Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge As Summer Game Geoff, aka Keigh3, aka The Keighleys, aka Summer Game Fest 2023, winds down, there are a few more big developer presentations left, including today’s Ubisoft Forward 2023. You can watch the livestream on Twitch or YouTube at 1PM ET / 10 AM PT / 6PM BST.
Read MoreAs Tom Nardi mentioned in this week’s podcast, the Northeast US is pretty apocalyptically socked in with smoke from wildfires in Canada. It’s what we here in Idaho call “August,” so we have plenty of sympathy for what they’re going through out there. People are turning to technology to ease their breathing burden, with reports
Read MoreDan Primack / Axios: a16z plans to open a crypto-focused office in London and leads a $43M round in UK-based Gensyn, which offers a decentralized compute network for training AI — America’s largest investor in crypto startups believes that the industry’s future may be across the pond, and is opening …
Read MoreMatthias Bastian / The Decoder: Meta launches MusicGen, an open-source AI model to generate short pieces of music using text prompts that can optionally be aligned to an existing melody — Meta’s MusicGen can generate short new pieces of music based on text prompts, which can optionally be aligned to an existing melody.
Read MoreBefore the Internet became the advertisement generator we know and love today, interspersed with interesting information here and there, it was originally a network of computers largely among various universities. This was even before the world-wide web and HTML which means that the people using these proto-networks, mostly researchers and other academics, had to build
Read MoreNoah Smith / Noahpinion: Trying to shape AI tech to protect jobs is a bad idea since no one can predict which technologies will augment humans and which will simply replace their labor — Instead, we should empower workers and create mechanisms for redistribution. — I’ve been to a number of meetings and panels recently
Read MoreCredit: Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority On June 12, 2023, a major Reddit protest began. The protest sees over 3,500 subreddits “going dark” to protest new site policies. For at least the next 48 hours, huge chunks of Reddit will not work. If you opened up Reddit today hoping to see some cute cat photos
Read MoreSimon Parkin / The Guardian: An interview with Philip Rosedale, who launched the online world Second Life in 2003 and says his vision predates Neal Stephenson’s 1992 coinage of “metaverse” — Mark Zuckerberg’s grand vision for an online existence has been laughed off as a corporate folly.
Read MoreScanning Tunneling Microscopes (STMs) are amazing tools which can manipulate singular atoms, but they cannot characterize these atoms as they act only on the outer electron shell. Meanwhile X-ray spectroscopy is a great tool for characterizing materials, but has so far been unable to scale down to singular atoms. This is where a recent study
Read MoreCredit: Google AT&T will switch to Google’s Jibe platform for RCS messaging on its phones. This should allow for more reliable texting on the carrier’s smartphones. Google says this should also allow AT&T users to instantly get the latest RCS features. RCS is the successor standard to SMS, allowing for messaging, file sharing, and other
Read MoreBenj Edwards / Ars Technica: A tech reporter on why he bought a 2023 World Book Encyclopedia printed set: nostalgia, permanence, and no AI or human tampering, link rot, or stealth edits — The still-updated World Book Encyclopedia is my antidote to the information apocalypse. — These days, many of us live online …
Read MoreCredit: Apple A trusted journalist has confirmed that Apple is working on two more headsets. One headset is a cheaper model that could launch at the end of 2025. The other headset will be a follow-up to the newly launched Vision Pro. Apple revealed its Vision Pro XR headset a week ago, packing loads of
Read MoreNewley Purnell / Wall Street Journal: Google, OpenAI, and Microsoft haven’t rolled out their AI chatbots in Hong Kong, adding to a slow creep of tech companies treating the city like mainland China — Google and OpenAI haven’t rolled out AI chatbots to city, putting it alongside mainland China and North Korea
Read MoreWe are all used to modular construction in the analogue synth world, to the extent that there’s an accepted standard for it in EuroRack. But the same techniques are just as useful wherever else analogue circuits need to be configured on the fly, such as in an analogue computer. It’s something [Rainer Glaschick] has pursued,
Read MoreCredit: Apple Apple executives have surprisingly not been pictured with the Apple Vision Pro headset on. Executives have routinely posed with iPhones and Apple Watches, marking their confidence in the products. It is speculated that this may be because the Vision Pro headset is bulky and fairly dystopian, and Apple wants to protect its executives
Read MoreCecilia D’Anastasio / Bloomberg: Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer says he does not “feel an imperative” from users to release a major Xbox upgrade, preferring instead the “hardware we have” — Microsoft Corp.’s video gaming chief Phil Spencer said he doesn’t “feel an imperative” to come out with a major upgrade of its Xbox game
Read MoreIngrid Lunden / TechCrunch: HSBC rebrands SVB UK as HSBC Innovation Banking and adds teams in the US, Israel, and Hong Kong to serve startups, investors, and other tech clients — Acquired by HSBC in an emergency sale for just £1 in March as SVB was melting down, SVB UK is now getting a rebrand
Read MoreImage: Bethesda We got a solid 15 minutes of Starfield gameplay at Microsoft’s Xbox & Bethesda showcase last year, and today we’re getting a really in-depth look at Bethesda’s first new IP in 25 years. Described as “Skyrim in space,” by game director Todd Howard, the RPG is really shaping up ahead of its debut
Read MoreIt isn’t that often that we civilians get the chance to closely examine the fantastic internals that make up the modern marvels of avionic engineering. Luckily for us, [Glen] got his hands on a 747 fuel gauge and tore it down for our benefit. Not only does he tear it down, but he also builds
Read MoreTimthetatman / Activision Activision has removed another streamer’s skin (from a game, not their body). TimTheTatman, a prominent Call of Duty streamer, asked to have his operator bundle removed from Call of Duty in support of his friend Nickmercs, whose skin was pulled last week after he made homophobic comments. “At Tim’s request, we have
Read MoreWelcome to our comprehensive guide on the best 4K TVs of 2023. With advancements in technology, 4K TVs have become the new standard for enjoying stunning visuals and lifelike picture quality. As we delve into the new year, it’s essential to stay updated with the latest options available in the market. In this article, we
Read MoreImage: Microsoft Microsoft has just announced a new black version of the Xbox Series S with 1TB of built-in storage at the Xbox Games Showcase. Little has changed here since the original Xbox Series S, apart from a black paint job and more storage inside. Microsoft is launching the 1TB black Xbox Series S on
Read MoreAtlus / Xbox Xbox and Atlus have one helluva partnership going on. Last year Xbox announced that Persona 5 Royal, Persona 4 Golden and Persona 3 Portable were coming to Xbox Game Pass. Now, we’re also two more Persona games and a brand new Atlus RPG. Persona 3 Reload is a remake of the original
Read MoreImage: Microsoft At its Xbox Games Showcase on Sunday, Microsoft debuted a trailer for a new steampunk RPG from its inXile Entertainment studio, titled Clockwork Revolution. Here’s a short description of the game, from the reveal trailer’s description: Clockwork Revolution is a time-bending steampunk first-person RPG. After stumbling across an incredible invention that allows you
Read MoreRyu Ga Gotoku Studio / Sega Ichiban is back and still number one! During the Xbox showcase, the developers at Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio teased the next part in the Yakuza: Like a Dragon saga— Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth. In the trailer, Ichiban, the floofy-haired protagonist of Like a Dragon, has washed up on
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