Meta's big biz reveal and AI Joe Rogan
Meta officially announced their pro headset in a business pivot, William Shatner reflects on space, and you can get an AR tattoo now
We’re in the midst of the Jewish holidays. We’ve had Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, and we’re into Sukkot now. Rosh Hashana kicks it all off and is essentially the Jewish new year. Though I’m not religious at all, I find that it’s nice to feel like you’re starting fresh again even before January 1st. It’s especially apt given I’ve started a new company.
A new year, a new company, a new me. A fresh start is always available, take whatever excuse you need for your fresh start whenever you need one.
🤪 2 crazy things
🤖 AI Joe Rogan interviews Steve Jobs
The entire interview is generated by AI.
The script, the deepfake voices, all of it. If you listen intently it makes little sense, but at the surface level, it sounds pretty convincing.
19 minute episode here: transistor.fm
😢 Space sadness
A year ago William Shatner, AKA Captain Kirk, went to space on Jeff Bezo’s rocket. Obviously a bit of a publicity stunt for Bezo’s second-place rocket company. I covered the trip in this newsletter.
In an excerpt from his new book he talked about the experience filling him with sadness, a few poignant quotes:
It was among the strongest feelings of grief I have ever encountered. The contrast between the vicious coldness of space and the warm nurturing of Earth below filled me with overwhelming sadness. Every day, we are confronted with the knowledge of further destruction of Earth at our hands: the extinction of animal species, of flora and fauna . . . things that took five billion years to evolve, and suddenly we will never see them again because of the interference of mankind. It filled me with dread. My trip to space was supposed to be a celebration; instead, it felt like a funeral.
Essentially, when someone travels to space and views Earth from orbit, a sense of the planet’s fragility takes hold in an ineffable, instinctive manner.
It can change the way we look at the planet but also other things like countries, ethnicities, religions; it can prompt an instant reevaluation of our shared harmony and a shift in focus to all the wonderful things we have in common instead of what makes us different.
Full excerpt here: Variety
🥽 XR things
👨💼 The big biz reveal
Meta Connect 2022 was today and once again it was a cringe couple of hours of prerecorded nonsense.
You can watch the whole keynote here: Reality Labs
I’ll spare you the hours of cringe and summarize the four most interesting things:
The new Quest Pro is $1,499 and geared toward business users
Microsoft is partnering with Meta to bring Office 365, MS Teams, and even Xbox Cloud Gaming to the Quest headset. Satya Nadella himself came on screen for a bit
They announced a partnership with NBCUniversal to bring exclusive content to the Quest. “Starting next year, Meta and NBCU will co-create experiences around The Office, Universal Monsters, DreamWorks, Blumhouse, Halloween Horror Nights and so much more,” Vishal Shah, VP at Meta.
Lots of Quest games actually make decent cash. From Tech Crunch, “more than one-third of the company’s 400 Quest titles have grossed more than $1 million in sales, with 33 titles having surpassed $10 million in gross revenue. A couple bright spots that Meta noted among individual titles include The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners surpassing $50 million in revenue on Quest, and Resident Evil making $2 million in its first 24 hours in the store”
So if you’re thinking of developing a game for Quest, maybe go for it?
Heh, everything else wasn’t really worth mentioning. Shitty avatars, a partnership with Adobe, nothing super interesting.
✒ Augmented Reality Tattoos are a thing now
I can’t believe this hasn’t been a thing sooner. Kinda cool actually.
🔪 Among Us VR!
Among Us took the world by storm during the pandemic and launched the word “sus” into mainstream vernacular.
It’s a perfect group game, and would definitely work well in VR, and now it’s been brought over to VR. Sweet.
Would you use a VR headset at work?
I mean, we’re just not quite there yet, I don’t even really want to. Not for more than an hour or so at a time.
Let me know, just leave a comment below, or if you’re reading the email hit reply.
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