Adidas Wilson's Blog, page 111
July 20, 2017
Thanks to a dashcam, crafty Uber drivers are boosting their pay
Drivers are starting to place cameras behind their windshields to record the road ahead of them. Startups chasing the gold mine of car data are paying them to install these cameras. The startups want these videos to do everything from build maps for self-driving cars to track pedestrian activity.
A San Francisco startup, lvl5, is crowdsourcing maps for autonomous vehicles from dashcam videos. Two of its founders previously worked on Tesla’s autopilot team.
In three months, they’ve mapped over 500,000 miles of U.S. roads with 2,000 drivers using their iPhone app, Payver. Drivers receive between two and five cents per mile. Lvl5 expects that with 50,000 U.S. drivers, it can gather enough data to build maps for self-driving cars.
Lvl5 was founded in December by Andrew Kouri and Erik Reed, who both worked on Tesla’s Autopilot team, and George Tall, a computer vision engineer from iRobot, has developed a way to take enormous amounts of video collected from a camera and turn it into high-definition 3D maps that are constantly refreshing. These maps will always reflect the latest road conditions, providing self-driving cars with the information they need to detect and plan their route safely.
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“The thing that everyone is kind of ignoring silently is that self-driving cars won’t ship unless we have really good HD maps that update every single day,” Kouri said in an interview with The Verge. “And nobody has a system to do this yet. This is what we’re building.”
Kouri says self-driving cars don’t need LIDAR, light detection, and ranging radar used to see the world around it. That’s a departure from what many automakers and tech companies like Google’s Waymo say is needed for the safe deployment of autonomous vehicles.
Lvl5’s philosophy, in many ways, mirrors Tesla’s approach, which contends it can deploy fully autonomous vehicle technology without relying on LIDAR.
“WE DON’T REALLY CARE IF LIDAR WINS OUT OR COMPUTER VISION WINS OUT.”
“We don’t really care if LIDAR wins out or computer vision wins out,” Kouri said. “Right now we know that if we want to make self-driving car en masse, cameras are ready and LIDAR is not.”
The company’s system uses consumer-grade cameras and a computer vision algorithm to turn all of the video it captures into useable, 3D maps. But it needed to scale it.
So they reached out to Uber and Lyft drivers who can crowdsource the video data via a dashcam app created by Lvl5 called Payver.
Drivers are paid to mount smartphones on the dashboard of their cars and run the app, which automatically collects video, accelerometer, and GPS data. Huge amounts of data are captured; video is taken every meter along a vehicle’s route. The compressed data is then sent to the cloud and then sent to lvl5’s central hub. From there, lvl5 uses its computer vision algorithm to translate all of this footage into high-definition 3D maps.
Source:
https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/19/16000272/lvl5-self-driving-car-tesla-map-lidar
‘Confederate,’ From HBO’s ‘Game of Thrones’ Team, Is Already Drawing Fire
The creators of “Game of Thrones” triggered an online uproar on Wednesday with the announcement of their next HBO series, “Confederate,” set in an alternate timeline where the South successfully seceded from the United States and slavery is a legal, modern-day institution.
That HBO is willing to greenlight Confederate fanfic because it’s the GoT guys says something about prestige TV, and I don’t think it’s good
— Antoine Linguine (@aklingus) July 19, 2017
This is one of those ideas that could end up amazing or absolutely cringeworthy. https://t.co/Jcjq4ocmp5
— Jamelle Bouie (@jbouie) July 19, 2017
In a statement, HBO said that the show would portray events leading to a Third Civil War and follow “a broad swath of characters on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Demilitarized Zone — freedom fighters, slave hunters, politicians, abolitionists, journalists, the executives of a slaveholding conglomerate and the families of people in their thrall.”
The “Thrones” team, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, will be showrunners on the series and collaborate with Nichelle Tramble Spellman (“The Good Wife,” “Justified”) and Malcolm Spellman (“Empire”), who will be executive producers and writers.
“We have discussed ‘Confederate’ for years, originally as a concept for a feature film,” Mr. Benioff and Mr. Weiss said in a statement.
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“But our experience on ‘Thrones’ has convinced us that no one provides a bigger, better storytelling canvas than HBO,” they said. “There won’t be dragons or White Walkers in this series, but we are creating a world, and we couldn’t imagine better partners in world-building than Nichelle and Malcolm, who have impressed us for a long time with their wit, their imagination and their Scrabble-playing skills.”
The reaction on social media was less than friendly, with some questioning the need for a show that would depict institutionalized slavery and whether it would glorify the Confederate cause. “Game of Thrones” has come under its share of criticism for its depiction and graphic scenes of rape and slavery, even while it is one of the most popular shows on television.
Confidential to HBO: Nobody on here thinks #Confederate is a good idea.
— David M. Perry (@Lollardfish) July 19, 2017
Two white guys making a show where black slavery features prominently. This is profoundly tone deaf.
— Logan Rapp (@Loganchance) July 19, 2017
I don’t care if it is done tastefully as possible.
The VERY premise is DISGUSTING.
Especially now.
Who are you pandering to?
— Unfazed (@unfazed_post) July 19, 2017
Source:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/19/arts/television/hbo-confederate-game-of-thrones.html
Atari’s ‘Speakerhat’ Is the Asshat Asshats Have Been Waiting For
You’ve probably called someone an asshat before. But do you know what an asshat literally is?
It’s this. This Speakerhat is an asshat. It is a hat with two embedded speakers and a microphone that connects to your phone via Bluetooth. It’s for the casual hat-wearer who wants to bathe their face in music, but also doesn’t care if they’re annoying the shit out of everyone in their general vicinity.
The Speakerhat is a collaboration between Audiowear and Atari. But why would a 45-year-old gaming company want to pivot to asshats?
Atari executives told VentureBeat last month at E3 that the Speakerhat is part of a strategy shift for the company. COO Michael Arzt said Speakerhat is the first of a “full range of connected personal devices that live at society’s intersection of entertainment, technology, and social connectivity.”
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But at the same event, CEO Fred Chesnai also announced to VentureBeat that Atari is finally making a new gaming console, something gamers have actually been wanting for years. Initial reports were skeptical, but suffice to say there is more excitement for the Ataribox, than there will ever be for a boombox you can put on your head.
This fall, Atari will also release a limited-edition Blade Runner 2049 Speakerhat, for asshats who like sci-fi.
The target demographic for the Speakerhat could be the asshats who plays music too loud on public transportation. But Atari says it is marketing this asshat to musicians, skaters, sports fans, and “fitness enthusiasts,” which presumably means asshats who work out. A good way to make people hate you at the gym would be to work out while wearing a hat with speakers.
The Speakerhat was also made with gamers in mind, as it comes with “multiplayer mode,” which allows several asshats to connect their asshats and listen to the same audio stream. Atari calls this a “fundamentally new social audio experience.” We call it assynchronicity.
Source:
http://gizmodo.com/ataris-speakerhat-is-the-asshat-asshats-have-been-waiti-1797088671
O.J. Simpson granted parole and could be released from prison as soon as Oct. 1
O.J. Simpson will soon be a free man. Again. A four-member parole board in Carson City, Nev., voted unanimously Thursday to curtail his 33-year prison sentence for kidnapping and armed robbery, stemming from a confrontation over sports memorabilia in Las Vegas in 2007.
The football legend and abusive husband, now 70 years old, could be released as soon as October 1 into a world that’s still fascinated by his plummet from grace.
As the proceedings got underway around 10 a.m., Nevada time, a smiling Simpson entered the hearing room at the Lovelock Correctional Center dressed in a light blue shirt with billowy sleeves, his hair splotched white, his voice gravelly. Seated at a desk with his attorney, Simpson was by turns affable and testy, humbled and defiant.
“I always thought I’ve been pretty good with people,” Simpson told the board by video link, “and have basically spent a conflict-free life.”
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Simpson’s eldest daughter, Arnelle Simpson, and one of Simpson’s victims from the Vegas case testified in support of his release. “I’ve known O.J. for a long time,” said Bruce Fromong, a memorabilia dealer. “I don’t feel that he’s a threat to anyone out there. He’s a good man. . . Nine-and-a-half to 33 years is way too long. I feel that it’s time to give him a second chance.”
The networks and cable-news stations carried this latest chapter live for more than an hour, programming their day with key players from Simpson’s trial for murder in 1994 and 1995.
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Facebook Is Pursuing a Subscription Tool for News Outlets on Its Site
Facebook is working on a new tool that could help drive subscriptions to news organizations that publish articles directly on the online service, an effort to improve the fraught relationship between the social giant and media companies.
The tool would be added to Facebook’s Instant Articles product, which allows publishers to post news articles that can be read within Facebook rather than on the publisher’s website.
The discussions about the tool are still in the early stages, according to two people familiar with the talks who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the details were not public. But it is possible that Facebook could produce a metered pay wall product similar to those used by some publishers. After reading 10 New York Times articles on Facebook, for instance, a user could be sent to The Times’s subscription sign-up page.
Facebook plans to start a pilot with a small group of publishers using the tool in October and to expand the initiative in 2018 if early results are promising. It was not clear which publishers might participate in the test.
The Wall Street Journal reported earlier on the discussions.
“We are in early talks with several news publishers about how we might better support subscription business models on Facebook,” Campbell Brown, head of news partnerships at Facebook, said in a statement. “As part of the Facebook Journalism Project, we are taking the time to work closely together with our partners and understand their needs.”
News outlets have become increasingly dissatisfied with how online platforms like Facebook and Google are consuming the digital advertising market and gaining more control over the online distribution of news. This month, a group of publishers started an effort to gain group bargaining rights so they might be able to negotiate more effectively with the online platforms that are threatening their business models.
While nearly all publishers have shifted their attention to increasing digital revenue, most are still seeking profitable solutions that will work in the long term.
Although many publishers recognize the importance of online platforms for getting their content in front of broad audiences, there are also drawbacks. Publishers are concerned about losing valuable ties to their readers, particularly subscriber data and payment connections. Readers may also become accustomed to staying in Facebook to consume news, instead of, say, navigating directly to publishers’ sites.
Source:
July 19, 2017
Walking Dead season 8 premiere date reveals when the war against Negan begins
Now we know when the first official battle in the war between Rick and Negan will commence on The Walking Dead.
Key art from the upcoming eighth season confirms that the zombie drama will return for its 100th episode on Sunday, October 22 on AMC in the US and in the UK on Monday, October 23 on FOX — so, just a little over three months to go now!
Mark your calendars. #TheWalkingDeadUK pic.twitter.com/2lPZU0rHZo
— FOX TV UK (@FOXtvUK) July 19, 2017
Judging by the poster above, The Walking Dead wants to remind us that Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) has secretly united his Alexandria survivors with those of the Hilltop and The Kingdom in order to gain the upper-hand on Negan.
Just don’t count out Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) quite yet! If last season taught us anything, it’s that Negan always has a trick up his sleeve — whether it’s undercutting Rick’s pact with Jadis’s Scavengers or turning Eugene against his friends.
© GENE PAGE / AMC
Tom Payne, who plays Jesus, recently hinted that beyond being “out-of-this-world amazing”, season eight will be a course correction for The Walking Dead after a critical backlash and ratings drop for its most recent run.
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The actor teased: “I always told myself I wouldn’t say what I’ve heard other cast members say every other year, which is, ‘Oh the next season is gonna be this! And the new episode is so many superlatives and so many words you use!’ And I’m like, ‘Come on, you can’t say the same things every year!’
“But then I had to bite my tongue and say, ‘Well, actually…'”
© AMC
Many questions remain about the road ahead, particularly whether we’ll finally see the return of Rick’s lost ally Heath and whether Negan will actually be MIA for a portion of the eighth season.
Hopefully we’ll get our answers when The Walking Dead returns to the US and the UK in October.
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