TLDR 2021-10-14

Mark Zuckerberg and Andrew Bosworth recently posted pictures of themselves wearing prototype headsets and linking the concepts to Facebook's work on the metaverse. Zuckerberg's headset looks similar to an Oculus headset. It features retina resolution, a pixel density so high that individual points can't be discerned at a normal operating distance. Bosworth's headset looks almost exactly like drawings and descriptions of Apple's rumored VR headset. There are few details about the tech inside the headsets. Links to the original posts are available in the article.

Apple is exploring new health-focused features for its AirPods, including the ability for the AirPods to take a wearers' temperature, monitor their posture, and improve their hearing. The functions aren't expected to be released any time soon, and they may never be rolled out to consumers. Integrating health features into commercial products is difficult due to medical regulatory standards. Apple has been exploring the possibility of adding monitors for blood pressure, temperature, sleep quality, blood oxygen, and blood sugar into the Apple Watch. It has increasingly focused the marketing of its products on their health and fitness applications.

Axie Infinity is an NFT-based game made by a Vietnam-based company named Sky Mavis. It allows players to earn meaningful income by playing the game. Players can buy and sell goods in the game using real money. Dedicated players can earn thousands of dollars a month playing the game. There are many steps involved in even starting to play Axie, including paying a $1,500 upfront cost to buy into the game. Some companies are loaning out Axies to other players in exchange for 30 percent of their earnings. Sky Mavis is working on a free-to-play version that will be available within four months.

DeepMind is trying to create a deep learning model that can learn how to emulate any algorithm to generate an algorithm-equivalent model that can work with real-world data. Algorithms possess fundamentally different qualities to deep learning methods. If deep learning methods could better mimic algorithms, the type of generalization seen with algorithms might become possible with deep learning. A network that could learn algorithms would be able to plug those algorithms together to form complex pipelines and programs.

Aura Theme is a dark theme designed for completing long-term work without discomfort to the eyes. It is available for Visual Studio Code, Sublime Text, CodeSandbox, and a variety of terminals, browsers, and apps. Screenshots and examples are available.

Go+ is a language for engineering, STEM education, and data science. It is statically typed with a script-like style that is more readable than Go. Go+ features list comprehensions, map literals, slice literals, lambda expressions, and much more and it is fully compatible with the Go language. Examples and tutorials are available.

Google's Arts & Culture team has launched an online experience that lets users virtually walk the Great Wall of China. It features a 360-degree virtual tour of one of the wall's best-preserved sections, 370 images of the Great Wall, and 35 stories. The experience lets users learn about the Great Wall's history and experience parts of it that might be otherwise hard to access. Google has launched numerous 360-degree virtual tours, and students can create their own VR tours using Google's Tour Creator tool. A link to the Walk the Great Wall of China tour is available in the article.

Reddit is introducing a new on-platform feature called Predictions that will allow users to make predictions on current events. Subreddit moderators can create Prediction Tournaments, a series of questions that users can predict the answers to. Users will be able to bet on questions using tokens that they receive when they join the Predictions Tournament. There is no monetization model for Predictions and the tokens have no value outside of Predictions Tournaments. Users can compete for high scores on a community leaderboard. The feature will roll out to all safe-for-work communities with at least 10,000 members.