Videogames
The top publishers of last year. The archive was weird so here's the regular one.
https://www.metacritic.com/pictures/2023-game-publisher-rankings
Still getting updates on Kickstarter for Bloodstained. This one was about playing videogames with some of the investors.
A game based on the Last Ronin is being made. The comic was about the remaining Ninja Turtle trying to rebuild his clan.
Witchfire has a way more complex magic system. The creators made Painkiller, so combine magic with that and imagine the possibility.
Gollum is releasing this year. It lets you play the movie character as he tries to get to the ring on his own. It's more of a Serkis event if you know what I'm Tolkien about.
Lords of the Fallen sequel will have the exact same name.
Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon collection in Physical format is coming out soon. I will be getting that.
Lancer Tactics is a videogame version of the TTRPG.
Videogames: mods and Fan made
Star Fox with 15 new levels and co-op.
Grove Street has been recreated in… drum roll please… Fortnite.
Fans are archiving the digital versions of all the online games for 3DS and Wii U. Seeing as both allow for Sad cards, getting them to play on original equipment shouldn't be hard.
Videogames: Counter Strike 2
The game has just been announced.
Counter Strike 2 makes the best Molotov Cocktails.
Videogames: Business
GameStop is profitable again.
Atari Acquires Night Dive studio. This is cool to me, because Night Dive used to show off their games at indie events in Seattle and Portland.
Videogames: Microsoft Activision merger
UK regulator approves the Microsoft and Activision merger. Expect Clippy to appear in the next Call of Duty.
UK Watchdog now approves merger
Videogames: Creation
Tim Sweeney believes the Metaverse is real. He should, Roblox and Fortnite are the best versions of one.
USD command language being used to make Gran Turismo. It's a standard command script for movie editing.
Unreal Engine Metahuman show reel.
Unity is introducing AI programs to help in the process of game making. I would need way more space on my computer to do this. Not a joke, I have Unreal Engine on a portable hard drive right now.
https://create.unity.com/ai-beta
Flight Simulator will soon get humans moving around. Why they haven't ported all this info to a driving simulator is beyond me.
Adobe, Epic and Autodesk are partnering to make better game making programs.
https://archive.ph/5gaJz Videogames: MoCap
Film on a regular camera and get great results with the new Nvidia set up.
More on the Nvidia set up.
Videogames: History
SEGA arcade games used defense contract rendering hardware and programs.
Kirby Creators answer questions like, "Where do things go after Kirby eats them," and, "what do his insides look like".
TTRPG
Warhammer aims for non fans in next big edition. The article makes sure to mention Nazis.
AR VR
Goggle sales are expected to be lower this year.
Metaverse Propaganda
Metaverse is just VR says Meta.
Better hand tracking let's you touch menus instead of using controllers.
Work at Atari in the late 70's. Then fall into the games. Cool idea, but voice actor is bad.
AI
Can you run an AI Image creator through your web browser? Well yeah, of course.
Professor figures out he can use AI to cover his lectures for him.
AI Chat programs compared.
A guy thinks Apple will win the AI Wars even though it hasn't been playing. Heck, it's still got AR goggles to release.
Ablation instead of training is a new attempt to copy another style.
Check out how this video was changed by AI filters. I really want to learn this, but haven't had the time or money yet.
https://www.reddit.com/r/StableDiffusion/comments/120l1nm/i_changed_style_of_the_video_using_stable/
An AI art exhibit. It looks like it's a promotional stunt for a documentary on the subject. Art as a money laundering scheme will not get weirder.
Canva says they're going full AI ahead to compete with Adobe.
We now have text to video creations. Try it out.
https://huggingface.co/spaces/damo-vilab/modelscope-text-to-video-synthesis
AI: Business There's a lot of money going into AI right now.
Adobe and Yahoo have figured out the answer to 'stealing art'. It's in the EULA to use the art as wanted.
Amazon and Nvidia team up to make better hardware for AI.
AI: Chat GPT
ChatGPT has limited access to the internet.
Another limited internet article.
ChatGPT closed down because it was revealing personal info about other users.
Android Chat now has Bard
Mozilla wants to make their own ChatGPT.
AI: Bard
Google president says he expects Bard to make mistakes.
Tech
Carnegie Mellon University keeps doing amazing stuff with WiFi. It's a video, so I'm doing a direct link.
https://twitter.com/TheRundownAI/status/1639334310711787536?t=rSfBWv8yi9C9PAPlAr_2wA&s=09
Gordon Moore of Moore's Law fame has passed away.
The reason why you can't use a regular GPU to do multiple streams of video or render several AI images? The code for your card won't let you. It can do it, but Nvidia doesn't allow it.
Boeing can't seem to get it's commercial space tourism vessel up.
Tech: Blender
Blender add on for SDF modeling. It means you can take stuff away with a shape.
A blender add on creates a hand drawn outline of characters.
Film TV
Check out this illumination intro.
Cinema Stocks rise as streaming companies start releasing movies to theaters.
Themed Experiences and Parks*
Disney is getting rid of their parks dedicated to teaching about subjects and turning them into regular Theme Parks. More Avatar, more Pixar, and more stupidity. Why? Because they want to make more money and have reached that limit even though the parks are even fuller than ever.
Comics
WAND is a part of SHIELD. It's the magic department in fact. I doubt the writers know how to use it, but the set up seems great.
Propaganda
World Athletics Council bans Transgender athletes.
British Museum refuses to give back items in their collections. A long article on why this is evil continues.
The Mary Sue compares the Harry Potter game to Elden Ring and says ER is way more popular. In fact, people have stopped playing the Harry Potter one. As if they all played it and finished around the same time…
What is woke? A writer asks another writer and doesn't get the answer she wants and then says woke is anti racism. This article is being spread by lefty friends.
All that global climate change has ended California's drought.
US sends airstrike into Syria because a US worker was killed.
Propaganda: Banks
JP Morgan are accused of stealing jewelry.
US Banks have $1.7 Trillion in unrealized losses
Deutsch Banks drops 9% because it can't insure all it's debts.
Propaganda: Business
Companies are requiring fired workers not to complain about them in contracts.
Accenture slashes 19,000 jobs.
NPR to fire 10% of their business and 3 podcasts!
An Amazon top brass rejected a letter to allow out of office workers, to appear to be tough.
California is passing a bill that punishes price gouging oil companies. Expect said companies to leave California or comply maliciously.
Propaganda: China
China and US fight over deep sea internet cables.
CEO of TikTok hopes to stay in US.
Propaganda: LA Teacher Strike
LA parents don't know what to do during teacher strike. They completely forgot what they did during Covid.
The deal was found a day after the strike. This seems so silly now. The entire thing was planned, prepped and even treated like a yearly thing.
Propaganda: Florida Schools
Race left out on story of Rosa Parks in a Florida School thing. Therefore Florida is racist evil. Teachers complying badly is not a question.
A principal in Florida was fired for not telling parents the 6th graders would be looking at the statue of David. The full frontal thing. Not even hard to fix this problem. This is the third principal in as many years.
Bookshops are selling banned books as one night stands. People line up to buy these books. They feel like they are rebelling against the man. All of them are middle aged or older and have no clue what's in these books.
Clowns have a convention in Florida. No, that's not an Euphemism, it's actual clowns.
Propaganda: Russia Ukraine
Volunteers to the war front are full of themselves. One little note, a Marine Colonel brought US tech to use. He's facing a possible court martial, but I get the feeling he's a scapegoat.
Russian Orthodox church shares blame for violence in Ukraine.
Propaganda: Donald Trump
Donald Trump has soo many investigations you guys. He's going down for real this time.
DA who wants to prosecute Donald Trump says house GOP asking him what he is doing is impeding his investigation.
More on the DA. The House GOP wanted him to testify on his investigation, and show the receipts.
The same DA says they will not be arresting Donald Trump. It's False, he has no intention to… anymore.
Donald Trump took to Social Media to complain about the dumb investigations being done on him. The ones where every news channel can't wait to tell you how illegal and dangerous it is. That same media is abhorred that Trump calls them evil.
Propaganda: Canadian Immigration
Canada grew by a million people in one year from Immigration alone.
The US catches people trying to sneak in through Canada and get a free ticket to immigration department in Texas.
US and Canada reach deal to reject asylum seekers.
Cars
Remember the awesome demo of a Rivian in the jungle on Unreal Engine 5? The real life version isn't as cool.
Pagani show off their new SUV.
Weird
This Velociraptor has a very special message for you.
https://twitter.com/ButWitRaptors/status/1639377238117285890?t=V1u2mFIv3uzD6sSkJC95wQ&s=09
Dr Pepper Cake
English footballers vs Countdown
Music
A rapper named Afroman was arrested by police. It was such a botched arrest, Afroman made music videos from the footage of the police at his doorstep. The police are now suing him for emotional distress.
Led Zeppelin's John Bonham has a son named Jason. Jason found tapes of something, but hasn't played them yet. It could be unreleased songs. Also, Jason talks about the Led Zeppelin reunion tour.
That's way dumber than I expected.