Wagner James Au / New World Notes
Author, strategist, virtual world reporter
recent posts
- Welcome to New World Notes’ 2006-2025 Archive!
- Virtual World Usage Stats from S&P Global Market Intelligence — Plus VRChat & Second Life Specifics!
- Top Five Posts Including: Huge Rec Room Layoff & Meta Boots Neal Stephenson Off Facebook (Briefly)
- Four Glorious Second Life Sims to Explore — After Watching Sabina Valeska’s Machinima Tributes to Them!
- Virtual World Usage Stats from S&P Global Market Intelligence — Plus VRChat & Second Life Specifics!
about
Category: New World Tech
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Interesting new comment from Tad Noodle and Jerom Franzic on an older post on Second Life's upcoming iOS app. How about Second Life on consoles? Specifically, Valve's Steam Deck, set for release this December. (Trailer above.) As Mr. Noodle wonders aloud: I wonder if Second Life would run decently on a Steam Deck? I watched…
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Back in May, a FOX producer was reaching out to members of the Second Life community (and presumably other virtual world communities) about Alter Ego, an upcoming avatars-meet-Masked Singer reality competition show. Now set to premiere on September 22nd, here's the teaser. … and here's my questions about it:
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I seriously doubt Verizon's 5G network can substantially address this as much as Verizon thinks it can*, but their ad pretty much nails the laggy virtual world experience transplanted to the real world. (Too bad there's no jelly dolls.) * As my brilliant futurist friend Amber Case points out, rather than 5G being the Internet…
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Skittish, Andy Baio's upcoming "playful virtual space for online events" (go here to register for early access) recently added High Fidelity's 3D spatial audio to the platform, so naturally, I had to get a hands-on (ears-on?) demo from Andy — watch above, but maybe turn the sound down a bit due to my overly booming…
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Virtual economy pioneer Philip Rosedale recently unveiled a simulation which suggests that a universal basic income — the kind recently popularized by Andrew Yang — cannot ultimately prevent widening divides between rich and poor. However, that’s not the end of the story. In a new simulation just posted on his newsletter, Rosedale proposes a pretty…
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Skittish is "a playful virtual space for online events" now in closed beta, the brainchild of beloved tech veteran Andy Baio, a longtime advocate of Internet-driven creativity. As the video teaser above suggests, it combines the whimsical charm of online games like Animal Crossing, with video sharing and other features associated with platforms like Zoom,…
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What you're watching above is a video from social media influencer Taryn Southern, except not quite: It's a "clone" of Ms. Southern, created via an AI platform called HourOne. "We take a small sample of video footage (ideally captured in a studio, as we did with Taryn), and use our proprietary AI algorithms and generative…
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What you're looking at above is a follow-up simulation of wealth inequity by Philip Rosedale, who recently created a simulation which showed how a divide between rich and poor will emerge even when everyone starts at a hypothetically equal state, income-wise. This new simulation basically models the injection of universal basic income — a solution…
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What you're looking at above is a fascinating simulation from Philip Rosedale, who is known more for simulating virtual worlds. This project, however, is coded to help explain one of the real world's most vexing problems: Why do the rich get richer? While government regulations (or lack thereof) are a major factor, Philip's simulation is…
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Google's game streaming service Stadia is cutting its game development arm to focus more on growing the service as a publishing platform: Google is shifting away from making its own games for Stadia. It’s shutting down studios in Montreal and Los Angeles, and industry veteran Jade Raymond, who Google tapped to lead the game development division, is leaving the company.…
Wagner James Au / New World Notes 