New World Notes

Jimmy Wales on WT Social, His New Social Network: Pseudonyms Allowed on the Platform's "Real Names Culture"

WT:Social is a new and much-needed social network led by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, which unlike Facebook, Twitter, and the other market leaders, won't make money on targeted (often intrusive or dishonest). Instead, like Wikipedia, it'll be run on donations. It's not however affiliated with the online encyclopedia. As Wales puts it to me: "This is just me having fun trying to invent something new." 

You can go here to sign-up  as Wales and his team scale up the system to take on more new users.  "[We have] only 2 developers who are mainly scrambling to keep the site running," Wales explains. "I am hopeful that the waiting time will end in a few weeks time as we beef up our infrastructure (again!)"

While Facebook in particular has ongoing controversies with real name identities, and the company's insistence on them, Wales tells me WT:Social will have a more nuanced approach to that question. When I ask him, "What's WT Social's policy around anonymous/pseudonymous user identities, such as game handles?", here is his take in full:

Struggling Stadia Should Shift Away from Twitch Games to Virtual Worlds

Google recently launched Stadia, its OnLive-like streaming service for AAA games, and to no one's surprise who's ever been involved with streaming services like OnLive (like, um, say, me), the reaction so far has not been surprising:

• Google’s Stadia Just Ain’t It (Kotaku)
• Google Stadia Wants You to Replace Your Video Game Console. Don’t. (New York Times)
• Google Stadia is here, but there are still huge issues (CNN)

The amazing thing is this was entirely a foreseeable reaction. Stadia is leading with action-oriented AAA games where split second reaction times are essential to gameplay. Which brings up the core problem with streaming services for that kind of content:

There is simply. No. Fricking. Way. To get past. The speed. Of goddamn light. I mean seriously. Dude:

Apple's AR Plan Per The Information: Headset in 2022, Glasses in 2023

Insider tech industry news site The Information has a great scoop on Apple's plans for augmented reality (subscription required), and given The Information's consistently reliable track record, I'm inclined to believe it:

Apple is aiming to release an augmented-reality headset in 2022 and a sleeker pair of AR glasses by 2023, The Information has learned... Apple’s headset, code-named N301, will offer a hybrid of AR and VR capabilities, according to people familiar with the device. It resembles the Oculus Quest, a Facebook virtual reality headset released earlier this year, but with a sleeker design, these people said. Cameras will be mounted on the outside of the device, allowing people to see and interact with their physical surroundings, they said. Apple wants to make heavy use of fabrics and lightweight materials to ensure the device is comfortable to wear for extended periods of time, executives said in the presentation in October.

... In contrast, Apple’s AR glasses, code-named N421, present bigger technical challenges than the headset and are further from release. They are meant to be worn all day, and current prototypes look like high-priced sunglasses with thick frames that house the battery and chips, according to a person who has seen them.

This report contradicts earlier rumors that Apple's AR glasses were coming next year and would be third party (which seemed believable to me at the time). Then again, Apple pushing an AR/VR headset back to 2022 is a good idea, especially if Oculus Quest sales continue to disappoint in the short term; that gives Apple time to reschedule the release of their own headset, as needed.

Another tidbit from The Information addresses AR's "Glasshole" problem -- i.e., how do you project information onto glasses in a social situation without the user appearing to be a disconnected jerk ignoring everyone around them? Apple's apparent solution:

Majority of Facebook Employees Believe Policy Allowing Political Ads With False Claims May Change 2020 Election - Blind Survey

A majority of Facebook employees believe the company's policy of allowing false statements in political ads posted to the social network may change the outcome of the 2020 election. That's at least according to an anonymous survey launched last weekend by the development team of Blind, an anonymous messaging app for tech company staffers.

The results are above, with 51% of Facebook employees who took the survey answering Yes to the question, "Do you think Facebook's policy to allow political ads with false claims may change the 2020 election?" Many more respondents from other major tech companies thought that election interference was  likely -- with 78% of Apple employees answering Yes, at the high end.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg made a widely-covered speech last week, defending this policy on free expression principles. However, according to this same Blind survey, his employees are almost evenly split on the matter:

 

Watch: Capture Real World Locations With Your Smartphone & Turn Them Into LEGO-Like Virtual Worlds With New SDK

Some cool videos from our creative teams building with https://t.co/Ob4co4nbsh. Who doesn't love turning a normal sidewalk into a lego land? #arcloud #mirrorworld #everythingisawesome pic.twitter.com/4Yhx6mtbt1

— 6D.ai (@6d_ai) October 14, 2019

Remember 6D.AI, the startup that's creating a 3D mirror world of real life from the input of standard smartphones? The company recently released its SDK, and it makes what you see above possible: Scan a real world location into a 1:1 scale 3D model... then turn into a LEGO-like virtual world.

"It’s all built on our SDK," 6D CEO Matt Miesnieks tells me. "Instead of mesh triangles we draw LEGO blocks." These blocks are the only texture available in the SDK, he adds, but users can create and add their own textures -- opening up incredible opportunities.

Modern 3D Game Worlds Look Better on Old School CRT Monitors Than LCD?

... at least that's the argument from Digital Foundry, and I'm totally intrigued. (Watch above.)

"For example," comments Clive Thompson, "because a CRT is a light gun painting a screen, the computer doesn't need to engage in as much processing to produce bigger image -- so you can lower the resolution in the game settings, still have a good-looking game, and enjoy the knock-on boost in game responsiveness."

Another reason:

Tim Sweeney Has an Epic Vision for an Open Metaverse -- But Unanswered Questions "Who Needs It?" & "Who Wants It?" Remain

Master VR podcaster Kent Bye has a valuable Twitter thread on a SIGGRAPH 2019 talk by Epic's Tim Sweeney, who just laid out his vision for an open metaverse. (No surprise Epic has plans to build one, as that was evident when the company rolled out user-creation tools for Fortnite last year.) In opposition to say, Facebook, Sweeney's metaverse is admirably open and not a walled garden: 

.@TimSweeneyEpic
What is the Metaverse?
Real-time social medium to share experiences & ceators need to be able to create their own stuff.
Needs to have an open economy that participants can participate & survive w free market economics without corporate dystopian control.

— Kent Bye VoicesOfVR (@kentbye) July 30, 2019

As with any other metaverse framework, however, two basic questions (far as I can tell) remain unaddressed:

Libra Has Promise, Says Virtual Currency Expert/Blockchain Skeptic Adam Frisby, But Faces Adoption, Trust & Storage Challenges

Everyone in tech is talking today about Libra, the new blockchain-related cryptocurrency initiative led by Facebook in association with many major companies and organizations. (Read this detailed summary from Josh Constine on TechCrunch.) Assuming it isn't regulated to death by concerned government officials, can it live up to the utopian promises made in its promotional video (see above), while becoming a functional alternative to existing currency system?

"Biggest hole is just whether or not people trust it," virtual currency expert Adam Frisby tells me, in a chat today. "I think some will. Honestly, if it was anyone but Facebook pitching this (even if their stake is a minority one), it'd be way more likely to succeed."

As longtime New World Notes readers know, Adam has been involved as an entrepreneur in virtual world economies for over 15 years, and recently wrote a much-shared VentureBeat essay detailing his skepticism for blockchain. Libra, however, has promise, because (in his words) "it [s]olves a lot of the issues with blockchain, by not really being one."

One interesting point he raises: The industries with the greatest incentive to use Libra now are on the edge of the mainstream economy -- for instance, gambling, online gaming, porn, and the burgeoning legal pot industry in some US states. In my view, their rapid embrace will likely turn Libra into "Vice Coin" -- a brand association which might hamper Libra's adoption by the wider mainstream. (Which is probably not what Facebook and its partners were going for.)

On a technical front, Adam me, the heavy storage requirements may prevent Libra from becoming decentralized. Other challenges remain. For more detail, here's our lightly edited transcript:

Monday Flashback: Slack Began as Work Platform for Making a Virtual World

When listening to my interview with Philip Rosedale, where he talks about creating a virtual world-meets-Slack for distributed work groups, here's a fun irony worth keeping in mind: Slack itself was originally created... in order to create a virtual world. Specifically, Stewart Butterfield's web-based world Glitch. As he told me back in 2011:

“[Glitch] is a game, and not a total open virtual world. There are some tools for creative expression now and more will be added, but anything which would count as ‘user-generated content’ will have to fit within the constraints of the game (without the constraints, there's no game left). So, much of that will be visual customizations (to avatars, houses, locations, etc.) and some of it will be ‘other’ stuff (the non-visual: collaborative music making, player-created games, etc.)”

His development team for Glitch was based around the globe, so they needed a unified communication channel where they could work together, and that's the seed of what eventually became Slack, after the small but much-loved world closed down:

Listen: Philip Rosedale on the Future of VR, the Metaverse, and Building a "Virtual World Meets Slack" Workspace - The New World Notes Interview

Interview starts at about :09 seconds in

UPDATE, 4:40pm: Bumped up for weekend listening/discussion!

Days after Philip Rosedale announced that his social VR company was laying off 25% of its staff and focusing on building Project Lilypad, a cross-platform virtual world for workgroups, I got on a Zoom call with him to talk about that news and related topics. Highlights include news that High Fidelity is coming to Oculus Quest, his thought on the fate of VRChat and other social VR worlds in the wake of this pivot -- and the final word on open work spaces, of which Rosedale was once a prominent advocate.

Timestamps and notes/quotes below:

00:30 Philip and the founding Second Life, my stint as an embedded journalist within it — and walking the virtual world.

01:54: Philip’s mission to build a massive virtual world through High Fidelity and VR headsets — and how the slow adoption of HMDs and their shortcomings for use in work contexts have made it difficult to launch a true Metaverse-type virtual world. Leading to High Fidelity’s pivot to create a cross-platform virtual world-based workspace for teams as a way of growing the market for an eventual Metaverse.

06:20: How High Fidelity’s pivot is like virtual worlds meet Zoom, or a virtual world meets Slack. The challenge of creating an online workspace in the face of open offices — and their opportunity for telecommuting workers, and as a solution to the rises costs of living in tech hubs like San Francisco and New York.  We also delve into the productivity problems inherent in open office spaces, which Philip once advocated. (“Let me go on record and say ‘I was wrong’.”)

12:28: The fate of High Fidelity’s consumer side, in terms of the virtual world and its blockchain-based commerce system. “I’m deeply committed to building the Metaverse… so I’m not spinning down any of that”. That includes plans to release High Fidelity of Oculus Quest soon-ish — date TBD “in the next couple quarters”.

Next: High Fidelity and PSVR, going multi-platform, and how to request early access to Project Lilypad.