a marketer or a technologist or a customer support person, or whoever they may be. You make sure they understand the mission. You’re going to do something that’s bigger than yourself. You’re going to do it together with these people. Here’s the reason why. It’s not about the latest game or social network. We’re going to save energy. We’re going to turn things around in the home with these kinds of things. You sell them based on that. Then you ask what they can bring to the table, how they can help. They see in that vision, through that vision, what they can bring to augment it and make it better. The more you communicate that vision, the more ideas you get from other people, and the more they’re going to believe in it. And not just believe in it, but own it. That’s another big difference between Steve and Larry. For Steve, most of the ideas, whether they were his or not, were his. It worked. But it didn’t always work. We didn’t really feel good sometimes. But the big thing is, when you give someone your mission and they have an idea, call it out. Say, “That’s an amazing idea! That’s awesome! We gotta do that!” The more you make people own that mission – not just assume the mission from someone else, but own the mission – the more you get done. VB: What’s the greatest lesson you learned from your biggest failure? Fadell: I mentioned the one from General Magic, which is setting a time limit. People need to see something. That’s one thing. The other big one is making sure that wherever you start, when you get to milestone break, either you ship it, or you learn so much that you know how you’re going to continue to a new direction off that. At Philips, one out of 10 products that was in design made it to market. Imagine what the teams were like. They’re getting assigned to a product, and they know there’s a 90 percent chance that product is going to get killed. No one was passionate. At Apple, 99 percent of everything that was started would ship. Now, with the iPhone it took two and a half versions to finally ship it, but you knew it was going to ship. That’s a very different thing in your culture. If people know it’s going to ship, they invest in it. If you have a culture where you kill stuff all the time, you won’t get the best out of your people, and the best people are going to walk. VB: How are you innovating around security? Fadell: We’re using all kinds of new hardware techniques, software techniques, all those kinds of things. I’m not saying we have a new technology. It’s just applying it appropriately and making sure we test it, making sure we have the right teams testing those things, and communicating what we do to the consumer so we can earn their trust. We’re not going to get it right 100 percent of the time. There’s no such thing as perfect. But it’s also knowing that you’re there to fix it immediately if something does happen. There was a big glibc thing that happened last week. We had fixed it. We found it and fixed it four weeks earlier before it hit the rest of the world. When it hit it was already done. It’s having that kind of diligence. That’s what people trust. Yes, there will be problems, but will you catch them and fix them and address them? We’ve applied all the best technology we can, applied the best processes, but nothing today is secure. Absolutely nothing. I don’t know how we’re going to get past it except for the fact that we have a team, and we fix things when problems arise. VB: Is it true that when you worked at the Country Club of Detroit, the caddymaster — I don’t know how someone knows this — told you that you couldn’t hit or find a golf ball to save your life and suggested you enter the foreign service? Fadell: Yeah. This story has to be from Jim over there. We went to the same high school and worked at the same country club. He was a tennis instructor and I was a caddy, much lower on the totem pole. But yes, I couldn’t hit a ball to save my life. VB: Should tech companies build automobiles? Fadell: Automobiles … Remember the analogy I just made about cell phones and the iPhone? It’s a computer with a phone in it. Guess what? Cars, especially self-driving cars, are increasingly computers with a bit of a motor to provide the battery. If anyone thinks that tech companies can’t do this, you’re crazy. The auto companies are really worried. In the ‘40s and ‘50s, that’s how Motorola got started. They were all about putting radios in cars. The car manufacturers wanted nothing to do with electronics. They wanted to outsource it. They just wanted to build carburetors and engines and wheels and brakes and style. The thing is, the technologies that become competitive differentiators aren’t going to have anything to do with sheet metal or drivetrain in the future. It’s all going to be about self-driving and those kinds of things. Tech companies can dramatically change the innovation tool sets that they have today. They’ve been outsourcing it for years. I don’t know how the auto companies are going to do what they think they’re going to do, because this is a new era of computers with wheels. VB: The electronic calculator was the end of the mechanical calculator. The mechanical calculator companies had absolutely no ability to compete, not any of the skill set. Do you see this being that kind of disruptive change? Fadell: Yeah. It’s that big. It’s that disruptive. If you look at the contents of a car, the building materials, the amount of sensors and computing and all those things, it’s going to fully go in that direction where 70 percent of what you build, outside of the batteries, is the computing infrastructure. The Ford board was just asking me the same question. [punch line drowned out by cough – 107:30] You could see the fear in their eyes. Oh boy. But yeah, should tech companies make and sell cars? Yeah, they should. And I’m from Detroit. I hope the car companies win out. Detroit is trying to come back up. Above: The Nest Protect smart smoke and carbon monoxide detector. VB: What leadership lessons, bringing people together, leading them to terrific products, would you leave to this audience today? Fadell: I talked about mission and getting people on the team. But it’s not just keeping people on the team. It’s keeping them engaged and moving ahead all the time. The other one is, I’m from the old school of leadership, which is to lead by doing. Be involved. A lot of people tend to say, “Let the team figure it out!” I think that even though that seems appealing, most of the younger people who really want to learn, they want to learn. They want to be mentored. You need to be there to mentor them and go through these things. They can’t just be learning by themselves. They need leadership. They need mentoring. I try to bring a lot of young people onto a team, but also to invest in them. Now, some of them walk out the door because they don’t have a lot of commitment to you. It’s a little different now with the Tinder generation. But there are a lot of people coming from other countries, from other perspectives, they’re just happy to be there. They want to be mentored. They want to learn. Those are the ones that we invest in. We give them a lot of leadership courses. We have them be part of the design phase, part of the design sessions, even though they might be an individual contributor on this part, to make sure they can learn about all these different things and make them multidisciplinary. If they have a mission and they’re growing themselves and they’re doing something really positive that they can invest in, that’s when the relationship builds with that person. Not just with that company, but the company after that. These people are going to be the next leaders of the Silicon Valley. Hold people to high standards, but invest in them. VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Discover our Briefings. VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"Tim Cook is surprisingly confident about the promise of augmented reality | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2016/07/26/apple-augmented-reality"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Tim Cook is surprisingly confident about the promise of augmented reality Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Apple chief executive Tim Cook. Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship. Learn more. Today, on Apple’s quarterly earnings call with financial analysts, Apple CEO Tim Cook spent some time talking up augmented reality (AR). Apple doesn’t have any existing hardware or software for that technology at the moment, so it was surprising to hear Cook talk about the subject. He brought it up in the context of the Pokémon Go mobile game (or, as he called it, “ PokéMan “), in response to a question about the business value of Apple Pay. In case you’ve been living under a giant Charmander, and you haven’t had the pleasure of playing it, Pokémon Go is different from many mobile games because it superimposes Pokémon creatures on top of whatever is in front of you, using the camera on your mobile device. So it looks like the characters exist in real life, and you have to catch them. This is an implementation of AR, and you can approve mobile payments for things like PokéCoins with Apple Pay. “In terms of AR and the Pokémon phenomenon, it’s incredible what has happened there,” Cook said. I think it’s a testament to what happens with innovative apps and the whole ecosystem, and the power of a developer being able to press a button, so to speak, and offer their product around the world. And this certain developer has elected not to go worldwide yet because of the pressure on their servers, etc., because of the demand. But I am sure that they will over time.” He continued: “It also does show, as you point out, that AR can be really great, and we’re — we have been and continue to invest a lot in this. We are high on AR for the long run. We think there’s great things for customers and a great commercial opportunity, and so we’re investing. And the No. 1 thing is to make sure our products work well with other developers’ kinds of products, like Pokémon, and so that’s the reason you see so many iPhones out in the wild right now, chasing Pokémons.” Event GamesBeat at the Game Awards We invite you to join us in LA for GamesBeat at the Game Awards event this December 7. Reserve your spot now as space is limited! He went on to address a question about whether computing will shift to AR in the long term. “I know there’s people that want to call it a new computer platform, and we’ll see,” Cook said. “I think there’s a tendency in this industry to call everything new the next computer platform. However, that said, I think AR can be huge. So we’ll see whether it’s the next platform, but, regardless, it will be huge.” While that’s sufficiently generic and applicable across the technology industry, it’s also a statement that suggests Apple won’t be sitting out the AR trend. And that makes sense, given what Apple’s competitors have done — Microsoft with the HoloLens headset and Google with the Tango platform, which was recently deployed in Lenovo’s Phab2 Pro phablet. Sure enough, Apple has been spending more money on research and development (R&D). As my colleague Chris O’Brien pointed out on Twitter today, Apple spent 27.8 percent more on R&D in the first nine months of its 2016 fiscal year than it did during the same period in the 2015 fiscal year. “There’s quite a bit of investment in there for products and services that are not currently shipping, or derivations of what is currently shipping,” Cook told analysts today. That broad statement could be referring to the much-hyped but never confirmed Apple car project, but it could also speak for some sort of AR technology. What’s more, Apple has made acquisitions in the field of AR: Last year there was Metaio , and this year, Flyby Media. The Financial Times , in breaking the news about the Flyby deal, also reported that Apple has hundreds of people working on virtual reality (VR). Today’s remarks do not guarantee that Apple will unveil any AR functionality. But now we have proof from the top person at Apple that the company is spending money on it. GamesBeat's creed when covering the game industry is "where passion meets business." What does this mean? We want to tell you how the news matters to you -- not just as a decision-maker at a game studio, but also as a fan of games. Whether you read our articles, listen to our podcasts, or watch our videos, GamesBeat will help you learn about the industry and enjoy engaging with it. Discover our Briefings. The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"Apple announces Watch Series 2: 'swim-proof' with GPS and brighter display | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2016/09/07/apple-announces-watch-series-2-swim-proof-with-gps-and-brighter-display"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Apple announces Watch Series 2: ‘swim-proof’ with GPS and brighter display Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn The Apple Watch Series 2. Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship. Learn more. At a press event in San Francisco today, Apple unveiled the second generation of its Apple Watch wearable device. The Apple Watch Series 2, as Apple calls it, is “swim-proof,” rather than splash proof, as the first Apple Watch was. The new model is water-resistant for up to 50 meters. Many parts of the hardware have been updated to make this possible; the speaker pushes out any water that gets into its grille, Apple chief operating officer Jeff Williams said. The new version features the brightest display Apple has ever released, with 1,000 nits, Williams said. It’s powered by a new dual-core S2 system-on-a-package and a new graphics processing unit (GPU) with graphics performance that’s twice as good as what you could get on the original Apple Watch. It also features built-in GPS, Williams said. That way, when you go on a workout with your Watch Series 2 but without your iPhone handy, the Watch will remember your route and report it back to Apple’s Health app once it’s connected again. Above: Apple Watch Series 2. The Apple Watch 2 will still require you to pair it with an iPhone. But the new version includes new components that helps it become a little less reliable on a secondary device. The changes aren’t major surprises given the rumors about them that emerged last month. The new version will run watchOS 3, which Apple first announced in June. The launch of watchOS 3 was a substantial revision of the core experience of using the Apple Watch, but today marks the first time Apple is giving the hardware itself another shot. Apple first announced the original model two years ago. The new watch will features cases made of aluminum, stainless steel, and a new ceramic option. New bands will be available as well, as a result of Apple’s existing partnership with Hermès. There will also be an Apple Watch Nike+ version with an aluminum case, four sporty new bands, and custom software that invites you to run and gives you notifications about how you’re doing relative to friends. The Apple Watch Series 2 and the Nike+ version will sell for $369. The Nike bands will not be available for sale independently. The Series 2 will require an iPhone 5 or something newer running iOS 10 or a newer operating system. Apple has also revamped the original Apple Watch and will call it the Apple Watch Series 1. It now features the same dual-core chip and GPU as the new version and will cost $269. Preorders begin on September 9. The new watchOS 3 operating system will be available on September 13. And the watches go on sale on September 16. VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Discover our Briefings. The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"Apple AirPods still delayed because of technical problems, may not be ready as holiday gifts | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2016/12/10/apple-airpods-still-delayed-because-of-technical-problems-may-not-be-ready-as-holiday-gifts"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Apple AirPods still delayed because of technical problems, may not be ready as holiday gifts Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Apple AirPods and iPhone 7 Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship. Learn more. It looks like Apple’s wireless earphones won’t be ready for the holiday season. The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that the technology giant continues to delay the availability of its AirPods, which were announced in September with great fanfare as a companion to the new iPhone 7. The newspaper, citing an unnamed source, reported that the delay is being caused by technology problems with how the earpieces receive wireless signals via Bluetooth. Apple blogger John Gruber wrote in response to the Journal ’s report that his prototype AirPods seems to be working fine and that he doubts the Journal ’s report that faulty wireless technology is causing the delay. Instead, Gruber speculated that a manufacturing error is to blame. Regardless of the reason for the delay, Apple’s AirPods don’t appear to be ready to ship to customers anytime soon, making them doubtful for holiday gifts. Apple first announced its upcoming AirPods at its iPhone 7 unveiling as a replacement for conventional earphones that require a headphone jack. For the iPhone 7, Apple removed the headphone jack. However, consumers can still use tethered earphones, but they must use a dongle to connect them via Apple’s Lighting port. The original plan was to ship the AirPods in October, but Apple decided to delay the earphones that month without giving a reason. A spokesperson told technology news site CNET in October that Apple needed “a little more time” to get the AirPods ready for shipping without elaborating. Fortune contacted Apple and will update this story if it responds. This story originally appeared on Fortune.com. Copyright 2016 VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Discover our Briefings. VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"You can now preorder Apple's AirPods (and start worrying about losing them) | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2016/12/13/you-can-now-preorder-apples-airpods-and-start-worrying-about-losing-them"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages You can now preorder Apple’s AirPods (and start worrying about losing them) Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Apple AirPods and iPhone 7 Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship. Learn more. First they were launching in October. Then they were delayed. And then it looked like Apple might not release them at all this year. But now they’re here, sort of: Apple’s Airpods are finally available for preorder. At the time of writing, Apple’s site said the wireless headphones will ship to customers on December 29, just in time to miss Christmas. You can buy the earbuds the entire world is terrified about losing right here. The cause for delay, according to the Wall Street Journal , was due to Bluetooth connectivity problems — making Apple’s “ magical ” new earbuds sound … a lot like any old pair of wireless headphones. Apple watcher John Gruber questioned the report, suggesting instead that the company has possibly “run into a manufacturing problem.” Update 7:41 am. PT: Now the ship time reads “4 weeks.” VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Discover our Briefings. The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"Apple's AirPods are a no-brainer -- if you have the latest iPhone | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2017/01/19/airpods-review"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Review Apple’s AirPods are a no-brainer — if you have the latest iPhone Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn AirPods with iPhone 7 Plus. Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship. Learn more. When Apple introduced the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus in September, it presented consumers with a sort of problem: most headphones and earphones wouldn’t work with these smartphones, because they don’t have a headphone jack. (“Courage”!) But at the same event Apple proposed a solution: new wireless headphones and earphones, including AirPods , a wireless version of the classic white EarPods. In addition to letting you make phone calls and listen to music, AirPods give you a new way to access Apple’s Siri virtual assistant: Just tap one of the earbuds twice. I, for one, look goofy in them. My girlfriend thinks they’re a fashion faux pas. And I suspect that some people do a double-take when they see me wearing them on the streets of San Francisco, thinking, “Wait, something’s off, where are the wires…?” VB Event The AI Impact Tour Connect with the enterprise AI community at VentureBeat’s AI Impact Tour coming to a city near you! Above: AirPods in case and the box that pops up when the case is nearby to show remaining battery life. But their wirelessness makes life easier in some ways. When you’re working on your desktop, you can just stand up without worrying about unplugging. When you’re walking, you can go upstairs without worrying about messing up the cable that’s plugged into your phone. And your hands have one less thing in which to get tangled. You can keep listening as you put on a shirt or take it off. Are AirPods perfect? No, no. When I use my AirPods I keep a backup pair of wired EarPods nearby. You know why? AirPods eventually run out of battery life. It’s sort of like my comfy old noise-canceling Bose headphones — except AirPods don’t last as long. Still, it’s a cool product. I love pushing open the charging case with my thumb, and I love the popping sound it makes when I close it. The stubby little case reminds me of the oldest iPhones and iPods — and I mean that in a good way. And gosh, they’re comfortable — I can wear them for more than four hours straight. But your mileage may vary here, just like with other headphones and earphones. No two ears are alike. They’re louder than many headphones I’ve used, and the sound quality is good enough. AirPods typically last five hours, as advertised. But they can survive a lot longer if you don’t mind slipping them into their charging case when the internal batteries run out. (You’ll know when one of them stops working after making a few sad-sounding beeps.) I got up to 20 hours of usage after recharging them again and again using the case. (Apple promises up to 24 hours.) But I do have my gripes with the AirPods. While the pairing experience on the iPhone and the Mac is very good, it’s less reliable and functional, and more like a pair of regular Bluetooth headphones, on Android and Windows. There’s no way to see how much battery life is left on those operating systems, and you don’t have Siri. I’ve run into occasional pairing issues on Android Nougat or Windows 10 — the Bluetooth settings will say the AirPods are connected, but sometimes music won’t play. It can be frustrating. Above: AirPods in air. When Siri is available, you can tell it to do certain things, which is good, but the delay for pausing or adjusting the volume is too long for me. I’d like to see Apple come up with a new way to do those things, just like on its traditional EarPods and other wired headphones. Also, Siri needs to take a hint from Amazon’s Alexa and start relying less on a paired display in order to provide a truly voice-first experience. And although I like that music stops playing when you pull an AirPod out of your ear, I don’t like that this feature won’t work when the AirPods are paired to an Android device. Clearly iOS — and specifically the iPhone — is the optimal platform for AirPods. At the bottom of the AirPod case is a Lightning port for charging. I wish a USB-C port would be there instead, in line with Apple’s latest MacBooks. Here again you see proof that AirPods are iOS-first. At least they are now. I hope Apple improves the experience on other platforms, but judging by how Apple Music works on other platforms, I don’t think that’s likely. Ultimately, if you think you want a pair of AirPods, you have one decision to make: Are you ready to set aside your wired headphones that work just fine? If you have an iPhone 7, you may well find its missing headphone jack infuriating. If that’s the case, AirPods are worth trying, or even a no-brainer. If you have an older iPhone, AirPods aren’t nearly as necessary, but you may still want them because of the great pairing experience, and Siri. If you have an Android phone with or without a headphone jack, AirPods aren’t the best way to go wireless. At $159, they’re not cheap. Plus they may make you look goofy, no matter what phone you use. Nevertheless, some people will be keen to buy them just because they’re the latest product Apple has come out with since the Watch in 2015. For me personally, until Siri is smarter and the batteries last longer, I can’t help but think of the old saying, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” I’m sticking with EarPods. VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Discover our Briefings. The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"Discord gets its own Early Access program for unfinished games | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2018/11/15/discord-gets-its-own-early-access-program-for-unfinished-games"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Discord gets its own Early Access program for unfinished games Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn No More Robots will publish Descenders from Rage Squid. Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship. Learn more. The Early Access concept is coming to Discord. After launching its game store and subscription service in October , the communications platform is expanding with even more ways for developers to connect with fans. With its Early Access portal, Discord is now selling unfinished games and then enabling studios to quickly get feedback on those products. Discord Early Access is getting a handful of games today. The excellent downhill bicycling game Descenders is one of the headliners of this new service. But it is also getting games like Parkasaurus, Kynseed, Visage, and Mad Machines. “As players ourselves, we’re stoked at the chance to provide feedback and shape the game experiences we love,” reads a Discord blog post. “Chatting directly with devs in their verified servers and helping guide the game towards what we want to play is, well, sick. This is why we’re launching Discord Early Access. Now, devs can release their games as early access and players like you can support them during their development. Help create some awesome game experiences.” An ideal fit for Early Access Early Access is a concept that came into popularity with Minecraft. In 2009, developer Mojang released an unfinished version of that game that people could buy to help fund development. It would eventually hit its “finished” 1.0 version in 2011. Following that success, Valve — the company that owns and operates PC-gaming platform Steam — embraced that business model. Early Access on Steam is now a thriving ecosystem. It’s a place for studios to bring in revenue and gauge player excitement during the first steps of their process. And it has launched hugely successful games like PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. Event GamesBeat at the Game Awards We invite you to join us in LA for GamesBeat at the Game Awards event this December 7. Reserve your spot now as space is limited! But Discord could have an even bigger impact on Early Access. Many people are already using this platform’s chat and voice features to communication with developers, and now Discord wants to bring all of that into a unified experience. That’s something that developers, like Descenders studio No More Robots, are happy about. “Without opportunities like Early Access, we would not have made Descenders,” No More Robots founder Mike Rose said. “By specifically joining Discord’s curated Early Access program, we now have a way to connect where our community lives and where they buy our games. It’s easier for players to find the games or find us or both — which is exactly what we need.” Finally, Discord is going to work to bring various Early Access developers together so that they can share feedback and best practices with one another. GamesBeat's creed when covering the game industry is "where passion meets business." What does this mean? We want to tell you how the news matters to you -- not just as a decision-maker at a game studio, but also as a fan of games. Whether you read our articles, listen to our podcasts, or watch our videos, GamesBeat will help you learn about the industry and enjoy engaging with it. Discover our Briefings. Join the GamesBeat community! Enjoy access to special events, private newsletters and more. VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"Apple reveals ARKit 3 with RealityKit and Reality Composer | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2019/06/03/apple-reveals-arkit-3-with-realitykit"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Apple reveals ARKit 3 with RealityKit and Reality Composer Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship. Learn more. Apple has used the last two WWDCs as opportunities to show off its latest and greatest augmented reality innovations, the ARKit and ARKit 2.0 software development kits for iOS, along with annual hands-on demos. This year, it’s unsurprisingly showing off new augmented reality initiatives including ARKit 3, RealityKit, and Reality Composer, a collection of tools to make AR development easier. ARKit 3 adds support for two major features: automatic real-time occlusion of people viewed by the host device’s camera, and real-time motion capture with the camera. Face tracking now supports up to three people at a time when viewed by the front-facing TrueDepth cameras on iPhone X/XR/XS devices and iPad Pros, and developers can simultaneously access both face and world tracking on the front and back cameras at once. Live collaborative sessions are supported between multiple people, using a shared world map. RealityKit is a high-level framework to enable developers to easily blend virtual objects with real world environments, automatically scaled to perform properly on multiple Apple devices, and handle the networking demands of shared AR experiences. It supports photorealistic rendering, new environmental and camera effects, and additional animation, physics, and audio effects. It natively integrates with ARKit, and has a Swift API. Event GamesBeat at the Game Awards We invite you to join us in LA for GamesBeat at the Game Awards event this December 7. Reserve your spot now as space is limited! Reality Composer lets developers build interactive scenes with full AR support, and includes hundreds of virtual objects, with the ability to import and customize USDZ files. Virtual objects within scenes can be animated and made responsive to taps, proximity, and other triggers. Developers will be able to run Reality Composer both in XCode and as an iOS app. Additionally, Mojang representatives came up on stage to demonstrate Minecraft Earth, an AR-augmented version of Minecraft that looks much like HoloLens demonstrations Microsoft offered several years ago. It’s effectively Minecraft on a surface of your choice, such as a large table, with the ability to interact somewhat with people. Minecraft Earth is apparently coming this summer, which would be ahead of the expected release date for ARKit 3, RealityKit, and Reality Composer. Join the GamesBeat community! Enjoy access to special events, private newsletters and more. VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"Apple Stores add augmented reality [AR]T installations and lessons | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2019/07/30/apple-stores-add-augmented-reality-art-installations-and-lessons"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Apple Stores add augmented reality [AR]T installations and lessons Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship. Learn more. After having largely focused on convincing developers to create augmented reality apps for iOS devices , Apple today announced it’s bringing art-based AR into Apple Stores across the world. This effort will include city-specific [AR]T Walks, a globally available [AR]T installation, and educational sessions called [AR]T Lab. Developed in conjunction with New York City’s New Museum, all of the experiences will be free for visitors. The [AR]T Walks bring participants through augmented parts of the cities of San Francisco, New York, London, Paris, Hong Kong, and Tokyo, where individual artists have used AR to bring their chosen past themes into public spaces. For instance, one artist has placed an experience in London’s Trafalgar Square, while another has done so in a specific plaza within New York’s Central Park. Each experience differs, with some offering light interactivity and others simply overlaying graphics atop the scenery. The [AR]T installation, Nick Cave’s Amass, will be viewable in any Apple Store using a new [AR]T Viewer in the Apple Store app. Through the screen of an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, viewers will be asked to collect glowing, floating icons, described as “Ikon Elements,” to help create a “universe of positive energy right in the middle of an Apple Store.” Last, but not least, [AR]T Lab is a 90-minute educational session codeveloped by New Museum’s Sarah Rothberg, enabling participants to learn about using the iPad app Swift Playgrounds to create AR experiences. [AR]T Lab lets attendees go hands-on with “whimsical objects and immersive sounds,” such as those in the image above. Event GamesBeat at the Game Awards We invite you to join us in LA for GamesBeat at the Game Awards event this December 7. Reserve your spot now as space is limited! In addition to adding AR software development kits to iOS, Apple has reportedly been working on its own AR headset , though the project was recently reported to have been cancelled. It’s still unclear whether that claim is accurate, but for the time being, Apple’s only way to experience AR is through iOS device screens. The [AR]T experiences begin on August 10. If you’re interested in signing up for a session, you can do so from this Apple page. VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Discover our Briefings. Join the GamesBeat community! Enjoy access to special events, private newsletters and more. VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"Apple lists AR/VR jobs, reportedly taps executive who finalizes products | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2019/08/01/apple-lists-ar-vr-jobs-reportedly-taps-executive-who-finalizes-products"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Apple lists AR/VR jobs, reportedly taps executive who finalizes products Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Apple’s work on augmented reality glasses appears to be shifting into a new phase this week, as a series of recent job postings and a reported leadership change suggest the company is actively working to bring a new AR/VR platform to market. Many of the new jobs have opened up over the last week, with a key product manager position appearing on Apple’s hiring site today. On the hiring front, Apple has recently posted (via RoadtoVR ) a large collection of new job openings calling specifically for AR and VR expertise, ranging from graphics, system UI, system frameworks, and software engineers to an AR/VR demo evangelist and the aforementioned product manager position. Collectively, the listings point to a wide range of needs at Apple — enough people to code and demonstrate the fundamentals of a new AR/VR platform, rather than just some basic apps — assuming, of course, that the new positions aren’t just duplicating those held by existing Apple employees. The postings are notably within Apple’s Technology Development Group, an ambiguously named part of the company that has reportedly been working on augmented reality glasses, as well as a new operating system dubbed rOS. Interestingly, however, the job descriptions tend to refer to “AR/VR” rather than AR or VR alone, suggesting Apple may have decided to make one headset with both capabilities rather than focusing solely on AR. While there’s been plenty of speculation about Apple’s progress in the mixed reality space, the company has offered no concrete assurances beyond hints that it will move beyond the capabilities of ARKit, its iOS augmented reality software toolkit. The company has prodded developers to begin working on iPhone- and iPad-dependent AR apps, seemingly with modest success despite continued efforts. Event GamesBeat at the Game Awards We invite you to join us in LA for GamesBeat at the Game Awards event this December 7. Reserve your spot now as space is limited! However, a separate report from the Information yesterday suggested Apple has moved a particularly disciplined, demanding program management executive named Kim Vorrath into a leadership role with the augmented reality team. Vorrath’s name first surfaced years ago in a profile establishing her role as a finalizer of products — someone who corrals developers to meet internal deadlines and actually ship releases of iOS and macOS on time. Now, the report claims, Apple hopes she will bring “some order to the team developing a long-anticipated AR headset,” which might or might not be able to meet a previously suggested 2020 shipping timeline based on current progress. Apple has also hired Nat Brown , a Valve VR team member and cocreator of Microsoft’s original Xbox, to a position that will focus “on all applications of graphics” across Apple platforms. It’s unclear whether Brown will continue to work on VR at Apple or have a more broad portfolio within the company, but a series of post-hire tweets suggested he loves working on “platform ecosystems and systems engineering,” bringing third-party developers to work on and improve hardware platforms, and is particularly interested in how “games and AR/VR push systems really, really hard.” Last month, a questionable supply chain report suggested Apple had cancelled its AR headset project and disbanded the development team in May, following the early 2019 departure of former HoloLens creator Avi Bar-Zeev from the company. The project was first publicized by Bloomberg in 2017, at the time suggesting Apple hoped to ship the headset in 2020. VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Discover our Briefings. Join the GamesBeat community! Enjoy access to special events, private newsletters and more. VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"Snapchat boosts Lens Studio with new Landmarkers, templates, and guides | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2019/08/27/snapchat-boosts-lens-studio-with-new-landmarkers-templates-and-guides"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Snapchat boosts Lens Studio with new Landmarkers, templates, and guides Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn The new version of Lens Studio includes 16 more Landmarker locations. Are you ready to bring more awareness to your brand? Consider becoming a sponsor for The AI Impact Tour. Learn more about the opportunities here. While the Snapchat mobile app is Snap’s most popular offering, its desktop app Lens Studio lets users easily create augmented reality lenses that can be applied on the go. Today, Lens Studio is adding a collection of new features designed to appeal to a wider range of creators — inexperienced newbies and pro 3D modelers alike — including Landmarker template support for 14 new real-world locations, six new facial templates, and an interactive tour for first-time app users. As true AR goes, the new Landmarker templates are perhaps the most compelling. They provide creators with examples of how real-world locations can be augmented with digital content such as persistent decorations and special effects; the assets can be customized for current locations or adapted for use at other places. And as shown in the screenshot above, regular Snapchat users will be able to see the Landmarkers live starting today, if they’re lucky enough to be in one of 11 countries: Czech Republic, at Prague’s Astronomical Clock Egypt, at the Great Sphinx of Giza France, at Paris’ Arc de Triomphe Germany, at Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate or Munich’s Neues Rathaus India, at Agra’s Taj Mahal or Mumbai’s Gateway of India Italy, at the Leaning Tower of Pisa Mexico, at Chichen Itza’s El Castillo Saudi Arabia, at Mada’in Saleh’s Qasr Al-Farid Turkey, at Istanbul’s Galata Tower United Kingdom, at London’s National History Museum or Tower Bridge, and United States, at the Statue of Liberty Snap has also added six new facial Lens templates to the existing collection of 40 options. Face In Video adds a live face onto a video, Portrait Particles produces customized particle effects that appear behind a live head, and Countdown creates a timer to celebrate a given date with 3D hats and glasses. Additionally, a Skeletal frame tracker adds 2D images to heads, necks, shoulders, elbows, and hands, while Hair Color automatically recolors the user’s hair and an AR Make-Up feature adds lipstick, blush, eyeshadow, and other effects. Beyond making fun AR effects for users to play with, it’s been clear for some time that Snap is actively working to deepen its footprint in the AR creative and marketing spaces. The company saw success last year with musician-focused AR lenses , and later worked to broaden brands’ access to people with experience crafting Snapchat AR content. Over 500,000 Lenses have been developed since Lens Studio launched in late 2017. Event GamesBeat at the Game Awards We invite you to join us in LA for GamesBeat at the Game Awards event this December 7. Reserve your spot now as space is limited! The last new additions to Lens Studio attempt to make it easier for companies and marketing firms to dip their toes into the shallow end of the AR pool. Snap is adding an interactive step-by-step tour of the app that can be used on first load, helping first-time creators to understand how to get started. Additional interface tweaks spotlight new features and templates alongside particularly noteworthy Lenses that were previously released. Snap’s new version of Lens Studio is available for free download today. It works on machines running Windows 10 and macOS 10.11 or later. VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Discover our Briefings. The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"iOS 13 reveals iPhone-tethered Apple AR glasses with a controller | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2019/09/11/ios-13-reveals-iphone-tethered-apple-ar-glasses-with-a-controller"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Analysis iOS 13 reveals iPhone-tethered Apple AR glasses with a controller Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Nreal's Light glasses are likely to be similar in some key ways to Apple's AR glasses. Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship. Learn more. Regardless of whatever other augmented reality hardware solutions Apple might have been working on, the company’s immediate path forward appears to be iPhone-dependent AR glasses with a handheld controller, rather than a standalone platform. That’s the biggest surprise developers Steve Troughton-Smith and Guilherme Rambo have discovered in newly released versions of iOS 13 and XCode 11, which now show clear evidence of a stereo augmented reality feature called StarBoard — a necessary software prelude to the release of compatible hardware. As of now, StarBoard looks similar to iOS’s CarPlay feature, which uses an iPhone to generate the graphics for a car’s external touch display. Unlike CarPlay, which outputs a single image for the 2D dashboard display, StarBoard appears to be focused on outputting two images for a 3D stereoscopic headset, which would be paired with a new touch-based controller for AR navigation. Code suggests that your hand will grasp something akin to a Siri Remote or Oculus Go controller , combining a touch surface and motion controls with a trigger and a Home button. While it appears that Apple will have developers create objects and environments within its existing ARKit software environment, there are references in Apple’s code to Holokit, Garta, Franc, and Luck, which appear to be new AR software and hardware currently undergoing internal testing at the company. Troughton-Smith speculates that Apple might be priming a third-party accessory program to bring compatible glasses into the marketplace with its own offering as a “halo” product. Above: Apple appears to be supporting an AR controller similar to the one included with Facebook’s Oculus Go. From a distance, Apple’s approach appears to be similar but not identical to Qualcomm’s XR Smart Viewer initiative, which will use Snapdragon 855-powered smartphones to process data and visuals for lightweight, screen-laden glasses. Qualcomm’s program was announced in February , shortly after Nreal demonstrated a 3-ounce pair of glasses called Light at CES that use a prior-generation Snapdragon 845 processor. Event GamesBeat at the Game Awards We invite you to join us in LA for GamesBeat at the Game Awards event this December 7. Reserve your spot now as space is limited! Priced at $500 , Nreal Light occupies a 52-degree field of view with a bright, colorful 1080p resolution display that appears to make digital objects float plausibly in your field of view. Twin cameras and SLAM technology help an inside-out tracking system display the objects within real-world spaces, correctly adjusting their position and perspective as you move around them. Further advancements in graphics chips and display resolution will soon enable rendering of even more complex objects, likely approaching photorealism. Two big challenges for Apple will be offering the accessory with both a form factor and a price that will resonate with consumers, rather than just enterprise users. Microsoft and Magic Leap have both released multi-thousand-dollar AR headsets that demand significant computing power, which Microsoft anchors on your head and Magic Leap tethers to your waist , using a cable, like Nreal Light. For numerous reasons, neither platform has taken off with mainstream audiences. It remains to be seen whether Apple will be able to stream data wirelessly to the headset while offering enough battery power to make it usable for hours at a time. New iPhone 11 and iPhone 11 Pro models notably include both Wi-Fi 6 and an ultra-wideband wireless chip called U1, which could enable the company to steer fairly high-bandwidth wireless transmissions from iPhone to headset rather than relying on a cable. Software will also be an issue, though a decision to rely on iPhones as the initial foundation for an AR headset could be canny. Apple could rely on developers to code iOS apps that will initially depend on iPhones, then spin off into apps that run directly on a more powerful future headset or over 5G from cloud servers. The company was originally said to be working on a custom variant of iOS called “rOS” for its wearable AR devices , which could emerge in the future as 5-nanometer chip manufacturing shrinks its A- or S-series processors down to glasses frame sizes. Apple’s reveal timing for its headset remains unclear. A report earlier this year suggested that it had killed the headset project , while another claimed that it was mobilizing internal resources to finalize the project — possibly a sign that a more ambitious standalone device was shelved in favor of a more practical and shippable tethered one. VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Discover our Briefings. The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"Apple delaying AR glasses until 2022 would be bad for XR, but no shock | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2019/11/11/apple-delaying-ar-glasses-until-2022-would-be-bad-for-xr-but-no-shock"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Opinion Apple delaying AR glasses until 2022 would be bad for XR, but no shock Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship. Learn more. Years ago, an Apple loyalist claimed the company was being unfairly criticized for delaying products that had been widely reported to be on the cusp of release, arguing that Apple couldn’t have pushed back products it hadn’t formally announced. The faulty premise was that an Apple product only exists after it debuts in a keynote or press release, so anything before that is merely rumor and speculation. Judged by that standard, Apple isn’t pushing back augmented reality hardware since it hasn’t formally revealed it. So if you believe The Information’s report today that Apple is currently planning 2022-2023 releases for its first AR devices, that wouldn’t be a two or three year delay from the 2020 timetable first reported by Bloomberg in 2017 — it’s merely a revision of Apple’s internal timetables, which were never intended to become public. Call it whatever you want, but today’s report isn’t good news for the mixed reality community. It’s also not a huge surprise given either Apple’s track record or AR’s continued struggles to evolve from pipe dream to mainstream. Hardware development takes time, especially for a detail-obsessed company such as Apple. Contrary to hype at the time, the iPad didn’t emerge miraculously finished from the heavens; Apple famously redirected its early iPad development efforts into the iPhone before circling back years later to create a tablet. But having a sense of what was coming before it actually happened was important to both customers and third-party developers: The iPad hit the ground running with apps and games because coders were able to prototype software on the iPhone and iPod touch. Event GamesBeat at the Game Awards We invite you to join us in LA for GamesBeat at the Game Awards event this December 7. Reserve your spot now as space is limited! Augmented reality is an even bigger risk for developers because it requires a human paradigm shift that has only barely started to happen. The expectation is that people will eventually wear glasses to add digital layers on top of (and between) real-world environments, objects, and people; Apple supposedly sees AR glasses replacing iPhones a decade from now. Despite their best efforts, however, Google , Magic Leap , Microsoft , and smaller AR headset makers such as Vuzix have had only modest success in selling AR hardware, and then almost exclusively to enterprise customers. Everyone’s looking to Apple or a smart, well-funded rival to come up with AR glasses people will actually wear in public. A likely candidate, Facebook , has declared itself years away from having all-day wearable AR glasses ready. Over the past two years, there have been plenty of confirmed stories about Apple hiring AR platform experts, engineers, and marketers. There have also been reports of key people leaving Apple, and certain AR projects being canceled, despite concrete evidence of research ranging from AR patents to an entire “StarBoard” AR testing system hidden in iOS 13. It’s fair to call the current state of evidence mixed, but it’s unrealistic to pretend that the Apple AR hardware story will only start when the company speaks publicly about it. According to The Information, Apple AR/VR head Mike Rockwell shared a new 2022-2023 timetable last month with a group of roughly 1,000 employees, stating that an AR headset could debut in 2022, with smaller glasses following in 2023. It’s unclear at this point what the headset will contain that the glasses will omit. Apparently, Apple’s headset is expected to include cameras with 3D scanning, human identification, and object occlusion technologies, while resembling a VR headset — closer to skiing goggles in size. By comparison, the 2023 AR glasses will be designed to be “worn all day,” with prototypes resembling “high-priced sunglasses with thick frames” to hold largely unspecified electronics. Having followed all of the reports on Apple’s AR work, this one sounds worse to me than it initially appears. If the timetable is accurate, it means that Apple doesn’t expect to have a breakthrough consumer wearable in the marketplace for at least three years. The earlier product will be a smaller Oculus Quest — something that Facebook will likely be producing itself by 2022. And the later product will be an advanced version of Nreal Light , which similarly will most likely have its own sequel (and numerous competitors) by 2023. Of course, Apple could blur the dates somewhat by holding an event to announce a 2022 headset ahead of launch. The company will supposedly reach out to software developers “as early as 2021” to encourage app development for this device, and if the iPhone/iPad/Apple Watch launch cycle plays out again, it will give the public four to six months of advance notice before a headset actually hits store shelves. My primary concern is for the growing community of developers who have been creating AR content and business models around the expectation that wearable consumer hardware is just around the corner. Based on what I’ve seen at trade shows such as CES , Siggraph , and Adobe Max this year, there are now lots of companies — little and big ones alike — spending time and money creating augmented reality user paradigms, assets, and software. It’s unclear how many of them will be able to make it through two or three more years of waiting for the first real payoffs from their AR investments. That having been said, I know from covering Apple that a timeline like this — “delayed” or not — is as credible as it is disappointing. Despite what the fanboys might say, Apple products do in fact get delayed from their internal target dates. Computers, accessories, and entirely new product categories can slip by a year or even years due to problems with hardware production, software engineering, or other factors. Major innovations can be shelved indefinitely pending resolution of unspecified technological or legal issues. Only time will tell whether the latest reported 2022-2023 timeline for Apple AR hardware holds up. But you can be sure that other hardware and software companies will be at least interested in filling the gap between now and then. GamesBeat's creed when covering the game industry is "where passion meets business." What does this mean? We want to tell you how the news matters to you -- not just as a decision-maker at a game studio, but also as a fan of games. Whether you read our articles, listen to our podcasts, or watch our videos, GamesBeat will help you learn about the industry and enjoy engaging with it. Discover our Briefings. The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"Niantic and Qualcomm will build AR glasses for world-scale games | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2019/12/05/niantic-and-qualcomm-will-build-ar-glasses-for-world-scale-games"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Niantic and Qualcomm will build AR glasses for world-scale games Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn A demonstration of the Niantic Real World Platform. Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship. Learn more. Fresh off today’s announcement of the Snapdragon XR2 mobile platform , Qualcomm has revealed an impressively ambitious early partner for its latest mixed reality effort: AR software giant Niantic. The developer of multi-billion-dollar hit Pokémon Go and the popular Warner Bros. collaboration Harry Potter: Wizards Unite said today that it will collaborate with the chipmaker on AR glasses, software, and cloud components. While details on the partnership are still few and far between, the deal will combine Qualcomm’s XR2 hardware and software with Niantic’s Real World Platform to enable world-scale AR games shared by millions of concurrent users. Though imagery for the platform isn’t yet available, it’s not hard to imagine people wearing Niantic glasses as they wander through shared public places chasing Pokémon, rather than doing so with their smartphone screens. Niantic has expressed interest in AR glasses before, but a move into the still-challenging consumer AR hardware market is bold for the software company. Five years ago, any developer would have struggled to make its own AR glasses, and even today, no consumer AR headset has achieved mainstream popularity. On the other hand, Niantic is the only large company to build a sustainable business wholly around augmented reality games and has all but single-handedly kept consumers interested in AR technology, which remains nascent at best, gimmicky at worst. Meanwhile, Qualcomm’s XR team has been laying the groundwork for deals just like this. In September, the chipmaker said that developers can use its chips , reference hardware designs, software, and established supplier relationships to become mixed reality platform vendors in as little as four months if they hit the ground running. Niantic offered no timetable for its own offering, but described the deal as a multi-year joint collaboration, suggesting that its glasses won’t be coming quite that quickly. Event GamesBeat at the Game Awards We invite you to join us in LA for GamesBeat at the Game Awards event this December 7. Reserve your spot now as space is limited! Thanks to its considerable experience with AR development, Niantic has been thinking bigger over the past year, setting up its own Creator Program and Beyond Reality Fund to lure AR and location-based projects to its Niantic Real World Platform — an augmented reality development kit designed to help third-party developers hasten development of location-based games. Access to the Qualcomm-Niantic hardware will be included in the Creator Program “when available,” Niantic said, and interested developers can sign up at niantic.dev. Niantic cofounder and CTO Phil Keslin said that the company hopes to help “move the entire AR industry forward as we work together with Qualcomm Technologies to define a true end-to-end architecture — inclusive of hardware, software, and cloud technologies.” Given the currently iffy state of consumer AR glasses development , Niantic is better positioned than most companies to actually get people to spend money on AR, so it will be interesting to see what it comes up with, and when people will actually be able to buy in. GamesBeat's creed when covering the game industry is "where passion meets business." What does this mean? We want to tell you how the news matters to you -- not just as a decision-maker at a game studio, but also as a fan of games. Whether you read our articles, listen to our podcasts, or watch our videos, GamesBeat will help you learn about the industry and enjoy engaging with it. Discover our Briefings. The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"What's next for consumer AR in 2020 | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2019/12/26/whats-next-for-consumer-ar-in-2020"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages What’s next for consumer AR in 2020 Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship. Learn more. True augmented reality hasn’t found an easy path to consumer adoption. In spite of general understanding of how AR hardware and software should theoretically work — put on glasses to see the real world overlaid with digital objects and signage — the technology needed to actually get there has been confoundingly difficult , requiring so many big and small advances that as of the last days of 2019, no one is actually selling viable consumer AR glasses. That will start to change in 2020. Backed by ambitious cellular carriers , smartphone-dependent consumer AR hardware will soon become available in stores. Consumer AR software will continue to evolve, as well. And while fully standalone AR solutions such as Microsoft’s HoloLens 2 will likely remain exclusive to enterprises, companies will continue working on ways to free AR headsets from physical connections to phones and computers, using Wi-Fi and 5G cellular connections. Here are the big trends worth watching in 2020. Consumer AR hardware: Nreal and everyone else Leading technologists (and their supporters across multiple industries) predict that within a decade people will access the functionality of their smartphones through lightweight AR glasses rather than screens they manually hold up to their faces. Some people will try to make this transition in 2020, though whether it takes more or less than a decade to go mainstream remains to be seen. Having spent 10 years investing in extended reality (XR) technologies — VR and AR — Qualcomm currently provides chips for virtually every VR and AR device on the market. Right now, the key impetus for consumer AR hardware is Qualcomm’s XR Viewer program, which posits that the first round of viable consumer AR glasses won’t be standalone, but will instead get most of their horsepower from USB-C-tethered Android smartphones with Snapdragon 855 or newer chips inside. Event GamesBeat at the Game Awards We invite you to join us in LA for GamesBeat at the Game Awards event this December 7. Reserve your spot now as space is limited! The de facto flagship for this program is Nreal Light , a pair of lightweight AR glasses that use multiple cameras, spatial tracking, and 1080p screens to augment your view of the real world with bright digital content. Nreal has already made deals with China Unicom, Deutsche Telekom, and Japan’s KDDI/Au to distribute the $500 glasses next year, in some cases with carrier-specific Android apps that will make use of both high-speed networks and the new AR technology. One demo showed the glasses enabling a wearer to get computer repair instructions — including live, persistent annotations from a remote person — while looking at the hardware in person. Another let wearers fight off realistic zombie attacks while using a phone as a position- and gesture-sensing controller. Nreal’s glasses aren’t perfect, but they have a better chance of giving mainstream users a taste of future wearable AR technology soon than anything else I’m currently aware of. In some markets, I wouldn’t be surprised to see people wearing the sunglasses-styled Light in public, something that would have been harder to say about earlier alternatives. Above: Pokémon Go creator Niantic has developed a Real World Platform and is working on AR glasses. It’s unknown at this point whether any other company will mount a consumer-focused challenge to Nreal in 2020. Qualcomm’s XR Viewer program is open to multiple companies, and there have been vague hints that Nreal won’t be the only vendor of Android-compatible glasses next year, but the identities and specs of rivals probably won’t be known until CES in January, if not later. As just one example, Pokémon Go creator Niantic has announced that it’s working on AR hardware in partnership with Qualcomm , but the details and release timeline aren’t clear. Several key players are unlikely to enter the consumer AR hardware market soon. After releasing the enterprise-focused and expensive HoloLens 2 late in 2019, Microsoft doesn’t appear to be any closer to offering a consumer AR headset in 2020. Magic Leap recently rereleased its One Creator Edition as Magic Leap 1 — seemingly even more focused on enterprise users — and said it’s not expecting the next-generation model to be released in 2020. Facebook has also suggested that it’s working on an all-day consumer wearable that won’t be ready for years. And Apple’s AR plans remain ambiguous. Consumer AR software: Making a (use) case for AR Last year, I was generally bearish on AR, thanks to a seemingly endless stream of shrug-worthy hardware and software announcements. As I put it in July 2018: I’m not saying that the list of practical AR applications begins and ends right now with Pokémon Go , but there hasn’t been anything else that has taken off on a comparable level. Nearly a year and a half later, Pokémon Go remains the AR industry’s biggest success story — a roughly $3 billion juggernaut — though there’s still a question of whether it truly qualifies as AR. Ditto on all the other tablet and smartphone apps that are augmenting … well, reality as it’s seen through a device’s camera and screen. Millions of people use Snapchat’s AR filters to change their faces or transform the looks of buildings, and who’s to say those are less worthwhile uses of AR technology than navigation or living in a “ magicverse. ” As I said last August, I see these apps as baby steps toward true AR’s future, and they’re frankly necessary prerequisites to establishing what people will and won’t actually be doing with dedicated AR hardware. Do people really want to use AR to shop for and decorate their homes ? Will they pay more for AR navigation integrated into car windshields ? If they’re interested in these sorts of features in smartphone apps, the answer is more likely to be yes. Throughout 2020, we’re most likely going to see handfuls of apps for early consumer AR wearables like Nreal’s, and plenty more apps that are used through smartphones and tablets. I would also expect to see some developers begin experimenting with adding wearable support to existing AR apps where appropriate, and cellular companies pushing more AR collaborations that will show off their 5G networks — a trend we’ve seen with Snapchat and Verizon in the United States , while European, Japanese , and South Korean carriers pursue similar deals overseas. Wireless consumer AR: Wi-Fi and 5G cellular Something important will be taking place behind the scenes in 2020: Qualcomm, Apple, and other companies involved in smartphone-based AR solutions will be wrestling with which wireless technologies to use instead of cables — probably in 2021 and 2022. The leading contenders are 802.11ay Wi-Fi and 5G. Current chip and display technologies aren’t capable of squeezing an entire smartphone’s worth of processing and screen power into the frames of a lightweight pair of glasses. For that reason, Magic Leap offloaded most of its computing into a large wearable puck, Microsoft placed its computer inside a gigantic visor, and other companies are using smartphones physically connected with USB-C cables to lighter glasses. The problem is that the cables will be conspicuous and may in some cases limit your range of movement. Above: Magic Leap’s current hardware requires the user to wear a puck containing its computer and carry at least one controller. Prior-generation Wi-Fi and cellular standards don’t have enough bandwidth to feed low-latency, high frame rate XR displays — at least, not good ones. So the latest standards, including Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) , 60GHz Wi-Fi (802.11ay) , and mid- or high-band 5G (3.5GHz or millimeter wave) will in the future connect AR glasses wirelessly to nearby smartphones, computers, or direct networks armed with edge cloud computers. It’s unlikely that we’ll see much in the way of actual consumer wireless AR hardware in 2020, but it’s possible that early demos will pop up later in the year. Assuming they work properly, they’ll serve as a reminder that consumer AR is still in its earliest days, with plenty of exciting evolution yet to come over the next decade. GamesBeat's creed when covering the game industry is "where passion meets business." What does this mean? We want to tell you how the news matters to you -- not just as a decision-maker at a game studio, but also as a fan of games. Whether you read our articles, listen to our podcasts, or watch our videos, GamesBeat will help you learn about the industry and enjoy engaging with it. Discover our Briefings. The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"Nreal Light gets Nebula 3D augmented reality UI and eye tracking | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2020/01/06/nreal-light-gets-nebula-3d-augmented-reality-ui-and-eye-tracking"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Nreal Light gets Nebula 3D augmented reality UI and eye tracking Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Nreal's Nebula lets you create an AR environment to launch and use Android apps. Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship. Learn more. Nreal’s Light augmented reality glasses are set to become available to consumers early this year , so the company is answering two of the bigger questions users may have: how they’ll load and control apps in AR. Today, the company revealed a new 3D home screen called Nebula that will let users access Android apps and interactive 3D content, as well as eye tracking and controller support that will let you interact with mixed reality experiences. Nebula transforms your current environment into a user interface, enabling you to place persistent app screens within a physical space and interact with them at will. During hands-on testing of the new UI, anti-aliased text and icons looked even clearer and brighter than one might have expected from Light’s dual 1080p displays; a tethered Android smartphone serves as a 3DoF controller to laser-point at icons and reposition app windows as you want them in 3D space. Nreal claims that the UI actually creates a digital reconstruction of your real world surroundings, enabling virtual objects to be occluded within the 3D space for realistic mixed reality blending — something we didn’t see in the demo. Multiple users can share app work and play spaces for collaboration, or a single user can keep the space private. Event GamesBeat at the Game Awards We invite you to join us in LA for GamesBeat at the Game Awards event this December 7. Reserve your spot now as space is limited! Critically, Nebula will serve as a bridge between the host device’s OS and the glasses, enabling traditional Android apps to be accessed while wearing Light — including tablet-class versions of Facebook, YouTube, and other apps that are displayed in wide rather than tall windows. Nreal will show new apps, such as AR-bolstered shopping, education, gaming, and smart home software, during CES this week. Users will have multiple options to control Nebula and other apps. Any tethered smartphone can be used as a 3DoF controller, but Nreal will also support Finch’s 6DoF controllers, and a Black Shark gaming kit as alternatives. The company is also partnering with 7invensun to add eye tracking to Light, enabling it to “soon” go beyond tracking control inputs and head motions by adding real-time gaze controls. Nreal also disclosed some additional connectivity options for Light: In addition to working with Android smartphones over USB-C, the $499 consumer version will also work with tablets and Windows PCs. Optional magnetic corrective lenses will be offered to accommodate nearsighted users, in addition to the included magnetically attachable nose pads that will come in the box. No pricing for the lenses is yet available. GamesBeat's creed when covering the game industry is "where passion meets business." What does this mean? We want to tell you how the news matters to you -- not just as a decision-maker at a game studio, but also as a fan of games. Whether you read our articles, listen to our podcasts, or watch our videos, GamesBeat will help you learn about the industry and enjoy engaging with it. Discover our Briefings. Join the GamesBeat community! Enjoy access to special events, private newsletters and more. VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"Secret Oops makes its AR debut on Apple Arcade | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2020/01/31/secret-oops-makes-its-ar-debut-on-apple-arcade"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Secret Oops makes its AR debut on Apple Arcade Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Secret Oops Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship. Learn more. Game studio MixedBag is unveiling its Secret Oops augmented reality game today on Apple Arcade. The AR title is the fourth AR game on Apple Arcade, joining Spek from developer RAC7, Rosie’s Reality from developer RosieReality, and Possesions from developer Noodlecake (a noted mobile publisher and developer known for excellent games like Super Stickman Golf). Secret Oops is a co-op action game in which players use AR to make sure that the world’s dumbest spy evades his foes. When a new threat arises, and briefcases start to disappear all over the world, the S.P.Y. Agency (which has the honor of being the only spy agency in the world run by … pigeons), sends its best agent to investigate: Special Agent Charles. Charles is the best spy in the world, but … he’s also as dumb as a rock. Security cameras? Deadly traps? Dangerous robot-guards? Charles will trigger them all, and he’ll do it with glee. Event GamesBeat at the Game Awards We invite you to join us in LA for GamesBeat at the Game Awards event this December 7. Reserve your spot now as space is limited! Above: Help the dumbest spy escape in Secret Oops. As the player, you help him. Gather with family and friends, place the virtual game board and use AR to move around, interact with the virtual world, talk, and cooperate with the other players to devise the perfect plan and execute it. Players need careful planning and perfect coordination to succeed: communication is the key. At launch, Secret Oops will offer two game worlds with 35 levels for up to four players. Secret Oops AR functionalities are powered by Apple’s ARKit 3, while the cartoon game world is built on top of the Metal 2 graphic applications programming interface. MixedBag will add more worlds, levels, game mechanics and extras in the following months. GamesBeat's creed when covering the game industry is "where passion meets business." What does this mean? We want to tell you how the news matters to you -- not just as a decision-maker at a game studio, but also as a fan of games. Whether you read our articles, listen to our podcasts, or watch our videos, GamesBeat will help you learn about the industry and enjoy engaging with it. Discover our Briefings. Join the GamesBeat community! Enjoy access to special events, private newsletters and more. VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"Jeff Bezos: Amazon Prime has more than 100 million members | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2018/04/18/jeff-bezos-amazon-prime-has-more-than-100-million-members"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Jeff Bezos: Amazon Prime has more than 100 million members Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Amazon's Jeff Bezos at a 2010 event. Are you ready to bring more awareness to your brand? Consider becoming a sponsor for The AI Impact Tour. Learn more about the opportunities here. Amazon has more than 100 million Prime members around the world, CEO Jeff Bezos revealed in an annual letter sent to shareholders today. Amazon first began to extend Prime benefits to its customers 13 years ago, but the company never shared how many paying customers had signed up until now. Much of the letter focused on the importance of high standards, but it also touted recent achievements, like the spread of Amazon Lockers at hundreds of Whole Foods stores and expansion of Prime benefits to countries like Mexico and Singapore. Estimates from earlier this year found that nearly half of U.S. households have a Prime membership. More new Prime members signed up last year than any prior year, including 4 million in one week in late 2017. The news comes a day after Amazon said it will get rid of the Whole Foods loyalty program in two weeks in order to make Prime membership the primary way to share benefits with shoppers, something the company has signaled since completion of the $13.7 billion acquisition last summer. Work is still being done to make Prime membership recognized at Whole Foods checkout stands, Bezos said in the letter. Free two-hour delivery for Whole Foods purchases over $35 was extended to Prime Now members in February. VB Event The AI Impact Tour Connect with the enterprise AI community at VentureBeat’s AI Impact Tour coming to a city near you! Prime benefits added within the past year include two-minute order fulfillment at Instant Pickup sites , Amazon Key in-home deliveries , and free access to Double Jeopardy! , the first paid subscription game on Echo devices. Bezos also addressed things like Amazon’s growth in India, cashierless Amazon Go stores, and improvements to Alexa’s intelligence that took place within the past year. “Far-field speech recognition (already very good) has improved by 15 percent over the last year; and in the U.S., U.K., and Germany, we’ve improved Alexa’s spoken language understanding by more than 25 percent over the last 12 months through enhancements in Alexa’s machine learning components and the use of semi-supervised learning techniques,” Bezos said in the letter. Additional details about Prime are likely on the way next week — Amazon is scheduled to announce quarterly earnings on April 26. VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Discover our Briefings. The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"Amazon Prime discounts for Whole Foods purchases will cover the whole U.S. from June 27 | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2018/06/25/amazon-prime-discounts-for-whole-foods-purchases-will-cover-the-whole-u-s-from-june-27"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Amazon Prime discounts for Whole Foods purchases will cover the whole U.S. from June 27 Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship. Learn more. Amazon is expanding its Prime member discount program to cover all Whole Foods stores in the U.S. from June 27. The ecommerce giant first started offering Amazon Prime members a 10 percent discount on some Whole Foods purchases in Florida back in May, and it has been slowly expanding the offering to other states around the country in the six weeks since. Now all 365 Whole Foods stores in the U.S. will offer 10 percent off “hundreds of sale items” that are marked with yellow stickers and “deep discounts” on other products from this week. Vortex Amazon’s huge shift into the brick-and-mortar realm kicked off last June with its $13.7 billion acquisition of the natural foods supermarket chain. The company wasted little time in leveraging its acquisition once the deal closed in August, including slashing Whole Foods pricing and selling its own hardware at the outlets. Earlier this year, Amazon also started offering free Whole Foods deliveries in the U.S. within 2 hours through Prime Now. Ultimately, Amazon wants to hook customers into its ecommerce ecosystem, with its annual Prime membership serving as the glue to keep people onboard. Amazon is already buying up the TV rights to packages for sports, including tennis and soccer, to make access to Prime TV an additional incentive for buying a Prime membership. And Whole Foods discounts fit into that broader scheme — it’s one extra perk for joining Prime and one more way to get consumers into the Amazon vortex. VB Event The AI Impact Tour Connect with the enterprise AI community at VentureBeat’s AI Impact Tour coming to a city near you! “Since launching Prime savings at Whole Foods Market, we’ve seen excitement and momentum from both Prime members and our supplier partners,” noted Whole Foods Market president and COO A.C. Gallo, in a press release. “Our weekly Prime member deals are a hit, and we’re excited that Prime members across the U.S. will now be able to take advantage of these savings in our stores.” VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Discover our Briefings. The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"Amazon reports $72.4 billion in Q4 2018 revenue: AWS up 45%, subscriptions up 25%, and 'other' up 95% | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2019/01/31/amazon-earnings-q4-2018"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Amazon reports $72.4 billion in Q4 2018 revenue: AWS up 45%, subscriptions up 25%, and ‘other’ up 95% Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn The Amazon logo is seen at the Young Entrepreneurs fair in Paris Are you ready to bring more awareness to your brand? Consider becoming a sponsor for The AI Impact Tour. Learn more about the opportunities here. Amazon today reported earnings for its fourth fiscal quarter of 2018, including revenue of $72.4 billion, net income of $3.0 billion, and earnings per share of $6.04 (compared to revenue of $60.5 billion, net income of $1.86 billion, and earnings per share of $3.75 in Q4 2017). The fourth quarter is the biggest and most important for Amazon because of holiday sales. Analysts had expected Amazon to earn $71.9 billion in revenue and report earnings per share of $5.67. The retail giant thus handily beat expectations. The company’s stock was up 3 percent in regular trading, but largely flat in after-hours trading. Amazon gave first quarter revenue guidance in the range of $56 billion and $60 billion, compared to a consensus of $60.96 billion from analysts. “Alexa was very busy during her holiday season. Echo Dot was the best-selling item across all products on Amazon globally, and customers purchased millions more devices from the Echo family compared to last year,” Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said in a statement. “The number of research scientists working on Alexa has more than doubled in the past year, and the results of the team’s hard work are clear. In 2018, we improved Alexa’s ability to understand requests and answer questions by more than 20% through advances in machine learning, we added billions of facts making Alexa more knowledgeable than ever, developers doubled the number of Alexa skills to over 80,000, and customers spoke to Alexa tens of billions more times in 2018 compared to 2017. We’re energized by and grateful for the response, and you can count on us to keep working hard to bring even more invention to customers.” Bezos may have talked up Alexa, but Amazon is nowhere near ready to break the voice assistant out in its earnings reports. Alexa is simply contributing to overall Amazon retail sales, which is of course the company’s main revenue driver. North American sales were up 18 percent to $44.1 billion, while international sales grew 15 percent to $20.8 billion. VB Event The AI Impact Tour Connect with the enterprise AI community at VentureBeat’s AI Impact Tour coming to a city near you! Amazon Web Services (AWS) continued to be the star of the show, jumping 45 percent in sales to $7.4 billion. AWS thus accounted for about 10 percent of Amazon’s total revenue for the quarter. AWS is the cloud computing market leader, ahead of Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure. Subscription services were up 25 percent to $3.96 billion. That would be Amazon Prime , which the company is expanding to offer deals at places like Whole Foods. Amazon’s “other” category, which mostly comprises of the company’s advertising business, jumped 95 percent to $3.4 billion in revenue. The company knows plenty about what its customers want to buy, or don’t even want to buy, so it’s no surprise its advertising business is booming. This was the quarter that Amazon ended its search for a “second headquarters” (HQ2) in North America, first announced in September 2017. Fourteen months later, Amazon split HQ2 across Queens, New York and Arlington, Virginia. How that move will impact the company over the next few quarters, if at all, remains to be seen. VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Discover our Briefings. The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"VRenetic is Independence Day director Roland Emmerich's new VR venture | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2017/10/07/vrenetic-is-independence-day-director-roland-emmerichs-new-vr-venture"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages VRenetic is Independence Day director Roland Emmerich’s new VR venture Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Are you ready to bring more awareness to your brand? Consider becoming a sponsor for The AI Impact Tour. Learn more about the opportunities here. Independence Day director Roland Emmerich just launched his own VR company. No, really. Emmerich is the chairman and co-founder of a new VR media outfit named VRenetic that aims to make 360 degree broadcasting accessible and affordable to everyone. The company has its own free app, VResh, that allows for real-time streaming of panoramic video with the use of a proprietary smartphone-connected camera. It’s powered by the company’s own Media Engine, which it plans to utilize in other apps developed both in-house and with partners. Here’s a idyllic promotional spot set in an alternate universe where people who put a VR headset on during a bus ride to catch up with their friends on a beach. The company claims is broadcasting is usable with average data connections, which could be key to its success if true. Streaming panoramic images is an intensive process, with much more data to channel than a standard screen. Event GamesBeat at the Game Awards We invite you to join us in LA for GamesBeat at the Game Awards event this December 7. Reserve your spot now as space is limited! Not only that, but VRenetic will be releasing its own VR headset to support the platform. The device looks about as bare-bones as they come, with literally only the lenses and a minimalist frame to hold the smartphone, but that’s sort of the point of it all. Ultimately it’s an idea we’ve seen before; affordable headsets and 360 degree cameras aren’t anything new, though perhaps in the combination of the two VRenetic is onto something. You can currently sign-up to beta test the new app, though prices for the company’s hardware haven’t yet been announced. This story originally appeared on Uploadvr.com. Copyright 2017 VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Discover our Briefings. Join the GamesBeat community! Enjoy access to special events, private newsletters and more. VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"Google and Reddit defend law protecting tech companies from liability for user-generated content | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2019/10/16/google-and-reddit-defend-law-protecting-tech-companies-from-liability-for-user-generated-content"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Google and Reddit defend law protecting tech companies from liability for user-generated content Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Google San Francisco office Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship. Learn more. ( Reuters ) — A 23-year-old law giving technology companies legal protection from lawsuits over user-generated content remains critical to the internet’s future, Alphabet’s Google unit and social media site Reddit said in testimony released on Tuesday. Senior executives from Google, Reddit, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation and legal experts are due to face questions on Wednesday in Congress about the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which critics say shields tech companies from dealing with threatening, violent, dangerous, or bullying content. Lawmakers from both major political parties have said Congress could make additional changes to the law to restrict companies’ immunity. Last year, Congress made it easier for prosecutors and sex-trafficking victims to sue social media networks, advertisers, and others that kept exploitative material on their platforms. At issue is Section 230 of the act, which generally provides immunity to online platforms for content posted by users, although companies can still be held liable for content that violates criminal or intellectual property law. Advocates say the law has helped the rapid growth of internet companies over the past 20 years and encouraged free expression. Katherine Oyama, Google’s global head of intellectual property policy, said Section 230 incentivizes “action against harmful content” and that Google has more than 10,000 people working on content moderation. Without Section 230, search engines, video sharing platforms, blogs, and other providers would “either not be able to filter content at all (resulting in more offensive online content, including adult content, spam, security threats, etc.) or would over-filter content (including important cases of political speech),” Oyama said in written testimony. The U.S. House Energy and Commerce committee released written testimonies ahead of Wednesday’s hearing, which is titled “Fostering a Healthier Internet to Protect Consumers.” Reddit CEO Steve Huffman said Section 230 has incentivized “good faith attempts to mitigate the unavoidable downsides of free expression.” “While these downsides are serious and demand the attention of both us in industry and you in Congress, they do not outweigh the overwhelming good that 230 has enabled.” Huffman said that “all-or-nothing moderation simply isn’t feasible,” given the fact that Reddit handles more than 750,000 posts and 6.3 million comments per day across over 130,000 active communities. Danielle Keats Citron, a Boston University law professor, said courts had stretched Section 230’s legal shield far beyond what it was intended for, and that it has instead been used “to immunize platforms from liability even though they knew about users’ illegal activity, deliberately refused to remove it, and ensured that those responsible for the illegality could not be identified.” In June, Republican senator Josh Hawley introduced legislation to remove immunity large tech companies receive under Section 230 unless they submit to an external audit that proves their algorithms and content-removal practices are politically neutral. ( Reporting by David Shepardson; editing by Jane Wardell ) VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Discover our Briefings. The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"Simon Segars interview -- Arm's CEO on competitive threats, custom instructions, and a far-off IPO | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2019/10/14/simon-segars-interview-arms-ceo-on-competitive-threats-custom-instructions-and-a-far-off-ipo/view-all"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Simon Segars interview — Arm’s CEO on competitive threats, custom instructions, and a far-off IPO Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Simon Segars at Arm TechCon 2019 Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship. Learn more. Simon Segars , CEO of the Cambridge, England-based Arm , took the stage at last week’s Arm TechCon 2019 event in San Jose, California to tell the company’s ecosystem of partners about its future plans. Arm designs the underlying architecture and semiconductor chip components for its partners, who license the technology and put it into a wide range of chips that drive just about everything electronic, from smart doorbells to energy-efficient Arm-based servers. Arm’s partners have shipped more than 150 billion chips to date, and in the next two years Segars expects 50 billion more to ship. The world is undergoing nothing less than an electronics revolution, and Arm is at the center of it. The internet of things — everyday devices that are smart and connected — could reach more than a trillion units by 2035, Segars said. These dynamics attracted Japan’s SoftBank and led to its $31 billion acquisition of Arm in 2016. SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son said he was readying his company for the Singularity, or the day when AI exceeds the collective intelligence of humanity, in a few decades. But last year Son acknowledged that he might spin off Arm in an initial public offering, possibly within five years (by 2023). VB Event The AI Impact Tour Connect with the enterprise AI community at VentureBeat’s AI Impact Tour coming to a city near you! Segars is trying to run the company as usual in the meantime, with a near-doubling of the company’s staff to more than 6,500 people. At TechCon, he announced that Arm would fend off competition by enabling custom instructions for embedded centralized processing units (CPUs) to give chipmakers more flexibility in a changing world. I sat down with a group of reporters at Arm TechCon 2019 last week to talk with Segars in a wide-ranging interview. We discussed the possible IPO, the custom instructions, Arm’s moves in IoT, its interest in security, and the state of competition. This interview has been edited for length and clarity, and questions have been reordered by theme. Custom instructions for Arm processors Above: Simon Segars, Arm CEO, at a press group interview at Arm TechCon 2019. Question: I talked to a couple of analysts who felt like the custom instructions were a nod toward the competition from RISC-V. Simon Segars: The way we’re looking at it is that — chip design is evolving in multiple ways in parallel. You have consolidation going on amongst big chip companies, producing large players who are investing on the leading edge. They have the size and scale to build very complex devices. You have some OEMs who want to build chips. You have various smaller companies who are looking at how to create things much more optimized for specific applications, especially in this world of IoT. There’s a range of different solutions out there for how people can extend the capability of what an ARM processor does based on the workload. Our inclusion of the custom instructions is based on feedback from the market. In some areas having a dedicated accelerator sitting in the memory map or sitting as a co-processor, that works very well. There are some other applications where doing that final optimization can make a big difference. We’ve listened to the market. We’ve thought long and hard about how we add that flexibility and maintain the benefits we’ve had for our entire history of standardization and that big software ecosystem we’ve developed. This seems like a good way to address all those needs. It’s really driven by the needs of the market more than anything else. Question: How should we visualize what this new customization ability addresses? Above: Arm custom instructions Segars: The target market is actually quite broad. When you look at the biggest shippers of ARM-based microcontrollers today, it’s companies that have been around a long time. They have broad portfolios of microcontrollers where they’re taking, say, a Cortex-M3, M33, whatever, and building portfolios around them that produce hundreds of SKUs. They ship development boards. They ship a lot of software support to go with that, so that as a developer you have this library of functions prebuilt for you that you can integrate together in software, whatever application in particular you want to build. I anticipate companies looking at particular markets, like motor control. We have these libraries today that are implemented using special ARM instructions. If, as we implement our Cortex-M33, we can add some special feature, maybe we can halve the run time of that library that does some operation to work out where to take the motor to next. Companies like that are going to do those optimizations and build them into the board support packages that they create. There will be some others in the startup category that are going to focus on one specific thing, as opposed to a broad portfolio of MCUs that they’re largely shipping to distributors. They might have some market in mind where adding some instructions can, again, just optimize for that. Again, I think it’s going to be quite broadly applicable. We’re going to see big, classic MCU shippers adopting it, and we’re going to see smaller startups. Question: How do you add custom instructions and still maintain the ecosystem? Segars: We’re trying to enable the best of all worlds. One key thing is that the custom instructions that can be added are purely additive to the core instruction set. The operating system that might sit on top of this processor isn’t going to rely on custom instructions. It might call a routine where, if the custom instructions are there, it runs very efficiently, and if they’re not there, it goes and does something else. But the core operating system that you can take off the shelf and run, that will still run on every ARM processor, because all the instructions that are defined today are still there. We’re not enabling people to strip stuff out and risk having a C compiler spit out code that won’t work. There’s still that compatibility with the architecture. This is an opportunity to add things for — the regular code it’s never going to touch, but specific application optimizations could take advantage of this in a particular vendor’s set of support tools. That isn’t very different, at the chip level, from what we have today. There may be, in an MCU, some accelerator that’s sitting completely outside the core. It sits in a memory map. Again, one of these library routines might call upon it to do something. If that accelerator isn’t there in Vendor B’s chip, it’s not going to do anything. Same principle applies here, but it’s more tightly integrated. For some functions we think that’s going to deliver significant performance uplift for very small overhead in silicon. That’s much more efficient than building a completely separate accelerator. Question: Should we expect the majority of customers to do custom instructions? Segars: No, I don’t think the majority. Like any instruction set check, when we look at the architecture — we’re going to put this in. What’s this used for? Who is going to use it? How do we support it? It’s a significant step to add something into the architecture, to change it. I think you’ll see companies think long and hard about it. Again, back to this mix of partners we have, bigger companies maybe standardize around a few optimizations, make sure there’s great support for it, and then you’ll have some small guys that focus on one thing. But I don’t think you’re going to suddenly see a million and one different variations. A possible IPO Above: Simon Segars expects a trillion internet of things devices by 2035. Question: Do you have any updates about a new IPO? Segars: At last year’s SoftBank AGM [annual general meeting], Masa said that in about five years, we’ll have an IPO of Arm. That’s not a hard and fast ruling, where on July 10, 2023 we’ll have an IPO. It’s not cast in stone. What we’re doing is investing to make Arm a more valuable company. We’re investing to do that through the development of technologies, the development of our ecosystem, to ensure that we can grow with the growing opportunity that’s represented by IoT and AI and 5G and autonomous vehicles and continued growth in mobile. I think there are a number of these technologies that will drive growth for the semiconductor industry, and since we supply into that, we want to make sure we’re providing the building blocks for chip companies that want to serve those markets. It feels to me that in that sort of 2023 time frame, we should be seeing the real fruits of that investment. We should be seeing revenues take off from the sale of those chips, and that should be flowing to the profitability of ARM. If all that comes together and the conditions are right, that would be a good time to have an IPO of Arm and release some of that back. Question: You mentioned driving growth, having a mandate from SoftBank to drive growth and push forward as fast as you possibly can, and not be as concerned about quarterly earnings and so forth. What does that mean for Arm in terms of the overall attitude as you continue to drive growth? Segars: For now, nothing has changed. We’ve been investing our profits in growing the company. Since the acquisition — as you know, prior to, we were a very profitable company. We operated with roughly 50% margins. We’ve taken that down significantly and invested our profitability in our growth to develop this long-term road map of compute solutions for these growing markets. None of that has changed relative to anything that’s gone on in the rest of the SoftBank portfolio. For us we’re continuing on that mission. It’s business as usual. If and when Arm becomes a public company, the stake in the ground is 2023. That’s a while off. We need to have gone through this phase of investment, seeing the growth in the end markets, seeing how that growth in top-line converts and profitability — a lot of things need to fall into place for us to be in the right shape to go back to the public markets. We’re on a runway to do that. That’s not changed based on anything else that’s going on across the board. Question: If you were to relist as a public company, where would you might like to do it? Segars: It’s not something we’re spending any time as a board discussing. It’s still a long way away. If we were to relist, it would be in a market that takes a long-term view on technology. We had a great time being a public company previously, with a primary listing in London and a secondary listing in the U.S. The world is a different place from what it was in 1998 when we went public and that choice was made. We’ll determine how much closer. Question: As a board member of SoftBank, can I ask you about the recent results of the investment in the Vision Fund? Segars: The way the SoftBank group is organized, the business is run separately. I’m running Arm. Rajeev [Misra] is running Vision Fund. Masa is running Sprint. They’re separate companies. I’m not spending my days worrying about what’s going on at Vision Fund, nor is Rajeev, who runs the Vision Fund, spending his days worrying about what I’m doing. My primary focus is on delivering an Arm strategy. The SoftBank group board, as you can imagine, is pretty interesting, and it’s a fascinating experience for me being part of that. The Vision Fund is going to do what it needs to do. The IoT market Above: Simon Segars expects Arm’s partners to ship 50 billion chips in the next two years. Question: You talked about how the new area of expansion for you is this emerging market in IoT. How is that business going? Segars: It’s something we saw a long time ago, pre-acquisition. Thinking about IoT, what the challenges are in bringing IoT devices onto the network. We’ve spent the last three years since acquisition accelerating our work in that area. Last year we did a couple of acquisitions to complete a platform approach that we’re taking to market. We’re looking at, in a sophisticated IoT device — it’s going to be running some software workload. You need to worry about keeping that up to date. Security threats come up all the time. All of these computers have security updates pushed to them every other day, it seems at the moment. There’s a future where everything that is connected to the network is going to have to be managed in a similar way. Part of the infrastructure we’ve been building is to enable that. Our IP down to the chip needs to allow for secure code to be installed on the chip, to allow for over-the-air software updates, even in a microcontroller. An operating system that can run on top provides those features through our API, and then you plan a service that can run on it. That’s part of the platform as well. Those devices are connected, obviously. Increasingly they’ll be connected over a cellular network. That connection needs managing. One of the acquisitions we did last year was for a company that has built a platform that enables cellular-connected devices like phones to be managed over the mobile network. When you have that connected, you have this data coming from it. You need to ingest that and organize it so you can build a specific application that’s going to enable you to get something out of the data coming in from this physical thing. We’re putting all of that together. The acquisitions we did last year went well. They’ve grown very nicely in the last four months. We’re engaging with people who want to build sophisticated IoT solutions, who really care about security, who really care about understanding that what they’re talking to is the genuine device, and not some counterfeit thing that’s spamming the network. The delivery of that, the rollout of those solutions, takes some time. We’re pleased with the progress. We’re finding customers that really care about the future, that we think are going to be important, that are going to be found in everything. We’re working closely with them. A bigger focus on security Above: Security is increasingly important to the Arm ecosystem. Question: There’s been an increased focus on security. What is driving that? What do you see as the drivers? Segars: In a world of billions of connected things, the level of security threat that introduces is something that we just don’t seem to talk about. There aren’t many of these things, really, in the world, relative to what we anticipated with IoT. These are all managed devices. People are now building, very quickly, IoT-like things that have no security in them at all. As we saw the other day, when I was talking about — the security cameras at Amazon, someone had done something with them, taken them all apart and realized that they’re all horrific from a security point of view. As a consumer, how do you know? And the answer is you don’t. He was going to fix it. In something that isn’t a managed device, you can’t do that. Too bad. Our view has been that if that situation continues, and people start deploying insecure IoT devices, then bad security incidents will happen. People will lose faith in IoT. That will be a limiter to the growth of the market. We want to try to build a world where IoT has great security, and the industry that provides it — which is a combination of us as an IP company, chip companies, software companies, service providers — collectively takes responsibility to provide good service. That’s why we’ve been making a big deal out of this. We do think it starts down on the device. We want to help build secure devices. But it does require a lot of cooperation across the industry to make all this in a way that people can trust it. Question: If your software is not secure, though, it doesn’t matter whether the device isn’t secure, right? Segars: Increasingly, as systems get more sophisticated, it is the interaction of hardware and software that can lead to security vulnerabilities. You take Spectre and Meltdown. That was a class of security attack that nobody had thought of before. I sat down with our chief architect and explained it to him. Who in their right mind thought of that? But somebody did. Some things like Spectre and Meltdown can be fixed relatively easily without a hardware change. But other things are actually about the interaction of the hardware and the software. You cannot look at each component in isolation. You have to think about the system and the interaction of the different components of the system. That’s why collaboration is required across all the companies in the supply chain. The competitive picture and Arm’s outlook Above: Sensors will be everywhere. Question: What do you think, in general, about some of the push some companies have, like Apple, to go vertical and depend less on anybody else? They have a pattern of building everything in-house. What are the consequences of that for you and for the market? Segars: There’s a class of OEM that is building their own silicon. I don’t think you’re going to see lots of companies do it. You have to be big. You have to have scale. You have identify some way you’re going to differentiate your product as a result of doing that. I think the merchant semiconductor market has a pretty good future ahead of it. As I just said, developing these chips is incredibly complex. It takes a lot of time. You don’t just decide to go and do this. But we are seeing some companies pick up chip design teams and start to work where they see some opportunity to innovate and differentiate. I’d say most that we know of are looking to license our technology in order to help them get there. Many of the teams being picked up have experience of using Arm. Typically people are building quite sophisticated things where the breadth of our IP offering, the quality of what we do, the support that we can provide, is really useful to people as they look to build these complex systems. This, to us, expands our market, expands our customer base, gives us different people to go and work with, people our building end systems, which is in itself a useful source of input to help drive our road map. It’s a trend, and it’s one that we’re looking to work with and engage with. Question: I wanted to check in with you on some numbers, like when the next 50 billion chips ship and when you get to that trillion IoT devices. Are there any timelines or changes to timelines there? Segars: No. As I said this morning, we’re on a run rate that predicts about 50 billion chips in the next two years. We’ve previously said a trillion connected devices by 2035. At the moment we’re seeing the industry dip a little bit because of everything that’s going on in the world, but I think — the 2035 number might be wrong by a couple of years, but ballpark, that’s what we anticipate. Question: What about the singularity? Segars: What do you think? Question: I don’t think you like talking about that as much as some people. Above: Dipti Vachani, senior vice president at Arm, gives a keynote at Arm TechCon 2019. Question: This is more prosaic. What do you think of the future of Arm in the clients? Segars: Windows Arm laptops, obviously there was phase one, or let’s call that phase zero. The phase we’re in now — actually, I think the last two years, that was phase one. Your Lenovo device there is really good. That’s a great machine, running Windows 10. I’ve been using this for a while. It does everything. The battery lasts a really long time. The new version that just launched, the Surface Pro X, frustratingly enough I haven’t had a chance to play with that yet. But knowing what has been coming down the pipe, I think that’s going to be a great platform. Hopefully it’s going to rule the market for Windows running on Arm processors, following those designs. That’s great. Question: Have you reached a critical mass there? Segars: Time will tell. But Microsoft building a first-party device, I think — they’ve done a lot of work on software, to the point where in a blind test, other than the lack of stickers on that thing, you couldn’t tell. And similarly, in the datacenter, a lot of work has gone into getting processor performance and the software ecosystem going. It’s the same thing. It’s about hardware and software coming together, to the point where chips can be deployed in the data center. Amazon did that last year. That’s gone very well. We’re expecting a bright future for that, and we’re expecting others to come into that market. Question: Moore’s law is slowing down, getting toward its end here. We have all this worry about climate change. I wonder whether or not that slowing of Moore’s law is happening right when we need it more, in order to combat climate change. It seems like a fairly dark trend. I don’t know if you see anything brighter. Segars: And PG&E is going to switch off half the electricity in Silicon Valley. The keynotes tomorrow might not be so visually appealing. I mean, Moore’s law aside, I think that the deployment of IoT and the AI processing of data can do a lot to help with some of the issues of climate change. We’ve been a believer, and publicly outspoken, on the role that technology can play in addressing all of the U.N. global goals, whether it’s to do with climate change, quality of water, education, whatever. If you look across the global goals, technology can help with all of them. There’s a lot of inefficiency. This thermostat cranking out freezing cold air when we’re all not enjoying it — a wall switch would help here. But there’s really a lot of inefficiency in the world. There’s low-hanging fruit here that doesn’t take much to address. We have the technologies we need for that now. Above: Yep, it’s like a supercomputer in this self-driving car. VSI Labs’ full stack of AV technology in the trunk of their research vehicle. Question: It seems like a big buzzword these days is heterogeneous computing. Clearly you’re invested in this idea that as Moore’s law slows down, people are going to use more of these different strategies to squeeze out more computing power at a certain workload capacity. Does that mean that you need to cooperate more with people who might traditionally have been competitors? Do you see more partnerships in the future? People are using totally different types of things to build devices. Does there need to be more collaboration? Segars: I’m certain that solving complex problems that we face is going to require more collaboration. I think AVCC [Autonomous Vehicle Computing Consortium] is an example of that. Most of the companies involved are ones we’ve had some relationship with in the past, but we’re now forming a consortium together to work on that hard problem. That’s an example of what, for Arm, is actually a kind of constant development of the collaboration that we do. That’s a fundamental principle of Arm’s development over the last 21 years. When I think about heterogeneous computing, again, I can point to examples where we have, years ago, 20 years ago, worked on — how does an Arm processor sitting next to a DSP chip — how do you program it? How do you develop it? We’ve done work on tools chains to enable you to look through one interface into the different processors that might be on one chip. We work with people with whom we sometimes compete, and we sometimes collaborate. That’s just the way our bit of the industry works. Question: So you don’t see a change in the way you operate? Segars: I don’t think it’s any kind of step change. The players might change, but it’s what we’ve always done. We’ve focused on people doing ever more sophisticated chips. Heterogeneous isn’t a new thing. It’s been around from — those first modems that Arm got our designs into that really grew the company, that’s a heterogeneous computing model. It’s an Arm CPU and a DSP. Pretty soon there was another one tucked in there to do Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. That’s been our life. The players might change, but the principles behind that are incredibly familiar ground for us. Question: Do you see a tipping point or a catalyst for IoT, or is it something that’s just going to gradually grow, and before we know it, everything around us is connected? Is it 5G that will make this all happen? Segars: I think it is a gradual thing. There are lots of things connected over Bluetooth and Wi-Fi today. 5G is about as close to a catalyst as it comes, because hooking something up through a Wi-Fi network — you’re probably doing it at home. You get your password out and punch it in through some horrific user interface and you hope you never have to change it again. There’s an element of pain and difficulty associated with that. For me, the promise of 5G is the ability to connect those things directly to a server on the network. You can’t do that today. I was talking to somebody three weeks ago now who’s — I don’t remember the exact application, but they’re putting IoT things into cars. They accidentally took down an AT&T tower because of all these devices suddenly trying to connect to it. That’s because the network just wasn’t designed for it. 5G is designed to be able to do that. That’s going to remove a lot of pain in how devices get into the network. We have a view that through all the technologies we’re putting together, you can design an IoT thing, build it in a factory wherever in the world, take it to some other market, it switches on, it works out who the local service provider is, it gets attached to that network at local rates, and it talks to service that needs to support it. All you’ve done is switch it on. You haven’t had to associate the device with a network or a person or a service. That’s what the world is today. There is a mass simplification ahead of us that relies on chips being built the right way and entities getting together in the right way, service sitting on the back end, 5G. Those things are all going to come together. We won’t wake up one day and shazam, here it is. It will be a gradual rollout. But that’s where I think we’re headed. Question: When you talk about gradual, do you mean the next couple of years? Segars: Yeah, yeah. For 5G to be completely ubiquitous, that’s going to take a long time. I got a stat this morning. There are more than 1,000 city trials being run on 5G today. That’s a lot. There are 80 different operators. But still, global penetration of 5G is a fraction of LTE. I can’t remember the stats, but you can look at how quickly it took to roll out 3G to a point where 70% of the world’s population had that, and compare it to LTE, which I think is faster. 5G is going to be interesting to look at how quickly that rolls out. Meanwhile, you’ll talk to people who think 5G is this glorious thing that will allow self-driving cars to operate and talk to the cloud and whatnot. But there will be large parts of the surface where you don’t have coverage and you have to do computing locally. This is going to be a gradual, multi-year evolution. Question: Are you happy with where 5G is at the moment? Segars: As I said in my keynote, there seems to be a lot of negativity around 5G and accusations that it’s all hype. But I look at what operators have been saying for the last couple of years. They’re doing it. 5G is rolling out. It’s slower in some countries than others, but it’s rolling out. Arm’s view of the automotive market Above: Self-driving cars need a standards body to get to the finish line. Minneapolis-based VSI Labs’ research vehicle at ARM TechCon. Question: Part of today’s presentation was about the automotive market. That’s another market where we’ve seen a lot of hype and interest and overall excitement, and maybe not enough material advances and deployments as we were led to expect two or three years ago. It seems to me that bringing people together makes sense conceptually, but it’s also a tacit admission that there’s a long way to go still. Segars: It’s interesting. I actually think the automotive industry has changed an enormous amount in a very short space of time. It’s two things that are going on. One is electrification and the other is autonomy. What Elon Musk has done with Tesla, if you want to talk about a catalyst, that is something that’s driven a lot of change. Car OEMs have been around, in some cases, more than 100 years. They’ve spent their lives worrying about petrol engines and gearboxes and buying stuff from tier one suppliers. That’s all radically changing. We had one of them in the office the other day saying, “Yeah, we need to become a software company. We’re hiring all these software engineers. That’s the future. We’re changing our supply chains. It’s all about compute now. Despite the fact that you, Arm, are at the bottom of this supply chain that supplies all this stuff to us, we want to work you and build a relationship because we care about the processing.” A lot of the stuff they’re anticipating is going to run on our technology. Question: And they have high hopes for reuse. Segars: Yeah, absolutely. They’re thinking about how to get supplied with technology in the future, because they know how it was, but the thing they’re going to be building in the future is going to be radically different. They want commonality of platform with choice of supplier so they can benefit from standardized architecture, and yet competitive forces that give a better solution at the end of the day. I look at all of that and it’s actually quite staggering, how a pretty staid industry that produced a platform and what you’re driving today is technology that was good seven years ago — all of that is changing very quickly. I think there was a lot of underestimation of what it was going to take to build a compute platform capable of driving a car under any set of circumstances, and doing it better than a human. That’s such a hard problem. When the light’s failing and it’s raining — I got in mine this morning and it said, “Lane avoidance features are limited. If the problem persists, contact Tesla.” There’s mist on the sensor and it stops that from working. It’s no good. If you take the steering wheel away that’s a problem. There are certainly trivial problems, but there’s also just a ton of challenges to creating a fully autonomous car. The consortium we just launched, I hope, is going to address some of those issues and bring some of the players together to go and work on them. Everyone realizes they’re not going to do this on their own. Above: Arm’s alliance for self-driving cars. Question: I felt like the Autonomous Vehicle Computing Consortium had a kind of depressing message about it. Some of these cars seem to be stuck in prototyping. There’s a need for the consortium because progress isn’t there. Segars: I look at it a little differently. I’ll give you the glass-half-full version. The rack of servers in the back of a car that’s driving around here right now, think of that as a prototyping platform for the software. There comes a point where that software can’t run on a rack of servers in the back of a car, because that’s clearly unscalable. It needs to get migrated to a small, low-power, low-cost, multi-supply-chain solution that can then scale up to millions of cars. The glass-half-full, then, would be that the software is reaching a point where it’s time to think about how you turn that very unscalable, inefficient set of hardware into something that’s going to work for the mass market. Now, I think that’s quite a long journey, and people want to start migrating some of the software they’ve been working on. This consortium has come together to work out, architecturally, what that should look like and provide that solution into the market. I think it’s actually — this represents a powerful evolutionary step to start working toward not a prototype, but something that can go into mass production. Question: Tesla already seems to be there. Segars: We’re talking about full autonomy, solving the problem of enabling the car to do anything under any circumstances. Everyone is a long way from that. Question: Can we evolve beyond that competitive position that we saw when — we had chip companies, some of them your customers, some of them your competitors, talking about how the other gang were idiots and they had the magic solution. Has that calmed down a bit now? Segars: We don’t hear that so much nowadays, no. Maybe a dose of reality about how hard this is has settled in. Question: Where’s the sweet spot for you in that arena? Clearly there’s full autonomy, stage five or whatever you call it, and then these other stages. Do you want to position the company in the lead-up to full autonomy, or do you see the most opportunity elsewhere? Segars: We think about time frames. Arm technology is already used in a lot of automotive electronics. High-end cars have a couple of hundred microprocessors in them. Not all of them are Arm, but many of them are. We have great positioning in IVI, and we’re increasingly in more and more ADAS systems. We anticipate ADAS systems getting more sophisticated with every generation. Through our partners we’re in a great position. We have a technology road map and our ecosystem to deliver into that. I expect more Arm technology to be shipped into or through the conventional supply chains of automotive than there is now. Meanwhile, you have people coming at this autonomy challenge from the other end. Forget all that, let’s put a rack of servers in the back of a car and write a boatload of software and work out how to do it, and then we’ll scale it. We’re working with both ends of that. They’ll meet in the middle, probably, but we’re working on both ends of it. The near term opportunity, we have more Arm technology improving cars that get safer and safer. That’s good. And we have an eye on this long-term prize. Question: Are you confident that it will happen, that it isn’t just one of these flying-car things that we’re always seeing the day after tomorrow? Segars: Yeah, I look at the focus on it, the progress being made. There are many cars out there that can drive themselves — not in all circumstances, but in a lot of circumstances. You can do it. Like all things, there comes a point where you get into optimization. I don’t think we’re quite there yet, but when I look at the progress being made, it gives me confidence that it’s going to happen. Arm’s hiring Above: The beard is about two months old. Question: Last year you said you had a surge in hiring after SoftBank acquired you. Segars: Yeah, we hired a couple of thousand people. Question: Where are you today? Are you hiring more than just a year ago? Segars: Yeah, we’ve grown in the last 12 months. Total number of people in Arm is about 6,500, and we’re continuing to grow. When SoftBank made the offer to acquire Arm, there was a commitment made to double our U.K. headcount over a five-year period. We’re three years into that, and we have about 1,000 more net people to hire into the U.K. to meet that objective. Question: What areas are you hiring into? Segars: Broadly, our sales team is relatively small. There’s about 150 people in the Arm sales team, because there aren’t that many semiconductor companies. We know them all really well. The majority of the hiring we’re doing is in engineering. That’s our life’s blood, the IP we create. International challenges Question: How is Brexit for you? Segars: How is Brexit for anyone? Our concern — Brexit actually doesn’t affect our business very much. We don’t export physical things. We’re not worried about border controls messing up exporting things. But for us, consistently, we’ve always said that the risk of Brexit for us is in the ability to hire people from all across Europe to come work for Arm in the U.K., which we’ve done extensively over the years. We hope we’ll continue to be able to do that. Question: Does the threat of trade war between China and the U.S. also jeopardize that talent pool? China produces a hell of a lot of engineering talent that comes through these days. Segars: That’s not really changing our ability to hire, say, Chinese graduates into the U.K. It causes immigration challenges in the U.S., of course. But Brexit doesn’t affect that. It’s more that right now, as you know, if you’re a European citizen you can go and work in any country in the EU the next day. If we have to suddenly go through extensive visa processing to hire people in, that’s a delay, and that always affects things. Question: Are you balancing your operations from an engineering point of view because of any restrictions that could be placed on U.S.-based companies? Segars: No. We have a number of teams in different offices around the world. We take a long-term view on that. You don’t just uproot in one place and put it down somewhere else, because it takes a long time to develop the skills and the talent and the experience you need. We’re not about to make any radical changes. Arm’s pricing Above: Autonomous cars produce a huge amount of data. LiDAR point cloud demonstration by VSI Labs at TechCon. Question: I would ask a bit about the flexible terms and whether that’s going to push customers to negotiate with you at a different time. If I think from a customer perspective, I pay you a very modest fee to get started, but when it comes time to really negotiate the final royalty on a per-chip basis, I’m already committed, which creates a different position than if I were negotiating both of those things up front in a discussion about licensing and royalties. To bring that up a few levels, if that program takes off, do you expect it to have an impact on the kind of royalties you get? Do you think they will be higher on net, especially given that these are smaller, cheaper chips that we’re talking about? Sometimes as much as just 50 cents a chip. Segars: Well, we make chips that sell for even less than that. Net, I’m not really expecting this to change the fundamental economics of the access to the IP, or the royalty per chip that we get down the road. If you’re implying that the point we’re negotiating, someone is completely committed, and therefore we might take that as an opportunity to charge more, we would never do such a dishonorable thing. We’re trying to encourage people to use more of our IP, design more variants of chips, and enable flexibility in the way that they access our IP, to make sure that the thing they end up taking out of that factory is optimized for their application and they’re not making some decisions based on paper simulation of what they’re doing. It’s actual system design that they’ve gone through. Price-wise, we operate under the assumption that it’s make versus buy, that there will always be choice, and if we charge too much for what we do, then ultimately people are going to find alternate solutions if it’s beyond the threshold of pain. If we make people’s chips uneconomic, then they’re going to find different ways to design the technology. Question: Is part of the program a pricing plan, so that people know exactly what they’re buying into? Segars: You get a price in front. There’s going to be no surprises. It’ll be transparent. VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Discover our Briefings. The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"Will the rise of IoT and slowing of Moore's Law contribute to climate change? | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2019/10/19/will-rise-of-iot-and-the-slowing-of-moores-law-contribute-to-climate-change"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Will the rise of IoT and slowing of Moore’s Law contribute to climate change? Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Are you ready to bring more awareness to your brand? Consider becoming a sponsor for The AI Impact Tour. Learn more about the opportunities here. At Arm’s recent TechCon 2019 conference in San Jose, California, the chip licensing company said its partners have shipped more than 150 billion chips to date. And thanks to the rise of the internet of things (IoT), or making everyday objects smart and connected, another 50 billion chips are expected to ship in the next two years. By 2035, Arm estimates there will be a trillion IoT devices. These IoT devices will connect to the cloud and require a lot of computing in datacenters. But will those datacenters contribute to climate change? After all, the efficiencies we get from Moore’s Law are slowing down. For decades, the advances of technology, as predicted by Intel chair emeritus Gordon Moore, made chips faster, smaller, and cheaper by doubling the number of transistors on a chip every couple of years. But that progress is slowing down, as chip companies have acknowledged. Of course, the rise of IoT devices could also make the world more energy-efficient, as these devices will monitor energy waste and curtail it. I have no idea what’s going to happen here, but I had an interesting conversation about it with Drew Henry, senior vice president at Arm, in an interview at TechCon 2019. Here’s an edited transcript of our interview. Above: Drew Henry , senior vice president of IPG strategy and operations at Arm. VentureBeat: I had an interesting calculation I wanted to see if you had done or could do. You’re pretty good at all these numbers, as far as 150 billion chips shipped, 50 billion coming in the next two years, a trillion IoT devices by 2035. That eventually leads to a data explosion. But I’m concerned that Moore’s Law is slowing down at the same time that this happens. Does that mean that we have to build a ton of new things, a ton of new datacenters, all kinds of new computers, without the efficiency gains of Moore’s Law? And then if that’s true, what is the ultimate impact on climate change and whether this melts the planet down? How much more power gets involved, even though these things are more energy-efficient than they used to be? Drew Henry: Right, what happens with it all running? What’s amazing to me now is, given how creative engineers are — there are new sensors evolving that are just sipping power out of the ether … these capacitive-driven little tiny sensors. There are some that just sip RF power that’s generally in the ether. You remember Phil Carmack, from Nvidia? Phil runs all the silicon at Google now, but he did a little stint between Nvidia and there, where he worked for a small startup that was doing just that, [thinking] about how to put a capacitive load into a little sensor and sip power out of it so you could fire it up when you needed to and it would send a small amount of data out, and then it could go back to sleep. But my point is there are these emerging technologies that are reusing power. That’s really interesting stuff. When I started thinking about this problem — I’ve kind of left it to the fact that, you know what? Engineers are pretty creative. There are new ideas where you can see early glimpses of them, but then also there are new ideas that will just be discovered as people try to figure this thing out. There’s a great blog written by James Hamilton, on the point of datacenters. He’s the infrastructure guru at Amazon. At every Amazon Reinvent for years, he would do a Monday night talk, something like that, and talk about their infrastructure and all that. This guy sails around the world on a boat and runs datacenters from his boat. But he writes about the future, and he’s written some really interesting things about the future of datacenters and the need for datacenters to be able to handle the amount of data that’s being driven. He references a little bit of that. He’s pretty responsive to his blogs, by the way. If you pop the question on it, I bet he’d respond to it. But it is true that the amount of computing that we’re going to have to do is going to increase, and it’s going to have to become more efficient. Above: Drew Henry at Arm TechCon 2019. VentureBeat: And we talk about this on a day when our power grid is going crazy. One answer I hear is that IoT is going to save a lot of energy, because there’s so much waste that already happens in the world. But the notion of somebody inventing some kind of new Bitcoin analog, that would keep all the datacenters busy again … a lot more demand for graphics cards, that’s not exactly helping the planet. Are there other calculations that you’re doing around — clearly you’re thinking a lot about what has to happen. Given some of the things you talked about with the edge and datacenters, do you think things are on track to make all these visions come to life in a fairly short time? Henry: On track, generally I think yes. You can begin to see just little tiny early indicators of it on interesting new things. Autonomous vehicles, everyone talks about that, but I like just walking into the Amazon Go stores and seeing how that whole experience is. Have you been in one? The cashierless ones. You walk in and scan [your items] right there. It’s interesting to see those types of applications happening now, because those are these really super early indicators of how things are going to evolve. You take the labor out of managing the cash register and put the labor out on the floor. It becomes much more involved in interacting with customers and less involved in checking them out. I did an analysis last year of a billion drop cams. A billion drop cams generate like 400 to 600 exabytes of data a month, more data than transits the internet. I was interested in that because I believe the video sensor is such an information-rich device. It generates a lot of information. For instance, the Amazon retail stores, these Go stores, they’re just equipped with video sensors sitting there monitoring what goes on in the store, which enables you to do this kind of cashierless stuff. Those are the kinds of things we’re involved with. There are these early indicators of stuff that’s happening. Being able to go in and change the way that purchasing experience happens, where online meets brick and mortar, those are pretty interesting early indicators. The reason I say that is because you equip a bunch of video sensors in those stores, and then you absolutely have to have an edge compute device that does the merging of that data. You need to do real-time analytics, real-time decision-making with it. But then you’re backhauling all that data to the cloud to be able to make longer-term decisions based on what’s a better way to operate the whole system. It’s a good early indicator of the way these systems are going to work. Above: Drew Henry at Arm TechCon 2019. VentureBeat: Is 5G helping there? Henry: It does, in a couple of ways. 5G for smartphones is really interesting, what it’s going to be able to do, but I think it’s far less interesting compared to what will happen in the IoT world. In the IoT world, you have the option with 5G to move from operator-controlled to private network-controlled [networks]. You don’t have to have an operator manage your 5G network for a private environment. On a factory floor, you don’t want to wire the entire thing for the sensors you’ve got. You want the benefit of the high bandwidth and connectivity and latency you get out of it, so it becomes close to wired speed. Nokia’s CEO talks about this all the time. Their view is that we’ll take these 5G systems and run them in industrial IoT applications, and the operator doesn’t need to be involved because it’s not an operator-controlled world. It’s an unlicensed spectrum. Being able to apply that same model into what’s effectively a much more massed Wi-Fi type of network today — it’s a completely different class of wireless connectivity. I think that’s really interesting. 5G, to me, becomes much more enabling of those types of things as a use case in the industrial IoT space than it is about making cell phones better. That’s interesting, as well, but I don’t think it’s all that enabling. VentureBeat: I wonder if 5G — you mentioned it’s 10 to 100 times faster. That’s a wide range. I wonder if it just gets filled up, or if it provides you with some extra bandwidth to do a lot more on the computing front — more cloud computing, more edge computing, or a combination of the two. Henry: It does from a standpoint of shipping data back and forth. It doesn’t really change the speed of compute, because that’s controlled by the compute systems you have. But the ability to ingest a whole bunch of data really fast and be able to ingest that, process it, and return an answer to it — I think that’s where it’s going to be interesting. VentureBeat: And more so through private 5G, essentially? Henry: Like I said, going back to the industrial IoT example, yes. But from a standpoint of how your smartphone evolves into new types of applications that are 5G applications, that will take advantage of those capabilities, that’ll emerge. It’s hard to predict, because a decade ago who could predict any of this? Above: Arm custom instructions VentureBeat: The supercomputer in the car, that still might be necessary? Or can you cram enough cloud computing in so that it’s not? Henry: It’s necessary today because we have a view of how you have to make decisions today. You’re merging so much data to make these decisions. Remember, I was at Nvidia not that long ago when that whole DARPA autonomous car thing happened. Remember that? It’s not long between that and where we are now. The understanding of the kind of data you needed to merge together to make decisions back then, the computing you needed to do, compared to what we do now, it’s pretty advanced. The point is that the supercomputer in a car has become less of a buzzword because we’re becoming much more efficient at understanding what data you need to be able to do the kind of autonomy we need to be able to do. Certainly at some point — your smartphone is the supercomputer of whatever past decade. But things like the introduction of Bfloat that I was talking about today — half the amount of data structure that you have to deal with, and yet generally speaking you’re able to make about the same kind of decisions on it. There’s a lot of invention happening right now to make it even more efficient. You don’t need to have this Lawrence Livermore kind of supercomputer sitting in a car doing decision-making, because you’ve filtered out what information is most important to make your decisions. You’ve figured out better ways of doing compute. Above: Simon Segars at Arm TechCon 2019 This Bfloat thing that we did is really cool. One of the principal engineers that did it, Nigel Stephens — this is a funny story. One of the guys I worked with at Silicon Graphics was the principal guy behind FP16. He now works at Arm. He’s been working on this Bfloat thing with us. It’s just one of those funny connections that happen in our industry. But Nigel Stephens, the guy that wrote the blog about Bfloat last week — the big thing we’ve realized is you could do a lot of this training and inferencing on CPUs. You can do it with really small amounts of silicon area. And then, of course, that leads to less power consumed doing it. These are these interesting inventions that are starting to happen as people have a deeper understanding of the algorithms you need to run to do this kind of stuff. That’s one of those early examples of how we’re becoming more efficient at the way we do this stuff. We don’t have to be so brute-force. VentureBeat: How is ARM in the datacenter doing? Henry: I’m so happy. You have the public announcements, and then there’s a lot more progressing that’s not public today. I’ll leave the public announcements as the indicator, but it’s happening in both ways. Amazon has deployed [ARM] throughout. They’re always the first mover. They’ve deployed ARM-based Graviton CPUs that they’ve built. Their Annapurna group built it. Those are now deployed in their A1 instances, as well as deployed in their infrastructure that does things like function as a service. The stuff that you don’t buy the compute cycle for. You actually buy an execution of some kind of application. They’ve deployed it there, as well. We’re thrilled with that deployment. Above: Arm’s alliance for self-driving cars. VentureBeat: What is the niche for it? Or is it really going head-on with Xeon? Henry: Our focus has been — the internet infrastructure is about networking technologies, storage technologies, compute technologies, security technologies. It’s devices at the edge, switches, offload devices that sit inside every server, server application processors. The sum total of that is 300 million processor units a year, something like that. We’ve grown from 27% last year to 30% this year in that. On the server side, which is the thing that most people fixate on — though from a volume standpoint it’s actually really small — that side, two interesting phenomena are happening. The first is that workloads are moving off the application processor. This is the network storage security processing. We have, by now, millions of these systems deployed — that network storage security processing is what used to run as an application load on a Xeon. Now it’s running on ARM. Millions of systems are deployed with that now. If you want to count how workload TAM is, ARM has taken a pretty substantial portion of that workload TAM. Now, in the classic application processor — this is what’s doing the web frontend and Nginx processing, or it’s doing database processing with Redis, or it’s doing other types of application processing. That application tier, that’s where ARM doing the work with Graviton is the first indicator of hyper-scale adoption of that. And then, of course, merchant silicon providers from guys like Ampere and Marvell who have entered into the marketplace, the work that’s happening in China with HiSilicon and others — these guys are now building it, and they are addressing what I think is a growing compute market between the edge stuff I talked about today and the compute side. The adoption is quite good. This is where, as I said last year, pay close attention to the next six months, because the next six months is where you’re going to see a lot of interesting announcements happening. VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Discover our Briefings. The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"AMD CTO: How making the right bets years ago is paying off now | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2020/01/18/amd-cto-how-making-the-right-bets-years-ago-is-paying-off-now/view-all"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages AMD CTO: How making the right bets years ago is paying off now Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn AMD's new Threadripper costs $4,000. Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship. Learn more. It’s been a long ride for Mark Papermaster , chief technology officer at Advanced Micro Devices. But the journey to challenge Intel in the race to design, make, and ship the best microprocessors on the planet is paying off. At CES 2020 , the big tech trade show in Las Vegas, AMD was on a victory lap. The company showed off its new Ryzen 4000 mobile processors, based on its Zen 2 architecture and cost-efficient 7-nanometer manufacturing process. I talked to Papermaster at CES, and he was gratified to see 7nm manufacturing roll out across the entire AMD product line, including the new Radeon 5600 graphics processing units. Coming soon is a monstrous, $4,000, 64-core AMD Threadripper processor that will claim the title of the most powerful microprocessor. And AMD is working on designing the next-generation processor architecture, dubbed Zen 3. I joined in a group interview with AMD CEO Lisa Su, and I also had an opportunity to sit down with Papermaster one on one. Here’s an edited transcript of our interview. Event GamesBeat at the Game Awards We invite you to join us in LA for GamesBeat at the Game Awards event this December 7. Reserve your spot now as space is limited! Above: Mark Papermaster is chief technology officer at Advanced Micro Devices. VentureBeat: It’s different from other times that AMD has had a shot. If you look at it from a tech point of view, what was important to you from [your announcements here at CES]? What technologies are the most important that have come out now? Mark Papermaster: I’m excited about the products we’re announcing at CES. The course of 2020 is really completing the rollout of 7-nanometer [manufacturing] across our full product line. We made a huge bet several years ago on 7nm and married that foundry technology bet with our road map, which was centered on bringing the highest performance to our CPUs and GPUs. We’re super excited, with Ryzen 4000, to now bring that 7nm with the high-performance Zen 2 cores, with optimized graphics cores, into the notebook form factor, including the 15-watt ultrathin market. That’s very exciting for us. VentureBeat: What’s been hard about bringing that out on 7nm? Is it more of a production-driven schedule? Are there a lot of technological steps that you’re taking with each product launch? Papermaster: The decision of our product rollout is based on a combination of our road map planning internally. We need to plan our implementations so we can spread them across our product lines. The decisions as far as which product lines go first are a combination of our partnerships across our technology teams and business unit teams with our OEMs, and with the market planning. What we’re able to do with 7nm is have the fastest product launch we’ve ever had in AMD history. You look at the volume ramps we achieved. You don’t do that by launching every product on the same day. You want to thoughtfully look at the market. You look at what we did with our first launches in desktop. We demonstrated leadership in performance around Zen 2. If you look across Amazon or any of the retailers, Ryzen is holding down most if not all — it’s all of the top 10 spots on Amazon for highest-selling processors. [It was] clearly the right call to first take that leadership in CPU. It drove very high-volume adoption and demonstrated the prowess of Zen 2. We then followed that with introducing our Navi graphics in 7nm. We showed the kind of graphics processing efficiency that we could bring with the new generation Navi architecture, again with 7nm, because 7nm with both CPU and GPU is allowing us to double the kind of computation in the same power envelope that we had in the previous processor node. We followed that with the server in the fall, and now we’re very excited to bring an integrated CPU and GPU Ryzen 4000. Above: PowerColor Red Dragon uses AMD’s Radeon RX 5600 XT. VentureBeat: How much credit goes to TSMC? Papermaster: It’s a full partnership. We’re a different optimization point for the foundry than a smartphone, because of the kind of high performance we demand. It requires a deep partnership across AMD design teams and the TSMC process technology designers. That’s a bet we made several years ago. It was a very deep partnership. The aspects that allow that kind of density improvement — we can get a lot more processing per square millimeter in the same power envelope. A lot of that benefit comes from process technology. And then there’s significant elements, equally significant, that come from the design approach. If you look at the Ryzen 4000, it has even further power management features beyond what we had in our previous generation. When you’re not actually playing a game, when you’re not using all the features of that PC, we have very fine-grained controls that gate off the power. That’s key to getting us the battery life and efficiency we have. It’s process technology and design. VentureBeat: Some people pointed out that you’re able to get into some of these premium laptops. That hasn’t been AMD’s territory. Papermaster: That’s absolutely right. Getting into the 15-watt and the ultrathin space is very exciting. It took all of that design and engineering, the partnership across the processor design and the foundry. VentureBeat: Logically, this turns into market share. How do you think about what’s important there? Papermaster: We’ve established a great momentum in 2019 in terms of market share gain. With the product announcements you see today, you’ll see continued growth as we expand the segments we can play in. Adding the ultrathin is very significant. You’ll see about a dozen platforms in this quarter leveraging our new Ryzen 4000, and you’ll see more to come as the year progresses. You’ll see continued growth in the markets that we launched across last year. The story of AMD has been providing that high-performance product, providing value to our customers. A steady share gain is coming as a result. Above: Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 laptop uses latest Ryzen 4000 processor. VentureBeat: On the APU side, what is the progression there? You’re designing more custom things for Microsoft and Sony. A desktop APU, is that logically the thing that follows? Papermaster: When you look at our APUs, they’re very tightly integrated CPU and GPU, like the Ryzen 4000 we just announced. Certainly, our semi-customs and game consoles today are very tightly coupled APUs. Our partners for the next generation of game consoles will announce details over 2020 as they roll out. But generally, your point is well made. That is, the kind of workloads — not just in notebook, but in desktop — more and more want to leverage very fast across CPU and GPU computing. You already see the kind of direction we’re on there with SmartShift, which we announced at CES this year. SmartShift is in a notebook configuration, in the first product we rolled out, allowing you to very seamlessly optimize across the CPU and GPU based on what you as the user need to optimize your experience. Those types of tight integrations across CPU and GPU, you’ll indeed see those move across our full product line and into desktop applications over time. VentureBeat: If there’s a real estate division on your chips, how much of it is GPU versus something — what do you notice about where the emphasis is and where the choices are? Papermaster: In a notebook configuration, obviously you always have to have a balance: CPU and GPU performance versus size of battery and length of usage that the battery can support. That’s a constant balance. What’s exciting about Ryzen 4000 is we’ve now reached an implementation point where Ryzen 4000 can support triple-A gaming with a monolithic die and a highly optimized implementation. But users really demand a whole range of computation. They want flexibility in the amount of GPU they want. A high-end gamer wants to be able to add graphics capability. That’s what we support. SmartShift is a great example of an enabling technology. Even in a notebook configuration, you can add discrete graphics and optimize that experience. Then you look at desktop. That’s where the hardcore enthusiasts are, and that’s where you can choose. How many cores of CPU do I want? Now, with the 3990X, do I want 64 cores, 128 threads of CPU? Accordingly, how many GPU cores do I want to marry with that? With PCIe Gen 4, we’ve amped up the kind of bandwidth and connectivity between the CPU and GPU that you can deploy across our Ryzen plus Radeon road map. Above: Lenovo Yoga Slim uses AMD’s latest mobile Ryzen processor. VentureBeat: If there’s something different about this generation of gamers and users, it seems like they’re uploading so much now. They’re creating content at the same time they play games. That changes the workload. How is that fitting with what you’ve designed? Papermaster: The trend of users toward — first, from a consumption standpoint, they want higher resolution. They want very quick response when they’re gaming, because it’s the difference between winning and losing. The consumption is going up, and then the generation of content is going up. People want to share their gaming in real time. That certainly surprised me personally, how popular it’s become to watch others play games. Of course, then you have the growth of pure content creation. The engines that we provide — the reason we focus on high performance is to focus on those trends, both in gaming and content creation. We want to enable a much broader population to be able to afford that kind of high performance in CPU and GPU that enables a better consumption experience and a better content generation experience. You do need, to have the best experience, excellent bandwidth to the web. That’s why we work very closely with our partners to make sure we’re very tightly integrated with Wi-Fi, and as 5G takes off we’ll fully support 5G connectivity. Above: AMD is hoping for a victory lap in 2020. VentureBeat: As far as spreading into new areas, how do you think about what markets are interesting, places where you’re not so big right now? Papermaster: We have a huge opportunity as far as share gain in the base markets we’re in, across PC, for content consumption and creation, all the way through server applications. We’ll remain incredibly focused on growing share as we continually improve our high-performance products there. But if you look at each of those markets, there are adjacent segments that are very exciting. You look at the growth AMD has had in supplying to the cloud today, with our second-generation Epyc. You see our share going up and you see growing adoption. The cloud — you’re starting to see wider and wider connectivity as 5G starts to take hold in 2020. You’ll see a need for more computation at the edge, where certain applications can’t absorb the delay going all the way back to a datacenter. They need more local analytics and local optimization. That’s an emerging area we’re very excited about. We’re working with our OEMs and partners in the vertical there to bring that same high-performance technology. We’re very excited about the advent of 8K displays — 8K content is starting to come to reality in 2020. The Olympics will be broadcast in 8K this year. That’s very exciting to us at AMD. As you know, we’ve geared up our GPUs today to be capable of seamlessly processing and delivering 8K content. VentureBeat: Do you foresee self-driving cars and the chips that drive those becoming important to AMD in the way they are to Nvidia? Papermaster: When we look at self-driving cars, I think all of us realize that true self-driving capability — level 4 autonomous driving and beyond — is taking longer than anticipated to come to fruition. There are a number of challenges. They will all be tackled in time. One of the challenges is that a fully self-driving capability demands almost a datacenter processing capability in the auto. We’re interested in that. We think it aligns with our datacenter strategy. We’re looking to the longer term as far as full self-driving capability, making sure that if there’s market demand for our products there, we can provide that. VentureBeat: Nvidia launched their 360Hz G-Sync display here, 6 times a normal refresh rate. On the FreeSync side, is this another feature you think you have to go after? Are gamers going to be interested in that? Or is it a category where nobody’s really going to be able to tell the difference? Papermaster: We’re very pleased with our partnerships with the display vendors. You see broad adoption of FreeSync now. We’re going to continue that close partnership with our display partners and our gaming content development partners. We’re focused on experience. We’ll continue as you’ve seen us evolve FreeSync. We love it. There’s broader adoption. We’ve made the standards open, and they’ve been adopted by the standards committees. That’s a real endorsement that we’re on the right approach. Above: Kohler’s Touchless Toilet debuts at CES 2020. VentureBeat: How open does hardware have to be? You look at RISC-V coming along, following behind Arm. They’re saying that they’ll offer more choice. Before this, maybe people didn’t know that they wanted hardware to be this open, the same way Linux is on the software side. Papermaster: For application development, what’s most important is that you have an open software ecosystem. That’s what the applications are built on. What that software layer — if done right, it should hide the unique characteristics of the hardware underneath. Because of the long lead time and detailed optimization of silicon engines, it allows a rich ecosystem of tailored and optimized silicon. In my mind, it’s less important what instruction set architecture you’re running. What’s most important is, what degree of performance can you provide at the best economic point? Those are the winners on the hardware side. What you’ve now seen, with the advent of AI frameworks and hardware extraction layers between that software and hardware, it’s opened up innovation on hardware to optimize implementation, and a more standard and open approach to build applications on top. It’s great if there are more players. Of course, RISC-V is out there. Arm has already been out there. You’re starting to see more tailored ASIC designs out there. I love it. Competition is a good thing because it drives innovation. We now have such momentum of open software stacks that sit on top. As you know, at AMD we’ve completely embraced open software and interface to applications. Our API approach at AMD is a very open API. VentureBeat: On the semi-custom side, has anything surprised you as far as what people come to you asking for? Papermaster: Our semi-custom business is there for customers who have a high volume and want to leverage the engines we have, along with unique technology and IP they have. They want to have a very close integration. That continues. When you look at the markets we’re in, tailored products that may make sense, that’s a natural direction for the semi-custom business. VentureBeat: Are there any other topics at the top of your mind? Papermaster: There’s a meta-theme that you’re seeing at CES. It underscores the strategy that we’re on at AMD. When you look across all of the segments we talked about — you go and walk the floor at CES, what you’re seeing is this acceleration of having smarter devices everywhere, of having those devices be connected, and the demand that all of us have for better computation, more contextually aware computation, and a more lifelike human-computer interface. It’s a trend we’ve been talking about at AMD for years. Now, what I’m excited about this year at CES — we’re seeing, again, major strides toward making that vision a reality. We’re doing everything we can at AMD to hasten that progression. VentureBeat: There is a big thing I’ve been wondering about. We have Moore’s Law slowing down at a time when the demand for datacenters is gigantic. Then we have climate change to worry about, and we have IoT coming on board at the same time and creating all this demand that wasn’t there before. I wonder if that combination of things is going to doom the planet. Papermaster: You can look at it that way, but I’ll flip it the other way. I’m an optimist by nature. What opportunity do we have, when we have more data available to us than we’ve ever had, and more computation than we’ve ever had? You look at what was announced by the Department of Energy with the Frontier supercomputer, where we’re partnering with HPE Cray to deliver 1.5 exaflops of computing in 2021. If you marry that with, as you said, this massive amount of data we’ve never had before, what analytics can we run that we never have before that can improve society? What can we do, based on that kind of analysis, that can inform us on how to contain climate change? What can we do in drug analysis that can leverage the data telemetry that’s expanding today, running deeper analytics to improve therapies and health care going forward? I look at it the other way. There are two sides to the coin. I really am excited about how technology can help address those concerns we all share. Technology can be used in very negative ways. Technology has caused climate change. It’s a fair criticism. But we can point that same technology to address those ills. GamesBeat's creed when covering the game industry is "where passion meets business." What does this mean? We want to tell you how the news matters to you -- not just as a decision-maker at a game studio, but also as a fan of games. Whether you read our articles, listen to our podcasts, or watch our videos, GamesBeat will help you learn about the industry and enjoy engaging with it. Discover our Briefings. Join the GamesBeat community! Enjoy access to special events, private newsletters and more. VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"Apple Arcade hands-on -- dozens of original cartoon games aimed at family players | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2019/09/16/apple-arcade-hands-on-dozens-of-original-cartoon-games-aimed-at-family-players"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Apple Arcade hands-on — dozens of original cartoon games aimed at family players Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Sneaky Sasquatch Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship. Learn more. Apple Arcade is coming on September 19 in 150 countries for $4.99 a month [ though it appears some people have access today, September 16 — Ed. ]. The company promises more than 100 games for it, and I was able to get a glimpse at some of these. Altogether, Apple has revealed about 20 games for Apple Arcade (you can see the descriptions below). I’ve started with my own descriptions and observations about the games that I saw. And below that, I have included descriptions of other games that I heard about but was not able to play. Overall, these are solid and fun games, mostly done with cartoon-style art that is targeted at family players. Some are exclusive, and some are not. Sayonara Wild Hearts, for instance, debuts on Apple Arcade on the same day that it also debuts as a standalone title for the Nintendo Switch and the PlayStation 4. The game is no different on Apple Arcade. But plenty of original games are coming out that you’ll only be able to play on Apple Arcade. You can play these games on iPads, iPhones, or on the television on Apple TV. You can use the touchscreens for controls or play with a Bluetooth controller. Take a look. Event GamesBeat at the Game Awards We invite you to join us in LA for GamesBeat at the Game Awards event this December 7. Reserve your spot now as space is limited! Hands-on game demos Overland (Finji) Above: Overland Overland is another postapocalyptic game, but you won’t find one that looks like this. It is a turn-based survival road trip that takes place in a car as you travel across the country. You face off against creatures who move toward you across a strategic grid. You have to think about how to avoid the creatures and accomplish your goals in each level. You can rescue survivors and move across the country. You steal a car, get gas, and make friends. Then you dash across the U.S. Sayonara Wild Hearts (Annapurna/Simogo) Above: Sayonara Wild Hearts Sayonara Wild Hearts is a super-fast action game, and it’s about the fusion of music and gameplay. Every level is a song, and every collectible is captured by being awesome at riding motorcycles, skateboarding, dance battling, shooting lasers, wielding swords, and other things at 200 miles-per-hour. A bunch of hearts will speed at you and you have to run them over or switch lanes when an obstacle presents itself. It’s like you’re always riding through a tunnel toward the horizon. You’ll crash a lot, but the game gets you back on your bike really quickly. In that way, it is very accessible, fulfilling one of Apple Arcade’s goals. Of course, since this one will be on other platforms, it’s not going to give Apple Arcade a huge advantage. But you’ll certainly find this game to be cheaper on Apple Arcade, considering the $4.99 a month all-you-can-eat price. I think this game is easiest played on an Apple TV with a game controller. Shinsekai: Into the Depths (Capcom) Above: Shinsekai: Into the Depths Shinsekai: Into the Depths is a graphically beautiful 2D sidescrolling game. You dive underwater and hear the immersive sounds, all recorded under the sea. You explore the depths and deal with sea creatures (one looked like a giant centipede). I had a tough time figuring out how to attack and evade as the centipede kept smashing me with its body. I eventually figured out how to use my underwater ray gun against the beast and I finally got rid of it. I’m looking forward to this one. Skate City (Snowman) Above: Skate City is coming to Apple Arcade Skate City is the kind of game that could prove to be very popular on Apple Arcade. It’s a skateboarding game arriving at a time when not many such games are on the market. Between Shaun White and Tony Hawk, the population apparently got exhausted and never wanted to play another skateboarding game again. But this one was fun. You could tap on the screen to do timed jumps and engage in tricks. I was naturally quite bad at the game, but it wasn’t really that hard to learn. Where Cards Fall (Snowman/The Game Band) Above: Where Cards Fall is coming to Apple Arcade. I spent most of my time playing around with Where Cards Fall, which is a top-down isometric puzzle game. It tells a story about a boy who is looking back at some formative memories from his life. Whenever you solve a puzzle, you get a glimpse of something significant that happened to the boy. The puzzles aren’t that easy. You see a lot of rectangular shapes and buildings in the landscape. You can pick up some cards and spread them out so they form a new building or a wall or a rooftop. Then the boy can walk over them to get to a new location. The cards had a lot of clever mechanics. You can, for instance, move a set of cards out of the way, set up another deck to build a bridge, and then bring the other cards over to build another piece of the puzzle. I thought it was highly original. Sneaky Sasquatch (RAC7) Above: Sneaky Sasquatch Sneaky Sasquatch is a cute 2D game where you live the life of a Sasquatch. You have to sneak around a national park, evading rangers and stealing stuff from the campers. You can disguise yourself in human clothing, but the rangers may recognize you and chase you out of the campsites. You can distract them and head straight for the food cooler. I did so and stole a few hot dogs and ketchup. Then I went to a picnic table and ate them. This silly game had plenty of other things to do in it. Spek (RAC7) Above: Spek Spek made very interesting use of augmented reality. It invites you to guide a dot along the edge of an unseen world and collect mysterious fragments of a broken dimension. When you view it using an iPad or iPhone camera, you can see animated shapes superimposed on the real world. A little dot will move along the shapes. If you line the shapes up from the proper viewing angle, you can make the dot transfer to a different shape and advance the game to its next level. It’s one of those puzzle games that literally makes you look at things from another perspective. Super Impossible Road (Rogue Games/Wonderful Lasers) Super Impossible Road is one of those games where you play it because you want just one more chance to redeem yourself. Or so it was with me. This spiritual sequel to Impossible Road is a race with eight players — one of them is you. You start out rolling a ball down a roller coaster-like race track. It’s easy to fly off the edge of the track, but you can recover if you land on the track below you. But if you fall for more than 5 seconds, you die and start again at the point where you flew off the track. You can also bump others off the track. You can get an idea of the gameplay from the video above. A developer played it, as you can tell from the level of skill. Frogger in Toy Town (Konami) Above: Frogger in Toy Town The classic frog-action game returns on Apple Arcade as Frogger in Toy Town. It looked like any Frogger game to me, except it had a 3D view of the action, rather than a 2D overhead view. I realized this when a baby started crawling directly at me, wiping out a bunch of the toys that were in my path. I tried to crawl out of the way of obstacles, but your green amphibian can get flattened in a lot of ways. Additional games we haven’t seen Above: Chu Chu Rocket Universe is coming for Apple Arcade. Apple also disclosed these additional games that will be available on or near the launch date for Apple Arcade. I’ve listed them below. Atone: Heart of the Elder Tree (Wildboy): Atone: Heart of the Elder Tree teams players up with Estra, the daughter of mankind’s last great leader, to help her protect the Sacred Elder Tree and return Midgard to its previous splendor as a prosperous land teeming with mythical beasts and beings. Cardpocalypse (Versus Evil): Make friends, play cards, twist the rules, become a Mega Mutant Power Pets master, and try to save the world in Cardpocalypse, a single-player role-playing game about being a ’90s kid. Chu Chu Rocket! Universe (Sega): Chu Chu Rocket! has been revived with over 100 mind-bending pathfinding puzzles for players to solve as they travel through a universe full of strange and wonderful planets while rescuing their mouse-napped friends from the claws of King Kapu and his wacky band of space cats. Down in Bermuda (Yak & Co): Down in Bermuda is a quirky adventure filled with family-friendly puzzles to solve and uncover mysteries in order to escape each of the three unique islands (with more to come), each one leading to the next on a quest for a way back home. Hot Lava (Klei): Hot Lava transports you back to your childhood imagination requiring you to use your skills to conquer treacherous obstacles in nostalgia-packed environments flooded with hot molten lava. Lego Brawls (Lego): Build your way to the top in Lego Brawls, a lighthearted, team action brawler where anything can happen. Oceanhorn 2 (Cornfox & Brothers): Oceanhorn 2 is a role-playing adventure game that has the look of classic video games. Projection: First Light (Blowfish Studios): Projection: First Light is a shadow-puppet adventure about light manipulation, curiosity and lost art inviting players to embark on a journey of self-enlightenment with the assistance of legendary heroes from each culture the character explores. Speed Demons (Radiangames): Speed Demons is a highway racing simulator, with breakneck speeds, physics-based crashes, inviting players to leisurely cruise down the highway, weave through traffic at high-speeds, take out rogue racers, escape from law enforcement, or just barrel through everything in sight. The Enchanted World (Noodlecake Studios): The Enchanted World asks players to guide a young fairy through a series of tile-sliding puzzle adventures on her journey to piece back together a magical world torn asunder by dark forces. Way of the Turtle (Illusions Lab): An adventure platform game, Way of the Turtle, invites players to join two turtles on their journey to reunite stranded on a tropical island in the middle of nowhere. Conclusion Are these games worth $4.99 a month? Of course they are. But it depends whether you are going to play a lot of them. If you like family games and you like what you see here, then the price is a bargain. If you don’t play many games, then you’ll have to think about it because you don’t have an a la carte option here. We don’t know yet exactly how many games are going to debut on the first day, but it is encouraging that Apple has about 20 games that it is acknowledging. We’ll find our for sure in a few days. Apple’s offering is quite enticing, and the trick will be if it can roll out additional games that justify the monthly subscription. GamesBeat's creed when covering the game industry is "where passion meets business." What does this mean? We want to tell you how the news matters to you -- not just as a decision-maker at a game studio, but also as a fan of games. Whether you read our articles, listen to our podcasts, or watch our videos, GamesBeat will help you learn about the industry and enjoy engaging with it. Discover our Briefings. Join the GamesBeat community! Enjoy access to special events, private newsletters and more. VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"Zynga launches Breast Cancer Awareness Month campaign in Words With Friends | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2019/10/01/zynga-launches-breast-cancer-awareness-month-campaign-in-words-with-friends"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Zynga launches Breast Cancer Awareness Month campaign in Words With Friends Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Words With Hope was a Zynga campaign to fight breast cancer. Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship. Learn more. Zynga is kicking off a month-long initiative supporting Breast Cancer Awareness Month in its Words With Friends social mobile game. The event is Words With Hope, and the San Francisco game publisher will use it to highlight a word of hope and corresponding statements from people whose lives have been touched by breast cancer. “We’ve all seen the statistics; 1-in-8 women in the U.S. will receive a breast cancer diagnosis in their lifetime,” said Deepthi Menon, senior vice president of Words With Friends at Zynga, in a statement. ”And we’ve seen the power that community can have in bolstering strength, courage, and humor during times of illness. Over the years, our players have shared their stories of friendship and support that they’ve found in Words With Friends, and we’re proud to be joined by these incredible, esteemed women to spotlight this cause that touches so many.” The timing of the campaign is not great in one respect. Zynga acknowledged that it has been hacked recently, and a hacker claimed the breach netted the personal data of 218 million Words With Friends users. An investigation is pending. Event GamesBeat at the Game Awards We invite you to join us in LA for GamesBeat at the Game Awards event this December 7. Reserve your spot now as space is limited! Above: Zynga’s campaign personalizes the fight on breast cancer. Players don’t get a special incentive for playing with the word of the day (WOTD). In this case, the idea is to raise awareness about breast cancer. Celebrities joining in the campaign include Talia Balsam, Pat Benatar, Sharon Byers, Katie Couric, Regina Dugan, EMM, Roxane Gay, Melissa Gilbert, Neil Giraldo, Judy Greer, Sally Hawkins, Alice Hoffman, Olivia Newton-John, Betsey Johnson, Billie Jean King, Purnima Kochikar, Sharon Lawrence, Julianna Margulies, Deepthi Menon, Carol Mills, Alanis Morissette, Phuong Phillips, Amy Poehler, Melissa Rivers, Janice Roberts, Kendra Scott, Ellen Siminoff, Jaclyn Smith, Taryn Southern, Mindy Sterling, Alison Sweeney, Chandra Wilson, Rita Wilson, and Trisha Yearwood. Above: Taryn Southern’s word of the day. “Awareness and early detection are powerful tools for improving breast cancer outcomes — but words are powerful, too,” said Dr. Richard Wender, chief cancer control officer of the American Cancer Society, in a statement. “During October’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month, as well as year-round, keep words of support, compassion, caring and hope at the forefront, as we continue to battle this disease that affects so many of the people we love.” For more information about Breast Cancer Awareness Month and other ways to get involved, visit go here. The #WordsWithHope campaign begins today with iconic singer and actress Olivia Newton-John, and her word, “thriver.” GamesBeat's creed when covering the game industry is "where passion meets business." What does this mean? We want to tell you how the news matters to you -- not just as a decision-maker at a game studio, but also as a fan of games. Whether you read our articles, listen to our podcasts, or watch our videos, GamesBeat will help you learn about the industry and enjoy engaging with it. Discover our Briefings. Join the GamesBeat community! Enjoy access to special events, private newsletters and more. VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"OneWeb raises $1.25 billion to mass-produce high-speed internet satellites | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2019/03/18/oneweb-raises-1-25-billion-to-mass-produce-high-speed-internet-satellites"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages OneWeb raises $1.25 billion to mass-produce high-speed internet satellites Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn OneWeb Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship. Learn more. OneWeb , a space startup that recently launched its first “constellation” of micro-satellites to deliver broadband access across the globe, has raised $1.25 billion to begin mass-producing its satellites and capitalize on what it calls “first mover advantage.” The gargantuan cash injection was led by SoftBank, Qualcomm, Grupo Salinas, and the Rwandan government and takes the company’s total money raised to $3.4 billion, including its previous $1.2 billion investment more than two years ago. Internet from space Founded out of London in 2012, OneWeb is one of a number of startups planning to bring affordable, high-speed internet access to more people around the world by deploying hundreds of low-orbit satellites. The infrastructure will not only help mobile operators and internet service providers (ISPs) extend their coverage to hitherto hard-to-reach areas, it will also ensure always-on coverage during natural disasters and help power new technologies that are coming to the fore. Other players in the field include Luxembourg-based LeoSat and Elon Musk’s well-funded SpaceX, which has been focused on developing rocket technology but is also known to be working on a satellite internet business similar to OneWeb’s. But after launching an inaugural six satellites last month, OneWeb hopes that having its operational network in place first will enable it to gain traction in a time of growing demand for low-latency network capacity, which will support 5G , the internet of things (IoT), and self-driving cars. VB Event The AI Impact Tour Connect with the enterprise AI community at VentureBeat’s AI Impact Tour coming to a city near you! “OneWeb has extended its first-mover advantage and is on track to become the world’s largest and first truly global communications network,” said SoftBank Group chief operating officer (COO) Marcelo Claure. “At SoftBank, our aim is to invest in transformative companies at the leading edge of technology disruption. OneWeb’s potential is undeniable as the growth in data from 5G, IoT, autonomous driving, and other new technologies drives demand for capacity above and beyond the limits of the existing infrastructure.” Expensive Launching satellites is an expensive endeavor, which is why OneWeb’s funding rounds have been so substantial. The company develops its satellites through a partnership with Airbus, which is also an investor, and over the next few months OneWeb expects to begin doubling down on its production efforts at a new manufacturing plant in Florida. The company said that in Q4 2019 it plans to kickstart monthly launches of around 30 satellites at a time, which will lead to its first constellation of 650 satellites covering the globe by 2021. It plans to add more satellites to the mix as demand grows. “We are committed to bridging the digital divide, and this funding helps ensure our globally shared dream will soon become a reality,” added OneWeb founder and chair Greg Wyler. “We look forward to continuing our work with the many supportive and forward-looking governments, ISPs, and telecom operators to help them broaden the reach of connectivity to connect people everywhere.” OneWeb’s roster of investors reveals that beyond bringing additional capacity to developed markets, a core focus will be bringing internet coverage to places that have yet to come online. Grupo Salinas is a conglomerate of a number of Mexican companies, including ISP Telecosmo. “I have worked for over 20 years to bring network access to people throughout Mexico and Latin America and have seen first-hand the power of connectivity to change and improve lives,” added Grupo Salinas chair and founder Ricardo Salinas. “OneWeb will have the ability to reach places that have previously been impossible to connect.” This is part of a growing trend, with the likes of Facebook recently announcing a partnership with Viasat to bring satellite Wi-Fi hotspots to rural communities, starting in Mexico. VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Discover our Briefings. The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"Amazon plans network of satellites for high-speed broadband | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2019/04/05/amazon-plans-network-of-satellites-for-high-speed-broadband"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Amazon plans network of satellites for high-speed broadband Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn The Amazon logo is seen at the Young Entrepreneurs fair in Paris Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship. Learn more. ( Reuters ) — Amazon on Thursday confirmed its plan to build a network of over 3,000 satellites through “Project Kuiper” to provide high speed internet. The project will launch a constellation of low-Earth orbit satellites that will provide low-latency, high-speed broadband connectivity to people globally who lack basic access to broadband internet, the company said. Details of the project were filed with the United Nation’s International Telecommunication Union last month. Amazon’s satellite project faces stiff competition from similar ventures from billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s rocket company SpaceX and Airbus-backed OneWeb among others. In February, OneWeb launched its first six satellites. VB Event The AI Impact Tour Connect with the enterprise AI community at VentureBeat’s AI Impact Tour coming to a city near you! Companies such as SpaceX, LeoSat Enterprises and Canada’s Telesat are working to enable data networks with hundreds or even thousands of tiny satellites that orbit closer to Earth than traditional communications satellites, a radical shift made possible by leaps in laser technology and computer chips. Earlier this year, Jeff Bezos’ rocket company Blue Origin also signed a deal with Canada’s Telesat to launch part of its satellite constellation. VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Discover our Briefings. The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"SpaceX launches first satellites for Starlink internet venture | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2019/05/24/spacex-launches-first-satellites-for-starlink-internet-venture"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages SpaceX launches first satellites for Starlink internet venture Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn FILE PHOTO: A SpaceX Falcon 9 carrying the Crew Dragon spacecraft sits on launch pad 39A prior to the uncrewed test flight to the International Space Station. March 1, 2019. Are you ready to bring more awareness to your brand? Consider becoming a sponsor for The AI Impact Tour. Learn more about the opportunities here. ( Reuters ) — SpaceX, the private rocket company of high-tech entrepreneur Elon Musk , launched the first batch of 60 small satellites into low-Earth orbit on Thursday for Musk’s new Starlink internet service. A Falcon 9 rocket carrying the satellites blasted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at about 10:30 p.m. local time (0230 GMT Friday), clearing a key hurdle for a business venture that Musk hopes will generate much-needed cash for his larger ambitions in space. The launch came a week after two back-to-back countdowns for the mission were scrubbed — once due to high winds over the Cape and the next night in order to update satellite software and “triple-check” all systems. The 60 satellites flown into space were released into orbit as planned about an hour after Thursday’s launch, and the Falcon 9’s main-stage reusable booster rocket flew back to Earth for a successful landing on a barge floating in the Atlantic. VB Event The AI Impact Tour Connect with the enterprise AI community at VentureBeat’s AI Impact Tour coming to a city near you! SpaceX said it would probably take another day to learn whether all the satellites deployed were functioning properly. Each weighs about 500 pounds (227 kg), making them the heaviest payload carried aloft by SpaceX to date. They represent the initial phase of a planned constellation capable of beaming signals for high-speed internet service from space to paying customers around the globe. Musk has said he sees the new Starlink venture as an important new revenue stream for his California-based Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, whose launch service income he expects to top out at around $3 billion a year. He told reporters last week that makes Starlink pivotal in helping pay for his larger goals of developing a new spacecraft to fly paying customers to the moon and for eventually trying to colonize Mars. “We think this is a key stepping stone on the way toward establishing a self-sustaining city on Mars and a base on the moon,” said billionaire Musk, who is also chief executive officer of automaker Tesla Inc. At least 12 launches carrying similar payloads are needed to achieve constant internet coverage of most of the world, Musk said. For now, Starlink is only authorized for U.S. operations. Musk faces stiff competition. Airbus SE-backed OneWeb launched its own clutch of satellites in February, while LeoSat Enterprises and Canada’s Telesat are also working to build data networks. In each network, the tiny satellites orbit closer to Earth than traditional communications satellites, a technological shift made possible by advances in laser technology and computer chips. Musk said SpaceX would begin approaching customers later this year or next year. As many as 2,000 satellites will be launched per year, with the ultimate objective of placing up to 12,000 into orbit. ( Reporting by Joey Roulette in Cape Canaveral, Fla.; Writing by Steve Gorman; Editing by Paul Tait ) VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Discover our Briefings. The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"OneWeb's first commercial satellite service will bring broadband to the Arctic | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2019/09/04/onewebs-first-commercial-satellite-service-will-bring-broadband-to-the-arctic"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages OneWeb’s first commercial satellite service will bring broadband to the Arctic Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn September 14, 2008 - Arctic sea ice Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship. Learn more. OneWeb , a heavily funded space startup that recently launched its first constellation of micro-satellites to deliver broadband globally, has announced its first official commercial service. The London-based company, which closed a $1.25 billion funding round earlier this year, will be bringing “fiber-like” internet to the Arctic region from 2020 and plans to be the first to provide 100% coverage to the region. Founded in 2012, the company is one of a number of startups bringing high-speed internet access to hard-to-reach regions by deploying hundreds of low-orbit satellites, though OneWeb gained first-mover advantage back in February when it launched six such satellites on a rocket from French Guiana. A few months later, Elon Musk’s SpaceX launched its first satellites as part of its planned Starlink internet service, and Amazon is planning something similar. The new satellite infrastructure will complement existing ground-based technologies, such as fiber cables, to extend coverage. But it will also ensure “always-on” coverage during natural disasters while powering new technologies that require low-latency connectivity, like internet of things (IoT) devices and self-driving cars. VB Event The AI Impact Tour Connect with the enterprise AI community at VentureBeat’s AI Impact Tour coming to a city near you! 60th parallel north OneWeb’s new internet service promises 375Gbps of capacity for areas lying above the 60th parallel north, which is basically a circle of latitude 60 degrees north of the Equator that spans North America, Europe, and Asia. Above: Rough path of 60th parallel north The company is already building out the ground infrastructure required to make its satellites operational on Earth and is building antennas in both Norway and Alaska, where it plans to be operational by January of next year. “Connectivity is now an essential utility and a basic human right,” said OneWeb CEO Adrian Steckel. “Our constellation will offer universal high-speed Arctic coverage sooner than any other proposed system meeting the need for widespread connectivity across the Arctic.” The next billion One of the greatest remaining obstacles for tech giants targeting the “next billion” internet users is a lack of internet access, which is why companies are investing so much in the necessary infrastructure — including subsea cabling systems , solar-powered networking equipment mounted on balloons , and satellites. Earlier this year, Facebook announced a partnership with Viasat to bring satellite-powered Wi-Fi hotspots to rural communities, starting in Mexico. And Amazon launched AWS Ground Station to help its enterprise cloud customers access and manage data garnered from satellites. While OneWeb’s commercial service is partly designed to help individuals and households get online, a big focus is on business endeavors, including advancing scientific research and governmental initiatives in the region, as well as aviation and maritime interests. The melting Arctic ice is expected to open up the far Northern hemisphere to new shipping routes, which means the region could become more of a trading thoroughfare. “Connectivity is critical in our modern economy,” added Lisa Murkowski, U.S. senator for Alaska. “As the Arctic opens, ensuring the people of the Arctic have access to affordable and reliable broadband will make development safer [and] more sustainable and create new opportunities for the next generation leading in this dynamic region of the globe.” VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Discover our Briefings. The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"Apple's satellite project won't rival SpaceX's Starlink anytime soon | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2019/12/20/apples-satellite-project-wont-rival-spacexs-starlink-anytime-soon"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Apple’s satellite project won’t rival SpaceX’s Starlink anytime soon Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn SpaceX's Starlink satellites have been going into orbit since 2019. Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship. Learn more. Somewhat akin to Apple’s work on a self-driving car, the company’s satellite communications project has been an open secret for some time — former Dropcam, Google, and Apple executive Greg Duffy referenced the topic on his public LinkedIn profile months ago. But even after Bloomberg reported the discovery today, the key question about Apple’s interest in satellites remains unanswered: “Why?” Like its seemingly out-of-nowhere interest in making either cars or telematic systems for cars, Apple appears to be watching the pursuits of Elon Musk, founder of both Tesla and SpaceX , and planning its role in a world where those innovations become mainstream. Apple reportedly considered buying Tesla , but wound up building its own secretive auto division from scratch. Now it’s hiring multiple satellite experts who worked at Google, aerospace companies, and network-building firms, seemingly to emulate SpaceX’s Starlink project , though the actual end goal of Apple’s research isn’t clear. Bear in mind that building, launching, and maintaining a constellation of satellites is a massive, multi-billion-dollar proposition. While a company with Apple’s resources could take on such a project, it entails significant enough staffing and regulatory challenges to require an entire company’s worth of additional infrastructure — and many years of development — not just a handful of new employees and a near-term deadline. That having been said, here are three reasons Apple would bother with satellite research. Only two of them involve actually building and launching satellites. 1. Two-way communications. Starlink is designed to offer satellite-based internet access, using thousands of small satellites in three separate orbital shells around the Earth. Notably, these satellites aren’t expected to communicate directly with handheld devices; instead, like Dish Network subscribers, users will need ground-mounted small satellite dishes connected to “ beautiful ” user terminal boxes. SpaceX plans to deliver broadband service at speeds in the 500Mbps to 1Gbps range, with sub-35-millisecond latency — potentially lower. That would make the service competitive with current-generation home broadband, but well behind the cable industry’s next planned evolution to 10Gbps service. It’s currently somewhat hard to imagine Apple getting into this business, but anything’s possible. Another theory is that Apple might use satellites to offer internet access to remote regions that aren’t served well by existing cellular networks. While this certainly isn’t impossible, underserved areas are typically underserved because they’re lightly populated and don’t represent major revenue sources for companies; new Apple businesses always target huge numbers of customers with a focus on making lots of money. 2. One-way communications. A similar collection of satellites could enable Apple to broadcast in a single direction — outbound — to multiple devices across the globe. Apple TV+ , for instance, could see its shows available “over the air” anywhere the satellite signals can be picked up. Lower-bandwidth data such as News+ stories, apps, or other content currently served by ground-based servers could instead be fed to people from the skies. According to Bloomberg, Apple has hired a former Netflix content delivery network executive for this project, making this application seem more likely. But launching a risky, expensive, and night sky-polluting collection of satellites just to distribute videos and data — something that’s already achieved with existing networks — doesn’t sound like something Apple would do, either. It’s also possible that Apple isn’t focused on traditional satellite broadcasting or communications. Satellites can also be used to gather map imagery, provide global positioning data for location services, and support other features that are important to users as background rather than foreground tasks. Again, it’s hard to imagine Apple launching its own satellites for these purposes, but who knows? 3. Preparing for the technology or an eventual acquisition. Apple doesn’t need to launch its own satellites to prepare for a time when they might become a bigger part of telecommunications or broadcasting technology. It could just be hiring people who understand the hardware, software, and related engineering challenges well enough to keep Apple from being surprised by new developments in the satellite sector — and conceivably to support it in appropriate devices. Apple might also be setting up an internal team to assess the value of potential acquisitions from the sector, as it considers whether to go further into one of the aforementioned directions. My personal feeling is that scenario 3 is the most likely for now. Apple is said to have a five-year timeline for producing results from this project, and SpaceX took over a decade to go from the design stage to actual satellite launches. While some might guess Apple will just copy SpaceX’s work so it can move faster, five years isn’t a long time when it comes to aerospace development. Given the slow pace of Apple’s car and augmented reality initiatives, each of which reportedly required mid-cycle reboots and haven’t yet borne fruit, the likelihood that Apple could go from nothing today to a fleet of self-made satellites by 2025 — without acquiring a company that’s already partially through the process — seems low. Even so, it’s worth watching to see what Apple and its competitors begin to do in the satellite space. While early satellite TV and satellite internet never achieved the popularity their backers once enthusiastically predicted, the underlying technologies have advanced enough to be somewhat compelling as an alternative to traditional wired and terrestrial wireless communications. Whether and how Apple ultimately intends to capitalize on those advances remains to be seen. VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Discover our Briefings. VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"Netflix beats Q4 2019 subscriber expectations, misses on Q1 2020 forecast | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2020/01/21/netflix-earnings-q4-2019"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Netflix beats Q4 2019 subscriber expectations, misses on Q1 2020 forecast Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Netflix is moving into games. Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship. Learn more. ( Reuters ) — Netflix missed Wall Street subscriber forecasts for the first quarter Tuesday, amid pressure from lower-cost services from Walt Disney and Apple in the streaming video wars. The streaming giant added more paying subscribers than Wall Street expected in the fourth quarter, beating international subscriber estimates but missing estimates for U.S. subscriber growth. Netflix shares were up 1.5% in volatile after-hours trading on Tuesday. The company acknowledged that competitive pressure and a recent price hike impacted its U.S. business, where subscriber growth fell short of analyst estimates. Competition had a more muted impact on its viewership in Canada, Australia, and the Netherlands, the company wrote in a letter to investors. The Disney+ and Apple TV+ streaming services both launched in the United States in November. Disney+, which is also live in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, will launch in the U.K., France, Germany, Italy, Ireland, Spain, Austria, and Switzerland on March 24. Apple TV+ is available in over 100 countries and regions. Netflix’s first-quarter forecast reflected the potential threat of that international expansion. The company said it expects to add 7 million subscribers globally in the first quarter, below analysts’ average of 8.82 million, according to IBES data from Refinitiv. Netflix said it added 8.76 million paid global subscribers in the fourth quarter, boosted by strong releases that included a new season of royal drama “The Crown” and two films nominated for Best Picture Oscars. It beat the 7.6 million average expectation of analysts, according to IBES data from Refinitiv — the same growth Netflix forecast for the quarter. The Disney+ service launched in the United States and Canada for $7 per month and $13 a month for a bundle with ESPN+ and Hulu; it reached 10 million sign-ups on its first day. Apple TV+ launched Nov. 1 for $5 per month and is free for one year with the purchase of some Apple devices: its performance has been harder to define. AT&T-owner WarnerMedia’s HBO Max will cost $15 per month when it launches in May. Netflix is available in over 190 countries; its standard U.S. plan costs $13 per month. Netflix has had an outsized impact on the pay TV landscape, changing the way that people consume TV and film and forcing media and tech companies to shift their business models. As streaming video has grown in the United States, the market has become more competitive, pushing Netflix to look overseas for growth. As such, the company has invested heavily in non-English language content, and this quarter began releasing revenue and subscriber numbers by region for the first time. It added 1.75 million subscribers in Asia-Pacific, its fastest-growing region, while Latin America grew by 2.04 million subscribers in the quarter. As rivals have pulled their content off of Netflix, the company has poured money into original TV series and films. It had a $15 billion cash budget for content last year and $14.76 billion in long-term debt as of Dec. 31, 2019. “Friends” left Netflix in the United States this month and will run on HBO Max. “The Office” is leaving the service at the end of 2020 and will be available on Comcast-owned NBCUniversal’s forthcoming Peacock streaming platform next year. “The streaming service’s massive content and marketing budget can only be justified if the company is adding more subscribers at a robust rate. If that doesn’t materialize, then its stock price will reflect that reality,” wrote Haris Anwar, an analyst at investing.com. The addition of new streaming platforms — taking more out of a household’s monthly entertainment budget — has also made it harder for Netflix to raise prices, as it did in the United States last year. Free, advertising-supported services such as Peacock and ViacomCBS-owned Pluto TV may also limit Netflix’s pricing power, according to research from Citigroup. Net income rose to $587 million, or $1.30 per share, in the fourth quarter from $134 million, or 30 cents per share, a year earlier. Total revenue rose to $5.5 billion from $4.2 billion a year earlier. Analysts on average had expected $5.45 billion. The streaming giant said it added 8.76 million paid subscribers globally compared with expectations of 7.63 million, according to IBES data from Refinitiv. VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Discover our Briefings. The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"GamesBeat Summit 2019: Dean Takahashi's opening speech on gaming communities | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2019/04/23/gamesbeat-summit-2019-dean-takahashis-opening-speech-on-gaming-communities"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages GamesBeat Summit 2019: Dean Takahashi’s opening speech on gaming communities Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship. Learn more. We’ve kicked off GamesBeat Summit 2019, our event at Two Bit Circus in Los Angeles, and I talked about our themes, motivations, and speakers for the event in an opening speech. I’ve included the speech for you here. You can also view what’s happening on the stages live here. Here’s the speech. Building gaming communities We’ve been doing these conferences for more than 10 years. And I can honestly say that this is our best lineup ever. It’s amazing what happens when you offer people free games and free food. Event GamesBeat at the Game Awards We invite you to join us in LA for GamesBeat at the Game Awards event this December 7. Reserve your spot now as space is limited! Putting on this event is also a nice way to be lazy. Why hunt down all of the newsmakers one at a time when we can bring you here to us. All we have to do is sit back and listen to your stories. We have 97 speakers over the next day and a half. It’s the first time we’re doing two concurrent stages. Our audience can swipe right or swipe left. Above: Notre Dame as it once was. If you can’t tell which stage is more important, that’s good. But I will say more CEOs are on the Boss stage, where we are now, and more consumer and community talks are on the Hero stage. Swipe right for the Boss Stage. Swipe left for Hero. If the stages get a little tight, remember you can watch the TVs on the outside and listen on the app. About 37 speakers are CEOs, presidents, and founders. 14 are women. 20 are from racially diverse groups. And despite a decade of events, 61 of the speakers have never spoken at a GamesBeat event before. For speakers who need inspiration: Remember the words of Reggie, who retired last week from Nintendo: “My name is Reggie. I’m about kicking ass.” Kicking ass And since so many of you are fresh faces, that means I get to recycle my jokes. Above: Reggie Fils-Aime is retiring as president of Nintendo of America. This routine is part of my attempt to show you that we are in a safe space. You have license to be brilliant. Innovative. Different. Inspiring. Amazing. Uplifting. I thought it was beautiful of Ubisoft to make Assassin’s Creed Unity available for free, in the wake of the Notre Dame fire, so people could once again see what the unburnt cathedral looked like. That’s inspiring, and you can make us feel that way too. Just don’t be goofy like me. I set the bar low, so you can go high. In fact, this conference has leveled up so much, that I’m removing myself from a lot of it. We’ve got our super professional co-emcees, Andrea Rene and Tommy Tallarico on the Hero Stage, and Elizabeth Howard and Ted Staloch on the Boss Stage. My job is to bring you here. As speakers, you are here to tell stories. And to help us strengthen our GamesBeat community. Our theme is about building gaming communities. And I guess this community is for people who tolerate my jokes. Actually, we have a very high bar for speaking here. Some previous speakers asked me why I didn’t ask them to speak again. And I asked, “What did you do different, from a year ago, or the last time you talked?” Like what have you done for us lately? That’s what you have to do when you are curating and serving an audience. This is one message I hope doesn’t get old. We have an enduring mission for GamesBeat Summit, the GamesBeat publication, and VentureBeat. We’re curators. We serve our audience. We serve our readers. We present you with thought leadership. We are real journalists. We are not fake news. We are public servants. We have brought you to a place where you can make the most of things, whether you’re raising money, looking for innovative developers, trying to make an acquisition, or searching for inspiration. This is your opportunity, your possibility space, as Will Wright would say. You can even take over the unconference room for your own purposes. This is the neutral zone of the industry. GamesBeat Summit is a place where we check our tribalism at the door. And you should give yourself permission to stay away from the office, catch up with old friends, or make new ones. Face to face work always pays off. Not all those who wander are lost. And this venue, Two Bit Circus, is such a great place to wander. Brent Bushnell and Eric Gradman built it for community. We bill this as an exclusive conference. But we never try to keep good people out. We lowered our ticket prices for developers to the lowest we’ve ever had them. We’ve used some of our money from sponsors like Facebook to bring interesting people here, like Lual Mayen, who went from refugee to game developer. Above: Notre Dame in Assassin’s Creed Unity. We can put an emotional talk like Lual’s story of making games for peace, or the Xbox Adaptive Controller discussion about how everyone wins when we all play, right next to the conversation of Google Stadia leader Phil Harrison and Amy Hennig about what’s coming next. And it will seem like the most natural thing. You will hear Kevin Chou’s vision for blockchain games and Tommy Tallarico take us back to the past of Intellivision. We cover all of games at this conference. Bigger questions Our speakers are going to make you think. Are games really meant for everyone? Are hardcore gamers really who you think they are? Why did Apex Legends take off? If you make games universally accessible, will everybody play? The research shows that games do not make you behave violent. But can they make you addicted, and if so, what should you do about it? Or can games make you see things from another perspective, or make you feel more peaceful? Can message games convince you to do something about issues, like climate change? We made sure the common thread in this room was gathering people who make you feel like you are stepping into the future, five years ahead of everyone else. These are some of the people who can inspire the next generation and bring more diverse gamers and game creators into the fold. The way to think about this is like the user interface for a game. You can zoom in on tactical ideas, like Brian Bowman’s talk on adtech or Adjust’s panel on eradicating bots. Or you can zoom out for inspirational ideas on the future of games, and how to invest in that future, so we can add another billion gamers. Or two. Chris Taylor, who will speak tomorrow, gave us that notion of strategic zoom in his games like Supreme Commander. I like to think GamesBeat is a unique publication because we cover things like the skill it takes to play Sekiro or Cuphead, but we also ask questions at the high level, pulling up to get some strategic zoom on the landscape. Above: Go out and create something wonderful. Intentional and accidental game platforms I used to talk about the difference between the accidental and intentional game platforms. The intentional game companies are Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo and the accidental game companies are Amazon, Google, Apple, Tencent, and Facebook. By accidental, I mean that they created platforms that were meant for something else, but eventually welcomed games. The iPhone is a perfect example of that. Steve Jobs didn’t like games. But he saw that people wanted to play. The intentional game companies have been deadly serious about games for a long time, and they have decades-long credibility with their customers. They are about to launch another cycle of new products that reel in more of us. But now the accidental companies are all awake to the power of games. Google CEO Sundar Pichai took the stage at the Game Developers Conference to declare that games are for everyone and that he wants billions more people to become gamers. That carried gravity. And Phil Harrison and Jade Raymond brought game business cred as they announced Google’s cloud gaming platform Stadia. That’s throwing down the gauntlet. Apple became the latest company to propose a subscription game service, Apple Arcade, launching this fall. It is the latest company to offer a “Netflix of games.” Then you have games like Fortnite, which Epic is using to become a platform unto itself. If you look at the top games being streamed on Twitch, you’ll see that it is a multi-store world. I can’t tell you how long I’ve been waiting for this moment. And this is why, for the first time in a decade, I bought a new suit for this conference. Above: Assassin’s Creed Unity takes you inside Notre Dame. It’s like a battle royale among the platforms, spilling across borders and genres and business models. And what are they fighting over? You. The creators. The makers. The doers. It’s like the war of the seven kingdoms. (You knew I was going to get a Game of Thrones reference in there.) It’s a chess game, where you win or you die. And it is very hard to understand, because you don’t really know who’s is a pawn and who is a queen, or who’s bastard, and who’s a king. Our speakers will help you sort that out. This is the time to bring your A game. It’s not a time for sitting on sidelines. We are in an era of accelerating and cascading revolutions. You don’t want to be distracted by those who want to drag us back into the past, when only certain people got to play. Above: Notre Dame Thankful I’d like to thank the people who made this happen, starting with our GamesBeat team members Jason Wilson, Mike Minotti, Jeff Grubb, and Giancarlo Valdes. Thanks also to the VentureBeat team who worked hard on this event, as well as our advisory board, Show Imaging, USC Games, Two Bit Circus, Jason Robar, and my own daughter, Danielle Takahashi. Thanks so much to our sponsors and partners. Your money and support pays not only for this great event in this place. It enables us to deliver news to you 365 days a year. From our U.S. president on down to the denizens of Gamergate, media critics say that we are the enemy. But we believe our purpose is to serve you, and we cannot do it without your help. Please join us in helping people see that the future is what matters — not keeping games shackled inside an old stereoptype, trapped by borders that are imaginary. I think about the privilege I’ve had in going around the world to hear people talk about games. I try to understand why a local games industry blossomed in those places. Where in the world will the next game jobs be created? Where will your competitors come from? Where will the Notre Dame of gaming be created? It is hard to measure, but the spread of game development into places like Israel, Helsinki, Pakistan, Bogota, and even Siberia is inspiring. And let’s hear it for LA, where I first started covering companies like Blizzard Entertainment, as they were born. We’re pleased to do this event for a second time in Los Angeles, where the game industry is coming on very strong. This particular event was first suggested by Peter Levin and the Bushnells, the first family of fun. And I am so glad we did this here. I don’t want to put too much responsibility on you. But what you do matters. Not just at the GamesBeat Summit, but in your careers in gaming, which is all about spreading fun and love, not hate and fear. One day, your kids will ask, “What did you do in the battle royale wars, daddy?” or “How did you fight as a knight in the war of the seven gaming kingdoms, mommy?” And I assure you that you will feel good when you say, “I did something that mattered.” Thank you so much for coming. Now go kick some ass. And remember Notre Dame. GamesBeat's creed when covering the game industry is "where passion meets business." What does this mean? We want to tell you how the news matters to you -- not just as a decision-maker at a game studio, but also as a fan of games. Whether you read our articles, listen to our podcasts, or watch our videos, GamesBeat will help you learn about the industry and enjoy engaging with it. Discover our Briefings. Join the GamesBeat community! Enjoy access to special events, private newsletters and more. VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"Two Bit Circus unveils developer program for location-based entertainment | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2019/04/23/two-bit-circus-unveils-developer-program-for-location-based-entertainment"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Two Bit Circus unveils developer program for location-based entertainment Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Two Bit Circus is a micro-amusement park in downtown LA. Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship. Learn more. Two Bit Circus has opened a “Park as a Platform” program to enable game developers to create location-based entertainment more quickly and easily. During its development, Two Bit Circus ‘ founders Brent Bushnell (son of Atari cofounder Nolan Bushnell) and Eric Gradman realized that some traditional approaches to game development were slowing innovation and hindering the ability of developers to get their content out into the world, particularly in location-based entertainment. To support the developer community and increase the potential for innovation, Two Bit Circus is launching its Park as a Platform in downtown Los Angeles. “Getting a game in front of the public requires a lot of resources that many developers don’t have access to,” said Eric Gradman, cofounder of Two Bit Circus and chief technology officer, in a statement. “Imagine the possible variety of public games and experiences if more developers had the resources to explore LBE. We hope that by erasing some of the obstacles and encouraging the community, we can support developers and increase the diversity of fun.” Event GamesBeat at the Game Awards We invite you to join us in LA for GamesBeat at the Game Awards event this December 7. Reserve your spot now as space is limited! This new program is designed to provide developers with a streamlined approach to adapting games and experiences for location-based entertainment (LBE). Developers in the program will be able to leverage Two Bit Circus’ 38,000 square-feet “micro-amusement park” as a physical development and publishing platform. Above: Eric Gradman at the Two Bit Circus’ former headquarters. Out-of-home entertainment (location-based entertainment) is becoming increasingly popular, yet traditional approaches are limiting the quantity of innovative content that’s available. By connecting developers directly with patrons of their micro-amusement park, Two Bit Circus’ Program creates access to revenue, awareness, and enthusiastic beta testers. Through the Park as a Platform Program, Two Bit Circus aims to smooth the path to public exhibition and create a test lab for both large and small developers, ultimately allowing the world access to a greater variety of social gaming experiences. The Platform Program launches with numerous projects, including Death Squared, a puzzle game from SMG Studio, first released for consoles; Hidden in Plain Sight, a stealth party game from indie developer Adam Spragg; ClusterPuck 99, a digital air hockey game from PHL Collective; and Line Wobbler, a one-dimensional dungeon crawler controlled with a door stop from Robin Baumgarten. As a first step toward entering the Program, developers are invited to submit their products to be featured at one of Two Bit Circus’ Beta Nights — where enthusiastic locals come out to play and test new content. The Two Bit team reviews submissions to find games with the potential to create great new experiences and get people playing elbow-to-elbow. With a community of support, Two Bit Circus aims to encourage developers, increase the potential for innovation, and ultimately allow the world access to a greater variety of engaging and social gaming experiences. The Park as a Platform Program is being announced at Gamesbeat Summit 2019. GamesBeat's creed when covering the game industry is "where passion meets business." What does this mean? We want to tell you how the news matters to you -- not just as a decision-maker at a game studio, but also as a fan of games. Whether you read our articles, listen to our podcasts, or watch our videos, GamesBeat will help you learn about the industry and enjoy engaging with it. Discover our Briefings. Join the GamesBeat community! Enjoy access to special events, private newsletters and more. VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"The DeanBeat: Reinvention at the GamesBeat Summit | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2019/04/26/the-deanbeat-reinvention-at-the-gamesbeat-summit"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages The DeanBeat: Reinvention at the GamesBeat Summit Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn A close-up of Two Bit Circus' artificial tree. To me, it feels like renewal. Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship. Learn more. I’m very proud of our GamesBeat Summit 2019 , the event we held about Building Gaming Communities at the community-oriented Two Bit Circus in Los Angeles. It was all about fun, with a major subtheme of reinvention. We had nearly 500 people this time, and that made it hard to talk with everybody I wanted to catch up with. I’ve formed relationships with many of the people who spoke at the event over the decades, and it’s always fun to see how they are reinventing themselves and gaming. But so many people attended, I could not chat with them all individually at this event. Above: Chris Taylor and Dean Takahashi at GamesBeat Summit 2019. We had 97 speakers across 52 sessions on two concurrent stages producing more than 24 hours of content. Fortunately, we’re going to put most of the onstage talks on our VentureBeat YouTube channel for on-demand viewing. What I enjoyed were the moments of silly banter with old friends and raising questions that didn’t have answers. In this column, I will talk about just three of the speakers here — the talks that I personally moderated. Those included fireside chats with Chris Taylor, founder of Kanoogie; Michael Condrey, founder of 2K Silicon Valley; and Brock Pierce, chairman of the Bitcoin Foundation and blockchain entrepreneur. Event GamesBeat at the Game Awards We invite you to join us in LA for GamesBeat at the Game Awards event this December 7. Reserve your spot now as space is limited! All three have reinvented themselves. Chris Taylor Above: Chris Taylor of Kanoogi gave Dean Takaahshi this bowl. Chris Taylor went from running large teams at Gas Powered Games and Wargaming to a solo shop, guided by his own inspiration and a single artist. He stepped off the hamster wheel of making bigger and bigger games, each one more intense and graphically beautiful. Now he’s back with a company called Kanoogi. “I said I wanted to do something with deep gameplay,” he said in our fireside chat. “I want to write all the code myself. I want to go in deep, as an indie developer.” He is making a platform for super-fast web games and a title called Intergalactic Space Empire. He broke the rules, making a browser-only game that, when it comes out, should run on just about any computer in the world. With 30 years of game development behind him, Taylor is starting over from scratch. I’ve seen the arc of his life, with its peaks and valleys. A decade ago, Taylor was the emcee at our very first GamesBeat Summit. Seven years ago, he took up the hobby of making pottery. He gave me one of the bowls. It means I’m part of Taylor’s inner circle, and it’s exciting to see him get excited about doing something new and totally different. Now he thinks that Kanoogi can enable billions of people to play games in a web browser, with no need to download. “There’s nothing worse than doing the same thing every day of your life,” Taylor said. “You gotta do something different. It’s not all about the money. I’m tired of money. It’s about art, and life experiences, and friends.” Michael Condrey Above: Dean Takahashi and Michael Condrey speak at GamesBeat Summit 2019. Michael Condrey has also gone through the time warp, morphing from developers of games like Need for Speed and Dead Space at Electronic Arts, to cofounder of Sledgehammer Games and creator of titles like Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare and Call of Duty: WWII. He walked away from that 300-person studio last year and recently announced the formation of a new studio, 2K Silicon Valley. Condrey has already assembled a team of 30 developers, and he has approached it with a new eye toward diversity from his very first hire. I asked him about that, and he reminded me that he has a daughter , and that he would like her to grow up and have the opportunity to work in the game industry someday. For that to happen, the industry has to change to be more hospitable toward women. I asked Condrey about the idea of “responsible game development,” and he had an interesting answer. He said that he has often thought about the kind of content he has made in the past, like games such as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, where just a certain kind of enemy was depicted as evil. And he thought about the mass shooting at Christchurch, New Zealand. In this global gaming business, in these times that we live in, is it a responsible thing to create such violent games? Condrey didn’t have an answer to that, nor do I. I used to be hyper-sensitive to violent games at one point in my life. I didn’t play them. But slowly, I picked them up again. And when I picked them up, I didn’t play games like Grand Theft Auto because you didn’t get to play the “good guy.” You were a criminal. I have moved beyond that point in my life, and I am able to separate fiction from reality, and I will play characters who are both bad or good now. But they still make me ask myself questions. Like whether we can solve issues like game addiction. And Condrey is asking himself those questions anew as he starts a new studio. And he’s acknowledging he doesn’t have all the answers. Embracing change and changing times, is sometimes what you have to do, he said. Brock Pierce Above: Brock Pierce and Dean Takahashi at GamesBeat Summit 2019. Brock Pierce came onstage as our last speaker on the Boss Stage, closing the conference. And he was like the boss of bosses. Pierce, the chairman of the Bitcoin Foundation, has been described by Forbes as a “Bitcoin billionaire.” We don’t know what his net worth is, but he has been at the right place at the right time. I met him during the heyday of social casino games, when he was starting a company called Playsino back in 2012. I stuck with games and he veered off into Bitcoin. Just as he was early with internet video, virtual goods, and other waves of technology, Pierce was way ahead of the game in seeing the potential of blockchain — a transparent and secure decentralized ledger — and cryptocurrency, a digital currency which uses encryption and blockchain to securely regulate the currency and verify the transfer of funds. In 2013, he cofounded Blockchain Capital, which raised money to invest in a large number of blockchain startups. He was forming new companies every 45 days. In 2017, he was a shareholder and adviser for Block.one , which held an initial coin offering (ICO) and sold $700 million worth of its EOS coins. EOS tokens are now valued at around $4.9 billion. He was also an investor in Tether, which like EOS is also one of the largest digital currencies in the $350 billion cryptocurrency market. He left Block.one in March 2018. Now Pierce is coming back full circle on games. At first, he felt like cryptocurrency needed a foundation, with faster, secure, and programmable blockchain platforms like EOS and Tron. And now that the foundation is there, Pierce believes that blockchain-based games have real potential. This is one of those seams between games and technology that could lead to something big, or blow up in disastrous ways. He thinks we are like at the beginning of internet 2.0. “I do my best not to drink my own Kool-Aid, and I do my best not to be blind to what is going on,” he said. “I get very nervous. A lot of people show up to make a quick buck.” People get caught up in scams and gold rushes. But the collapse of the price of cryptocurrencies has caused a cleansing of these people, he said. “Bull markets produce bullshit, and bear markets bear fruit,” Pierce said. Pierce wants people to learn, empower themselves, and decide how to apply new technologies like games over the long term, and not worry about the “fear of missing out,” or FOMO. He now sees companies coming out of the blockchain prototyping stage, with technologies that are ready to scale. Above: Blockchain panelists at GamesBeat Summit 2019 (left to right): James Zhang, Miko Matsumura, Roy Liu, Kevin Chou, and Arthur Madrid. “We have blockchains you can build games on,” he said. “Imagine if you had access to the iPhone before its release. You start thinking about can you build games for this iPhone. This is the time. I think we are at that moment.” Entrepreneurs like Kevin Chou , cofounder of Kabam, are now investing in blockchain, and Pierce thinks that’s a tea leaf. At an earlier panel, Chou said he was excited about the opportunity to use blockchain to change game economies. “It’s a big deal,” he said. “When you start to see people who can do anything in the gaming space do this, pay attention.” Pierce is mulling whether to invest in game companies himself once again to kickstart the blockchain gaming space. “Under the right circumstances, I could see myself doing something in this space,” Pierce said. He doesn’t have to do this just to become a bigger billionaire. But Pierce said he believes a “billionaire” is someone who positively impacts the lives of a billion people. Thank you for coming I enjoyed these talks. I hope our audience did too. I heard from a lot of people that it was our best GamesBeat ever, and I humbly accept that gracious praise. We reinvented our show at the micro-amusement park Two Bit Circus, just as these entrepreneurs reinvented themselves to get ready for new waves of gaming. If you came, thank you for being present. Or if you viewed in on the stream, I’m glad we could entertain you. And if you missed a lot of sessions like I did, check it out on our YouTube channel over the coming weeks. It takes a village to make a gaming community like the GamesBeat Summit. Thank you to those who helped put it on. I’m glad those videos will live on because it makes me feel like we built something of lasting value. GamesBeat's creed when covering the game industry is "where passion meets business." What does this mean? We want to tell you how the news matters to you -- not just as a decision-maker at a game studio, but also as a fan of games. Whether you read our articles, listen to our podcasts, or watch our videos, GamesBeat will help you learn about the industry and enjoy engaging with it. Discover our Briefings. The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"GamesBeat Summit: Watch all the Day 1 talks | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2019/05/02/gamesbeat-summit-watch-all-the-day-1-talks"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages VB Event GamesBeat Summit: Watch all the Day 1 talks Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Insomniac Games' Ted Price interviews Respawn Entertainment's Vince Zampella (right) at the GamesBeat Summit. Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship. Learn more. Our GamesBeat Summit 2019 has come and gone. We learned about reinvention and communities , about dealing with games that launch to huge audiences and rabid response — and how to communicate with them better. We gave one of the speakers, Insomniac Games’ Ted Price, a visionary award for his contributions to the game industry over the past quarter-decade. And you can see the Day One agenda here. GamesBeat has gathered videos of all the first day’s sessions from our Twitch and YouTube livestreams. You can watch all the Day Two talks here. Dean Takahashi’s opening remarks Event GamesBeat at the Game Awards We invite you to join us in LA for GamesBeat at the Game Awards event this December 7. Reserve your spot now as space is limited! 2019 GamesBeat Visionary award winner: Insomniac Games’ Ted Price Chasing the fun Accessible communities The Walking Dead: Wrapping up a fan-favorite IP Climate change games Building a gaming culture that lasts Games in the DNA: Growing up Bushnell Gaming communities today and tomorrow Where game communities are going Influencer campaigns that work The future of games and learning From refugee to game developer Games as a global language The future of kids communities The landscape of gaming The future of gaming Crafting culture, creating vision Gamer 2.0 — new rules in a crowded field Communities that last for years The future of interactive storytelling Location-based entertainment then and now User acquisition is dead — Facebook & Google UAC creative are king Eat or get eaten — consolidation is coming That’s all from Day 1 — we’ll post the Day 2 talks soon. GamesBeat's creed when covering the game industry is "where passion meets business." What does this mean? We want to tell you how the news matters to you -- not just as a decision-maker at a game studio, but also as a fan of games. Whether you read our articles, listen to our podcasts, or watch our videos, GamesBeat will help you learn about the industry and enjoy engaging with it. Discover our Briefings. The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"GamesBeat Summit: Watch all the Day 2 talks | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2019/05/02/gamesbeat-summit-watch-all-the-day-2-talks"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages VB Event GamesBeat Summit: Watch all the Day 2 talks Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Chris Taylor (left) tells GamesBeat's Dean Takahashi about his new cloud gaming platform, Kanoogi. Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship. Learn more. Our GamesBeat Summit 2019 is over, but that doesn’t mean we can’t go back to the lessons we learned — or heed them for the first time. Storied strategy game designer Chris Taylor talked about his new cloud gaming platform. We examined how to better navigate China’s game market (something that’s becoming more complex by the year), and how to apply the lessons of dealing with online gamers in the late 1990s and 2000s to today’s communities. We looked at esports, investing, and influencers. And you can see everything that we discussed during Day Two here. And you can catch our Day One videos here. GamesBeat has gathered videos of all the second day’s sessions from our Twitch and YouTube livestreams. GamesBeat’s Mike Minotti introductory remarks Event GamesBeat at the Game Awards We invite you to join us in LA for GamesBeat at the Game Awards event this December 7. Reserve your spot now as space is limited! Video games live, Intellivision, and gaming communities Future of influencers and gaming videos Lightning talks: Drivetime, Hearo.Live, Lucid Sight, Hollywood Reporter https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsDRYPqaGf0 Transforming your team based on the lifecycle of your product The wisdom of owning game studios Surviving China’s gaming market The Future of Augmented Reality Chris Taylor Fireside Chat: What’s coming next Taking esports to the next level Gaming behavior: bot or human? Blockchain comes to games Dealing with games across the decades Unconscious bias Jupiter & Mars: Addressing climate change Design principles for Facebook gaming Gaming’s new growth area Creating a multi-generational esports league The future of of the blockchain and crypto gaming community GamesBeat’s Dean Takahashi’s closing remarks Stay tuned for news on next year’s GamesBeat Summit 2020. GamesBeat's creed when covering the game industry is "where passion meets business." What does this mean? We want to tell you how the news matters to you -- not just as a decision-maker at a game studio, but also as a fan of games. Whether you read our articles, listen to our podcasts, or watch our videos, GamesBeat will help you learn about the industry and enjoy engaging with it. Discover our Briefings. The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"The DeanBeat: The Bushnell family -- growing up with gaming in your blood | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2019/05/17/the-deanbeat-the-bushnell-family-growing-up-with-gaming-in-your-blood"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages The DeanBeat: The Bushnell family — growing up with gaming in your blood Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship. Learn more. Nolan Bushnell is often called the father of the video game industry, but he’s also the father of eight children, and we recently got to see him interact with four of his kids in a conversation about what it was like to grow up Bushnell, with gaming in your blood. This remarkable conversation took place at our recent GamesBeat Summit 2019 event, which we held in April in downtown Los Angeles at Two Bit Circus , a “micro-amusement park” that is like an arcade meets Ready Player One. That place was special because it was created by Brent Bushnell, one of Nolan’s sons. Bushnell is 76 years old, but he is as witty as ever when it comes to describing his learnings as a creative showman. You can see the conversations we had on stage in the videos embedded in this post, as well as a video interview I did with Nolan, in a conversation recorded by my own daughter, Danielle Takahashi. Event GamesBeat at the Game Awards We invite you to join us in LA for GamesBeat at the Game Awards event this December 7. Reserve your spot now as space is limited! What this family’s legacy tells us is that the first generation of video game creators is passing on their experience to the second generation, much like parents have passed on their appreciation for Star Wars or Disney. And like those parents and kids, the Bushnell family has slowly come to realize that their dad passed on something special to them. Tyler Bushnell said on our panel that he started figuring out that his dad was someone important in the video game business because the kids could always find some kind of older console tucked away in a closet and pull it out and play it. That made Tyler curious about games and inspired him to go into the business. He is now the cofounder of Polycade , which is bringing arcade machines back to bars. But Brent Bushnell didn’t want to go into games at first. He went into web hosting, auto salvage systems, and art. “I really didn’t want to [do games]. It wasn’t until I met my cofounder Eric [Gradman] and the art we made turned into games that I realized it,” said Brent Bushnell. “I know so much about this. Why am I not in games? It was a 20-year cycle for me.” Above: Jason Robar (left) and Brent Bushnell talk at GamesBeat Summit 2019. Wyatt Bushnell turned to game design when he figured out that he needed to learn something that could earn him money. He steered into social games because his father told him never to compete in a “red ocean,” where there is too much competition. Alissa Bushnell went into public relations, and she wanted to hone the storytelling of game creators so that they could succeed with his business ventures. “The story I remember so well [from Nolan] was the rocket ship and the lifeboat,” Brent Bushnell said. “He said, ‘Listen. You have to have the lifeboat, the thing that is going to make you money, the thing you can rely on. But always put some time into the rocket ship. The rocket ship is what you want to do, the thing that is your life’s work. But you can’t have the rocket ship without the lifeboat. That stuck with me for a really long time.” Alissa Bushnell said, “We learned how to play games from this guy (pointing at Nolan). We learned how to play business from this guy.” Like learning how to cheat, Wyatt interjected. “I feel like learning how to cheat and not get caught is really an important life skill,” Nolan Bushnell replied. Tyler said, “We learned early on that dad couldn’t be the banker in Monopoly.” Alissa Bushnell said that the kids all learned how to solder when they were young. He encouraged them to be makers and to think out of the box. Above: (Left to right) Wyatt Bushnell, Alissa Bushnell, and Nolan Bushnell. They also learned that while their father is a great big thinker, he isn’t as good at staying engaged in day-to-day tasks, particularly if it becomes boring, Wyatt Bushnell said. Nolan Bushnell agreed. Jason Robar, cofounder of Author Digital and moderator of the family talk, asked Nolan Bushnell when his kids started teaching him about things. “Incessantly,” Nolan Bushnell said. “You realize very quickly that they know so much more than you do, like everything about being a teenager. They constantly recalibrate you.” “We were all the beta testers,” Alissa Bushnell said. They were also competitive when they were growing up, and they also all worked for their father at various times in their lives. They learned how to take risks. They also joked around a lot and had a good appreciation for humor. “If you can survive in our environment, you have a really thick skin,” Nolan Bushnell said. Above: (Left to right): Brent Bushnell, Wyatt Bushnell, Alissa Bushnell, and Nolan Bushnell. As for location-based entertainment, Nolan Bushnell started out as a “carnie,” or carnival worker. He put his first video game, Pong, in a bar. For Brent Bushnell, the circle became complete when he and Gradman founded Two Bit Circus, which at first was like a modern traveling carnival. They had a lot of experience working on a restaurant with games, dubbed Uwink. That business didn’t succeed. “When your dad was the boss, you had to double prove yourself,” said Tyler Bushnell, whose first job was at Uwink. “The last thing you want is for everyone to think you got the job because of your dad.” “It’s called the nepotism curse,” Nolan Bushnell said. Nolan Bushnell admitted to being something of an anarchist as a parent. He said that if grow up always obeying the rules, you never learn when it’s OK to break them. They took the collective learnings from Uwink and Chuck E. Cheese, and then they built the 40,000-square-feet version of Two Bit Circus in downtown Los Angeles. The business opened in September 2018. The place is a modern take on location-based entertainment, with things like Killer Queen arcade machines and a robot bartender. That place is an experiment on the kind of fun that you can create when you put a lot of people together in a social gaming mecca. Nolan Bushnell said the idea for Two Bit Circus circulated in the family for a long time, long after the creation of the Chuck E. Cheese location-based entertainment chain. Brent Bushnell said it was inspired by the problems of having too much screen time and not enough face-to-face contact. “We’ve always talked about how there needed to be something more,” said Nolan Bushnell, in an interview with me. “There is a whole class of games that are not available. So you have to build them yourself. They can be really simple, but very powerful.” Two Bit Circus is still a work in progress. But Nolan Bushnell said he is so proud of what his son — and his family — have accomplished. Brent Bushnell said he sees Two Bit Circus as a platform, one that can change out the games over time as better ones become available. Above: Two Bit Circus “We like to say it’s half done,” Nolan Bushnell said. “What we are seeing is a real thirst for group games, where you get together and collaborate physically. When we talk about our design cycle going forward, it should be a lot more collaborative. More fun for people to get together and compete with strangers. Bring people together in a new way.” I’m so glad we were able to curate our event with so many Bushnells in attendance on appropriately jovial panels. They taught us all a lot, and I would encourage you to check out the entertaining videos. GamesBeat's creed when covering the game industry is "where passion meets business." What does this mean? We want to tell you how the news matters to you -- not just as a decision-maker at a game studio, but also as a fan of games. Whether you read our articles, listen to our podcasts, or watch our videos, GamesBeat will help you learn about the industry and enjoy engaging with it. Discover our Briefings. Join the GamesBeat community! Enjoy access to special events, private newsletters and more. VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"GamesBeat Summit 2020: Our panel on the future of influencer marketing | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2020/01/24/gamesbeat-summit-2020-our-panel-on-the-future-of-influencer-marketing"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages GamesBeat Summit 2020: Our panel on the future of influencer marketing Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Andrea Rene and Janina Gavankar at GamesBeat Summit 2018. Rene will be back in 2020. Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship. Learn more. GamesBeat Summit 2020 will focus on the latest trends in the gaming ecosystem , so of course we’re going to have a panel on the future of influencer marketing. Our event will take place on April 28 and April 29 in downtown Los Angeles at Two Bit Circus , a “micro-amusement park.” This place combines old-style circus and arcade games with modern virtual reality entertainment in the city’s Arts District. You can register for tickets here under our early-bird pricing at 30% off. You can see 23 of the speakers listed on the event site, and we’ll have 100 speakers by April. The future of influencer marketing panel’s speakers are: Event GamesBeat at the Game Awards We invite you to join us in LA for GamesBeat at the Game Awards event this December 7. Reserve your spot now as space is limited! Andrea Rene , cofounder of What’s Good Games Mari “AtomicMari” Takahashi , cofounder of Smosh Games Paola “Pancakepow” Alejandra , creator of Pancakepow.com Joshua “Jovenshire” Ovenshire ,gaming influencer and series creator of Worst Ways to Die at Arcade Cloud Other previously announced speakers include: Nicolo Laurent , CEO of Riot Games Gary Whitta , screenwriter for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and former editor of PC Gamer Tina Amini , editor-in-chief of games at IGN Richard Lemarchand , associate professor at the USC Games program Nika Nour , executive director of International Game Developers Association Foundation David Gardner , cofounder of London Venture Partners Anantha Duraiappah , director of UNESCO MGIEP, a promoter of games for peace We’ve got more speakers that we haven’t announced yet. They will have their own way of expressing what our theme — the Dawn of a New Generation — means to them. It’s a time of change in the game industry. Console makers are moving ahead with their new machines. Cloud gaming efforts like Google Stadia are joining the fray. Apple is driving hard with Apple Arcade, and HBO, Netflix, and others are moving into games. The digital delivery stores are proliferating, giving competition to the old guard like Steam. And AR/VR companies are trying to get off the ground with new tech. Gaming is moving down parallel paths, finding new ways to turn all of us into gamers. It is an ever-widening circle of opportunity, and our speakers will talk about how to best navigate these transitions to new machines, new markets, new business models, and new technologies such as artificial intelligence. Andrea Rene, cofounder of What’s Good Games Above: Andrea Rene, on-camera host, producer & writer for “What’s Good Games” Andrea Rene is one of the brains behind the wildly popular “ What’s Good Games ,” serving as head of operations and co-host. She is also a producer, writer, and on-camera host. She’s been working in video games media for over a decade, and you can catch her video game commentary weekly on “What’s Good Games.” She was nominated for “Trending Gamer” at The Game Awards 2017 and has hosted for EA, Facebook Live, Nintendo, IGN, and many more Mari ‘AtomicMari’ Takahashi, cofounder of Smosh Games Above: Mari Takahashi is cofounder of Smosh Games. As one of the top women in the world of video gaming, Mari “AtomicMari” Takahashi (no relation to me) is a digital pioneer, pop and nerd culture advocate, former prima ballerina, and cofounder of the top-ranking gaming brand Smosh Games (7.45 million subscribers), the fastest-growing channel to reach 1 million on YouTube at launch. She has about two million social media followers. Recognized by Forbes as a “Top Influencer In Gaming,” Mari transitioned her love for video games, adventure and technology into being an advocate for young girls to pursue STEM careers in her philanthropic work with NASA and The Planetary Society. Recently, she starred in beauty giant Olay’s New York Fashion Week “Face Anything” campaign for being a top fearless female in a male-dominated industry. Paola ‘Pancakepow’ Alejandra, creator of Pancakepow.com Above: Paola “Pancakepow” Alejandra Paola Alejandra (aka Pancakepow) is a California-based gamer, host, model, consultant, shout caster, and interviewer. Her passion for video games is matched only by her drive to create compelling content. Growing up with a love of first-person shooters and RPGs inspired her to establish her own gaming publication (Pancakepow.com) and the podcast (GGGWP) in 2012. Over the course of her career, she has attended and hosted coverage for companies like Twitch, MLG, ESL, Facebook, and Marvel. She has covered gaming expos worldwide such as E3, San Diego Comic-Con, New York Comic-Con, C2E2, Gamescom, IEM, Penny Arcade Expo, Blizzcon, Anime Expo, TwichCon, and Call of Duty Championships, and many more. Also has deep passion for the art of cosplay. Her cosplay work has been featured on MTV, Kotaku, Game Informer, CNET, IGN, and Tokyo Journal. Paola’s positive, personality-driven hosting style, along with her tri-lingual background (English, Spanish, Portuguese), make her a versatile and influential voice within the gaming and esports community. Joshua ‘Jovenshire’ Ovenshire, TheJovenshire Above: Joshua “Jovenshire” Ovenshire The Streamy winner and Smosh Games founding member — best known to fans as Jovenshire — has appeared on TBS’s King Of The Nerds and Disney XD’s Gamer’s Guide To Pretty Much Everything. Since the launch of Smosh Games, Joshua has branched off, now sharing thoughts and insights on entertainment news, gaming content, and all things “Geek-Culture” on his YouTube channel TheJovenshire, his Instagram, and Twitter. Joshua also lends his voice to many popular channels and video games. Some of his voice-over work has been featured on “How It Should Have Ended”, “The Warp Zone”, “Smosh”, and the hit video game “Smite.” He is series creator of Worst Ways to Die at Arcade Cloud. What to expect We’re honored to have these speakers. They’ll be speaking in fireside chats, panels, and solo talks across our three stages: The Boss Stage (CEO/business talks), The Hero Stage (triple-A game developers and consumer-oriented talks), and The Bonus Stage (special talks). The event will span all of games. We think that bringing the leaders of the industry together from different sectors helps refine the best thinking, and you often get wisdom from lessons that are hard learned. These kinds of talks and the chance for networking across sectors and industries is what will make our event unique in the crowded conference space. Our event is going to be an intimate affair. And our location this year once again fits right with our theme. Two Bit Circus is a 40,0000-square-foot playground for all ages, with entertainment that includes escape rooms, virtual reality experiences, a VIP loft, live interactive games, a robot bartender show, and modern versions of carnival games. Our attendees will be able to hear business talks in the Club 101 auditorium and consumer-focused talks in a second hall. We’re still forming our topics around next-generation gaming. The discussions will likely focus on investing in games; mergers and acquisitions and the changes they will bring about; the globalization of games; diversity; esports; the psychology of games; rising regulation; AI’s impact on games; games for peace; the rise of influencers; the convergence of sci-fi, tech, and games; monetization; blockchain and cryptocurrency; and debates on topics such as addiction and loot boxes. This is our 11th year of GamesBeat events and this year promises to be the best one yet. If you’ve never been to our event, here’s my opening speech at last year’s event. And here are links to the videos for day one and day two. And here’s a summary of a few talks and a story about the Bushnell family that built Two-Bit Circus. Check out those links if you want to see if GamesBeat Summit is for you. Stay tuned as we announce more great speakers to our first-rate lineup. A partial list of sponsors includes Consumer Acquisition, Rogue Games, Genvid, Niantic, Two Hat Security, Jam City, Scopely, and Adjust. Register for GamesBeat 2020 below. https://www.eventbrite.com/static/widgets/eb_widgets.js var exampleCallback = function() { console.log(‘Order complete!’); }; window.EBWidgets.createWidget({ // Required widgetType: ‘checkout’, eventId: ‘60771924462’, iframeContainerId: ‘eventbrite-widget-container-60771924462’, // Optional iframeContainerHeight: 425, // Widget height in pixels. Defaults to a minimum of 425px if not provided onOrderComplete: exampleCallback // Method called when an order has successfully completed }); GamesBeat's creed when covering the game industry is "where passion meets business." What does this mean? We want to tell you how the news matters to you -- not just as a decision-maker at a game studio, but also as a fan of games. Whether you read our articles, listen to our podcasts, or watch our videos, GamesBeat will help you learn about the industry and enjoy engaging with it. Discover our Briefings. The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"How Facebook is capturing the hearts and minds of gamers and streamers | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2019/06/20/how-facebook-is-going-all-in-to-capture-the-hearts-and-minds-of-gamers"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages How Facebook is capturing the hearts and minds of gamers and streamers Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Facebook Gaming Tab Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship. Learn more. Facebook was out in force with a big presence at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) , the big game trade show in Los Angeles. E3 usually has about a billion impressions up for grabs as global gamers tune into the events, and as a social media platform, Facebook wants its share of those impressions. The company had live broadcasts from the booth, and I participated in one of them (the last segment on this link ). Facebook says that more than 700 million people tune into gaming groups, watch gaming videos, or play games on Facebook every month. And during the thick of E3 itself, Facebook said on June 11 that 18 million people were talking about E3 and the games announced there more than 65 million times. 41% of the people talking about the show were women. At E3, I met with Leo Olebe, global director of games partnerships at Facebook, and Franco De Cesare, director of the console and online gaming at Facebook. We talked about things like Facebook’s E3 activities and how to deal with toxic gamers. They talked about rolling out in March a dedicated Facebook Gaming tab for people to find all of their favorite gaming content in one place, personalized for them. And Facebook is investing heavily in its gaming creator programs (for people like livestreamers or professional gamers) so that they can earn a living from livestreaming games on Facebook. Event GamesBeat at the Game Awards We invite you to join us in LA for GamesBeat at the Game Awards event this December 7. Reserve your spot now as space is limited! Last year, the company announced its Level Up program for aspiring gaming creators to build their livestreaming communities on Facebook, and it is now available in more than 40 countries. More than 50 of partnered Facebook Gaming creators have come from the Level Up program. And one-third of the Level Up creators say the program was the first experience they had with livestreaming. Meanwhile, Facebook also announced that playable ads are now available on the Audience Network for rewarded video and interstitial placements along with new gaming monetization features for advertisers. Lastly, the company continued to support women in gaming at E3, and it announced two new Global Gaming Citizens. Together with The Game Awards at E3 Coliseum, Facebook drew attention to Vanessa Gill of Social Cipher and Damon Packwood of Gameheads. Social Cipher is a story-driven video game that gives children with autism a safe, fun, and accessible space to apply social skills. And Gameheads, based in Oakland, is a youth non-profit training low-income and first-generation students ages 15–24 in video game design and development to prepare them for careers in the entertainment and tech industries. (A previous Global Gaming Citizen, Lual Mayen , launched a Kickstarter campaign for his game about peace, Salaam ). Here’s an edited transcript of our interview. Above: Leo Olebe and Franco DeCesare of Facebook games at our 2018 interview. Leo Olebe: In March we released the game tab. That’s important, because it’s the first time we’ve collected a lot of the different parts that we’ve been building from a gaming product standpoint over the years: Instant Games, the ability to play gaming video, the ability to watch roots content. That’s very big. Then we have creators here on stage again. We announced two new Global Gaming Citizens just yesterday, at the Coliseum. We were on stage with Geoff and we brought back Sadia Bashir, one of last year’s Global Gaming Citizens. Then we introduced a young woman named Vanessa Gill. Vanessa has Asperger’s syndrome. She was undiagnosed for a long time, and went on to get a neuroscience degree. She created a development studio called Social Cipher. They’re building a game to help autistic kids learn how to process emotion and interact better with the world around them. The other we announced yesterday was Damon Packwood. I don’t know if you’ve heard of Damon’s program, Gameheads out of Oakland. They work with low-income and minority youth in Oakland, teaching them coding, level design, all this stuff. He has a big partnership network with probably 200 different developers who come in every weekend and teach programs and help kids learn what the game industry is all about. They’re building amazing things. That’s been really exciting. We even had a Women in Gaming breakfast yesterday, where we talked about allyship. We brought in several hundred women and men to have this conversation. That’s been a big part of what our E3 experience has been, just the continual push to fight toxicity, drive inclusion, and improve diversity in the game industry. Those are all big initiatives for us as well. Above: Facebook gaming video On the gaming side of things, we talked a bit about the tab. At F8 we introduced some new experiences inside of groups, where gamers can start chatting with each other both before and after gameplay to get together. It’s one thing after another that we’re working on to try and build the world’s gaming community. It’s been quite a journey. We’re talking about some new stats with our Level Up program. We had originally announced our Level Up program as part of our Facebook Gaming Creators. I think last year at some point. It’s been growing over time. Now we’re in more than 40 countries. Probably one of the coolest things about the adventure we’re on is that — I believe about 30 percent of people that are streaming games to Facebook as part of the Level Up program have never streamed games before. It’s this idea of, is it possible to broaden the market? How does that tie into this overall narrative of, everyone’s a gamer? I think that’s the theme of the day. We’ve believed everyone is a gamer for quite some time. That’s been good to see. They’ve been great. They’re streaming all sorts of games, all the games you would expect, and then streaming to new audiences and new countries, a really diverse population around the world. It’s more along these lines of different things we can do on the product and engineering side to improve the ways gamers can connect to their communities and the games they love. Franco de Cesare: On the marketing partnership side with publishers, two weeks ago we published a study you might have seen, in partnership with Accenture, that communicated a lot of what we’ve been seen in terms of engagement. We looked at the path to marketing and engagement in the console and PC spaces. It reinforced some things we already knew, but it’s great to see it confirmed. One is the social nature of games, and the other is the sense of community. There’s a whole trove of stats in that study, but just some highlights: more than 70 percent of people who play console games are doing it with family and friends. They’re way more likely to stay on and continue playing with other people. 51 percent are using Facebook and Instagram and other social platforms as key drivers of their choices as far as which games they play and which games they continue to play. It also confirms the importance of influencers. 49 percent are driven directly by seeing someone play a game. That determines what game they play, what DLC they buy. In terms of formats, we’ve seen a lot of success with all the different innovations in formats across our different services. Again, it speaks to the breadth of the industry, the breadth of experiences around the industry, and the breadth of users and gamers of different kinds. The two most recent studies — we did a study on stories. Stories has been a great format for us in terms of engagement, with 100 billion engagements per month. We did a case study with Just Dance, released in the holidays last year, where we saw great success for them on marketing. At the opposite side of the spectrum, for video specifically, we did a study with Resident Evil with Capcom. We have a product called Mobile Works that allows publishers to optimize their marketing assets across the board with all the different formats. With that study, they saw 2.2x improvement in reachable LTV, and that was obviously a successful release for them. Above: Facebook emoji stickers There’s a lot to say as a marketer about how much storytelling has evolved in this industry, how you can tell stories in different formats. Every day we find new ways to adapt to new formats in the mobile space. We haven’t published any studies about it yet, but you probably saw the goggle effect we released with Activision, the Instagram AR filter, which was kind of a labor of love between us and Activision. Obviously it’s very iconic for that game. It was an exclusive filter we developed together with them and released at the same time as the trailer. It allowed the community to engage with it. They saw really high engagement. As usual with Activision they had a lot of celebrities involved, a lot of influencers, a lot of athletes trying it out, but really they got tremendous feedback from the community. It’s that ability to immediately play with the game that you love. GamesBeat: On E3 yourself, how do you guys feel about the show itself, participating and running the booth? The show looks a bit thinner, both here and in the west hall. There are more small companies in the west hall. Sony is probably coming back, but I don’t know about Activision and EA. It feels like there’s a transition happening. de Cesare: All of us have been to quite a few E3s. On our side, we have always believed, especially over the last few years, that E3 is a moment in time for the industry. It has a global reverberation. It’s not just what happens here at this location. This is the spark of what we see growing in the coverage and engagement that goes around the world digitally. On that side, we’ve seen it continue to grow. We publish our own side of the conversation. We saw 18 million people in 10 days engage with games at E3. 65 million engagements. We can’t do a direct comparison versus last year because of the difference in the period we look at, but those are very big numbers. Even if you look at it without the apples to apples comparison, it feels like the interest around E3 and the global footprint of our digital platform is bigger than ever. Even though I’m very confident that you could argue that the number of news stories, the number of new games released at this E3 is somewhat inferior to others. It definitely was in terms of the press conference, since there’s no PlayStation. As far as my personal view of the floor, there’s definitely a rebalancing of things in terms of the hardware hall versus the software hall. But this feels very buzzy, here in the south hall where we are. There are some very big games – Cyberpunk, Borderlands. The talk of the show is all in this hall. Nintendo is a great anchor for the other side, but with Microsoft being outside and PlayStation not being here at all, it does seem a little thin. But at the same time, it’s the end of a console generation. You’ve covered a few. We’ve done a few. That plays into it. Above: Facebook Level Up program Olebe: I would add — between the three of us here we probably have 50 E3s, 60 E3s, and however many other conventions. I think we’re in a transition moment, definitely. I think that developers and publishers are trying to figure out — let me rephrase. Developers and publishers have a much more intimate relationship with their communities. The distance between those things has been shrinking over time. If we went back into some sort of historical study, every year there would be just a bit more of those things coming closer together. As we’ve known, the most intimate relationships in the games industry are directly between the player and the game itself. Then it’s between the player and their community. And then it’s between the community and the developer. We’re in a transition period where people are figuring that out. Does it make more sense for me to be in an industry hall with an industry presence, or do I want to get closer to the consumer? I think it’s been a good thing, bringing more consumers in to play. It’s probably a bit of a debate we’ve been having. My first E3 was either 2000 or 2001, and the question was, we’re building all these amazing booths and experiences, and then only showing it off to the industry. How do we bring consumers into the fray? It’s more about that transition moment. If we’re smart about the question of what E3 means, we’ll be more open, more welcoming to consumers and creators. I was just walking past where Borderlands is showing. They have a creator presence at their booth. We’re here because we want to talk about Facebook Gaming and all the ways we interact with creators, developers, and publishers. Clearly our creators and streamers are front and center. You’re seeing that from other companies as well. It’s a transition moment, but E3 is — I like how you phrase it, calling it a spark. It’s a moment in the industry for everyone to focus on their strategy, show off their new stuff, and hopefully be really thoughtful about how they interact with their communities. Above: Borderlands 3 booth at E3 2019. I don’t know what E3 will look like next year, or the year after. My prediction would be more creator and influencer presence, more direct community and player presence, and more open experiences for people who are participating in the conference. It perfectly dovetails into this thing you’re saying with all the new energy around cloud gaming, all the continued energy around mobile gaming, and the idea that you should be able to play games anytime and anywhere on any device with whoever you want to and generate a community around it. Instead of becoming more inclusive, we have to be more representative, which ties back to the first part of this conversation. It’s so important for us to bring more people into the industry, become more diverse, less toxic, and bring people together. GamesBeat: On the toxic side, we saw a pretty good story recently on the YouTubers who were making more money because they were mean. I wonder about things that will be coming in the future. Call of Duty is sure to create a lot of buzz, good or bad. What sort of role do you think Facebook should have as far as helping to steer the community in a more positive direction? de Cesare: Two things come to mind. I’ve followed the debate and your point of view about Call of Duty. On one side, there’s the role of the publishers and how we can help them. Publishers know more than ever now that they need to be authentic to their community. These communities see through things that are not respectful of them. Our platform, because it has real identities and things like groups that enable that dialogue, allows them to be authentic. It doesn’t allow them to bullshit, if you’ll forgive my bad word. In that sense, our platform can help. We’re not the only one. And it’s not as if real identities mean that people with bad opinions don’t express them. We know that all too well. But it enables that authenticity. The other part, the question of what happens when someone sees something that’s not appropriate, we work very closely with the ESRB. We believe in their mission for the industry. It’s critical that a user, a viewer, a player is always informed about content. That’s why you have the big logo at the beginning of every video. Are you sure you want to see this? But we also try — when it comes to advertising and marketing on our platform, real age and real identify have to be confirmed. That’s a filter where if it’s set up right, it can be better and more effective than a basic age gate. The responsibility is also on the publishers to make sure that the content on their page is only viewable to certain people. When you do a campaign, when you do advertising, you have to use the ESRB. You have to reach only certain people. The 18-and-over button is very clear. They all know how to do it. Above: Fortnite booth at E3 2019 Olebe: Everything we do is about trying to build the world’s gaming community. We’ve talked about this before. Part of that is, of course, the inherent responsibility of having the best community standards and moderation tools you can have. And the only way you’re ever going to get to the best is by listening to people and constantly improving. It’s not to say we’re perfect. There is no perfect. It’s always a question of how we can be better. You’ve heard the phrase, “This journey is only one percent finished” probably more times than you ever wanted to. But the message is to be specific and thoughtful about building an open and positive community. Put the power in the hands of the creators and streamers to interact with their community. Encourage them to set the tone. We were on stage with Melonie Mac and GoodGameBro just yesterday. They both talked about how they have inclusive and positive communities because they work at it. They focus on driving out negative things, or at least embracing their community and the types of discussions and conversations that they want to participate in. When toxic behavior starts to happen, there are clever ways people can intervene. Maybe it’s changing the topic. May talks about pizza. Everybody likes pizza. Let’s find some common ground. Part of the conversation is also, well, sometimes people just have a bad day and they do silly negative things. Not everybody has remorse, but some people do. People make mistakes. How do you be sure to put the power in the hands of the community itself, as well as creators and influencers, to generate an atmosphere of positivity? Above: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. Soldiers stack up as they enter a house. Across the board, on our platform, that’s something we’re proud of, having lots of different diverse types of streamers and diverse populations of people who are watching streams. We’ve talked about 700 million people a month who are playing, watching, and sharing games on our platform. In aggregate, more than 40 percent of them are women. If we only focus on the Play side of that it’s much higher than that. It’s like 55 percent or more. We’re doing the best job we can. There’s always room to learn and grow, but we have to be specific, we have to be thoughtful, and we have to be open to figuring things out as we go. GamesBeat: I had one interesting moment where I had a long off-the-record conversation with one of the YouTubers on the opposite side of Call of Duty. We came to a point where we understood each other. That was a good thing. It’s kind of rare. Olebe: Everybody chooses how they want to interact with the world. Speaking for myself, I prefer to interact on the side of positivity, of engagement and inclusivity. Others may choose differently. But all we can ever do is encourage what we perceive to be the type of behavior we want to associate ourselves with. I’ve heard the analogy before, but there are some people who just really want to go to a dive bar and know that they’re going to get in a fight. That’s what’s exciting for them. And other people are there to interact and have a great time. There’s responsibility all around, is what I think I’m trying to say. GamesBeat's creed when covering the game industry is "where passion meets business." What does this mean? We want to tell you how the news matters to you -- not just as a decision-maker at a game studio, but also as a fan of games. Whether you read our articles, listen to our podcasts, or watch our videos, GamesBeat will help you learn about the industry and enjoy engaging with it. Discover our Briefings. Join the GamesBeat community! Enjoy access to special events, private newsletters and more. VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"Facebook is mapping demographics, human movement, and network coverage to combat diseases | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2019/05/20/facebook-is-mapping-demographics-human-movement-and-network-coverage-to-combat-diseases"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Facebook is mapping demographics, human movement, and network coverage to combat diseases Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Facebook heat map of Tanzania Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship. Learn more. Facebook is partnering with a handful of organizations to combat diseases using real-time maps powered by satellite imagery, computer vision, census data, and Facebook’s proprietary data. The social networking giant has been working on population mapping for a while already — back in 2016 , it revealed that it was applying its computer vision smarts to satellite imagery to identify human-built structures and reveal exactly where people live in around 20 countries. These results are combined with existing census counts to create a population data set with a resolution of about 5 meters. Last month, Facebook announced a major global expansion of the program, including more accurate versions of the maps. Knowing exactly how people are distributed helps Facebook invest resources in connectivity projects to get more people online (and using its services), but as a by-product of these endeavors the company has been providing data for health-related initiates around the world. “After working with groups such as the American Red Cross and its Missing Maps project , we realized these maps could also have profound applications in public health,” noted Laura McGorman and Alex Pompe, who work on Facebook’s Data for Good program. VB Event The AI Impact Tour Connect with the enterprise AI community at VentureBeat’s AI Impact Tour coming to a city near you! “When planning public health campaigns or responding to disease outbreaks, health organizations need information on where intended beneficiaries live, as well as real-time insights from the field. However, in much of the world, information from the most recent census is often out of date and timely insights from remote communities are scarce.” The first fruits of this effort are three map types, designed to help universities and non-profits preempt the spread of diseases and communicate with those most at risk. While Facebook is already working on population density maps to estimate now many people live within a 30-meter area, it will also now break these numbers down into demographics, such as how many children under five or women “of a reproductive age” are likely to be in the vicinity. It could also show where high numbers of elderly people live. Ultimately, this kind of detailed demographic data could help organizations decide where to deploy certain types of medicine or health workers. Above: The distribution of women of reproductive age (ages 18-49) across Tanzania As with Facebook’s existing mapping project, the demographic estimates and population density data is not gleaned directly from its own platform, but rather through meshing computer vision, satellite imagery, and census figures. “By combining these publicly and commercially available data sets with Facebook’s AI capabilities, we have created population maps that are 3 times more detailed than any other source,” Facebook said. Moving As the world’s single most popular social network, Facebook has a wealth of data on mobility patterns, which is what it’s putting to use in movement maps. By looking at where people move, when they move, and how often they move, it’s possible to make some predictions about where disease outbreaks are more likely to occur. Health organizations can combine population movement data with disease data on the ground to figure out where there is likely to be a big Cholera breakout, for example, or where in London flu vaccinations should be stockpiled. “This kind of data can be integrated into our epidemiological models to help us estimate how quickly a disease might spread and where to put resources to contain it,” said Caroline Buckee, an associate professor of epidemiology at Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health. Above: Movement between Greater London and surrounding areas by day. The third map type Facebook is introducing is all about helping get health-related messaging to populations through real-time maps that show how many people currently have access to a cellular network. In areas with low density network coverage, health officials may have to dedicate more resources to house visits to communicate a message about vaccination availability, for example, while areas with good network coverage can perhaps rely on distributing their messages online. “This allows public health teams to prioritize where other forms of communication are required, reaching the maximum number of people at the lowest possible cost,” Facebook said. Above: Map showing density of 3G coverage in areas of Democratic Republic of Congo affected by a recent Ebola outbreak. To begin, Facebook has partnered with more than a dozen organizations that will leverage these maps, including Harvard School of Public Health, the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, Malaria Atlas Project, Sabin Vaccine Institute, UNICEF, Wadhwani AI, the World Bank, and the World Economic Forum. The density maps are available to everyone through a page on the Humanitarian Data Exchange, but movement data and network coverage can only be accessed by contacting Facebook. VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Discover our Briefings. The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"Facebook downgrades posts that promote miracle cures | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2019/07/02/facebook-downgrades-posts-that-promote-miracle-cures"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Facebook downgrades posts that promote miracle cures Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Facebook: mobile app and website Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship. Learn more. Facebook has revealed that it’s downgrading content that makes dubious health claims, including posts that try to sell or promote “miracle cures.” Big technology platforms have faced growing criticism over the spread of fake or misleading content. Reports emerged last year that Facebook had been featuring homemade cancer “cures” more prominently than genuine information from renowned organizations, such as cancer research charities. And a few months back, a separate report found that YouTube videos were promoting bleach as a cure for autism. Facebook also recently said it would crack down on anti-vaccine content. Fight against misinformation The fight against digital misinformation is ongoing, and it isn’t limited to spurious health cures. Back in January, YouTube announced plans to curb conspiracy theory video recommendations, including claims that the moon landings were faked and the Earth is flat. At the time, YouTube also confirmed that it would reduce video recommendations for phony miracle health cures, another indication of the extent of its fake information problem. Facebook’s latest announcement appears to have been in response to a Wall Street Journal investigation into the spread of bogus cancer treatments on both Facebook and YouTube, with Google’s video-streaming offshoot telling the publication that it has cut off advertising revenue for such videos. “In order to help people get accurate health information and the support they need, it’s imperative that we minimize health content that is sensational or misleading,” Facebook product manager Travis Yeh wrote in a blog post. Yeh said the company made “two ranking updates” last month to reduce the visibility of posts that exaggerate or sensationalize particular health-related remedies. Related to this, Facebook will specifically target posts that strive to sell products and services based on such claims — anything from a dubious cancer cure to a pill claiming to help a user lose weight. “In our ongoing efforts to improve the quality of information in News Feed, we consider ranking changes based on how they affect people, publishers, and our community as a whole,” Yeh added. “We know that people don’t like posts that are sensational or spammy, and misleading health content is particularly bad for our community.” As with other content-moderation initiatives on Facebook, the company is taking an automated approach to downgrading and has identified common phrases to “predict which posts might include sensational health claims or promotion of products with health-related claims,” Yeh said. Of course, if past efforts are anything to go by, this could turn into a game of whack-a-mole — content creators and promoters typically find ways to circumvent such algorithmic sensors. Today’s news comes just a day after an independent audit found that Facebook’s policy on white nationalist content does not go far enough, as it only prohibits support for “white nationalism” in which specific terminology is used. “The narrow scope of the policy leaves up content that expressly espouses white nationalist ideology without using the term ‘white nationalist,’ the auditors wrote. “As a result, content that would cause the same harm is permitted to remain on the platform.” VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Discover our Briefings. The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"Big tech's credibility crisis: Fake news, fake goods, and fake reviews | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2020/01/24/big-techs-credibility-crisis-fake-news-fake-goods-and-fake-reviews"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Analysis Big tech’s credibility crisis: Fake news, fake goods, and fake reviews Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Logos of Amazon and eBay apps. Are you ready to bring more awareness to your brand? Consider becoming a sponsor for The AI Impact Tour. Learn more about the opportunities here. Big tech’s role in the spread of misinformation and “fake news” is well documented, and as we enter a U.S. presidential election year you might expect the issue to be a top priority. In the face of public scrutiny, tech giants have begun targeting various credibility issues over the past year, with Facebook introducing measures to downgrade (but not ban) posts that promise miracle cures, and YouTube announcing plans to curb conspiracy theory video recommendations, including claims that the moon landings were faked and the Earth is flat. Elsewhere, Twitter acquired a machine learning platform that helps spot fake news. But the fake news problem is far from contained, in spite of some companies’ steps to regulate or ban false and micro-targeted political ads. Meanwhile, these companies are facing a global push to crack down on at least two other manifestations of “fake” content — goods and reviews. The unreal McCoy Today, the Trump administration is set to unveil a slate of measures designed to combat fake items sold on marketplaces such as eBay and Amazon. The total value of fake goods sold globally was pegged at around $1.2 trillion in 2017 and will reportedly hit nearly $2 trillion this year. More specifically, luxury brands, including those that sell clothes and jewelry, are estimated to be losing more than $30 billion annually to online counterfeit sales. Back in January 2018, the United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) published a study in which it bought 47 branded items from Amazon, eBay, Sears, Walmart, and Newegg. It turns out 43% of the goods were counterfeit, according to the report. Last April, President Trump signed an order that tasked the Department of Homeland Security and the Commerce Department with drawing up plans to combat the sale of fake goods on the internet, including investigating supply chains and tracking down sellers, as well as cracking down on the marketplaces themselves. “This is a warning shot across the bow that it is your job [the marketplaces] to police these matters, and if you won’t clean it up the government will,” Peter Navarro, director of the White House National Trade Council, said at the time. Fast-forward to 2020, and the Trump administration is set to announce new recommendations when it convenes at the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center in Arlington, Virginia later today. Plans will include levying “civil fines and other penalties” against sellers in the U.S., as well as seeking legal remedies that will “explicitly permit the government to seek injunctive relief against third-party marketplaces and other intermediaries dealing in counterfeit merchandise,” according to an official quoted by the Wall Street Journal. Both eBay and Amazon have for some time faced criticism for facilitating the promotion of counterfeit goods , with fake fashion accessories and jewelry areas of particular concern. Both companies have launched initiatives to demonstrate they’re trying to stop the practice — back in 2017, eBay launched an authentication service with a broad focus on giving “high-end” goods an official stamp of approval prior to sale. This feature relies on a network of professional authenticators who take receipt of a seller’s products, validate them, and then sell them directly to the buyer. Last year, Amazon launched a program called Project Zero that uses machine learning and other automated tools to help brands take down counterfeit goods on Amazon’s marketplace. Last week, Amazon announced it was planning to crack down on counterfeit goods by giving law enforcement more data, such as a merchant’s name and contact information, once it has confirmed the seller is indeed hawking fake goods. Presumably, this was a response to the Trump administration’s efforts to get marketplaces to adopt tougher measures. In review On the other side of the Atlantic, the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) this month singled eBay and Facebook out for the spread of fake and misleading reviews on their respective platforms. According to the CMA, consumers spend billions of dollars each year based on “write-ups of products or services,” which means fake and misleading reviews — illegal under U.K. consumer protection law — are a serious issue. According to the CMA, Facebook and eBay have agreed to better identify, investigate, and respond to false or otherwise misleading reviews. This has led to Facebook removing nearly 200 groups and 24 user accounts, while eBay banned 140 users for illicit practices. The CMA also said it found fake or misleading reviews for products on Instagram, which Facebook — Instagram’s parent company — is now investigating. Moreover, both companies have apparently put in place measures to “prevent this type of content from appearing in the future,” according to a statement released this month. “Fake reviews are really damaging to shoppers and businesses alike,” noted CMA CEO Andrea Coscelli. “Millions of people base their shopping decisions on reviews, and if these are misleading or untrue, then shoppers could end up being misled into buying something that isn’t right for them — leaving businesses who play by the rules missing out.” The CMA was quick to stress that it’s not alleging Facebook or eBay were intentionally allowing this content to appear on their sites, but the problem highlights an underlying issue. These companies can’t keep up with the billions of user interactions on their online properties — or they’re simply unwilling to prioritize the issue. The widespread lack of accountability is one reason we’re seeing more efforts to tackle the problem from a regulatory standpoint. Thwarting counterfeit handbag sales and falsified reviews is a good first step. But with Facebook brazenly selling political ads based on lies , and Twitter awash with stunts designed to mislead voters , it’s a shame lawmakers aren’t doing more to address the problem of fake news, especially given the influence it had on the last presidential electio n. VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Discover our Briefings. The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"EA reports strong quarterly results on Apex Legends, FIFA, and Madden growth | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2019/10/29/ea-reports-strong-quarterly-results-on-apex-legends-fifa-and-madden-growth"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages EA reports strong quarterly results on Apex Legends, FIFA, and Madden growth Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Madden topped one of the slowest August months on record. Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship. Learn more. Electronic Arts reported earnings that hit expectations for the second fiscal quarter ended September 30, thanks to strong games like Apex Legends , FIFA 20 , and Madden NFL 20. EA reported adjusted earnings per share of 97 cents on revenue of $1.277 million. That compares to analyst expectations of adjust EPS of 80 cents on revenue of $1.23 billion. In after-hours trading, EA’s stock price was up 1.7% to $96 a share. “It was an excellent second quarter for Electronic Arts. Our new EA Sports titles are thrilling core fans and bringing in new players, and our ongoing live services are growing with deeply-engaged communities,” said CEO Andrew Wilson, in a statement. “With new games like Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, Need for Speed, Plants vs. Zombies and more great content across our top franchises, we’re set to deliver a lot of fun and excitement to players this holiday season, and continue our momentum in this fiscal year.” Before the earnings came out, analyst Colin Sebastian of Baird Equity Research said that he believed that the revenue trends for Apex Legends appeared better than the general sentiment suggested. He expected that FIFA 20 and Madden NFL 20 sales would help results in the quarter. Event GamesBeat at the Game Awards We invite you to join us in LA for GamesBeat at the Game Awards event this December 7. Reserve your spot now as space is limited! In fact, Apex Legends reached 70 million players in the quarter, EA said. Apex Legends developer Respawn Entertainment recently launched the third season of the free-to-play battle royale game, and that could help keep it competitive against rivals such as Fortnite. Michael Pachter, analyst at Wedbush Securities, noted that EA raised its year-end earnings guidance in part because it bought back a lot of shares in the quarter. EA launched Plants vs. Zombies: Battle for Neighborville (a multiplayer shooter) during the quarter. And on November 15, during EA’s third fiscal quarter, it’s launching the highly anticipated Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, which is coming out ahead of Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker. Analysts had expected adjusted earnings of 86 cents a share and revenue of $1.25 billion. Above: Volta is a NBA Street-style mode for FIFA 20. “The strong results this quarter illustrate the power of our live services and our core franchises. Strength in Ultimate Team, The Sims 4 and FIFA Online drove live services performance above our expectations,” said Blake Jorgensen, EA chief financial officer, in a statement. “Looking ahead, we are doubling down on live services combined with our core franchises. We’re investing in games that people play for longer and engage with much more deeply. This focus will continue to drive growth and profitability for the company through the remainder of this year and beyond.” Digital net bookings hit $3.88 billion for the past 12 months, up 8% from a year earlier, and it now represents 78% of total net bookings. The number of FIFA Ultimate Team unique players increased 22% year-over-year. The number of Madden Ultimate Team unique players increased 19% year-over-year. And The Sims 4 monthly average players are up more than 40% year-over-year. During the three months ended September 30, 2019, Switzerland changed its income tax rates. As a result, EA has recognized an income tax benefit of $1.705 billion, or $5.74 of earnings per share, during the fiscal year ending March 31, 2020. EA recognized $1.08 billion, or $3.61 of earnings per share, of this income tax benefit during the three months ended June 30, 2019 and $625 million, or $2.11 of earnings per share, during the three months ended September 30, 2019. For the full year, EA said GAAP net revenue is expected to be $5.41 billion, while net income is expected to be $2.841 billion, with $1.705 billion of that related to the one-time income tax benefit. For the third fiscal quarter ending December 31, EA expects earnings per share of 92 cents on revenue of $1.51 billion. GamesBeat's creed when covering the game industry is "where passion meets business." What does this mean? We want to tell you how the news matters to you -- not just as a decision-maker at a game studio, but also as a fan of games. Whether you read our articles, listen to our podcasts, or watch our videos, GamesBeat will help you learn about the industry and enjoy engaging with it. Discover our Briefings. Join the GamesBeat community! Enjoy access to special events, private newsletters and more. VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"NexTech AR enters VR market with virtual shopping platform VRitize | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2020/01/22/nextech-ar-enters-vr-market-with-virtual-shopping-platform-vritize"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages NexTech AR enters VR market with virtual shopping platform VRitize Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship. Learn more. As mixed reality technologies have continued to gather steam over the past several years, virtual reality companies, including Facebook, have increasingly dipped their toes into the more challenging and nascent augmented reality market. Today, NexTech AR announced that it’s going in the opposite direction, bringing some of its AR tools and assets to the VR world in a new virtual shopping platform. The VRitize platform is designed to let companies leverage assets already created for AR to sell products to VR users — a practical move, given that consumer AR hasn’t yet taken off , while VR continues to grow steadily in popularity. In an effort to appeal to a growing “V-commerce” market, NexTech says it will release an app that works on Facebook’s Oculus devices, as well as iOS and Android devices, to provide a mixed reality retail shopping experience for AR and VR users. It already offers ARitize through the App Store and Google Play. NexTech made headlines last year when it introduced a shopping tool for AR glasses that uses Microsoft Azure AI to respond to the wearer’s facial expressions, pitching additional items based on live or prior responses. That said, most AR glasses have either been initially targeted or subsequently retargeted at enterprise customers due to high prices and technology limitations, dramatically limiting the number of prospective customers. The first affordable consumer AR glasses are expected to go on sale later this year. “[W]e are entering a fourth transformational wave, where AR/VR and 3D content creation are becoming essential to merchandising products both online and in brick and mortar stores,” explained NexTech CEO Evan Gappelberg. “By adding VR to our product mix, we are positioning NexTech as the industry leader set to dominate both the AR and VR industry for retail.” Event GamesBeat at the Game Awards We invite you to join us in LA for GamesBeat at the Game Awards event this December 7. Reserve your spot now as space is limited! VRitize is set to launch in the first quarter of this year, at roughly the same time as NexTech debuts AR-focused 3D ad platforms and immersive entertainment content. Collectively, the new projects are expected to help the company reach $20 million in revenues for 2020 — roughly 10 times its total revenues for fiscal year 2019, when it was solely focused on AR. VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Discover our Briefings. The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"Zinier raises $90 million to embed field service work with AI and machine learning | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2020/01/15/zinier-raises-90-million-to-embed-field-service-work-with-ai-and-machine-learning"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Zinier raises $90 million to embed field service work with AI and machine learning Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Ziniers cloud dashboard and mobile app. Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship. Learn more. Workplace automation tools are expected to see an uptick in adoption in the next few years. One company leading the charge is San Francisco-based Zinier , which was founded in October 2015 by Andrew Wolf and former TripAdvisor market development manager Arka Dhar. A developer of intelligent field service automation, the startup provides a platform — intelligent service automation and control, or ISAC — aimed at fixing machinery before it breaks and maintaining mission-critical client services. After raising $30 million across three funding rounds, the first of which closed in January 2016, Zinier is gearing up for a major expansion with fresh capital. Today the startup announced that it has raised $90 million in series C funding — nearly quadruple its series B total — led by new investor Iconiq Capital, with participation from Tiger Global Management and return investors Accel, Founders Fund, Nokia-backed NGP Capital, France-based Newfund Capital, and Qualcomm Ventures. The round brings Zinier’s total raised to over $120 million, and CEO Dhar says it will support the company’s customer acquisition strategy and accelerate expansion of its services across telecom, energy, utilities, and beyond. Specifically, Zinier plans to expand in Asia Pacific, Europe, and Latin America, with a particular focus on Australia and New Zealand. On the R&D side, it will build out its AI technologies at the platform level and partner with global system integrators. Above: Zinier: Scheduling and dispatch “Services that we rely on every day — electricity, transportation, communication — are getting by on centuries-old infrastructure that requires a major upgrade for the next generation of users,” added Dhar. “A field service workforce powered by both people and automation is necessary to execute the massive amount of work required to not only maintain [this] critical human infrastructure, but to also prepare for growth. Our team is focused on enabling this transformation across industries through intelligent field service automation.” VB Event The AI Impact Tour Connect with the enterprise AI community at VentureBeat’s AI Impact Tour coming to a city near you! Zinier’s eponymous suite delivers insights, general recommendations, and specific tasks by running operations metrics through proprietary AI and machine learning algorithms. As for ISAC, it triggers preventative actions based on equipment health while anticipating stock transfers, and it scans technicians’ calendars to help define ongoing and potential problems. A separate component — Zinier’s AI configurator — affords control over the recommendations by enabling users to define the corpora on which the recommender systems are trained and to set the algorithms used. A complementary workflow builder automates routine tasks with custom workflows, and it lets users build, deploy, and update those workflows to their hearts’ content without having to write custom code. They’re also afforded access to the app builder, which supports the building of custom solutions for specific field service problems, as well as the grouping together of key functionalities into a single bundle that can be deployed across teams (subject to roles and permissions). Coordinators can accept or reject suggestions on the fly — the former sets off a series of automated actions. And managers can build custom dashboards from which teams can view insights generated by the analysis of historical trends, and optionally receive proactive alerts configured to address particular pain points, like when a task is at risk of falling behind. Zinier supports scheduling and dispatching so technicians know their work orders up to months in advance, and it autonomously determines general capacity based on transit time, technician availability, and task prioritization. Elsewhere, Zinier uses AI to predict systems failure by weighing real-time internet of things data against historical trends, and it tracks and manages inventory to ensure technicians consistently have the parts they need. On the mobile side of the equation, Zinier’s app makes an effort to boost productivity and job satisfaction by ensuring accurate job completion — in part by surfacing contextual and back-office data for technicians in the field. Service workers can access not only relevant documents, but detailed site records and readings from internet of things gadgets. As my colleague Paul Sawers notes, field service organizations are embracing AI and machine learning at an accelerated pace — and startups are rising to meet the demand. There’s the well-funded ServiceMax, which was acquired by GE Digital a few years back for $915 million and in turn sold a majority stake to Silver Lake in December 2018. Salesforce also offers a product called Field Service Lightning , while Microsoft snapped up FieldOne Systems in 2015 and now offers a field service management platform called Dynamics 365 for Field Service. For its part, Oracle in 2014 acquired the reportedly lucrative TOA Technologies, and in 2018 SAP bought AI-powered field service management company Coresystems. Zinier’s ostensible advantage is that its AI-powered platform was developed in-house from the ground up and it isn’t distracted by other business interests. “For Zinier, field service is our sole focus,” Dhar told VentureBeat in an earlier interview. “The platform has allowed us to quickly build Field Service Elements, our end-to-end field service automation product. And as we continue to build our expertise in different industries, we can quickly configure specific use case solutions for customers.” VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Discover our Briefings. The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"Directly raises $20 million to improve customer service with AI | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2020/01/28/directly-raises-20-million-to-inject-ai-into-customer-service"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Directly raises $20 million to improve customer service with AI Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Are you ready to bring more awareness to your brand? Consider becoming a sponsor for The AI Impact Tour. Learn more about the opportunities here. According to CustomerTheromometer, 54% of people have higher expectations for customer service today than just one year ago. Antony Brydon, Jean Tessier, and Jeff Patterson argue that a degree of automation is required to keep up with demand. The three are cofounders of Directly , a San Francisco, California-based startup helping enterprise companies launch and train virtual agents that can double their automation rate. To lay the runway for future growth, Directly today announced a $20 million strategic investment led by Industry Ventures with participation from Samsung NEXT, AvidBank, with participation from existing investors M12, Costanoa Ventures, True Ventures, and Northgate. Newly appointed CEO Mike de la Cruz, previously Siebel Systems senior vice president of customer relationship management and Directly’s chief business officer, said the fresh capital willl “significantly” expand the company’s ability to bring AI and customer experience automation to the market. The round brings Directly’s total raised to over $55 miillion, following a $20 million series B in April 2018. Notably, it comes after a year in which the startup grew 10% per month over a six-month period. “At Industry Ventures, our focus is to work with leading growth companies, full stop,” said the VC firm’s Brian Langer. “Directly saw tremendous growth toward the end of 2019, and the work they’re doing to revolutionize AI and machine learning for virtual agents is outstanding. We’re proud to take the lead on this strategic investment, and we look forward to Directly’s bright future.” Directly’s platform taps AI algorithms trained by thousands of subject matter experts to analyze contact center interactions and strategically answer, automate, and prevent customer issues. The algorithms are designed to integrate with existing customer relationship management platforms and messaging apps, including Microsoft’s Bot Framework, Salesforce’s Einstein Bot, and Google’s Dialogflow, matching chatbots and human agents with customers across channels in a unified experience. VB Event The AI Impact Tour Connect with the enterprise AI community at VentureBeat’s AI Impact Tour coming to a city near you! Autonomous customer service agents are fast becoming the rule rather than the exception, partly because consumers seem to prefer it that way. According to research published last year by Vonage subsidiary NewVoiceMedia, 25% of people prefer to have their queries handled by a chatbot or other self-service alternative, and Salesforce says roughly 69% of consumers choose chatbots for quick communication with brands. Directly’s extensive API lets clients insert automatic answers mapped to intent into any messaging channel in order to resolve issues in-line and in real time, while its AI-powered expert answers feature automatically determines which questions are best handled by a network of subject matter experts, who provide live assistance over channels. Meanwhile, a complementary insights feature automatically shares issues internally to the right stakeholders to work on preventing problems. De la Cruz claims companies can reduce support ticket volume by up to 80% and cost by over 90% per customer contact. Consider that the top 2,000 corporations in the U.S. spend about $250 billion each year on supporting customers — about 50 billion customer cases a year, with each query costing about $5 to answer. (Large companies like Comcast spend $2 billion to $3 billion a year.) And yet their customer service ratings remain at about 75%. Directly says it gets those ratings up to an average of 93% and reduces response times to two to three minutes across digital channels. High-profile client Microsoft said it worked with Directly to build a trusted network of Excel and Surface hardware power users that could answer questions directly, instead of routing them through an outsourced call center. (The experts receive a cash incentive, typically $2 to $60, while Directly gets a 30% cut.) Questions are clustered into topics, and AI identifies which experts are the top performers on specific topics by polling the wider expert network. If a particular answer is better than others, it will bubble to the top, and the expert who provided that answer earns more income every time the question is served. Experts get paid an average $200 a week, but the top 5% make $2,000 to $5,000 a week, according to Directly. Directly’s growing list of partners and customers includes LinkedIn, Airbnb, Autodesk, Samsung, and SAP, which De la Cruz says are saving on average tens of millions of dollars per year. A larger company can do $10 million in rewards a year, while a mid-sized company can see $1 million in rewards a year, Directly previously told VentureBeat. VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Discover our Briefings. The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"The shift toward open source conversational AI | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2019/08/31/the-shift-toward-open-source-conversational-ai"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Guest The shift toward open source conversational AI Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Are you ready to bring more awareness to your brand? Consider becoming a sponsor for The AI Impact Tour. Learn more about the opportunities here. In July, Uber released a new open source AI library called the Plato research dialogue system. A couple of months ago, Cisco open-sourced its MindMeld conversational AI platform , after acquiring the company of the same name in 2017 for $125 million. Why are so many new libraries being announced? There seems to be a trend of developers adopting open source conversational AI and leaving behind closed-source alternatives. Most of the key tooling for building conversational AI that has been developed in the last three years is open source. And companies like Uber and Cisco want to be in the running to define the standard conversational AI stack. In fact, the whole field of AI has seen a strong shift toward open source infrastructure in the past few years. The initial spark may have been Google’s decision to open-source TensorFlow in 2015. At that point, many businesses started paying attention. Google Search data shows that interest in open source libraries like TensorFlow and PyTorch has grown at the expense of closed platforms such as IBM Watson and Amazon’s Sagemaker. VB Event The AI Impact Tour Connect with the enterprise AI community at VentureBeat’s AI Impact Tour coming to a city near you! The market is driving this shift. Companies are increasingly deciding that many of the AI capabilities they need are strategically important and should be developed in-house. By using open source tools, they can build up their own training data sets and other IP, such as custom integrations with their backend systems. By developing the talent, data, and software to ship AI themselves, these companies control their own AI destiny. This trend has now reached the field of conversational AI. Looking at developer interest in two of the most popular cloud-based tools, it’s clear the number of questions asked on Stack Overflow has gone flat since early 2018. (Note that although “botframework” is the name of an open source SDK, it’s used to access Microsoft’s conversational AI platform, which is not open source.) While interest in closed-source tools like Dialogflow and Microsoft Bot Framework has stalled, monthly installations of the most popular open source natural language understanding (NLU) libraries increased six-fold between mid-2018 and mid-2019. I predict that within 12 months, open source will overtake the cloud APIs and become the dominant force in conversational AI. So why now? In 2016, chatbot hype had reached its peak, with companies exploring chatbots and voice assistants. For building a proof of concept, the convenience of a fully hosted solution like Dialogflow is compelling, because it requires very little in the way of engineering effort or up-front costs. Now, however, companies in various verticals are deploying conversational AI to solve more compelling business problems, and many prefer to control the tools and training themselves. The market for conversational AI is starting to mature, especially in the banking, insurance, and health care industries. Bank of America’s Erica and Capital One’s Eno are examples from leading banks that have built large teams to develop conversational AI. Challenger startups like Lemonade and N26 are on the path to building autonomous organizations, which becomes possible as the industry moves from level three conversational AI to level five. As always, with market maturity comes differentiated products. There are already multiple competing open source solutions targeted at different types of developers. MindMeld’ s main purpose is to enable developers to build use cases on Cisco-specific conference devices and the wider Cisco ecosystem. Uber’s Plato system operates in a different vertical; it’s optimized for the needs of researchers who want to develop and test new algorithms and evaluate them on standard data sets, similar to other research-focused libraries, such as PyDial and the very recent ConvLab. Then, of course, there’s tooling targeted at developers that are shipping products into production. Vendors include Rasa (where I am CTO and cofounder), DeepPavlov , and Snips. If open source does overtake the cloud APIs in the next 12 months to become the dominant force in conversational AI, tools from the likes of Cisco and Uber are just the beginning. Alan Nichol is founder and CTO of Rasa. VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Discover our Briefings. The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "

"OpenAI standardizes on PyTorch"

"https://openai.com/blog/openai-pytorch"

"Close Search Skip to main content Site Navigation Research Overview Index GPT-4 DALL·E 3 API Overview Data privacy Pricing Docs ChatGPT Overview Enterprise Try ChatGPT Safety Company About Blog Careers Residency Charter Security Customer stories Search Navigation quick links Log in Try ChatGPT Menu Mobile Navigation Close Site Navigation Research Overview Index GPT-4 DALL·E 3 API Overview Data privacy Pricing Docs ChatGPT Overview Enterprise Try ChatGPT Safety Company About Blog Careers Residency Charter Security Customer stories Quick Links Log in Try ChatGPT Search Blog OpenAI standardizes on PyTorch We are standardizing OpenAI’s deep learning framework on PyTorch. Illustration: Justin Jay Wang × DALL·E January 30, 2020 Authors OpenAI Announcements We are standardizing OpenAI’s deep learning framework on PyTorch. In the past, we implemented projects in many frameworks depending on their relative strengths. We’ve now chosen to standardize to make it easier for our team to create and share optimized implementations of our models. As part of this move, we’ve just released a PyTorch-enabled version of Spinning Up in Deep RL , an open-source educational resource produced by OpenAI that makes it easier to learn about deep reinforcement learning. We are also in the process of writing PyTorch bindings for our highly-optimized blocksparse kernels , and will open-source those bindings in upcoming months. The main reason we’ve chosen PyTorch is to increase our research productivity at scale on GPUs. It is very easy to try and execute new research ideas in PyTorch; for example, switching to PyTorch decreased our iteration time on research ideas in generative modeling from weeks to days. We’re also excited to be joining a rapidly-growing developer community, including organizations like Facebook and Microsoft, in pushing scale and performance on GPUs. Going forward we’ll primarily use PyTorch as our deep learning framework but sometimes use other ones when there’s a specific technical reason to do so. Many of our teams have already made the switch, and we look forward to contributing to the PyTorch community in upcoming months. Authors OpenAI View all articles Research Overview Index GPT-4 DALL·E 3 API Overview Data privacy Pricing Docs ChatGPT Overview Enterprise Try ChatGPT Company About Blog Careers Charter Security Customer stories Safety OpenAI © 2015 – 2023 Terms & policies Privacy policy Brand guidelines Social Twitter YouTube GitHub SoundCloud LinkedIn Back to top "

"How DeepMind is unlocking the secrets of dopamine and protein folding with AI | VentureBeat"

"https://venturebeat.com/2020/01/15/deepmind-dopamine-protein-folding-ai"

"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages How DeepMind is unlocking the secrets of dopamine and protein folding with AI Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Are you ready to bring more awareness to your brand? Consider becoming a sponsor for The AI Impact Tour. Learn more about the opportunities here. Demis Hassabis founded DeepMind with the goal of unlocking answers to some of the world’s toughest questions by recreating intelligence itself. His ambition remains just that — an ambition — but Hassabis and colleagues inched closer to realizing it this week with the publication of papers in Nature addressing two formidable challenges in biomedicine. The first paper originated from DeepMind’s neuroscience team, and it advances the notion that an AI research development might serve as a framework for understanding how the brain learns. The other paper focuses on DeepMind’s work with respect to protein folding — work which it detailed in December 2018. Both follow on the heels of DeepMind’s work in applying AI to the prediction of acute kidney injury , or AKI, and to challenging game environments such as Go, shogi, chess, dozens of Atari games, and Activision Blizzard’s StarCraft II. “It’s exciting to see how our research in [machine learning] can point to a new understanding of the learning mechanisms at play in the brain,” said Hassabis. “[Separately, understanding] how proteins fold is a long-standing fundamental scientific question that could one day be key to unlocking new treatments for a whole range of diseases — from Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s to cystic fibrosis and Huntington’s — where misfolded proteins are believed to play a role.” Dopamine In the paper on dopamine, teams hailing from DeepMind and Harvard investigated whether the brain represents possible future rewards not as a single average but as a probability distribution — a mathematical function that provides the probabilities of occurrence of different outcomes. They found evidence of “ distributional reinforcement learning ” in recordings taken from the ventral tegmental area — the midbrain structure that governs the release of dopamine to the limbic and cortical areas — in mice. The evidence indicates that reward predictions are represented by multiple future outcomes simultaneously and in parallel. VB Event The AI Impact Tour Connect with the enterprise AI community at VentureBeat’s AI Impact Tour coming to a city near you! The idea that AI systems mimic human biology isn’t new. A study conducted by researchers at Radboud University in the Netherlands found that recurrent neural networks (RNNs) can predict how the human brain processes sensory information, particularly visual stimuli. But, for the most part, those discoveries have informed machine learning rather than neuroscientific research. In 2017, DeepMind built an anatomical model of the human brain with an AI algorithm that mimicked the behavior of the prefrontal cortex and a “memory” network that played the role of the hippocampus, resulting in a system that significantly outperformed most machine learning model architectures. More recently, DeepMind turned its attention to rational machinery , producing synthetic neural networks capable of applying humanlike reasoning skills and logic to problem-solving. And in 2018, DeepMind researchers conducted an experiment suggesting that the prefrontal cortex doesn’t rely on synaptic weight changes to learn rule structures, as once thought, but instead uses abstract model-based information directly encoded in dopamine. Reinforcement learning and and neurons Reinforcement learning involves algorithms that learn behaviors using only rewards and punishments as teaching signals. The rewards serve to reinforce whatever behaviors led to their acquisition, more or less. As the researchers point out, solving a problem requires understanding how current actions result in future rewards. That’s where temporal difference learning (TD) algorithms come in — they attempt to predict the immediate reward and their own reward prediction at the next moment in time. When this comes in bearing more information, the algorithms compare the new prediction against what it was expected to be. If the two are different, this “temporal difference” is used to adjust the old prediction toward the new prediction so that the chain becomes more accurate. Above: When the future is uncertain, future reward can be represented as a probability distribution. Some possible futures are good (teal), others are bad (red). Reinforcement learning techniques have been refined over time to bolster the efficiency of training, and one of the recently developed techniques is called distributional reinforcement learning. Distributional reinforcement learning The amount of future reward that will result from a particular action is often not a known quantity, but instead involves some randomness. In such situations, a standard TD algorithm learns to predict the future reward that will be received on average, while a distributional reinforcement algorithm predicts the full spectrum of rewards. It’s not unlike how dopamine neurons function in the brains of animals. Some neurons represent reward prediction errors, meaning they fire — i.e., send electrical signals — upon receiving more or less reward than expected. It’s called the reward prediction error theory — a reward prediction error is calculated, broadcast to the brain via dopamine signal, and used to drive learning. Above: Each row of dots corresponds to a dopamine cell, and each color corresponds to a different reward size. Distributional reinforcement learning expands upon the canonical reward prediction error theory of dopamine. It was previously thought that reward predictions were represented only as a single quantity, supporting learning about the mean — or average — of stochastic (i.e., randomly determined) outcomes, but the work suggests that the brain in fact considers a multiplicity of predictions. “In the brain, reinforcement learning is driven by dopamine,” said DeepMind research scientist Zeb Kurth-Nelson. “What we found in our … paper is that each dopamine cell is specially tuned in a way that makes the population of cells exquisitely effective at rewiring those neural networks in a way that hadn’t been considered before.” One of the simplest distributional reinforcement algorithms — distributional TD — assumes that reward-based learning is driven by a reward prediction error that signals the difference between received and anticipated rewards. As opposed to traditional reinforcement learning, however, where the prediction is represented as a single quantity — the average over all potential outcomes weighted by their probabilities — distributional reinforcement uses several predictions that vary in their degree of optimism about upcoming rewards. A distributional TD algorithm learns this set of predictions by computing a prediction error describing the difference between consecutive predictions. A collection of predictors within apply different transformations to their respective reward prediction errors, such that some predictors selectively “amplify” or “overweight” their reward errors. When the reward prediction error is positive, some predictors learn a more optimistic reward corresponding to a higher part of the distribution, and when the reward prediction is negative, they learn more pessimistic predictions. This results in a diversity of pessimistic or optimistic value estimates that capture the full distribution of rewards. Above: As a population, dopamine cells encode the shape of the learned reward distribution: We can decode the distribution of rewards from their firing rates. The gray shaded area is the true distribution of rewards encountered in the task. “For the last three decades, our best models of reinforcement learning in AI … have focused almost entirely on learning to predict the average future reward. But this doesn’t reflect real life,” said DeepMind research scientist Will Dabney. “[It is in fact possible] to predict the entire distribution of rewarding outcomes moment to moment.” Distributional reinforcement learning is simple in its execution, but it’s highly effective when used with machine learning systems — it’s able to increase performance by a factor of two or more. That’s perhaps because learning about the distribution of rewards gives the system a more powerful signal for shaping its representation, making it more robust to changes in the environment or a given policy. Distributional learning and dopamine The study, then, sought to determine whether the brain uses a form of distributional TD. The team analyzed recordings of dopamine cells in 11 mice that were made while the mice performed a task for which they received stimuli. Five mice were trained on a variable-probability task, while six were trained on a variable-magnitude task. The first group was exposed to one of four randomized odors followed by a squirt of water, an air puff, or nothing. (The first odor signaled a 90% chance of reward, while the second, third, and fourth odors signaled a 50% chance of reward, 10% chance of reward, and 90% chance of reward, respectively.) Dopamine cells change their firing rate to indicate a prediction error, meaning there should be zero prediction error when a reward is received that’s the exact size a cell predicted. With that in mind, the researchers determined the reversal point for each cell — the reward size for which a dopamine cell didn’t change its firing rate — and compared them to see if there were any differences. They found that some cells predicted large amounts of reward, while others predicted little reward, far beyond the differences that might be expected from variability. They again saw diversity after measuring the degree to which the different cells exhibited amplifications of positive versus negative expectations. And they observed that the same cells that amplified their positive prediction errors had higher reversal point, indicating they were tuned to expect higher reward volumes. Above: Complex 3D shapes emerge from a string of amino acids. In a final experiment, the researchers attempted to decode the reward distribution from the firing rates of the dopamine cells. They report success: By performing inference, they managed to reconstruct a distribution that was a match to the actual distribution of rewards in the task in which the mice were engaged. “As the work examines ideas that originated within AI, it’s tempting to focus on the flow of ideas from AI to neuroscience. However, we think the results are equally important for AI,” said DeepMind director of neuroscience research Matt Botvinick. “When we’re able to demonstrate that the brain employs algorithms like those we are using in our AI work, it bolsters our confidence that those algorithms will be useful in the long run — that they will scale well to complex real-world problems and interface well with other computational processes. There’s a kind of validation involved: If the brain is doing it, it’s probably a good idea.” Protein folding The second of the two papers details DeepMind’s work in the area of protein folding, which began over two years ago. As the researchers note, the ability to predict a protein’s shape is fundamental to understanding how it performs its function in the body. This has implications beyond health and could help with a number of social challenges, like managing pollutants and breaking down waste. The recipe for proteins — large molecules consisting of amino acids that are the fundamental building block of tissues, muscles, hair, enzymes, antibodies, and other essential parts of living organisms — are encoded in DNA. It’s these genetic definitions that circumscribe their three-dimensional structure, which in turn determines their capabilities. Antibody proteins are shaped like a “Y,” for example, enabling them to latch onto viruses and bacteria, while collagen proteins are shaped like cords, which transmit tension between cartilage, bones, skin, and ligaments. But protein folding, which occurs in milliseconds, is notoriously difficult to determine from a corresponding genetic sequence alone. DNA contains only information about chains of amino acid residues and not those chains’ final form. In fact, scientists estimate that because of the incalculable number of interactions between the amino acids, it would take longer than 13.8 billion years to figure out all the possible configurations of a typical protein before identifying the right structure (an observation known as Levinthal’s paradox ). That’s why instead of relying on conventional methods to predict protein structure, such as X-ray crystallography, nuclear magnetic resonance, and cryogenic electron microscopy, the DeepMind team pioneered a machine learning system dubbed AlphaFold. It predicts the distance between every pair of amino acids and the twisting angles between the connecting chemical bonds, which it combines into a score. A separate optimization step refines the score through gradient descent (a mathematical method of improving the structure to better match the predictions), using all distances in aggregate to estimate how close the proposed structure is to the right answer. The most successful protein folding prediction approaches thus far have leveraged what’s known as fragment assembly, where a structure is created through a sampling process that minimizes a statistical potential derived from structures in the Protein Data Bank. (As its name implies, the Protein Data Bank is an open source repository of information about the 3D structures of proteins, nucleic acids, and other complex assemblies.) In fragment assembly, a structure hypothesis is modified repeatedly, typically by changing the shape of a short section while retaining changes that lower the potential, ultimately leading to low potential structures. With AlphaFold, DeepMind’s research team focused on the problem of modeling target shapes from scratch without drawing on solved proteins as templates. Using the aforementioned scoring functions, they searched the protein landscape to find structures that matched their predictions and replaced pieces of the protein structure with new protein fragments. They also trained a generative system to invent new fragments, which they used along with gradient descent optimization to improve the score of the structure. The models trained on structures extracted from the Protein Data Bank across 31,247 domains, which were split into train and test sets comprising 29,427 and 1,820 proteins, respectively. (The results in the paper reflect a test subset containing 377 domains.) Training was split across eight graphics cards, and it took about five days to complete 600,000 steps. The fully trained networks predicted the distance of every pair of amino acids from the genetic sequences it took as its input. A sequence with 900 amino acids translated to about 400,000 predictions. Above: The top figure features the distance matrices for three proteins, where the brightness of each pixel represents the distance between the amino acids in the sequence comprising the protein. The bottom row shows the average of AlphaFold’s predicted distance distributions. AlphaFold participated in the December 2018 Critical Assessment of protein Structure Prediction competition (CASP13), a competition that has been held every every two years since 1994 and offers groups an opportunity to test and validate their protein folding methods. Predictions are assessed on protein structures that have been solved experimentally but whose structures have not been published, demonstrating whether methods generalize to new proteins. AlphaFold won the 2018 CASP13 by predicting the most accurate structure for 24 out of 43 proteins. DeepMind contributed five submissions chosen from eight structures produced by three different variations of the system, all of which used potentials based on the AI model distance predictions, and some of which tapped structures generated by the gradient descent system. DeepMind reports that AlphaFold performed particularly well in the free modeling category, creating models where no similar template exists. In point of fact, it achieved a summed z-score — a measure of how well systems perform against the average — of 52.8 in this category, ahead of 36.6 for the next-best model. “The 3D structure of a protein is probably the single most useful piece of information scientists can obtain to help understand what the protein does and how it works in cells,” wrote head of the UCL bioinformatics group David Jones, who advised the DeepMind team on parts of the project. “Experimental techniques to determine protein structures are time-consuming and expensive, so there’s a huge demand for better computer algorithms to calculate the structures of proteins directly from the gene sequences which encode them, and DeepMind’s work on applying AI to this long-standing problem in molecular biology is a definite advance. One eventual goal will be to determine accurate structures for every human protein, which could ultimately lead to new discoveries in molecular medicine.” VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Discover our Briefings. The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat. All rights reserved. "