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Jess Weatherbed

Jess Weatherbed

News Reporter

News Reporter

    More From Jess Weatherbed

    Jess Weatherbed
    Jess Weatherbed
    Magic Leap’s CEO isn’t worried about competing with the Apple Vision Pro.

    In an interview with Venturebeat, Ross Rosenberg claims that Apple can’t match the level of precision that Magic Leap’s tech can provide:

    “What Apple has shown, as I’m sure you’ve seen, is much more about watching a streaming movie or a Facetime call, where you don’t need nearly as much accuracy. That’s a very different space.”

    The augmented reality company was recently granted $590 million in additional debt relief funding from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, as Apple readies its Vision Pro headset for launch on February 2nd.

    Jess Weatherbed
    Jess Weatherbed
    Having performance issues with YouTube? Try a different ad blocker.

    Folks online have accused YouTube of targeting AdBlock users with degraded performance, with reports of the desktop player freezing up, lagging while buffering, and hogging CPU usage.

    YouTube has since refuted this. Our own tests found that using Chrome extensions on PC for other ad blockers like Ublock and Ghostery didn’t affect performance, and uninstalling the latest AdBlock browser extension eradicated the issues entirely.

    Jess Weatherbed
    Jess Weatherbed
    Apple’s Watch workaround to avoid an import ban has reportedly been approved.

    Word of this comes not from US Customs, but Masimo’s own lawyers in a letter published by 9to5Mac. It says the updated watches “do not contain pulse oximetry functionality,” which is a step further than last month’s report that Apple engineers were working on new algorithms.

    It means Apple can continue importing the Apple Watch Series 9 and Apple Watch Ultra 2 despite the patent infringement dispute — just without blood oxygen reading features enabled.

    Jess Weatherbed
    Jess Weatherbed
    Meta’s new mixed reality app lets you digitally deconstruct the Quest 3.

    Caddy is a free visualizer tool that utilizes hand-tracking to interact with 3D CAD models — allowing users to “grab” individual components, and measure both real and digital objects like you’re operating Tony Stark’s sci-fi workbench.

    Every Meta Quest VR headset released to date is currently supported and it even has a collaborative mode for working on projects as a group.

    Jess Weatherbed
    Jess Weatherbed
    AI will impact the global economy — for better or worse.

    Analysis from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) warns that almost 40 percent of global employment is exposed to AI. While some workflows are assisted or “complimented” by the technology, it’s also expected to replace some jobs entirely.

    Roles that are highly exposed to AI but aren’t necessarily aided by it — such as administrative work and telemarketing — are the most likely to be displaced, particularly in advanced economies.

    A graph provided by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that breaks down employment by how exposed it is to AI.
    AI is expected to assist “high complementarity” (red) jobs, whereas “low complementarity” (pinkie peach) jobs could be at risk. Blue jobs are unaffected.
    Image: International Monetary Fund (IMF)
    Jess Weatherbed
    Jess Weatherbed
    The 1,000-year photo.

    The aptly named “Millennium Camera” is a functional art piece that intends to capture how the landscape in Tuscon, Arizona changes over the next 1,000 years via an extremely long-exposure image.

    The experimental pinhole camera set up by University of Arizona research associate Jonathan Keats aims to encourage people to imagine what the future will hold.

    Keats says:

    “Most people have a pretty bleak outlook on what lies ahead. It’s easy to imagine that people in 1,000 years could see a version of Tucson that is far worse than what we see today, but the fact that we can imagine it is not a bad thing. It’s actually a good thing, because if we can imagine that, then we can also imagine what else might happen, and therefore it might motivate us to take action to shape our future.”

    A photograph of the Millennium Camera, peering across the desert landscape toward the Star Pass neighborhood West of Tumamoc Hill in Tucson, Arizona.
    A snapshot for the long-distant future — the Millennium Camera will capture an image of the Tuscon landscape for ten centuries.
    Image: Chris Richards / University of Arizona College of Fine Arts.