But let’s get back into focus. A series of pictures that have surfaced of social media and gaming platforms, seem to depict what could be concluded as the release date of the Series X. The 1st picture is said to show a controller online warranty, which dates that the warranty is valid still 5 November 2021, why is this evidence? Well Microsoft has a “year from purchase” warranty, so given the validity til 5.11.2021, this could be an indication of what the ended release date is.

Secondly, a twitter user posted a picture of what is said to be packaging of the controller. The packaging was marked that “DO NOT SELL OR DISPLAY BEFORE 05 NOV 2020”, which, if the pictures are real, is a clear indication of the release date. Apart from the 2 pictures that surfaced online, previous blog posts by Microsoft have suggested that the console might be released Nov of 2020.

See report by IGN

The post Leaked? | Xbox Series X & S Release Date first appeared on The Men-tal Hospital.

The Tourism industry is worth $1.26 billion by global expenditures. It’s an important industry, and one of the few that has constant steady growth. It’s also a significant global employer, with 296 million jobs predicted by 2019.

VR tourism could dampen the outlook for this vibrant industry.

What is Virtual Reality?

From vrs.org.uk:
Answering “what is virtual reality” in technical terms is straight-forward. Virtual reality is the term used to describe a three-dimensional, computer generated environment which can be explored and interacted with by a person. That person becomes part of this virtual world or is immersed within this environment and whilst there, is able to manipulate objects or perform a series of actions.

In practical terms, it currently means that you strap on a headset, so that your field of view is taken over by a device that displays a 3D, moving image, and tracks your head movement (and with extra equipment, body movement), and adjusts the generated scene accordingly. This will allow, amoung other things, VR tourism.

Mainstream types of headsets

There are a range of headsets, and they differ greatly in quality and price.

Top of the range: Oculus Rift

The Oculus Rift is one of the top of the range headsets, at $599.99. Other competitors in this range are the HTC Vive and Sony Playstation VR Headset.

Middle of the range: Samsung Gear VR

The Gear VR is a middle of the range VR headset coming in at $99.00. Other competitors in this range include the Google Daydream VR.

Entry level: Google Cardboard

The Cardboard was originally released by Google. Designed as a cardboard structure that can be folded and put together by anyone, it really is an entry level headset allowing for mass adoption of VR, as it can be used in conjunction with most smartphones which people already own. There are multiple competitors in this range, mainly made from plastic.

This is really where most of the action is going to happen, I believe. People will be more willing to try the low end headsets, and with the pace of mobile graphics improvement and cloud-based AI services, these low end devices could kick start the VR tourism revolution.

What does it mean for tourism?

Imagine that instead of spending tens of thousands on overseas trips, for example for a vacation in Paris, you could visit Paris virtually, with just your smartphone and a cheap VR viewer.

While the quality isn’t there yet, it may well be in a few years – it’d be interesting to see what the figures look like after 2019 in terms of the tourism industry. Maybe it won’t have a big impact – but it could well have, as VR tourism makes strong inroads into every day life.

The post Could VR Tourism be the end of the Tourism Industry? first appeared on The Men-tal Hospital.

The first popular, mainstream electric car, pictured above – the Model S. It has self-driving technology built in.

Electric

Many manufacturers are following suit and producing electric vehicles.

There are clear advantages to electric cars: they are environmentally friendly, thanks to the possibility of using renewable energy. With fossil fuel based cars, the petrol or diesel is necessary for the engine to run. With electric cars, batteries are used, and yes, some of the power may be produced at power plants that burn fossil fuel, but in the long run, it’s possible to move to renewable sources.

One downside that gets bandied around a lot is range.

Fossil fuel based cars typically have ranges of 600 km or over, depending on the size of the car and the fuel tank. Electric vehicles have been limited to around 100 km in the past, and although Tesla have configured their battery storage in a way that allows for more, it hasn’t reached traditional range as yet.

Superchargers and charging stations

Tesla’s superchargers change the game significantly here. Imagine being directed towards a Supercharger via GPS when your batteries are running low, and having multiple superchargers in every country, effectively making the range issue a non-issue.

Other companies also have charging stations, and it isn’t difficult to imagine a standard being agreed upon, similar to mobile phone chargers using mini-USB. Once that happens, electric cars may well completely take over market share.

Self-driving

Several companies have announced self driving car plans.

Some car manufacturers have even partnered with app companies like Uber and Lyft, and the speed of development has been staggering.

Combine the two

If you take electric car technology and self-driving technology and combine them, it’s not hard to imagine a world where people don’t drive their own cars, but rather, if they do own them, they add them to networked “Car Pools” and collect money from them every month, whilst using the same car pools to do most of their travel.

While there will always be motorheads who own and drive their own vehicles, it may be that the vast majority of the population won’t bother either owning or driving cars in the near future.

The post The future of motoring will be electric, and self-driving first appeared on The Men-tal Hospital.

AI will soon see exponential growth in power. Ray Kurzweil calls this exponential growth the Singularity, when artificial intelligence surpasses human intelligence, and grows at an exponential rate. The only way humans would potentially be able to keep up would be to transcend biology and become High Men.

Our brains would have to merge with machines and be contained in the Cloud, allowing us to also progress at an exponential rate.

What would this mean for humanity and for the planet?

As humans we are currently limited by physical limitations – our brains are slower than computers, our bodies are, relatively speaking, quite fragile. Transcending biology would solve these problems.

As uploads, our minds would be in the Cloud, and be able to leverage redundancy and expandability.

We could still navigate the physical world as either telepresence robots connected to the Cloud, or as nanobot swarms, without worrying about our bodies being destroyed, or about biological illnesses.

How would the environment benefit?

Humans consume a lot of resources – from agriculture to mining, to depleting forests, the planet really takes a hit to allow us to survive and grow as a species. If we transcended biology, we could minimize the amount of resources we needed to survive. A lot of functions could be centralized, without sacrificing autonomy. (Each individual would still have a unique Mind File, but use shared resources to run whole brain emulations allowing the Mind Files to form a continuation of the person in his or her previous biological form.

Humanity could also leave the confines of Earth far more easily, not needing an environment suitable for our current biological bodies to live in.

Is it really possible?

There’s a lot of skepticism and a lot of technological hurdles to overcome. But if it turns out to be possible, it could take humanity to the next level.

The post The Rise of the High Men – Mind Uploading first appeared on The Men-tal Hospital.