

News
Viltrox AF 13mmf / 1.4 lens now available for pre-order
The Viltrox AF 13mmf / 1.4 lens for mirrorless cameras with Fujifilm X mount, preliminary information about which appeared some time ago, has become available for pre-order. According to the source, the official announcement of the novelty is scheduled for January 3. However, the technical characteristics and price of the lens are already known, so it is unlikely that any new information will appear at the time of the announcement.
The description of the lens says that it uses internal focusing, in which a high-precision stepping motor moves a light block of optical elements, which provides fast and accurate automatic focusing. The subtle change in focal length as the focusing distance changes will be appreciated by those who shoot movies. The scope of the lens includes shooting landscapes, architecture, still lifes, starry sky and even portraits.
Viltrox AF 13mmf / 1.4 Lens Specifications:
- focal length – 13 mm (EGF 20 mm);
- angle of view – 94.06 °;
- aperture – f / 1.4 – f / 16;
- optical design – 14 elements in 11 groups;
- the minimum focusing distance is 0.22 m;
- maximum magnification – 0.1x;
- the number of aperture blades – 9;
- filter installation size – 67 mm;
- diameter – 74 mm;
- length – 90 mm;
- weight – 420 g.
The lens costs $ 469. The kit includes covers, lens hood and case.
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Gaming
Now for game designers: ChatGPT in the Unity editor will help create games

A user named keijiro introduced a very interesting concept – the ChatGPT deep learning model in the Unity editor for creating games. With this system, the generation of game scenes and environments has become easier, since you only need to set a text query. The project is called AICommand.
At the same time, the author honestly admits that this is only a concept, not a finished product, the whole system does not always correctly understand requests, which will lead to errors in the game. However, in general, this is a rather curious tool that can potentially improve the work of game designers.
The author notes that Unity version 2022.2 or newer is required to work, no other requirements are given. The project itself is available on GitHub.
Note that earlier another generative one has already been able to replace musicians, creating music based on images.
News
Five Planets Alignment 2023: Jupiter, Mercury, Uranus, Mars and Venus line up on March 28

At the end of this month, the five planets of the solar system, Jupiter, Mercury, Uranus, Mars and Venus, will be visible from Earth as they line up in a small patch of sky shortly after sunset. This will happen on March 28th.
All 5 planets will be visible in the sky quite well. The brightest planets will be Mercury and Jupiter, which will be visible above the horizon, as well as Venus, which will be slightly higher. Mars will be less visible, and in order to see Uranus, you will need binoculars.
Two or three planets located next to each other in the sky can be observed quite often, and a similar parade occurs less often (it was in 2022, 2020 and 2016).
Last year, northern hemisphere stargazers had the amazing opportunity to observe Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn at the same time. Last year, residents of the northern hemisphere of the Earth could watch the alignment of Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.
Several more similar events are expected in 2023. So, in April it will be possible for Mercury, Uranus, Venus and Mars to line up next to each other. Mars, Venus, Uranus and Mercury are expected to align in the same month.
News
Midjourney smells of racism: the neural network created a provocative image

We have repeatedly written about how the Midjourney neural network has progressed over the past year. The quality of the generated images has reached a whole new level. Often, Midjourney’s work can be confused with photographs.
However, this note is about something else: the Midjourney neural network was asked to generate an image for the query “White man robbing store”, clearly implying that we are talking about a robber with a light skin color.
What Midjourney was “thinking” about, one can only guess. It is unlikely that the neural network believes that whites have never robbed stores. However, in the end, Midjourney issued an image of a black man in a white tracksuit and a white balaclava.
So far, no accusations of racism have been filed against the developers of Midjourney. In fairness, it is worth adding that, at the request of iXBT.com, the neural network produced the following pictures:
You can see how Midjourney developed by drawing cats here.
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