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Pixar’s Dylan Sisson to Discuss RenderMan Technology in Free VIEW Conference PreVIEW Online Talk

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Pixar technical artist Dylan Sisson will discuss the studio’s RenderMan technology and the art of movie magic during the VIEW Conference’s latest free PreVIEW event Friday, July 24, beginning at 2:30 p.m. PT.

Sisson will talk about the ever-evolving RenderMan software, created by Pixar and used by visual effects and animations studios worldwide. The surfaces of every character and object in Pixar’s films from Woody’s jeans in the “Toy Story” movies to the pink unicorn in “Onward” have been created using the technology. In conversation with Ian Failes, Sisson will discuss RenderMan’s latest advances as well as other non-photorealistic rendering tools currently in development at Pixar that will stretch RenderMan’s abilities, allowing it to turn into a tool that can be used for nearly any type of look from photorealism to painterly.

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Sisson has been in the VFX

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Sophisticated software used to attack activist couple shows new disinformation frontier

Oliver Taylor, a student at England’s University of Birmingham, is a twenty-something with brown eyes, light stubble, and a slightly stiff smile.

Online profiles describe him as a coffee lover and politics junkie who was raised in a traditional Jewish home. His half dozen freelance editorials and blog posts reveal an active interest in anti-Semitism and Jewish affairs, with bylines in the Jerusalem Post and the Times of Israel.

The catch? Oliver Taylor seems to be an elaborate fiction.

His university says it has no record of him. He has no obvious online footprint beyond an account on the question-and-answer site Quora, where he was active for two days in March. Two newspapers that published his work say they have tried and failed to confirm his identity. And experts in deceptive imagery used state-of-the-art forensic analysis programs to determine that Taylor’s profile photo is a hyper-realistic forgery – a “deepfake.”

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Online school? In-person? How parents are making their own fall 2020 decisions as COVID-19 squabbles continue

John A. Ratliff

As officials play political football with K-12 school reopenings, parents such as Johanne Davis are formulating their own game plans for the fall.

“To exercise an abundance of caution, I’d like to keep my kids home with me where they’ll study online,” says Davis, a mother of three from Indian Land, South Carolina, one of countless states where COVID-19 cases have spiked in recent weeks.

“Health is the issue, not just for my children, but also school workers,” Davis says. “Teachers shouldn’t have to be front-line soldiers in this pandemic.”

Families across the nation are busy making their own calculations about whether to send children back to school. While Davis seems resolved, many parents are still mulling.

Johanne Davis, left, in a photo with her three children. Davis and her husband say they're both fortunate enough to work from home and can manage the children if they have to spend a lot of next year studying remotely. But she acknowledges that hers is a privileged position not afforded to lower-income parents grappling with child care in order to go off to work.
Johanne Davis, left, in a photo with her three children. Davis and her husband say they’re both fortunate enough to work from home and can manage the children if they have to
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Remote Working Boosts Internet Software Industry Prospects

The Zacks Internet Software industry primarily comprises software infrastructure and application providers like F5 Networks (FFIV). Social media provider Twitter (TWTR) and online payments company Paypal (PYPL) are also notable companies in this industry.

The industry participants use SaaS-based cloud computing model to deliver solutions to end-users as well as enterprises.

Here are the four major industry themes:

  • The industry is benefiting from continued demand for digital transformation. Growth prospects are alluring primarily due to rapid adoption of SaaS, which offers a flexible and cost-effective delivery method of applications. It also cuts down on deployment time compared to legacy systems. SaaS attempts to deliver applications to any user, anywhere, anytime and on any device. It has been effective in addressing customer expectation of seamless communications across multiple channels, including voice, chat, email, web, social media and mobile. This drives customer satisfaction and increases retention rate, thereby driving the top line
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