Humane has fully unveiled their Ai Pin gadget. This 10 minute intro video featuring the co-founders gives an overview of what it is capable of. My impression is that the Ai Pin re-imagines the smartphone - take photos, listen to music, look up info, text/call people, etc - but they took the screen off, so the main way to use it is via Siri or Google Assistant along with a few gestures and a blurry laser projection of text onto your hand. I agree that GPT is way better than Apple and Google's voice assistant, but it's not that amazing to avoid the 99% problem where it might be fine for 99% of stuff you want it to do, but that last 1% is a bag of dog shit rendering the device nothing more than a tech demo. It's not a good sign that in the intro video it's spitting out incorrect answers as if it was a fact. Humane's Ai Pin is US-only for now, with pre-orders for the US$699 + US$24/m subscription device kicking off next week and shipments starting in early 2024. I look forward to some independent reviews next year.
Omegle, that controversial video chat with a random person site, has been sued out of existence after 14 years on the internet. 404 Media is reporting that two lawsuits hit Omegele claiming the site is responsible for hooking up minors with adults who groomed them to do sex stuff - this BBC article has info on the abuse that took place. Normally good ol' Section 230 would protect Omegle, but a judge decided that's not the case here, so the founder of Omegle, Leif K-Brooks, shut the site down. In a letter posted to Omegle's website, K-Brooks doesn't mention these cases explicitly as to why they ceased operations, but explain how the internet has changed lately and that Omegle tried its best to protect users and co-operate with law enforcement, but the only way to "please these people is to stop offering the service". K-Brooks gives an analogy of "shutting down Central Park because crime occurs there" and that a "healthy, free society cannot endure when we are collectively afraid of each other to this extent".
Big news in photography circles this week as Sony announced the a9 III digital mirrorless camera. It is the world's first full-frame camera with a global shutter. Why is this important? According to DPReview, global shutter allows for "the elimination of the rolling shutter distortion effect often seen on video and with slow electronic (progressive) shutters", "eliminates the banding that can occur with progressive shutters under flickering lights" and that "a global shutter can sync with flash at almost any shutter speed. With global shutter it's the duration of the flash burst that becomes the limitation, rather than the length of time it takes to close the shutter". I just assumed all that stuff was sorted with digital cameras by now.
Here's five interesting discussions over on The Sizzle's paid subscriber forum for you to enjoy over the weekend. If you are not a paid subscriber but want to get involved, visit https://thesizzle.com.au/payme to get onboard.
Bell Laboratories Transistor Water Tower – Holmdel, New Jersey. The transistor breakthrough happened at another Bell Labs facility further north (Murray Hill in Berkeley Heights), but the 60-ft tall tower tribute was erected here in 1961, when they broke ground for the Eero Saarinen-designed building. It was the Bell System's Bell Labs at the time, then AT&T's Bell Laboratories, then became simply Bell Labs in 1996 with the spin-off of Lucent. (Mike Carroll / Flickr - text from Roadside America)
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