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Boredom busters and content verification
4th level in Among Us
Among Us is the biggest hit game this year. The indie game has a team of players work together to performing simple tasks on three available maps. There are randomly assigned "Imposters" who will have to directly, or indirectly, kill the other players without getting caught.
The game is two years old but it rose to sudden fame this year, with people stuck at home and wanting something more than just killing time. It has been downloaded 217 million times. Want to see if it will rack up something close to PUBGs 734 million downloads"?
The latest update to the game is a new fourth level. Developer InnerSloth gave a screenshot of the new map which looks like a large cockpit complete with the all-important vent through which players get around. It will be revealed at The Game Awards on December 10th where Among Us is nominated for "Best Multiplayer," and "Best Mobile Game."
Content verification on YouTube and Twitter
Covid vaccine news getting you hopeful? YouTube is adding a verification panel so that viewers can be directed towards legitimate sources of information related to Covid-19 vaccines. This is in an attempt to combat misinformation. Relevant videos will also prompt more verified info linking sources like CDC and WHO.
YouTube is a massive hotbed of misinformation especially for conspiracy theorists and anti-vaxxers. Twitter also announced a relaunch of its verification process early next year. Once verified, users will get that all important small, blue badge. Accounts will need to meet certain criteria to be verified such as like being profiled in a media outlet. Among other rules, verified users can have their badge revoked if they change their name or bio to mislead people. Twitter is taking surveys on its policy and users can tweet their feedback before December 8th with the tag #VerificationFeedback.
Draw up your own monster
Have you heard of Chimera? It's a genetic anomaly where one organism contains two sets of DNA. In Greek mythology (and sounding much cooler) it was a fire breathing creature made of two animals. You can play with Chimera though. It is an AI tool made by Google researchers. It will turn your strange doodles into monsters. You draw, it applies textures and fine tunes it. Random blobs will be textured blobs. So you'll have to put a little effort into it. It uses machine learning similar to how Nvidia made landscapes, MIT and IBM created buildings. You have segmentation map overlays that divide different parts of a monster for you to draw (muzzle, limb, claw etc). Lot of options, super easy, so try it (https://storage.googleapis.com/chimera-painter/index.html) or just look for chimera painter. I've been spending all day on it.