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Steven Spielberg Worried About How Streaming Will Affect Theatrical Movies

John Martellaro ·

The Verge writes: «Over the weekend, in a speech at the Cinema Audio Society’s CAS Awards, director Steven Spielberg reminded listeners yet again that he’s specifically dedicated to a theater-based cinematic experience as ‘a firm believer that movie theaters need to be around forever.'»… and «for all the high-quality content streaming services are producing and regardless of the quality of people’s home theater setups, ‘there’s nothing like going to a big dark theater with people you’ve never met before, and having the experience wash over you.’” (Image credit: Gage Skidmore.)

What do you think?

Podcast

The Mesh Wi-Fi Industrial Complex – Mac Geek Gab 749

John F. Braun & Dave Hamilton · · 2 Comments

Wanna know how to force Safari to download a media file instead of playing it? Want to know how to use the same drive on USB-C and USB-A Macs? Want to know how to secure erase your NAS drive? John and Dave have your answers! There is also a lot of concern about the future of eero, so your two geeks discuss that, too. All this and more, just press play and enjoy learning at least five new things!

Podcast

TMO Background Mode Encore #6 Interview with Science Communicator Dr. Kiki Sanford

John Martellaro · · Add Comment

Dr. Kiki Sanford makes her sixth appearance on Background Mode. Kiki is a neurophysiologist with a B.S. in conservation biology and a Ph.D. avian neurophysiology from the University of California. She’s a popular science communicator and creator of This Week in Science (TWIS) podcast and radio show.

In this episode, we chat about the science of rising sea levels, neural networks and vocoder technology trained to recognize brain patterns related to listening to human speech, how learning two human languages in childhood positively affects the brain, rebooting the human immune system, whether intelligence is sexy, and the colonization of Mars and whether it will be commercially exploited or preserved by all nations like the Earth’s Antarctic. Dr. Kiki is always a delight to listen to and learn from.

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No, You Probably Don't Take Privacy and Security Seriously

Andrew Orr ·

Zach Whittaker is tired of the same old line companies use, like when they suffer a data breach: «We take your privacy and security seriously.»

The truth is, most companies don’t care about the privacy or security of your data. They care about having to explain to their customers that their data was stolen…About one-third of all 285 data breach notifications had some variation of the line. It doesn’t show that companies care about your data. It shows that they don’t know what to do next.

I’m betting there’s a template that public relations employees have that they copy and paste into official emails sent out in the wake of security stuff like this.

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Just 12% of U.S. Patent Inventors are Women

Charlotte Henry ·

Data released in February 2019 by the U.S. Patent and Trademarks office revealed that in 2016 just 12% of inventors with a U.S. patent were female. This is actually a fall from the 1980s when the number hit 21%. A report from MarketWatch outlined that the reasons for this fall mirror many of the reasons there is a lack of women in STEM fields more broadly. They include gender bias and societal expectations as well as difficult workplace environments.

The number of patents with at least one woman inventor grew from 7% in the 1980s to 21% in 2016, according to an analysis released this month by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. But there’s a long way to go: Women made up just 12% of all patent inventors in 2016. “There’s untapped potential,” said Amanda Myers, the acting deputy chief economist at the USPTO. “There might be very intelligent and creative women who are not accessing the innovation system. That has real consequences for economic growth as well as our global competitive position.”

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Augmented Reality is the Mirrorworld

Andrew Orr ·

Kevin Kelly writes how augmented reality will become a mirrorworld; That is, an exact replica of the physical world we will interact with.

The mirrorworld—a term first popularized by Yale computer scientist David Gelernter—will reflect not just what something looks like but its context, meaning, and function. We will interact with it, manipulate it, and experience it like we do the real world.

I firmly believe that AR can be as revolutionary as the internet. We just need an AR device that will dominate peoples’ lives to the point where everyone will wear a headset all the time.

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Apple's Ecosystem Is Actually Your Body

Andrew Orr ·

Apple’s ecosystem is your body. It’s in our pockets, our ears, our wrists, and soon it will be over our eyes with augmented reality glasses. Lucas Rizzotto talks about Apple hardware can be thought of as a modular system, similar to what Bryan and I discussed on ACM. iPhone will provide processing power and networking, Apple Watch is for biometrics and input, AirPods give us contextual 3D audio, and Apple Glasses are our screen.

Ultimately, Apple’s final AR product offering won’t just be a set of glasses — but an interconnected ecosystem that can itself become a single, immersive computing platform. One that’s an extension of you and your body — whether you’re wearing glasses or not.

TMO Deals

CloudMounter For Mac Lifetime License: $16.15 Today

Bryan Chaffin ·

We have a deal on an app called CloudMounter that takes your various cloud storage services and mounts them on your Mac’s desktop for quick access. Supported services include Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon S3, and Microsoft OneDrive. Our deal is for a lifetime license for $19, but Stack Commerce gave us a coupon code for President’s Day (which is today!). Enter PREZDAY15 at checkout for 15% off, which brings the price down to $16.15.

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Now Kansas Introduced a Porn Filter Bill

Andrew Orr ·

Last month I wrote about an Arizona politician wanting to introduce a porn filter bill. Now Kansas wants to do the same thing, although it sounds like this one won’t attempt to fund the border wall.

«It’s to protect children,» Garber, a Republican, said in an interview. «What it would do is any X-rated pornography stuff would be filtered. It would be on all purchases going forward. Why wouldn’t anybody like this?»

Why indeed. Because you guys don’t seem to care about children outside of the womb.