- Good news:
- Computing tech:
- Zoom will have additional features for their VisionOS version: usage of visionOS personas based on face scans, pinning faces of meeting participants with transparent backgrounds in the real-world environment, and 3D object file-sharing.
- Meta Quest 3 to support iOS/visionOS Spatial Video.
- Interview with Metalenz
- Reports: Meta Quest Pro 2 set to ship in early 2025 with LG as hardware partner. Hopefully going to build on top of lessons from both Quest 3, original Quest Pro and Apple Vision Pro.
- Reports: Apple considering competitor to Meta Ray-Ban, other AI glasses. Apple also looking at options for augmenting other devices, including cameras in AirPods.
- Vision Pro release party in San Francisco, complete with multiple people wearing VP headsets while partying (more on the organizers)
- Disney Research invents HoloTile, a multi-user omnidirectional treadmill.
- Feds to Insurer: AI cannot be used to deny health care coverage.
- IFTAS takes action against deadnaming and misgendering in the fediverse.
- ideas on visionOS 2.0 features (sourced from this concept, these comments, this video)
- Engadget: Researchers at Cornell built AI-infused sonar glasses that track facial movements for silent communication. Also Engadget: These AI-infused sonar-equipped glasses from (again) Cornell could pave the way for better VR upper-body tracking (paper)
- Civil rights and elections
- Japan’s Wakayama Prefecture to become the 21st to create a same-sex partnership registry on 1 February (news in Japanese). More prefectures to create similar registries throughout the year, but no news as to more mutual recognition agreements between prefectures as of yet. Keep track on Wikipedia.
- PA Supreme Court rules that the state’s Equal Rights Amendment protects Medicaid coverage of abortion procedures.
- Governor Tony Evers signs last-ditch legislative district maps from the Republican-supermajority legislature who want to avoid a WI Supreme Court unilateral redraw. New maps, which are very evenly divided, take effect for the November 2024 elections for all Assembly seats and half of Senate seats. Evers is seeking judicial override of a portion of the new law prohibiting use of the new maps for an earlier special election. Big Republican concession nonetheless, a decade and some change in the making.
- Sightline Institute on even-year local elections.
- Same-sex marriage now legal in Greece. The Wild Hunt reviews reactions from local polytheists.
- Polish public TV reporter apologizes on air for carrying homophobic, transphobic water for the former PiS government.
- Reconciliation within the Alabama Democratic Party?
- Florida Officials Confirm Abortion Legalization Ballot Measure Qualifies for the Ballot Pending FL Supreme Court Decision
- How indigenous leaders saved Guatemalan democracy
- Alabama union membership increases for 2nd year
- Weed legalization passed in German Parliament
- POTUS’ Plan B on student loan debt forgiveness and its success
- Climate, housing and infrastructure
- Decatur declared “most bikeable city in Georgia” by Redfin. Still a long ways from Portland OR though.
- Researchers achieve breakthrough in solar technology: system can capture and store solar energy for up to 18 years and can produce electricity when connected to a thermoelectric generator (EuroNews Green, paper)
- SPUR Urban Center publishes white paper recommending the creation of a California Housing Agency and California Planning Agency (PDF).
- Spain’s cabinet supports bill to ban domestic flights which can be replaced with a high speed rail ride.
- Australia’s cars emit more cumulative CO2 than elsewhere. Pressure on the Albanese government to make voluntary emission standards mandatory.
- How Los Angeles is becoming a sponge city and overcoming the ongoing atmospheric river.
- Professor Michael Mann wins big in court against climate denialists in defamation case.
- Streetsblog USA: Why Jaywalking Reform is an Unhoused Rights Issue.
- Half of 2022 bike rides in US were for social or recreational use.
- Amsterdam is the first European city to endorse the Plant-Based Treaty.
- Superfund for Climate Change?
- Nanowerk: sound-powered sensors could save millions of batteries.
- Strong Towns on how Sacramento City Council ended single-family zoning in city limits by increasing the Floor Area Ratio and switching to a form-based zoning code. This is on top of laws passed by the state to override city laws to abolish parking minimums within a 1/2 mile of transit and allowing for homeowners to split their home lots into ADUs.
- Washington State House passes lot splitting bill.
- Researchers find way to use AI to slash energy use of carbon capture.
- States are preparing to use Medicaid for rental assistance for the first time.
- Climate concerns shifting some voting preferences/patterns
- Health
- Computing tech:
- Bad news:
- Study (PDF): African Americans freed from slavery in slave states after the Civil War had worse, multi-generational economic outcomes afterward than those freed from slavery in free states prior to Civil War, and Jim Crow added compound economic interest. Makes sense.
- From Erin Reed: A full-on assault on bodily autonomy for anyone is plotted by religious bioconservative legislators, including against abortion and gender confirmation treatment.
- Study: We blew past 1.5C degree of warming 4 years ago. Yikes.
- Power companies paid civil rights activists in the South. Sad, frustrating.
- Spam attack wave hits the Fediverse, erupting from a stupid feud in the Japanese-language Web. Investigations from Cappy at Fyra Labs, Techcrunch (and another article on how Discord failed to take any action against the perps)
- Big trouble for electrified transport in Germany.
- CNBC tries to explain why these tech layoffs keep happening
- Ohio families seek funds to flee Ohio after veto override on transphobic legislation
- NYC Marathon refuses to give nonbinary prize money to winner. Rule: “a runner eligible for prize money in the nonbinary group had to be a member of the NYRR for at least six months, and compete in several club-sponsored events. The same rule applies to professional and invited athletes.” Winner: “They added this stipulation to this division following the registration period. It was not there last year.”
- Somber news:
- Sonar detection found an object which may be Amelia Earhart’s plane somewhere near Howard Island in the Pacific. It took years and millions of dollars, and will take even more to lead an expedition to confirm.
- The mass murders of Jews and Romani people by Nazis and their collaborators were deeply interlinked.
- Study: Transphobia hurts trans women’s health.
- How the word “voodoo” became a racial slur.
- How America failed to defend liberal values abroad.
- LGBT rights groups bring complaints against Texas to UN
- Air pollution linked to dementia
- The Non-Emergent Democratic Majority?
- Interesting
- BlueSky opens up their AT protocol, shining a light on the ongoing beef that many Fediverse users have with BlueSky and their protocol.
- Mozilla walks away from Hubs and Fediverse projects, tries to chase AI and profit. At least they’ve open-sourced both.
- Toward a unified taxonomy of text-based social media use.
- The New Republic: Quit Hating on California
- How conservatives are finally admitting they hate MLK
- Abolish the $100 bill
- Time for Democrats to Make Some Enemies. Cue Drake.
- Wikipedia links:
- Role of mothers in Disney media
- Slate voting
