While major carriers such as AT&T and Verizon begin the rollout of 5G networks in select areas, a San Francisco startup named Common Networks is developing an alternative that combines 5G with tech open-sourced from social giant Facebook. The startup is competing with ISPs by offering home broadband instead of mobile service. In Alameda, California, for example, it is using millimeter wave 5G tech to offer 1 Gbps service for $50 per month (the speed matches that of Google Fiber’s home broadband service). The millimeter wave service uses hardware design Terragraph, which Facebook open-sourced through its Telecom Infrastructure Project. Continue reading Common Networks Has a Plan to Compete with 5G Carriers

The Academy Color Encoding System (ACES), first introduced in late 2014, has made increasing inroads in the film industry. Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences (AMPAS) Science and Technology Council managing director Andy Maltz said at least three of this year’s Academy Awards nominees in the Best Picture and Best VFX categories used ACES; SMPTE also has created seven standards related to the use of ACES. According to AMPAS’ ACES project chair Annie Chang, the group released ACES 1.1 this last year. Continue reading HPA Tech Retreat: Academy Color Encoding System Update

At the Sundance Film Festival, tech companies now pitch new tools to the M&E industry. This year, Dropbox is offering a time-based commenting feature for video files, and Google and Sony are open-sourcing a tool that will simplify cloud rendering. Dropbox’s new feature will aid audio and video review by adding time-based commenting. Google, in partnership with Sony Picture Imageworks, will introduce OpenCue, which breaks down rendering steps and then schedules and manages the job across rendering farms. Continue reading Dropbox, Google and Sony Debut Tech at Sundance Festival

Facebook unveiled Spectrum, an open-source image processing library to help improve the quality and reliability of images uploaded through its own apps. Spectrum, which Facebook first showed publicly and launched in beta in November, is now on GitHub, available to the developer community. As higher quality cameras on smartphones have become a key selling point, consumers are dealing with larger image files, which can be a stumbling block since they eat up more device memory and more network bandwidth. Continue reading Facebook Introduces Open-Source Image Processing Library

UTA chief innovation officer Brent Weinstein convened technology and entertainment honchos to parse out 5G’s impact on a range of M&E applications. Intel senior vice president/general manager of the network platforms group Sandra Rivera opined that, “it’s never too early to be on the forefront of innovation.” “The work we did on 4G created the environment that drew in investment and services from Airbnb to Netflix and Uber,” she said. “We’re not quite at 5G, but the excitement is attracting the entrepreneurs and engineers.” Continue reading CES Panel: Envisioning Entertainment in the 5G Ecosystem

Intel revealed that it has made progress in an anonymized, encrypted method of model training. Industries such as healthcare that need a way to use AI tools on sensitive, personally identifiable information have been waiting for just such a capability. At the NeurIPS 2018 conference in Montreal, Intel showed off its open-sourced HE-Transformer that works as a backend to its nGraph neural network compiler, allowing AI models to work on encrypted data. HE-Transformer is also based on a Microsoft Research encryption library. Continue reading Intel Describes Tool to Train AI Models with Encrypted Data

Nvidia used processing power and neural networks to create a very convincing virtual city, which will be open for tours by attendees to this year’s NeurIPS AI conference in Montreal. Nvidia’s system, which uses existing videos of scenery and objects to create these interactive environments, also makes it easier for artists to create similar virtual worlds. Nvidia vice president of applied deep learning Bryan Catanzaro said generative models are key to making the process of creating virtual worlds cost effective. Continue reading Nvidia Reveals Use of Neural Networks to Create Virtual City

Researchers at 20th Century Fox published a paper to reveal how they are using artificial intelligence to analyze movie trailers. Published last month, the paper described Merlin, the code name for machine vision systems examining trailers frame by frame and labeling the objects and events. Then this data is compared to data from other trailers, with the idea that trailers with similar labels will attract similar kinds of people. Movie studios already cull similar data via interviews and questionnaires. Continue reading 20th Century Fox, Google Use AI to Analyze Movie Trailers

The Library of Congress and U.S. Copyright Office just passed exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) that legalizes the so-called right to repair. Although the DMCA was created to prevent copyright piracy, it also resulted in a host of problematic side effects. Because devices such as smartphones come loaded with digital rights management (DRM) software, users infringed copyright laws if they attempted to repair such devices. With the new exemptions, users are now free to do so. Continue reading Library of Congress, Copyright Office Unlock Gadget Repair

IBM and open-source software provider Red Hat announced that they have reached an acquisition agreement. Marking what will be the third-largest tech acquisition in U.S. history, IBM will purchase all issued and outstanding common shares of Red Hat in a deal valued at approximately $34 billion. Red Hat is the largest distributor of open-source operating system Linux. The deal reflects IBM’s ambitions for a piece of the fast-growing cloud computing market. “The acquisition of Red Hat is a game-changer,” said Ginni Rometty, IBM chair, president and chief exec. “It changes everything about the cloud market.” Continue reading IBM Is Buying Red Hat, Aims to Be Top Hybrid Cloud Provider

Microsoft has joined the Open Invention Network (OIN), the North Carolina-based open-source patent community that launched in 2005 with a mission to protect Linux and Linux-related software. In joining OIN, Microsoft is essentially granting an unrestricted, royalty-free license for its patents to the community’s 2,650 members. Microsoft’s corporate VP and chief IP counsel Erich Andersen said the company is pledging its “entire patent portfolio to the Linux system. That’s not just the Linux kernel, but other packages built on it.” Continue reading Microsoft Joins OIN, Open Sources its Entire Patent Portfolio

Canadian company D-Wave Systems launched the Leap Quantum Application Environment, a web portal that aims to offer public access to quantum computing for “any and all developers.” D-Wave R&D executive vice president/chief product officer Alan Baratz says Leap will provide such developers “immediate, free, real time access to a live quantum computer.” Quantum computing, which is expected to dramatically improve the ability to manipulate and analyze data, has thus far had a very limited user base. Continue reading D-Wave Offers Free Real-Time Quantum Computing For All

As artificial intelligence-based tools become more widespread in the business industry, cloud service companies are debuting tools that explain the artificial intelligence algorithms they use to provide more transparency and assure users of their ethical behavior. That’s because regulated industries are demanding it. Capital One and Bank of America are just two such companies interested in using AI to improve detection of fraud, but want to know how the algorithms work before they implement such tools. Continue reading Accounting, Finance Industries Demand Explainable AI Tools

At The Reel Thing conference in Hollywood, the Academy’s Science and Technology Council managing director Andy Maltz and Dr. Wolfgang Ruppel at Germany’s RheinMain University of Applied Sciences introduced the specifications of the Academy Digital Source Master, built on a suite of SMPTE standards. Maltz described the background that led to the Digital Source Master. “The Digital Dilemma published in 2007, identified open source software and digital file format standardization as key components to the solution,” he said. Continue reading The Reel Thing: Academy Debuts Digital Source Master Specs

For people who may be growing tired of Twitter, there is Mastodon, an open-source community-run microblogging website that first appeared in 2017. The social media platform lets users post “toots” and “boost” other users’ posts. The decentralized network exists as numerous “instances,” each of which has its own rules and administrators and which together form a “federation.” There is no central server, so if one “instance” stumbles in some way (for example, forgets to pay for the Internet), none of the other instances are harmed. Continue reading Why This Reviewer Hails Mastodon as a Refuge From Twitter