Sphere tests its giant LED video dome in Las Vegas

It's Wednesday, July 05, 2023.

MSG and Sphere Entertainment have started fully testing the Sphere, a 17,600-seat venue near The Venetian with an animated outer dome and a wraparound internal 16K LED screen. It displays images, video and animation on the outside and the inside, apparently opening up entirely new concert and cinematic experiences.

MSG's James Dolan and David Dibble explained to Rolling Stone the aim is to create a VR experience without the "damn goggles." Creators use a special camera to produce footage that envelops the audience. Construction started in 2019, but the pandemic and technological complexity have brought costs close to $2.3 billion, making it the most expensive venue in Las Vegas to date. And this is Las Vegas – not a place of humble, small-scale buildings and structures. 

You can watch it here, but it will count as one of your finite tweet views a day...

– Mat Smith

You can get these reports delivered daily direct to your inbox. Subscribe right here!​​

The biggest stories you might have missed

The best 2-in-1 laptops for 2023

Tech giant gatekeepers must comply with all of the EU's new digital market rules

Judge blocks federal officials from contacting tech companies

The best early Prime Day deals for 2023

Apple wants to take the Epic Games case to the Supreme Court

Prior rulings could reduce its App Store profits.

Apple is initiating one last-ditch effort to maintain a cut of in-app sales, asking the Supreme Court to hear its appeal of Epic Games' anti-trust case, Reuters reports. Two lower courts ruled Apple must drop its guidelines preventing apps from including their own payment options, a policy that helped Apple's bottom line.

The lawsuit was a mixed bag for both parties involved: In 2021, US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers ruled that Epic knowingly violated Apple's rules, and the iPhone maker wasn't required to re-add Fortnite to its App Store. Rogers also stated Apple wasn't acting like a monopoly, but it must allow apps to offer third-party payment systems. The change went into effect last year, and the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the entire injunction this past April.

Continue reading.

July 3rd was the hottest day in recorded history

Average global temperatures climbed past 17 degrees Celsius on Monday.

Reuters

According to US National Centers for Environmental Prediction, meteorologists documented the hottest day in recorded history on Monday, July 3rd. They saw average global temperatures over 17 degrees Celsius (62.62 Fahrenheit) for the first time since satellite monitoring of global temperatures began in 1979. Scientists even believe Monday is also the hottest day on record since humans began measuring daily temperatures in the late 19th century. The recent heat is attributed to a combination of El Niño and ongoing human-driven emissions of greenhouse gases. Studies have shown climate change is contributing to heat waves that are more frequent, last longer and hotter than ever.

Continue reading.

Twitter says it couldn't tell people about rate limiting in advance

The company claims bad actors could otherwise have changed their strategies.

Twitter’s decision to limit the number of tweets users could read each day came as a surprise to many. (Most? All?) However, the company now says it could not give folks a heads-up. "We temporarily limited usage so we could detect and eliminate bots and other bad actors that are harming the platform," a Twitter Business blog post reads. "Any advance notice on these actions would have allowed bad actors to alter their behavior to evade detection."

Continue reading.