Category: International

Niantic’s ‘Codename: Urban Legends’ wants to be the first great 5G AR game

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The first experience meant to demonstrate that high-quality augmented reality games could be the killer app for 5G wireless networks is here. Last summer, Pokémon Go creator Niantic announced it was teaming up with an international roster of wireless carriers to expand the availability of high-quality AR experiences for 5G networks . Now, seven months later, some of those carriers’ customers can finally play a demo version of the first game to emerge from the alliance. Dubbed Codename: Urban Legends , the demo was built on the same global location-based AR platform powering megahits like Pokémon  Go and Harry Potter: Wizards Unite . The goal of the project is to showcase the attractiveness of high-quality AR games on the 5G networks of a subset of alliance partners—Verizon, Deutsche Telekom, and Globe Telecom. Although Niantic isn’t yet saying when the full version of Codename: Urban Legends will be available, the release of the demo is an important milestone as the alliance moves toward a broader deployment of 5G-ready AR experiences. Each of the networks is doubtless eager to prove to customers that it’s worth paying for access to the next generation of wireless network. “Many of today’s 4G applications will simply work better or evolve in 5G,” Ross Rubin, principal analyst at Reticle Research, told me last year when the alliance was first revealed. At the time Rubin said he believed AR might be the only “pillar” technology that could “fundamentally change how we interact with the world if it can gain access to the high-bandwidth, low-latency, and eventually broad coverage of 5G.” Since then, he’s concluded that cloud gaming may also be a winner on 5G networks. Still, Rubin now says, “AR has the most transformative, long-term potential in driving consumers’ interest.” Niantic’s alliance with 5G carriers might hint at where it will go with its hardware efforts. And that’s exactly what Niantic is hoping to show the world. As its CEO, John Hanke, said last year, the goal of the alliance is to marry the edge-computing element of the carriers’ 5G networks with Niantic’s platform in order to let millions of people play the advanced games and other applications that will eventually be available. According to Niantic, alliance partners’ 5G networks will deliver one-tenth the latency of 4G networks as well as the ability for 10 times as many people to play games concurrently. Read More …

Disney put the brakes on going back to the movies. Here’s why

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For many months now, the much-anticipated Marvel movie Black Widow has sat boldly on the movie release calendar. Slated to come out in theaters on May 7, the film was a sign that Disney, the studio releasing the film, felt confident that the ebbing state of the pandemic meant that fans would swarm to see the film in-person, driving up box-office receipts. More than any other film set for release this year, Black Widow was a harbinger of better times ahead for the movie business, which has been severely crippled by COVID-19.   On Tuesday, Disney dashed those hopes.   The studio abruptly announced on March 23 that it was not only moving Black Widow back to July 9, but that it will be simultaneously releasing the film on its streaming service, Disney Plus, for an additional $30 for subscribers, as it’s done with films such as Mulan and Raya and the Last Dragon . Disney also said that Cruella , which stars Emma Stone as Cruella de Vil, will also get the day-and-date theatrical-streaming treatment, though the film will   remain on its original release date of May 28.   Other changes included pushing the next Pixar film, Luca , straight to streaming on June 18, and delaying films including the Ryan Reynolds comedy Free Guy and another Marvel film, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings .   The news was a major blow to the exhibition business (to put it mildly), as well as a sign that the world’s emergence from COVID-19 is slow, laborious, and prone to unforeseen shifts—such as the new strains of COVID-19 that are ravishing Europe at the moment, sending countries back into lockdown. This gradual, up-and-down emergence from the pandemic, as opposed to the quick, clean pivot everyone would love, is evident in current movie theater attendance. While recent releases like Tom and Jerry and Croods 2 have proven that there’s pent-up demand to get back into theaters, in the United States the reality is that only 52% of theaters are currently open. Those that are operating are doing so at between 25% and 50% capacity. Anecdotally, that means that parents who couldn’t wait to break out of the house and go see Raya and the Last Dragon with their kids last weekend in cities like Los Angeles, where vaccinations are moving along at a steady clip, found themselves in empty-feeling theaters that were nonetheless sold out. That’s great for audiences, safety-wise. But not so great for Disney looking at all that lost revenue. The fact that Raya was also on Disney Plus was a consolation for the studio, as it now will be with Black Widow . Read More …

Vaccine passports are coming. Here’s why they’re controversial

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Vaccine passports—proof that you’ve been vaccinated against COVID-19—are at this point an inevitability. Countries including Seychelles, Cyprus, Georgia, Romania, Poland, Iceland, and Estonia will require travelers to have a COVID-19 vaccination to enter. Now, lots of tech companies are working on building apps that certify a traveler is vaccinated. But there are a few problems with vaccine passports, and the World Health Organization has voiced its distaste for the concept. The main concern is that vaccine distribution is not globally equitable and vaccine passports could create social stratification. “At the present time the use of certification of vaccination as a requirement for travel is not advised because quite simply vaccination is just not available enough around the world and is not available certainly on an equitable basis,” said Michael Ryan, head of the WHO’s health-emergencies program, at a press conference. The organization says that it thinks providing vaccinated people with an official certification is valuable for public health purposes, but that vaccination should not entitle a person to more freedoms than an unvaccinated person. This is particularly true, the WHO notes, because there is no proof that any of the COVID-19 vaccines prevent transmission of COVID-19 Read More …

How a former Apple executive is streaming international chefs into your kitchen

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It might seem odd that a company that offers virtual cooking classes with chefs from around the world who whip up exotic, local dishes has its roots in Buffalo wings, but that’s where the story began for Jenn Nicken , the founder of The Chef & The Dish .   Nicken, after all, hails from Buffalo, New York, where she says “wings” are the equivalent of pizza on Mulberry Street or poutine in Toronto. “They’re a part of your life,” she says. “You go for wings and beer. They’re at birthday parties.”   This wasn’t something Nicken was acutely aware of when she was working at Apple back in the iPod days. She helped launch that product across North America and then moved on to become the head of marketing for Apple/iTunes’s entertainment division in Canada, where she’s now based. But when she decided to shake up her career in 2015, enrolling in cooking classes and traveling around the world to learn more about international cuisine, she began to see her hometown—and its native dish—in a new light.   The Chef & The Dish founder and CEO, Jenn Nicken [Photo: The Chef & The Dish] During her travels, she would try wings in different places, but something was off. “The further I got from Buffalo, the more I realized wings weren’t the same. It’s a dish that’s so simple but when you get it in the place it originated from, that’s what makes it so wonderful. Recipes that you get at the source deserve to be protected and celebrated. Just like Bolognese sauce is best in Bologna.”   This revelation—along with the joy of learning to cook Bolognese sauce in Italy as well as Pad Thai in Thailand—led her to quit her job at Apple and launch The Chef & The Dish in 2016. The company offers live, online private cooking classes—$299 for a couple; group classes are also available—with chefs based in such locales as Peru, Laos, Turkey and Italy Read More …

India’s punishing new social media rules could be a nightmare for the tech giants

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In late February, India, the second-largest internet economy, released new regulation that is supposed to hold social media platforms “accountable against their misuse and abuse.” The new digital media rules aim to tighten the government’s grip over how social networks regulate their content. Along with the changes, the country’s ruling administration has also reportedly dispatched written warnings threatening to jail Facebook and Twitter’s India-based employees if they fail to comply. The message is clear: Follow the government’s orders or risk prosecution. In a punishing move, tech companies only have three months to update their platforms to comply.  As the lines between political speech, hate speech, and misinformation blur, social media platforms have increasingly found themselves in a constant censorship battle with local authorities. Similar rules to India’s have been rolled out by many other countries before, like Germany, whose NetzDG law mandates removal of illegal content within 24 hours, and Australia, which penalizes social networks for not taking down abusive and violent posts in a timely manner.  But India’s new law edges closer to the digital censorship of autocratic nations such as Russia and China, and could endanger the very foundation of free expression online.  At its core, the new rules remove legal protections for tech companies over what their users post. If an “unlawful” piece of information—anything that’s prohibited under the country’s law— is reported by the local authorities, the new regulation requires that social networks act, else face the loss of immunity and potentially criminal prosecution.  That might sound reasonable on the surface. Read More …