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Entertainment

Watch Pixar’s 'Turning Red,' play VR table tennis and more things to do this weekend

Don't know what to do this weekend? We've got you covered.

Watch Pixar’s 'Turning Red,' play VR table tennis and more things to do this weekend

Here are some recommendations for your weekend.

Images: Pixar, Lisa Keffer/Unsplash, Mike Castro Demaria/Unsplash

This weekend we're watching "Turning Red," which some people are saying is Pixar's best movie in years. We're also reading about movie scores and how they're not often made the way we think, and we're going back to our gaming basics with Eleven Table Tennis, a great game for new Meta Quest 2 owners.

‘Turning Red’ is Pixar’s latest

Disney is releasing its latest Pixar movie, “Turning Red,” exclusively on Disney+ this weekend, and I can’t wait to immerse myself in the story of Mei Lee, a 13-year-old girl who happens to turn into a giant red panda whenever she gets too worked up.

‘Lucas builds the future’ brings out your inner mad scientist

I’ve long been a fan of Lucas Rizzotto, a kind of high-tech mad scientist who uses AI, AR, VR and everything in between for far-out projects at that accident-prone intersection of art and technology. For his latest video, titled “I gave my microwave a soul with AI and it tried to kill me,” Rizzotto outdid himself, giving his Alexa-powered microwave a brain transplant and then training it with an elaborate backstory that happens to be very personal. It’s extremely entertaining, and well worth watching the entire 35 minutes, if only to make sure that Rizzotto keeps on making more of these.

‘Sounds of Survival’ is by — and aids — Ukrainian musicians

There have been a lot of fundraisers for the victims of the war in Ukraine, including a number headed by musicians and other artists. Notably absent from these have been Ukrainian artists themselves, which is why it is so refreshing to see this compilation of electronic music curated by Kyiv-based electronic music producer Serge Dubrovsky, aka Dubmasta. Money raised through sales of the album goes directly to the artists involved and their families, and buyers are also encouraged to donate to NGOs providing help on the ground.

There’s nothing pretty about how movie scores are made

Streaming is disrupting the business of film music and shining light on some of the industry’s best-kept secrets: Composers don’t always write the music they’re lauded for. This Vanity Fair piece on the intricacies of the film-score industry is a fascinating read.

Eleven Table Tennis is a great game for Meta Quest 2 beginners

“So what should I try?” A few days ago, a friend of mine finally got himself a Quest 2. After playing through a few demos and falling in love with Beat Saber, he asked for additional game and app suggestions. Going down my mental list and mentioning some obvious candidates (everyone has to try Tilt Brush at least once), I realized that Eleven is a great game for VR beginners looking for a social experience that doesn’t require too much of a time commitment. You can easily jump into a game with a stranger or invite friends, and the gameplay feels remarkably realistic.

A version of this story also appeared in today’s Entertainment newsletter; subscribe here.

Janko Roettgers

Janko Roettgers (Twitter, Mastodon) used to be a senior reporter at Protocol, reporting on the shifting power dynamics between tech, media, and entertainment, including the impact of new technologies. Previously, Janko was Variety's first-ever technology writer in San Francisco, where he covered big tech and emerging technologies. He has reported for Gigaom, Frankfurter Rundschau, Berliner Zeitung, and ORF, among others. He has written three books on consumer cord-cutting and online music and co-edited an anthology on internet subcultures. He lives with his family in Oakland.

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Fintech

Judge Zia Faruqui is trying to teach you crypto, one ‘SNL’ reference at a time

His decisions on major cryptocurrency cases have quoted "The Big Lebowski," "SNL," and "Dr. Strangelove." That’s because he wants you — yes, you — to read them.

The ways Zia Faruqui (right) has weighed on cases that have come before him can give lawyers clues as to what legal frameworks will pass muster.

Photo: Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post via Getty Images

“Cryptocurrency and related software analytics tools are ‘The wave of the future, Dude. One hundred percent electronic.’”

That’s not a quote from "The Big Lebowski" — at least, not directly. It’s a quote from a Washington, D.C., district court memorandum opinion on the role cryptocurrency analytics tools can play in government investigations. The author is Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui.

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Veronica Irwin

Veronica Irwin (@vronirwin) is a San Francisco-based reporter at Protocol covering fintech. Previously she was at the San Francisco Examiner, covering tech from a hyper-local angle. Before that, her byline was featured in SF Weekly, The Nation, Techworker, Ms. Magazine and The Frisc.

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The financial technology transformation is driving competition, creating consumer choice, and shaping the future of finance. Hear from seven fintech leaders who are reshaping the future of finance, and join the inaugural Financial Technology Association Fintech Summit to learn more.

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The Financial Technology Association (FTA) represents industry leaders shaping the future of finance. We champion the power of technology-centered financial services and advocate for the modernization of financial regulation to support inclusion and responsible innovation.
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Enterprise

AWS CEO: The cloud isn’t just about technology

As AWS preps for its annual re:Invent conference, Adam Selipsky talks product strategy, support for hybrid environments, and the value of the cloud in uncertain economic times.

Photo: Noah Berger/Getty Images for Amazon Web Services

AWS is gearing up for re:Invent, its annual cloud computing conference where announcements this year are expected to focus on its end-to-end data strategy and delivering new industry-specific services.

It will be the second re:Invent with CEO Adam Selipsky as leader of the industry’s largest cloud provider after his return last year to AWS from data visualization company Tableau Software.

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Donna Goodison

Donna Goodison (@dgoodison) is Protocol's senior reporter focusing on enterprise infrastructure technology, from the 'Big 3' cloud computing providers to data centers. She previously covered the public cloud at CRN after 15 years as a business reporter for the Boston Herald. Based in Massachusetts, she also has worked as a Boston Globe freelancer, business reporter at the Boston Business Journal and real estate reporter at Banker & Tradesman after toiling at weekly newspapers.

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Farewell from Protocol

Image: Protocol

We launched Protocol in February 2020 to cover the evolving power center of tech. It is with deep sadness that just under three years later, we are winding down the publication.

As of today, we will not publish any more stories. All of our newsletters, apart from our flagship, Source Code, will no longer be sent. Source Code will be published and sent for the next few weeks, but it will also close down in December.

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Bennett Richardson

Bennett Richardson ( @bennettrich) is the president of Protocol. Prior to joining Protocol in 2019, Bennett was executive director of global strategic partnerships at POLITICO, where he led strategic growth efforts including POLITICO's European expansion in Brussels and POLITICO's creative agency POLITICO Focus during his six years with the company. Prior to POLITICO, Bennett was co-founder and CMO of Hinge, the mobile dating company recently acquired by Match Group. Bennett began his career in digital and social brand marketing working with major brands across tech, energy, and health care at leading marketing and communications agencies including Edelman and GMMB. Bennett is originally from Portland, Maine, and received his bachelor's degree from Colgate University.

machine learning
Enterprise

Why large enterprises struggle to find suitable platforms for MLops

As companies expand their use of AI beyond running just a few machine learning models, and as larger enterprises go from deploying hundreds of models to thousands and even millions of models, ML practitioners say that they have yet to find what they need from prepackaged MLops systems.

As companies expand their use of AI beyond running just a few machine learning models, ML practitioners say that they have yet to find what they need from prepackaged MLops systems.

Photo: artpartner-images via Getty Images

On any given day, Lily AI runs hundreds of machine learning models using computer vision and natural language processing that are customized for its retail and ecommerce clients to make website product recommendations, forecast demand, and plan merchandising. But this spring when the company was in the market for a machine learning operations platform to manage its expanding model roster, it wasn’t easy to find a suitable off-the-shelf system that could handle such a large number of models in deployment while also meeting other criteria.

Some MLops platforms are not well-suited for maintaining even more than 10 machine learning models when it comes to keeping track of data, navigating their user interfaces, or reporting capabilities, Matthew Nokleby, machine learning manager for Lily AI’s product intelligence team, told Protocol earlier this year. “The duct tape starts to show,” he said.

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Kate Kaye

Kate Kaye is an award-winning multimedia reporter digging deep and telling print, digital and audio stories. She covers AI and data for Protocol. Her reporting on AI and tech ethics issues has been published in OneZero, Fast Company, MIT Technology Review, CityLab, Ad Age and Digiday and heard on NPR. Kate is the creator of RedTailMedia.org and is the author of "Campaign '08: A Turning Point for Digital Media," a book about how the 2008 presidential campaigns used digital media and data.

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