AI: Tech
The cafe of the future. I saw a video of this working at a Chinese cafe and had to look it up. The cafe had someone watching it, but not touching anything.
WiFi and AI do motion capture
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWi5LrOqEFw
A video editor that uses AI let's you swap out characters at ease.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuUsunFIJCU
How to view NeRF in VR.
AI
LLaMA can run on anything. The AI world is going really fast.
Microsoft fires the entire AI ethics team.
Stupid AIs and their filthy fans. I mean, um guys, AI has problems and we should beware of it. Also I wrote a book.
Propaganda
Death of the 9-5 job. Push for 4 day work week. Paid for by Zurich Insurance and is being disavowed in italics at the front of the article by the website itself.
Meta to lay off 10,000 more.
I don't know where to categorize this one. A company that sells it's products directly online has seen it's stock fall, and will likely not recover. This sounds like the dot com craze of the late 90's.
Community college isn't being used as often. The article forgets to mention that many of these CCs are four year colleges now. I got an AA in film from Yakima Valley Community College, and a certificate of TV Video Production from YV Tech at the same time. They both have different names and one is a full college. I expect drug transport to be a class.
Nurses are charged exorbitant amounts by the hospital they work for that they have to pay off with several years of contract work.
The school that refused to play against trans kids has been banned from tournaments. I don't think the school is offended.
Jewish parents vs LA school district? Fight!
The FBI lied in a case against the Proud Boys. The site itself is unknown to me, but the Twitter feed being referenced has some evidence.
Netanyahu changes politics in Israel. He says he is trying to reign in an activist court. There are also protests against him. Since this is the news, I'm expecting a lot of stretched narrative here.
Washing machines will get worse because of climate change regulations.
Biden complains about Florida to former aide now journalist.
Books
RL Stine Emphatically denies that he edited his own books. Having read them, I agree.
Ursula K LeGuin's books have also been edited.
Some good Urban Fantasy series. I've read the majority and enjoyed most of them. Dresden Files is amazing. True story, Neverwhere was originally a mini TV series that had Peter Capaldi in it. Anansi Boys the Audiobook is one of my all time favorites.
A similar list for classic sci-fi.
Film and TV
There is a 6 hour edition of star wars Phantom Menace. Apparently it is awesome.
There's a movie about the GameStop stock run coming out. I'm expecting it to be bad.
Videogames
Last Of Us represents the first major jump into Trans Media. Yeah, I know the name is awful. The guy who introduced it called the idea Convergent Entertainment. Imagine videogames, theme parks, movies, and books all told the same story. You read the book, watch the show, and play the game to find out the entire story. It's why Marvel feels episodic with everything. Anyway, last of Us is on this train, or Wired says it is.
An archive of every single interview with Shigeru Miyamoto.
A speedrunner gets an impossible 1 UP.
Watch someone get 350,000+ points at Asteroids with a single ship. It's nearly 40 minutes long, so grab some food and a phone first.
How to make a press kit for a game.
Android phones now have Neo Geo games. Here's a list of great games to buy.
Space Hamster is an unreleased Sega 32X game. Try it out.
Fans want Dead Space 2 Remake to have a difficult battle with the tormentor.
The Last Spell is a tower defense RPG game. It looks interesting.
Soul Calibur to get a remake or collection released soon.
Tech and Videogames
Making the well lit screens from Portal. An interesting look at how screens work from a maker point of view.
Tech
Samsung has been caught faking moon photos. You take the photo, and the AI recognizes it and alters it to fit what you want. A redditor took a picture of a blurry moon photo and got a great picture on his phone. So, it's a photo with so much manipulation it can't be considered real.
Disney has real life lightsabers and isn't sharing them.
Vinyl records outsold CDs last year. Great news for hipters.
A company scans real world items to present and sell them on the Metaverse.
Tech: gaming computers
AMD says they could make something to compete with the 4090, but decided against it.
The reason why is the cost and power consumption was just too much.
AMD is releasing a new CPU, and it tests well.
Comparisons between AMD and Nvidia cards. Bench test!!
The laptop version looks nice.
The Nvidia 4070 is rumored to release next month.
TTRPG
Horror game Public Access is set at 2004 and uses the Brindlewood rules set. It's analog horror as a table top game.
Here it is for $15.
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/429340
Pinball
Pulp Fiction just announced.
Guns
New minigun for sale. It can fit in a suitcase and shoot 5,000 rounds a minute.
Thanks again for the links. It's great--I'm reading a lot of stuff I would not normally find.
Decision made by son,Theo Downes-Le Guin. Hyphenated last name. Does anything more really need to be said?
He has a hyphenated last name because his mother was a radical feminist. The trash doesn't fall far from the dumpster.
I'm actually surprised to learn that since Sparrowhawk was a Chad. I've only read the earthsea books and none of her other works
Not Christopher Tolkien for certain. I get the feeling he doesn't really know what to do with it, and the edits seems benign to him. He's at the precipe and hasn't looked down.
You're welcome. I enjoy making the lists.
Re: Urban Fantasy, I would like to recommend two series:
Jeff Somers' Ustari Cycle series. Set in a modern urban setting, where the dregs of society use blood magic to scam and con their way through life, while trying to retain the last shreds of their morality when their only opportunity to not starve or freeze to death is literal blood sacrifices. Book #1 is We Are Not Good People.
Charles Stross has a rather benignly named series know as the Laundry Files, that mix magic, demons, and Lovecraftian horrors with IT humour and white collar office antics. People summoning demons by computing forbidden mathematical algorithms, programming FPGA chips with offensive occult weaponry, and worst of all, having to deal with Internal Auditing. Book #1 is The Atrocity Archives.
I read the atrocity archives. It's pretty good.
Try the Nightside series if you like Lovecraftian urban fantasy in the styling of a noir novel
Thank you, I'll definitely check it out this weekend.
There's also hawk and fisher. Picture cops but medieval and with monsters
Couldn't have happened to a better target. You reap what you sow.
Actual sample of Le Guin's "writing" from The Dispossessed. Page 2, I think.
That beat out Mote in God's Eye by Nivien, for the Hugo AND the Nebula.
Here is some required reading for anyone who is interested in the state of Sci-Fi.
https://archive.is/y0RDx https://archive.is/aqceS
I worked at the Hugo award that handed out the asterisks.
Niven was robbed.
I really appreciate you doing this again. Every time I find some news I never heard of like:
On a PHONE? They specifically mention a pixel phone, I have something equivalent... I should look into this as having one of those in the pocket could be really useful. Ai is really going fast, I remember when the Stable Diffusion stuff started, the webui became a thing and I could generate some stuff. I tried to regenerate what I did back then with massive successes as compared to before. If stuff keeps developing like they have had I don't even know where we will end.
Imma be honest: I am a Linux guy, Linux is the general consensus that amd is better. I have had numerous issues with amd that I did not with nvidia. Not only that but I feel like AMD should just focus on their CPUs, it's where they shine so I am not surprised they are not directly competing with the 4090(which tbf you don't really need if you don't dabble in anything production related or you wanna run Minecraft with Ray tracing in 4k,lol). Feels like they should capture the low to mid range pc market with good prices.
Just watched tales from earthsea the other day. Fuck these assholes
Thank you. It's as much for me as it is anyone else.
I enjoy it as well. Appreciate the effort. This book editing is ridiculous but that’s why it’s good to church the year it was published
Tolkien has a long history of editing and correcting bad editors.
That I heard of but I guess now it’s people who think they are editing for a modern audience. I guess I’m just tired of those who act like anything that came before them was evil
I agree, and I expect it to happen to LeGuin's work. They're testing the waters now.
I’ve only read one of her books. Isn’t she an icon for women in sci-fi/fantasy?
Very much so. Some of her books were even good.