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The dawn of the 3D-printing age was full of sky-high promises that had no chance of matching the reality of what was possible. Companies like Formlabs have taken the subsequent decade to look for places that the manufacturing process can work, and refining its technology to suit. Today, the company is announcing its Form 4 and Form 4B printers that, it says, offer a substantial improvement on what has gone before. And with maturity comes a shift in focus from just being able to create custom doodads on the fly toward a real manufacturing platform. The headline promise is simple: The Form 4 series will crank out prints up to five times faster than its predecessors. Rather than waiting a full day for a prototype to print out, the company is now suggesting youll be able to get something usable in just two hours. (For the uninitiated: The B suffix stands for biocompatible, meaning the unit can 3D-print materials for medical applications. Formlabs has made inroads into the dental and medical industries, making cheap, custom-designed dentures as well as training models, prostheses and custom-fit medical equipment.) The faster print time is enabled by better hardware, including a new print engine and a new light processing unit, as well as better resins. Formlabs is today announcing a set of new resins, including ones that help you crank out quick-and-dirty initial prototypes, as well as ones with more rigidity and color retention. Plenty of effort has also been jammed into ensuring that the resins (and the printers themselves) last longer, making prints cheaper and more efficient. The company is suggesting that prints made with the new gear will be around 40 percent lower thanks to the efficiency savings made elsewhere. This emphasis on speed, efficiency and lower cost should help bolster the sales pitch that these units are ready for bigger and better manufacturing jobs. The Form 4 and Form 4B are available today, priced at $4,499 and $6,299, respectively.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/formlabs-new-3d-printers-are-faster-and-cheaper-to-use-130008859.html?src=rss
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It's becoming increasingly difficult to determine what is AI-created as tools' capabilities continue to improve. Marking AI-created images is one solution and an option Snapchat is expanding on. The platform is introducing a watermark on AI-generated content that is saved to your camera roll or exported. Snapchat In a surprise to absolutely no one, Snapchat's AI watermark will be a ghost with sparkles next to it. There doesn't seem to be any way to control where the icon appears (as is typical with watermarks), but we'll know more when Snapchat adds the feature "soon." The addition of an AI marker for externally seen images follows Snapchat's steps to label in-app content. There's the extend tool, which creates the effect of a zoomed out image, and has a sparkle icon to indicate it's an AI feature. Then there's the Dreams feature, which uses generative AI to turn selfies into "fantastical images that transform their persona into new identities." Anyone who receives a Dream image also gets a context card explaining its AI use.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/snap-is-adding-a-watermark-to-ai-generated-images-124542245.html?src=rss
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Marketing and Advertising
It's time for another video game showcase and this time around, Nintendo's stepping up to the plate. The company's latest Indie World stream takes place today at 10AM ET and you can watch it above. The showcase is slated to last for around 20 minutes and it will feature announcements and updates on games that are coming to Nintendo Switch this year. With only Endless Ocean Luminous, Luigis Mansion 2 HD and Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door on the docket as things stand, the first-party calendar is looking pretty sparse in the run up to the Switch's successor, which is rumored to arrive in early 2025. So giving fans some exciting indies to look forward to in the meantime is a smart idea. There are some signs that Hollow Knight: Silksong may show up during the showcase. It wouldn't be a surprise to see updates on some of the year's biggest hits, such as Balatro. One thing I'm especially curious about is whether we'll ever see Palworld on Switch. That enormous hit is effectively a survival-based spin on Pokémon. Given Nintendo's close association with that franchise and The Pokémon Company, a Switch port of Palworld seems unlikely, but hey, some strange things have already happened in the video game world this year.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/watch-nintendos-indie-world-stream-here-at-10am-et-123008283.html?src=rss
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