Ravey Light sticks

Ravey Light sticks

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Now on their 5th version, Light Toys Visual Poi V5 MAXI are LED light sticks that can produce some amazing patterns when swung around. Persistence of vision illusions (in this case a pair of sticks) uses densely-packed RGB LEDs and circuitry that displays a line at a time to produce complete images when spun. They are pretty amazing, but ought to be since a pair costs an eye watering $2190

Amaze your friends at the next rave for about 30 minutes – or more likely synced up as a backup dancer for the next Super bowl concert.

Apple’s electric car project is dead (again)

Apple’s electric car project is dead (again)

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Apple has halted its long-rumored “Project Titan” that was developing an electric car (Bloomberg). The company reportedly announced the news internally on Tuesday and said many people in the 2,000-person team behind the car will shift to other AI efforts instead.

Despite hiring industry leaders like Tesla’s former Autopilot director, the project has been plagued by high turnover (including chief Doug Field in 2021), constantly changing plans, and internal skepticism. More recent rumors suggest that the $100,000 car would likely not have self-driving capabilities.

Given this, it likely makes sense apple is re-directing the efforts of the automotive team to more established AI plans.

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Midjourney’s is now open to everyone – but only for 25 images

Midjourney’s is now open to everyone – but only for 25 images

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Midjourney is the pre-eminent image generator; but used to require submitting prompts in a fiddly way through Discord and then paying for anything beyond a few free ones. Last year they made a more intuitive website; but you had to have a special account.

They’ve now opened the Midjourney website to everyone – but you can only generate 25 images and then need to buy a paid plan. You’ll need to log in with your connected Discord account, or use your Google account. Apparently it even will show your history of previously generated images to browse when properly connected.

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Drowning in AI generated content

Drowning in AI generated content

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Neil Clarke, the founder of Clarkesworld sci-fi magazine, says they are drowning under an onslaught of low-quality AI-generated story submissions. Clarke says almost 50% of their sci-fi story submissions are obviously AI generated. In Feb 2023, he had to shut down online submissions and implement a rudimentary filter. But the problem is only getting worse, and there is a worry the massive amounts of AI generated content will overwhelm his small business.

Why do people submit low-quality AI generated content? Clarkesworld pays about 12 cents a word for an accepted story; so if you can get ChatGPT to generate a story and get is accepted it’s basically free money.

Clarke blamed influencers for the flood of AI generated submissions. He suggests that there are “[influencers] waving a bunch of money on YouTube or TikTok videos and saying, ‘Oh, you can make money with ChatGPT by doing this [using ChatGPT to generate a story then get free money if it’s accepted].'”

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Nitty Gritty

Nitty Gritty

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Despite having taken a number of salsa and swing dancing lessons, I’m afraid that I’m just not that natural of a dancer. But boy I love swing dancing when I see it. It’s definitely my favorite.

Stephen and Chanzie put on an amazing show at the Rock That Swing Festival by dancing to The Nitty Grity (by Shirley Ellis). Performed at the Deutsches Theater (February 6th, 2016)

Man – I wish our culture had a lot more of this kind of quality.

Taking a cybertruck to a truck pull

Taking a cybertruck to a truck pull

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Two buddies go to a truck pull to see if electric beats diesel. The diesel pulled 251 feet and the dual-motor cybertruck didn’t do too bad at 207 feet. The cybertruck definitely didn’t with as a crowd favorite though.

That’s not too bad considering the cybertruck is one of the first commercial electric vehicles and things are likely to get better.

People should pay attention though; because electric motors can potentially put out more torque than an internal combusion engine could ever hope to generate. That’s probably why the diesel engines in a locomotive don’t turn the wheels – they turn a generator that feeds the electric motors that turn the wheels. It makes me wonder if you could Frankenstein locomotive electric motors to a vehicle and see what is possible.