Category Archives: Mind Uploading

Cast your mind back to the first half of 2020. Beleaguered as we all were by scary and depressing daily news about the pandemic, the global recorded-music industry began to doubt the security of its own near-term future. With retail stores closing and income from performance royalties being hit by the shuttering of bars and restaurants, reports began to emerge suggesting that record labels should brace themselves for a mini-crash.

Such fears were worsened in Q2, when the release schedule of the major music groups grew noticeably thin. (Case in point: The recorded-music division of Universal Music Group the worlds biggest record company saw its quarterly revenues fall 4.5 percentYoY in Q2 on an organic basis.)

Better news, however, was just around the corner. Midia Research has published its estimate of what the global recorded-music industry including majors, indies, and DIY artists generated across the course of 2020 in wholesale/trade revenues. Midias figures suggest that the recorded-music business saw revenues of $23.1 billion in the year. That was up seven percent on 2019, and represented a $1.5 billion monetary increase year-on-year.

It would take a hard-hearted industry commentator to complain aboutany growth in 2020, but that $1.5 billion (+seven percent) annual uplift, notes Midia, was smaller than the $2.1 billion growth seen in 2019 (+11 percent year-over-year).

Midia notes: Although the [worldwide] recorded-music business experienced a dip in the earlier months of the pandemic, the remainder of the year saw industry revenue rebound. That rebound, notes Midia, saw the global recorded-music businesss quarterly revenues bounce up 15 percent YoY in Q4 2020, suggesting a strong 2021 may lie ahead if that momentum continues.

Interestingly, global annual recorded-music streaming revenues actually grew fasteron a monetary basis in 2020 than they did in 2019.

Midias numbers suggest that total (recorded-music trade) streaming revenues grew by $2.3 billion (+19.6 percent) to $14.2 billion in 2020. In the prior year, the research company notes, annual streaming growth weighed in at $2.2 billion.

Midia

Universal and Sonys recorded-music operations both saw annual growth in 2020, with Warners equivalent numberstaying flat on 2019.

Midias numbers suggest that combined, the three major music companies lost a little global market share in the 12 months, falling from 66.5 percent in 2019 to 65.5 percent in 2020. Notes Midia, While this shift is part of a long-term market dynamic, most of the dip was down to WMG reporting flat revenues for the year.

Another factor here was one of the biggest industry stories of 2020: the continued growth of the DIY artist sector. DIY artists uploading their music via the likes of TuneCore, DistroKid, and SoundCloud generated $1.2 billion globally last year, says Midia.

This artists direct sector saw a 34.1 percent growth in annual revenues in 2020, according to the companys numbers, and broke the billion dollar mark for the first time. Artists direct grew their collective market share by more than a whole point to 5.1 percent, says Midia.

Midias MD, Mark Mulligan, said: The recordings business managed to deliver a strong performance due solely to the growth of streaming. Streaming has been the engine room since the recorded-music business returned to growth, but the fall in performance and sync revenues due to the pandemic highlighted just how overly dependent the global music business has become on streaming.

With lots of private equity money now pouring into creator tools companies like Native Instruments, expect this space to heat up even further in 2021. The recorded-music business is changing, and it is changing fast.

This article originally appeared onMusic Business Worldwide.

Go here to read the rest:

Recorded Music Grew $1.5 Billion in the Pandemic Year - Rolling Stone

If you've ever wondered what Vladimir Putin singing Vengaboys' Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom! would look like, this new deepfake-style lip-syncing app will show you.

Wombo uses AI to animate photos so it appears they're singing along to one of 18 pop hits. Though designed for selfies, the app has gone viral over the past few days as users realized the comic potential in uploading photos of famous people and making them sing along to entirely unsuitable material.

It works in a similar way to the Deep Nostalgia tool released by the online genealogy company MyHeritage last month: you upload a photo and the app uses AI to animate it in a fairly convincing manner. The extra step here is that it also pairs the animation with a song of your choice, so that the photo appears to be singing along.

The songs on offer range from Michael Jackson's classic Thriller to Rick Astley's slightly less classic Never Gonna Give You Up. And much of the fun lies in matching the right song to the right (or wrong) person.

What's more, the AI works on anything that even vaguely looks like a face. We've tried it on a Labrador puppy, a cuddly toy and even our car, with varying degrees of success.

The app was created by Wombo CEO Ben-Zion Benkhin, who told The Verge he came up with the idea while smoking a joint with my roommate on the roof.

It launched in Canada in February and has since been downloaded on the Google Play Store and Apple App Store more than 2 million times.

It's free to use, supported by the occasional advert popping up, but a Premium version is available for $4.99/month. This removes the ads and gives you faster processing.

Benkhin is adamant that users data is safe, telling The Verge, We take privacy really seriously. All the data gets deleted and we dont share it or send it to anyone else.

If you fancy giving it a go yourself, scroll down to find out how it works.

1. Download the Wombo app from either the Apple App Store or Google Play Store.

2. Open the app and click the big yellow Let's go! button.

3. Next, you have a couple of options. Wombo will immediately open the camera app and prompt you to take a selfie. It provides a silhouette so you can position yourself in the frame correctly, and suggests that you look directly at the camera and don't show your teeth. If you want to take this approach, press the camera button when you're ready.

4. If you'd rather use an existing photo (of yourself or someone else), you can press the folder icon to the left of the camera button, then upload an image from your device.

5. Alternatively, you can press the reverse icon to the right of the camera button, and use your device's rear lens to capture your subject. Just make sure you have their permission to do so.

6. Next you'll see the Crop screen. Here you can resize the crop box around the subject so it removes any unwanted objects on the periphery. The Scale slider below the image will let you zoom in or out, and if you press the Rotate icon on the bottom left of the app, you'll be able to change the angle of the image. When you're happy, press the tick in the top-right corner.

7. Press the green W icon below your picture or if you've changed your mind, press back and try again.

8. Now it's time to choose your tune. The 18 available songs span a wide range of genres and eras, so there's likely to be at least one you're happy with. Plus, Benkhin says he plans to expand the options soon.

9. As you press each song, you'll hear a snippet of it play, so you can decide if it works. If it does, press the green W icon again.

10. Wombo will now work its AI-powered magic on the image, while telling you it is "Transmitting particles through radio waves" and "Uploading psychic connection to the reality plane." It isn't.

11. Finally, the app will serve up your finished video. You'll have the option to save it to your device (as an mp4 file), share it with a friend via any of the usual options (social media, WhatsApp, email and so on) or try again with another image.

Today's best Apple AirPods Pro deals

Link:

Wombo uses AI to make your selfies sing and its hilarious - Tom's Guide

For the first time in program history, the GCU basketball program is going to the big dance. After winning the WAC Championship on Saturday night against New Mexico State, the Lopes were announced as the 15-seed on Selection Sunday in the West Region and will take on the two-seed Iowa in their first-ever game in March Madness.

The Lopes will get the winner of No. 7 Oregon and No. 10 VCU if they pull off the massive upset. Iowa finished 21-8 coming out of the Big Ten and are led by Player of the Year candidate Luka Garza, who is one of the best big men in the country.

Garza is averaging nearly 24 points per game to go along with 8.8 rebounds. Hes going to be a lot to handle for GCU, but the Lopes will be ready for the daunting task. Iowa is averaging around 84 points per contest as a high-scoring offense.

Our guys are all familiar with Iowa and they are all familiar with Garza. Hes the best big man in the country, said head coach Bryce Drew. He could be Player of the Year and its not like hes not getting schemed against every night. The Big Ten, some of the best defenses in the country, and maybe the best conferences in the country, has schemed against him all yearYoure going to have to score points against them because they are so potent offensively and you arent just going to shut them down.

Over the next couple days, GCU will have to quarantine in Indianapolis before getting back to practice in preparation for the game. Right after the announcement and opponent was announced, Drew was already uploading game film of the Hawkeyes to his laptop.

Lopes assistant coaches Jamall Walker and Ed Schilling, who previously served as coaches in the conference, will all have their hands full with watching video over the next couple of days in quarantine in preparation of trying to pull off a big upset in the best time of year for college basketball.

Drew is no stranger to upsets and the magic of March, and hell look to carry that aura into Saturdays showdown.

We have quite a few days to prepare and go through things. We want them to enjoy the excitement of this moment and hearing their name called, Drew said of his team. After we get out of quarantine, we will really start diving into Iowa and game planning, and trying to get their mind at a good place to be ready to play.

The Lopes and Hawkeyes are set to meet this Saturday, March 20. An official tip-off time has not yet been announced. March Madness begins this Thursday, March 18.

Originally posted here:

Indy Bound: GCU To Face Iowa In First Round Of NCAA Tournament - Sports360AZ

MBWs Stat Of The Week is a series in which we show why a single data point deserves the attention of the global music industry. Stat Of the Week is supported by Cinq Music Group, a technology-driven record label, distribution, and rights management company.

Cast your mind back to the first half of 2020. Beleaguered (as we all were) by scary and depressing daily news about the pandemic, the global recorded music industry began to doubt the security of its own near-term future.

With retail stores closing and income from performance royalties being hit by the shuttering of bars and restaurants, reports began to emerge suggesting that record labels should brace themselves for a mini-crash.

Such fears were worsened in Q2, when the release schedule of the major music groups grew noticeably thin. (Case in point: The recorded music division of Universal Music Group the worlds biggest record company saw its quarterly revenues fall 4.5% YoY in Q2 on an organic basis.)

Better news, however, was just around the corner. Midia Research has today published its estimate of what the global recorded music industry including majors, indies, and DIY artists generated across the course of 2020 in wholesale/trade revenues.

Midias figures suggest that the recorded music business saw revenues of $23.1 billion in the year. That was up 7% on 2019, and represented a $1.5 billion monetary increase year-on-year.

It would take a hard-hearted industry commentator to complain about any growth in 2020, but that $1.5 billion / +7% annual uplift, notes Midia, was smaller than the $2.1 billion growth seen in 2019 (+11% YoY).

Midia notes: Although the [worldwide] recorded music business experienced a dip in the earlier months of the pandemic, the remainder of the year saw industry revenue rebound.

That rebound, notes Midia, saw the global recorded music businesss quarterly revenues bounce up 15% YoY in Q4 2020, suggesting a strong 2021 may lie ahead if that momentum continues.

Interestingly, global annual recorded music streaming revenues actually grew faster on a monetary basis in 2020 than they did in 2019.

Midias numbers suggest that total (recorded music trade) streaming revenues grew by $2.3bn (+19.6%) to $14.2bn in 2020.

In the prior year, the research company notes, annual streaming growth weighed in at the slightly lower figure of $2.2bn.

Universal and Sonys recorded music operations both saw annual growth in 2020, with Warners equivalent number staying flat on 2019.

Midias numbers suggest that combined, the three major music companies lost a little global market share in the 12 months, falling from 66.5% in 2019 to 65.5% in 2020.

Notes Midia: While this shift is part of a long-term market dynamic, most of the dip was down to WMG reporting flat revenues for the year.

Another factor here was one of the biggest industry stories of 2020: The continued growth of the DIY artist sector.

DIY artists uploading their music via the likes of TuneCore, DistroKid and SoundCloud generated $1.2 billion globally last year, says Midia.

This artists direct sector saw a 34.1% growth in annual revenues in 2020, according to the companys numbers, and broke the billion dollar mark for the first time.

Artists direct grew their collective market share by more than a whole point to 5.1%, says Midia.

Midias MD, Mark Mulligan, said: The recordings business managed to deliver a strong performance due solely to the growth of streaming. Streaming has been the engine room since the recorded music business returned to growth, but the fall in performance and sync revenues due to the pandemic highlighted just how overly dependent the global music business has become on streaming.

With lots of private equity money now pouring into creator tools companies like Native Instruments, expect this space to hot up even further in 2021. The recorded music business is changing, and it is changing fast.

Cinq Music Groups repertoire has won Grammy awards, dozens of Gold and Platinum RIAA certifications, and numerous No.1 chart positions on a variety of Billboard charts. Its repertoire includes heavyweights such as Bad Bunny, Janet Jackson, Daddy Yankee, T.I., Sean Kingston, Anuel, and hundreds more.Music Business Worldwide

See original here:

The global record industry grew by $1.5bn in 2020, despite the pandemic - Music Business Worldwide

Get inside Wall Street with StreetInsider Premium. Claim your 1-week free trial here.

EASY-TO-USE FREE APP CREATES COMMUNITY COMFORT ZONES AS PEOPLE GET BACK TO LIVING AGAIN

HOUSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--SafeFun a revolutionary new consumer-facing app developed by a team led by Houston-based software and hospitality entrepreneur Carson Hager was born out of a desire to help everyone, everywhere, once again gather together following a year defined by fear, isolation and loss due to the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210317005702/en/

Programmed to be effortlessly and intuitively navigated, users register and download the app to secure a complimentary, password protected SafeFun account before uploading their test results or vaccination records. Download SafeFun from the Apple App Store or Google Play Store. Photo courtesy of Michael Anthony.

The socially-focused digital health passport which is completely free to use in its launch phase powers a game-changing app that allows users to voluntarily and easily share COVID-19 test results and vaccine records with everyone in their social network from friends and family to co-workers and first dates. The community-focused document wallet combines industry expertise with technology, data science and ease to provide comfort knowing the people around you have either undergone a recently validated negative Covid test or have received an approved vaccination.

Programmed to be effortlessly and intuitively navigated, users register and download the app to secure a complimentary, password protected SafeFun account before uploading their test results or vaccination records. SafeFun, in turn, extracts those results from the document, instantly analyzes and validates it with hundreds of known testing and vaccination record formats from around the world, then summarizes and adds the users most current health records into their digital health wallet so they can be displayed on the SafeFun Passport.

The internationally compliant app not only offers On Demand access to records anywhere in the world at any time, it also provides visual cues that help users immediately identify when they and the people in their sharing network are up to date on tests and vaccinations. SafeFun is your passport to begin sharing memorable moments and enjoying life again, said SafeFun founder Carson Hager. In addition to encouraging responsibility, it opens up a world of opportunities to comfortably reengage in person with friends, family and co-workers or to display for entry at designated SafeFun programming and events.

Hager, who made a name for himself in the tech world in 1996 as the founder of Cynergy Systems, was uniquely qualified to develop and launch the COVID-era digital tool in record time following two decades of creating enterprise and consumer-facing software applications for companies servicing the healthcare, manufacturing, financial services and government market industries.

By 2008, the privately held Cynergy headquartered in Washington D.C had sprouted U.S. field offices from Boston to San Diego along with European operations in London and Asia Pacific operations in Taipei, Taiwan and Sydney, Australia. In 2014, Hager sold the company to the U.S. advisory firm KPMG and soon traded in developing software programs in the cloud for opening watering holes on the grid. Under a newly formed umbrella organization The Hospitable Viking he launched a trio of bars in his native Houston that ultimately led to the idea for SafeFun.

As the severity of the then-called Corona Virus began to take root, Hager realized that the only way he would get customers back into not only his - but everyones - establishments would be if he could somehow make people feel comfortable, and that would only happen if they could confidently demonstrate to others around them that they were at low or no risk. In the flash of a lightbulb moment, SafeFun was born.

Dusting off his programmers hat, Hager and team immediately began working around the clock to develop an intelligent system that could import any number of PDF health records from anywhere that could quickly identity and validate them by incorporating the data into an aggregated digital health wallet for users. The resulting SafeFun platform runs on the Microsoft Azure cloud and includes native mobile applications for iOS and Android as well as a full web version for those users who do not own smartphones.

We tried to think of everything that would prevent someone from having the option to utilize the technology, so we did our best to ensure that SafeFun would be accessible to everyone, everywhere, who are in need of some serious comfort right about now.

SafeFun supports molecular/diagnostic, antibody and antigen results from hundreds of testing centers around the globe, including national testing providers like Walgreens, CVS, Walmart/eTrueNorth and Curative as well as local and regional testing centers in every major market. The app ranks molecular testing as the gold standard in determining a true negative diagnosis for COVID-19 and grants a 48-hour window from the time of testing to determine strong or weak comfort levels to account for the possibility of contracting COVID-19 after taking a test.

If the app doesnt currently support a testing center, users can simply upload the result so that SafeFun can validate the testing center and add it to their system within 24 hours. We are not epidemiologists, emphasized Hager. We rely on the experts at the CDC, FDA, NIH and others to provide conservative guidelines around safety and use them in our algorithms to provide comfort. Ultimately, it is the users not the app that decides what they are comfortable with and what they are not.

The platform also comes with follower and following categories that will be familiar to anyone using popular social media channels. Once downloaded, users can search contacts and request friends who then have the option of approving requests so they can monitor and determine who theyre comfortable gathering with in their vetted social network. Imagine returning to a time when a couple can plan on inviting all and not just a handful of their family and friends to their wedding and feeling confident enough to book a honeymoon with non-refundable reservations, Hager said. Thats the kind of hope were trying to instill.

In addition to weddings, birthdays, graduations, holidays and social gatherings of all kinds, Hager sees SafeFun credentials being embraced by SafeFun-designated venues as people look to transition back into a life worth living comfortably and confidently. The app is available to all ages, but parents must set-up their childs account in order to be activated.

About SafeFun

Developed by software veteran and hospitality entrepreneur Carson Hager, SafeFun was born out of a desire to help everyone get back to living with a full consumer-facing digital health passport that allows users to voluntarily share their COVID-19 test results and vaccine records with friends, family and coworkers. The community-focused social app combines industry expertise with technology, data science and ease with a mission to provide peace of mind that the people around you have had a recent negative COVID-19 test or vaccine. SafeFun aims to greatly reduce the risk of contracting COVID-19 by utilizing conservative safety guidelines set by the CDC, FDA, NIH and others in its algorithms to provide safe spaces for just about anywhere else a crowd might gather. For more information, please visit https://safefun.com.

Media assets, including images, video and FAQs please visit here

How to video here

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210317005702/en/

Media Contact: Mark Sullivan/Erin WoolseyPublic Content / 713.524.2800mark@public-content.com / erin@public-content.com

Source: SafeFun

See more here:

SafeFun Digital Health App Allows Users to Share Vetted Test Results and Vaccination Status to Instill Comfort and Confidence in a Post-Covid World -...

How much would your favourite movie change if it starred another actor? A recent trend on social media involves editing clips of movies with actors who originally do not star in them. The most recent one I watched was of comedian/actor Jim Carrey in the horror film, The Shining. I was confused by what I saw at first, for I knew that he wasnt originally in the movie, and yet, the actors facial movements and expressions seemed absolutely real, sans any obvious editing. It was only later that I found out that such videos are made using an Artificial Intelligence technology known as deepfake.

Its a form of AI technology used to create videos or images of fake events. The process works by uploading numerous still images of one person, and video footage of another person. By morphing the formers face with the latters, expressions and movements can be matched.

In a survey conducted by a cybersecurity platform, it was found that the number of deepfake videos are growing exponentially. The report suggests that such images/videos are doubling every six months, and they might not always be used for good. In September 2019, 15,000 deepfake videos were found online, and 96% of them had pornographic content.

In India, a video featuring a political party leader criticising another went viral on WhatsApp before the Delhi Assembly election in February. But after further speculation on the matter, the video was found to be made using deepfake software.

From amateur media enthusiasts to researchers, pornographic producers, and political parties, everyone is making content using deepfake technology. However, there are very few tools to identify such videos, and there are no strategies in place to prevent the circulation of such content.

Keeping in mind the rampant misinformation stemming from deepfakes, four students of Raisoni College of Engineering, Nagpur have come up with a solution that uses AI to identify manipulated videos, pictures, or audio.

After months of research and development, we have developed AI and computational neural networks to detect deepfakes with 96% accuracy, says Atharva Peshkar, a 3rd-year student of B.Tech Artificial Intelligence. Peskhar worked along with three other students on this project Rishita Mishra (3rd year, Electronics and Telecommunication), Yash Moharir (3rd-year Computer Science) and Atharva Khedkar (2nd year, BTech AI) and they named themselves Team Detectd.

In August 2020, the team began research on the kind of solutions that were already available. After speaking with a few cybersecurity experts, it was clear that there are advanced technologies to identify deepfake images, but not videos. The images are identified using softwares that pick up any distortion between the images background and foreground. This distortion can be anything; uneven shapes, lines, or facial features.

So, we took it as a challenge to work on a model which can analyse any form of media (video, image or audio) and accurately predict whether they are fake. For this, we used the method of Spatial and Temporal Data analysis. This identifies small changes in a video by conducting a frame-by-frame analysis, says Atharva Khedkar, adding that the method is considered to be accurate because it has a memory of previous frames.

After a few months of developing the machine learning model, the team tested a few real-life fake videos to test the accuracy. It did not cross the 50% mark, because we could not access enough data sets (videos) to expand our machine learning model, says Peshkar.

To perfect the system, Peshkar says he started reading research papers to understand other methods that are being used to process and analyse videos. By using some existing methods with the new model we have innovated, we were able to process videos effectively. After we started seeing results, we started using data sets provided on a website named Kaggle, to analyse fake videos and images, he says.

To date, the team has accurately processed over 7,000 videos with 96% accuracy. They are also partnering with Cyber Forensic Technologies (CFT), Nagpur to deploy their technology and help the organisation investigate cybercrimes. But we are still developing the model, making changes, and updating the system to achieve 100% accuracy, says Atharva Peshkar.

In January, Team Detectd enrolled in the Microsoft Imagine World Cup and submitted their research paper. They were selected as one of the four teams from India to participate in the World Cup. The team selected as the winner of the World Cup will also get a mentorship opportunity under Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.

Edited by Divya Sethu

Here is the original post:

Nagpur Students Innovate AI-Based Technology; Help Identify Deepfakes With Over 90% Accuracy - The Better India

SINGAPORE - Imagine you had about $800 left in your start-up's account and pay day was coming up for the staff.

Faced with this stark truth in August 2018, Mr Ender Jiang did what no one expected - he started busking at Hougang MRT station near his home.

The founder of media technology start-up Hiverlab is quick to add that, at the time, money from a project was on the way and he did have some savings. "But I still wanted to challenge myself and see how much I could push myself to respond to such a scenario," he says.

He took himself off the company payroll and busked with his harmonica twice a week for about a month, taking in "dozens of dollars every day", which boosted his morale. At the time, his company had three full-timers, including himself, and four interns.

"It's not about the result, it's also about the process," he says of the experience. "Since I'm very confident in having this resolve, I believe that any future challenge won't be an issue for me as well."

It looks like Mr Jiang, 37, will not have much time for busking for the time being, as Hiverlab is projecting to double its revenue when its financial year ends in July.

Its staff numbers have more than doubled from about 10 pre-Covid-19 to 28 now, and the company is expanding into another unit at its Toa Payoh headquarters. It has also gone regional, opening an office in Vietnam last year. Branches in India and Indonesia are in the works.

Hiverlab's products help businesses transform digitally using immersive technologies such as virtual reality (where users enter virtual environments) and augmented reality (where digital content is superimposed on the real world, like in the Pokemon Go app).

It has been a hard slog for Mr Jiang, a permanent resident originally from Tianjin, China. He came to Singapore in 2009 to work in a creative agency and set up Hiverlab five years later.

For the first three years or so, "the industry didn't really exist", he says. "People were also questioning whether there's any value in this technology."

Still, his team never lost faith and gradually built an impressive portfolio of big-name clients across 14 industries as diverse as banking and retail, as well as culture and religion. Its efforts have also been recognised by tech giants, and it has been accepted into the Microsoft Mixed Reality Partner Program and Facebook's Independent Software Vendor Program for Oculus, a virtual reality platform.

As the pandemic disrupted normal routines and accelerated digital transformation across all aspects of life, it also changed his company's direction as he "realised the importance and urgency of making technology very accessible to the user".

"Before Covid-19, people saw a lot of entertainment-driven movement in immersive tech. But during Covid-19, we felt we needed to help industries build valuable applications for business operations, communications and training," he says.

With these needs in mind, Hiverlab launched three products last year.

RealityCast allows users to create augmented-reality webinars; CloudExpo helps them build experiences online, such as a virtual showroom for products; and TheHub is a remote collaboration tool for workplaces that uses immersive technology. The new offerings have been well received, with several multinationals signing multi-year contracts, he says.

One of its notable projects last year was creating a personalised experience for the Singapore Management University's graduation ceremony, where graduates created avatars by uploading selfies and watched themselves "go onstage" to receive their certificates, among other immersive experiences.

More exciting innovations are on the cards, including one in the logistics industry that uses data "to help the business to grow, maintain and even expand, so (it) becomes an essential part of the business. So this is something we feel is really a great achievement".

Hiverlab gradually built an impressive portfolio of big-name clients across 14 industries as diverse as banking and retail, as well as culture and religion. ST PHOTO: KEVIN LIM

Certainly, Hiverlab seems well placed to play a bigger role in the immersive technology sector, which is projected to have a market value of US$209.2 billion (S$280 billion) by next year, according to the Infocomm Media Development Authority.

Even as he races to help companies transform digitally, Mr Jiang revels in finding new uses for technology in his personal life. He built a Covid-19 map of Singapore as a data visualisation project to share with friends last year.

Fatherhood has also spurred him to learn along with his children, from shooting a 3D documentary chronicling the development milestones of his sons, aged five and one, to designing a machine learning platform that encourages his elder son Edision to write Chinese characters correctly.

"I feel I'm growing my skills and, meanwhile, he's also growing his cognitive capability, so it is really a multi-beneficial journey," says Mr Jiang, who is married to a post-doctoral research fellow at the Agency for Science, Technology and Research.

"All these things I learnt are being applied to how we operate a company. So it's really a great benefit. I didn't feel any stress, I didn't feel any challenge because it's a fun part of my life."

Read the original here:

Prospering in the pandemic: Start-up boss once busked to feed himself - The Straits Times

Passengers line up at the American Airlines counter in Ronald Reagan National Airport in Arlington, Virginia, amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic is far from over, but as the promise of a brighter future moves from improbable to possible thanks to coronavirus vaccinations, a new question is emerging: Should countries and the private sector embrace the idea of a digital vaccine passport for travel, working and dining? Though proving you're vaccinated to travel isn't a new concept (some countries have required yellow fevervaccines for years), doing so for COVID-19 would be on a far grander scale than ever before.

Advocates say such passports would hasten the return of a "normal" world with travel, sporting events and dancing in packed nightclubs. Skeptics, however, predict they could result in discrimination and fraud, encourage risky behavior when the coronavirus is still raging, and be a privacy minefield. And the logistical challenges in implementing them are immense.

But some places, most notably the European Union, are pushing ahead with vaccine passport plans. As the debate continues, here's what we know, including which countries may be the first to use a passport as proof you got a coronavirus vaccine.

Keep track of the coronavirus pandemic.

They don't fully exist quite yet -- Iceland, though,has announced vaccinated visitors can skip testing and quarantine requirements -- a vaccine passport would be a form of documentation (likely digital) that would allow you to prove to border officials or another gatekeeper that you've been vaccinated against COVID-19.

The idea behind a vaccine passport is that it would allow a person to resume activities that are now restricted because of the coronavirus pandemic. Regaining the ability to travel freely is getting the most attention in the debate, but that's not the only proposed benefit. Advocates say they also could let you eat inside a restaurant, enjoy a cocktail in a bar, see a movie, go to the gym and attend concerts, sporting events, theater performances and other events that would put you in close proximity with a lot of other people. Schools could require it, and employers may mandate it for employees hoping to reenter the office.

Despite its name, the vaccine passport wouldn't be like the little booklet passport you present to immigration officials when you cross an international border. Rather, the concept is for a digital passport that's part of a mobile app. The app could also allow you to check entry requirements for a country (possibly after uploading your itinerary) and hold the status of your last COVID test and possibly other health information. Some are pushing for a paper version, and while paper vaccination passports for other diseases do exist, a digital version will likely win out (more on that later).

How the app would show your vaccination status is unclear as multiple apps are in development (see next section). A scannable barcode is a likely option.

How the app would verify your vaccination is another outstanding question. Perhaps you could take a photo of a paper vaccination certificate, but that method opens the door to possible forgery. A better option would be for vaccinated people to receive a digital record, but that would require vaccination sites to keep standardized records and make the data available to passport developers.

The IATA is developing its Travel Pass for its member airlines.

Currently a few businesses and organizations are working to create passports. Here's a partial list.

One is the International Air Transport Association, a trade group based in Montreal, Canada, that represents 290 airlines worldwide. The IATA is developing an app called Travel Pass that would let users upload documentation that proves vaccination status. It also would let passengers check health entry requirements for countries they plan to visit and find COVID testing centers either before they leave on a trip or when why arrive. Eventually, the Travel Pass also could incorporate biometric information like a thumbprint or facial recognition to prove a person's identity.

The IATA says 12 airlines including Qantas, Singapore Airlines, Qatar Airways and the parent company of British Airways arecurrently testing Travel Pass. The app should be released later in March, and the organization says airlines would have the option of integrating the data into their own apps.

IBM is developing a Digital Health Pass that would "enable organizations to verify health credentials for employees, customers and visitors entering their site based on criteria specified by the organization."

Clear, the registered traveler program that allows you to speed through security at US airports, is pushing the Health Pass feature in its app, as well. It recently partnered with The Commons Project Foundation to collect and manage vaccination records. The Commons Project Foundation working with the World Economic Forum also has its own app, CommonPass, which has signed on United Airlines, Cathay Pacific and JetBlue as initial partners. CommonPass also could link with the iOS and Android health apps.

Other possible apps include the AOKpass, Passport for COVID and Corona Pass.

Now playing: Watch this: When will I get my COVID-19 vaccine?

6:55

It could be. One potential problem could be countries and airlines accepting only some apps, forcing travelers to upload their vaccination records multiple times. But we'll have to see how that plays out.

That's unclear at this moment, and it's something that could get messy if some countries decide to exclude a certain vaccine if they haven't approved it. The European Union has already said as such, which I'll discuss below.

Not yet, at least on a cross-border basis. But Israel, which is leading the world in vaccination rates, has launched a "green passport" that gives holders access to places like gyms, theaters, hotels, concerts and synagogues.

It's a broad coalition with much of the push now coming from Europe. Denmark and Swedenhave both said they will develop vaccine passports for travel, and Estonia is working with the World Health Organization on a solution. Popular tourist destinations like Greece, Spain and Cyprus are on board, as well.

On March 1, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen tweeted that the EU would present a legislative proposal this month for a Digital Green Pass that would include proof that a person has been vaccinated. Two weeks later on March 17, the European Commission released a proposal for resuming free travel within the bloc for vaccinated EU citizens and residents. There will likely be some restrictions -- currently, the EU hasn't approved Russia's Sputnik V and China's Sinopharm vaccines for use, and vaccinated people from other countries would still be barred from entry. The Green Pass could be ready by June.

Outside of the EU, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said his government is reviewing their use. China also is advocating for vaccine passports as are other tourism-dependent countries like Thailand and Aruba.

The US has yet to take a clear stance. On Jan. 21 as part of an executive order aimed at curbing the pandemic, President Joe Biden directed his cabinet to assess the feasibility of linking COVID-19 vaccination to the current International Certificates of Vaccination or Prophylaxis used by the World Health Organization (more on that later). The US alreadyrequires a negative COVID testfor international travelers.

But in a briefing on March 9, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said the private sector would likely drive any use of passports in the country. "There are lots of ideas that will come from the private sector and nonprofits," she said. "We welcome those. But our focus from the federal government is on getting more people vaccinated, and that's where we feel we can use our resources best."

Even with the EU's push some member countries like France and Germany aren't so eager. And around the world, the idea has yet to gain traction in developing countries with less access to the vaccine or with economies not dependent on tourism.

Though the WHO is exploring how a vaccine passport might work, in a statement on Feb. 5 it said, "At the present time, it is WHO's position that national authorities and conveyance operators should not introduce requirements of proof of COVID-19 vaccination for international travel as a condition for departure or entry, given that there are still critical unknowns regarding the efficacy of vaccination in reducing transmission." The WHO gives more reasons for its stance, which are included below.

Qantas said it will require international passengers to be vaccinated.

Very much so. Airlines, led by the IATA, cruise lines and others in the travel and hospitality industry are big supporters. Qantas, for example, will require visitors to Australia to have a vaccine to fly. Australian borders remain closed at the moment, but given the country's strict quarantine policy and success in suppressing the pandemic, it's not surprising.

There is a big incentive for airlines to endorse the idea of a vaccine passport. Keep in mind that airlines are responsible for ensuring passengers have the correct documentation to fly to any country before they board a flight. In a sense, that makes an airline check-in desk the equivalent of a border crossing. And if an airline happens to fly someone to a country they can't enter because they're not vaccinated, the carrier is responsible for flying them back home at its own expense.

Cruise lines are motivated to support the use of passports given that cruise ships like the Diamond Princess were large COVID hotspots when the pandemic began and less recently for other diseases like norovirus.

Advocates say there are a few reasons. They could:

The problem, though, is that these reasons aren't perfectly in line. So, which will be the priority? That's something we'll have to decide.

There are a few critical ones here, as well.

The WHO Yellow Card lists a bearer's vaccination status.

A vaccination as a requirement to enter a country is not a new concept. The affected diseases include not just yellow fever, but also meningitis and polio. Travelers can record their shots and prove their status with the WHO's International Certificate of Vaccination or Prophylaxis (also called a Carte Jaune or Yellow Card), which is a vaccination passport.

But COVID-19 is different because it's happening on a vastly wider scale than something like yellow fever. Only a handful of countries, all in equatorial Africa, require a yellow fever vaccination for all travelers. And a set of other countries, like China, Australia, South Africa and Colombia only require it if you're arriving from a country with a yellow fever risk (the WHO has a comprehensive list of vaccination requirements by country).

Advocates say there are a few reasons to go digital. Paper passports would be more subject to forgery, and they'd be more difficult to replace if lost, stolen or damaged. And it's likely that border officials would be able to check digital passports quicker than they would paper certificates. That would help at busy international airports where multiple flights with hundreds of people each can arrive within minutes of each other.

There's no set timetable yet for the introduction or adoption of any kind of vaccine passport. But once a major country starts requiring one and there's some consensus on how it would work, we'll likely see some quick traction.

No. Social distancing and mask wearing are still absolutely essential for fighting the spread of the virus and protecting the health of you and others. And they'll remain that way for many months.

The information contained in this article is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as health or medical advice. Always consult a physician or other qualified health provider regarding any questions you may have about a medical condition or health objectives.

Excerpt from:

Vaccine passports: How they could be used to give COVID-19 travel the green light - CNET

Mike Winkelmann, better known as Beeple, has sold the most expensive work of digital art in history.

It's part of an explosion in the market for NFTs, or non-fungible tokens digital tokens that prove ownership of things like Beeple's image that you can't even touch.

"I honestly, like, I never thought I could sell my work," Beeple said in an interview at his home in South Carolina. "Kind of late September, early October, people kept hitting me on being like, 'Oh, you got to look at this NFT thing.'"

Two months later, in December, he netted $3.5 million selling art backed by NFTs.

In March, Christie's, a 225-year-old auction house that previously only sold physical art, auctioned an entirely digital piece by Beeple. It sold for $69,346,250.

"If everybody wants it, well, then it has value," Beeple said.

The speculation in this market is so wild that when a $95,000 Banksy piece was recently burned and turned into an NFT, the NFT was sold for nearly $400,000. A cat meme recently sold for $600,000. To understand who's paying these prices, it's important to understand NFTs.

"I really look at NFTs as like a blank slate," he said. "And so it's sort of like saying, do you think a webpage is valuable? Well, I don't know. It could be, or it could be totally worthless."

NFT stands for non-fungible token, essentially a digital signature backed by blockchain technology that proves ownership of something.

Unlike Bitcoin, which are all identical by design, NFTs are unique. To some degree, what NFTs offer for sale is the idea of scarcity. It's possible to buy a token that represents art in the physical world, but NFTs also back digital assets like an image or a tweet.

"So May 1, 2007, I started doing a sketch a day, every single day, start to finish, and uploading it online," Winkelmann said. "And after a year of that, I learned a lot about drawing. Like, I got much better at drawing. I was still very, very bad, as you can see from the Christie's piece. But I learned a lot."

Beeple's popularity caught the attention of Christie's in December. They decided on a collage of his first 5,000 days of work that forms a square of 21,069 x 21,069 pixels. To help make his digital art more accessible, back in December, Beeple provided a physical product along with the NFT for his digital art. But for Christie's, being completely digital is what made Beeple's work unique and all the more valuable.

"It's really a radical gesture to offer for sale something without any object, and we might as well lean into that," said Noah Davis, specialist in Post-War & Contemporary Art at Christie's.

In the media, Beeple has been compared to artists like Banksy and Warhol, though his paid work has been as a graphic designer, with clients like Louis Vuitton, Nike and Apple.

"So I don't really like the term artist because it sounds very pretentious and douche-y," Beeple said.

"There's an interesting parallel between Mike and Andy Warhol in the way that their careers developed," Davis said. "Andy also started as an illustrator working in, basically, a gig economy."

Critics have compared him with artists like Warhol, Banksy, and the Italian artist who taped a banana to the wall of a Paris art gallery.

"I've been thinking about the banana a lot, talking a lot about the banana," Davis said. "It's the dumbest idea, and you are basically celebrating a lack of creativity, like the bare minimum of creativity, but with Mike, it's a ritual assignment of value that is celebrating 13 years of hard work of him doing this for no financial gain."

For Beeple, the pace of change has been mind blowing. Back in the olden days of 2020, Beeple's NFT-backed "Crossroads" sold for $66,666.

"At the time it was like, oh my God, I sold a piece for 66,000," Beeple said. "It was just, like, insane."

In December, he sold $3.5 million worth of art in one day. Then, on February 26, Crossroads was resold on a secondary NFT market for $6.6 million, of which Beeple got a 10% cut.

Then in March, Christie's sold the 5,000 image montage by Beeple for $69.3 million.

Read the original here:

We talked with Beeple about how NFT mania led to his $69 million art sale - Business Insider

09 March 2021

Investment in Industry 4.0 technologies with standards-based platforms supporting edge infrastructure will enable critical machine and plant data to be monitored and analysed on site, offering better latency for decision making. Meanwhile, the cloud is able to use data provided by the IIoT to support higher analytical performance, especially where multiple plants are uploading data.

Industrial enterprises should really be looking to achieve connectivity from the edge to the cloud to allow for fast decision making based on real-time edge data, while also benefitting from higher resilience and secure remote access to mass storage data, reports, updates and notifications, offered by the cloud.

Greg Hookings, head of business development digitalisation at Stratus Technologies, agrees with this need, pointing out that, while focusing just on edge computing will give valuable real-time insight into operations on the plant-floor, without linking edge computing to the cloud the benefits of consolidating and processing larger amounts of contextualised data are lost. He said: Without edge to cloud connectivity, artificial intelligence (AI) and broader digital transformation approaches, that require data from cross-business functions, are lost.

At the other end of the spectrum, a cloud-only approach can reduce efficient management at a local level, continued Hookings. While the enterprise would be able to process large amounts of data with information from the entire supply chain, operators at the machine level would be reliant on bandwidth and availability to have access to information. Even in areas with high bandwidth, the data collected by machines needs to be sent to the cloud for analysis and so latency becomes a factor reducing real-time reactivity. In some manufacturing processes such a delay might be enough to lose an entire batch, or bring production to a halt.

Bringing these two disciplines together in a combined solution means that, at the machine level, operators have all the information they need as soon as they need it and large amounts of non-time critical data can be sent to the cloud for analysis. What this creates is an enterprise with a global, contextualised understanding of its processes and an enabled, flexible, agile workforce, equipped to overcome challenges in real-time, said Hookings.

Taking steps

Slawomir Dziedziula, technical systems engineer at Panduit EMEA, believes that there are anumber of steps that will ensure successful data flow from the edge to the cloud. These include:

Plan and implement a robust and high-quality physical infrastructure that is suitable for the harsh environmental conditions of the plant.

Design for standardised and normalised data and protocols to ensure data extraction is simplified and consistent.

Support this with stable and redundant network connectivity between edge and the cloud.

Decide what information and tasks will be analysed locally using real time computing.

Select a suitable analytical platform and deploy policies to decide which data is sent to the cloud.

Create a central point of control and decide who can access data and from where it can be accessed.

With a robust development process an edge structure and cloud solution can maximise an organisations capability operationally at a physical site level and corporately in planning, implementation and analytics, said Dziedziula. More data analysed faster will benefit the business.

Steve Pavlosky, director, digital product management at GE Digital, advises that any edge to cloud integration strategy should start with the end in mind. Consider whether the data will be used for plant level decision making or just in aggregated form from across the enterprise or fleet of assets, he said. If the data will be used locally, a solution to aggregate it, such as a historian, can provide the basis for storage, normalisation, and access for local use. In addition, a historian can enable the right subset of data at the right frequency and the right aggregation level to be sent on for cloud-level analytics. Applications that derive value from the aggregation of distributed data only in a centralised way require a different IIoT approach.

Pavlosky advises that companies embarking on an edge to cloud strategy should also consider the following points: How big a team will be needed to build, and later maintain, this solution and how much time will it take to build and test the solution? What type of skills will be needed on the team and what are the scale requirements? In addition, security should always be top of mind.

Once these questions have been answered, companies can reduce risk by using supported software that leverages the latest secure-by-design technologies to minimise the threat of cyberattacks, said Pavlosky.

Generally, he advises that an integration strategy should reside on three main pillars:

Security: While the cloud is largely secure and the OT network should be secure by this point, the only area of vulnerability is the edge gateway device and the pipe to the cloud. Ensuring highest levels of security at the edge becomes the foremost consideration.

Scalability: The edge platform should scale with a companys growth plan and most importantly, it should be priced appropriately.

Flexibility: An edge platform should be flexible enough to work with both legacy and new systems. The edge platform should allow the flexibility to port existing apps onto the platform regardless of the language they were originally written in.

A suitable strategy

Offering his thoughts on how to identify a suitable integration strategy to ensure data flows from the edge to the cloud, Hookings says that this will be unique to each enterprise and will depend on the existing connectivity, the legacy systems, the software languages in use and most importantly, the desired outcome. The best way to approach data connectivity is to consider it in terms of a broader digital transformation journey that involves every function of the business, he said. In this way, he believes that the approaches adopted will underpin future development and enable the continuous, exponential development that new technologies offer. This neednt be overly complex, he said. From a data point of view, simple principles, such as using edge computing platforms that offer virtualisation, simplicity, autonomy and an intrinsically secure deployment can offer the versatility required to link to existing or planned business software in the data centre, and/or in the cloud. The right place to start is where ROI can most readily be achieved the low hanging fruit. If you know the cost of IT-related downtime, for example, eliminating or drastically reducing it can have an immediate impact on the bottom line.

Barriers to data flow

Marco Zampolli, Industrial IoT solution architect & senior PSM at Advantech Europe highlights the fact that the physical location of plant items may make certain technologies impractical or cost prohibitive when it comes to ensuring edge to cloud data flow. He said: Fundamentally, the communication path must be reliable and must offer enough bandwidth to transfer all the generated data in a timely manner. But, this will mean different things in different situations, and so the value of the data must also be considered. Offering an example, Zampolli points that it is likely that engineers would want to monitor the temperature of a critical process much more closely, and would therefore accept a higher cost of data collection, than say for the level of fuel supply to a back-up generator, which changes at a much slower rate.

Processing can be added to filter and transform data as it passes towards the cloud, and this means it is relatively easy to morph the data into any desired data model and protocol as it progresses up the chain, continued Zampolli. However, what is possible is ultimately constrained by the characteristics of the plant itself, so the architecture needs to be optimised to maximise connectivity at the plant level, and then edge processing can be applied to transform this data into a unified model as early as possible. Operating in this way gives the flexibility to optimise the balance between speed, reliability and coverage of the data and the cost of the processing and communication systems needed to recover and process it.

It is an unfortunate fact that, with so many legacy systems in place in plants, there will always be barriers to achieving edge to cloud integration. Hoping to find a factory without legacy systems is unrealistic, said Zampolli. They conspire against the implementation of IIoT architectures simply because they were created to execute a specific task often without any consideration about exchanging information. Even when information exchange is supported in legacy equipment, it could take place using a plethora of different, proprietary, protocol standards, often designed to only be used for local physical connections.

How can this problem be overcome? Zampolli advises the introduction of a layer of intelligence at the edge, close enough to the plant to have physical connectivity to it, which can then translate bidirectionally between any disparate and mutually incompatible protocols into a unified model for onward transmission, adding the necessary error detection and security characteristics. This edge layer needs two main features, he said. Flexibility for easy adaptation to different legacy systems, wherever possible by configuration rather than programming; and a small and industrial footprint to be close to the data generation without interfering with the process.

Hookings highlighted a legacy equipment issue that can be overcome with edge computing security. There is widespread concern that adding previously un-networked operational technology to the enterprise level network can increase security risks by adding more points of vulnerability. However, by deploying the right edge computing hardware to previously unconnected operational technologies, it is possible to protect both the physical asset through restricted access and the cybersecurity with in-built protection. A network is only as secure as its weakest node and this is often legacy equipment. Deploying edge computing can help to bring ageing hardware up to modern standards of protection without huge expense.

Whats in it for the engineer?

So, how might cloud to edge integration benefit the role of the control engineer? Edge and cloud computing both have their places in industrial operations, I believe that edge to cloud connectivity will result in the emergence of a hybrid professional, continued Hookings. The gap between IT and OT has continued to diminish and this has had an effect on the role of the control engineer. The challenges that once only faced programmers in the IT world now affect control engineers as more businesses enable digital transformation. A control engineer no longer just focuses on configuring SCADA, for example. They have to configure the entire process all the way to real-time asset control.

Zampolli believes that the seamless integration of edge and cloud, and the corresponding analysis tools which can be brought to bear on the resulting consolidated data lake can significantly benefit the control engineer. Big data analysis will show in an automated way the correlation of the different variables in a production environment irrespective of the complexity, he said. The control engineer will be able to consider optimisation not just of each individual machine, but instead of the entire process, adjusting the performance of the individual elements to benefit the whole. Comparison of performance across production lines or across different factories, shift patterns or raw material variations will lead to more subtle insight into what is really important to improve output and yields. Best of all, this can occur in real time changes can be implemented and tested, their effects judged and, if positive, can be rolled out across multiple lines in minutes rather than weeks or months taken by traditional, paper based, data collection and reporting.

With such a solution, instead of being viewed as an operational role, primarily concerned with keeping the factory running, the control engineers position is elevated into a critical strategic asset, focusing on continuous process improvement based in evidential analysis, and using their knowledge of the process and plant to create, test and deploy ever more flexible and efficient working practices, concludes Zampolli.

Commenting on how edge to cloud integration can benefit the control engineer, Dziedziula believes that the new level of aggregated data analytics is key, especially where multiple sites are contributing data, to provide benefits such as predictive maintenance based on real time and historic data across the organisation. He said: Simplified and secure access to site data from anywhere and any authorised device, reduces the need for routine on-site inspection. A major benefit is handing maintenance and support for the IT platform to the cloud provider, allowing engineers to refocus on performing their core activities more effectively.

The last word goes to Hookings, who believes that, by focusing on real-time asset control, the machine level can utilise the deployed edge computing to improve overall equipment efficiency (OEE). Integration right up to the cloud means that the control engineer can make changes and improvements that apply to the entire enterprise. No longer will changes on the plant floor be driven just by the business requirements of the boardroom indeed, the opposite will also be true business changes will be driven by new insight, flexibility, and capability from the plant-floor.

The digital transformation drives the needs of customers just as it drives capabilities for manufacturers. Customers expect faster delivery times at lower prices and the planet requires all of this in a more sustainable, energy efficient way. Enabling edge to cloud integration allows enterprises to use the expertise at machine level to make significant gains in all of these areas without massive, costly changes to production processes. Moreover, well planned and executed digital strategies will help form a digital backbone that enables the progressive change of the digital transformation journey to bear fruit at every step.

Follow this link:

Making edge to cloud integration pay - Control Engineering Website