Lifeboat Foundation

Android manufacturers tend to love big spec sheets, even if those giant numbers won’t do much for day-to-day phone usage. In that vein, we’ve got the new high-water mark for ridiculous amounts of memory in a phone. The new Nubia RedMagic 8S Pro+ is an Android gaming phone with an option for 24GB of RAM.

The base model of the RedMagic 8S Pro+ starts with 16GB of RAM, but GSMArena has pictures and details of the upgraded 24GB SKU, which is the most amount of memory ever in an Android phone. Because we’re all about big numbers, it also comes with 1TB of storage. Keep in mind a 13-inch top-spec M2 MacBook Pro has 24GB of RAM and 2TB of storage, and that’s a desktop OS with real multitasking, so Nubia is really pushing it. This suped-up 24GB version of the phone appears to be a China-exclusive, with the price at CNY 7,499 (about $1,034), which is a lot for a phone in China.

You definitely want an adequate amount of RAM in an Android phone. All these apps are designed around cheap phones, though, and with Android’s aggressive background app management, there’s usually not much of a chance to use a ton of RAM. Theoretically, a phone like this would let you multitask better, since apps could stay in memory longer, and you wouldn’t have to start them back up when switching tasks. Most people aren’t quickly switching through that many apps, though, and some heavy apps, games especially, will just automatically turn off a few seconds once they’re in the background.

Sam Altman, a tech CEO, has finally watched a movie about sleazy tech CEO that invents a possibly conscious AI humanoid robot. Huh.

Steam, one of the world’s largest video game storefronts is reportedly not having any of this AI generated stuff.

Welp, we warned you.

Netflix’s promotional Streamberry site, inspired by the parody version of the streaming platform in the Black Mirror Season 6 episode “Joan Is Awful,” is indeed using your image in a marketing campaign in the UK.

Launched Tuesday, Netflix’s Streamberry site (opens in a new tab) allows you to “sign up” to the platform, which looks remarkably like Netflix’s own. Signing up requires you to upload or take a photo of yourself which “may end up on a billboard” — an instant red flag if you’ve watched the Black Mirror episode.

Malls are becoming places for public libraries, animal shelters, basketball courts and entertainment centers.

Across the United States, some malls are undergoing big changes. Businesses such as animal shelters, trampoline parks and movie theaters are filling the spaces that have been left empty in recent years. NBC News’ Brian Cheung has the story.

Continue reading “Malls across the U.S. transforming amid rise of e-commerce” »

The game comes equipped with a robotic arm, a display screen and a board.

Chinese company SenseTime has unveiled an artificial intelligence-powered rendition to the world’s oldest board game called Go, which is thought to have originated in China some 4,000 years ago.

SenseRobot Go, is a robot designed for young people to learn the game Go. It has a robotic arm, a screen and a board to play the game from entry-level to professional level, according to the company’s press release.

While the U.K. and U.S. try to block Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision over concerns it will kill competition in games distribution, competition appears to be alive and well in another (smaller) area of gaming: modding and analytics.

Wargraphs, a one-man-band startup behind a popular companion app for League of Legends called Porofessor, which helps players track and improve their playing stats, is getting acquired for up to €50 million ($54 million), half up front and half based on meeting certain earnings and growth targets.

MOBA Networks, a company founded out of Sweden that buys, grows and runs online gaming communities (MOBA is short for “multiplayer online battle arena”), is buying the startup and its existing products. The plan is to expand them to more markets, in particular across Asia, and to build analytics for more titles.

Computer scientists have, for decades, been optimizing how computers sort data to shave off crucial milliseconds in returning search results or alphabetizing contact lists. Now DeepMind, based in London, has vastly improved sorting speeds by applying the technology behind AlphaZero — its artificial-intelligence system for playing the board games chess, Go and shogi — to a game of building sorting algorithms. “This is an exciting result,” said Emma Brunskill, a computer scientist at Stanford University, California.

The system, AlphaDev, is described in a paper in Nature¹, and has invented faster algorithms that are already part of two standard C++ coding libraries, so are being used trillions of times per day by programmers around the world.

Siren is a digital human that showcases the potential of 3D/4D scanning technology for digitizing human appearance and motion with unprecedented realism.

Epic Games Inc. is a leading developer of the popular video game engine Unreal Engine. Recently, the company launched the highly anticipated MetaHuman Creator, a tool for creating high-fidelity digital humans for various applications including video games, film and more. The MetaHuman Creator is powered by advanced motion capture and rendering technology, enabling creators to create lifelike characters that can be customized and animated for various uses.

The advancement of digital humans is disrupting our world in profound and unpredictable ways. As they become increasingly intelligent, empathetic and capable, they will reshape businesses, society and human relationships at every level.