On My Radar: A Reasonably Curated News Round-Up
This week is jam-packed with news and happenings, including stories about Fortnite, Snoop Dogg, Ice Spice, Batman: Arkham Shadow, TechCrunch Disrupt + So Much More
A veritable cornucopia of stories to highlight this week:
Ice Spice and Snoop Dogg Perform Surprise Concert in Times Square to Kick Off Fortnite’s 27th Season
The VR Adventure Batman: Arkham Shadow Launches Exclusively on Quest 3 to Much Deserved Fanfare
From TechCrunch Disrupt 2024: Vinod Khosla on the Future of AI
Midjourney Seeking Input for its Twelve-Month Product Roadmap
Lookout, Google. ChatGPT Rolls Out a Robust Web Search
Apple Premieres Apple Intelligence
Boston Dynamics Releases New Video of its Autonomous Robot
Read on for details and links.
INTERACTIVE ENTERTAINMENT
🦙 Ice Spice and Snoop Dogg Perform Surprise Concert in Times Square to Kick Off Fortnite’s 27th Season (Variety)
Ice Spice and Snoop Dogg kicked off Fortnite’s 27th season celebrations for the “Fortnite Chapter 2 Remix” release in Times Square with a surprise concert. The concert was also featured in-game.
For this 30-day event, players can get skins and weapons based on Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Ice Spice, and Juice WRLD and access battle royale locations related to each artist. New artists will be featured every week, and this latest season will end with a huge finale on November 30th.
The presence of musical artists on these gaming, metaverse, and open-world platforms continues — as these industry sectors continue to collaborate and converge.
🦇The VR Adventure Batman: Arkham Shadow Launches Exclusively on Quest 3 to Much Deserved Fanfare (Meta Quest)
Batman: Arkham Shadow just launched in the Meta Quest store. Step into the murky and complex world of Gotham as you become Batman. In this immersive VR adventure, set in the shadowy space between Batman: Arkham Origins and Batman: Arkham Asylum, you’ll slip into Bruce Wayne’s cowl as he faces off against a dangerous new foe—the Rat King. This twisted adversary has stirred up a cult-like following, and his plans for Gotham threaten to plunge the city into chaos.
As you investigate the Rat King’s rise, you’ll encounter Gotham’s unforgettable characters: Dr. Harleen Quinzel, Jim Gordon, Harvey Dent, Dr. Jonathan Crane, and others whose motives remain in question. Who among them will stand by you—and who will ultimately descend into villainy?
Crafted exclusively for VR, this full-length installment in the Arkham series lets you explore Gotham like never before, immersing you in its gritty alleyways, iconic landmarks, and heart-pounding encounters. Experience the city in a way only possible with Meta Quest 3.
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
🌉 From TechCrunch Disrupt 2024: Vinod Khosla on the Future of AI (TechCrunch)
Apart from that little Martins Beach situation, Khosla has been a measured and outspoken voice — embracing an optimism for technology, innovation and (ever more so lately) the many potential benefits of artificial intelligence. His perspective on these matters is grounded in knowledge, foresight, and some degree of caution. I always find his commentary to be insightful. Here’s a recent talk with Khosla during TechCrunch Disrupt 2024, which took place in San Francisco. During the talk, he predcicts “the need to work will go away.” In September, Mr. Khosla published a long-form essay that more specifically outlines his hopes for the outsized impact will have on our lives — cautioning that guidelines and ethics must be at the core of these efforts.
🖼️ Midjourney Seeking Input for its Twelve-Month Product Roadmap (Midjourney)
Are you one of the 20+ million Midjourney users? Are there new or improved capabilities or features you’ve been craving? Now is your time to share your features wishlist with Midjourney as they prepare their next 12-month product roadmap. These ideas for Midjourney product expansion will then be compiled into a giant list for the community to vote on.
David Holz founded Midjourney in 2021 as an independent research lab. Upon its release one year later, their eponymous prompt-based image generation tool has led the charge, giving users an impressive range of options for setting parameters to customize and control output. Midjourney is also constantly expanding its capabilities and recently released an image editor. In 2022, the company was valued at $10 billion.
🌐 Lookout, Google. ChatGPT Rolls Out a Robust Web Search (MIT Technology Review)
Trick or Treat? It depends. For Halloween 2024, OpenAI announced the launch of its new web search feature. I don’t think many people realize the disruptive potential of such implementations — not only for companies like Google but also for how business on the web is conducted across the board. Google stands poised to continue to lose ground to the competition.
🍎 Apple Premieres Apple Intelligence (Apple)
At long last, Apple released Apple Intelligence into the wild. Apple Intelligence introduces AI-driven features to a range of Apple products. This initial release provides a glimpse, they say, of what's to come.
These new features include Writing Tools that work across apps such as Mail, Messages, and Notes. Siri has been revamped to be smarter and smoother (I can't wait to test this one out). Siri's ability to toggle seamlessly between voice and text is one new improvement that's been introduced. The Photos app has also leveled up with natural language search, letting users describe what they're looking for. There's a Clean Up tool to remove unwanted objects from images (I already use similar tools in PhotoShop and having it on my iPhone device potentially makes this a big plus in terms of convenience), and an upgraded Memories feature that crafts movies from user prompts.
Future updates promise more interactive and creative features, from personalized Genmojis and an Image Playground (where users can "create playful images in moments") to enhanced Writing Tools. With a new Camera Control arriving in December, Apple Intelligence will help users recognize objects and locations, tapping into integrations like ChatGPT for even broader support. At the end of the day,
Via Apple:
ROBOTICS
🤖 Boston Dynamics Releases New Video of its Autonomous Robot (The Verge)
Boston Dynamics is well-known for its creative video demonstrations of its latest robotics advancements. Through improvements in its machine learning processes and sensors, the company showed its Atlas robot correctly sorting items based on a provided list. It's not as fun to watch as its parkour demo, though, just as (if not more) impactful in terms of the capabilities demonstrated.
The timing of the release of this video, highlighting the fact that the robot is performing these warehouse tasks autonomously, comes on the heels of another recent demonstration of humanoid robot technology that relied on (but was not clearly stated as such) teleoperation.
