Summary
General intelligence requires problem solving in many domains. Current reinforcement learning algorithms carry this potential, but are hampered by the resources and knowledge required to tune them for new tasks. DreamerV3, a general and scalable algorithm based on models of the world, outperforms previous approaches in a wide range of domains with fixed hyperparameters. These domains include continuous and discrete actions, visual and low-dimensional inputs, two-dimensional and three-dimensional worlds, various data budgets, frequency rewards, and reward scales.

Minecraft
DreamerV3 is the first algorithm that collects diamonds in Minecraft without human demonstrations or hand-crafted tutorials, presenting a great challenge to explore. The video shows the first diamond it collects, which happens at 30 million steps in the middle or 17 days of play.

Below is uncut video of the moves during which DreamerV3 collects diamonds. The algorithm succeeds under many initial conditions that require searching for trees in the world, swimming across lakes, and traversing mountains.

Comparative tests
DreamerV3 masters a wide range of domains with a fixed set of hyperparameters, outperforming specialized methods. Eliminating the need for tuning reduces the amount of expert knowledge and computational resources required to implement reinforcement learning.

Although the source code of DreamerV3 has not been published, its creator says it “will be soon.” The code for the previous version, DreamerV2, is available on GitHub. Hafner notes that V3 includes “better playback buffers” and is implemented based on JAX instead of TensorFlow.

The company posted a blog post titled “Minecraft and NFTs” and acknowledged that some creators and companies have begun launching NFT projects associated with Minecraft world files and skin packs. The post also suggested Minecraft creators may use the game as a platform to create and sell collectible NFTs that players could earn through activities performed on a Minecraft server or as a reward for activities in the real world.

“To ensure that Minecraft players have a safe and inclusive experience, blockchain technologies are not permitted to be integrated inside our Minecraft client and server applications nor may they be utilized to create NFTs associated with any in-game content, including worlds, skins, persona items, or other mods,” Mojang wrote in the post.

“We will also be paying close attention to how blockchain technology evolves over time to ensure that the above principles are withheld and determine whether it will allow for more secure experiences or other practical and inclusive applications in gaming,” the company added. “However, we have no plans of implementing blockchain technology into Minecraft right now.”

The traditional game industry has begun to distance itself from NFTs over the past few months following backlash from players and a crashing crypto market. Sony last week said it would be launching a digital collectibles feature as part of a new PlayStation rewards program, but clarified emphatically that its collectibles were “definitely not NFTs.” Ubisoft, which became the first major game publisher to experiment with NFTs last fall, shut down its experiment after four months. Last October, Steam marketplace owner Valve said it would not permit any games using blockchain or NFT technology, though Fortnite creator Epic Games recently opened the door to such products on its PC game store.

Microsoft has not issued a strong opinion on the subject as it relates to its library of gaming properties before now. But Xbox chief and Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer told Protocol last year he was “leery” of the “near-term kind of hysteria around NFTs” and the potential for scams, fraud and the pyramid scheme nature of the crypto market leading to consumers losing vast sums of real money very quickly. Spencer separately told Axios last fall that NFTs had the potential to be exploitative and that the market contained “a lot of things that probably are not things you want to have in your store.”

Mojang’s blog post expresses similar sentiments. “Each of these uses of NFTs and other blockchain technologies creates digital ownership based on scarcity and exclusion, which does not align with Minecraft values of creative inclusion and playing together,” the company wrote. “NFTs are not inclusive of all our community and create a scenario of the haves and the have-nots. The speculative pricing and investment mentality around NFTs takes the focus away from playing the game and encourages profiteering, which we think is inconsistent with the long-term joy and success of our players.”

The studio said it was also worried about fraud and that third-party NFT technology could result in a loss of assets for consumers, situations that “may end up costing players who buy them.

Minecraft 

The person who sits behind this legendary game is Markus Perrson, a.k.a Notch. The original name of the game was “Cave Game”. It was launched in 2009 and five years later it was bought by Microsoft for $2.5 billion.

Minecraft is an open-world game and it is one of the most played games. It gives its players freedom to build their own world making it look like the way they would want it to be. Minecraft turned out to be a favourite game for many gamers. Not only that but there are even books based on it.

GTA 5 

Grand Theft Auto 5, as this is the full name of the game, was released in 2013. It’s a game based on a criminal storyline. There was $265 million invested in the game. It is also an open-world which feels like a reality.

The game is full of streets, chases, shootouts, litter and graffiti. It’s a source of fun which made the game one of the most successful and popular ones in the industry.

World of Warcraft 

This is a game released in 2004 by Blizzard Entertainment – a company which was announced to be bought by Microsoft recently.

The game gives its players an opportunity to start with a group of other players letting them play together through the entire game. However, gamers are free to play it as they like to but you can also play it alone if you would like to.

The Witcher 

Geralt’s fantasy world is created by mug, metal, and thatch. His main quests include some freelance work and he loves playing cards in a pub.

This is a role-playing video game and its storyline is complex enough for a player who wants to dig a little deeper in it.

Half-Life 

Half-Life was released in 1998 and it turned out to be one of the most successful games in the gaming industry. Its monsters which transform scientists into horrible zombies and the AI soldier made the game interesting and kind of spooky.

The game is full of weapons which contributed to the battle experience favourite for almost every gamer.

The news was announced on Minecraft’s official website in a blog post. It was also said that this action was taken in order to ensure player’s safety and security.

However, there are some advantages which are meant to be beneficial for users.

Single account for all Microsoft games, two-factor authentication and improved safety are just some of the options which are supposed to make players’ experience much more enjoyable.

Players don’t have to worry about their data and game progress because all of this will be retained.

In October 2020 Minecraft announced its plans and explained all the changes that are about to become a reality. It has also said that everyone who changes their account from Mojang to Minecraft will receive a cape as a special reward.

The Nvidia RTX Winter World, commissioned by Nvidia and built by Minecraft world builder, Ushio Tokura, will give families across the globe a festive immersive experience to explore. The company will also offer an opportunity to raise funds for Nvidia’s charity partner, Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity.

Utilizing Nvidia’s GeForce RTX GPU, real-time ray tracing stunningly simulates the physical behavior of light, enabling reflections, shadows, and other realistic lighting effects, as users are transported to a whole new virtual world offering a full winter wonderland and Santa’s grotto experience.

The world includes roller coasters, a Christmas village, ice-skating lake, a penguin postal service, and a petting zoo tent, with playable storylines and quests.

Covering an area with a size of 155,000 square meters or 38 acres, the virtual wonderland is 4 times the size of the biggest real-world Christmas Market in Austria. This took Ushio Tokura more than 300 hours and 30 million individual blocks to complete.

The world also features a full recreation of the Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) building and visitors will be able to donate via an in-game QR code to contribute to the charity’s ‘Home for Christmas”.

Liz Tait, director of fundraising at GOSH Charity says:

“We’re thrilled to be partnering with Nvidia who have created this amazing experience for families across the world. We are so grateful for any donation’s visitors to this incredibly festive winter wonderland, and those joining the charity stream, are able to make it. Every child should have the chance to be at home with their families for Christmas Day, by donating to Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity this Christmas, you’ll be helping fund vital resources that can help get seriously ill children one step closer to home as well as helping to bring that special Christmas magic to children at GOSH whose treatment needs to continue over the festive season.”

Families can download the Nvidia RTX Winter World in Minecraft now at planetminecraft.com.

Now Nvidia is one of those companies. Although there was a controversy over the tech giant when purchasing the UK chip firm ARM last year, it appears that Jensen Huang and his team are raising money while showcasing its own technology in one of the biggest games around.

A recent record says that Nvidia has introduced a Minecraft festive winter wonderland event which shows off the company’s own ray-tracing capabilities. The new winter map, which was created by prolific creator Ushio Tokura, also known as Dr Bond, is set in three snow globes. Those globes are featuring all the stuff that many people associate with this time of the year. Not only that but players will be able to meet a blocky Santa who comes with some presents which are actually quests. The main aim of the event is to raise money for London’s Great Ormond Street children’s hospital.

Gaming industry changed really fast. If some years ago games were some kind of “tool” which helped people relax from their hard day, or captivated people’s attention and curiosity, now games mean much more for people and the world. Now fundraising and video games are inextricably linked together.

This year a UK gaming charity raised approximately $85,000 for different kinds of important causes across the country. Also, the Games Done Quick events have also helped by raising millions over the past years for all kinds of worthy causes. Now, the Minecraft event is taking place via Nvidia and it is open to offerings from anyone, with a donation page now live on Tiltify.

Coupled with the charitable event, Nvidia is also focused on launching a series of hardware products in the next year. For example the RTX 3090 Ti, which is about to be rolled out in January. However, let’s keep in mind that the pairing between Nvidia and Microsoft is not only for showing the RTX tech off, but mostly for supporting London’s children’s hospital.

“I’d be hard-pressed to think of a company that’s not at risk,” His online infrastructure protects websites from malicious actors.

The computer emergency response team of New Zealand was one of the first who reports that the flaw in a Java-language utility for Apache servers used to log user activity was being exploited just hours after it was publicly reported on Thursday and then a patch was released.

The so-called ‘Log4Shell,’ vulnerability was rated 10 on a scale of one to 10, which is the worst possible. This means that anyone with the exploit can get full access to an unpatched machine. Adam Meyers, who is a senior vice president of intelligence at the cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike, said:

“The internet’s on fire right now. People are scrambling to patch and there are script kiddies and all kinds of people scrambling to exploit it. In the last 12 hours, it has been fully weaponized.”

The foundation said that the vulnerability in the Apache Software Foundation was firstly discovered on November 24 by the Chinese tech giant Alibaba. Although Meyers expected computer emergency response teams will have a busy weekend because trying to identify all impacted machines, the real problem is in the affected software which can be in programs provided by third parties. The exploitation was firstly discovered in Minecraft, which is an online game hugely popular with kids and owned by Microsoft.

Meyers and Marcus Hutchins, who is a security expert, said that Minecraft users had already been using it to execute programs on the computers of other users by pasting a short message in a chatbox.

Some researchers reported finding evidence the vulnerability could be exploited in servers run by companies including Apple, Amazon, Twitter, and Cloudflare.

According to Cloudflare’s Sullivan, his company was not compromised, as there is a lack of indication about it.  However, when requested for a comment, Apple,  Amazon, and Twitter did not immediately respond.

The Caves and Cliffs update is also known as version 1.18. It is now available on Minecraft Bedrock Edition and Java Edition (via Android Police). The Bedrock update increases the world height and depth, and gives a brand new cave generation, new cave and mountain biomes, revamped ore and biome generation, new music tracks, and many bugs are fixed.

When it comes to the Java Edition update it has most of the same changes, including updated biome and ore generation, new music, taller worlds, and expanded build limits. This update, however, now requires Java 17 or later. Fortunately, at the moment you open the game from the official Minecraft Launcher, everything will be automatically updated for you.

Now every company living in the digital world such as Facebook, wants to own their own metaverse or at least their combination of tech elements that makes our life much easier.

The term was coined in 1992 in Neal Stephenson’s book called “Snow Cash”. The author detailed different kinds of lifelike avatars in various VR environments. Since the release of the book, many technological developments led to the creation of the very first real-life metaverse. Now Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg are popularizing the term trying to change our lives for the better.

The real-life metaverse is a virtual world mixture of video communication technologies, virtual and augmented reality technologies, and 3D avatars. Thanks to emerging technologies that directly contribute to Zuckerberg’s metaverse, the metaverse of the future will allow us to coexist in an alternative, hyper-real world.

Nowadays metaverse can be seen in the gaming sector – video games such as Minecraft, Fortnite, and Roblox for example, have created their own gaming universe relying on the most advanced AR, VR, and other technologies. The metaverse will definitely impact the way people gamble online. It will also affect the iGaming industry too.

If Mark’s Metaverse comes to life, online casino players, for example, will be playing in virtual environments. His Metaverse plan will change the way we communicate to each other, educate, work and entertain.

Recently, in an interview, Mark Zuckerberg revealed that he is planning to transform Meta (à.k.a Facebook) into a bigger social media platform with different social apps connected.

According to Zuckerberg, there are millions of people who already live in his Metaverse of the one Facebook offers. In his opinion, many people want to inhabit an alternative virtual world that he aims to create. He believes this is the next step of the major Internet revolution and some experts agree.

Mark said metaverse will be a virtual place for everybody who wants to experience things online. Mark’s Metaverse will include different virtual reality layers alongside other emerging technologies such as 3D holograms.

Sony had blocked cross-platform play, which allows people to play the same video game together on different platforms, in the past for titles including Minecraft and Rocket League. Both those titles feature Xbox and Nintendo Switch cross-play capabilities.

There are rumours that new emails and documents in the court case have revealed the extent to which Sony has been against the possibility of cross-play for Epic’s game Fortnite. Sony eventually allowed it for Fortnite in 2018. Joe Kreiner — Epic’s vice president of business development — wrote an email to Sony proposing that cross-play would be “a huge win for us all”. He also wrote:

“We announce cross-play in conjunction with Sony. Epic goes out of its way to make Sony look like Heroes.”

Gio Corsi, who was Sony’s senior director of developer relations at the time, wrote:

“cross-platform not a slam dunk no matter the size of the title. As you know, many companies are exploring this idea and not a single one can explain how cross-console play improves the PlayStation business”.

Tim Sweeney, Epic Games CEO, has confirmed as part of his testimony on May 2, 2021, that Sony is the only platform holder that requires compensation for cross-play, backing up a document from August 2019 that was included in the evidence for the court case.

There is no confirmation that Sony ultimately followed these policy outlines, and currently, Sony supports cross-play for a handful of titles including Apex Legends, Call of Duty: Warzone, Minecraft, and recent release MLB The Show 21, which was the first Sony published game to launch on Game Pass.