Japanese researchers have developed a technique for automatic colorization in anime production. "To promote efficiency and automation in anime production, the research team focused on the possibility of automating the colorization of trace images in the finishing process of anime production," reports Brightsurf. "By integrating the anime production technology and know-how of IMAGICA GROUP and OLM Digital with the machine learning, computer graphics and vision technology of NAIST, the research team succeeded in developing the world's first technique for automatic colorization of Japanese anime production." From the report: After the trace image cleaning in a pre-processing step, automatic colorization is performed according to the color script of the character using a deep learning-based image segmentation algorithm. The colorization result is refined in a post-process step using voting techniques for each closed region. This technique will be presented at SIGGRAPH ASIA 2018, an international conference on computer graphics and interactive techniques, to be held in Tokyo, Japan on Dec. 4-7. While this technique is still in the preliminary research stage, the research team will further improve its accuracy and validate it in production within the anime production studio. The product of this will be available for commercialization from 2020.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: After three weeks, 12 straight draws and a day of tiebreakers, Norway's Magnus Carlsen finally retained the world chess championship in London on Wednesday with a victory against Fabiano Caruana (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source), his American challenger. Carlsen's victory came in what amounted to sudden-death chess: a scheduled series of four so-called rapid games in which the players started with 25 minutes to make their moves. The speedier pace of the games, after the far more deliberate matchups of the previous three weeks, meant players were more likely to make blunders. And that increased the chance of a victory by one player. Carlsen won the first two games, then closed out Caruana in Game 3.

Caruana, 26, was bidding to become the first American champion since Bobby Fischer beat Boris Spassky to win the world title in 1972. The famously cantankerous Fischer forfeited his title in 1975 amid a dispute with the world chess federation, and the sport has been dominated by Russians and Eastern Europeans in the decades since then. The tiebreaker result was not a shock. While Carlsen, 27, and Caruana, 26, are closely matched in longer conventional chess games, known as classical chess, Carlsen had been considered the favorite in the tiebreaker because he has had better rapid chess results than Caruana. "It was the first time in the history of the world championship, which dates to the 1800s, that regulation play ended with every game a draw," the report notes.

Brian Merchant, writing for Medium : In 2017, PricewaterhouseCoopers, the professional services firm that advises 440 of the Fortune 500 companies, published a blueprint for using science fiction to explore business innovation. The same year, the Harvard Business Review argued that "business leaders need to read more science fiction" in order to stay ahead of the curve. "We're already seeing science fiction become reality today," said Google's then-CEO Eric Schmidt in 2012. "Think back to Star Trek, or my favorite, the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy -- much of what those writers imagined is now possible," he said, ticking off auto-translation, voice recognition, and electronic books. Jeff Bezos' product design team built the Kindle to spec from Neal Stephenson's book The Diamond Age. (Stephenson himself is the chief future at the multibillion-dollar-valued Magic Leap.) Josh Wolfe, a managing partner at Lux Capital, is pouring millions of dollars into companies building what he explicitly describes as "the sci-fi future." "I'm looking for things that feel like they were once written about in science fiction," he told Fortune. "The gap between 'sci-fi,' -- that which was once imagined -- and 'sci-fact,' that which becomes manifest and real, is shrinking."

A number of companies, along with a loose constellation of designers, marketers, and consultants, have formed to expedite the messy creative visualization process that used to take decades. For a fee, they'll prototype a possible future for a client, replete with characters who live in it, at as deep a level as a company can afford. They aim to do what science fiction has always done -- build rich speculative worlds, describe that world's bounty and perils, and, finally, envision how that future might fall to pieces. Alternatively referred to as sci-fi prototyping, futurecasting, or worldbuilding, the goal of these companies is generally the same: help clients create forward-looking fiction to generate ideas and IP for progress or profit. Each of the biggest practitioners believe they have their own formulas for helping clients negotiate the future. And corporations like Ford, Nike, Intel, and Hershey's, it turns out, are willing to pay hefty sums for their own in-house Minority Reports.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: At the start of this decade, U.S. lawmakers drafted several controversial bills to make it easier for copyright holders to enforce their rights online. These proposals, including SOPA and PIPA, were met with fierce resistance from the public as well as major technology companies. They feared that the plans, which included pirate site-blocking measures, went too far. In the many years that followed, the "site blocking" issue was avoided like the plague. The aversion was mostly limited to the U.S., as website blocking became more and more common abroad, where it's one of the entertainment industries' preferred anti-piracy tools.

Emboldened by these foreign successes, it appears that rightsholders in the U.S. are now confident enough to bring the subject up again, albeit very gently. Most recently the site-blocking option was mentioned in a joint letter (PDF) from the RIAA and the National Music Publishers' Association (NMPA), which contained recommendations to the Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator (IPEC) Vishal Amin. The IPEC requested input from the public on the new version of its Joint Strategic Plan for Intellectual Property Enforcement. According to the music industry groups, website blocking should be reconsidered an anti-piracy tool. "There are several changes that should be made legislatively to help legal authorities and third parties better protect intellectual property rights," the music groups write. "These include fixing the DMCA, making it a felony to knowingly engage in unauthorized streaming of copyrighted works, and investigating the positive impact that website blocking of foreign sites has in other jurisdictions and whether U.S. law should be revised accordingly."

"As website blocking has had a positive impact in other countries without significant unintended consequences, the U.S. should reconsider adding this to its anti-piracy tool box," the RIAA and NMPA write.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Comcast is raising its controversial "Broadcast TV" and "Regional Sports Network" fees again on January 1, with the typical total price going from $14.50 to $18.25 a month. The newly raised broadcast TV fee will be $10 a month, and the sports fee will be $8.25 a month, Cord Cutters News reported last week. The new fee sizes are confirmed in a Comcast price list for the Atlanta market. The new price hikes will take effect in most of Comcast's regional markets across the U.S. on January 1, but some cities will get the increase later in 2019, a Comcast spokesperson told Ars. The fee sizes can vary by city based on which stations are available, so in some cases they could be less than $10 and $8.25, Comcast said.

The fees, which have become common in the industry, are controversial because they are not included in Comcast's advertised prices and because Comcast imposes fee increases even on customers who are under contract. The broadcast and sports fee increases will also be applied to customers who pay Comcast's promotional rates, which typically last one year, Comcast told Ars. Equipment rental fees are rising, too. Comcast last year raised its modem rental fee from $10 to $11 a month. The new price list for January 1 lists an "Internet/Voice Equipment Rental" fee as $13. Comcast confirmed to Ars that the modem rental fee is rising $2 a month. Customers can avoid that fee by purchasing their own modem.

The next time you see, say, a wedding scene on a USA Network show followed by a champagne commercial, it may not be a coincidence. From a report: NBCUniversal announced a new machine learning tool today that helps brands place ads around scenes relevant to their product across any of the media giant's broadcast and cable properties. The Contextual Intelligence Platform analyzes programming scripts, closed captioning data and visual descriptors of both ads and shows to find opportune moments for a given advertiser to appear as well as an emotional gauge for each scene determined by proprietary algorithms.

Focus groups for ads placed with the platform thus far have shown an average bump of 19 percent in brand memorability, 13 percent in likability and 64 percent in message memorability, according to Josh Feldman, vp and head of marketing and advertising creative, NBCU. The announcement comes as linear television providers continue to grapple with how to bring digital targeting practices to a medium that still largely operates on traditional phone-call media buying and manual ad placements. NBCU is now working with three to five advertisers for the system's beta-test, and is aiming for an official release date early next year.

The US Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator is working hard to update his copyright enforcement plans. In a written submission, Hollywood's MPAA shared a few notable ideas. The group calls for more cooperation from Internet services, including hosting providers, who should filter infringing content and block referral traffic from pirate sites, among other things. From a report: Besides processing takedown notices and terminating repeat infringers, as they are required to do by law, the MPAA also wants hosting companies to use automated piracy filters on their servers. "Hosting providers should filter using automated content recognition technology; forward DMCA notices to users, terminate repeat infringers after receipt of a reasonable number of notices, and prevent re-registration by terminated users," the MPAA suggests.

In addition, hosting providers should not challenge suspension court orders, when copyright holders go up against pirate sites. Going a step further, hosts should keep an eye on high traffic volumes which may be infringing, and ban referral traffic from pirate sites outright. The MPAA wants these companies to "implement download bandwidth or frequency limitations to prevent high volume traffic for particular files" to "remove files expeditiously" and "block referral traffic from known piracy sites."

Josh Holtsclaw, a Graphic Artist at Pixar Animation Studios, writes: I remember seeing the first Incredibles film in college with a few friends. We went on opening night and the theater was packed. I remember thinking that the way the movie opened with the old film footage of a younger Mr Incredible, Elastigirl and Frozone being interviewed was such a different way to open an animated film, and it just got better from there. The whole thing was so stylized and just...cool. I loved the mid century aesthetic. When I got to Pixar and heard that they were working on a sequel, I knew I wanted to be a part of it.

I joined the Incredibles 2 art department in the Fall of 2016 and one of the first things we did as a group was take a research trip to Palm Springs. At the time, the story was still in its early stages and a few of the sets were under way. There was still a lot left to do and Palm Springs was the perfect one-stop-spot for us to find design inspiration. We were able to take an architectural tour of the city and had access to private homes that aren't usually open to the public. One of the most memorable houses was the Frey house which was designed by architect Albert Frey and was also his personal residence. It sits on a hill looking down on Palm Springs. Do check out the pictures on Holtsclaw's blog.

Charter has been using the argument that their First Amendment rights are being violated as it fights off state lawsuits for its poor service. "It recently tried to use the First Amendment card again in a legal battle with Byron Allen's Entertainment Studios Networks (ESN), which recently accused Charter of violating the Civil Rights Act of 1866 by refusing to carry TV channels run by the African-American-owned ESN," reports Techdirt. "While Charter tried to have the suit dismissed by claiming that the First Amendment prohibits such claims because an ISP enjoys 'editorial discretion,' the ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit didn't agree." From the report: The court noted that while ISPs and cable companies do enjoy some First Amendment protection, it doesn't apply here, just like it didn't apply in the net neutrality fight: "As part of its defense, Charter had told the court that by choosing which channels to carry, the company was engaging in a form of editorial discretion protected by the First Amendment. Therefore, it said, the court would have to use a stricter standard to evaluate Entertainment Studios' claim of a legal violation -- a standard that might result in the claim being rejected. The Ninth Circuit said otherwise, saying that just because Charter engages in corporate speech when it selects which channels to carry does not 'automatically' require the court to use the tougher standard."

As a result, the court is letting the case move forward. For its part, ESN's discrimination complaint alleges that its complaint is based on more than just having its channel withheld from the company's cable lineup: "The opinion on Charter's motion to dismiss also marks a victory for the 25-year-old programming firm founded by comedian Byron Allen, which bought the Weather Channel in March and accused Charter executives in court of hurling racist insults at Allen and other black Americans in numerous encounters. In one alleged instance, Charter chief executive Tom Rutledge called Allen, who is black, 'boy' at an industry conference and advised him to change his behavior, according to court documents. In another alleged example, the court said, Charter's senior executive in charge of programming, Allan Singer, approached a group of black protesters outside Charter's offices to tell them to 'get off of welfare.'"

On Monday, developer Crowbar Collective released the first trailer for Black Mesa: Xen, the final act of its long running remake of Valve's 1998 game Half-Life, which marked its 20-year anniversary on the same day. "The finale of Half-Life put hero Gordon Freeman in an alien world, and Black Mesa: Xen's upgraded graphics and redesign makes the original's muddy palette look vibrant and strange," reports Motherboard. "It looks just as exciting as it did at the time of the original game's release." From the report: When Valve unleashed Half-Life, it changed video games forever. The first person shooter from what was then a relatively unknown company starred a silent scientist beating down alien headcrabs and shooting human Marines in a novel sci-fi adventure. It was a triumph. Shortly after, in 2003, the Crowbar Collective began work on a remake that would come to be known as Black Mesa. Fan communities routinely reimagine their favorite video games, often as modifications, or mods, of the originals. Black Mesa began life as a free mod for Half-Life 2, but grew into a proper remake. Crowbar Collective added new voice work, changed animations, and tweaked the original game in hundreds of ways big and small. Black Mesa: Xen has a target release date of early 2019.

"And the winner of the 2021 Academy Award for best picture is .â.â. Apple?" jokes the Washington Post, noting that Apple has just signed a new multi-year movie deal with film production company A24, "and while that seems like a comparatively minor announcement, it could change the game in some significant ways." It's sneakily consequential. A24, if you're not familiar, is the boutique New York outfit that has been responsible for a slew of hipster-approved, Academy Award-recognized films including "Lady Bird," "Moonlight" and "Room." Since its founding six years ago by a trio that includes the former partner of late Beastie Boy Adam Yauch, it has located commercial success and downtown cool. Its movies are handmade hipster-fests that also often manage to please audiences: In addition to its big three, they include "Hereditary," "Eighth Grade," "A Ghost Story" and "Ex Machina". Welcome to the party, Tim Cook....

For Apple, cachet is everything. And it needs that now. A company that has prided itself on cool has reason to be worried about sustaining that on the entertainment side, with Netflix swiping its video lunch and Spotify some of its music swagger.
That with major competitors like Amazon already producing its own films, Apple, "had to do something..." They add the Apple's announcement "contained about as many details as the iPhone 7 has headphone jacks."

But "Even without those specifics, the significance was clear. Apple is installing itself as a producer of some of the most-acclaimed films around, all without needing to take a single meeting or read one script off the slush pile first...."

YouTube's "Movies & Shows" page added a "Free to Watch" section last month. They're trying to compete with free ad-supported online movie offerings from Roku, Walmart, and Tubi, while "Amazon is rumored to be working on something similar," reports TechCrunch: Before, YouTube had only offered consumers the ability to purchase movies and TV shows, similar to how you can rent or buy content from Apple's iTunes or Amazon Video.... Currently, YouTube is serving ads on these free movies, but the report said the company is open to working out other deals with advertisers -- like sponsorships or exclusive screenings.

YouTube's advantage in this space, compared with some others, is its sizable user base of 1.9 billion monthly active users and its ability to target ads using data from Google.
The 99 free movies include the first five Rocky movies, and four movies in the Pink Panther series (all from the post-Peter Sellers era, including the forgotten 1993 film in which the title theme is sung by Bobby McFerrin), as well as Pauly Shore's dreadful 1996 comedy Bio-Dome (which received a 4% rating on Rotten Tomatoes). Also available is James Cameron's original 1984 film The Terminator, the 2010 documentary With Great Power: The Stan Lee Story and the 1995 film "Hackers" starring Angelina Jolie.

"In this cyberpunk thriller, a renegade group of elite teenage computer hackers rollerblade through New York City by day and ride the information highway by night. After hacking into a high-stakes industrial conspiracy, they become prime suspects and must recruit the best of the cybernet underground to help clear their names."

The first alleged images of the rumored "budget" Pixel 3 have been leaked. The Pixel 3 Lite, as it is being called, looks very similar to the Pixel 3, although it features a plastic build construction, slower processor, and a headphone jack. 9to5Google reports: Just like the standard Pixel 3, there's a display that's roughly 5.56-inches in size, but this time it's an IPS LCD panel at 2220x1080 rather than an OLED panel. Obviously, there's also no notch to be seen on this alleged Pixel 3 Lite. There's a single front-facing camera as well as one speaker above that display, relatively thick bezels on the top and bottom, and a speaker along the bottom of the device as well.

Perhaps most interesting when it comes to the hardware, though, is that there's a headphone jack on the top of the phone. That's certainly unexpected since the Pixel 2 dropped the jack and Google hasn't looked back since. Tests from Rozetked reveal some of the specifications running this device as well. That includes a Snapdragon 670 chipset, 4GB of RAM, and 32GB of storage. Previous reports have pointed to a Snapdragon 710. Battery capacity on this device is also reported at 2915 mAh and there's a USB-C port along the bottom. It is rumored to include the same 12MP and 8MP cameras found in the standard Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL, which will be a huge selling point for the affordable phone market. The price is expected to be around $400-500.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Microsoft is planning to release a disc-free version of the Xbox One as early as next spring, according to an unsourced report from author Brad Sams of Thurrott.com (who has been reliable with early Xbox-related information in the past). The report suggests the disc-free version of the system would not replace the existing Xbox One hardware, and it would instead represent "the lowest possible price for the Xbox One S console." Sams says that price could come in at $199 "or lower," a significant reduction from the system's current $299 starting price (but not as compelling compared to $199 deals for the Xbox One and PS4 planned for Black Friday this year). Buyers will also be able to add a subscription to the Xbox Games Pass program for as little as $1, according to Sams. For players who already have games on disc, Sams says Microsoft will offer a "disc to digital" program in association with participating publishers. Players will be able to take their discs into participating retailers (including Microsoft Stores) and trade them in for a "digital entitlement" that can be applied to their Xbox Live account.

Netflix is testing a cut-price mobile-only subscription, priced as low as $3 for some, as it explores new packages aimed at widening its appeal in Asia and other emerging markets. TechCrunch: CEO Reed Hastings told Bloomberg last week that the company would test lower-priced packages and it hasn't taken long for those experiments to come to light. The first reports are from Malaysia, where Netflix quietly rolled out a mobile-only tier priced at RM17, or around $4, each month. That's half the price of the company's next cheapest package -- 'Basic' -- which retails for RM33, or around $7.90, per month in Malaysia. A Netflix spokesperson confirmed the Malaysia trial. They added that similar trials are "running in a few countries" although they declined to provide details. It remains to be seen if this new subscription tier will roll out to other parts of the world.

Question: what is entertainment's highest-grossing weekend debut of all time? Hint: It only took place two weeks ago. From a report: It was claimed by a Western-themed video game called Red Dead Redemption 2 -- the second in a series dubbed 'Grand Theft Auto on horseback' -- which generated over $725m in just three days. The wording above ('highest-grossing weekend debut') has been carefully chosen. Because the highest-grossing entertainment launch of all time actually kicked off on a Tuesday, in September, 2013. That launch was Grand Theft Auto V, another video game, which grossed more than $1bn during its opening 72 hours on sale. Both Red Dead Redemption and Grand Theft Auto are made by Rockstar Games -- a New York-HQ'd interactive entertainment company famed for its ability to bring filmic sophistication to the world of PlayStations and Xboxes, and for its ability to generate billions upon billions of dollars by doing so.

Ready for this? The Grand Theft Auto franchise, and the core team behind Rockstar's success, were, unbelievably, both once part of the music business. They were allowed to leave 20 years ago. For an absolute pittance. Let's rewind. Back in 1990, London-born Sam Houser, aged 19, landed a dream first job -- working in the post-room at BMG's UK HQ. Houser then supplemented his university studies by continuing to work at BMG for the next four years, focusing on pop music videos and VHS releases. By 1994, he'd graduated, and took a full-time role within BMG's new interactive entertainment division. Houser, it turned out, had a natural talent for 'A&R'ing' video games -- spotting titles that would sell big and signing them up as a label would an artist -- and, by 1996, he was named Head of Development at BMG Interactive in the UK. Got your palm located somewhere roughly near your forehead? Good. Prepare for the two to forcibly meet.

Interactive released Grand Theft Auto, a 2D action-adventure game, which saw players fulfilling the objectives of criminal overlords across three cities. The title was a commercial smash in the US and Europe -- yet it emerged amid serious corporate turbulence. In March 1998, convinced that its foray into video games had been a waste of time and money, BMG -- under the instruction of owner Bertelsmann -- agreed to sell off BMG Interactive. According to Sam Houser, BMG let the company go, to New York-based Take Two Interactive, for a total consideration of $9m. (For those who can see where this narrative is going: Red Dead Redemption 2 generated that $9m back within an hour of going on sale last month.) The story doesn't end there.

schwit1 shares a report from The Hollywood Reporter: Douglas Rain, the veteran Canadian stage actor who provided the soft and gentle voice of the rogue HAL 9000 computer for Stanley Kubrick's classic 2001: A Space Odyssey and its sequel, has died. He was 90. The first drafts of the 2001 script had HAL being voiced by a woman and was called Athena; afterward, it was decided that the computer should sound more like a man. Nigel Davenport, Martin Balsam and others were tried out -- and ruled out -- before and during filming of the 1968 sci-fi thriller.

"Well, we had some difficulty deciding exactly what HAL should sound like, and Marty just sounded a little bit too colloquially American, whereas Rain had the kind of bland mid-Atlantic accent we felt was right for the part,' Kubrick told Newsday film critic Joseph Gelmis in an interview for the 1970 book The Film Director as Superstar. Kubrick told Rain that he had made the computer "too emotional and too human." So, in late 1967, the actor flew to New York City and spent a day and a half -- about 9 1/2 hours in all -- to voice HAL. As reported on the blog 2010: The Year We Make Contact, Rain "did the recordings with his bare feet resting on a pillow, in order to maintain the required relaxed tone."

Netflix says it plans to begin testing lower-priced subscription in some markets in a bid to see if it will help the company boost the number of subscribers, CEO Reed Hastings told Bloomberg. The company has not identified the markets where it will be testing the lower-priced subscription, and has not clarified how soon it intends to conduct these tests. The company will likely consider Asian markets where it is having a tough time gaining the market share against local services that are much aggressively priced.

Cord-cutting promised us that we won't have to pay the ludicrously large cable bills. But it turns out, as long as you do not just want to watch a very limited set of movies and TV shows, you will have to subscribe to any number of these services: Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, HBO Go, Hulu, and Disney+ (and more.) For some living outside the US, the situation has become even more dire as they browse through as many as three dozen services. This, in addition to making watching TV expensive, is also creating a number of other confusions. No wonder piracy is on rise again.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: Disney's new streaming service will be called Disney+ and launch in late 2019, CEO Bob Iger announced on the company's earnings call Thursday. The service will also feature new, original shows and movies, including original Marvel and Star Wars series. Marvel fan favorite character Loki, played by Tom Hiddleston, will get an original series on the Disney+ service. A prequel series to Star Wars movie "Rogue One" about the character Cassian Andor, portrayed by Diego Luna, will also call the service home.

Other original shows and movies include a rebooted version of The High School Musical franchise. It will also be a hub for animated content, including the next season of "Star Wars: The Clone Wars" and an new original animated series based on Pixar's "Monsters Inc." Exclusive movies include "Noel," a Christmas movie about Santa's daughter played by Anna Kendrick, and "Togo," a movie about the 1925 Nome Serum Run starring William DaFoe. Disney launched a placeholder website for Disney+ that shows off logos of brands like Pixar, National Geographic and Marvel. Last year, Disney announced that it would remove all its movies from Netflix in 2019 to entice consumers to use their own streaming offering. It also purchased Fox for $71.3 billion to bolster its library of content.