This week in the ➡️ #Metaverse - Issue #29

🎆Happy New Year from a very festive Argentina! ⚽ Here we are with a supersized weekly roundup of what’s happening in the digital land(scape).

Also, happy to share the launch of my book"ARTEficial: Creatividad, Inteligencia Artificial y Derecho de Autor" is out now. You can find the digital edition here!

Paper and digital edition, with variant cover!

What's going on:

Zuckerberg defended Meta’s reliance on acquisitions to build out virtual and augmented reality services.superzied

Today, we’re very pleased to announce the launch of the Lamina1 Ecosystem Fund (L1EF). Unlike other crypto ecosystem funds, L1EF is a rolling fund — the first Layer 1 blockchain rolling fund in…

"South Park's" Trey Parker and Matt Stone raised $20 million for their AI entertainment startup Deep Voodoo from CAA and NEA's Connect Ventures.

The Sandbox has sold more than $1.66 million worth of virtual land across the map of its metaverse in the past few weeks.

OpenAI, the Elon Musk-founded artificial intelligence startup behind popular DALL-E text-to-image generator, announced on Tuesday the release of its newest picture-making machine POINT-E, which can produce 3D point clouds directly from text prompts..

My way or the hardware:

the city university of hong kong has developed 'wetac', a wearable electronic 'skin' that provides tactile feedback to users in VR.

Diver-X, the Japan-based startup known for pitching an ambitious VR headset earlier this year, is at it again, this time with a pair of VR gloves that incorporates a membrane capable of flexing and compressing to replicate the sensation of touch. The original HalfDive headset campaign on Kickstarter managed to secure enough cash to be …

The WTF award of the week goes to...

Can you use artificial intelligenceto fake a life? In the case of Kyle Vorbach, you can. Here's how he used AI generated photos to do it.

"To celebrate the 100th anniversary of the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb, this ancient Egyptian city has joined the Metaverse. Learn more about real estate in the metaverse by tapping on the link in our bio. @tutera.egypt".

Behold, the #Chopraverse!!!

The meditation marvel has brought his friend and CEO of the Chopra Foundation, Poonacha Machaiah, into the fold to build a digital oasis of caring and compassion.

Gaming news:

Software company says deal won’t threaten competition in the industry

I Am Not A Robot: AI news

Comic editors and artists unite in expressing their distaste of AI art, which has caused some to refuse submissions for publication and conventions.

The United States Copyright Office initiates a proceeding ruling that a comic book made using A.I. art is ineligible for copyright protection

AI researcher, Murray Shanahan, warns about the dangers of large language models not understanding language and "truth" like humans.

Petals, a research effort backed by the BigScience project, aims to create a distributed network for running and fine-tuning text-generating AI.

CryptoLand:

Counting users in the metaverse is tough. CoinDesk scoured and analyzed multiple data sources to distill an answer.

Alleged 'mastermind' who proposed 'take the money and run' exit strategy remains a fugitive

Meme corner:

New year, Old news

Ending nugget:

2022 was characterized by evermore blatant greed—kind of like the 80ies, but without the fun.

Theranos’ Elizabeth Holmes and her partner-in-crime Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani getting sentenced to jail for their fraud. 

"Elon Musk’s ill-motivated, ill-planned, ill-executed train wreck of a Twitter takeover that should bury any glorification of his qualities as entrepreneur, leader, manager, or human being"

In 2023, I hope that we get better at recognizing fraudsters and hucksters, and become more aware of what James Surowiecki so accurately described as a birth defect of Anglo-American capitalism: that con artistry is part of its DNA. 

Tim Leberecht, Co-founder and co-CEO, House of Beautiful Business