Showing posts with label SCIENCE. Show all posts
Showing posts with label SCIENCE. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 9, 2019

CES 2019: It’s the Year of Virtual Assistants and 5G

SCIENCE , TECHNOLOGY
CES 2019: It’s the Year of Virtual Assistants and 5G


A visual tour of the world’s most important tech conference offers a window into the year’s trends, including next-generation wireless networks and the invasion of A.I.
LAS VEGAS — The show must go on.
That sentiment couldn’t have been stronger this week at CES, the largest consumer electronics convention in the country. The conference, which brought more than 180,000 people to Las Vegas, was a reminder of what the tech industry is best at: being optimistic about itself.


Who cares about the abysmal stock market and growing fears that we are sliding into a recession? Check out these virtual-reality headsets, self-driving cars and big-screen TVs.
Filippo Yacob, a tech entrepreneur who attended, was blasé about the state of the market. “The speed of progress and innovation happens at such a rapid pace that it’s not like it pulses with the stock market,” said Mr. Yacob, whose company Primo Toys makes tech products for children. “It’s more like a bullet train.”

This year’s event was also slightly larger than the last, with more than 4,500 exhibitors sprawled across 2.7 million square feet. The conference offered a peek at the year’s hottest tech trends, including artificially intelligent virtual assistants, next-generation wireless networks and connected cars.

And companies unveiled thousands of products. Google and Amazon showed car accessories, alarm clocks and speakers that can be controlled with their virtual assistants by speaking commands like “Hey, Google, what’s the weather today?” or “Alexa, what’s my sports update?”

Wireless carriers and chip makers highlighted 5G, the next-generation cellular network arriving this year in a small number of cities with data speeds so zippy that devices can download an entire movie in seconds.





The most surprising news came when a host of tech companies announced they were working with Apple to bring some of the company’s content and virtual assistant capabilities to their devices.
Vizio, the TV maker, said its newer TVs would work with AirPlay, an Apple software feature for streaming video and audio content from an iPhone or Mac to a television screen. People will be able to speak to Siri on their iPhones to play content they had purchased from iTunes on the Vizio TVs. Samsung, Sony and LG announced similar partnerships with Apple.In the past, AirPlay and iTunes videos were mostly tied to Apple-made hardware like the Apple TV set-top box. Their expansion to third parties underlines Apple’s ambition to expand the revenue it generates from its internet content and services. That’s especially important now that sales of Apple’s cash cow, the iPhone, are slowing. This month, the company reduced its revenue expectations for the first time in 16 years.
The move is also notable because it illustrates an unusual willingness by Apple to open its technology to other companies, including competitors like Samsung.
In a statement provided by Samsung, Eddy Cue, Apple’s head of internet software and services, said that with the expansion of iTunes and AirPlay, “iPhone, iPad and Mac users have yet another way to enjoy all their favorite content on the biggest screen in their home.”

Front and center at CES was the battle between virtual assistants — namely Amazon’s Alexa and Google’s Assistant. Google erected an enormous outdoor booth to show off the multitude of devices that now work with Assistant, including smart watches, speakers and displays. The company said a billion devices now work with its assistant, up from 400 million last year. Google wants to make the Assistant the focal point of a consumer’s life: in the home, in the car and on mobile devices.
“When I walk down the aisle at Home Depot, will all the devices I might buy work with the Assistant?” Nick Fox, a Google executive who oversees Assistant, said of items like smoke detectors and thermostats. “The answer is yes.”
Amazon also had a large presence at the show. It filled a large conference room at the Venetian hotel with dozens of products that work with Alexa, including an Audi car, a motorcycle helmet and a stereo system.
The battle among virtual assistants is shaping up to be very different from past platform wars between tech companies because consumers will have more choices. Many of the smart gadgets at CES worked with multiple virtual assistants.
Aaron Emigh, chief executive of Brilliant, which makes smart home products that work with Alexa, Google Assistant and Siri, said it was critical for virtual assistants to work together, not against one another, because the smart home was already too complex, with products like light switches, thermostats and cameras coming from different brands.
“The more technology and the more different vendors that get put in your home, the more important that it all works together,” he said.

Car manufacturers like Mercedes-Benz and BMW showed off concepts of autonomous vehicles powered by artificial intelligence and 5G wireless connections. But consumers won’t be able to buy self-driving vehicles from a dealership anytime soon, in part because companies still need much more data on how people drive cars. Smarter cars with features like built-in voice assistants to help people use maps, play music or get a sports update without taking their eyes off the road are available now, however.
If the economy does cool off, sales of cutting-edge gadgets will drop. Fast. But that didn’t faze people here. None of the CES attendees I spoke to expressed concern.
Matt Strauss, who oversees Comcast’s Xfinity internet and cable service, was especially bullish about the year ahead. He said just about everything announced at CES required an internet connection, so that’s the last thing that people would cut off.
“It’s become like oxygen,” he said.
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Devices That Will Invade Your Life in 2019 (and What’s Overhyped)

SCIENCE , TECHNOLOGY
Devices That Will Invade Your Life in 2019 (and What’s Overhyped)


A.I. that responds to your voice. Next-generation wireless networks. If this year’s biggest consumer technology trends have a familiar ring, there’s a reason for that.

Imagine a future where you are never truly alone. Even when your spouse is on a business trip or your children are away at summer camp, you will always have someone (or something) to talk to. In the morning, you could ask the microwave to heat up a bowl of oatmeal. In your car, you could tell your stereo to put on some ’90s music. And when you walk into the office, you could ask your smartphone, “What’s on my calendar today?”
This is increasingly the world the tech industry is building with a bloating portfolio of devices that can react to voice commands — and that the companies will be pitching to you even more in 2019.
The future will be on display next week at CES, a consumer electronics trade show in Las Vegas that serves as a window into the year’s hottest tech trends. Artificially intelligent virtual assistants will take center stage as the most important tech topic, with companies big and small expected to showcase voice-controlled devices like robot vacuums, alarm clocks, refrigerators and car accessories. Most of these products will be powered by Amazon’s Alexa or Google’s Assistant, the two most popular artificially intelligent assistants, industry insiders said.
“A.I. will pervade the show,” said Gary Shapiro, chief executive of the Consumer Technology Association, which owns CES. 

If this all sounds like a repeat of last year, that’s because much of it is. Artificial intelligence was 2018’s hottest tech trend, too. In other words, the tech industry is in a state of iteration rather than making leaps and bounds with something totally new.
Other tech trends that are progressing include the debut this year of fifth-generation cellular networks, known as 5G, which will significantly quicken mobile internet speeds. Cybersecurity products for home networks are also proliferating, an important safeguard now that consumers own so many devices that can connect to the internet.

But as is often the case, there will also be plenty of talk in the coming week about overly optimistic tech that you would do best to sidestep for now. That’s because some of the most hyped technologies — especially self-driving cars — are so far from reality that you won’t see them in stores or dealerships anytime soon.
Here’s what to watch, and what to avoid.
Last year, Amazon introduced a microwave powered by its Alexa virtual assistant.
In 2015, Amazon birthed the Echo, the artificially intelligent speaker featuring the virtual assistant known as Alexa. A year later, Google responded with Home, its smart speaker powered by Google’s own digital companion, called Assistant.
Since then, in a bid to become your go-to digital companion, the two tech giants have teamed up with makers of devices like thermostats, doorbells, light bulbs and car accessories to add their virtual assistants to them.

Google is expected to be even more aggressive this year with its Assistant. The company will triple the size of its presence at CES this year, suggesting that it is likely to unveil a large array of products that work with Assistant.
“We’re really leaning into the Assistant as the best way to get things done, helping you for lots of things as you go about your day,” said Nick Fox, a Google executive who oversees Assistant.
Amazon said it would also showcase a wide range of technologies that work with Alexa next week, as part of a vision it calls Alexa Everywhere. The company’s goal is to expand the reach of its virtual assistant into every part of people’s lives, including the kitchen, the living room, the office and the car.
For you and me, here’s a cautionary note: Virtual assistants are still in their infancy and have many shortcomings. We have to speak a very specific command to trigger a virtual assistant to control a device, like setting the temperature on a thermostat or turning on a lamp. Those unfamiliar with the lingo may find the devices even more difficult to use than pressing a button inside an app.
“We still have to learn their language, and they have not learned our language,” said Frank Gillett, a tech analyst for Forrester, a technology research company.
Lost in the hype about virtual assistants is whether people truly want an omnipresent companion involved in their everyday tasks. Owners of smart speakers mostly summoned digital assistants for basic functions like listening to music, checking the weather and setting a timer, according to research by Nielsen last year.
Plenty of people install antivirus software on their computers. But what about all the other devices that can be connected to the internet, like smart watches, phones, televisions and speakers? 

In an era of smart things, the Wi-Fi router is becoming a bigger target for hackers, so expect a flood of new equipment and software that offer protection by improving your network security.
For a sense of what to expect, consider Eero Plus, a subscription service that Eero, a maker of Wi-Fi equipment, released last year. Eero Plus includes protection against viruses and malware for all the devices connected to its Wi-Fi network. Last year, NetGear released NetGear Armor, a similar security service.
More should follow this year — beginning next week at CES, where Scalys, a networking company, plans to introduce TrustBox, a router with built-in security features.

Carriers like Verizon and AT&T said new network technology would deliver data at incredible speeds.
Carriers like Verizon and AT&T said new network technology would deliver data at incredible speeds.
This year, the wireless industry will begin a big upgrade to its infrastructure. Phone carriers like AT&T and Verizon Wireless say the 5G technology will deliver data at incredibly fast speeds, allowing people to download entire movies in a few seconds.
In addition to increasing smartphone speeds, 5G will be important for other types of devices, like robots, self-driving cars, drones and security cameras. The technology is expected to greatly reduce latency, or the time it takes for devices to communicate with one another.
But don’t get too excited. Carriers say the new network technology will be deployed this year in only a few cities in the United States, and in some parts of Britain, Germany, Switzerland, China, South Korea and Australia.
And not many smartphones will be compatible with 5G initially. Some Chinese handset makers and Samsung Electronics have said they will release their first 5G smartphones this year. Apple is not expected to release a 5G-compatible iPhone until 2020.

“For the early adopters with deep pockets, that’s great,” Mr. Gillett said. “For the rest of us, big whoop.”
Virtual reality and self-driving cars have been talked about a lot in recent years, and they will still be talked about this year. But these two technologies are still nascent or premature.
Over the last two years, tech companies like Facebook’s Oculus, HTC, Google and Samsung have flooded the market with virtual reality headsets and plenty of software and games. Yet people have not exactly embraced the products.
“The industry has been plagued by high-cost hardware, motion sickness, a dearth of compelling content and a general lack of consumer interest,” said Victoria Petrock, an analyst for the research firm eMarketer, in a recent post.
Self-driving cars are also still many years from becoming mainstream. Even though some companies have permits to test autonomous cars in California, Arizona and elsewhere, several of the leaders in the technology — such as Alphabet’s Waymo — have refrained from committing to a release date for self-driving vehicles.
“There’s going to be a lot of noise about automotive technology, but nothing distinct or specific,” Mr. Gillett said.

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Thursday, January 3, 2019

Michelle Yeoh on Ferocious Mothers and Heartbreaking Leaders

SCIENCE , TECHNOLOGY
Michelle Yeoh on Ferocious Mothers and Heartbreaking Leaders
Michelle Yeoh was an established martial arts star in Asia by the time Western audiences came to know her, first as a Bond girl and then a balletic warrior in the 2000 hit “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.” During Yeoh’s action-hero days, she performed her own stunts — like launching herself and the motorcycle she was riding onto a moving train — and was at one point, she said, uninsurable. Little wonder, then, that Yeoh’s portrayal of the imperious mother, Eleanor Young, in the summer smash “Crazy Rich Asians” was so ferocious. Now she and her co-stars are nominated for the top prize, outstanding performance by a cast, at the Screen Actors Guild Awards on Jan. 27. (The film is also up for a Golden Globe for best musical or comedy at Sunday’s ceremony.)
During a recent trip to New York, Yeoh — who is 56, and cut an edgy figure wearing head-to-toe black and a supple motorbike jacket — met me at the Four Seasons for black coffee and a conversation about the film, the racism she encountered in her earlier years, and her heartbreak over Myanmar’s repressive government under Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Yeoh played in the 2012 biopic “The Lady.”

Here are edited excerpts.

 


It is almost unfathomable that “Crazy Rich Asians” was the first Hollywood movie with a contemporary setting and a majority Asian-American cast since “Joy Luck Club” in 1993.
Asian communities are so hungry, they never see themselves on the big screen. Honestly when I first came out here, suddenly to be told I’m a minority was a big shock. I came from China — how did I suddenly switch to being a minority? We want to be represented, we don’t want to be invisible, we don’t want to be told that we’re not good enough to be on the silver screens. You don’t have to treat us special. Just treat us as equals.

Was your mom like Eleanor?
Oh no. My mom is not Eleanor at all. She’s not a hippie, but she’s very carefree, very outgoing. Eleanor would be truly my homage to the mothers that I know in Asia. A lot of my friends or my friends’ mothers.
Your crazy rich Asian friends?
Ha ha. Yes. And their mothers-in-law. Or their mothers. Because I drew a lot of inspiration from them.

Eleanor was up to the last moment trying to please her mother-in-law. She wanted her son to look good because she wasn’t good enough.
That was the one thing we really, really worked on. We needed Eleanor to be vulnerable to make her more human. In the book Eleanor was black-and-white-movies mean. I didn’t want her to be a villain. I wanted her to have very high standards, to be very elegant. But the most important thing, what we really worked on, is the love between the mother and son.
The mah-jongg scene was great. I take it you know how to play.
Yes, it’s my sort of specialty, I had no problem in that scene at all. It was the showdown, right? And the movie could’ve ended there. At the end of the day it wasn’t a prince-Cinderella movie. If you look at all of the women, they all were stronger. They weren’t waiting to be rescued.

Eleanor had a very intense presence.
Eleanor was very composed. She didn’t talk with her hands. She was very contained. For a character like that, she has to command a lot of attention, with the stillness. That I worked on.
Yeoh as Daw Aung San Suu Kyi in “The Lady.”CreditMagali Bragard/Cohen Media Group
 
Yeoh as Daw Aung San Suu Kyi in “The Lady.”CreditMagali Bragard/Cohen Media Group
“The Lady” was quite contained.
“The Lady” is. But “The Lady” is also very emotional on other levels.
How are you reacting to news about the atrocities against Rohingya Muslims under Aung San Suu Kyi’s leadership?
I feel very against of course what is happening to the Rohingyas. We do have a foundation inside Burma. We felt when the country opened up, it’s not the top layer [of society] that needed help. It’s the rest. But they adore her. Because they really believe that she’s trying to do whatever she can for the lower people.
They still adore her?
They still feel like that. But the thing is, it’s so complicated. I don’t believe she has the power. Maybe she’ll hate me for saying this. She has no power. The power is still with the military.
Are you in touch with her?
We are in touch with her. But recently it has been very difficult because of all the things that have been going on. But she knows that I have been a little bit outspoken about the fact that I’ve been so disappointed. It’s tragic.
It must be very strange for you, having played her. Do you think she should lose her Nobel?
I think we should really take a step back and try and understand. What they are condemning her for is for not speaking out. For not turning around and saying, “You are wrong, you shouldn’t have.” Yes, maybe she can do that and be thrown out of the country again. I feel that she’s trying to keep the door open so that there’s still dialogue within her country and she still can have some kind of say. What I fear is without the support of the international people, it’s easy for the military to just disregard her. So I think she’s in a really, really rough place.

Let me ask you about another controversial thing.
Why stop now while we’re at it? Don’t get me into trouble.
It’s been over a year since news about Harvey Weinstein broke. You have said you never had any trouble with sexual harassment, and if you had, you would have deployed your martial arts skills. What do you think about men hoping to come back?
It was an adjustment. Something that we needed to clean up. We needed skeletons to come out from the closet. The most important thing is that the person has changed and understands that all that is bad.
With “Crazy Rich Asians,” were there reactions to the film that surprised you?
Asians are quite reserved, but after the movie they’ve come up to me on the streets to say “Can I give you a hug? I just want to say thank you.” The first opening weekend, I was on my knees, because God forbid, if it didn’t work, it could’ve set us back 20 years.
I was shocked by the opening scene, the intense discrimination aimed at Eleanor’s family. I thought it couldn’t have been like that in the ’90s.
[Yeoh arches a brow and shoots me a piercing “Girl, you’re so naïve” look.]
I remember when I first went to Paris, in the late ’80s, early ’90s. Every time I walked into a store, the women would fold their arms. They wouldn’t even speak to me. So the next day, my ex sent his designer to go shopping with me, and doors flew open.

Just like “Pretty Woman”!
You’d be surprised how racist people were at that time, it’s a shame. But I’m glad it’s not like that now. I work with the [United Nations Development Program] as a good-will ambassador, to promote gender equality, all these things we [need] to have a better world, more peaceful world. If we don’t we’re not going to be able save our world. We have to work together, start dialogue together and have no judgment. Why are we so judgmental?
Twitter. It’s all Twitter’s fault.
I don’t know. I don’t know how to twit.
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Hurricanes. Shootings. Fires. Time for an Editor’s Emergency Kit.

SCIENCE , TECHNOLOGY
Hurricanes. Shootings. Fires. Time for an Editor’s Emergency Kit.


When news of natural disasters or man-made ones break in the U.S., Julie Bloom taps a variety of tools to communicate with reporters, edit stories and get them published.


As a deputy editor on the national desk, you oversee a lot of breaking news. What tech tools do you use to help?
Hurricanes. Shootings. Wildfires. Elections and earthquakes. I didn’t think anything could be as crazy as the fall of 2017 in this country, but 2018 came pretty close.
I primarily oversee California and parts of the West, but also handle a lot of our coverage of major breaking news. With my colleagues on the desk and our boss, Marc Lacey, the national editor, we’ve developed a tool kit of sorts to handle these stories that are fast-moving and intense.

I feel like each day is a little like being caught in a batter’s box without knowing when or where the balls are coming from, and that can be both exhilarating and exhausting. Technology certainly helps.
My phone is pretty much everything. It’s kind of its own command center, and I can do almost everything on it except edit. For stories, I still need my laptop. Most of the reporters know that if they get a call from me at an odd hour, it usually means they’re on their way to something awful, but the reason we can do what we do is that they are total pros. Nobody ever just hangs up and goes back to sleep.

In these cases, our job is to help them produce the best journalism possible in difficult situations and make sure they stay safe, too. I’m in awe of the reporters on National who are relentless and often put themselves in danger while covering tough stories with compassion. Unfortunately, we’ve done enough of them now that we kind of know what to do.
Recently, we had a ton of breaking news out of California, where the majority of my reporters are based. The combination of the shooting in Thousand Oaks and the wildfires was a good example of having to be really nimble. One of our California reporters, Jenny Medina, called me in what was the middle of her night to say she and a bunch of F.B.I. agents who were in Thousand Oaks after the shooting had been forced to evacuate their hotel because of the fires. You can never predict what’s next, so you just have to be ready to switch gears and work with what you have.
In breaking news, I rely on Twitter and Dataminr, which monitors Twitter for newsworthy patterns, to keep track of developments. We’re also paying attention to police scanners, local television and all forms of social media and trying to break and confirm our own scoops, too. The trick is being careful and fast at the same time. A lot of bad information gets out in the immediate aftermath, and you never want to get it wrong.

In the middle of any given story, reporters and I communicate using text messages, Slack, Signal, Gchat and phone calls. We often spin off a Slack channel just for one event and have an email set up for breaking news that teams of reporters feed to. Those are split up into a bunch of different Google docs that we keep building out simultaneously for, say, a profile or a piece just on weapons or victims. Stories are updated dozens of times. We’re also watching search trends and adjusting headlines to make sure we’re showing up first. On a big, big story we’ll also send out multiple alerts with new developments.
"My phone is pretty much everything," Ms. Bloom said. "It’s kind of its own command center."
"My phone is pretty much everything," Ms. Bloom said. "It’s kind of its own command center."
Many of your reporters are based on the West Coast, while you are stationed in New York. How do you keep in touch with them and work with them on stories?
Even though it’s a different time zone, we’re still covering the news no matter when and where it happens. My reporters are all early risers, or they’re becoming ones. We have regular calls where we brainstorm ideas, but most editing is a constant back and forth over email, Gchat and text, and that seems to work well.
We’re fortunate because The Times has bureaus all over the place, so sometimes we hand off to Hong Kong or London and the editors there can help keep stories going.
Your contributors sometimes report stories from odd situations, like natural disasters. What tools do they use, and how do they get stories to you expediently?
For stories like wildfires or hurricanes, reporters often take satellite phones with them to make sure they can keep in contact when cell communication is down. But it doesn’t always work. During the recent wildfires, one reporter, Julie Turkewitz, was one of the first to enter the fire zone in Paradise, Calif., with a team of forensic experts searching for remains, and we lost contact with her for a few hours right on deadline. Thankfully, she surfaced just in time.
Sometimes good old dictation is the best means of getting scenes and reporting in real time. Reporters are also well versed in filing from their cars, Waffle Houses or the side of the road. We’ve had a few instances in hurricanes when reporters have had to abandon their rental cars because they were flooding and get to safety and they still managed to file.

You are a Los Angeles native. In your view, how has tech changed California?
I grew up in the Los Angeles area and went to school at Berkeley and keep close ties to both parts of the state, and I go back a lot to see family. California is an endlessly exciting place for The Times to cover: It’s the world’s fifth-largest economy, at the forefront of all sorts of change, extremely complex and a hotbed of contradictions. I like to think of it more as its own country. Technology is obviously a big part of all of that, and we’re a long way from when I was a teenager on AOL Messenger.
When you’re not at work, what tech product do you use a lot?
I’m pretty low-tech in my nonwork life — or I try to be. When you’re responsible for news, it’s hard to let go. I’ve tried everything from burying my phone under my kitchen sink to deleting certain apps on the weekend, but at a certain point you just relent and accept.
I think social media is a mostly necessary evil and try to avoid it when I’m not working, but I still haven’t quit Instagram. Besides friends and family, I follow a lot of dancers and ballet companies — remnants from a former life — and museums, chefs and fashion designers. It’s good to be reminded that there are people out there creating beautiful things, too.
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Wednesday, January 2, 2019

Queen, Ally and the Alchemy of Musical Stardom on the Big Screen

SCIENCE ,
Queen, Ally and the Alchemy of Musical Stardom on the Big Screen

I was waiting for a subway last month in Mexico City when I figured out what’s wrong with the Queen movie. I mean, I knew what was wrong. “Bohemian Rhapsody” is scared of tapping into the imagination that made the band so innovative and powerfully, addictively strange. But that’s not what hit me waiting for the subway.
The platform entertainment system was playing a concert video of “Another One Bites the Dust.” I don’t know what year the clip was from or what city Queen was in. I just know that the lighting is warm, the groove is skintight (you could feel it on the platform), and that Freddie Mercury is wearing — is packed into — white short-shorts and almost nothing else. No shoes, no shirt yet all service. The towel he’s whipping around gets an almost immediate, theatrical toss into the crowd. The red wristband and red bandanna tied round his neck bring out the red in his Montreal Canadiens trucker’s cap.
The real Freddie Mercury, mesmerizing French fans in 1984.
The real Freddie Mercury, mesmerizing French fans in 1984.
Mercury does all his Mercurial moves — the side gallop, the chug-a-lug, the duck strut, the steed swipe, the rewind, the vroom-vroom, the Wimbledon Final frozen pirouette, the one where he kind of dries his tushy with the microphone stand in a full march. And he does them while belting out this uppercut of a song (with some shockingly forceful assistance from the drummer Roger Taylor). Commuters, tourists, kids: we looked up at this thing, mesmerized, in jeopardy of missing a train. That’s right about when I figured out what was wrong with the Queen movie: There’s nothing in it remotely like this.
“Bohemian Rhapsody” plods, explains, obscures, speculates and flattens. It does not mesmerize. I mean, I wouldn’t miss a train for this. We learn how “We Will Rock You” allegedly sprang from a fit of personal protestation. But it’s news we can’t use. The movie won’t stop telling us things — about the music business and the songs, about Mercury’s tortured sex life. And it fails to show you anything close to what that clip on the subway platforms makes you feel: sweaty.
The musical biography has an impossibly high degree of alchemical difficulty. One performer has to become a totally different performer, and not any performer, just this one star the whole world knows, and it has to be done in a way that makes you believe you’re seeing either the impersonated star or something quintessential about them. Val Kilmer made you believe you were seeing something vitally true about Jim Morrison. Joaquin Phoenix did the same with Johnny Cash. And Jamie Foxx became Ray Charles. Angela Bassett convinced you that if you were seeing if not Tina Turner, then Turner’s indestructibility; and Marion Cotillard, the brittle incandescence of Edith Piaf.
For my money, one of the triumphs of this type of acting is Chadwick Boseman’s James Brown in “Get On Up.” Boseman pumps Brown full of edginess and spite while having to reconstruct Brown as a stage specimen, and part of that reconstruction involves learning to lip sync to Brown. You sense that you’re watching an actor who’s done more than homework. He’s written himself a little dissertation. It’s not an impression of Brown. It’s an interpolation.
Some movies pivot and omit the musical performance altogether. That’s the approach Todd Haynes applied to Bob Dylan in “I’m Not There” and John Ridley took in having Andre 3000 play Jimi Hendrix in “Jimi: All Is by My Side.” But the alchemy is a reason to dislike the genre. It’s hard to get the proportions right. It takes some work in, say, “Cadillac Records” to figure out where Beyoncé ends and Etta James is supposed to begin.
Rami Malek has a different challenge in “Bohemian Rhapsody.” He’s not a superstar playing another superstar. He just has to become the superstar Freddie Mercury was. Just. And yet because the movie is mostly scenes of recording sessions, squabbling and self-pity, Mercury’s stardom is made beside the point — it’s assumed — so Malek gets to play a charismatic sufferer, -quipster and, eventually, proud brown gay man. It’s just that this version of Mercury isn’t terribly exciting without the reward of seeing him vroom-vroom in short-shorts. The movie rides the roller coaster of biographical cliché. What’s missing are musical numbers that showcase his showmanship and eternal capacity for self-delight.
This means more time watching Malek struggle with dental effects meant to bring his mouth into more realistic alignment with Mercury’s. Maybe Malek has done the best anyone could with the teeth. But they wind up bringing something vampiric out of Mercury that I don’t know was ever there. Either way, the alchemy is off.
In “A Star Is Born,” Lady Gaga (with Bradley Cooper) shows a lovely hesitance.
In “A Star Is Born,” Lady Gaga (with Bradley Cooper) shows a lovely hesitance.
WE’RE IN A HAPPY MOMENT for musical-movie excitement. “Mary Poppins” has returned with new songs. And despite that lie of a title, “The Greatest Showman” is the most impressive phenomenon nobody saw coming or took seriously once it came. “Bohemian Rhapsody” is now the musical biopic’s biggest hit. We can have the argument later about the difference between a classical movie musical and a movie where people get on stage and do music, but you could also add to the mix this latest incarnation of “A Star Is Born,” which was a smash too.
It’s the story of how a waitress became a Grammy winner. And because the tale is essentially a fantasy — of love, fame and ruin; biography as mythology — its casting is the inverse of the rock bio. A musician does the acting. In Bradley Cooper’s version, the musician is Lady Gaga. She starts off as Ally the restaurant grunt. But when Cooper’s beloved alt-country pill guzzler sees her belt “La Vie en Rose” in a drag parlor, he hauls her into stardom, which Gaga knows well.
But the surprise of her acting comes in the first hour when the movie is closer to earth and requires her to be more like you and me — daughter, employee, listener. There’s a lovely hesitance to her here, not in the camera-shy way singers tend to get when it’s time to act. Reluctance is a performance strategy for her in this movie. Again, she’s like you and me, she can’t believe Bradley Cooper’s happening to her, either. Some of what’s great about the first hour is how it gets you thinking about the kind of career Gaga could have in movies they haven’t made in, like, 30 years.
Lady Gaga with Andrew Dice Clay as her father in the movie.
Lady Gaga with Andrew Dice Clay as her father in the movie.
The scenes at home with Ally, her chauffeur father and his fellow drivers are loud, funny and warm in a way that reminded me of “Moonstruck.” And some of the pleasure I had watching Gaga in them is how she reminded me of another singer who acts: Cher. A friend points out that she could have Cher’s career if the movies were still interested in normal people. I, at least, would love to see Gaga in a “Mask” or a “Suspect.”
She and Malek are both near the top of the heap for Oscar nominations. And she’s got an alchemical advantage over Malek’s Freddie Mercury. When Ally’s career takes off, Gaga winds up playing a pop star not unlike herself. And you realize she has the opposite problem that Malek does. You’re less interested in her as a singer — but only because we’ve seen her do huge, stadium-size razzle-dazzle before. And yet she’s indifferent to playing the fame stuff. It doesn’t seem to interest Ally or Gaga. If the movie loses Ally a bit in the second half, Gaga never appears lost. She’s giving a serious, considered, committed performance of a person she seems to know. Malek’s commitment is to a movie committed in the wrong proportions. It doesn’t know who it wants Freddie Mercury to be.
“Bohemian Rhapsody” doesn’t fixate on the showmanship until the finale, which restages their electric, legendary Live-Aid performance at Wembly Stadium and passes for showstopping. Yet you exit hungry for a movie that gets closer to the bottom of a man who renamed himself after both an element and a planet. If someone dares take another crack (and someone really should), I know the perfect Freddie. Her first name is Lady. And her last name comes straight from a Queen song.
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Quora Looks for Answers in Wake of Massive Data Breach

SCIENCE , TECHNOLOGY
Quora Looks for Answers in Wake of Massive Data Breach


hack of personal data could expose quora users to more phishing attacks


The personal data of some 100 million people who have used Quora, a popular question and answer website, has been compromised, the company disclosed Monday.
"We recently discovered that some user data was compromised as a result of unauthorized access to one of our systems by a malicious third party," wrote Quora CEO Adam D'Angelo in an online post.
"We are working rapidly to investigate the situation further and take the appropriate steps to prevent such incidents in the future," he added.
The intrusion -- which was discovered Friday, D'Angelo noted -- placed the following information of Quora users at risk:
  • Account information, such as name, email address, hashed password and data imported from linked networks when authorized by users;
  • Public content and actions, such as questions, answers, comments and "upvotes";
    • and
  • Non-public content and actions, such as answer requests, downvotes and direct messages.
"It is highly unlikely that this incident will result in identity theft, as we do not collect sensitive personal information like credit card or social security numbers," states a response on the company's FAQ page.

Mild Breach

Compared to other large data breaches -- such as the breach at the Marriott hotel chain last week, which affected some 500 million customers and enabled intruders to steal credit card numbers, dates of birth and passport numbers -- the Quora attack is relatively mild, said Ted Rossman, an industry analyst with Creditcards.com in Austin, Texas.
"The Quora breach seems more contained," he told TechNewsWorld. "It was information that was already public or things that are not that sensitive, like email addresses."
The risk for most Quora users isn't that severe, remarked Paul Bischoff, privacy advocate at Comparitech, a reviews, advice and information website focused on consumer security products.
"The stolen passwords are hashed and no payment information was breached, so there's little immediate threat to most people," he told TechNewsWorld.
"However, the small portion of users who utilized Quora's direct messaging platform might have exposed private information sent to other users," Bischoff added.
All personal information -- not just passwords and credit card numbers -- can be valuable to data abusers, though.
"As we saw with the Cambridge Analytica fiasco, access to personal likes, tastes, and other preferences can be used against individuals," Javvad Malik, a security advocate at AlienVault, a threat intelligence company in San Mateo, California, told TechNewsWorld.

Chilling Effect on Sharing

Theft of data at the site also could have other consequences for Quora.
"Since this is a knowledge-sharing platform, one of the risks of an incident like this is it could deter people from engaging in that kind of activity, which is productive and useful," said Thomas Jackson, chair of the technology practice group at Phillips Nizer, a law firm in New York City.
"Breaches like the one at Marriott put clients at risk because so much customer data is exposed," he told TechNewsWorld. "In the Quora case, the main issue is going to be the willingness of inviduals to contribute going forward. Will it have a negative effect on postings and new signups?"
Once a breach occurs, the damage is done and there's no taking it back, added Bischoff.
"That being said, other than being breached, Quora did pretty much everything right," he continued. "Passwords were stored as hashes and not in plain text. Quora promptly notified users of the breach and took action to remedy the issue."

Leveraging Social Media Logins

Although knowledge seekers with Quora-only accounts may be at minimal risk from the data breach, that might not be the case for those who use other services, such as Facebook and Google, to log into the website.
"For people who log into Quora using Facebook or Google authentication, there may be more identity information leaked, depending how much is contained in their Facebook or Google profiles," said Mounir Hahad, head of the threat lab for Juniper Networks, a network security and performance company based in Sunnyvale, California.
"People need to make sure their Google and Facebook profiles contain a minimal amount of personal information," he told TechNewsWorld. "For example, neither service needs to know your exact date of birth to provide you with services."
The most useful information stolen by the cybercriminals likely will be a massive list of valid email addresses, Hahad said.
"Hackers will often turn around and sell this data on the underground market," he explained. "Typical buyers are those that run spam platforms that cater to people trying to push products or build botnets."

What's a Consumer to Do?

Consumers concerned about the risks posed to them by the Quora breach can take a number of steps to protect themselves.
"They should decouple their Quora accounts from other platforms," recommended Mike Bittner, digital security and operations manager at The Media Trust, a website and mobile application security company in McLean, Virginia.
"They should also change all their passwords, applying unique credentials to each one," he told TechNewsWorld, "and check their credit cards for any unauthorized charges."
Maintaining unique passwords across all accounts is particularly important, noted James Carder, CISO for LogRhythm, a cybersecurity solutions company in Boulder, Colorado.
"It's common for attackers to sweep other consumer platforms to test credentials they just stole," he told TechNewsWorld.
Quora users also should be on the lookout for increased phishing and other attacks,he advised, as the black hats might have enough information to craft specially targeted ploys.

More of the Same in the Future

Until the Quora and Marriott attacks, 2018 was shaping up to be a down year for breaches, with 670 million records lost, compared to 1.58 billion in 2017, noted Terry Ray, CTO of Imperva, a web application firewall maker in Redwood City, California.
"Now, with two back-to-back major breaches compromising roughly 600 million total accounts, 2018 is in striking distance of matching or exceeding last year," he told TechNewsWorld.
The future doesn't look bright, unless you're a data thief.
"All companies, regardless of size, should expect to be targeted by attackers and prepare themselves by knowing all the third parties they work with," The Media Trust's Bittner warned.
"Attacks are not a matter of if, but when," he added.
"Until companies can adequately protect their customers, this trend will not slow down, and the prognosis will not trend positively," Carder predicted.
"I thought the Equifax breach last year -- where they let 150 million accounts slip out the cracks -- would be a tipping point," said Creditcards.com's Rossman, "but a year, later very little has changed. It's up to us to protect ourselves."
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Linux Skills Most Wanted: Open Source Jobs Report

SCIENCE , TECHNOLOGY
Linux Skills Most Wanted: Open Source Jobs Report

The 2018 Open Source Technology Jobs Report shows rapid growth in the demand for open source technical talent, with Linux skills a must-have requirement for entry-level positions.
The seventh annual report from The Linux Foundation and Dice, released Wednesday, identifies Linux coding as the most sought-after open source skill. Linux-based container technology is a close second.
The report provides an overview of open source career trends, factors motivating professionals in the industry, and ways employers attract and retain qualified talent. As with the last two open source jobs reports, the focus this year is on all aspects of open source software and is not limited to Linux.
This year's report features data from more than 750 hiring managers at corporations, small and medium businesses, and government organizations and staffing agencies across the globe. It is based on responses from more than 6,500 open source professionals worldwide.
Linux skills rank as the most sought-after skills in the 2018 report, with 80 percent of hiring managers looking for tech professionals with Linux expertise.
Linux is required knowledge for most entry-level open source careers, likely due to the strong popularity of cloud and container technologies, as well as DevOps practices, all of which typically are based on Linux, according to the report.
"Open source technology talent is in high demand, as Linux and other open source software dominates software development," said Linux Foundation Executive Director Jim Zemlin.
"I am encouraged that companies are recognizing more and more each day that open source technology is the way to advance their businesses," he continued. "The Linux Foundation, our members and the open source ecosystem are focused on ensuring training and certification opportunities are highly accessible to everyone who wants to seek them out, and we are supporting the developer community and its growth in every possible way."

Heightened Recruitment Efforts

There has been an increase in recruitment activities among companies and organizations that want to bolster open source technology talent, the report reveals.
Slightly more than half (55 percent) of the responding companies said they were offering additional training and certification opportunities for existing staff in order to fill skills gaps. That total is up from 47 percent in 2017 and only 34 percent in 2016.
Eighty-seven percent of hiring managers reported difficulty finding open source talent. Nearly half (48 percent) reported their organizations had begun to support open source projects by contributing code or other resources for the explicit reason of recruiting individuals with those software skills.
"Hiring skilled technology professionals remains a real pain point for employers, and our report shows newer skills like containers are growing in popularity, putting more pressure on organizations to find good talent to carry out necessary projects," said Art Zeile, CEO of DHI Group, the parent company of Dice.

Key Takeaways

There appears to be a disparity between the views of hiring managers and open source pros over the effectiveness of ongoing efforts to improve diversity. Only 52 percent of employees saw those efforts as effective, compared to 70 percent of employers, the report found.
Other findings:
  • Hiring open source talent was a priority for 83 percent of hiring managers, an increase from 76 percent in 2017.
  • Containers have been growing rapidly in popularity and importance, with 57 percent of hiring managers seeking container expertise, up from only 27 percent last year.
  • Hiring managers have been moving away from hiring outside consultants, increasingly opting to train existing employees on new open source technologies and help them gain certifications.
  • Many organizations have been getting involved in open source with the express purpose of attracting developers.

Effective Business Strategy

Demand for open source talent is high because more companies have begun embracing open source technologies for next-generation workloads and applications, said Ian McClarty, CEO of Phoenix Data Center.
Business leaders see open source as a way to rein in licensing costs, and technologist are enamored with new ways to deploy code and systems in a scale-out fashion, he suggested.
"The big push into cloud services and virtualization has also helped to drive adoption of open source technologies," McClarty told LinuxInsider. "Developers want rapid systems to deploy in, and do not want to wait around for purchasing and logistics to take care of their needs."
IT has changed from driving the bottom line to driving the top line for enterprises. Most new applications are developed and built using the DevOps model, according to Brajesh Goyal, vice president of engineering at Cavirin.
This movement was driven by new-generation companies such as Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Twitter, he noted.
"In addition to changing the business landscape, these companies also built the next set of tools for big data, cloud, AI/machine learning and containers," Goyal told LinuxInsider. "All of these technologies are mostly open source. [They] are now entering the scale of massive adoption across the business landscape and hence driving the need for open source talent."

High Demand Is Contagious

Two of the leading reasons for open source's growing popularity are its effectiveness in improving time to market and in developing base software.
"It is the way most new software is being built, particularly infrastructure software that is broadly applicable across many industries and use cases," said Howard Green, vice president of marketing at Azul Systems.
People who work on open source projects on their own time typically are willing to give their creativity and their work to the community. Almost any business that plans to survive wants motivated, creative people.
"That includes people who are excited enough about what they do to work on their own open source projects and make their skills and ideas directly visible to their peers," Green told LinuxInsider.
Demand for open source talent increases because open source has become the most relevant way of producing base software, noted Stefano Maffulli, director of community for Scality.
Open source powers everything, he pointed out.
"Software drives innovation, and the productivity of whole nations depends on it," Maffulli told LinuxInsider. "According to a Black Duck report, 57 percent of proprietary codebase includes open source code, up from 36 percent last year. I expect that percentage to keep on rising."

Hiring Insights

Companies and job candidates can take steps to benefit from the report findings. The key is to leverage their interest in open source.
"Companies can take advantage of this trend by being clear that they support open source technologies [and] use them," noted Azul's Green.
"Most newer open source technologies are not available via traditional certification means. The easiest way to get into the open source field is to get a virtual instance in one of the many public cloud companies that are out there -- it isn't just about the hyper scalers," he said.
"There are excellent documentation and videos readily available for beginners. Most open source software has toasters available that are step-by-step guides on how to configure, install and test," Green pointed out.
"Finding a small project to apply the knowledge gained is also critical," he continued. "The 'just do it' mentality married with a small project will give someone the necessary foundation to open up a new career field in their daily operations, and value people who also work on their own projects and/or contribute to larger-scale projects."
Very large enterprises and early-stage companies often hire people full-time, with their sole responsibility being to contribute to a high-value open source technology, Green said.
Job candidates can respond to this trend by walking the walk. They can do this by contributing to one or more open source projects they care about. Another strategy is to learn how to make the best use of today's powerful open source technologies.
"In the case of applications ranging from databases to development tools to messaging stacks, understand the tradeoffs between specific open source offerings and their closed-source analogues," advised Green.
Developers and engineers interested in working on open source projects and tools can enter the field by demonstrating value within an existing community. Or they can build open source products or tools of their own.
"The great thing about open source is that quality of the design and the code is visible," noted Green. "It is a living CV. Open source contributions and developers are by their nature visible, verifiable and stand on their own."

Schooling and Professionalism Count

Technical schools need to start teaching social skills to engineers, suggested Scality's Muffulli.
The old stereotype of the lone open source coder in the basement is not accurate anymore, he said. With so much code and documentation being developed in the open, across cultural boundaries, developers cannot avoid human interactions.
"In my job, a lot of effort is spent explaining how to craft comments to a pull request that is not offensive and can lead to actual progress. It should not be surprising, but candidates that are pleasant human beings have a better chance of being hired," Muffulli observed.
Presentation skills are important to new developers, he added. "Be ready to show equally good code, well-done documentation, and social interactions on platforms like mailing lists, GitHub, forums and the like. [Candidates] need to demonstrate that they can develop and solve issues in a collaborative environment."

No Ordinary Path

Most newer open source technologies are not available via traditional certification means, according to Phoenix Data Center's McClarty.
The easiest way to get into the open source field is to get a virtual instance in one of the many public cloud companies, he suggested.
For job candidates, it's a no-brainer: Learn open source software, said Kaj Arno, chief evangelist at MariaDB.
"Document your usage through certification -- and if you are into developing open source infrastructure software yourself, start by writing contributions to existing open source software," he advised.
"Almost all of our developers started out that way," Arno told LinuxInsider.
The key is to learn, certify and develop by contributing. Then decide whether a career in open source means a career in developing applications that are based on open source, or a career in developing open source software, he suggested. "Those are two different things, albeit related."
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CES 2019: It’s the Year of Virtual Assistants and 5G

A visual tour of the world’s most important tech conference offers a window into the year’s trends, including next-generation wireless net...