Daily Archives: May 18, 2017

iCloud Drive: How to See the Status of Uploads – The Mac Observer

Posted: May 18, 2017 at 2:26 pm

Boy, I sure have been writing lots of tips about iCloud lately. Is it something in the water? Maybe its the cycle of the moon? Have I finally lost my mind?

No, no, and yes. But that doesnt have anything to do with this tip.

So anyway, Ive been uploading a ton of stuff lately into iCloud Drive. I finally decided that I like it enough to consolidate everything into the Desktop and Documents syncing feature and abandon some other services Im using. But Ive been noticing how supremely unhelpful the little pie chart progress indicator is when Im uploading a large number of files:

That icon, available in Finders sidebar during an upload, is way less info than I want to have sometimes. But how do you get more? Well, one way is toturn on Finders Status Bar, the option for which is under the View menu.

When you do that and click on the iCloud Drive option in Finders sidebar, suddenly youll get a lot more information about your uploads.

Well, thats about a billion times more interesting.

I leave the Status Bar on all of the time anyway, as I like how itll typically show me the number of items in a folder and the space remaining on the drive Im looking at.

In that screenshot, you can see right above the Status Bar that I also have the Path Bar on (View > Show Path Bar). This is helpful if youd like to have a trail of breadcrumbs, so to speak, leading back withinthe folder structure youve navigated through. Any of the location icons in the Path Bar are double-clickable, as well, to return youto someplace youve been. Useful if you tend to drill way deep down into folders and then forget where you came from! Not that I ever do that myself, oh no.

Wait, where am I?

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How to be a DIY pop star: lollipops, kung fu and other fail-safe strategies – The Guardian

Posted: at 2:26 pm

After years of upheaval, the music industry is still pulling itself out of the doldrums. News that music revenues grew 5.9% to 12.2bn in 2016 largely thanks to the continuing evolution of streaming was met by a howl of discord in many quarters (not least an article in the Quietus that stated, perhaps fairly, that for independent and small-label artists, the Valhalla of a Spotify-curated playlist is as distant a proposition as Simon Cowell signing Fat White Family). Nevertheless, there are plenty of independent musicians building enduring careers away from the limelight. Weve spoken to five soloists about how theyve grown outside of the label model, whilst receiving little to no exposure in the mainstream outlets normally seen as key to future success.

Shes got over a million YouTube subscribers, 477,000 Twitter followers, a Top 40 EP, Intertwined, that also went to No 5 in the iTunes album charts, plus one Shorty award for best musician on YouTube. But unless you have a teenage child with a love of pensive, cutesy folk, its unlikely youll have heard of the singer, serial vlogger and ukuleledon Dodie Clark. And the 22-year old is just fine with that: I like it! Weve been brought up in a world where mainstream fame separates you into black and white, and the celebrities are untouchable. Ive basically lived my life online through songs and vlogs and videos. Im not untouchable.

Though she counts herself as a musician she started uploading music online when she was 15 much of her income comes through brand work. In the past, this was writing songs for Kelloggs and Barclays; now its Chupa Chups sponsoring her tours and giving her thousands of sugar-free lollipops for her fans. Despite a slight reticence about how shes perceived outside of her YouTube bubble, she does profess to aspirations to go more mainstream. It would be interesting to document it, she says, I cant think of many people doing that.

Thirty-year-old Tom Rosenthal is about to release his third album, Fenn (named after his second daughter), and has been releasing music on the internet since 2005. Hes racked up Spotify streams of around 55m, 22m YouTube views, and been courted by major labels keen to release his gently epic ballads, which channel Brian Wilson-esque whimsy through the mind of the classic British kook. But why would I change everything to make just 20% of the money when I currently make 80%? Tom says. If you want to be the next Ed Sheeran, it might be beneficial. But I dont.

Tom puts his success down to several factors: a penchant for songwriting, obviously. But most crucial are a constant stream of content (hell be releasing a video for every song on Fenn), and building a granite-strong fanbase. This last year, Ive sent out thousands of personalised notes to people. Its nothing to do with songwriting, but it connects you to people in a (hopefully) lovely way. If you build the foundations of a strong house, its hard to knock down.

When we call the Shaolin kung fu-trained rapper ShaoDow (pronounced sha-ow-dough), hes about to leave south London to manage a pop-up shop in Gatesheads Metrocentre shopping mall. Retail work might not be that unconventional a sidejob for the budding musician, but Shao is different: hell be selling all his own-branded caps, hoodies and tees. He also has a range of branded headphones and wrote a manga book The Way of the Shao to go with 2016s album of the same name. Hes also a rapper, of course, selling around 25,000 albums independently and touring with the likes of Stormzy and Skepta. The temptation is to see him as an architect and gatekeeper of a brand, rather than a musician?

To a degree you have to be, nowadays, he says. My income split is about 60% music and 40% merchandise. But I want to get to a point where I can hire people to do the other stuff, so I can be in the studio making music.

A lot of people recognise me in Hackney, says 24-year old Paige Mead, AKA Paigey Cakey, though half the time its because we went to school together.

Cakey might not have the mainstream profile of other Hackney musical alumni like Rudimental, JME or Professor Green, but that doesnt mean the MC couldnt sell out the Hackney Empire in 2013. That show was dope, but that was in the early stages of my career. If I did it now, it would be so much better.

Paigeys media career started on screen. She was in cult ghetto sci-fi film Attack the Block, and then a role in BBCs Waterloo Road helped raise her profile and drew attention to her music. Both careers now feed off each other, though shell freely admit the role that social media has played in her success: Social networking is the best thing. Dont be shy. I try to engage with everybody so they know Im a human being. And always put your music out there time waits for nobody!

For every star, theres a hundred broken dreams, says the virtuosic guitarist Jon Gomm. Ive seen too many of my friends sign major deals, then have their lifes work left to rot, owned by a corporation who wont release it or market it.

Jon started having ukulele lessons at just two years old and has a mind-skewering method of playing his acoustic guitar, retuning the strings as he goes to create bass, and using the body of the guitar to generate drum, bongo, bass and snare sounds. Hes toured full time since 2004, and album sales are now in the tens of thousands for each release (theres been three). Also, uniquely, none of his music is on Spotify.

Jon has a fervent belief in social medias importance, saying: Its almost everything now. This perhaps isnt surprising, since a 2012 tweet from Stephen Fry about his song Passionflower helped fire him into a wider consciousness. Elsewhere, he says dont be afraid to put your money where your talent is. It drives me crazy when my musician friends dont want to spend money on advertising or hiring a PR person. You have to invest in your own music, as any business has to invest in itself.

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The YouTube Parents Who are Turning Family Moments into Big Bucks – TIME

Posted: at 2:26 pm

Shay Carl Butler came to fame and fortune via a unitard .

In August 2007, after a video of the father of two dancing in his wife Colettes workout outfit went viral, he realized there might be a business in domestic antics. The former granite-countertop installer, who says he didnt even own a computer until 2004, began recording his life and posting the videos and didnt stop for almost a decade, through weight loss, the birth of three more kids and the ever growing wealth of his family.

Shaytards , as Butlers main channel on YouTube is known, became wildly popular. Collectively, its videos have been watched more than 2.6 billion times. The most popular videoat about 23 million views, titled WE GOT A SWIMMING POOL! is typical; it features 15 minutes of wholesome family fun, in which the most noteworthy thing that happens is that one child reports that another got hit in the nuts by a water balloon.

Vloggingthe frequent recording and uploading of personal videos, usually on YouTubehas become a big business, or rather a sea of businesses, with operators as small as one person and as large as a massive production company. (Butler was one of the co-founders of Maker Studios, a conglomerate of YouTube channels that was sold to Disney for $500 million in 2014 but absorbed into the company on May 4.) And family vlogging is the ultimate family business: you literally get paid for raising your kids. The more fun a family has, the more viewers and, ergo, money they get. Popular clans can attract sponsorship, advertising and, at the very least, a lot of free stuff to play with on camera. Brands seeking a PG-rated YouTube outlet have flocked to family vloggers like the Mormon-raised Butlers, who now live on a huge property, complete with a studio and horses, in Idaho. YouTube metrics firms estimate that the Shaytards channel brings in anything from $2,000 to $38,000 every month just in ad revenue.

Thousands of these families live out their lives in the lens of the webcam: from the megapopular folks at Family Fun Pack a family of seven Californians, including parents Kristine and Mattto We Are the Freemans! , who have just 400 subscribers after five months of daily uploads. And its a growing genre; YouTube says that time spent watching family vloggers is up 90% in the past year.

But recently, several prominent YouTube families have got into strife, some in the way families often do, only with a lot more spectators, and some because the pressure to get spectators seemed to muddy their judgment. With a camera and an Internet connection, any parents can put their home life on YouTube. But its becoming clear that a childhood in which a part of every day must be given over to public consumption and commentary is not ideal for every kid, or even every adult. As family vlogging matures, some of its perils are beginning to emerge.

In February, Butler, who had previously said he would leave YouTube in March, abruptly stopped vlogging. A webcam girl by the name of Aria Nina released an explicit series of direct Twitter messages the father of five had sent her over the course of a few months. Then Butler announced that he was struggling with alcoholism and needed to rehabilitate. Its been impossible to keep up this perfect happiness is a choice mentality, he wrote on Twitter . Since then, Shaytards has gone silent.

The pressure of being the perfect family wasnt what prompted Mike and Heather Martin to shut down DaddyOFive, which had attracted hundreds of thousands of subscribers and was their chief source of income. In April, the Ijamsville, Md.based couple were called out by other YouTubers for appearing to be particularly cruel to their younger children Cody, 9, and Emma,12, during their prank-style videos.

In one video, Cody is blamed for mysterious ink stains on the carpet in his bedroom. He crumples in a confused heap as the elder Martins shout obscenities at him, before they let him in on the joke: its invisible ink, and they put it there! In another video, the kids are encouraged to flip water bottles with the added twist that if their bottle doesnt land on its base, someone will hit them. Thats how Emma gets slapped hard across the face by her stepbrother. The kids insisted that they enjoyed their rough-and-tumble on-camera life, but even with that and an apology from Mike and Heather, Frederick County Circuit Court granted the youngest two kids biological mother emergency custody.

The Martins are now under a gag order, and through a spokesperson, they declined to comment for this story. But Heather told the Baltimore Sun that things simply got out of hand. What started out as family fun crossed the line, she said. When I stepped back and reflected and looked at how this would appear to other people, I was able to take myself out of character andme just being MomI put myself in other peoples shoes to see how bad that some of this looked.

Child psychologists say that most kids are very resilient and can adapt to the circumstances in which they are brought up, including fame, but they warn that there are danger areas in family vlogging. All children want to please their parents, says Harold Koplewicz, a psychiatrist and head of the Child Mind Institute , who adds that the DaddyOFive pranks were clearly abusive. We trust the caretakers in our lives that theyre looking out for us. If theyre not, it makes us very anxious and uncomfortable. As they grow into adolescence, he adds, kids need some privacy to be able to make mistakes, and they need parents who are their protectors, not their employers.

YouTube says it took down the DaddyOFive videos that violated its standards and stopped feeding ads to the Martins as soon as viewers alerted it. Malik Ducard , global head of Family and Learning at YouTube, says the vast majority of family vloggers find it to be a positive experience. I see a lot of true family love in these families, he says. I feel like theyre families I know down the block. Most of them, he adds, dont need to be told to prioritize their loved ones over their viewers.

Some vloggers are well aware of the dangers. No one knows what the implications [of family vlogging] will be in the future, says Rossana Burgos, matriarch of the megasuccessful Eh Bee Family channel. And so for us, every single step, we think, How is this going to affect [our kids] in 15 years? The family has tried to conceal their two kids real names, calling them Miss Monkey and Mr. Monkey online, but they get recognized almost everywhere they go. They also dont work every day. We dont think putting up videos every day is a good idea, especially when you have children involved, Burgos says.

Of course, YouTube fans dont have to meet their idols to interact with them. The company, which is owned by Google , actively encourages its families to engage in the comments section. This can mean that kids could be exposed to a lot of opinions that even adults find hard to negotiate. Even in the beginning, people would leave really rude comments, Kristine of Family Fun Pack has said. Really disturbing things. She never knew how seriously to take them. Is this a kid or a legitimate adult? You never really know. The Eh Bee parents dont allow their kids to be online unless they are in the room with them.

Even when parents nurturing skills are perfectly appropriate, anonymous commenters can make painful situations worse. After Caleb LeBlanc died in October 2015 of an undiagnosed heart condition at the age of 14, the Internet swirled with speculation about the real cause of his demise. His family, known on YouTube as Bratayley (2.4 billion video views), not only had to deal with shock and grief, but had to process why so many people were suspicious of the parents. (The Maryland state medical examiners office confirmed that the death was due to a previously undiagnosed heart condition.) The family still vlogs regularly, because, they say, they want to be celebrating life.

Despite the drawbacks, experts are cautious about criticizing what could just be family scrapbooking writ large. The effect of fame on children is hard to discern, says Alan Kazdin, director of the Yale Parenting Center , pointing to the social and material advantages that come with it. What famous families sacrifice may be worth less than what they gain. Many of them eventually post a video of their new house. And the Eh Bee family is about to set off on their second trip around the U.S., courtesy of an allergy medication.

And perhaps that, in the end, is what makes family vlogging so irresistible, despite the potential downsides. It forces people to create a more interesting life for the camera. As Missy Lanning, a mother of two and the matriarch of Daily Bumps said in a video of her familys many adventures, Because we daily vlog, we have chosen to live our life to the fullest, and its awesome.

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Irritu’s ‘Carne y Arena’ Virtual Reality Simulates a Harrowing Border Trek – New York Times

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New York Times
Irritu's 'Carne y Arena' Virtual Reality Simulates a Harrowing Border Trek
New York Times
The cold of the hieleras is the first thing you feel in Carne y Arena (Flesh and Sand), a groundbreaking hybrid of art exhibition, virtual reality simulation and historical re-enactment by the Mexican film director Alejandro G. Irritu on view ...
How Alejandro G. Irritu Used Virtual Reality to Tackle Illegal ImmigrationVariety
Alejandro G. Irritu Strikes At Heart Of Immigrant Experience With Virtual Reality Installation CARNE y ARENA ...Deadline

all 4 news articles »

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‘Bjrk Digital’: Sonic dreams become virtual reality in downtown LA – Los Angeles Times

Posted: at 2:26 pm

Bjrk isnt just a pop star. Shes a songwriter and producer, as well as a composer who has done the arrangements on 90% of her music for the last 25 years. Most fans may not know this. She doesnt trumpet her musical fluency, she says, because its ingrained in her as a woman to stay quiet about her talents.

Shes done remaining silent on the subject, however, as she stands poised to unleash a veritable Bjrk-apalooza on the City of Angels with a three-pronged musical and artistic blitz. A virtual reality exhibit titled Bjrk Digital opens Friday in downtown L.A. Advance copies of her new book, 34 Scores for Piano, Organ, Harpsichord and Celeste, will be made exclusively available there. Then May 30 will mark the Iceland natives sold-out Walt Disney Concert Hall debut, accompanied by a 32-piece string orchestra.

If I were a guy, people would be talking about, and writing about, my music and not just about my love life and kids, she said in her lilting, sing-song voice over the phone from New York. So my input for feminism is to start putting the spotlight on my arrangements.

If I were a guy, people would be talking about, and writing about, my music and not just about my love life and kids.

Bjrk

The score book alone took eight years to put together. She met two times a year with composer, keyboardist and former bandmate Jonas Sen to go through her back catalog. They merged her arrangements for choir, strings, brass and vocals into versions for keyboards. She also worked with designers on what turned into a challenging task: creating a font for her music in the same way one would be created for letters. If youre not quite sure what this means, youre not alone. When pressed to elaborate, Bjrk said she could talk about the process for hours and that a documentary could be made about it, but it still wouldnt be easy to understand.

We had to do a Kofi Annan situation between the [music] notation universe and the font universe, she said, referring to the seemingly impossible negotiations undertaken by the former secretary general of the United Nations. That actually took two years, but hopefully now other musicians can do the same with their own notations.

Its fitting that 34 Scores, with its hard-won font, will be released at the Bjrk Digital exhibition, which highlights Bjrks talent for bringing multiple art forms together with technology in service of amplifying the effect of her music. The exhibit will be making its West Coast premiere after appearing in Sydney, Australia; Tokyo; London; Reykjavik, Iceland; Montreal; Mexico City; and Houston.

The exhibit has three distinct components. The first features six virtual reality experiences made for her most recent album, Vulnicura, which transport viewers in custom headsets to far-flung and unexpected places including a windswept beach in Iceland and the interior of the singers mouth.

The second is a hands-on educational alcove showcasing Bjrks custom instruments and music apps, which were made for her 2011 album, Biophilia. That groundbreaking work was the first album to be released as a series of interactive apps that stitched together aspects of musicology with science and nature to some academic effect. The album ultimately launched the Biophilia Educational Program, which adapted the singers programs into the official curriculum of several Northern European countries.

Finally, Bjrk Digital will have a cinema room playing remastered music videos spanning the career of the 51-year-old singer. Directors include heavyweights such as Michel Gondry, Spike Jonze and Alexander McQueen.

It has been particularly satisfying to see the emotional reaction from people who come to the show and experience virtual reality for the first time. Audience members often hold hands, sing along, even cry while they are inside the virtual space, said James Merry, Bjrk Digital creative co-director, by email from Reykjavik. I think the ability to place sound in a 360-degree environment is particularly exciting to a self-confessed audio nerd like Bjork.

For fans of Bjrks music, Bjrk Digital should feel like a natural extension of her career trajectory. As a testament to her early use of digital technology as a means for artistic expression, the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2015 staged a three-month-long retrospective of her multifaceted work.

Her voice is among the most distinctive sopranos in modern music, characterized by remarkable elasticity and vulnerability. Her music, no matter the genre electronic, pop, experimental, trip-hop or orchestral has always somehow sounded like the future itself.

Bjrk stresses that this has not necessarily been intentional.

To be honest, when I do things that are technological, or with VR, or even with acoustic strings and choirs, Im basically just trying to be functional, she says. Im trying to be truthful to the lives we lead now. Im not trying to be far-out. We are on our phones now sharing files and ideas, making videos, photos and songs.

As complicated as playing with a 32-piece orchestra can be, the experience has brought Bjrk back to simpler tasks and allowed her to explore the roots of her arrangements. She is finding new freedom in that. Prior to her upcoming concert at Disney Hall, she has performed with orchestras at the Royal Albert Hall in London, Harpa hall in Reykjavik and the Auditorio Nacional in Mexico City.

Ultimately, says Bjrk Digital co-director Merry, Bjrk is creating a musical landscape all her own.

Collaborating with her is like an invitation into a very specific universe that she is creating to surround her music, where she encourages you to grow and flourish inside of that world and brings the best out of you, teasing out the places where both your worlds overlap while still staying true to her vision, he says.

What future creative innovations might populate this universe is up in the air, Bjrk says, adding that shes always writing and learning new tools to enhance her craft.

I think its important at any given time to re-evaluate what is relevant and not relevant, and maybe cross-connect those to create a new form that is relevant to the world we live in, she says.

Where: Magic Box at the Reef, 1933 S. Broadway, Los Angeles

When: 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Friday to June 4

Tickets: Starting at $35; timed entry every 15 minutes

Information: (323) 850-2000, http://www.laphil.com

jessica.gelt@latimes.com

@jessicagelt

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‘Neon Genesis Evangelion’ Gets The Full Virtual Reality Treatment In Japan This Summer – Forbes

Posted: at 2:26 pm


Forbes
'Neon Genesis Evangelion' Gets The Full Virtual Reality Treatment In Japan This Summer
Forbes
This new virtual reality or VR game will be playable at Bandai Namco's upcoming event space in Kabukicho, Shinjuku this summer. To be honest, I am surprised that Bandai Namco hasn't leveraged its mecha related properties more aggressively when it ...

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With Some Help from Google, Virtual Reality Is About to Break Free from the Wires – Motherboard

Posted: at 2:26 pm

If there's one thing that's been consistently annoying about the current virtual reality renaissance it's that almost all of the available devices require you to stay tethered to another device, like a PC or PlayStation 4 with a wire.

But virtual reality may be about to break free from those chains. Yesterday at Google I/O 2017 conference, Google and HTC announced the upcoming release of a new standalone Vive headset powered by Google's Daydream virtual reality platform.

Image: Google

There's no clear word on if it'll be able to handle the Vive's more graphically intensive games and other applicationsalthough the official site claims it'll deliver an "unparalleled experience"but it at least sounds like the realization of a dream that's been long in the works. The unnamed device requires neither a PC nor a smartphone to run. It supports Google's WorldSense, a 3D mapping technology that works without any external sensors. And since you won't have to stuff your phone into the visor, there's more room available for a larger battery. This is liberating stuff.

Yet details are scant, unfortunately, aside from a couple of teaser images and an announcement that it'll be available "later this year." There's also no word on how much the thing will end up costing, although a price in the range of your average high-end smartphone seems like a safe bet.

The technology isn't just limited to HTC, as Google announced that Lenovo is also making a standalone device with Daydream tech. But for now, at least, Vive is the one to watch. After months of sluggish sales, a competent standalone device from one of the most successful virtual reality headset makes to date could be just want the virtual reality industry needs.

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Virtual reality brings ninth century Viking invaders’ camp to life – The Guardian

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Vikings raid the English coastline in the 900s. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

The Viking armies that invaded Britain in the ninth century were far larger than had previously been realised, according to academic research that forms the basis for a groundbreaking virtual reality project.

A major exhibition at the Yorkshire Museum, staged in partnership with the British Museum, draws on new research by the universities of York and Sheffield. According to Professor Dawn Hadley, one of the co-directors of the universities project at the site of a Viking winter camp, archeologists and historians had thought that the invading Viking armies numbered in the low hundreds. But archeological work at the camp on the river Trent at Torksey, Lincolnshire, suggested otherwise.

Our work at Torksey has revealed a camp 55 hectares in area, the size of some 75 football pitches, Hadley said. This reflects an army which, along with women, children, and crafts workers and traders, must have been several thousand strong, larger than most towns of the period.

The VR project at the Yorkshire exhibition presents those findings in an immersive reproduction of the camps life. Armed with virtual reality helmets, visitors will be transported back to the camp where Vikings camped out in their thousands during the winter of AD 872-3 while they prepared for conquest. They are seen melting down stolen loot, repairing ships and playing a favourite strategic board game.

Professor Julian Richards, Hadleys co-director on a project focusing on the camp, told the Guardian that the project was the first to present the Viking world via immersive virtual reality.

Torksey was much more than just a handful of hardy warriors, he said. This was a huge base From the finds we know, for example, that they were repairing their boats here and melting down looted gold and silver to make ingots or bars of metal they used to trade. Metal detectorists have also found more than 300 lead game-pieces, suggesting the Vikings were spending a lot of time playing games waiting for spring and the start of their next offensive.

The virtual reality scenes are based on actual objects found by archaeologists and metal detectorists at Torksey, recreating a camp where boats and weaponry were being patched up and replaced, objects like jewellery were being made for trading and clothes were being repaired.

The exhibition also reflects events of the year 865 AD, when a large Viking force landed in East Anglia. It is described in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the main contemporary documentary source, as the Great Army because it was much larger than previous raiding parties.

Torksey was a perfect defensive and strategic position. Hadley said: Here Anglo-Saxon scribes tell us that the army overwintered but, working with metal detectorists, we have now been able to identify the actual site and nature of the camp.

Over 1,500 objects have been found, and the visitor will take part in a number of vignettes which show their use. For example, in Games Night, they will see a group of Vikings sitting round a board game, using some of the 300 lead playing pieces found on the site, to play an old Norse strategy game hnefatafl.

In another scene, some warriors are busy repairing one of their ships, drawn up on the river bank, as reflected in the iron rivets we have found.

Richards said: These extraordinary images offer a fascinating snapshot of life at a time of great upheaval in Britain. The Vikings had previously often raided exposed coastal monasteries and returned to Scandinavia in winter but in the later ninth century they came in larger numbers and decided to stay. This sent a very clear message that they now planned not only to loot and raid, but to control and conquer.

The virtual reality exhibition will feature alongside prized exhibits from the British Museum and Yorkshire Museums collections. The exhibition, entitled Viking: Rediscover the Legend, opens at the Yorkshire Museum on Friday.

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Building the virtual reality experiences and worlds of the future – VentureBeat

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Pretty soon, real life will be stranger than fiction when it comes to bringing the great inventions of science fiction and games into real world technology.

Kim Pallister, director of Intels virtual reality center of excellence, moderated a fireside chat about that topic with science fiction writer Austin Grossman at our recentGamesBeat Summit 2017: How games, sci-fi, and tech create real-world magic.

They dwelled on the future of virtual reality experiences and building worlds like the Metaverse in Neal Stephensons 1992 sci-fi novel Snow Crash. Given the advances of VR, its not such a crazy talk to have anymore. People are really looking for an experience that lives up to the imagination portrayed in such early works of fiction.

Snow Crash imprinted [the idea of virtual life] on the culture, Grossman said.

Pallister added, It feels like the current set of hardware has tipped us over a point where people can feel a magical experience but it is really only just the beginning of the types of experiences depicted in those fictional works.

Pallister leads Intels virtual reality (VR) project lab in Hillsboro, Ore. His team is working to improve the state of VR technology and to bring VR to mainstream audiences. In his current role, Pallister forecasts the progress of VR and the ingredient technologies responsible for driving VR experiences.

Above: Kim Pallister (left) of Intel quizzed sci-fi novelist Austin Grossman at GamesBeat Summit 2017.

Image Credit: Michael O'Donnell/VentureBeat

Assisting Intels original equipment manufacturer (OEM) partners, from Microsoft to HTC and Oculus, Pallister works closely with the underlying solutions making VR possible.

Prior to rejoining Intel in 2007, Pallister worked on Microsofts business development team conducting deals for MS Casual Games services, including MSN Games, Xbox Live Arcade and Windows Live Messenger. From 1998 to 2005, he served as games technical strategist at Intel.

Grossman straddles the lines between books and games, as he is botha novelist and game designer.

Above: Kim Pallister of Intel talks with Austin Grossman (right) about the future of virtual reality.

Image Credit: Michael O'Donnell/VentureBeat

Grossmans novels include Soon I Will Be Invincible, YOU: a novel, and Crooked. Soon I Will Be Invincible was nominated for the 2007 John Sargent Sr. First Novel Prize. His writing has also appeared in Granta, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times.

His game credits include Ultima Underworld 2, System Shock, Trespasser, Deus Ex, Epic Mickey, and Dishonored, which received the 2012 BAFTA award for Best Game.

Its discouraging if the thing that VR gives us is an escape from a dystopia rather than tool to better ourselves or better the world, Pallister said.

That was part of the premise behind the world of Ready Player One, the novel by Ernest Cline that is being turned into a sci-fi movie by Steven Spielberg, Grossman said.

In the future, Grossman wants to be able to get all of the senses and sensations in VR so that he can learn how to dance in VR, and then come out into the real world and know how to dance in real life.

Pallister, by contrast, wants to learn how to juggle in VR.

Originally posted here:

Building the virtual reality experiences and worlds of the future - VentureBeat

Posted in Virtual Reality | Comments Off on Building the virtual reality experiences and worlds of the future – VentureBeat

Hear Me Out: Let’s Elect an AI as President – WIRED

Posted: at 2:26 pm

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Link:

Hear Me Out: Let's Elect an AI as President - WIRED

Posted in Ai | Comments Off on Hear Me Out: Let’s Elect an AI as President – WIRED