Month: November 2022

Enlarge (credit: SOPA Images / Contributor | LightRocket)

A few weeks ago, Twitter CEO Elon Musk asked his remaining staff for a show of loyalty by prompting them to click a "yes" link in an email. By clicking yes, the employees were telling Musk that they agreed to work longer hours—if they could keep their jobs. It was Musk’s way of seeing who on his existing team was truly ready to fall in line behind his “hardcore” efforts to build Twitter 2.0. Musk quickly learned how unattractive his offer was when an overwhelming number of employees did not click yes, and among those rejecting Musk’s severe terms was apparently almost half of Twitter’s global team dedicated to preventing child sexual exploitation on the platform.

Three people familiar with Twitter’s current staffing told Bloomberg that when 2022 started, Twitter had 20 team members responsible for reviewing and escalating reports of child sexual abuse materials (CSAM). Today, after layoffs and resignations, there are fewer than 10 specialists forming what Bloomberg described as “an overwhelmed skeleton crew.” It seems that despite Musk continually tweeting that blocking CSAM is Twitter’s top priority and even going so far as inviting users to tweet CSAM directly at him, Musk may already be losing his battle to keep the material off Twitter.

“Musk didn’t create an environment where the team wanted to stay,” sources told Bloomberg.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Samuel Corum )

Twitter owner and CEO Elon Musk yesterday asked if Apple "hates free speech"—because the iPhone maker isn't spending as much on Twitter advertising as it used to. "Apple has mostly stopped advertising on Twitter. Do they hate free speech in America?" Musk wrote. "What's going on here @tim_cook?"

Musk didn't explain how Apple's Twitter ad spending is related to its stance on free speech. But he subsequently wrote a series of tweets criticizing Apple's policies and claimed that Apple threatened to pull Twitter off the iOS App Store.

"Apple has also threatened to withhold Twitter from its App Store, but won't tell us why," Musk wrote a bit later. Musk did not provide further details on Apple's demands or explain how Apple conveyed the message to Twitter.

Directed by Sean Dacanay. Produced by Justin Wolfson. Edited by Jeremy Smolnik, with Billy Ward. Click here for transcript. (video link)

We've watched the gameplay. We've heard the terrifying noises. We've seen the scary sights. Now, in the final part of our peek behind the scenes of Glen Schofield's upcoming horror sci-fi adventure The Callisto Protocol, we're examining how the characters move—and how the more motion capture you can do, the better your characters will look on-screen.

As Glen notes in the video, Callisto Protocol makes heavy use of a technology called "motion capture"—actors dressed in special reflective suits act out the motions you want your characters to make, and computer-controlled cameras capture hundreds of frames per second as the actors do their thing. When done well, "mo-cap," as it's called, can drastically reduce the time it takes to animate a game's characters. Rather than having skilled animators meticulously hand-animate every frame of a character's movements, the raw performance data and movements from the actors are mapped over digital models. While hand-animating can lead to beautiful results, it's impossible to beat the performance one gets from motion capture—since it's an actor actually pantomiming, the resulting movements come with all the grace and subtle nuances with which living beings imbue their motions, nuances that animators have to create manually (and often at considerable time and expense).

Directed by Sean Dacanay. Produced by Justin Wolfson. Edited by Jeremy Smolnik, with Billy Ward. Click here for transcript. (video link)

We've watched the gameplay. We've heard the terrifying noises. We've seen the scary sights. Now, in the final part of our peek behind the scenes of Glen Schofield's upcoming horror sci-fi adventure The Callisto Protocol, we're examining how the characters move—and how the more motion capture you can do, the better your characters will look on-screen.

As Glen notes in the video, Callisto Protocol makes heavy use of a technology called "motion capture"—actors dressed in special reflective suits act out the motions you want your characters to make, and computer-controlled cameras capture hundreds of frames per second as the actors do their thing. When done well, "mo-cap," as it's called, can drastically reduce the time it takes to animate a game's characters. Rather than having skilled animators meticulously hand-animate every frame of a character's movements, the raw performance data and movements from the actors are mapped over digital models. While hand-animating can lead to beautiful results, it's impossible to beat the performance one gets from motion capture—since it's an actor actually pantomiming, the resulting movements come with all the grace and subtle nuances with which living beings imbue their motions, nuances that animators have to create manually (and often at considerable time and expense).