Elvis returns to Las Vegas in Marco Brambilla’s new video for the Sphere, created with AI
... starting 29 September, he is back in Las Vegas to help inaugurate the Sphere ...
... The latest Elvis extravaganza is the work of London-based artist Marco Brambilla: a four-minute, hyper-detailed, image-dense video starring the King in his different incarnations—from young army officer to swaggering movie star to bloated has-been—as well as the dream-city of Vegas itself, which somewhat similarly evolves from a small desert oasis into the neon epicenter of debacle-spectacle. In keeping with its themes of celebrity-image proliferation and saturation, King Size (2023) is Brambilla’s biggest video collage yet, using 1,000 looped video clips from different movies, including all 33 Elvis films. ...
Brambilla turned to AI instead of human researchers or video editors this time because, he says, he was on deadline to complete this project quickly, within four months. “What I found is that it was very good at sketching, making conceptual sketches and hybrid images. It often comes up with things that are very magical,” he says. ...
See the full story here: https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2023/09/26/marco-brambilla-elvis-video-artificial-intelligence-las-vegas-sphere-u2
Don’t throw out those used coffee grounds—use them for 3D printing instead
... Inspiration struck while Rivera was a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University and a regular at Arriviste Coffee Roasters cafe in Pittsburgh. The used coffee grounds were composted by a local group until the COVID-19 pandemic hit, when the owner was forced to start throwing the grounds out. Rivera remembered the owner's dilemma when he became a postdoc at University of Colorado Boulder and was casting about for sustainable alternatives for 3D printing. Coffee grounds seemed like a viable option. "When you do the extraction for brewing a drink [of coffee] you're only drinking about 20 percent of what's in that bean," said Rivera. "The spent coffee grounds are the other 80 percent of the material that's there."
Arriviste supplied Rivera with spent coffee grounds from making espresso-based drinks like lattes and cappuccinos. The grounds were dried in direct sunlight over two days rather than drying them in an oven to reduce energy consumption for the process. The dried grounds were sifted with a standard kitchen strainer to remove large clumps and then mixed with xanthan gum and carboxymethyl cellulose powders, which serve a similar purpose to binders, stabilizers, and thickeners. Finally, that mixture was combined with water (proportional by mass), and the resulting paste was loaded into 60 mL syringes for use in a modified consumer-grade 3D printer. (Rivera's adapter design is open-sourced.) No heat is required during the printing process.
The finished 3D-printed objects are as strong as unreinforced concrete, per Rivera. His team has made small planters to grow seedlings, which can be transferred to a garden—biodegradable planter and all—when the resulting plants are ready. They've made decorative pendants and espresso cups out of this new material. And they created 3D-printed prototype user interfaces for human-computer interactions that changed shape due to shrinkage as they dried—a single-layer square morphing into a saddle shape, for example, or a rectangular rod that bent upwards as it dried.
See the full story here: https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/09/dont-throw-out-those-used-coffee-grounds-use-them-for-3d-printing-instead/?mc_cid=671b60cb73&mc_eid=cf24d7da5b
A new crop of fintech startups are tackling blockchain-inspired problems without the blockchain
... I spotted three companies in this batch that use traditional finance tools to tackle blockchain-adjacent problems — all focused on markets outside the U.S.
The most promising of the batch is the Bengaluru-based Cheq, which is one of the first startups to build on India’s unified payments interface (UPI). India is currently making a push to expand UPI internationally, which creates a major opportunity for projects like Cheq. The company plans to become the main entry point for UPI users who don’t have an Indian national ID, a potentially enormous market if the platform keeps growing. There’s a lot more bureaucracy involved in building for UPI (in Cheq’s case, they’re getting their API keys from the government), but it also means a reliable client base. ...
“We have to acknowledge that fintech has always been very closely linked to the government,” he says. “Like it or not, our tax systems and legal jurisdictions operate according to these borders. So while the world was told that bitcoin was global, ultimately all the real money was stored within the borders of particular countries, and when those countries turned on bitcoin, the whole thing crashed.” ...
In Africa, a company called Capi Money is dealing with international invoicing — essentially smoothing the path for African businesses transacting with customers overseas. A neobank project called Coba is focused on transfers and currency exchanges between the U.S. and countries in Latin America, aimed at digital nomads who are spending pesos but otherwise keeping their money in dollars. In both cases, they’re going after the same problems as blockchain remittance services, but with more focus and less ideological baggage. ...
“Every cross-border company is trying to give you a seamless, low-cost, trustworthy payment system,” Shekhar told me. “The way bitcoin does it is saying, ‘People are not trustworthy, we will trust abstract technology.’ The way traditional governments do it is by saying, ‘I have these guns and I’m going to shoot the guy who tries to break the system.’ And that is good enough.”
See the full story here: https://restofworld.org/2023/exporter-crypto-y-combinator-blockchain-fintech/?mc_cid=671b60cb73&mc_eid=cf24d7da5b
Sandbox VR starts Squid Game Virtuals location-based VR experience on September 29
... Starting September 29, fans will have the opportunity to immerse themselves in the thrilling world of Squid Game through a full-body VR experience at more than 40 Sandbox VRlocations. ...
The Squid Game Virtuals VR experience at Sandbox VR transports players to iconic locations from the series, where they become contestants in intense challenges inspired by the show. Fortunately for players, Sandbox VR version is a little more forgiving than the Netflix show. For instance, nobody really dies in a bloody mess. It’s not a graphic version of Squid Game. ...
There are eight games altogether at each Sandbox VR locations. Your group of up to six players can play for around 30 minutes, and get perhaps six games done during that time. You compete against each other to get the most points and win the Piggy Bank. The losers are all “eliminated.” If you want to play all eight games, you’ll have to go back more than once. ...
While the show is quite serious, maddening and horrifying, this experience is just fun. Your whole body is the game controller. ...
See the full story here: https://venturebeat.com/gaming-business/sandbox-vr-starts-squid-game-virtuals-location-based-vr-experience-on-september-29/
