The EU has passed the controversial Copyright Directive. The two most potent articles in the directive are Article 11 and 13. Article 11: Those who provide URL snippets to European copyright owners (like for instance Google and Facebook) must pay licence fees. Article 13: Larger companies will be more liable for any European copyright material published on their platforms. Why has the EU passed such a directive? The common notion across the late majority in Europe is that companies like Google and Facebook live off the backs of small, independent content creators. Here’s what th ..read more

This is Rebirth, a real-time cinematic produced by Sweden-based Quixel, harnessing the power of Unreal Engine and real-world scans from the Megascans Icelandic collection. A few thoughts: Imagine playing games in virtual, streamed, and mixed reality with this kind of photorealism. Whoa. Take my money, already. Imagine unleashing almost everyone’s creativity in visual storytelling once this type of technology becomes easy to use for everyone. And, imagine how this will disrupt Hollywood and film-making in general. In many ways, it’s mind-blowing that the unreal engine can be downloade ..read more

This is a guest post by Danielle Canstello, Pyramid Analytics. We live in the golden age of big data, with advanced monitoring systems constantly pouring new information in our databases. Whether it’s coming from the company website, the social media channels, or any other sources, data is highly valuable because it lets you understand customers and their needs and wishes. However, this doesn’t mean it’s easy to make sense of market trends. Without a well-established strategy, data doesn’t value more than a pile of unsorted documents! So, how do you put everything in a logical order ..read more

Late one night, I shared some vodka tonics with a friend. We talked about matters of great importance; life, meaning, and happiness — as one might do while getting moderately intoxicated after a hard day’s work in the propaganda industry. The next day, my friend sent me an email: “Our conversation yesterday reminded me of this poem of Henry Howard,” he wrote. “I think you might like it.” The Things that Do Attain What I read turned out to become one of my favourite poems: “My friend, the things that do attain The happy life be these, I find: The riches left, not got with pain ..read more

Is there a way to tell a good story? I written about storytelling elements1 before, but how about the over-arching structure of a good story? Well, it turns out that there are quite a few different takes on the subject. Ways to Structure a Story 1,462 Stories — or just One? Many intellectuals have been trying to figure out if there’s any typical underlying structures of a good story. However, it would be a stretch to say that many of them have arrived at the same conclusion. Aristotle said that there are only two types of stories, comedies, and tragedies.Jorge Luis Borges argued ..read more