Neural Networks Model Audience Reactions to Movies

Deep learning software models the audience reactions to the movies

Blockbusters and tentpole movies have become a mega event not just for the fans but also for the studios. A huge amount of money is stake when movie are released but for some time now movies are failing to get desired results as per the expectations of studio executives.

Engineers at the Disney Research had developed a new deep learning software which makes effective use of the neural networks to map and access the viewers’ facial expressions to the movies. This particular software is result of collaboration between Disney Research and researchers from the Caltech and Simon Fraser University.

This new age deep learning software will arm studios with the knowledge of how movies are going to perform on box office through utilizing a newly developed algorithm called factorized variational auto encoders (FVAEs).

How it works?

This software makes use of the deep learning to translate the images of highly complex objects automatically. These objects can be anything from the human face, forests, trees to moving objects and this software essentially turns their images into sets of numerical data through a process called encoding or latent representation.

Thereby they were able to understand how human react to the movies by understanding how much they are smiling or how worries they were in a particular scene and so on. In next stage these neural networks are fed with the metadata which helps in bringing better understanding of the audience responses.

Researchers are all set to showcase their findings to the world at the upcoming event called IEE Conference ion Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition in July.

Futures prospects and application of this new software

Research team has performed extensive testing of this software to make the best use of the neural networks to unlock how human perceive movies in real life. This software was applied in more than 150 showings of nine blockbusters ranging from The Jungles Book, Big Hero 6 to Stars Wars: The Force Awakens.

In the 400 seater cinema hall researchers made use of four infrared cameras to make out the audience face reactions in the dark. The result of these testing provided highly astonishing findings with the help of some 16 million individual facial images captured by the cameras.


Lead researcher has stressed the amount of data collected by the software is too much for a person to comprehend on its own. The FVAEs effectively understood the nueral networks and brought some of the greatest finding for the researchers. It helped in understanding how audience reacted to certain scenes and how movie making can be enhanced to strike cord with audience hot points.

This software will not be just limited to study the audience reaction to the movies but it can also find application in analyzing varied things or places like forest wherein it can state how trees responds to different climatic and environmental changes. Later on this very finding can be utilized in creating animated simulation of the flora all around us with precision.

‘CopyCat’ Malware Infected 14 Million Google Android Devices

“CopyCat”, a harmful software campaign, affected millions of devices that run on the Android operating system by Google. In this defect, more than a million dollars were brought in through false and fake advertising and app installations, as stated by the researchers at the Israeli cybersecurity firm Check Point Software Technologies.

This operation peaked during April and May 2016. It infected about 14 million devices and raked in about $1.5 million in just a matter of two months. The outbreak seemed to have spread to devices through third party app stores and phishing attacks, instead of the official Google play app.

A mobile security researcher at Check Point named Daniel Padon informed Fortune that his team conveyed the operation to Google in March almost immediately after discovering it. By that time Google had controlled much of the problem.

When CopyCat infection was rampant everywhere, the malware got hold of “root” control for about 8 million devices and used that authority to supply more than 100 million fake ads and install 4.9 million apps on various devices, garnering considerable amount of revenues for cybercriminals. The malware was able to do this with the help of a few exploits to gain access to security holes in Android versions 5 and earlier and then later by taking over the "Zygote" which is a part of Android systems that handle app launches.

Check Point researchers stated that is this first malware discovered that utilises this technique. They also noted that this tactic was first used by Triada which was a money-stealing malware. Researchers have in fact traced the CopyCat operation back to a 3-year-old ad-tech start-up that was based in Guangzhou, China called MobiSummer. The infrastructure, remote services and code signatures were shared by the malware operators and the start-up, as told by the researchers, although they were not sure whether the company acted on this deliberately or unconsciously.

The CopyCat malware mainly harmed devices in Southeast Asia, countries such as India, Pakistan and Bangladesh although about 280,000 people in the United States were also impacted when it was at its peak. Researchers also observed that the adware deliberately avoided pursuing China-based users, thus deducing that the culprits might have been based there itself and functioned this way to avoid being caught by the local authorities.

Aaron Stein who is a Google spokesperson, stated that the company has been keeping an eye out for any variant of the CopyCat malware for the last few years. He also added that a security feature made official by the company in May called Google Play Protect that scrutinizes and abolishes harmful apps from devices, was now able to immunize phones against these attacks even if they are functioning on an earlier version of Android.

Stein also said that CopyCat is modified version of a larger malware family that they have been on the lookout since 2015. Every time a new variant makes an appearance, they upgrade their detection systems to safeguard their users. Play Protect defends users from the family of malware and any apps that were carrying the CopyCat malware have not been circulated via Play, Stein said. This tactic of fake advertising has become a profitable way for offenders to make some cash online, examples are the “Hummingbird” ad fraud scam which helped fraudsters make $300,000 per month and the most recent one being “Methbot” which robbed up to $5 million a day.

Your Phone Is Your Most Vulnerable Gadget. Protect It Now

Smartphones – Gold Mine of Data/Secret/Password

Often we tend to be very cautious in safeguarding our homes and cars, putting in much effort for the security of the same. However we tend to overlook the fact that the smartphones which is our constant companion and a device with sensitive details could also be tampered.

No smartphone can be unhackable and all are not so permeable. Several of the companies have been working on designing devices which would make it difficult to peer into it. Smartphones are said to be gold mine of data, secrets and passwords, all on the one side of a four digit passcode or a fingerprint scan locks which could be picked by anyone with easy utilising the right tools.

General Manager of mobile solutions at BlackBerry, Alex Thurber had commented that `if the entire United States government wants to hack your phone, they are going to get in’. Some start-up firms like Sirin Labs who had designed a phone known as Solarin, have been utilising chip-level 256-bit AED encryption – translation: intelligence agency-grade puzzlement, as a precaution against breaches. The Solarin tends to have a switch in order to trigger a `secure zone’ that kills all features with the exception of the encrypted phone calls and texting.

Real Challenge – Super-Secure Smartphones

Blackphone of Silent Circle seems to have the same feature known as Spaces which enables the user to keep their personal life isolated from their work life, detached from their surveillance. Another company – Turing Robotic Industries has been functioning with big-name safety dealers in preinstalling defensive software which would be making Android phones less penetrable.

The Boeing Black which is a hyper secure smartphone designed for the defense group is said to use virtual-desktop software which tends to keep all the data of the devices on a dissimilar machine to avoid someone getting into Black and find nothing there. Moreover the phone also tends to have a self-destruct routine which gets activated should someone attempt to crack it open.

 CEO of Turing Robotic Industries, Syl Chao stated that the real challenge is in making supersecure smartphones adequately cool for customers to have them. He further added that `people tend to care about security, but they also have a lot on their mind and don’t want to think about security.

Smartphones/Apps Updated

It is essential to keep one’s phone and apps updated since Google, Apple together with the app developers tend to release new code regularly as they seem to play futile game against exploits. Moreover one should also be aware of what your phone tends to be doing. There are some devices such as the Blackphone which can convey which apps are utilising which sensors and radios.

 Should the user be on another Android handset, apps such as DCentral I tend to do something identical but not so meticulously. Besides this, there are some simple tips of not clicking the sketchy link, of never handing your phone to a stranger and refrain from being in public hot spots. If one makes it hard for the attacker they may simply move on and your data can be saved from getting into the wrong hands.

Google Blocks Lets You Make Gorgeous Low-Poly VR Art

Google Blocks Latest Virtual Reality App

The latest virtual reality app by Google called Google Blocks allows users to make colourful 3D models in Virtual Reality or VR and has recently been available for free on the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. It is supposed to be spontaneous enough for beginners to use, but at the same time it is fully featured to help make artistic models, similar to the ones Google has gathered in a gallery that is online. Users are able to export objects and can view them online itself, or can also place them in 3D scenes both inside and outside virtual reality. Visitors are also able to spin objects around to generate animated GIFs that can be downloaded, on Google’s site.

Blocks is a recent one of the many design tools that work inside VR. It is on the same lines as Oculus’ sculpting app Medium and corresponds to Google’s popular Tilt Brush 3D painting tool. You can also use both of these together as you have the ability to export art from both Tilt Brush and Blocks. However, the art style appearance is very different. On one hand Tilt Brush gives the delusion of sculpting with paint and light whereas Blocks lets you create low-poly art in a colourful style that is used by Google in its Daydream VR interface.

Sadly for Google Daydream users, Blocks is at present restricted to only high-end headsets, which have complicated hand controls and let you move around creations. But this may not always be the case as Google is now making available all-in-one Daydream headsets that could compete with the Rift and Vive’s feature set.

Virtual Reality creators envisage a future in which users can build fantastic environments with beautiful objects in it. But in order to do that, these objects have to be created by somebody and for this a basic knowledge of 3D modelling software is needed. Google, through its design tool Blocks, seems to have found a solution to this setback.

With the help of Blocks, Google aims to give the freedom to its users to use VR and create, share and modify 3D objects promptly and without any hassle. At present, the time it takes to build a 3D object is so tiresome and it is near to impossible to achieve it.

What Google Blocks creators have done is learn about the textures and lighting and just use the most fundamental colours and shapes to see how far one can get. The user interface of Blocks depends on the motion-sensing controllers of the HTC Vive or Oculus Rift. Unfortunately, it is not available for mobile users at present.

Blocks may appear to be less proficient than Oculus’ own VR sculpting app, Medium, which is powerful, but because of its minimalism it is more user-friendly. Intricately detailed objects have low-poly aesthetics which maintains high visual consistency as well as performance.

A lower count of polygon enables the 3D objects created in Blocks to run on not only powerful VR headsets such as Vive and Rift but also on low-cost, phone-enabled assembles like Google’s Daydream View or Samsung’s Gear VR. Google Blocks is therefore a fun tool to use and like Tilt Brush a brilliant introduction to VR.

Teachers 'Google' Tech Solutions

Image Credit: The Valdosta Daily Times

Google started to teach Tech things to the Teachers

Digital education is the key to success! With a permanent "future workplace" in many european countries, Google wants to build a first solid foundation for its worldwide education initiative and started to teach primarily to teachers. And also the tech giant is planning to provide the permanent “Future Workshops” in many countries. As an initiative, it started to teach the tech things to 250 teachers througout Lowndes County, Valdosta. They have been given training for three days, to learn a lot things about Google App. And also this tech giant has awarded certificates to 60 teachers who were done well.

A Google partner named AppsEvents offered certified faculties from across United States to teach them to make use of Google's Free Software suite. The speciality of this suite is that offers more interactive classroom experience for their students. The teachers are well trained to use Google Classrooms, YouTube Playlists as well as Google Forms.

USA Director of AppsEvents Allison Mollica said that nearly 60 million students and teachers got well trained to use Google Apps of Education. She also added that the students who are having the expertise in coding, they will definitely get a job. The students who volunteered in the events Brandon Booker, Cameron Jackson, Carlos Torres, Benny Zhang and Samuel Sandwell has been awarded a free extemporaneous training session in coding smartphone apps during the event.

Google wants to further the digital education in many countries. And the news flare around the net that it has initiated its first permanent training center in Munich. Together with its partners, the company is now offering free training courses on numerous digital topics. Digital education is the key to making everyone fit for change and keeping people internationally competitive. AppsEvents Director, Allison Mollica said, “ We also see ourselves responsible and want to be part of the solution."

 

Google wants to reach 2 Billion people

In the future workshop, important digital skills will be taught for professionals and non-professionals. The program includes both learning contents for occupational benefit and a range of courses for schools. Such long-term future workshops are also planned to start in many countries. Time training is scheduled to take place in all the federal states. By 2020, Google plans to reach a total of two Billion people.

For further vocational training, Google is working together with the respective volunteers, which also integrates the program into its own initiative. In addition to workshops on online marketing or web analysis, special courses are planned for non-profit organizations as well as for journalists. The future workshop is an ideal complement to meet the enormous need for know-how in the company.

Calliope mini microcontroller board, developed especially for programming learning under third graders, is also part of the offer for students. The hand-held device in the shape of a six-pointed star was the result of an initiative sponsored by the Ministry of Economic Affairs. Equipped with a number of sensors, the Calliope mini can be programmed on a PC or via an app. Google has already supported the project according to own data with 1.1 million euros.