Videogames
A school in Hawaii used special funds to build an arcade in an empty room. This is being used to persuade students to attend. "eh, like I borrow quarter then class?"
Sony has a possible handheld coming out. It sounds like someone saw the switch, and failed to understand why it's popular.
Turbased based RPGs announced. I like the last two.
Variety interviewed Shigeru Miyamoto. He wants to move away from phones and has ideas for everything.
Videogames: Creation
Twinmotion had a new edition.
AR VR MR
Metaverse had a fashion show. Big names showed up, and no one else.
VR AR MR: Experience
An ethnographer comments on the experience of the Metaverse and says it is lacking. She got sick a lot.
John Carmack says it's the interface not the tech that is bringing down VR. The design of the UI is so bad it turns off users. The ability to do it right is there, but companies are refusing.
Film TV
Long live Netflix with ads! Could also be in Propaganda.
Super Mario Bros movie is planned by critics for being a Super Mario Bros movies. They even call it dark for some reason.
Pirate Bay has a possible movie coming out.
TTRPG
Meet the people making art for Dungeons and Dragons campaigns. Realize how far things have gone and then make better art and stories with AI
Music
Heard this song on the drive home and finally found it. The band is two guys. One has two different amps connected to his guitar so they have bass and ugly at the same time.
Comics
Five comics coming out this week.
AI
Perhaps my biggest story. Luma AI can now be exported to Unreal Engine 5.
Creepy stories about AI
https://www.facebook.com/reel/235683438966113
Nvidia has a way to use video and AI art together. This is a method using a regular video editor.
Henry Cavill stars in this new Supermam trailer. If you haven't figured it out, yes, it was made by AI.
Check out these videos made with AI voices. I may have posted this earlier.
AI: Image to Text
MidJourney now has image to text capabilities.
Someone tested this by getting one image, then having it described and then made an image from that. He went as far as he could down the rabbit hole. Cool images, and it shows the holes in the system.
AI: Microsoft
Microsoft offers it's ChatGPT Bing services to anything with Swiftkey.
Microsoft has its ChatGPT Bing in notebooks.
AI: Hugging Face
Hugging Face Teams up with Jupiter Notebooks
Hugging Face releases ChatGPT clone.
AI: Chat
BloombergChat is now a thing.
Google to have chat AI with search.
Vicuna now exists.
Freedom GPT now exists.
Tech
Mint Mobile raises their download numbers while waiting to turn over to TMobile
A three part foldable phone is coming out. It looks like a display.
Mind controlled robots are now a thing.
TikTok is banned on Florida campuses. You can't even have it on WiFi. Could also be in Propaganda.
Here are some anti Google search engines. Great for academic research.
Kobold to take on Amazon as it releases in the US.
Tutorial on textures on blender.
Propaganda
You own nothing and are happy!! Internet ownership rights
Undoing the dollar with foreign money.
Tons of obesity medications coming out.
How Brandon Johnson won Chicago! It was popularity and not theft.
The US has given Ukraine enough vehicles and ammo to beat Russia.
Propaganda: Disney
Disney and Florida are partners again. Disney is promising to do a lot of things for Florida if the state backs down.
Propaganda: Abortion
Washington State stocks up on abortion pills as court case may ban them.
Idaho bans abortion trafficking. A parent must know their child is having and abortion and approve.
Propaganda: Transgender
National Geographic talks about their transgender photo shoot with a 9 year old.
Kansas bans Transgender athletes.
Florida mom demands discussion on why drag show was cancelled.
Propaganda: Donald Trump
Reports of masses joined together to protest arrest of Donald Trump are fake and full of liars.
Trump was told he did not have authority to seize voting machines.
You know what, I actually like the drop in school attendance for those that go to school at all. It was always pushed as delinquency back when I was in school. The thing is, as an adult I've seen some parents have their kids miss school to do something that's more valuable to them than being bored with indoctrination lessons, family things, and such. That's hurting no one really.
Oh and on book ownership, that's why if I ever choose to buy an eBook it's stripped of it's DRM and made into an ePub on day 1. I don't even use their eBook reader app to read it. I prefer paper books in a lot of cases though
It's a weird debate since a lot of what you mentioned means the author likely won't get a sale. I have friends that pay their rent with writing, and have a small job to buy fun stuff. Every non sale means that small job gets bigger.
The way I do it they should get paid. I buy from legit sites, download, strip of DRM, and then use it from there. It's all still on my account(s) as legit purchases and I generally don't share my DRM free files with anyone. I'm just free to then use the purchase as I wish on whatever device and app I wish, etc.
Paper books, physical movies, whatever I acquire legally and I guess at some point the author got a sale. My policy on piracy is typically where I only pirate works of authors/creators that are hostile to me, not reasonably obtainable, hostile subscription exclusive, etc. It's pretty rare I pirate really because most of those exceptions rule out any worthy entertainment anyway.
A friend of mine talks about how people demand his book be placed on pirate Bay to get an audience. He's not amused by that.
You are doing it legit and I doubt even my friends mind that. It's the fact that so many don't that bother them.