Comics and Books
One punch Man comic review
Last week's comic releases reviewed
Horror Comic Latah is set in the Vietnam War.
Batman from Arkham Knight shows up in comics alive and well.
25 characters and stories in the public domain
Comics: Digital Stores
Marvel is moving away from Comixology and toward their own online comic app
Kodansha has a digital store
Arcade
Top 10 home arcade cabinets
Classic Atari Cabinets from Concept to release. Lots of videos and pictures showing it off.
There is a sequel to Dead Storm Pirates coming out
VR AR MR
Paw Patrol immersive experience.
https://vimeo.com/819512689/de6cf2a8ae
How AR teaches people to weld
Hubris is coming to PSVR2. The game, not what most VR creators have.
Rogue Ascend allows for only hand controls in its first person shooter game
VR MR: Quest
Apparently Meta Quest has started having their own Nintendo Directs. The next one is scheduled for June 1st
Oculus Quest wasn't supposed to be a gaming console
The quest has an engagement problem
RIP Metaverse
VR AR MR: Goggles
Goertek has created an outline for a XR and Watch interface with your phone. So you can use all three while doing things.
Surgical glasses with AR add ons.
Check out these smooth looking concept goggles
MR: Apple
Are Apple's not released glasses already obsolete? Silicon Valley is pivoting towards AI, which means MR and it's brethren could be old news
The big reveal is on June 5th
MR: Science
New brain interaction device has been approved by FDA
Mice controlled objects in Virtual Space with their minds.
Theme Experiences and Parks
This AI photo booth has a retro future experience with it.
https://www.reddit.com/r/StableDiffusion/comments/134kzds/the_first_sd_ai_photbooth/
Here's the archive
Universal Studios work in interactive Mixed Reality systems
Architecture
Desai Chia looks cool.
Jeju Art Gallery looks evil on the outside and heavenly on the inside.
Casa Cafe has a nice natural look and a dumb name.
Three towers as one for a financial center by Zaha Hadid
What's it like to live in a Frank Lloyd Wright house? Some people answer
Check out these arches.
Cars
700 Horse Power Hill climber
The N Vision 74 will likely be announced and released in the next two weeks.
AI
Bing is doing well and is free.
Interview with start up QDC AI
MidJourney has prompt blocker in 5.1. I find this odd since I have seen a lot of nudity lately for pictures that don't have it in the prompt.
This could also be in Videogames. Remakes with AI filters might be the future of rereleased games.
AI: SDXL
SDXL is really nice.
It has photorealistic shots
AI: Lists
9 apps made in a month with AI.
AI Chrome extensions
Add ons for ChatGPT. The voice box add on is especially cool.
A long list of articles on AI
AI: Tests
Firefly image creation tests.
Stable Diffusion XL tests
https://lablab.ai/blog/stable-diffusion-new-model-sdxl-beta
An idea for making 3D animations from AI image creators.
AI: Tutorials
Tutorial on making AI videos
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bicPayZDI60
A tutorial on making better MidJourney pictures
Using ControlNet for image creation
https://colab.research.google.com/github/huggingface/notebooks/blob/main/diffusers/controlnet.ipynb
How to customize an LLM to research your own work.
AI: Opinions and Propaganda
AI has no moat. Internal Google messages released.
10%-20% chance of AI killing humanity.
Another article saying AI needs to be restricted before it's too late.
Generative Art needs to be stopped or take on ethics. During World War I, the English demanded that the German Submarines announce themselves before attacking. The Germans did this and lost. I see ethics in AI articles in the same vein.
FTC Chair is ready to fight evil AI
A CEO is using AI in his company and saving a lot of time.
New York Times interviews an AI expert about the dangers of AI. He calls them out for fear mongering.
We must perfect predictive text for the AI revolution to happen.
AI: HuggingFace
Copilot allows code to be made and corrected
AI: ChatGPT 4 new add ons
ChatGPT can create and correct code. It can also edit video and other stuff.
MetaGPT lets you edit video and stuff with natural language.
ChatGPT is getting into CAD.
AI: DeepFloyd
Paper on DeepFloyd
DeepFloyd can do actual text.
AI: Papers
Generative Disco is a music video creation AI.
Stanford University researches the weirdness of image generation. The artifacts and glitches that shouldn't be there are the key part of this paper.
There is a new Academic Journal asking for articles on the impacts of AI. I'm working on a Masters in Themed Design in Architecture, and this would be great for my research, but it likely won't be published in time.
Introduction to LLM+ Planner generation
Creating instructional data using LLMs instead of humans
Creating a text to image AI that will then animate the image
FreedomGPT is ethical without needs for laws to be passed.
ImpressionGPT is an AI that does radiological work and then does a writeup about it.
Perceptual quality filter for text to video AI creation
Augmented Reality with AI creation framework by Meta
Nvidia working with Stable Diffusion to create Text to Video in HD.
Working with LLMs a large paper
AI: Papers: NeRF
A paper introduces Diffusion to NeRF. It is so close to what I want to do
Single shot NeRF of humans
Tech
'holograms'
Firmware designed to brick drone goggles
This Amiga run on a Raspberry Pi lets you use Floppy Disks
How the '76ers used motion capture to improve their game playing skills and reduce injuries.
AI and some tech used to beat the TRex chrome game
Tutorial
Motion Capture with Wonder Dynamic
How to I stall Mac OS onto a Wii
Making 3D printed containers for bolts to be shipped
Tutorial: Unreal Engine 5
World Building in Unreal Engine 5
Remaking a scene from Resident Evil 2 in Unreal Engine 5
Tutorial: Blender
A watery donut in Blender
Using Weight to paint an image
Tutorial: Architecture
Ray Tracing and Rasterization in Lumion
Some tutorials on natural architecture design in Blender
Science and History
Neolithic Cattle Cult sounds like a rock band, but it's actually in Saudi Arabia and being dug up right now.
Chinese Rover finds evidence of water on Mars.
NASA's next space station will be way further out than the current one.
Did Middle Earth represent points in Germanic history? No, but Tolkien used them to explain the area. Much as Frodo is called that because it helps in knowing him. Sure it's Wise One in old English, but that's not his real name. Tolkien treats it as a translation from the original language and people.
I think it's a bit of one up manship. You suddenly know that much more because you know this little bit. Tolkien probably based some of the emotions in the book with his own experiences in WWI, but the story outline itself had been written out way before he served.
I've seen a similar thing with the Wizard of Oz being an analogy of American politics at the time. L Frank Baum continued to write stories from Oz, and none of those are compared to politics. He never said it was either. Someone 30 years later said it was, and highschool history teachers have been quoting it ever since. It's been showing up in England a lot in the last few years and based on history they barely know.
It sounds smart, and doesn't need a lot of details, which is even better. To these folks, Marie Antoinette said 'let them eat cake', Nero played a violin as Rome burned, Robin Williams was always sad and hid it with comedy, PT Barnum was an entertainer his entire life, and Shakespeare was anything else but some guy who made plays for a living. It starts to become historical fact and guys like me have to correct that way before we can explain what actually happened.
I was taught the Wizard of Oz thing in a gifted history class. It's something people who try to sound smart tell each other.
I also appreciate the thought in the article. It's why I posted it. I would love to have been in the writers group with Tolkien and Lewis. Even the people who took their classes have written some amazing stuff like Diane Wynne Jones.
And the shoes are the silver dollar.
I've also heard Roosevelt.
The AR/VR glasses very much interest me.
I 100% believe that VR/AR failing is entirely a hardware problem. Once it is pleasant to use for an extended period of time, and mobile, it will explode in popularity.
Looking forward to our decade in the 2030s where we all have 360 degrees of productive monitor space that we're controlling via AI integration understanding what we want very easily and quickly, before 2040 when we all die thanks to the singularity. :)
I agree with you to a point. They also need to create programs that work. Meta tried to be an office, and secretly a military, goggle business. Now they are moving over to games. VR needs a killer app, and it will most likely be about gaming.
I love the look of the N Vision 74. It's like a car an anime protagonist would own. Hyundai has been killing it lately. With how lame Nissan has been lately I think Hyundai should steal their seat at the cool kids table.
The Hyundai brand is really good. I consider the Elantra a good sneaky car and the Veloster is my favorite fun car. The Santa Fe is so standard now I can't drive another. You have to make sure Kia doesn't sneak in parts, but otherwise they're good reliable cars.
There have been some really cool N Visions and I would love to see more of them in production.
The enemy is scared of competition, again.
To win against a force greater than yours, you need to convince them to do something stupid out of nobility.