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Both sides agreed on seemingly only one thing: That a discussion and regulation of short-term rentals in New York City is overdue.

We actually were, I think, one of the first customers who actually requested this API

Imperson provides technology that knows how to automate this conversation in a realistic way, so the user believes he is speaking with a character or even the actor doing the character

I think there are a few different reasons why today it's more relevant and more attractive. We are taking familiar figures like celebrities; it's not just a chat bot that you speak with for the sake of your artificial intelligence curiosity. This is an entertainment experience. People chatting with Miss Piggy enjoy the experience as if they were chatting with the real Miss Piggy. In order to create the interaction, we were working with Disney people and Disney writers who actually write for Miss Piggy and make sure it's a completely authentic conversation.

the cognitive challenges and attention problems that result from overuse of digital technology.

Almost all respondents (95 per cent) owned at least two digital devices

bio-behavioural sciences

Respondents who spent more than six hours daily on their digital devices were more likely to report experiencing forgetfulness in the past month compared to those who spent fewer hours

the survey for first time shows this connection between overuse or higher use of digital devices and more complaints of memory disturbances in Hongkongers

"digital immigrants"

In his 2008 book iBrain, Small talks about "digital natives"

The survey also found poor dietary and exercise habits among the respondents

The term digital dementia was coined a few years ago in South Korea, after doctors reported seeing young patients with memory and cognitive problems, conditions that were more commonly linked to brain injuries.

Samsung Medical Centre in Seoul, South Korea: "As people are more dependent on digital devices for searching information than memorising, the brain function for searching improves whereas an ability to remember decreases

Dr Manfred Spitzer, a German neuroscientist and author of the 2012 book Digital Dementia: What We and Our Children are Doing to our Minds,

warns that children who spend too much time on electronic devices could experience irreversible deficits in brain development.

multitasking teens

The devices are not all bad," he says. "It's really about content, context and dose

balance the online time with offline time

Cinemas probably aren’t going to die out any time soon, but they may well host different kinds of films than laptops and phones in the near future.

Netflix’s chief content officer is open about this, saying that watching a movie online is like seeing a sports game broadcast on TV rather than being at the stadium

When you watch it, you realise that this software blurs the boundary between films and games: although, strictly speaking, you are not playing anything; you are participating in the experience.

A distinctive form of film is also emerging on phones: 360-degree movies were developed by Google

The technology gets really interesting when it comes to documentaries. Director Chris Milk has used virtual reality to make films about a refugee camp in Jordan and a mass protest in New York.

Fundamentally, this is taking out the middle man in that process, and making you feel as if you were actually there.

Call it fly-off-the-wall film-making

traditionally it is the director’s job to tell the audience what to look at, in this approach directors don’t exist, only “creators”

During the task, some of the children instinctively used gestures — making rabbit ears when they knew shape mattered, or moving their palms from facing up to turning sideways when they were sorting by the teddy bear’s orientation — to guide themselves.

Earlier work showed that older children were better able to learn math if taught to use gestures while doing so. And they often found the right answer physically — for example, by making movements to signify the numbers that needed to be kept together to add correctly — before finding it verbally

The toddlers’ gestures could be interpreted as a glimpse of their brains at work, as they figure out how to exert the cognitive control necessary to complete their tasks.

What’s more, she found that this effect had a stronger effect on successful performance than age — a powerful finding given that children’s skills improve rapidly with age during this stage of development.

That has implications for improving the way we communicate and think, and could help to address developmental disorders associated with cognitive control issues, such as autism

one-quarter of 2-year-olds needed no help using a smartphone or tablet, the findings showed.

TONO also

“As high-speed internet capacity has become normal and often included in mobile subscriptions, illegal download and use of music has decreased,”

“The new legislation is in my opinion not sufficiently technology neutral, as it is clearly designed to serve as a tool to prevent P2P file sharing and not, for example, illegal streaming services, which may become a problem in the years to come.”

What’s most worrisome here is that the emergence of VR technology opens up an new type of data for companies to mine en masse which can be collected efficiently. The fact that Oculus, the clear leader in the new VR marketplace, is setting this precedent could be dangerous for the future of the technology.

the Oculus Rift is a device that is always on (much like Microsoft’s Xbox One Kinect feature) which leads to further concerns about when the information will be collected.

We’re happiest when our ties with others are deep and strong. And the research tells us that the ebb and flow of happiness in America is clearly linked to the quality and character of our social ties—including our friendships, community ties, and marriage. It’s also linked, specifically, to the frequency with which we have sex.

So we investigated four indicators of sociability among today’s young adults—marriage, friendship, religious attendance, and sex—in an effort to explain

married young adults are about 75 percent more likely to report that they are very happy, compared with their peers who are not married

As it turns out, the share of young adults who are married has fallen from 59 percent in 1972 to 28 percent in 2018. The decline has been similar for men and women, although from 2016 to 2018 the share of married men fell, while the share of married women rose.

Faith was the second factor. Young adults who attend religious services more than once a month are about 40 percent more likely to report that they are very happy, compared with their peers who are not religious at all

The share of young adults who attend religious services more than monthly has fallen from 38 percent in 1972 to 27 percent in 2018, even as the share who never attend has risen rapidly.

The third factor was friendship. The effect of seeing friends frequently is less clear than that of marriage or religion, but young adults who see their friends regularly do seem to be about 10 percent more likely to report being very happy than their less-sociable peers.

Indeed, it may be that rising social time spent with friends in recent years could be buffering young adults from the declines in institutions such as marriage or religion, as friends stand in place of other relationships or forms of community.*

And, finally, we looked at sex. Young adults who have sex at least once a week are about 35 percent more likely to report that they are very happy, compared with their peers who have no sex.

This trend in rising sexlessness is broadly confirmed in other surveys of sexual behavior,

Less sex, we speculate, could help account for declining happiness for many young adults.

What’s more, as the #MeToo era has taught us, there has been too much unwanted or nonconsensual sex out there, which is obviously bad for the (more often female) target of such advances. From this perspective, the so-called sex recession might just amount to a sexual recalibration, with a lot of bad sex being eliminated from our social lives—and this would be a good thing. For all these reasons, the feminist family historian Stephanie Coontz is “suspicious of any hand-wringing” about the sex recession.

physical objects to understand the real world and using that information to behave intelligently, we can treat these characters in the physical world as if they were just characters in a video game

elements that make video games so engaging and fun and literally program them onto physical characters to make an entertainment experience that has never been possible before.

a massive opportunity in consumer products to change the way people interact with the physical world around them

new category of entertainment that brings these technologies to people in a familiar and fun way

Almost anything we interact with in the physical world has the potential to act with autonomy and purpose, and the challenge is in identifying the truly high-impact opportunities at the right times

He said the legislation was debated and passed while the public, media and politicians were preoccupied with Brexit: “Now that the bill has passed, there is renewed concern about the extent of the powers that will be given to the police and security agencies.

Home secretary hails ‘world-leading’ laws, which include forcing web and phone companies to collect browsing histories

t’s much more entertaining to watch a sport like this where you don’t have to know what the rules are

We’re starting some VR projects around Ark

For the abstract questions, on average, participants using the non-digital platform scored higher on inference questions with 66 percent correct, as compared to those using the digital platform, who had 48 percent correct

On the concrete questions, participants using the digital platform scored better with 73 percent correct, as compared to those using the non-digital platform, who had 58 percent correct

it's crucial to recognize the role that digitization of information might be having on this important aspect of cognition

was not one of the big studios, but the streaming service Amazon.

But blockbusters have a design flaw: their marketing costs are enormous — opening a movie typically costs anywhere from $20m — and they spend less and less time in cinemas. To take a recent example, ticket sales for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice dropped by an astonishing 68.4 per cent on its second weekend

“What you’re going to end up with is fewer theatres,” George Lucas said during a panel at the University of Southern California in 2013. “Bigger theatres, with a lot of nice things. Going to the movies is going to cost you 50 bucks, maybe 100.”

He argued that a film will come out in cinemas for 17 days — three weekends — which is where 98 per cent of films make 95 per cent of their revenues anyway. On the 18th day, the film will be available everywhere and you will pay for the size: a movie screen will be $15, a 75-inch TV will be $4, a smartphone will be $1.99.

“Fifty per cent of Americans did not step into a movie theatre last year, and of the 50 per cent that did go into a theatre, 95 per cent of them went to one or two films,”

Arguably, it’s more visual than television. It has our full attention: each frame must pull its weight in terms of narrative and spectacle. That is why it is a director’s medium: it envelops us. TV comes to us, into our homes, casual, familiar, favouring habit-forming episodic narratives. That is why it is a writer’s medium. The big screen glamorises — its stars are the stuff of myth; the small screen is more like a member of the family

And something like The Avengers, it’s too much fun laughing with the audience. These things are communal experiences.

But then many film-makers would argue that movies should be consumed differently from music: a song is a song wherever you play it, whereas films were built for the big screen.

“I don’t think that experience is going to die,” says Obst, “although I do worry that eventually we will all be inside on our huge computer screens, watching all of the different types of entertainment together

Nothing breaks the spell of the movie more instantly than the pause button.

Even if film distributors were to reject the conventional wisdom of windowing, those windows are jealously guarded by their respective sectors.  The theatrical exhibition window is particularly so

announced in September 2014 that they would distribute a sequel to the 2000 hit Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon simultaneously via Netflix and IMAX theaters worldwide, movie theater chains swiftly circled the wagons and announced a boycott of the Weinsteins’ film.

“value of ownership for the consumer” is a euphemism for “consumer willingness-to-pay.”  The longer a consumer must wait before they can watch a movie on their Netflix subscription, the likelier that consumer is to pay for a DVD

numerous industries have attempted to insulate themselves from disruption by persuading lawmakers to prescribe their exclusive industrial role in public laws, including auto dealers and beer distributors

windowing has been widely criticized as contributing to piracy, and “leaving money on the table.”  Empirical evidence bears that out.  Content producers are not unaware of this data; their calculus is that the revenues attributable to aggressive windowing (and avoiding friction with their distributors) exceed losses associated with piracy.

Windowing alienates consumers and arguably undermines respect for copyright in countries that receive content late

In the content distribution example, compensation might involve repayment for government resources expended on attributable piracy, perhaps based on a user-fee model that various government agencies already have.  If the windowed release distribution model generated more revenue than the costs it incurs, it would continue, taxpayers would be made whole, and the externality would be “internalized.”

Schilowitz hopes to engage brands to make 270-degree short films to show before the actual movie. Think Red Bull's Red Bull's many extreme sports videos. Now picture them in an immersive experience.  The money coming from brands could help offset the costs of the Escape screen.

Schilowitz believes you could take that experience into the theater. Have two people playing a virtual reality game while strapped into Oculus Rift-type devices and people would pay to watch the game on the big screen if top- ranked players were competing.

Escape will also be used to show things like concerts which can be better experienced with a wider screen. A Lady Gaga and Tony Bennett show will debut in Escape theaters in 2015.

Hoddick said he wants to develop three additional films this year, then eight in 2017 and then 12 a year after that

The Barco Escape costs exhibitors $100,000 with an additional fee per movie.

there are currently 21 Barco Escape theaters in the world — 16 in the United States, two each in Europe and China, and one in Mexico.

the plan is to have more than 100 by the end of this year, and 1,000 within three to five years. Oh, and they want an additional 1,000 just in China, soon to be the world’s biggest movie market — and one where Imax is in the process of opening hundreds of its own screens

Hoddick said while Barco Escape is only for 2D films at this point, he imagines it’s only a matter of time before 3D comes to the platform

it’s currently about 4 percent more expensive to produce a movie for Barco Escape, because the work has to happen in post-production, Hoddick said new cameras from manufacturers including Sony that can film in the 7:1 aspect ratio necessary for the medium will slash costs significantly

the theater will soon install a camera-based surveillance system to analyze demographics and customize which “lobby dominations” go live — think superhero trailers going up when a crew of high school kids walks in

It's not available yet. But scientists are working on textile-based nanotechnology that uses friction to convert mechanical energy from body movements into electricity

And before any of my devices demand to be recharged, I can plug them into my solar-powered jacket to recharge them while I'm on the go

Innovative companies such as Evolution Wear have come up with a clever way to keep mobile devices charged, using solar panels integrated into the user's jacket

This month Samsung announced a new smart-home computing platform that will let people control washing machines, televisions and other devices it makes from a single app. Microsoft, Apple and Amazon were also tipped to take a lead there, but Google was until now seen as something of a laggard.

it is likely to do what it did with driverless cars: take a technology financed by military contracts and adapt it for the consumer market.