Extrapolations (Season 1) Episode 6: The last two episodes of Extrapolations explored the cause and the effects of a geoengineering experiment. While many believed that it would be helpful for the planet, it was also considered an eco-terrorism activity.

Now the narrative shifts to seven years later, in 2066, where humans struggle with deteriorating memories due to climate change. They start storing their memories on online cloud storage and end up in another endless cycle of repayments. As a result, we encounter a human narrative that explores how ones identity constitutes ones past.

*spoilers ahead*

In the first two episodes of Extrapolations, we meet a young couple Omar (played by Tahar Rahim) and Rebecca (played by Sienna Miller), who are trying to save the world in their ways. Omar loses his life, and Rebecca gets left with taking care of their son, Ezra. Now, we meet about 30-year-old Ezra (also played by Tahar Rahim), who works as a hired, artificial companion for people that struggle with the loss of their loved ones.

Natasha (played by Gemma Chan), a single mother from London, hires Ezra to play the part of her daughters father. Ezra forms a strong connection with the daughter Harlyn (played by Scarlett Sher). He also agrees to partake in parent-teacher conferences and fills that hole in their lives. But it irks her that he is replicating her ex-husbands behavior. She does not want Ezra to replace him. She rather wants him to just be Harlyns father. At the time, Ezra also reveals how he gets access to his clients memory vaults to better serve them. So, it paints a picture of how data is going to be one of the biggest currencies in the future.

While providing his clients with this emotional aid, Ezra struggles with his deteriorating memories and, thus, seeks help from cloud storage called Cache Cloud. He still misses his late partner, Lola (Devika Bhise), and repeatedly plays their fond memories on the cloud. After one of his weekly visits to Natasha, he learns about the increasing monthly fees for cloud storage due to the increasing temperatures.

Ezra meets his Cache Cloud representative, Janice (played by Marilee Talkington), to inquire about it. Since he has a condition called Summer Heart, he needs the Minds Eye service that can help him with visual stimuli. Without it, he is as good as a newborn with no past. Janice shares the reasons for the price change and also blames the geoengineering experiment for the rise of the temperature. Still, she offers a discount to Ezra since he revisits the cloud on a daily basis. (It feels like how our apps keep feeding onto how often we use them and provide a feeling of a special treatment)

Unfortunately, Ezra cannot afford to keep his memories. So, he decides to delete some of the storage, including the stories his grandmother used to tell him. On his way back home, a new service called Crispr advertises how it can solve the stress and anxiety issues caused by heat waves. Later, his neighbor, X (played by David Hywel Baynes), offers an alternative service that can help him store his memories. Ezra refuses to buy into this offer and rather relies on Cloud Cache.

The next day, Ezra picks up a few assignments for the day and heads out. He goes on to play the son of an aging woman and an old partner of a man. He makes up disguises, mimics certain parts of their mannerisms, and then speaks in the language that his clients expect him to speak. However, on the personal front, he senses that he is slowly losing his memories, especially the ones with Lola. It turns out to be because of vascular dementia accelerated by his summer heart condition. His doctor suggests a solution which he does not accept just then.

Soon after, Ezra attends Harlyns parent-teacher meeting with Natasha. Then they go out to have a drink together. Natasha holds Ezras hand and regrets immediately that she forgot the boundaries she hired him not for her but for her daughter. She also acknowledges that she hires other people to play the part since they offer sensory experience, but Ezra does not. Ezra notes how he also puts in a part of himself while playing the role of Harlyns father. Natasha reveals she does not want Ezra to play David because he abandoned her and Harlyn.

Later, when Ezra goes on his appointment with the aging woman, he learns that she has passed away. It means that he does not get paid, which means that he cannot earn enough to preserve his memories on the cloud. Back at home, he speaks with Janice to initiate memory sync. She reminds him that he needs to upgrade the storage service since he is beyond the capacity in his current plan. She suggests deleting some of his memories, and he refuses to do so.

However, he starts noticing the early signs of dementia to the point he cannot even recall what Lola looked like. To somehow relive how he felt with her, he hires a woman to play Lolas part. This person meets him in a bar and then joins him back to his place to have sex with him. However, Ezra cannot shake off the fact that he is slowly forgetting Lolas face. He stops the sex midway and tells the woman to leave. Nevertheless, he still needs to pay her 3000 units, and he does not have enough in his account.

Once again, Janice advises him to delete his memory assets. So, in that dire situation, he deletes everything besides his memories about Lola. The next day, when he gets on the train to work, he notices a consistent glitch. His co-passengers tell him that it is not going to work because of an earthquake. A cumulative result was that the blockchain was wiped clean. So, Ezra goes to the Cache Cloud office to complain about it. Janice says that he is among a sea of people who are also seeking help.

Since he cannot access his assets, he asks X to get them secured. X asks for a lofty price, and Ezra decides to work on multiple assignments within the same day to get the job done. He also picks up Natashas request and goes on to play Harlyns father. Like before, Harlyn wants him to tell his whale story. Ezra keeps trying to recall the memory of seeing the humpback whale with Rebecca. But he struggles to form a cohesive story. He cannot even remember that the woman he was with (Rebecca) was his mother.

Natasha gets worried about these symptoms and wants to help him. Ezra reveals that his summer heart condition is causing memory loss. Lola also had the same condition and died three years ago. He benefitted from a new recovery solution while Lola couldnt. In that vulnerable moment, he holds Natashas hand. It escalates to the point he decides to spend the night with her. In the morning, X informs him that he has found Ezras lost memory assets. However, he points out the struggle he faced and, thus, wants to get paid more.

To retrieve his memory assets from X, Ezra decides to pick up some more assignments. He decides to help with Isabel Wicks request despite knowing that her husband is a rager. She offers to pay the exact amount that X asked him in addition. So, Ezra goes there and plays the part of the person that Isabel had an affair with. Unfortunately, the situation gets out of control, and her husband punches him in the face.

Ezra walks back with blood dripping down his face. He goes back to Natashas place who was angry at him for breaking the boundaries and having sex with her. He accepts that he made a mistake but says that he needed the money urgently for his memory assets about Lola. She says that he should live in the present instead of latching onto the past. If he cannot lose Lola, why did he sleep with her as himself? He gets emotional and says that all he can do is pretend, be it his professional life or personal. Seeing him in pain, Natasha suggests he let go of Lolas memories and consider what they have with one another.

Ezra goes back home and refuses to answer X, who keeps pounding on his door, asking for the units as per their deal. Then about three months later, we see Ezra with Harlyn and Natasha. Only this time, Harlyn calls him Ezra instead of considering him David. Ezra sees the ad about the revival of humpback whales by Menagerie1000. However, cannot recall his relation to these animals. Besides, he sees an ad for technology that provides a safe environment for a fetus to grow in. The ad uses a private moment between Ezra and Lola from his memory asset. But by then, he has no recollection of it.

The ending denotes how privacy will remain to be a myth in the near future. When we depend on big corporations to help with these intimate human needs, they will keep using our emotions as assets for their personal benefits without caring about anything but individual capital gain.

Besides that, the bond between Natasha and Ezra beautifully shows how they both manage to get over the past with their previous partners. While David abandoned Natasha & Harlyn, Lola lost her life, leaving Ezra to grapple with loneliness. Still, letting go of that past is how Ezra & Natasha manage to connect with each other. It also conveys how such stories will keep being in our lives, albeit with AI interference. In the end, Ezras pursuit of reviving memories also gives a deja vu to Eternal Sunshine of Spotless Mind.

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Extrapolations (Season 1) Episode 6: Recap & Ending Explained Does Ezra retrieve his memory assets? - High On Films

The Celo Foundation has partnered with Google Cloud to support mission-aligned projects in Celos blockchain ecosystem and advance the early adoption of Google Cloud services. The collaboration is set to allow founders building on Celo to access credits for Google Cloud and Firebase usage, thereby enhancing Celos mobile-first infrastructure and decentralized applications (DApps).

Firebase is a mobile and web application development platform developed by Google that provides developers with various tools and services for building apps, including authentication, real-time databases, cloud storage and messaging.

According to the announcement, the Google Cloud team will also provide mentorship and guidance to the Celo Foundations Founders in Residence program and participate in the virtual Celo Camp accelerator program, which supports entrepreneurs in developing sustainability-focused startups.Additionally, the two organizations aim to co-host targeted workshops and events focused on Web3 sustainability and innovation.

Xochitl Cazador, the Celo Foundations head of ecosystem growth, told Cointelegraph that this new, expanded partnership between Google and the Celo Foundation enhances the ability to collaboratively create broader awareness for blockchain technology and its ability to scale real-world use cases on Celo.

Cazador further explained thatGoogle Clouds core team will also support the Celo Foundation through joint hackathons, workshops, and events centered on the intersection of Web3 and sustainability. The partnership aims to further amplify both teams belief that blockchain technology is well suited to address environmental matters.

Addressing the challenges that sustainability-focused startups in the Celo Network face, Cazador shared that highly technical onboarding processes, complex interfaces, and unfamiliar transaction fee currencies present major barriers to entry for such startups in the Web3 space. However, Cazador shared that Celos partnership with Google Cloud is set to alleviate the strain on emerging and established projects, thereby allowing ecosystem builders to tackle today and tomorrows largest sustainability challenges.

Related:Celo ecosystem projects raise $77.3M in support of interoperability, ReFi

Celo is a blockchain platform that has achieved carbon negativity through proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus. Within the Web3 community, it has gained recognition as a leader in regenerative finance (ReFi), a broad concept that prioritizes sustainability within finance. The platform has a diverse range of over 1,000 projects in more than 150 countries.

In episode 10 of Cointelegraphs Hashing It Out podcast, Rene Reinsberg, the president of Celo Foundation and the co-founder of the Celo blockchain, discussed the ReFi movement and Celo's plans to stay relevant in the multichain world.Reinsberg shared that he sees the increase in layer-1 blockchains and layer-2 networks as an opportunity to bring more people into crypto.

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Celo Foundation and Google Cloud partner to support sustainable Web3 startups - Cointelegraph

Its official - cloud storage provider Google Drive has decided to add an official cap on the amount of files that can be stored on a single account.

Per Ars Technica (opens in new tab), the limit, set at five million files, started cropping up for some Google Drive users in February 2023, despite Google offering no warning that the cap was being introduced, and offering a notification that wasn't all that clear at explaining what the problem was: "The limit for the number of items, whether trashed or not, created by this account has been exceeded."

Said notification has evolved since then, and now reportedly reads: "Error 403: This account has exceeded the creation limit of 5 million items. To create more items, move items to the trash and delete them forever."

As of last week, the notification for one Reddit user (opens in new tab) read "Please delete 2 million files to continue using your Google Drive account."

The new policy (which remains undocumented across all pricing pages) means Google Drive customers are being prevented from accessing the full extent of the storage theyve paid for. However, its worth noting that 5 million files, in real terms, is a pretty big allowance.

For Google Drives 2TB offering - the highest personal plan available - the average file size across an account would have to be 400 kilobytes (KB). There are certainly instances where that may be the case - the storage of large amounts of record data, for example. But in the vast majority of cases, users shouldnt run up against the limit.

Business users are even less likely to face issues with the limit. A spokesperson for Google told Ars Technica that the limit applied to "how many items one user can create in any Drive," rather than a blanket cap.

Details were thin on the ground, but they also noted that the new limit is "a safeguard to prevent misuse of our system in a way that might impact the stability and safety of the system."

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Google Drive has suddenly decided to introduce a file cap - but you might never hit it - TechRadar

If you know anything about cloud storage, odds are youre aware of Google Drive.

Google Drive is one of the top cloud storage services on the market, allowing every account holder up to 15GB of online storage space free of charge. If that wasnt enough, users can also pay into Google One, which launched in Canada in November 2018, for larger plans to fit their specific storage needs.

However, a new discovery in February of this year requires users to remove their files from Google Drive if they happen to reach a certain limit.

It turns out the cloud storage app does have a cap, and its set at a whopping 5 million files.

The discovery has been revealed by different sources in the past few months, including by several Reddit users.

User u/ra13 posted to the site regarding several Google Drive users being met with an error message reading Upload Failed when attempting to create inside of the drive.

Additionally, an error message for users over the 5 million file limit has reportedly begun to circulate reading.

It reads, This account has exceeded the creation limit of 5 million items. To create more items, move items to the bin and delete them forever.

Google Issue Tracker has also been receiving reports from users looking for solutions to the error message.

The file limit has been confirmed as a function of Google Drive, rather than a system bug after Ars Technica spoke with a Google spokesperson.

Despite there being no prior mention of the file limit in official documentation, Google is no stranger to file limits, as seen by Google Workspaces 400,000 Shared Drive item cap.

Regardless of a prior warning notice, Google Drive users are now aware that if they require more than 5 million created files, they will have to go elsewhere for their cloud storage needs.

Source:Reddit Via: Android Police

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Google Drive's file creation limit caps users regardless of storage - MobileSyrup

The demanding and rapidly evolving sports media industry needs to ensure that new and historical content is always available when needed for the creation and delivery of stories and footage quickly to their dedicated and enthusiastic fan bases. Secure, cost-effective, long-term protection of these assets is paramount for the continued monetization of this content.

According to Parks Associates, annual sports OTT subscription revenue in the U.S. was $13.1 billion in 2022 and will almost double to approximately $22.6 billion in 2027, a 73% increase in five years. Theres an opportunity for media companies to monetize historical content, in particular, but first they need to understand the technologies driving enhanced storage and the key components required to ensure long-term content preservation. After all, if content is no longer usable due to corruption from inadequate protection, monetization isnt possible.

Future-proofed, resilient, and secure content storage enables better monetization of sports content.

Key Storage Challenges for Sports ApplicationsSports media organizations need all their assets to be easily accessible, safe, secure and all in one place. One of the biggest challenges with storing sports media assets is long-term content preservation. Sports content must be stored for an extensive period of time. Its important for media organizations to consider whether in 20 years time their storage solution will still be able to read the content. Moreover, determining how the storage will be maintained is imperative.

Mitigating unpredictable costs for storing assets over a long period of time is also crucial. The cost of storing content in the public cloud may be clear today, but it can change in the future. Deploying a storage solution with long-term cost predictability will help media companies successfully monetize their assets.

Key Components for Long-Term Content PreservationTraditionally, sports media organizations relied on LTO storage due to its low cost. However, recovering content from LTO is slower compared with other archive types. Now, organizations are moving more toward the cloud to gain greater flexibility and scalability, but the cost of pulling out an asset from long-term cloud storage can be substantial. Its hard to anticipate when an asset might need to pulled from storage.

While cloud and tape are options today, there are inherent challenges in terms of cost, security, and performance. These issues can be addressed with software-defined object storage, utilizing the same cloud-native S3 interface and capabilities that power the public cloud.

Leading object-storage based archive solutions run on commercial-off-the-shelf hardware. As lower cost hardware becomes available, media companies can take advantage. Moreover, using object-based storage for long-term content preservation ensures protection against bit rot and long-term loss of content. Erasure coding technology enables seamless upgrades from smaller hard drives to larger hard drives. Ultimately, by choosing an object-based storage solution that is affordable, secure, and easily accessible, sports organizations can tap into their archive for monetization purposes.

Latest Innovations in Content Storage Include Cloud, Edge, and AI/MLWhile many media organizations are embracing on-premises solutions for long-term content preservation, more and more, they are using the cloud for live sports production because it is flexible, scalable, and efficient. Were seeing a shift toward cloud-native storage solutions as media companies look to unlock greater efficiencies and scale storage capacity based on changing requirements.

Another key trend is storage at the edge. Most of live sports production is done at remote locations such as sports venues. Edge storage is cost-effective, as it eliminates the need for sports media companies to move video to a physical location during the live event. Sports fans benefit because they receive content fast, without any delays.

During a live sports broadcast, there is not a lot of editing that goes on. But highlights and replays created after the event is over are done at a location outside of the edge. Moving content between the core (i.e., a facility or production center), edge (i.e., a remote venue), and the cloud can be done effortlessly by partnering with an expert in workflow solutions.

AI and ML technology are also pushing the envelope of innovation, enabling faster content search and access, as well as enhanced metadataawareness. When sports media companies are streaming live highlights, they need information about the content at the edge. Until now, AI and ML functionality has almost exclusively been limited to the cloud, but the tides are changing.

Technology providers like Perifery, a division of DataCore, are looking to bring cloud-enabled AI/ML applications to the edge to make content search more intelligent and to open up new monetization opportunities for sports media companies.

Future-proof Storage StrategiesSports media companies can take a few different approaches toward ensuring their content storage acts as foundation for future monetization. First, sports content must be easily accessible all the time. A great example are cloud-based storage solutions that assure easy access to searching and retrieving filesfrom the archive through a web-based content portal, available over HTTP/S3, which are standard interfaces.

Moreover, metadata awareness is critical. By choosing a storage solution that couples data and metadata together, sports media companies can perform a multi-level search in metadata as well as data. Adding a panel between the content storage solution and popular video editing software applications will enrich the metadata of searched objects and speed up the search for media assets, optimizing content browsing and enabling increased monetization.

Furthermore, content needs to be stored in more than one place. Using a storage solution that supports the core (i.e., on-premises data center), cloud, the edge empowers sports media companies to utilize a storage option that matches their evolving business goals.

Having a strategy for long-term content preservation is imperative if sports media organizations want to monetize their content. Through a mix of core, edge, and cloud-based storage, powered by AI and ML technology, sports media organizations can mitigate unpredictable costs, ensure immediate access to content, and locate content clips faster.

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Monetizing Sports Content Requires Scalable, Fast, Secure, and ... - TV Technology