Month: October 2018

Enlarge / Black Mirror is one of the Netflix shows reportedly getting the branching narrative treatment soon.

Over the past decade or so, Netflix has become a market leader in delivering linear TV and movie narratives via Internet streaming. Now, Bloomberg reports the company is on the verge of greatly expanding its effort to let viewers directly guide those narratives via choose-your-own-adventure style interactive prompts.

Netflix has already experimented with interactive choices in a few animated shows aimed at children, but Bloomberg reports it is now ready to expand the idea into adult-focused, live-action programming. The first of a series of such interactive specials will launch before the end of the year, Bloomberg reports, and the effort will include at least one episode of the popular sci-fi anthology series Black Mirror.

Two of the interactive projects currently in negotiations are based on existing video game properties, the report suggests. That seems to include the previously announced Minecraft: Story Mode, which was largely completed with the help of Telltale before that company's massive layoffs last month. Netflix has frequently said it is not interested in getting directly into the video game business, however.

Enlarge / Black Mirror is one of the Netflix shows reportedly getting the branching narrative treatment soon.

Over the past decade or so, Netflix has become a market leader in delivering linear TV and movie narratives via Internet streaming. Now, Bloomberg reports the company is on the verge of greatly expanding its effort to let viewers directly guide those narratives via choose-your-own-adventure style interactive prompts.

Netflix has already experimented with interactive choices in a few animated shows aimed at children, but Bloomberg reports it is now ready to expand the idea into adult-focused, live-action programming. The first of a series of such interactive specials will launch before the end of the year, Bloomberg reports, and the effort will include at least one episode of the popular sci-fi anthology series Black Mirror.

Two of the interactive projects currently in negotiations are based on existing video game properties, the report suggests. That seems to include the previously announced Minecraft: Story Mode, which was largely completed with the help of Telltale before that company's massive layoffs last month. Netflix has frequently said it is not interested in getting directly into the video game business, however.

Enlarge (credit: Aeva)

Founded by two veterans of Apple's still-secret driverless car project, Aeva is a startup promising a different kind of lidar—one that can measure the velocity of objects in addition to their distance.

We first covered the company when it was profiled by The New York Times a year ago, but at that time not much was known about how it worked. Now Aeva has unveiled its first lidar sensor, giving us a much better understanding of what the company has been working on.

Traditional lidar sensors, like the ones made by industry leader Velodyne, use a simple time-of-flight approach. They send out a brief pulse of laser light and measure how long it takes for the light to bounce back. This round-trip time translates directly into a distance estimate.

Enlarge (credit: Aeva)

Founded by two veterans of Apple's still-secret driverless car project, Aeva is a startup promising a different kind of lidar—one that can measure the velocity of objects in addition to their distance.

We first covered the company when it was profiled by The New York Times a year ago, but at that time not much was known about how it worked. Now Aeva has unveiled its first lidar sensor, giving us a much better understanding of what the company has been working on.

Traditional lidar sensors, like the ones made by industry leader Velodyne, use a simple time-of-flight approach. They send out a brief pulse of laser light and measure how long it takes for the light to bounce back. This round-trip time translates directly into a distance estimate.

Enlarge / Former Facebook CSO Alex Stamos is now a researcher at Stanford, exploring election security and threats to democracy.

During the 2016 presidential election, security experts at Facebook discovered that Russian operatives had been actively attempting to undermine the democratic process. Using ads and fake accounts on the social media giant's platform, those operatives spread disinformation and propaganda. As security chief of the company, Alex Stamos was at the center of the company's investigation. He and his team wound up uncovering thousands of fake accounts controlled by Russia, as well as political advertising scams. The Cambridge Analytica scandal was just the beginning.

Alex spoke up publicly about shortcomings with the government and tech industry's responses to the snowballing problem of election meddling. Now he has left Facebook for a position at Stanford, where he'll research digital threats to democracy and what we should do about them. Join Ars Technica's editor-at-large Annalee Newitz in conversation with Alex on October 10 at Eli's Mile High Club in Oakland. There will be plenty of time for audience questions, too. Doors are at 7pm, and the conversation starts at 7:30. Tickets are free.

Alex Stamos is an adjunct professor at Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute, a William J. Perry Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, and a visiting scholar at the Hoover Institution. As a chief security officer at Facebook and Yahoo and a co-founder of iSEC Partners, Stamos has investigated and responded to some of the most seminal events in the short history of cybersecurity, and he has been called the "Forrest Gump of Info Sec" by friends. He is working on election security via the Defending Digital Democracy Project and advising NATO's Cybersecurity Center of Excellence. He has spoken on six continents, testified in Congress, served as an expert witness for the wrongly accused, earned a BSEE from UC Berkeley, and holds five patents.

Enlarge / Former Facebook CSO Alex Stamos is now a researcher at Stanford, exploring election security and threats to democracy.

During the 2016 presidential election, security experts at Facebook discovered that Russian operatives had been actively attempting to undermine the democratic process. Using ads and fake accounts on the social media giant's platform, those operatives spread disinformation and propaganda. As security chief of the company, Alex Stamos was at the center of the company's investigation. He and his team wound up uncovering thousands of fake accounts controlled by Russia, as well as political advertising scams. The Cambridge Analytica scandal was just the beginning.

Alex spoke up publicly about shortcomings with the government and tech industry's responses to the snowballing problem of election meddling. Now he has left Facebook for a position at Stanford, where he'll research digital threats to democracy and what we should do about them. Join Ars Technica's editor-at-large Annalee Newitz in conversation with Alex on October 10 at Eli's Mile High Club in Oakland. There will be plenty of time for audience questions, too. Doors are at 7pm, and the conversation starts at 7:30. Tickets are free.

Alex Stamos is an adjunct professor at Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute, a William J. Perry Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, and a visiting scholar at the Hoover Institution. As a chief security officer at Facebook and Yahoo and a co-founder of iSEC Partners, Stamos has investigated and responded to some of the most seminal events in the short history of cybersecurity, and he has been called the "Forrest Gump of Info Sec" by friends. He is working on election security via the Defending Digital Democracy Project and advising NATO's Cybersecurity Center of Excellence. He has spoken on six continents, testified in Congress, served as an expert witness for the wrongly accused, earned a BSEE from UC Berkeley, and holds five patents.