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How the 5G network is going to change the world and A.I.
www.techradar.com/au/news/what-is-5g-everything-you-need-to-know
edition.cnn.com/2019/02/28/tech/5g-benefits-mobile-world-congress/index.html
5G networks are the next generation of mobile internet connectivity, offering faster speeds and more reliable connections on smartphones and other devices than ever before.
Combining cutting-edge network technology and the very latest research, 5G should offer connections that are multitudes faster than current connections, with average download speeds of around 1GBps expected to soon be the norm.
Industry players claim 5G can be 100 times faster than 4G and that a huge number of devices will be able to connect to the network simultaneously.
This will enable self-driving vehicles to talk to each other in real time: they’ll know when another car is changing lanes or braking and can adjust to manage traffic accordingly.
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AFL-CIO America Biggest Labor Federation Asks Game Developers to Unionize
www.polygon.com/2019/1/16/18178332/game-developer-union-crunch
variety.com/2019/gaming/news/liz-schuler-game-developers-unionize-1203141471/
AFL-CIO secretary-treasurer Liz Shuler took to Kotaku with a post that asks workers in the games industry to fight for adequate pay, sensible work hours, and against toxic work conditions.
“We’ve heard the painful stories of those willing to come forward, including one developer who visited the emergency room three times before taking off from work,” writes Shuler. “Developers at Rockstar Games recently shared stories of crunch time that lasted for months and even years in order to satisfy outrageous demands from management, delivering a game that banked their bosses $725 million in its first three days.”
“Growing by double digits, U.S. video game sales reached $43 billion in 2018, about 3.6 times greater than the film industry’s record-breaking box office,” she writes.
“While you’re fighting through exhaustion and putting your soul into a game, Bobby Kotick and Andrew Wilson are toasting to ‘their’ success,” she says.
“They get rich. They get notoriety. They get to be crowned visionaries and regarded as pioneers. What do you get? Outrageous hours and inadequate paychecks. Stressful, toxic work conditions that push you to your physical and mental limits. The fear that asking for better means risking your dream job.”
Some of the biggest players in game development and publishing have fostered hostile and unforgiving environments where our favorite games are made.
Co-founder and vice president of Rockstar Games Dan Houser seemingly bragged that staff were pulling 100-hour weeks to get the much-anticipated “Red Dead Redemption 2” ready for its launch last year.
Similarly, companies like Telltale have laid off the majority of their staff with little to no notice or severance. Many developers took to Twitter afterwards to air their grievances and express their hopes for change under the hashtag #AsAGamesWorker.
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domeble – Hi-Resolution CGI Backplates and 360° HDRI
When collecting hdri make sure the data supports basic metadata, such as:
- Iso
- Aperture
- Exposure time or shutter time
- Color temperature
- Color space Exposure value (what the sensor receives of the sun intensity in lux)
- 7+ brackets (with 5 or 6 being the perceived balanced exposure)
In image processing, computer graphics, and photography, high dynamic range imaging (HDRI or just HDR) is a set of techniques that allow a greater dynamic range of luminances (a Photometry measure of the luminous intensity per unit area of light travelling in a given direction. It describes the amount of light that passes through or is emitted from a particular area, and falls within a given solid angle) between the lightest and darkest areas of an image than standard digital imaging techniques or photographic methods. This wider dynamic range allows HDR images to represent more accurately the wide range of intensity levels found in real scenes ranging from direct sunlight to faint starlight and to the deepest shadows.
The two main sources of HDR imagery are computer renderings and merging of multiple photographs, which in turn are known as low dynamic range (LDR) or standard dynamic range (SDR) images. Tone Mapping (Look-up) techniques, which reduce overall contrast to facilitate display of HDR images on devices with lower dynamic range, can be applied to produce images with preserved or exaggerated local contrast for artistic effect. Photography
In photography, dynamic range is measured in Exposure Values (in photography, exposure value denotes all combinations of camera shutter speed and relative aperture that give the same exposure. The concept was developed in Germany in the 1950s) differences or stops, between the brightest and darkest parts of the image that show detail. An increase of one EV or one stop is a doubling of the amount of light.
The human response to brightness is well approximated by a Steven’s power law, which over a reasonable range is close to logarithmic, as described by the Weber�Fechner law, which is one reason that logarithmic measures of light intensity are often used as well.
HDR is short for High Dynamic Range. It’s a term used to describe an image which contains a greater exposure range than the “black” to “white” that 8 or 16-bit integer formats (JPEG, TIFF, PNG) can describe. Whereas these Low Dynamic Range images (LDR) can hold perhaps 8 to 10 f-stops of image information, HDR images can describe beyond 30 stops and stored in 32 bit images.
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This AI is so good at writing that its creators at the open source OpenAI won’t let you use it
edition.cnn.com/2019/02/18/tech/dangerous-ai-text-generator/index.html
OpenAI researchers fed the following Lord-of-the-Rings-style prompt to the system: Legolas and Gimli advanced on the orcs, raising their weapons with a harrowing war cry.
The computer composed this appropriately violent addition:
The orcs’ response was a deafening onslaught of claws, claws, and claws; even Elrond was forced to retreat. “You are in good hands, dwarf,” said Gimli, who had been among the first to charge at the orcs; it took only two words before their opponents were reduced to a blood-soaked quagmire, and the dwarf took his first kill of the night.”
The company’s decision to keep it from public use is the latest indication of a growing unease in and about the tech community about building cutting-edge technology — in particular AI —without setting limits on how it can be deployed.
Amazon and Microsoft in particular have voiced their support for legislation to regulate how facial recognition technology can and can’t be used. And Amazon investors and employees (as well as a dozens of civil rights groups) have urged the company to stop selling its face-recognition technology, Rekognition, to government agencies due to concerns it could be used to violate people’s rights.
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