Lifeboat Foundation

Real-estate transactions in the metaverse are reaching record highs. We spoke with companies investing in digital real estate to understand the economic model, and why investors are spending millions on virtual property. Photo: Republic Realm.

More from the Wall Street Journal:
Visit WSJ.com: http://www.wsj.com.
Visit the WSJ Video Center: https://wsj.com/video.

Continue reading “Investors Buy Up Metaverse Real Estate in Virtual Land Boom | WSJ” »

So far, dozens of cases of the new strain dubbed ‘Deltacron’ have been diagnosed.

You might not have to send your devices in (or buy replacement parts) if the display breaks — you could just make new screens yourself. University of Minnesota Twin Cities researchers have developed what they say is the first fully 3D-printed flexible OLED display. In theory, you wouldn’t have to depend on panels made at large, distant factories to build or repair your gadgets.

The new approach combines two methods of 3D printing to print the six layers needed for a functional display. The team used extrusion printing to make the electrodes, encapsulation, insulation and interconnects, while active layers were spray-painted at room temperature. Past attempts by various teams either had issues with light uniformity (consistency across the whole panel) or relied on techniques beyond 3D printing to put some components in place, such as spin-coating or thermal evaporation.

The prototype was just 1.5 inches wide and used just 64 pixels. Any practical uses would require much higher resolutions (a 1080p display requires over 2 million pixels), and the scientists also want to improve brightness. It might also take a while to adapt the technology for home use. The university used a custom 3D printer that costs as much as a Tesla Model S — it might take a while for the method to be viable on off-the-shelf printers, even including high-end models like FormLabs’ $4,850 3B+.

Formlabs, one of the few companies to turn 3D printing into a useful, real-world tool, is here at CES to show off two new printers. The Form 3+ and 3B+ are updates to the models it launched in 2019, with these units described as its “fastest 3D printers to date.”

New for 2022 include higher-intensity lasers, new material settings and faster, more durable hardware, with a promise of 40 percent faster prints. It also comes with the Build Platform 2, an updated deck for manufacturing that makes it easier to remove prints when they’re done.

At the same time, the company is showing off ESD Resin, enabling you to build components that dissipate electrostatic discharges. This should, Formlabs hopes, open up new opportunities for prints that can be used inside the electronics industry and other high-tech operations.

The ultimate mobile CPU.

Yesterday Romanian tech review site Lab 501 put up one of the world’s first reviews of Intel’s new mobile Core i9-12900HK (Alder Lake) processor. Packing Intel’s all-new hybrid core microarchitecture, the CPU has managed to beat AMD’s desktop Ryzen Threadripper 1950X in Cinebench R20.

The Core i9-12900HK will be Intel’s new flagship mobile part for the 12th Generation Core series. With specs including six P-cores and eight E-cores, 24MB of L3 cache, and a maximum frequency of 5 GHz, it’s a serious upgrade from Intel’s 11th Generation mobile parts on paper.

Continue reading “Core i9-12900HK Beats Threadripper 1950X In Cinebench R20 Benchmark” »

Areas like deep learning and large language models are set to be high on the AI research agenda this year.

This article was contributed by Valerias Bangert, strategy and innovation consultant, founder of three media outlets, and published author.

AI job automation: The debate

The debate around whether AI will automate jobs away is heating up. AI critics claim that these statistical models lack the creativity and intuition of human workers and that they are thus doomed to specific, repetitive tasks. However, this pessimism fundamentally underestimates the power of AI. While AI job automation has already replaced around 400,000 factory jobs in the U.S. from 1990 to 2007, with another 2 million on the way, AI today is automating the economy in a much more subtle way.

The immersive tech could eventually allow park visitors to interact with Mickey Mouse and Elsa as images, not cast members in costume.

Disney is joining the metaverse party.

We aren’t talking online gigs or business meetings with avatars. Disney wants to enhance the virtual dimension of its theme parks with its Virtual World Simulator, new technology for which it was granted a patent in the U.S. on December 28.

Continue reading “Disney Patents Virtual World Simulator That Doesn’t Require Headsets, Goggles, Or Smartphones” »

New islands are being built in numbers and on a scale never seen before.

We are building more islands than ever before. In the latest edition of Anthropo-Scene, we explore the striking results of humanity’s attempts to colonise the world’s lakes and oceans.