All posts tagged: vision

Late Actor Christian Oliver Appears in Spiritual Doc ‘Vision Quest’

Late Actor Christian Oliver Appears in Spiritual Doc ‘Vision Quest’

Published by Daniella Wilson

Late actor Christian Oliver can soon be seen on screen in a new spiritual documentary that explores healing, grief and transformation set against the backdrop of the California desert amid a four-day fast. Oliver is one of a handful of participants featured in Vision Quest, the feature directorial debut of Jan Becker in what marks Oliver’s final moments in front of a camera before his tragic passing on Jan. 4, 2024, when a private plane carrying him and his two daughters, Madita, 10, and Annik, 12, crashed into the Caribbean Sea. Filming on the documentary wrapped just weeks prior. Vision Quest unfolds as cameras follow Oliver and three fellow participants, Gabriela De Pasquale, Carol Grojean and Julie Conelly, over the course of a four-day solo fast in California’s high desert while being guided by facilitator Mark Tollefson. True to the title, the vision quest is an ancient ritual practiced by indigenous tribes as a way to seek spiritual guidance, unearth purpose, recover from trauma, process grief, search for clarity, mark a renewed chapter in life, …

Cheaper, Lighter Apple Vision Pro Successor Could Arrive in Late 2028

Cheaper, Lighter Apple Vision Pro Successor Could Arrive in Late 2028

Published by skeptic

Apple is still working on a cheaper, lighter successor to its Vision Pro headset, but it is unlikely to launch before late 2028 or 2029, according to Bloomberg‘s Mark Gurman. Writing in his latest Power On newsletter, Gurman says that Apple needs to come up with a slimmer design for the $3,499 headset and bring down the cost before it can return to the category, which is essentially “on ice” until then. Gurman made a point of distinguishing the Vision Pro successor from the long-rumored “Vision Air,” which was cancelled last year. In the meantime, Apple’s smart glasses project is now the focus, and former Vision Products Group members have been reassigned to that team. Apple is now aiming to release its first smart glasses in “late 2027,” according to Gurman. Apple refreshed the Vision Pro in October 2025 with an updated model featuring an M5 chip. Popular Stories Apple Seeds watchOS 26.5, tvOS 26.5 and visionOS 26.5 Release Candidates Apple today provided developers with the release candidate versions of upcoming watchOS 26.5, tvOS 26.5, …

Pinterest cut AI costs 90% by gutting a frontier model’s vision layer

Pinterest cut AI costs 90% by gutting a frontier model’s vision layer

Published by skeptic

At 620 million monthly users, calling a frontier model for every image recommendation isn’t a strategy — it’s a bill. Pinterest CTO Matt Madrigal solved it by gutting Qwen3-VL’s vision layer and rebuilding it with proprietary embeddings, cutting costs 90% and boosting accuracy 30%. Madrigal’s team has been heavily investing in customizing open-source models “foundationally in-house.” “If you’ve got really unique data that you can then fine-tune an open source model with, data quality will, frankly, outweigh or overcome model size,” Madrigal explained in a recent VB Beyond the Pilot podcast.  How Pinterest customized Qwen for visual discovery Pinterest, which has around 620 million monthly active users, has long applied open source models for visual search and discovery, going back to Google’s BERT and OpenAI’s CLIP. The company fine-tuned its own Pin CLIP on the latter, incorporating proprietary visual embeddings and image metadata.  Pinterest’s conversational shopping assistant, Navigator 1, was built on Qwen3-VL and customized in “pretty significant” ways. Madrigal’s team essentially “ripped out” Qwen’s vision encoder layer and fine-tuned the model on proprietary multimodal …

William Adams, the Bombay bureaucrat whose vision of a solar future was dashed by colonial conservatism

William Adams, the Bombay bureaucrat whose vision of a solar future was dashed by colonial conservatism

Published by skeptic

William Adams was entranced by energy. As a young man, his interest was nursed by working as a clerk in a London patent office in the 1860s. This gave him an early look at some of the first British designs for exploiting solar energy using mirrors, water or both. Adams would later recount his excitement at reading about the French mathematician Augustin Mouchot’s invention of the first machine ever to run on energy from the Sun. The device, which connected a solar boiler to a specifically designed steam engine, was warmly received by Napoleon III when it was presented to the emperor in 1866. Inspired, Adams soon designed and patented his own rudimentary solar boiler. The only problem was, he needed more sun. This series is dedicated to lesser-known, highly influential scientists who have had a powerful influence on the careers and research paths of many others, including the authors of these articles. When offered the chance to become deputy registrar of Bombay by the Indian city’s governor, Sir Philip Edmond Wodehouse, Adams jumped at …

Why rubbing your eyes could damage your vision, according to experts

Why rubbing your eyes could damage your vision, according to experts

Published by Daniella Wilson

Get the Well Enough newsletter with Harry Bullmore for tips on living a healthier, happier and longer life Get the Well Enough email with Harry Bullmore Get the Well Enough email with Harry Bullmore You know the feeling – the itchy eye that is just begging to be scratched. Before you start rubbing your eyes, you may want to think twice about the potential consequences. While eye rubbing may seem harmless, people who rub their eyes are at risk of infections or damage to their cornea. Fortunately, there are a number of common causes of itchy eyes that can be treated to reduce the urge to rub. We are a board-certified ophthalmologist and optometrist who provide comprehensive eye care. Itchy and irritated eyes are some of the most common reasons that patients visit eye doctors. We have experience in treating the causes of eye rubbing and the consequences, which can require specialized contact lenses or corneal transplantation. Causes of eye rubbing Rubbing your eyes is often a reaction that occurs when your eyes feel uncomfortable …

More All-Black Apple Vision Pro Parts Surface Online

More All-Black Apple Vision Pro Parts Surface Online

Published by skeptic

Images of parts designed for an unreleased all-black Apple Vision headset have been leaked online, courtesy of X account @LusiRoy8. The image shows what appear to be power strap and audio pod parts that look identical to Apple’s existing Apple Vision Pro hardware, except with a dark finish that is not commercially available. The account that shared the images claims that the parts are for a “upcoming” second-generation Apple Vision Pro in black. It’s not the first time we’ve seen black versions of hardware related to Apple’s headset, with images surfacing of similar parts last year. The leaker of those earlier images claimed that Apple has been testing a thinner and lighter mixed-reality headset referred to internally as “Vision Air,” featuring a Midnight-colored exterior and reduced weight achieved by switching several structural components and the battery enclosure to titanium. Apple vison pro 2 upcoming black color pic.twitter.com/bCxtI7Yq5b — pipfix (@LusiRoy8) May 26, 2026 Apple was widely expected to launch both a lower-cost headset, tentatively dubbed “Vision Air,” and a redesigned second-generation Vision Pro. However, Bloomberg‘s …

Detroit’s MOCAD Reopens with a New Vision and a New Kind of Leadership

Detroit’s MOCAD Reopens with a New Vision and a New Kind of Leadership

Published by Jenni Sidey

The creation of the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD) has been a slow and steady one. First conceptualized in 1995 by a trio of women, it took over 10 years of grassroots development before opening its doors to the public in 2006. This spring, the institution marks its 20th anniversary, reopening after an eight-month renovation and a new vision for its future. At the core of this vision is ensuring that artists are at the center of everything the museum does. “Artists will always exist; institutions maybe won’t always exist,” said Jova Lynne, MOCAD’s artistic director who serves as co-director with Marie Madison-Patton, the chief operating officer. “Putting artists at the forefront and acknowledging the multiplicitous lives that are lived is a cornerstone to what we are doing for this 20th year at MOCAD.” Related Articles Lynne and Madison-Patton have given MOCAD’s new chapter a title: “A Practice of Multiplicity.” Lynne described this approach as focused on “uplifting the wholeness of the artist and what they bring to the institution and their communities. We …

Pope Leo’s Unsettling Vision of the AI Future

Pope Leo’s Unsettling Vision of the AI Future

Published by Daniella Wilson

The Vatican, as one aphorism puts it, tends to “think in centuries.” But Pope Leo XIV seems intent on changing that, moving with remarkable speed to publish his first encyclical today, Magnifica Humanitas, “on safeguarding the human person in the time of artificial intelligence.” Leo has managed to produce a major teaching document on AI while college students are still booing commencement speeches about how the technology will change the world. Compare that with his 19th-century namesake, Pope Leo XIII, who didn’t publish an encyclical about the Industrial Revolution until more than a century after it started. In Magnifica Humanitas (“Magnificent Humanity”), Leo seeks to counterbalance alarm with hope. He composes a long and vivid list of dangers posed by AI, but insists that the technology is a “gift that can alleviate suffering and open up new possibilities”—as long as it’s ordered by humane values rather than monopolistic interests. As for the specific advantages that AI might yield, however, Leo is largely silent. His expressions of alarm are detailed and expansive; his expressions of hope, …

Pope Leo delivers on a people-first vision for AI

Pope Leo delivers on a people-first vision for AI

Published by Sam Flores

(RNS) — This spring, something new emerged on commencement stages across the country. Speakers who invoked artificial intelligence were met with boos and groans from graduates who sense, correctly, that the technology isn’t being oriented toward what matters most about being human. That unease isn’t confined to graduates, and it isn’t a rejection of technology. It cuts across political divides and reflects a question many Americans are asking: Who is AI for, and who is it leaving behind?  On Monday (May 25), Pope Leo XIV offered an answer. “Magnifica Humanitas,” his landmark teaching on artificial intelligence, provides not just a diagnosis of what’s at stake, but guiding principles that meet the urgency of our moment. From the beginning of his papacy, Leo has signaled his commitment to addressing the AI revolution, choosing his name in direct reference to Leo XIII, the pope who during the industrial revolution insisted that people must come first, even in the face of economic transformation. With “Magnifica Humanitas,” Pope Leo has delivered on that commitment. The Catholic Church’s insistence on …

Trump’s vision of the White House is starting to look like a fortress

Trump’s vision of the White House is starting to look like a fortress

Published by Sam Flores

Another shooting near the White House this weekend appears to have reinforced something already visible throughout Donald Trump’s second presidency: the transformation of presidential security into both political message and governing aesthetic. After a gunman opened fire near a White House checkpoint Saturday evening, Trump praised the Secret Service response on Truth Social while immediately pivoting toward a broader argument for expanded security infrastructure around the executive complex. “This event is one month removed from the White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooting,” Trump wrote, adding that the incident demonstrated “how important it is” to create “the most safe and secure space of its kind ever built in Washington, D.C.” That line is revealing because Trump no longer talks about security as background logistics. Under his presidency, security itself has become part of the branding. In recent weeks, Trump has promoted plans for a massive new White House ballroom alongside references to upgraded drone protections, broader security enhancements and AI-generated imagery depicting a towering “Golden Dome” over Washington. His social media feeds increasingly blur the line between …