Jacob Kastrenakes

Executive Editor

Jacob KastrenakesSep 1, 2023

VR school is here — and it’s not going so great.

The New Yorker stepped inside a VR school, where students wear headsets for two to three hours a day.

Here’s how a virtual field trip to a mountain went for some sixth graders:

One [student] suggested that we should all be quiet to prevent an avalanche, and then started screaming to demonstrate what not to do; a teacher quickly muted him. As the exercise got under way, the kids grew increasingly frustrated. “My teleport’s broken!” one of them shouted. Another couldn’t find the next chair in the line up the mountain. ...the whole group kept falling and getting reset to the beginning of the activity.

Virtual-Reality School as the Ultimate School Choice

[The New Yorker]

Jacob KastrenakesSep 1, 2023

One Medical’s CEO is leaving, just six months after Amazon bought it.

He’ll step down “later this year” and be succeeded by One Medical COO Trent Green, according to The Washington Post.

Amazon has lost a lot of executives lately: its hardware leader, the founder of Ring, the CEO of Twitch, the founder of Whole Foods. (And, of course, Bezos, too.)

One Medical CEO departs one year after Amazon acquisition

[The Washington Post]

Jacob KastrenakesSep 1, 2023

Great news for the island of Anguilla — also known as the place behind the .ai domain.

A lot of people want to buy their domains these days. See this chart from Bloomberg:

A chart showing .ai registration revenue from 2017 through 2023. It jumps from $6.9 million in 2022 to an estimated $30 million in 2023.

Anguilla is on track to quadruple its revenue from .ai this year.

Source: Bloomberg.

Jacob KastrenakesSep 1, 2023

Spring Breakers director: TikTok is better than a lot of films right now.

Variety spoke to Harmony Korine, who’s about to debut a new movie shot on thermal cameras.

“Watching a lot of this shit, you really feel the algorithms,” he says the day before receiving the Pardo d’onore Manor prize at the Locarno Film Festival. Whereas, “I’ll see a clip on TikTok that is so inexplicable, so outside the realm of what I even imagine someone creating. Like, I can have an experience with a 30-second clip that goes so far beyond” what movies do for him.

He’s also obsessed with a TikTok radio station right now. “It’s the greatest radio station I’ve ever heard,” he told Variety.

Harmony Korine Sounds Off on ‘Aggro Dr1ft,’ TikToks Being Better Than Movies and More: ‘I Feel Nothing’ and ‘Dead Inside’ Watching Films

[Variety]

Jacob KastrenakesSep 1, 2023

Always remember to renew your domain name.

Especially if it’s printed on your product — and especially if that product is marketed at kids.

Lidl recalls Paw Patrol snacks after website on packaging displayed porn

[TechCrunch]

Jacob KastrenakesSep 1, 2023

Video game physics is hard.

But somehow, Nintendo really knocked it out of the park when it came to Tears of the Kingdom. Our friends at Polygon dove into why game physics are so tricky and what makes Zelda’s mechanics so complicated.

BRB, going to stock up on a few more Zonai fans.

Jacob KastrenakesSep 1, 2023

A teaser for a teaser for the new Miyazaki film.

Studio Ghibli has been keeping The Boy and the Heron under wraps — there only seems to be a few still images out in the world so far — and that seems to be continuing as GKIDS brings the movie stateside. For now, at least. A “first look” is coming September 6th. There’s still no US release date.

Jacob KastrenakesSep 1, 2023

Night Sight might come to video.

9to5Google reports that a new feature of the Pixel 8 Pro may be better video recording in the dark. The report doesn’t say whether it’ll hit the standard Pixel 8, too.

Oh, and good news for anyone who switches phones now and then: apparently the SIM card slot is still there.

Sources: Pixel 8 Pro will keep physical SIM card and add Night Sight for video

[9to5Google]