Netflix To Re-Encode Entire 1 Petabyte Video Catalogue In 2016 To Save Bandwidth

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Lunch

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Project: Knoxville – Open Game Development from Microsoft

Microsoft's Press Play is building a mutliplayer game and you can join the fun right now!

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Digging into the data: How to make a faster race car driver

We talk data analysis with CJ Wilson's championship-winning team.

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Raspberry Pi VC4 3D Acceleration Should Come To Linux 4.5

While the Raspberry Pi DRM driver landed for Linux 4.4, with this forthcoming kernel release it doesn't expose any 3D hardware acceleration. However, it looks like that's coming for Linux 4.5..

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What is going on in Drift, the virtual reality assassin simulator?

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Files are hard

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Disney's FaceDirector changes facial expressions in movies

The new tool out of Disney Research's labs could turn an ingénue's semi-decent attempt into a finely nuanced performance. This software called FaceDirector has the capability to merge together separate frames from different takes to create the perfect scene. It does that by analyzing both the actor's face and audio cues to identify the frames that correspond with each other. As such, directors can create brand new takes during post-production with zero input from the actor. They don't even need specialized hardware like 3D cameras for the trick -- it works even with footage taken by regular 2D cams.

According to Disney Research VP Markus Gross, the tool could be used to lower a movie's production costs or to stay within the budget, say, if it's an indie film that doesn't have a lot of money to spare. "It's not unheard of for a director to re-shoot a crucial scene dozens of times, even 100 or more times, until satisfied," he said. "That not only takes a lot of time -- it also can be quite expensive. Now our research team has shown that a director can exert control over an actor's performance after the shoot with just a few takes, saving both time and money." Considering the lab also developed a way to make dubbed movies more believable and to take advantage of incredibly high frame rates, we wouldn't be surprised if filmmakers arm themselves with an arsenal of Disney Research tools in the future.

It's probably hard to visualize the way FaceDirector works without seeing an example, so make sure to watch the video below to see it in action.

Source: Disney Research (1), (2)

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Google's Project Sunroof can assess homes in more states

Solar panels are a huge investment, so something like Project Sunroof that can tell you if they're a good fit for your location is extremely useful. The good news is, the initiative is expanding to more locations across the US. Now, if you have a house in select metro areas in Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Nevada and North Carolina, you can try plugging in your address on the tool and check if it covers your location. If it does, you'll get an assessment of how many hours of usable sunlight you can get per year, how much of your roofspace can can be covered by solar panels and how much money you can save by getting a solar installation.

Project Sunroof uses the same visuals as Google Earth, and according to the Google Green blog, it looks at the orientation of your roof, the surrounding trees and buildings, as well as local weather patterns to make its assessment. You can try out Project Sunroof on its website -- if you live outside its covered areas just click "Try a Demo" to see how it works.

Source: Google

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Germany Fires Up Bizarre New Fusion Reactor

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3D Scanning Entire Rooms with a Kinect

Almost by definition, the coolest technology and bleeding-edge research is locked away in universities. While this is great for post-docs and their grant-writing abilities, it’s not the best system for people who want to use this technology. A few years ago, and many times since then, we’ve seen a bit of research that turned a Kinect into a 3D mapping camera for extremely large areas. This is the future of VR, but a proper distribution has been held up by licenses and a general IP rights rigamarole. Now, the source for this technology, Kintinuous and ElasticFusion, are available on Github, …read more

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Ford's 'Dynamic Shuttle' tests out a competitor for Uber

While Uber just announced that it's testing out some very familiar-looking group transportation options, its next competition could come from Ford. Today at an event in Dearborn, the carmaker showed off the Dynamic Shuttle service it's testing for employees, that it says could make Ford a "mobility service provider." On its campus, the Dynamic Shuttle people request a ride via the app, which determines an optimally located van to complete the trip. Reuters quotes VP of Research Ken Washington as saying "We see this as a business we want to be in," especially in a future where people who previously needed cars could potentially opt for ride sharing service instead. Slideshow-347368

According to Ford it tries to increase occupancy and reduce the amount of single riders, while also considering weather and presence of other shuttles, while learning from traffic patterns and frequently requested destinations. Naturally, the "perfect" vehicle for the service is Ford's Transit Van, carrying six to eight passengers while including amenities like USB charging ports and WiFi.

Describing what is fundamentally a smarter bus service, the developers noted many people are willing to walk to a neutral location for easier pickups. Ford is apparently considering expanding the program beyond its corporate campus, which probably can't come a moment too soon. While researchers pulled in data from far-flung locations like Mumbai and São Paulo, they only need look around the Metro Detroit area for a region desperately in need of faster and more flexible transportation options.

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How NVIDIA GRID Is Bringing GIS to Any Device, Anywhere

Life just got easier if your company is one of the 300,000 relying on Esri solutions to visually understand and analyze location data. That's because the Esri ArcGIS Desktop Virtualization Appliance with NVIDIA GRID graphics virtualization technology is here. Now, geographic information systems (GIS) applications, like Esri ArcGIS Pro, can be delivered to users in the field, on any connected device. Previously, using ArcGIS Pro had been confined to high-end workstations. With NVIDIA GRID, users anywhere get the same high-end experience, but the application stays hosted in the data center. Whether for city planning, military operations, facilities management or natural resource conservation, all sorts of organizations use ArcGIS Pro. Schools, governments and businesses use it to analyze data, create maps, visualize scenarios and share information, in both 2D and 3D environments. Comments

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Unreal Engine 4 Powers FINAL FANTASY VII

Have you seen the Final Fantasy VII gameplay video from PlayStation Experience? This game is actually powered by Unreal Engine 4.

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LDriel.net : quand LDLC souhaite avaler Materiel.net

C'est l'annonce bombe du soir fraichement reçue par communiqué : LDLC serait en négociations que l'on suppose avancées et surtout exclusives en vue de s'offrir Materiel.net pour Noël ! De meilleurs concurrents, les deux enseignes passeraient donc à une seule entité poids lourd du e-commerce français... [Tout lire]

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ZeroDB, a end-to-end encrypted database, is now open source

 LinuxBSDos: ZeroDB offer some interesting features to open-source database users.

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The Three Laws of Robotics

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F1 | Ufficiale: Toro Rosso con motori Ferrari nel 2016

4 dicembre 2015 – Anche l’ultimo tassello del puzzle power unit 2016 è andato al suo posto: Toro Rosso tornerà a essere motorizzata dalla Ferrari. Confermata anche la coppia piloti, Sainz e Verstappen. L’annuncio fatto ieri sera da Renault per ufficializzare il suo ritorno in Formula 1 ha dato il via a una reazione a catena: questa […]

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Unreal Engine 4 Will be used by the Military

Epic Games & Soar Technology, Inc. (SoarTech) will work together to provide licensing, support, training and development services for Unreal Engine 4 in Government and military applications.

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Raspberry Pi generates predictable SSH keys

The ultra-cheap Raspberry Pi computers have a security flaw which results in the devices generating a weak and predictable SSH key, new research suggests. The researchers say the computer’s operating system, Raspbian, should be patched to avoid the flaw. "As soon as the systems start up systemd-random-seed tries to seed /dev/urandom, but /var/lib/systemd/random-seed is missing, because it hasn’t been created yet", explains the developer oittaa. "/etc/rc2.d/S01regenerate_ssh_host_keys is executed, but /dev/urandom pool doesn’t have that much entropy at this point and predictable SSH host keys will be created", he continues. According to the report, there are two ways developers can create… [Continue Reading]

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