I thought VR/AR would be farther along. There was a pitch 10 years ago that VR would be the “final platform” in that anything a phone, TV, tablet, or computer could do could be easily emulated in VR.

Unfortunately it’s still all walled gardens. Also nobody wants to wear that shit for more than an hour.

Depends on the concert.

For everyone who never tried it, they had honest to god paid employees in Horizon Worlds to help players get oriented. I cannot imagine a worse job.

The one I ran into was standing in front of some “game” experience that was like…jumping on tiles or some shit.

But I thought the whole line was “hOrIzOn WoRlDs iSnt the MeTaVeRsE.”

Followed by no explanation of what the metaverse is.

There’s a remote job listing on LinkedIn right now for $125/hr to train an AI how to do schematic capture and layout. Like it’s right in the listing that you’re training an AI to do your job. Insanity.

My whole friend group stopped trusting Meta a few years ago, so I got everyone on Matrix-Synapse instead of WhatsApp.

I just set it up on my homeserver. Everyone just calls it “Element” and has no idea how it works, but the UI is familiar and easy to use.

Trying to work on Pixelfed, but most interesting photos just get shared on Matrix anyway.

Oh, they’re highly configurable. I use a DJI video camera (tiny 4k camera on a stick), but I assume the larger SLR gimbals can do the same. You can hold a button to lock the angle to the stick, lock the angle to the environment, set it to only stabilize vertically (if you’re tracking a laterally moving target), quickly re-center, and even tweak how quickly it responds to movement.

Of course my gimbal has all the camera controls on the handle. Not sure how it’ll work if you’re using an SLR. Especially with manual zoom/focus. But it’s a good start.

There are definitely a number of motorized gimbals you can mount a camera to. Gives you more flexibility. Just need to rig up a remote shutter release.

Definitely not Mandela, but maybe it’s something Google never officially confirmed.

Here’s an article about Ingress, the spiritual predecessor to PkmnGo. https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21628936-200-why-googles-ingress-game-is-a-data-gold-mine/

I feel like this was common knowledge back in 2016. Is this surprising to anyone?

And you realize that it’s taking a while to delete that small handful of files.

Ironically, the three trades you listed are in high demand right now specifically because of the rapid rollout of the data centers needed to power AI.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rce6HTFBaFg

Talk about a bony ass

Far from the biggest menace, but there is one nit I have to pick that somewhat aligns with the OP.

Pedestrians who don’t look up to notice that the cars aren’t stopped because the light is red, but because the light is green and they don’t want to block the box.

As a cyclist in the bike lane/cutting between stopped cars, these people are dangerous. Especially when you try to get their attention since they’re about to walk into your path, and they suddenly realize they’re in the middle of an active intersection and freak out and quickly move in a completely random direction. By all means, keep up with your sudoku while crossing the street, just make sure the light is on your side before you wander into traffic.

I also once saw a guy walk straight through a construction site and nearly bonk his head on a giant concrete pipe hanging from a crane overhead.

And yes, I think a safer city would have no stoplights and everyone would have to be aware of their surroundings and negotiate moving through traffic, but while we have stoplights, you kind of have to play along.

I used to work for a consultancy that tried to bill themselves as experts in VR/AR. This is back in 2017 or so. We helped a client make a 3D tracking system with VR/AR applications, and this client let us kind of run with it.

Anyway, I was sort of head of this AR/VR thing, and we were always desperate for free advertising, so I somehow got pulled to provide my thoughts on the impact of VR/AR on the grocery store industry for an article in “The Grocer” or some other industry mag.

Leading up to the call, I was trying to think of what I’d say. My thoughts were on building out virtual grocery stores to test customer reactions before building them for real. Bring in some test subjects, see how they plan their route, how they react to different placements of goods. Track their eye movements to see if the new end-cap design is working. Time how long they spend in the store, etc. Are the aisles too narrow and claustrophobic. I got the idea from another client who was using VR to test out new detergent bottle concepts (apparently a one-off of a blow-molded bleach bottle is crazy expensive).

Well my consultancy had been purchased by a multinational conglomerate a year or so prior, so I got a phone call from some C-suite ass who wanted to brief me on what they wanted me to say to the magazine.

His idea was a service where you could have a store employee wear some kind of camera rig so the customer could sit at home in VR and pilot the employee around the store. This would essentially replace curbside pickup, but with the added benefit of “allowing the customer to pick which apple they want out of the bunch.”

I resolved to ignore that advice, but the whole magazine thing ended up falling through anyway. I quit within the year.

Harry Harlow proven right once again

Child stars man. Never had a chance.

I’m mostly trying to describe a feeling I don’t hear named very often

That Funny Feeling?

I’ll give that a shot.

I’m running it in docker because it’s running on a headless server with a boatload of other services. Ideally whatever I use will be accessible over the network.

I think at the time I started, not everything supported Intel cards, but it looks like llama-cli has support form Intel GPUs. I’ll give it a shot. Thanks!