đŸ€ Snap back to reality

Virtual reality is poised for a renaissance with some new advancements.

Saturday | September 17th, 2022
Early Chirp

It’s Saturday again, chirpers! I’m wishing you an enjoyable and relaxing weekend doing whatever it is that brings you joy.

There’s always something in the news that seems designed to tear us apart, but hopefully, you’ll find something in today’s Early Chirp that provides common ground for folks from all walks of life. If you’re reading this in America, that common ground might be found in the liberties outlined in our Constitution.

Sure, it’s an imperfect document written by imperfect people — but it gave subsequent generations the ability to create a more perfect union. You might want to spend some time thinking about that today, which happens to be the 235th anniversary of its signing.

-Chris Agee

World

The Breakdown

A quick look around the world.

SNL via Giphy

đŸŽ„ Live From New York: NBC’s long-running sketch series “Saturday Night Live” is back for the 48th season — and this year it will include its first-ever nonbinary cast member. A decade after Kate McKinnon became the show’s first openly lesbian star, Molly Kearney is expected to make her debut this fall alongside three other new cast additions: Marcello Hernandez, Michael Longfellow, and Devon Walker.

đŸ‘šâ€đŸ’» Uber Hack: Despite the company’s size and focus on tech security, it appears that Uber isn’t immune to data breaches. In fact, recent reports suggest an 18-year-old hacker was able to obtain a range of sensitive information from the ride-sharing company’s database. After the alleged hacker shared apparent evidence of the crime, an investigation determined that the fraudulent access was likely granted through the use of an employee’s password, which itself was probably accessed via text message.

đŸ€‘ High-Tech Currency: If you enjoy paying for things with cash, perhaps you should brace yourself. The Federal Reserve is now openly recommending the creation of a so-called digital dollar that would be regulated like traditional paper currency. As Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen explained: “Right now, some aspects of our current payment system are too slow or too expensive.”

🚰 Tap Dance: After weeks of water outages and orders to boil anything that comes out of the spigot, residents of Mississippi’s capitol city now have the OK to drink the water from their taps. Republican Gov. Tate Reeves issued the announcement this week, noting that the previous order to boil tap water before drinking it had been rescinded. “We have restored clean water to the city of Jackson,” he said. While this is clearly a sign of progress, the city has plenty of work to do to repair the aging infrastructure that led to its recent crisis.

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technology

Virtual Reality Comes Into Its Own

The Sony Playstation is back with some compelling new features.

Tristan Fewings via Getty Images for Meta

If you’ve spent years wondering when virtual reality would live up to the hype, your wait might soon be over. While Meta’s Oculus has shown some progress and promise lately, a range of new products aims to make it much easier and more rewarding to cross the threshold from actual reality to virtual reality.

The Sony Playstation, which readers in my age group remember for revolutionizing the video gaming experience back in the ‘90s, is back again — this time with its VR2 device. Although it’s not set for public release until next year, insiders have been bullish about its capabilities after getting a sneak peek of the headset.

As The Verge concluded: “Like most modern VR headsets, it lets you adjust the head strap to make sure everything rests comfortably on your noggin, and you can tweak the inter-pupillary distance (IPD) so that the actual lenses inside the headset are the right distance for you.”

There’s also the news that Oculus is revamping its design to offer more immersion. If you’re disappointed by the current state of the Metaverse or just want to have a better experience while you’re there, this is probably big news for you.

Of course, the headsets are still kind of unwieldy and plenty of folks complain that they’re not exactly stylish. If you can get past this, however, the golden age of VR might be just around the corner.

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health

Here’s How Alcohol Can Impact Your (Imagined) Future

Participants in the study exhibited several impairments.

Giphy

While the mental, emotional, and physical effects of alcohol abuse are already widely understood, there are some less obvious negative impacts associated with even moderate consumption. A new study by Psychopharmacology indicates that people who drink somewhat regularly can have trouble imagining the future or planning for events that might occur.

This ability is known as episodic future thinking and can be impaired by alcohol consumption. While you might already be familiar with the tendency to make poor decisions when under the influence, the recent study shows that there could be more to it.

Specifically, researchers followed 124 social drinkers (those who consume between two and 36 “units” of alcohol per week, depending on gender) to study the impact.

After abstaining from alcohol for a full day, the subjects were given a dose of alcohol-related to their body weight, and researchers administered specific tests to gauge their episodic future thinking.

By and large, the participants exhibited impairments in their ability to imagine or describe events in the future. Under the influence of alcohol, they were unable to provide as much detail, and the information they did provide tended to be less accurate.

It’s worth noting that this was just one study and it doesn’t mean that moderate alcohol consumption is necessarily a bad thing. This research does, however, give you something else to think about before going out drinking.

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economy

The Numbers Are In: Rent Really Is Too High

Rising rental prices are fueling the overall inflation rate.

Spencer Platt via Getty Images

We’ve all experienced the impact that inflation has had on our wallets. While it might be pretty easy to put off some purchases until consumer prices come back down to earth, there are some things we have to buy.

For most of us who rent a home, rising prices have become unavoidable. In August, the average rental cost was a whopping 12.3% higher than it was the same month last year. That’s significantly higher than the overall 8.3% inflation rate for all types of consumer goods.

Experts say the ongoing rent hike is fueling the inflation numbers, but some other economic indicators don’t paint a rosy picture for American consumers:

  • The Federal Reserve has already hiked interest rates four times this year — with more increases almost certain to follow.
  • Mortgage rates are at their highest level since the 2008 housing crisis.
  • Even the Fed’s actions and a decline in gas prices weren’t enough to stave off inflation in August.

Nevertheless, some economists are cautiously optimistic that we’ve reached peak inflation. That doesn’t mean the pain is over, though.

As rising rates cause would-be home buyers to reconsider applying for a mortgage, that means more people will be looking for a rental property, which in turn could send rent prices soaring even higher.

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Early Chirp

Written by Chris Agee

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