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Most people reading this website will not be surprised to hear that the era of film is coming to an end. Even those of you who, like me, spent days in darkrooms perfecting your dodge technique, are likely unruffled at the notion. But in Hollywood film ...

Film_35_mm_-_amorce_croix_avec_agrafes

Most people reading this website will not be surprised to hear that the era of film is coming to an end. Even those of you who, like me, spent days in darkrooms perfecting your dodge technique, are likely unruffled at the notion. But in Hollywood film has been clinging tenaciously to life, if only out of a sort of traditionalist inertia. But this last year was marked by a sort of quiet final surrender by the film cadre: Arri, Panavision, and Aaton have all ceased production of film cameras. These companies have been driving the film industry for decades, and for them all to throw in the towel at once suggests that the end truly is approaching.

The story of the last few years of film is told extremely well in Debra Kaufman’s article at Creative Cow, which touches on the many people and industries which film moviemaking has both relied on and contributed to. To call its end a tragedy would be a sentimental overstatement, but the world rarely moves on without leaving some things behind, and it’s good to acknowledge that.

Practically speaking, there has been pressure for years on these film camera companies to switch entirely to digital, and a few things finally put them past the point of no return. While they have been doing good business in a way, the number of productions using film has been steadily declining, and the need for new film cameras hasn’t been strong in years. They’re phenomenally expensive, for one thing; even major production houses tend to only have a couple on hand or rent from a partner. Panavision and the others have been tweaking and repairing these cameras for a long time, but selling very, very few.

The competition from digital has also stepped up, even from within. Can Arri justify the cost put into their film department when everybody is crowing about the Alexa, which is by all accounts amazing? Then you have the upstarts like RED, whose totally new technology and research put the unwary old guard on the run, and Canon, whose 5D mk II has proven a popular option for filmmakers on a budget.

Changes in the industry, too, have portended film’s demise. TV production has made a sudden shift to digital, especially after labor disputes that led many actors and producers to join with the union covering digital productions instead of film. The earthquake in Japan flooded the one facility that makes a certain HD tape format, prompting a number of production houses to switch to all-digital. And of course the ongoing replacement of film projectors with digital continued to put pressure on the film ecosystem; in July, the National Association of Theatre Owners announced that fully half of their thousands of theaters were converted to digital, and they’re adding 700 every month.

What’s a film-based business model to do? Shut down quietly and with dignity, it seems. Film itself will likely be around for a while longer, though Kodak and Fujifilm are only going to continue production as long as it’s a good business decision. But with Kodak nearing bankruptcy and Fujifilm more and more embracing digital, the future isn’t looking bright for 35mm.

But will it disappear forever? It’s impossible to say, but the answer is a bit like that for books: they’ll remain in production for a long, long time, but will be marginalized to the extreme and bought only by collectors and traditionalists. As AbleCine’s Moe Shore estimates: “In 100 years, yes. In ten years, I think we’ll still have film cameras. So somewhere between 10 and 100 years.” Sounds reasonable. Some will say good riddance, and some will never convert, but that the industry is moving on is just a fact.

Whatever the specifics of the era’s demise turn out to be, here’s a modest salute to the film camera companies that have enabled so much creativity. They’re finally embracing the next wave with the humility proper to a venerable but truly outdated technology like film, and hopefully the next century will be as productive as the last.

Thank you Miles Lothe for taking the whole brogramming thing to the next level by reading the entire Facebook TOS and translating it into bro-speak. This is amazing because Facebook, aside from Manpacks (yes it exists), is the most brogrammy startup ...

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Thank you Miles Lothe for taking the whole brogramming thing to the next level by reading the entire Facebook TOS and translating it into bro-speak.

This is amazing because Facebook, aside from Manpacks (yes it exists), is the most brogrammy startup on earth — Please email or IM  me if you want me to elaborate on this, because it’s late but I can totally prove it. And for those of you don’t know what a brogrammer is please check out this very very informative Quora thread or this um,  brogrammer kit.

Fun fact: Nick Schrock, a Facebook engineer, runs the very popular Brogramming page on Facebook. Also, this exists.

Bro Speak Facebook TOS translation highlights vs. Actual Facebook TOS below …

“Your privacy is very important to us. We designed our Privacy Policy to make important disclosures about how you can use Facebook to share with others and how we collect and can use your content and information.  We encourage you to read the Privacy Policy, and to use it to help make informed decisions.”

“We give lots of fucks about your privacy, so we wrote this. Read it, so you know what the fuck we’re going to do with the shit you post, so you’re not all ‘Facebook, I had no idea!’ when your shit is in our press releases.’”

“When you publish content or information using the everyone setting, it means that you are allowing everyone, including people off of Facebook, to access and use that information, and to associate it with you (i.e., your name and profile picture).”

“Sometimes when you publish things, you can share with ‘Everyone’. Just so you know, we mean everyone. Every. Fucking. One. But if they ask whose shit it is, we only tell them your full name and show the one picture. That’s it. So make it a good picture.”

“We always appreciate your feedback or other suggestions about Facebook, but you understand that we may use them without any obligation to compensate you for them (just as you have no obligation to offer them).”

“Hey, sometimes, maybe you have an idea! Fuck yeah, we love it when you have ideas. If you tell us your idea, maybe we’ll be like, ‘Hey! Great fucking idea, kid! We’re totally going to make that happen.’ We, uh, we don’t have to pay you for it, though, just like you don’t have to tell us how to improve our site, asshole. Thanks.”

“You will not tag users or send email invitations to non-users without their consent.”

“Yeah, we’ve made it super easy for you to invite your friends and to tag them in pictures and shit. So easy, you’d think we want you to invite them. You might even be tempted to do it. But don’t, unless you have their permission. Don’t email anyone an invite to Facebook until you have their permission. No, go ahead, we don’t mind if you email them to ask for permission to email them. We’ll just wait over here.”

“If you collect information from users, you will: obtain their consent, make it clear you (and not Facebook) are the one collecting their information, and post a privacy policy explaining what information you collect and how you will use it.”

“There’s a lot of information in here about a lot of people. Useful stuff, information, right? Well, you can’t have it, unless you tell everyone exactly how you’re going to use it and make sure they okay it. Who do you think you are, us?”

“You will not misrepresent your relationship with Facebook to others.”

“Don’t be telling people we’re tighter than we are. You’re just some application developer; we don’t want to find out you were trying to impress that hottie or those investors by telling them you know Mark or whatever. You don’t.”

“You give us the right to link to or frame your application, and place content, including ads, around your application.”

“Basically nothing you create is private. We can check out your content, mine your data, analyze your application and pretty much whatever else we want, for any reason at all. Yes, even to make money off of your shit. Problem?”

“You understand that we may not always identify paid services and communications as such.”

“On the other hand, we don’t have to tell you shit, either. Sometimes you’ll see something that looks like an ad, but maybe it isn’t, and you’ll be like, ‘Is that an ad, Facebook?” and we’ll be like, ‘…Good question.’”

“We can use your ads and related content and information for marketing or promotional purposes.”

“We can use your ads in our ads, like when we make ads for selling ads. We call it ADCEPTION.”

“WE TRY TO KEEP FACEBOOK UP, BUG-FREE, AND SAFE, BUT YOU USE IT AT YOUR OWN RISK. WE ARE PROVIDING FACEBOOK AS IS WITHOUT ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. WE DO NOT GUARANTEE THAT FACEBOOK WILL BE SAFE OR SECURE.”

“LEGALLY WE’RE REQUIRED TO YELL THIS PART BECAUSE IT’S FUCKING IMPORTANT. THIS IS THE PART WHERE WE TELL YOU THAT WE DO OUR BEST TO NOT HAVE BROKEN SHIT BUT WE CAN’T MAKE ANY PROMISES OR GUARANTEE ANYTHING AT ALL. WE DON’T EVEN PROMISE THAT USING FACEBOOK IS SAFE SO IF YOU GET AXE-MURDERED BECAUSE OF SOME SHIT YOU DID ON FACEBOOK THAT’S NOT ON US WE TRIED TO WARN YOU WE EVEN YELLED IT. “

Read the rest here. 

Image of Brogrammer spirit animal Elliot Lynde: Quora



Company:
FACEBOOK
Launch Date:
1/2/2004
Funding:
$2.34B

Facebook is the world’s largest social network, with over 500 million users.

Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg in February 2004, initially as an exclusive network for Harvard students. It...

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And so it begins. Carnegie Mellon researchers recently combined Facebook profile pictures and PittPatt‘s facial recognition software to identify supposedly-anonymous pictures from a dating site. Now they’re planning to demo a smartphone app that id...

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And so it begins. Carnegie Mellon researchers recently combined Facebook profile pictures and PittPatt‘s facial recognition software to identify supposedly-anonymous pictures from a dating site. Now they’re planning to demo a smartphone app that identifies faces by tapping into cloud-based image databases and recognition software. What’s next?

That’s a question I’ve been thinking about for a long time. Facial recognition via cloud computing is a major plot point in my novel Invisible Armies, which I wrote some seven years ago. When I got mugged in Mexico City a few years back, I promptly started musing about the benefits of a surveillance society. Which is on the way, make no mistake—if it isn’t here today.

There are cameras everywhere already. I don’t just mean the nearly 5 million CCTVs monitoring Britain, or the similar system planned for New York: I mean the world’s hundreds of millions of phone cameras, all of which will soon automatically upload every picture they take to cloud repositories. Charles Stross has suggested, and I agree, that police will soon wear always-on cameras while on duty, for legal reasons. Meanwhile, Moore’s Law keeps ticking along nicely, making facial recognition software ever faster, more powerful, and more accessible; cameras get ever better, cheaper, and more innocuous; and drones start taking to our skies as well as Afghanistan’s. Add it all up, and we’ll soon spend much of our lives in sight of cameras that can and will identify us by our faces in near-real-time.

A comment on my recent Google Plus proposal said: “When I go out in public, nobody knows my name unless I tell them. If one were to demand that this be changed, that everyone be forced to wear an ID badge with key facts at all times, one would be denounced as a totalitarian.” Well, soon enough that’s pretty much going to be the case—at least in France, where covering one’s face in public was banned earlier this year, and maybe in Australia and the UK too. There won’t be any point in disabling Facebook’s auto-tagging: a single correctly labelled picture of your face anywhere on the public Internet will be all that is required to cross-reference all other pictures of you ever.

I don’t mean to be a paranoid conspiracy theorist. Most of this would all still happen without any government initiatives or ban-happy mobs. The death of public anonymity is a natural side effect of improving and increasingly ubiquitous technology. That’s why the ongoing brouhaha about “real names” on Google Plus, and their apparent insistence on digging to China even after realizing they’re in a hole, is actually important. Soon enough, pseudonymity and anonymity will only exist online; in the real world, barring plastic surgery, they’ll be more or less extinct.

Which is bad news for everyone. Pseudonymity shelters whistleblowers, dissidents, and the vulnerable along with trolls. Everyone assumes that real names make conversations more polite, but I’m not so sure. Here at TechCrunch, we stooped to using Facebook Comments in part for that reason; and it worked at first; but—

Follow @arishahdadi@arishahdadi
Ari Shahdadi

It's amazing how TC comments have completely devolved into the same pit they were before, except with real names attached because of FB.

(Feel free to prove him right!)

“There are myriad reasons why individuals may wish to use a name other than the one they were born with,” says the EFF. Over at My Name Is Me, many are cited. Danah Boyd says, “The people who most heavily rely on pseudonyms in online spaces are those who are most marginalized by systems of power.” Ivor Tossell argues, “It’s a given in our system of government that staff need to stay neutral, and never, ever criticize their elected bosses in public … They’re but one group for whom the Internet offers an anonymous outlet. For every anonymous weasel in a political forum, there’s a considerate citizen with an opinion that needs shelter to be voiced.”

But my favorite citation is this: “Using a pseudonym has been one of the great benefits of the Internet, because it has enabled people to express themselves freely—they may be in physical danger, looking for help, or have a condition they don’t want people to know about,” according to, believe it or not, Google’s Directory of Privacy, back in February. Unidentified, pseudonymous, identified: “We believe all three modes have a home at Google.” Boy, a lot can change in six months, eh?

Image credit: Jesus Ruiz Fuentes, Artelista.